RawPetMedics Tuesday Night Live: Guest Spot Barry Breen

And so you need to look at number 2 with Down to Earth.

Down to Earth? Yeah.

Yeah.

What was that? What's that? That sounds like a sci-fi show.

Oh, it's like with Zac Efron.

Oh no, he's a hunk.

I tried that as well, and he and the doctor who was with him, they're morons. They have nothing intelligent to say except from, oh yeah, okay, that's really cool. That's it. That's the extent of their conversation. So great, good luck to them. But I looked at— I saw that Iceland one and I wouldn't touch it again. Down to Work with Zac Efron. Sorry, Zac. He's probably watching.

And that's the Down Under one. Did you not do the Down Under one? Because they do the dark emu sort of review. They do all of the other bits.

What's it about? What's it about? Give me the gist.

It's all about sustainable farming. It's about, you know, trying to you know, how we can farm better, uh, how we can produce meat, how we can eat more of the animals that we're, uh, we are eating. Uh, so yeah, it really— I thought actually the Down Under one was, uh, I think far more interesting than any of the previous series. You shouldn't start. Go to Down Under.

There was a good— there was a funny meme going around there of, uh, the G27 meeting up, and it was the G20— it was a picture of the G27 and what they were eating. They were having wagyu beef and fish for mains. Yeah. And it said the G27 meeting up eating Aggie Beef and Fish discussing how to stop everyone eating beef and fish. I thought that was funny. But the reason we're talking about this, guys, for people are just coming in now— it's a relief when people start coming in, um, because yeah, but, um, the reason we're talking about is because I was talking about Ancient Apocalypse last week and it was a challenge to you all just to see if you enjoyed it because a lot of people will watch that and go, no way. But I just love, I just love an opposite opinion and hearing it and listening to the guy's point of view. And that's kind of what it is for me. It's like, yes, more of that on the table. Who cares if you think he's 100% correct or 90%? It's just so fascinating. Yeah, I thought it was great. So be interested to hear, guys, if anybody was watching that, because I told you to watch it.

I was half expecting to see whether he's going to start talking about spaceships landing on pyramids and things like that.

And no, but he did look— listen, here's a great one. Here's this, like, he just said this pyramid, he says this, the magic number is 42,300. And he goes, because bear with me If you multiply the height of the pyramid by 42,300, you get, you get the length of the Earth. And if you multiply the base of the pyramid by 42,300, you get the width of the Earth, to a fraction so tight that it would be normal standard deviation when you work it out with computers. That's how tight they have— they have a pink— they have this mass. Each block is 70 tons, and it weighs just an unbelievable amount of it. And they have it facing perfectly due north, this massive structure perfectly due north. How could you possibly build something like that today? Like, he's got all these figures, like how do you move a 70-ton block 500 kilometers? How do you do that? And so you ask any engineer, we say, do that without diesel, and they'd be like, rolling, we were told in school, rolling on logs, 70-ton blocks, you know, you would need—

Across the desert as well, you try to log in sand.

Up the hill. Across a dune. Oh, not another dude. Put your back into it, Nick.

I mean, sometimes—

more camels.

So like, and then he said, and they're like, how do you build the pyramids? And they said, oh well, they just cover it and muck higher and higher. And he goes, have you tried to pull the 70-ton block up a hill? Like, how do— where does the rope end? Where do all the people go? They go down the other side. And what do you do? And pull these— he said, just give me a break.

It's just—

he says, and then to have the fractions so perfectly tight and aligned to north and Uh, I, I was like, they're interesting points of view. And it's like, wow, he's not saying alien city, he just said what tech they must have had to put that thing up. I mean, that's serious thinking. I mean, you couldn't do it, you know, if we were given—

uh, the thing that I was more amazed by this week was actually talking of pyramids, uh, the explosion of Tonga, um, that happened last January that emitted 40 1,000, um, times the volume of a pyramid in mass out up into the atmosphere and across the ocean floor.

Wow.

Um, creating a new caldera around the— they thought the volcano would absolutely totally destroy itself in that explosion. I was heard around the world. The sound wave apparently passed around the world 3 times.

I missed it.

And yeah, we all missed it.

We were—

yeah, your wife, was that you?

Yeah, I blamed my wife.

I tell you what, the earth moved.

Anyway, that was interesting, guys. Before we bring on Barry, I'm dying to chat to Barry. There's too much to talk about with Barry. But how did you get on? There was a conference on the weekend. Tell people how we got on. That seemed to be very That seemed to go very well for the Raw Movement.

Well, my impression was— I'll give you my impression of the first day, and Brendan could give his of the second day perhaps, so that we can share things out. There was not one minute when there wasn't a person— am I still on? I've got a really bad connection tonight. There wasn't one minute during the whole day— I wasn't there the whole day, but I was there very much during the day— I couldn't— there wasn't a time when I didn't see somebody visiting the, the stall, the stand. And if you think, we, we only had a tiny stand and it cost a fortune, but per square meter we were one of the most busy stands in the whole place. Okay, yes, I think for meter for meter. And so very impressive. There was nothing but good conversations. I had one guy who was a little bit wobbly. And, um, Brendan, you spoke to our friend Cat the Fett, is that correct?

I know she watches. Hi, Kat.

Hi, Kat.

Oh, bless her.

Bless her. So, uh, yeah, that was, uh, our friend Joe who came along to, uh, sponsor the stand. So thank you, Joe Flanagan. Uh, he came in just to sort of like show, uh, willing and help us out. Um, and, uh, um, he sort of says, I've got this lady wants to know more about RAW, and delivers cat, the vet.

Get your shield and your sword.

No, I was just calm. I just, you know, answer the questions. Just, you know, you just have to do that thing of, oh, I sort of know who you are, but, you know, doesn't matter, we'll continue the conversation.

Answer your questions.

Do you know what? We had some great— I had some vet students in asking those questions, had some vets in asking those questions, all of the typical ones of, yeah, I've got a 2-year-old wild. Um, uh, you know, is it safe to feed raw? You know, we're thinking of producing raw. Um, is that going to be safe? You know, what, what do we have to look at for legislation if we're going to advocate raw? Uh, the students talking about barrier nursing, and I might use my old saying of, you know, if you're gonna have a patient in hospital, for God's sake, you should be barrier nursing every single patient, you know, to stop infection. So that's basically where they're wearing PPE. So personal protective equipment. They should be wearing gloves, mask, you know, a disposable gown, so that when those patients are in the hospital, you're not, you know, you deal with that patient, you take all of that stuff off, and then you move on to your next patient with a new fresh set, so you're not transmitting infection from patient to patient. My nurses had some really interesting lectures that they went to where people were sort of doing the what do you do if this is a dog comes in with a wound, it's raw fed, what would you do? And they were gobsmacked to hear people say, well, I just wouldn't let them in the practice. It's just like, you know, you call yourself a vet. That's not what you do.

Yeah, they're scared witless though. It's almost like during COVID it's like, I'm a doctor, do I treat COVID patients? And like, if you don't have the information, it would rattle them and they're thinking about other people and they're hearing the terror and it's filtered, it sinks in. There's no, it's hard to dodge it. I can sympathize. Great that you had a normal conversation with Kat at the time. Time enough that she comes over and comes over to our side. But I mean, even then, you just don't want any of the crap. We might as well be debating in a healthy manner. And so what if you don't agree?

She might not have seen it as a normal conversation. I just treated it as a normal conversation just to really wind her up because I'm sure she was trying to prod me with a big stick and get me to lose my rag and I just was refusing to do that.

Yeah, that's good. One of us guys, one of us, not me, has a beeping going on. I hear it every 10 seconds. Barry's in the background, but I think he's on mute, so I think it could be Nick or Bren. And I heard it last week as well. Nick, if you take off your earphones, can you hear a beeping?

No, I can hear it even now, and I'm on a completely different rig to last week, so I don't think it's anything I'm doing here.

I think it's one of those faults, internal faults with a Mac, and it is literally when it's rebooting its, uh, SD RAM. Okay, it does a test thing. Okay, but I can mute myself.

That's fine. Okay, so listen guys, we're Raw Pet Medics. You'll find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. That helps us bring in the big bucks to pay people like Barry, extremely expensive. I'm joking, Barry, it comes in here of his own accord. But patreon.com, price of a cup of tea or coffee if you can, it's great, we really appreciate it. If you can't, no problem, we're going to be here anyway. And do not forget to check us out on podcast, guys. You can hear us as you're walking your doggos anywhere you like. I mean, it's on all the kind of platforms that you could hope for. While you're in that platform, guys, it really helps us if you give it a 5-star rating because then we go up the rankings a little bit. So wherever you do listen to us, please give us a 5-star ranking. Or even if you don't listen to us, go in there and give us a 5-star ranking anyway. These things really, really help.

Then go and do something more interesting.

Yeah, they really help us move up the, move up the platform. Oh my god, I'm here on my own. Okay, say something. Time to bring in Barry. This is Barry Breen. He is a dog trainer extraordinaire from Galway. I've known Barry for years and we— our eyes met over a raw dog food dinner. And so that is how myself and Barry got chatting. And Barry is a fantastic trainer and he's into search and rescue, and I always wanted to do that. So I am here to pick Barry's brains really publicly. So Barry, how you doing? Nice to Nice to have you on the show. Do you want to tell the folks a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Yeah, so hi guys, small bit nervous, but it's fine. That's always the way. Yeah, as you said, we go a long way back, Conor. But yeah, my name is Barry Breen. I run a business in Galway called Galway Dog Training, and then on my— as a hobby, I also do search and rescue for— as voluntary— for a voluntary organization that is now progressing to be a charity. That's actually in the process of registering to be a charity. At the moment, and that's called GovDog Search and Rescue Unit.

I know I've been muted. Can you hear me now, lads? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been muted because of the child, but she's gone back down. She tried to put the kid to bed, it clearly didn't work. Something's very wrong with Zoe, and we'll ignore that. But yeah, Barry, look, search and rescue, okay, what's the difference? I hear the term like sniffer dogs used I see the dogs out working on the TV. You don't see search and rescue very often. I believe if you're looking for search and rescue, you're probably in big trouble. I see sniffer dogs at the airport. What's the difference between these sorts of dogs?

Yeah, so it's just different variation of the scent discrimination, but particularly in search and rescue, what is the dog is trained to pick up the scent of any human or a particular human by clothing or scent off a cadaver. So, and so those kind of three main items are what we kind of look for. Unfortunately, you don't want to be getting in contact with us because it's, you know, it's not, it's not always good news, you know, when we're involved.

Yeah, very negative. So out in Galway is where you work and patrol with your friends that do this. Can anybody join you with their dogs to help out, or is there a certain amount of training, like who who can do this.

Yeah, so qualifying the dog actually takes quite a bit of time. Like usually we're talking about, about a year, up to a year, if not a small bit more for someone to qualify. However, now with saying that, so that's how much work it takes, you know, so it's not one of those things where you do a 4-hour course and you're qualified.

That doesn't—

there's an awful lot of experience involved. Now with saying that, we're always looking for bodies, we're always looking for people that are willing to meet loads of dogs, be a body, and what I mean by a body is being going into a bush or up a tree or go into a hedge or whatever it is or into the water or even into the river if they feel comfortable going into the water and basically they teach the dog to kind of find them and throw a ball or throw food or whatever they want, usually it's a ball or toy.

I love it. How does the dog know, like you let the dog off in the hills to try find somebody and there's like 1,000 people have walked on that hill in the last week, how does the dog know which set of footprints to follow?

Yeah, so that's different, so that's man trailing. Our dogs are air scenting dogs so what that means is that the dogs are actually trained to find any human scent in an area by the their nose in the air rather than on following tracks on the floor, on the ground. So exactly like that. Now with regards to tracking particular footsteps, if you want to track particular footsteps, then you just train the dog with the scent, you give them articles, and then they can work it that way. But what we do is we train the dog to find any scent area. So usually what that means is we usually ask the civil defense or guardia civil, whoever's working at the time, can we vacate the area and have the area zoned off so we can actually search it? So we can try and find someone. And the dog will pick up every human it can and articles as well. And also a lot of dogs will be both trained in live and unfortunately dead scent.

How do you even start training a dog to find like the scent of a dead person, of a cadaver? How do you do that?

Yeah, so at the start it was actually quite difficult because we had to use— we weren't well established, so we had to use hair and we used teeth. Um, which was absolutely gross. And teeth, but yeah, teeth. Yeah. Um, so then we moved on from that, and we've got quite a substantial number of donations already of placenta. So people's afterbirth, they give us the placenta, we freeze that. Um, and then what we do then is we, we soak that in the clothing, and then we let that unfortunately decompose, and we use that to train, uh, cadaver and water cadaver.

Whoa, whoa. Ah, God, I can't believe this is an opportunity for me.

I could have, I could have saved the placenta of Yeah, it's definitely something we do. We all, like, people are very kind of gross about us and they're very kind of put off by it, but like, you're saving someone's life, you know, by training the thing. Because we do the live as well, and we do get live people as well as unfortunately people that have passed.

Barry, tell me, we always hear these statistics of that a shark can detect one part of blood in a trillion parts of water, or a dog can detect 40 trillion. What sort of figures are you being taught? What's the kind of— what's the up-to-date? How do sharks and humans and dogs compare?

I don't, I actually don't know, and I won't pretend to know. I actually— the granular data level, I don't actually keep an eye on, and I don't actually follow. I mostly work just by experience and by exposure and results. That's kind of what I do. So unfortunately, the only kind of thing—

for that kind of data, who would be the people to go to? Is there a university in Ireland who might have that kind of data?

I don't think in Ireland, but with regards to— definitely not Ireland, but it would be a university, I'd imagine, over in Australia, or else definitely over in America. Yeah, I know Dina Zafaris, they do a lot of scent work.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, or Dina Zafaris over in America, she does an awful lot of, um, she does detection work for ovarian cancer, so I know that she would have definitely have some of that research as well.

What's her name?

Uh, Dina Zafaris, I think it is. Dina, I know it's Dina, and I think her surname is Zafaris.

Okay, great.

Cool, cool, cool.

Because we know that Helsinki are doing quite a lot of stuff with that medical detection, aren't we, Des? So they are not just looking at the COVID I think there was a lot of cancer detection stuff that they're doing, various different diseases now. So that's really interesting as well. I find that fascinating that dogs can look at that side of things too. So, oh, Conor, you sounds like you need to go and look after a child.

Am I unmuted? Am I unmuted?

Yeah, you are, but the child is not.

Okay, the child is not indeed. I heard during— I heard during— they were being used during COVID that Annaheim Borgman was working with dogs up in Helsinki during COVID to try sniff out COVID. I mean, how bloody amazing that a dog could sniff out— I mean, is it a byproduct? Is it a metabolite of having a viral infection, or is it the virus itself? And I also heard that they can sniff homeopathic mixtures, which are so diluted. The whole reason people criticize homeopathy is because you dilute it so many times that the molecule that you said was in it, let's say silver, uh, it's so diluted that the molecule is just not in that anymore. You're looking at distilled water. And so this, this Avogadro's number, and that the dogs could sniff homeopathic mixtures and, and differentiate between them and distilled water. So when it comes to talking about a drop of blood in a swimming pool type thing, I mean, that's surely the level of where they're at when they're talking about that. So I mean, I would not be surprised. 25% of their brain. Alexandra Horowitz did a good book on, uh, on, on pseudoscienty stuff as well. Uh, so, so tell us a bit, is there any— can you talk about some of the things you've done in the last— is there like, what are the— what— give us a success story there, Barry. Yeah, yeah. What's it look like from the start of it? Do you get a call and you're up out of bed It's like it's game time. How's that look at the— how's the start?

Oh, it says sometimes we are in bed, but, um, well, the most recent would actually be— it was, uh, within Galway, um, and basically we were called by An Garda Síochána to have a task force to help try and find, um, a woman that was missing. Um, we basically went the area and there was a lot of prayers going on, those people crying, and it was a very delicate scene, you know, people were very worried. Uh, she went off for her usual walk, um, and she never returned from it. Um, but, uh, we did a search. We had Civil Defense, we had the Coast Guard helicopter out for about 2 hours combing the area. Um, with the, the guard, she kind of coming out all day. And then we got called then because, you know, obviously they limited the most basic type of searches. So then they start bringing in us, and we set off the dogs in several different areas, and we were kind of gritty. We were gridding the area, basically covering the area using zigzags and lines and cones and all that, and we couldn't locate her. And then just we had one or two areas extra left that we wanted to search that we knew weren't covered, uh, that we said we would cover. And we went back to the car and we were kind of looking at the maps, Google Maps, and zooming in, and we're going, okay, we haven't covered this area. Where have you covered? Now there's about 4 dogs at the time in that search, and we haven't covered a particular area. And sure enough, we looked at the, we looked at the areas and we said, okay, let's just do that. And we'll ask as well the guard that kind of had an area of interest. So then we went up there and sure enough, the two dogs went up and they went up to search the area in two different areas. And one was waiting for one dog to finish up and then start. Next thing I know is one of the dogs started showing an awful lot of interest in a particular area. Now normally what we do is we teach the dog to start barking at that point, you know, when they go in, to go in and to start barking. But we were very concerned and we could tell that the dog had something the way he was acting. It wasn't like, you know, walking around sniffing the trees, you know, it was very like— I see it all the time, they're zigzagging, going back and forth, and they're trying to get in, they're trying to jump through the wires and all this kind of thing. So there's barbed wire there at the time, and then the next thing, uh, what the dog started— the dog started barking, and then there was another dog as well, Rooney, that started kind of showing an awful lot of interest and was trying to get Wimperdon to get in. So there was Rooney, and then there was Fionn, and both— and next thing, anyways, we had to call them out really fast because we knew there was someone in there at that point. And sure enough, there she was, a lady, lovely lady, actually, lovely family, and she went down into a meter and a half ditch, and she was covered in mud basically up to the neck. And she was recovered and brought to hospital. And that was, that was in the middle of the night. That was about 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. And whoa, and not to, not to be presumptuous about it, but a couple of hours more and it would have been a much more tedious situation.

You'd be in the water all night in muddy cold water.

Yeah.

And then the search begins at 8 o'clock in the morning. They might not begin in your area.

Exactly.

And another day in a ditch where nobody can see you.

And that's, that's the danger of it as well, because we can't say an area is covered unless it's covered. Yeah, we're not just there to kind of go, oh, let's run the dogs past it, you know. This takes, yeah, years of training, you know, where we've trained the dogs that if they don't find anything, there's nothing there. Yeah, yeah, that's unfortunate. They know we have to be able to go to the guards and say there's nothing there, and we know it's not there, you know.

Barry, we've got it, we've got a, one of our top fans is called Sarah Jane Smith Horton, and she is saying She's got a 9-month-old female lab suddenly scared of children, sometimes low growl, sometimes a bark, otherwise really, really lovely. Okay, where does your mind go when you hear stories like that? It's kind of presentations like that, would you say?

Well, in that particular, it's very difficult to say without actually meeting the dog because a lot of people can kind of confuse, you know, and you know this yourselves, a lot of people confuse growling And sometimes growling can actually be a form of affection with dogs. So I'm not saying it is Dash, but I'm saying that can actually, it can get confused with Dash, you know, like a lot of dogs kind of growl. And if children start engaging in kind of rough behavior and stuff like that, especially when they're becoming into 9 months into their adolescence years and all that, into adolescence period, they're going to get much more boisterous. So that could be what's happening. But also as well, you have to get it looked at. You'd have to just kind of get a thing. But You can easily just look up as well and look up a bit of research online, but you have to be very, very careful what you look up because Dr. Google is a powerful thing but a dangerous thing.

Yeah, yeah, anytime it comes into negative stuff, you need help. And for the cost, the cost of a trainer, they cost half nothing. I mean, you could have somebody out at your house for £60, £80, £100, and they're sitting there drinking a cup of tea and assessing the family and the dog and looking at the interaction because you know, it takes a lot of time. Even like when you're in guide dogs, like you didn't get a dog for 3 months, you just follow the trainers 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, pick up the poo, look after the kennels, and you didn't get your own dogs for months. And so you're just following and observing, and you think you know stuff until you actually follow trainers who have a huge amount of experience. Like somebody handing you a manual to drive a Formula 1 car, you know, you might be able to start it when you get into it, but you sure as hell won't get it around a track. You know, without incident. So it's the same with them, with dogs, surely. There's a— you've got a lovely— that's a nice shepherd there. Have you got any other dogs?

Yeah, well, I have my— she's my main kind of search dog, but we also have lots of other dogs in the search and rescue organization.

Yeah, okay, so you've got shepherd dogs. One of the questions on my Facebook page was a very reactive shepherd. So was that a cat that just went— looked like a cat?

No, that's Maya going upstairs there.

Okay, oh, that's the stairs.

It's kind of like one of these kind of—

is that a mini German Shepherd or is it far away? Near, far away? Oh no, I didn't know what that was. Anyway, so somebody asked online there— there's a heap of training questions come in as soon as there's a chance to get insight from someone that knows. But there was a German Shepherd that popped up, so perfect time to say she has a reactive German Shepherd. What's the advice for somebody, or even so for somebody like me where the dog is my dog is addicted to scent work, he's a cocker spaniel and his nose is on the ground permanently and even this person's got a reactive German Shepherd, what's the advice to someone with a dog that's just a little bit mental for something, where do you go, what's the first few steps?

The first few steps, well first off is I look at the home environment like as we know and everyone knows first thing is food and exercise, are they getting those two things, are they getting the canine enrichment, are they getting activities, are they just getting a boring old walk down the rest of the neighborhood and then come back? Are they actually going swimming? Are they going sniffing trees? Have they any job to do? You know, what kind of activities are they doing? Then when I kind of get that kind of area, then with regards to reactivity specifically, then, then as I kind of check the energy. So normally, as well as that, with dogs that are very highly reactive, they have an awful lot of energy behind it, and a lot of that energy is actually fed in by the high carbs within foods, in the commercial foods that we have. So that's the big one. And you know that yourselves. So the— that thing, then I changed the diet and it was when I start seeing that. And normally I test that by kind of focus work with the dog. I see what he's like at very basic focus work, and if he can't do that, like a simple wait within a couple of seconds, then I know that, okay, his focus is wrong because he's sniffing the ground, he's doing this, he's doing that, he's not calm, do you know what I mean? Yeah. So that's the first thing. Then with regards to reactivity, first thing I would say don't panic, okay? Because they— if that was a small little Bijon Frise that was running around and barking like that, no one will bat an eye. Because German Shepherd, people are going to go, ah, yeah, you know what I mean? Like, so, so what you have to remember, that dogs are communicating, and it doesn't necessarily— reactivity is a big broad spectrum, doesn't necessarily mean they're aggressive. Aggression in a dog is extremely rare. True aggression in a dog is extremely rare. And you know, and the— well, so with regards to reactivity there, what I would do is I'd find out the source of the reactivity. Is it dogs? Is it people? Is it roads? And then I start counter-conditioning that using a protocol called CARE protocol. That's C-A-R-E protocol. And that would basically teach a dog that this new stimulus is actually a positive thing rather than a negative thing. So, and just for anyone that doesn't understand that, what I mean by that is, let's just say I hate Conor Brady there. God, I hate him.

How much I hate him.

And every time I I met Conor there, he gave me a Cornetto. After a good couple of 50 times, I'm going to start loving Conor Brady, you know. So, and that's kind of the thing. But with that, with regards to that, and the thing is, is that with corrections, where this is where a lot of kind of trainers kind of divide, is that with corrections it becomes a very negative area. And corrections don't necessarily have to hurt the dog, and I don't believe in hurting the dog. So corrections, what it is, is basically stopping the behavior. You know, just kind of blockish, get them to the station or whatever it is, and then do something positive and then reward that. But there are places for corrections, only in turn, not hurt ones, not ones that cause harm or aversive methods or anything like that. But there are times for methods like that so that you stop the behavior so people don't get scared, dogs don't get into a fight, and whatever it is, just to stop that issue. But that doesn't fix it, that just stops the behavior. Right there and then. And then you have to fix it by doing the proper procedures, which is care protocol.

I see, that's it. So they'll find the care protocol online because I can only imagine how long— I mean, that's just— I mean, imagine 2 or 3 shows just to go through that. But that's— you just said something critical there. People with the negative reinforcement, with the kind of a check on the lead or any sort of physical stuff to dogs, what people were doing was telling the dog no, but they weren't showing them what to do ever. It's just giving out when he does something wrong. And it's like playing the hot and cold game and just going cold cold, cold all the time and not getting any hot direction. So you don't learn at all. So people think they can just push the dog into a normal— and that makes it so, so much worse.

And the biggest one as well, just for people there, like, for example, I have the lead here, okay? Like, and the thing— and a lot of people don't realize this— is that you're walking along down— now imagine this is, um, just the lead and you have the dog here and you're walking along. The minute you start tensing that lead when you see another dog, you start going like this. The minute you do that, then you, you start giving the dog a cue. Start off.

Oh yeah, I'm worried. You should be. Yeah, exactly. Game time.

And it's— and people are there, oh, they're not that sensitive.

They are.

Yeah, it's the exact same thing as a mother or father with a child, you know. There's that neighbor that they hate and the kids start squeezing their hands. They won't be long hitting the neighbor themselves.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true.

So I've got a question for you then, Barry, that, uh, so So you know, Artie here in season again, you know, typical because I've not neutered her. And there's lots of clients come in, they've got their own male dog entire for health reasons, but yet within the neighborhood there's a bitch on heat. And in that period of time the dog goes absolutely nuts. It usually won't eat. You know, moping all the time, it's crying and everything else. So I've been asked often, is there a way of training them out of having that hormonal drive, which is quite natural? Okay, you know, do you think it's possible to get them out of that, just focus on the bitch on heat without neutering them?

It's a very good question. When I can figure it out for myself, I'll let you know about the dogs.

So Good answer. Okay, I've got, I've got a question. I've got a question of going off an observation. I've had two cases over the last 30 years where, where, where people have said, I took my dog— they're usually working dogs, Springers, Labs, and what have you— and they said, I noticed a distinct improvement in their sense of smell when we went from processed food, kibbles and what have you, to a more natural, simple, and even a raw food diet. Have you any experience with that, with what you feed the dog and their ability to use their nose at all?

With regards to using the nose directly, no. But with regards to, like, for example, our search dogs, a lot of them will be on raw and if they're not on raw, to be on a very high-quality dry food. Now when I say high quality, that's relatively speaking, you know. But Debbie, the thing is that with a very good food like Dash is their focus is much stronger, their problem solving is much better, and they're not hectic, so they're able to think it through, they're able to follow the scent more, lose it more, and that's where the food highly impacts behavior.

So you can see the difference, you can see the difference between the crap food dog and the raw fed dog.

I can see it in every puppy course there that I do, you know, because puppies are very obvious at start and even adults as well. But with the puppy course there, every course of like 7 dogs, I can spot 4 or 5 that are on really bad food, every single one of them. And I can actually tell as well, I've actually done this before, sorry to sound egotistical, but I've actually told what food each individual dog was on. Just by the way they're behaving. Yeah, so, so, um, like, red— I won't mention foods because I don't think I'm allowed, do you know what I mean? But certain brands give off a certain, um, energy and a certain kind of vibe and different kind of behaviors. Like, for example, um, if like Royal Canin is a lot of, uh, hectic kind of sniffing and then jumping, sniffing, jumping, you know, it's erratic. You can spot a mile off where, um, uh, I've seen with different kind of foods like Burns as well, they'd be constant sniffing and licking paws and stuff like that.

Interesting. Yeah, it's amazing that you just said focus, Barry, because when I was over— and I've used this, I've told this a million times, but I'm going to tell it again— when I was over with Brisbane Guide Dogs and they changed 220 dogs in training, not dogs, so much dogs in the street, but dogs in training, 220, about the same size as Irish Guide Dogs, and they jumped them from dry to raw. They did a small little test first, thought there's something to what Billian Hurst and Lonsdale and the other Aussie vets were pushing at the time in the '90s. And so this CEO jumped 220 training dogs from dry to raw, and the health bills fell by 82%, the CEO said in a piece for a newspaper. Okay, the health bills was amazing, but it was when you're talking to the trainers as a trainer and you're chatting and going, so, you know, how's things in that department? They said, well— and these are throwaway comments, this isn't down, there's no hard data on this, so there's no way to back this up— but there were conversations we're having. They were saying kennels are calmer. Like, the dogs are still doofuses. These are Labrador Coast Retrievers a year old, they're still idiots and fun and great but when it came to game time and the jacket was on, they were better, focus was the word, they had a better focus for the job. And the lady said, the kennel manager said, it's like kids after a birthday party. If you fed them junk food, you wouldn't try and train them 20 minutes later, you'd try and manage them, you know? And there's no focus in a kid that's eating junk food. And I thought, oh my God. And another critical thing they said, there's a big thing in guide dogs called rejection rates. So you spend huge amounts of money and effort to get this dog right. You spend a year and a half training the dog up to 2 years, to get them right for this one person. They're thinking about them all the time. And at the very end of the training, the last little bit, you start removing support from the dog and try to trip them up and kind of— not trip them up, but walk out on the road to get run over, or try to bash your face off a sign. And the dog has to say, no, no, no, it's this way. And he has to make his own decisions. Very stressful. And sometimes the dogs don't make it at that point and they get chopped from the program. And at that stage, the dog can be worth like 40 grand. And so that's what they're called, rejection rates. And they got— and guide dog organizations, because their charities really watch that, nobody wants to lose 30, 40 grand and Brisbane Guide Dogs were saying the rejection rates were just going pew because the dogs were just better able for the challenges. They were like, it's a tough gig to be doing this all day. So I can only imagine if you're trying to run around a mountain all day using your head, you must need a ferocious amount of energy. And sure, B complex and all the other stuff that we know fresh food is full of and dry food suffers for a want of, it has to be useful if you're running. How long would you be out with the dogs in the day? What sort of a workload is this? Oh, you've gone quiet. Hang on there.

That's not on our end.

You've gone quiet, right?

Microphone for a moment.

No.

Oh no, come back.

It's fine. He might be just—

you can take off your— unplug your Bluetooth earphones. You might have run out of battery. No, no, no. Oh God, I've got loads of questions.

Critical questions.

Yeah, yeah, we'll give them some time to come back.

I was going to say, my little Artie is just an A1 dead body finder, but they're usually either small fluffy creatures or shot venison.

And does she eat them? And does she eat the dead bodies? No, she brings them back.

She'll bring them back first. And then you've got to give her permission to eat or not, depending on the situation. But usually the rats, I don't want to pick them out of her mouth before she demolishes them. So it's just like, go for it, girl.

I remember Dudley rolled in a rat, the most rotten rat ever. And when he came up to me, its leg was hanging off his coat. It was just green and sticky, a rat's leg. And I saw the rest were just mashed on the ground and it was just awful. My God. I'm just fascinated by the sniffer dog stuff because I've got a sniffer dog. I've got a cocker spaniel who's obsessed with scent work. And so like when it comes to walking, it's not the most enjoyable dog walks I've ever had. I've had a number of dogs, you know, and, you know, it's either a Conor walk and sometimes I'll leave the dog behind, or it's a Dudley walk because it's just erratic, you know. And I feel every single tree, every lamppost, anything that looks slightly different, he used to stop and scent it for a a huge amount of time. So, you know, if you're trying to get down the town, it's not going to happen. Or bring him down the town, it's just, it's chaotic for him because there's just so much to do, you know. He's, uh, so I need to reward that a bit more. So I wanted to ask Barry for tips. I know Barry, we still can't hear you, Barry, in case you're trying.

No, can you hear us? Can you hear us?

You can hear us.

All right, there we go.

What about reboot?

What about if he reboots?

Yeah, leave Barry, come back in again.

Just press the re— what's it called?

So we're going to leave you and then just, just come back in when you refresh. Yeah, yeah, there we go.

So I wanted to ask him how to reward those dogs, how to work those dogs. And one of the tips was that, you know, scented dogs love smelling stuff out the back garden. So dried bits of meat, little tiny flaked up dried bits of meat, uh, or even dry food. I have to admit, you can get free packets from there, some of the pet shops, you know. So you can say let's say there was some dehydrated fancy kibble that you wanted to get, you know, and you go, oh, I'm not sure, they got trial packs behind the counter and you can get a few of them. So it's decent enough.

But any better?

Perfect. Yeah, perfect. Good stuff, man.

So Connor, you had a question for Barry.

So, okay, so I've got— I've finished. I was saying, first of all, I was saying about the workload. How long are you out in the mountain for? How long can these dogs work for? I heard that the sniffer dogs in the likes of the airports, that's energy intensive and they only get so many hours out of them for them to rest. How long does a working search and rescue dog do before—

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it depends on the level of fitness, but usually they last about 20 minutes to 45 minutes of intense working and then they need a break for 20 minutes, you know, because it's quite, it's quite a lot. And also our training sessions will be 3 to 4 hours per day and that's 2 days a week that we train. And then on a real search, we could be out for easily 6 hours, you know, because we go back, look at the maps, and then go back to the car, back out again.

Okay, so they'll be working for 4 to 6 hours simply because they have to, because there's somebody dying of hypothermia down a ditch somewhere, is that right?

Yeah, well, we can't— you see, we can't expect anything off the dogs that they're not able for. Like, they're having fun and they're, you know, they're absolutely loving it, but if we start seeing the dog's energy going down and he's not really paying himself, like he's starting to struggle and all that, we— it stopped, you know, it's immediately, no, the dog is tired. So, um, yeah, but usually about a good 30 minutes, 45 minutes to, uh, of a good search, and the dog then has pooped for a good while.

Wow, I'm surprised, that's quite short. I thought it'd be hours and hours of it.

Yeah, but the thing— yeah, but the thing is, that's the beauty about search dogs is because they cover a huge area in a short amount of time. Okay, that's the beauty of them.

And you— are you running around behind them? Waste?

No, no. Basically what we do is we kind of do what's called gridding. So we kind of stay in this kind of area and we kind of— let's just imagine a field, for example, and you'd be in the middle here, and then the dog would be kind of going over there, going over there, going over there, and basically thing like that. So, you know, let's just say a big football field, we'd probably get covered in about 2-3 minutes, you know, because we're just going, we're just going straight up, and that whole area that will be covered in trees is covered. Yeah, you know, dogs can smell it, that's it.

And what about, what about a, what about a body in a river or a lake?

I mean, that's where, that's where it gets a bit more tinged. That's where there's very little dogs that can actually do that in Ireland. And, and now we work with Irish Search Dogs quite a bit because they are absolute gurus and they've been amazing to us in sharing their information and their knowledge. But we've started doing the water cadaver and we are still in progress of that, and we are trying to raise money at the moment now to try and get a boat so we can start working with that. So far what we've done is we've gotten a kayak and we've got the dog on it and we've gotten them to pick up a water clever at a depth of about a meter and a meter and a half. That's where we're at the moment, but we need it a good bit deeper than that.

And what's under the water, do you mind me asking? That's a meter and a half down. Well, what are you using?

Well, oh, what, the substance we're using, is it? Yeah, yeah, it could be. For example, some people use diseased pig, uh, piglets. Or else we use, uh, placenta that are donated to us, which we're always looking for. Please, if you have any placentas, you can just call— you just give them—

yeah, and then decompose a bit.

And then, yeah, well, we put them in the water and we let them decompose naturally as if something was in the water.

And, and like, like a tiny little piece of placenta and a dog in a moving— I mean, imagine you're starting in a lake, because I can only imagine how impossible it would be in a river.

All right, very difficult. But yeah, they can do it in the river as well. We do that.

Yeah.

Barry, why a placenta? Why not just get a bit of steak? It's a whole lot easier to just go down to the butcher.

It doesn't, it doesn't work the same. The scent— oh, it has to be human. Well, it has to be human, but apparently there's research done on it that a piglish in water, it acts— it smells the same, very similar to human cadaver. So that's why we used a piglish. But yeah, if you want to use it if you want to do it dead right, you'd want to use them. You'd want to use the placenta or hair and teeth, whatever you can.

Wowzers. I saw, I saw a video. I'll share it again on, on this. I shared it last year. There was a video of a dog in the UK. She's a famous sniffer dog or a search and rescue dog. And, uh, they threw—

someone wants to know, they're just dying to know why placenta rather than just blood. Yeah, uh, placenta is a tissue, you see, so it's much easier to smell, but also as well with the blood, it's kind of hard to get a nice quantity of blood, do you know what I mean? Like obviously when someone's injured, we can't run around after them, 'Oh, can I collect your blood?' Yeah, it does seem an easier thing to donate though than a placenta.

Yeah, but this dog found in the lake, a huge lake, they threw a tin of corned beef with a hole in it and they threw it out into the lake, this really big depth, let's say 6-8 meters, all the way down into the silt, and it sank a meter into the silt. And very quickly, this dog on the top of a boat, like you're explaining there, zigzag pattern, the next thing the dog's going ape, and then boom, they, they had the canoe or the little boat right over the can that went into the lake. I mean, how can the scent be that sensitive? It's just—

it's— well, it's not that sensitive. It's— their olfactory is huge compared to ours, you know.

Yeah.

I forget what it is, the exact numbers, but like you're talking about millions more than ours compared to our thousands, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Receptors.

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it's just nuts.

Barry, do you have lots of stories that you could share with us just for another 10 minutes, do you think?

Well, what kind of stories? Like that was a happy story that I mentioned there, and I have a lot of sad stories, but you don't want—

Okay, not sad stories. Should we—

should we—

let's just wrap it up now. Yeah, and let's nip over to Patreon. And Barry, if you can share 2 or 3 happy stories.

We just do this— we didn't tell you this, Barry, yet, but we do this thing called Bit on the Side where we go off and we take our tops off and we do a bit on Patreon. No, we just do— we just do 10 minutes more content, Barry. We're going to squeeze the life out of you at the moment. But I would like to know— Conor does a Zac Efron and he strips off, shows his I'm, yeah, not quite that Xaver on standard. But yeah, I'd like to know some tips for like how to work with scent dogs, how to kind of train this up a little bit. I've got a dog that needs occupying, you know, how do you nurture this in your dog if you were after this, you know, how can I teach my dog to smell drugs in the park, for example? I'd like to know.

For a friend. Yeah, another one that I heard is actually local is that criminals train their dogs dogs to smell money so that they will break into the house, they open a house door and then they send the dog off to find money.

Oh wow, well let's talk about that, let's get into that.

Okay, but yeah, but it's basically as simple as getting a scent that you want and basically marking it with a tennis ball. Every time they show any interest in it, tennis ball, tennis ball, tennis ball. Then you start then progressing then of teaching dog to speak on command scent, and then you start bringing the dog to that scent and getting them to speak. Then when they speak and bark at the thing, then they get the ball. And then you progress and progress and progress and layer and layer and layer to the point where you let them off, go find, they find it and they bark at it and they stay barking at it until you go over and get it.

That's easy. I'm going to start a search and rescue club.

Well, that's exactly it. See, that's the thing.

Everyone—

there's all these courses online at the moment that 'Oh, it's for— you can train your dog to be a search and rescue dog in, you know, a couple of weeks.' That's not true. It's an awful lot of skill because there's handler training as well as the dog training. So the dog— the handler needs to know what area is covered, what's not covered, wind direction, gridding, type of patterns, range of the wind, because if it's woods, it's going to be less. If it's out in the grass, mountain area, it's going to be miles, you know. Yeah, there's a lot of parameters in it. And then also as well, the dog needs needs to know that as well. And also you have to be able, absolutely certain that you've searched the area and there's not— it can't be just by chance of those out in the field and bringing your dog.

Love it. Let's save the rest for the bit on the side here for 10 minutes. This is just a reminder from Karen Reid. Thanks, Karen. xmaspetexpo.com, guys, it's free to view. It's going to be all the best kind of pet products. I'm associated with this, was actually my idea. I thought it'd be a brilliant way of me showcasing my products. And there's a number of other companies there, Becker's Bites and Judy Morgan's coming in and a few others. And so we are— it's a very simple idea. You come in free to view. It'll start at 4 o'clock on a Friday in 2 weeks. And yeah, it's very simple. If you're a vendor out there and you want to be in it, it costs you £50, but you can enter all the categories if you want. They're going to be rapid-fire 2-3 minute video bursts of, this is my product, this is why it's awesome. You might be an author, you might be doing consults, whatever it is, as long as you can sell it globally. That's the little hit, because there's going to be people from the US watching this as well. Um, so that's it.

A little, little ask from Jane Iswith with regards to, um, special t-shirts. Uh, I think they— we want you to put a slogan or something that you think would look really good on a t-shirt for advocating Raw. We know Nick's really good at this. Uh, he loves his t-shirts.

I've got about 6 very snazzy. Not that I haven't done them as— I've got the idea, and Ellie's a designer, so together we'd be able to do something like, you know, Raw-tastic, but kind of, you know, plus, plus, plus.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Conor, however, has one, and that's sticking a stick in his spokes and blaming it on Raw.

Very successful, very successful. Um, okay guys, that's quite a bit on the side, and we'll— thanks everybody for being here. patreon.com/walpetmedics. Deeply appreciate it, guys. We'll see you next week for—

join us in about an hour if you want to see the stuff that we've recorded on Patreon. Hopefully it won't be a couple of guys talking about lawnmowers. Okay, take care.

Thank you to Barry.

Thank you, Barry. Barry, fair play. Thank you.