Max RandallDog Trainer. Who does more than just train.

Cecil had all 4 Fires, how many are you dealing with?

16 Oct 2026 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:38

In this YouTube monologue, Max Randall presents the case of Cecil, a six‑year‑old Poitevin who was anxious, reactive to other dogs, had no reliable recall, and pulled on leash like a train. Randall explains the “four fires” framework – four underlying problem areas that can coexist in a dog – and shows that Cecil was experiencing all four simultaneously, which caused conventional training attempts to repeatedly fail. Instead of adding more training, the owner made a handful of lifestyle changes: scatter feeding, free‑work sessions, scent‑based games to give the dog a daily job, and improving the dog’s sleep to lower arousal. These simple, consistent adjustments led to a dramatic turnaround, with most walks now polite, no reactions, and even successful recalls of deer in a field. Randall uses this story to illustrate a shift in his own training philosophy, moving away from a “training basket” mindset toward helping dogs heal holistically and creating a new type of dog owner. The video frames this approach as the core theme of the series.

Chapters

If the training keeps failing, stop adding more training and change these three things instead. So there's this dog called Cecil, and he's a Poitevin, and he's six years old. He was anxious, reactive to dogs, had no recall, and in her words, almost impossible to go out with due to him pulling like a train. Now I want you to remember those four fires that we spoke about Monday. Well, Cecil wasn't just one of them; he was. Carrying probably all 4 of them at the same time. And that's exactly why every bit of training failed. It was aimed at the behaviors that his human was struggling with while all those fires were just there burning underneath every single day. And the turnaround came from a few changes to his life. She said they added simple things first, like scatter feeding and free work, then scent games so the dog actually had a job every day so we could work him, but also dropping the dog's arousal through sleep. And I also love this line that she said, it really seems like it's not so much, but the are just amazing. She's only 3 months in, so he is still having 1 or 2 bad days a week where he's a bit more wound up than she'd like, but that's just a dog slowly healing. It's natural. Quick fixes like that with fancy tools doesn't get you a result like this. But most days now are polite walks, no reactions, and this week he even recalled off of 3 deers in a field without hesitation. And he's 6 years old. When I stopped putting all of my eggs into this training basket mindset and I started helping dogs as well, I became this a completely different type of dog trainer that creates very different types of dog owners. And that is everything that this series is about.