Brutally Honest Advice For Reactive Dog Owners | LIVE Q&A

Cool. Good afternoon, folks. If you can hear me okay, just, uh, drop a 1 into the chat for me, and then we can start doing some questions. Well, we'll give it a few minutes for everybody else to jump in. One. So it— Cool. So Susie's going to start me off with some questions, but folks, anyone jumping in, should you have any questions, start chucking them into the chat for me. I'll read through them and get them answered for you. Um, appreciate everybody spending their Sunday afternoons with me, and hopefully I can give you some value. On walks, not sure how to address the initial fixation on the other dog in the area. Correct or redirect? Trying to get in front of the escalation before it gets too high. Um, yeah, so the initial course of action of which we would often take in order to create a new behaviour is, is to redirect the attention. Typically the use of a terminal marker is what we use to do this. So a terminal marker, if you watch any of our videos, which I assume you do given that you've turned up to a YouTube Live, that is the yes cue most often, or a clicker, which tells the dog they're going to get paid. And initially we use that terminal marker to redirect the dog's attention, but over time you can narrow the criteria. So a terminal marker actually says to a dog, you did the right thing. Keep doing that thing. I want you to do it more. So initially, when our dog spots another dog and they've not reacted, we can say yes, redirect their attention towards us using a leash pressure and turning them back towards us, keeping our hips towards them, pay them some food, pay them some money. Um, and then hopefully what will happen over time is the dog will actually actively disengage with the other dog in the vicinity. That might mean that they maybe look at the floor, they go to sniff, they go to do something else other than fixate on the other dog. Or the jackpot, they look at you. And once they look at you, you can say yes and pay. And what you often want to do is create a bit of a rubbernecking behaviour where the dog looks up at you on a regular basis. And then you, again, you can start to narrow the criteria further. So you might pay few and far between. You might pay one in every three rather than every single time. And then that way you'll make the behaviour a lot stronger, and hopefully you'll take the fixation and the value away from the other dog. And position it more on you yourself. In regards to how to charge a marker, how to do that, how to make one, I'd kind of encourage you to either look at our YouTube videos or look at the Behaviour Bible, which is a free resource which we, we give out to people via our website. So one of the first things it teaches you is how to increase food motivation, how to create a terminal marker. Of course, if somebody else asks the question, I'll describe the process. But there you go. Hopefully there's enough homework there for you. Can we talk about reactivity towards strange/new people and how to tackle that? When do you correct? When do you initiate play? So really there's a wider picture or a wider problem here, and I need a little bit of additional context in regards to what we might do. Because there's a few different scenarios, right? If your dog is reactive towards people but they're— and I know this is a bit of an oxymoron— but they're proactive with the reactivity, e.g., there's a person at a fair distance on the other side of the road or walking towards you at the end of a pathway and your dog reacts at that person, um, that's not just the case of getting your dog used to new people. Um, we've got to do a bit of boundary setting. We've got to do it, tell our dogs 'Hey, look, that person walking down the street is not your concern. You can't just bark, lunge,' that sort of thing, 'at them.' And so the course of action in which we'd often take in that scenario is we'd use punishment, not necessarily just a correction depending on what your definition is and how you want to treat it, to fix that issue. So we tell the dog, 'Hey, you can't do that thing. You can do anything else.' And we might put some other things in place that the dog can do. And leading back to the kind of first question which I answered around using a positive marker to create alternative behaviors. You might do a little bit of that, but in addition to that, you might also work to making your dog more confident and secure around people. Um, if it's the case of the fact that your dog is a bit, uh, nervy around new people and a bit unconfident, e.g., they're not so proactive with their activity, it's more people coming into their space, then we might utilize things like play. Or a game that we call treat and retreat. So play-wise, if your dog's got good play drive, it's a really good way to break the ice and introduce them to people and make them more confident around people. And one of the best ways to do that is get them playing with somebody else and then let them win the toy so they think they're the big I Am. That's a good way of doing it. Also helps the person obviously enclose space and close the proximity And in addition to that, you can use food. But again, it's— food's more of an icebreaker too, just helps break that initial ice and get the person and the dog closer together. And we like to use a game called treat and retreat. So a way in which you would do that is you might have your dog on a lead, or you might have them backtied. And initially, the person who is new to the dog starts by throwing food out behind them so the dog can retreat, actively retreat away, and alleviate spatial pressure from the person. Then once the dog's a bit more confident, a bit more inquisitive, you might start to throw it down in front of them. And only when the dog initiates the social interaction, like— and the biggest concern and the biggest common mistake that we see is when somebody tries to force food down the dog's face and says, oh, I'm great with dogs, or they're taking food so they should take it from me. Again, that's very pressurizing to the dog, especially if they're unconfident with people. And I'm sure if any of you guys watching, if you gave me your favourite food and I put it in my hand and I shoved it in your face, you definitely wouldn't want it anymore. So only when the dog chooses to socially interact with the individual and come to them and get food do they feed it from hand. And again, there's a few different things that you can do to alleviate pressure, and that might be having the person seated side on rather than facing on, tell them not to stare the dog in the face, all these sorts of things, and eating from an open palm. Once the dog's done that you, the handler, the owner, can then use your terminal marker to re-engage the dog, redirect them back towards you, and then you can continue playing that game. So there's just a couple of different things that we do, um, but as I mentioned, the problem which you mentioned, your dog being reactive to strange or new people, is a bit of a wider issue than just using play or just using a correction. You've really got to identify what the root cause would be and then we can identify the best plan of action from there, to be honest. Um, if you want to speak about it further, I can only really encourage you to do a consult call with us, um, and we can help you identify the root cause and assist you with that one. Um, when my dog goes over threshold, what am I doing? I found punishing just amps him up. That kind of answers your question. That's not punishing. Uh, so I currently just do an about-face and walk away from the target until he calms down enough to hear me. Okay, fine. Um, so Reavers Restbite, the reason I know you're not punishing is because if you are effectively and efficiently and ethically punishing your dog, it wouldn't amp them up. It would do the opposite. It would bring their arousal down. And it would teach them not to do that behaviour. So whatever you believe is punishment at the moment, whether that be a firm leash correction, um, or maybe the use of an e-collar, or maybe the use of physical spatial pressure, um, whatever you're doing at the moment is not punishing. And what I'd encourage you to do is stop doing whatever you're doing, because the likelihood is you are using pressure inside of a reaction, and when you say it's amping them up, you're making the issue worse. So if a dog has an opportunity to fight through pressure to do the thing in which they want to do, and that might be something so simple as pulling you over to a lamppost on a lead, they have fought through pressure and alleviated pressure to get to the positive reinforcement of which they want. So In essence, what you are doing is making the problem worse for yourself and making the fix later down the line even harder. So what you currently believe is punishment is not punishment, so stop it. Um, in regards to what you should maybe do as an initial course of action, um, to close down threshold and maybe make your threshold distance a little bit smaller and start closing the distance with other dogs, um, is, as I mentioned right at the start of the call— I don't know if you were here— but using a terminal marker to re-engage your dog, bring the value back to you, um, drive value your side of the lead, and maybe disengage from the trigger, whatever that might be— dog or person or cat, squirrel, etc. So food motivation is key, charging your marker to the nth degree is key, and then selectively marking and redirecting your dog away from the trigger accurate timings and slowly closing down the distance is currently going to be your best friend because you can do a lot in regards to your threshold just by doing that. You can close down your threshold quite a lot, especially creating a new behaviour of your dog breaking the fixation and looking at you. Because really you've got 3 different ways of increasing or decreasing intensity, and that's the 3 Ds: distance. So obviously your distance from the trigger affects your threshold distance. Or threshold rather. Distraction, so the temperament of the other dog, how fast they're moving. Some dogs are triggered by movement, some dogs are triggered by excitement, some dogs are triggered by arousal. So a dog barking, a dog chasing after a ball, a dog jumping up with a person or being kind of fussed by a person or playing. And then duration, so how long your dog has to sit there looking at the trigger. That's another form of intensity. So always be thinking about those three things, those three Ds whenever you're working around a trigger and how you could maybe make it harder for your dog and how you could make it easier. And that is essentially what a threshold is, because that's why you might go out some days and your threshold might be massive, because you might be working with really high-energy dogs and you might have to stay really far away. And some days your threshold might be really small and you might be able to close down the distance with a dog because they might be of low temperament, they might just be chilling out, they might be the Labrador with the old lady from down the road who's just plodding along behind her and not even interested in looking at other dogs. So I'd encourage you to do more of that, kind of go back to basics, close down the distance with other dogs, create positive alternative behaviors, keep arousal nice and low because using food is a good way of keeping arousal low, and then maybe look into punishment and fixing the reaction. Because of course there are going to be instances where your dog is over threshold and will react to another dog and you have to be able to fix it. But whatever you're doing right now is not punishment because you're making the issue worse. Hopefully that helps. Thank you for the feedback. I'll work on— he's my second Malinois and typical punishment doesn't seem to work for him, so I redirect with positive markers and clickers. 3Ds, we need to back up. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I'm not sure what your definition of punishment is. Obviously you can give me more context around that and I might be able to help you, but I have a question. My dog is reactive but doing really well thanks to your videos. Oh, great news. For e-collar, what intensity do you recommend? Lower intensity to interrupt bad behavior doesn't seem to work. All right, okay. So this is similar to Reva's question in regards to punishment and just using physical intensity. And this comes back to something I say every single week on every boot camp to lots and lots of people. Um, tools, be it e-collar, prong collar, slip collar, flat collar, everything like that, do not fix issues for you. They don't fix reactivity, they don't fix loose lead walking, they don't fix jumping up. So you can't just put a tool on a dog and expect it to interrupt reactivity, whether or not using e-collar, because then you might end up in a situation— like you said, lower intensity levels don't work with your e-collar. If they've started barking at a dog and you whack your dog on an e-collar and they're at high arousal and they fight through that pressure, as I just explained, you're going to create your e-collar into a react button. And we've seen it happen more than once. And what you could do is intensify your dog's reactivity and make it 100 times worse. So don't do that. Initially, when we use e-collars, um, we condition them for a bombproof recall. So tools, as I mentioned, do not fix issues. They act as a catalyst in a process of teaching your dog something. And that might be recall, that might be loose lead walking, that might be punishment, that might be— well, it could be anything. But initially, when we start using an e-collar, 9 times out of 10, we use it upfront to condition a bombproof recall. Then we look to overlay it over other behaviors once the dog has gone through that conditioning process. Um, and that might look like punishment on occasion. So e-collars, you can— they're one of the, well, the best tool in the world. Um, you can overlay them over any behaviour marker or cue. Doesn't mean you would, you can. And often we do overlay it over punishment, so you have the ability to punish your dog or interrupt your dog at distance. Then you can start to use it for something like that. However, again, you have to teach the dog what punishment is, and you have to have an effective ethical punishment process before you even start to use an e-collar within that process, because that means you can use minimal effective dose. So where you've said at the moment lower intensity levels when your dog is reacting isn't working, they can and they do. Your dog just needs to understand what a marker and a cue is in regards to the punishment and preemptively assess the situation and what might happen. They need to know they're doing something bad. So that's as much as I'll kind of say on that one. Um, I'd request that you stop using your e-collar to try and combat reactivity. Uh, I recommend that you maybe look more into conditioning it for recall first, um, potentially, and then use it to overlay over top punishment. I have a rescue 7-year-old Mali, perfect indoors with people but reactive on leash outside towards other dogs. Is it too late to teach her off leash with a vibration collar because Lore only vibrate? Whereabouts are you based, Eanish? It's not too late by any means. People like to say you can't teach a new dog— an old dog new tricks. We've had 12-year-old dogs on boot camps here at YCA, so no problem there whatsoever. They learn everything within a week. You can use a vibration collar to teach recall. It's not going to be the strongest way, but it's definitely something you can do. The, the primary reason as to why we don't necessarily use vibrate with the use of a collar is you can't tend to change the intensity level, which means that you're working at one dose, which might not necessarily be the minimal effective dose, which means you might be being unethical. And more often than not, dogs, as soon as you put a vibration on, find it aversive, whereas stim function isn't always aversive. So, ah, Switzerland, okay, yeah, fine. But no, it's not, it's not too late if you know how to do it effectively and ethically. Go ahead and do it. Might give you that extra layer of protection whilst you're outside. But again, you might actually want to fix the reactivity, not just the recall. Uh, of course, recall is going to give you management. You're going to have the ability maybe to call her off of other dogs or recall her back before she reacts, but it's not going to fix that reactivity issue to allow you to have confidence when letting her off leash if you're surprised by another dog. So maybe look into fixing the reactivity too. Um, yeah. Ah, Hey, how are you? Hi, thanks very much to your help. 8-year-old JSD. Glad to hear Kay is doing well. All well and good. Thank you for the feedback. I will work on it. Here's my second Malinois. Typical punishment doesn't seem to work. So I really— oh, I've already read that one. I watched one of your webinars. Recommended everyone joins if they can. It was really good. Can you tell us more about Thor's journey? SM2, um, appreciate you turning up to the webinar. I do webinars every Wednesday for those guys that necessarily don't know. On those webinars, I often give away some free tools and lessons in which we use here during our boot camps or on things like TWI, um, to help you guys out with your reactive dogs. And then I can, of course, as part of the webinars transparently to all of you here before you turn up and then chastise me like some people do. There is, of course, talk about our products and services at the end of the webinar, but you don't have to stick around for that. You can just get the free stuff instead. So yeah, every Wednesday at 7:00 PM and they run for just over an hour on occasion. Can I tell you all about more about Thor's journey? I can, but I'm going to get slated for this by everybody at YCA because apparently they tell me I talk about Thor all the time. But yeah, I can. I can talk to you guys about Thor, which is essentially how I ended up sat here in front of you guys this Sunday afternoon. Um, Thor is my near 4-year-old Rottweiler. Um, I got him as a puppy. Um, I did probably what a lot of you guys did in regards to what socialization was and what corrections were and what I thought punishment was and what I thought the right way to raise a puppy was. Um, following various social media advice, various dog trainers, various social media gurus, behaviourists, that sort of thing, puppy classes, etc., etc., doggy daycare. And about 8 or 9 months, Thor started to become unsociably reactive towards other dogs. And initially it started on the lead. It started with one singular reaction. I'd actually taken him away on holiday. I'd gone to Wales with him and a dog came up behind him at a set of traffic lights and he went absolutely nuts. It was the first time I'd ever seen him do it. For the rest of the holiday, it kind of put me on edge. We had a couple more reactions whilst we were there. Um, very out of character from what he'd previously been like, although I see the signs now. He used to do a lot of fixating, he used to do a lot of hunching down, he used to lie down in the presence of a lot of dogs. Um, but from that point on, he obviously learned that he really liked that behavior. Um, it became more regular and it got worse over time because at first I thought I might be able to just do it myself. I might be able to just watch YouTube videos and read online information. And the issue got progressively worse. At first it was just like dogs like Frenchies, although the first dog he actually reacted to was a Vizsla. It was dogs like Frenchies or flat-faced dogs, black dogs. It was just big males. And then it became every single dog and he couldn't even see a dog on the other side of the road without absolutely going mental. So I was that owner hiding behind cars, walking early, walking late, um, enclosed fields, all that sort of thing with him. Um, I got in contact with the breeder. The breeder recommended some old-style yank and crank techniques, made it worse. So Reavers— I did exactly what you're doing now. I used pressure inside of reactions and made his issues worse. And then um, because I thought it was the yank and crank and aversive training that caused the issue and made it worse. I went the opposite direction and I started doing positive only, worked with a couple of behaviourists which suggested medications, um, positive only training, and again it didn't fix anything. I was left distracting him all the time, using high-value rewards which were only high-value for a matter of days or weeks if I was lucky. And yeah, progressively got worse to the point where he reached 18 months and I couldn't take him anywhere. Meanwhile, I used to take him to the beach, I used to take him to cafes, I used to take him to pubs, used to walk him everywhere with me. That was the whole reason I got him. And then I was in a position where I couldn't take him anywhere. And I was even at that point, I'd already spent thousands on training. I tried to do it myself and failed miserably. And I was at that point where I was going to probably rehome him. And I got in touch with YCA instead. And it was kind of my last ditch attempt. And did their TWI course, so the Virtual Personalised Programme. And then within 8 weeks, I was going to the pub, he was off lead with other dogs, he was going to the beach, we were going on holiday again. We came up to Leeds, we saw Kirkie and the team in person, we did some in-person sessions, he got off leash with their dogs, uh, and then I became a part of the furniture. So after that, I asked Kirkie and Jacob Morgan for a job and Here I am, um, 2 years later. So yeah, very good fun. It's what kind of started my training journey, um, and that's Thor's journey as a whole. And now Thor stooges, so he comes out to stooge. Um, yeah, that's Thor and my journey in a nutshell. And now he's a much happier lad. Um, punishment we tried in the past no longer. Leash pop, verbal no. Works at low-intensity situations only. Applying Pat Miller's positive psych seems to work for him if distance is controllable. So you're only using one element of what could or would be punishment with a dog, and that's physical interruption. And with a dog like a Malinois— dogs like Malinois don't mind physical attrition. They can go through quite a lot. If you think about humans respectively, and like myself, I like to play rugby. There are some people out there that like to do mixed martial arts. There are some people out there like to do judo, all that sort of thing. Um, they can take a lot of physical attrition. So just utilizing physical attrition alongside what you would believe to be punishment doesn't work for all dogs, especially not necessarily a breed like a Malinois. There are lots of other systems like the social system, emotional system, in which you can leverage in punishment. Um, yeah, but I'm not gonna go into punishment too heavy on a YouTube Live, primary reason being there's lots of room for error. And again, if you get it wrong, you can make an issue worse, or it could maybe put you guys and your dogs at risk. So I'm not going to go too far into punishment, but what I will say is a leash pop and a no is not, not necessarily punishment. Um, when in the neighborhood I don't have space and targets pop up out of nowhere, so we have to go back to more open spaces. What I'd recommend you do, like, management-wise, is stick the dog in the car, take them to a big open space, so avoid the neighborhood. Um, I know it's like a bit inconvenient, but it's means to an end, right? You can start working around some triggers in some more neutral and spacious environments to start closing distances, get some good reps in, prevent the rehearsal of reactivity. Then at that point, you can start working in and around your neighborhood to make it easier on you and to make it easier on your dog. Accidentally used the— oh, Helena— accidentally used the vibrate button on Ozzy. He turned around and looked as his bum was very puzzled. Yeah, he would have been. Yeah. So try not to do that. Thanks, Owen. I was just thinking, give her more freedom, she'll find a new hobby. More freedom is 100% going to help you out. Definitely. Like, one of the things in which we do here with any of our reactivity programs is we get a dog off leash with the use of an e-collar. Off-leash as quickly and as safely as possible, because that in a lot of cases will help us combat reactivity tenfold. Doesn't necessarily fix the issue and remove the addiction, um, so it will do a lot for us. It'll help us in the training regime. It's a big part of the training regime. It's not going to fix it. She's not necessarily just going to be like, oh, I've got off-leash freedom, I'll just ignore other dogs. You've kind of got to do everything in tandem. Here, the, the core to all of our reactivity programs is we use 6 key pillars. We teach the dog a solid yes. I want to see that behaviour. I want to see that thing again. We teach the dog a solid no. Don't do that thing. You can do anything else, but don't do that thing. Freedom. So we teach the dog a solid recall so that we have that. Fulfillment. So we do things like play around fulfillment. I'm not talking licky mats and that sort of bollocks. Um, fundamental obedience, because although like we don't use obedience to tackle reactivity or fix it, lots of trainers will use sit stays, down stays to get a dog to potentially try and ignore another dog. But we don't rely on management of behavior. We want dogs to make good decisions at liberty. But we do believe that you need an element of fundamental obedience, whether that be a loose leash walk or otherwise. And then, um, we work on like settle and chill. So a lot of people will just think their dog will settle and chill on their own. Yes, of course, with exercise comes a dog that will be more relaxed and less energetic and less aroused, but your dog doesn't know how to just settle and chill on their own. Lots of reactive dogs struggle just to do nothing. So we teach your dogs how to do nothing as part of one of the programs. So those are kind of 6 key areas of which you need to work on in order to fix reactivity for good. Ah, I was that owner too, avoiding dogs and places in case he kicked off. Not anymore though. Why not anymore? What did you do to fix it? Tell everyone, share your secrets. Highly recommend. Ah, cheers, Helena. Highly recommend boot camp. Dog is fantastic, doesn't react to the neighbors anymore. Only the downside of that now is I have to talk to them. We don't have to. You could just be rude like me and just walk off. Can I swear on here, Susie? That's where everyone knows what I was going to say anyway. Um, how about approach? How should I approach off-lead greetings with other off-lead dogs? Mine is e-collar trained and I recall her back, but when I release her, she rushes them. Okay. Um, so before, what we aim to do on our reactivity programs as a bare minimum is we take a dog back to neutral. So if you were to think about a Oh, nice. Yeah, I do remember Hector. Awesome. Yeah, so you did a boot camp too. If you were to think about sociability, I don't know why I even use that as a word because I'm not sure it is. Can anybody tell me if that's actually a word, sociability? I hope you all know what I mean by that. On a scale of say, minus 5 being unsocial, minus 5 to 0, and 0 to plus 5 being social, and 0 being neutral. Is throughout any of our reactivity programs, we aim to take a dog— because often dogs in which we see are on extreme ends of the spectrum, either on the over-social category in +5 or on the under-social or unsociable side in -5— and we aim to bring them back to zero. So we aim to bring them back to neutral as part of those programs. The reason for that being is then we can go through a resocialization process and we can make a dog feel more comfortable and more confident around other dogs. Want to put them at, say, +2 or +3, because that means they're not being over-social and getting lead frustration and being all in another dog's face. That's going to get them into trouble and potentially get them attacked, and then maybe create an unsociable dog and put other unsociable dogs in an even worse position. It's going to put them in a position where they're more comfortable to greet other dogs, they're more confident, they're more secure. But we also have to referee interactions. So we take dogs from neutral and then re-socialize them appropriately and teach them how to interact. And we develop a bunch of refereeing cues so that dogs, or you, can control interactions, so that you're not just willy-nilly letting your dog off lead hoping for the best when they meet and greet other off-leash dogs. Especially if, say, that dog has a bad reaction. What power have you got then in that sort of scenario to say to your dog, oh, that dog doesn't look so friendly anymore, they've gone a bit stiff, come over here, let's go this way, leave them alone, they're not a fan of you, that sort of thing. Um, so really what you want to be working on with your dog, although yours is e-collar trained, is teaching her how to interact with other dogs. Because at the moment she's rushing in, so she's probably on that more higher end in that sociable scale, like that +5 area. And maybe develop a bit of a pack it in cue as well. So a punishment marker would be my go-to, or a leave it cue. Because like you say, if you're just recalling your dog and doing recall yo-yos, the only thing that recall says to a dog is come to here, come to me right now. And as soon as you then release them, they're back at liberty, they can go back over there. So it doesn't say don't go over there, it just says recall to me. Yes, after a matter of a few recalls, your dog should understand, oh, they don't want me to go over there. My mum, dad doesn't want me to go over there and go over to that thing. But she's being a bit overzealous. So in that scenario, the way in which you would utilize, say, a punishment marker or a leave it cue is if I'd recalled my dog a number of times and they kept yo-yoing back to the thing, I'm then going to punish them. Because then contextually and ethically I've said don't go over there on a matter of occasions, you haven't listened, now I'm going to punish you and say don't go over there. Think about a child who's maybe not listening, you wouldn't just continually ask them not to do something, at some point there's going to be a consequence to actions. Alternatively you could use a leave it cue, so leave, developing a leave it cue is really easy Uh, could be as easy as walking past a lamppost or a smell on the floor, telling your dog leave it and using a lead to bring them away. That's how you'd start to condition a leave it cue. So with the dogs in which she keeps rushing over towards or you keep recalling from, you can instead use a leave it to say I want you to leave that dog alone. Doesn't mean you can't say hello to the next one, but leave that one alone. So there's a few different things you can work on there, resocialization and teaching her how to act appropriately and not be so obnoxious, because if she keeps rushing in, she's going to get herself into trouble. And maybe look into developing a bit of a punishment marker. Again, make sure you do it properly. If you do it badly, you'll make issues worse. And develop a leave it cue too. That'll help you out. Uh, I wish I lived near you guys. I got so ripped off in training. 5 months of training and my dog hasn't learned much. Oh no. Uh, I would love to bring my dog to you guys. I live in the States though. Um, so Naz, we offer online training. Um, just to let you know, I'd recommend that you book in a consult call with either myself or one of the other team members. Um, we can talk to you about that program. It's how we help lots of people worldwide. So we work with people in Australia, New Zealand, all throughout Europe, Asia, America, Canada, all of those countries utilizing our virtual personalised program. It's called Training with Instinct. You can find it on our website. Go and have a look. I'd love to go to a bootcamp, but it's fairly far from Switzerland. I vote for a YCA branch in Switzerland. I can speak to Jacob Morgan Morgan, but I don't think his plans are Switzerland just yet. We have had people actually travel all the way from Switzerland, by the way, Ines. So you've got no excuses. We've had people travel from Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, um, Switzerland, France. Yeah, so make the trip, why not make a holiday of it. Uh, Peter, would reducing our dog's reactivity to other dogs improve his behavior towards foxes and cats? Ours is a grey Saluki cross. Um, not necessarily. So dogs, like, are quite good with context. Um, they know the difference between a dog cat, fox. So just because you fix the reactivity with dogs doesn't mean it would then be fixed for foxes and cats. The tools in which you use to fix your— and I'm not just talking physical tools, by the way, guys, um, I'm talking physical, um, and kind of theoretical tools, use of markers, cues, commands, um, that you use to fix your dog's reactivity with other dogs may also as well be appropriate, and you might be able to use them with both foxes and cats. So that way you could just kind of learn one thing and kill three birds with one stone. So here, all the tools in which we give people help them deal with issues with dogs, foxes, and cats. It's not just specific to other dogs. Like, we have dogs that come to boot camps or work with us on TWI that their triggers aren't necessarily dogs. It might be kids, it might be fast-moving objects, it might be scooters, it might be cars. So lots of different things, and all those issues can be appropriately addressed. Alison, we have a 1-year-old GSD. He went to a board and train, not YCA, thanks for clarifying. He came home and was great for about 3 weeks, and then the reactivity started to creep back in. We think we need training. Is boot camp for us? Uh, Alison, short answer, yes. So, um, we as an organization actually moved away from board and trains. Uh, the reason being is the skill and knowledge transfer to the owner isn't as good So you guys don't necessarily— although there's a thorough handover process with our board and train programs, um, the, the kind of understanding, the ability isn't always necessarily there. So that makes things more difficult. Also, as I mentioned a minute ago to Peter, is, is dogs are very good at context. And what that means is you as an owner become contextual to your dog's reactivity, which is a risk. So it might mean that I take your dog, Alison, and he's not reactive with me, but I give him back to you and he's reactive with you. So you might give him to me, I might take him into a field full of dogs, and he might not even bat an eyelid. But you might walk into that exact same field with the exact same dogs in the exact same environment, and he might be reactive. So you might be contextual, and you might become a component to the reactivity. So the reason that we got rid of Board and Trains and we started honing in more on our boot camps and our Virtual Personalised Program is because we teach you, the owner. We never touch the lead, we never touch the dog. We teach you, the owner, how, what, and why you're doing it. So you understand all of the knowledge, you understand all of the theory, you have the skill set so that you can combat any scenarios in which you come across, which means it sounds like it's perfect for you given that you've done a board and train program. I'm sure you, I'm sure you received all those videos from the trainer of your dog in fields with other dogs and your dog's walking by next to other dogs and doing head-on passes with other dogs without an issue. But like you say, you got your dog back and within 3 weeks they're back to the beginning. Um, so it sounds like a boot camp really is perfect for you because He's quite obviously capable. It will just be the context and environment of which he's in. So bootcamps are perfect. Susie's very kindly put a link in the description. Book a consult and then we can talk to you more about bootcamp and also discover more about him and tell you if you're a good fit for bootcamp or not. So do that. Random stuff. Andy Irish. I live in Southwest France. Did Bootcamp 22. The long journey was definitely worth it. Ah, great news. Appreciate it, Andy. Thanks for the info, Nars. Folks, any more questions? I've rattled through some things. Come on, give me more. You've got 26 minutes to ask me as many questions as possible. Otherwise, I'll just start singing to everyone and it'll be terrible and you'll drop out of the call anyway and I can have an early afternoon. I have 6 rescues and I'm looking into the online training with you guys, but wondering if I should just do the Become a Trainer path so I can help all my dogs with their issues. Oh nice, um, yeah. So one of the things about the development program— so that's where, for anyone that maybe doesn't know, is we coach, mentor, um, aspiring, existing, or new dog trainers worldwide. So existing dog trainers and businesses, we help them improve and we get them to where they need to be so that they can live a happy life and be financially free and help more dogs. We help aspiring trainers and like increase their skill set in terms of dog training capability, but also their business. And then anyone that like wants to become a dog trainer or maybe just wants to have the skill set so they can help their own dogs or help rescues, um, or friends and family, we offer a development program, um, as well as mentorship. So with the development program, um, for additional context, you actually get access to, um, the Training with Instinct course So the course of which we give to our clients worldwide, um, we actually give that to you so you can watch all of that content, theory, demo, and Q&A material too, so that you can learn all of that skill set. But you also have the luxury of working with Kirkie for 9 weeks. So he does 9 lessons with you, um, across dog training theory and it's very practical advice. It's not talking too much around studies and going deep into the nitty-gritty. He's telling you what you need to know to be a good dog trainer. Um, he is the head trainer here at YCA. He mentors all of our new trainers. He mentored me, um, he mentored Alicia, he's mentored Alex, everyone that works at YCA here. Um, so you have the luxury of spending 9 weeks with him, getting a part of his brain, being able to ask him questions. Even I don't get to ask him questions anymore. And then on your 10th week, you get to get your hands on dogs, you get to train. So we run something that we call development weeks where we run a smaller boot camp, and often we bring in some rescue dogs of local charities, and you'll be allotted, or assigned rather I should say, to a dog. Trainers like myself or one of the other team members will be with you shadowing you and we will help you coach the owner and the handler in kind of fixing that dog. And that might be a reactivity issue, knowing us. Um, so that's the benefit of potentially doing the development course. You'll learn all of that skill set, you'll have a really thorough understanding and knowledge capability, and you'll also get your hands on more dogs with more issues too. So fixing your 6 at that point shouldn't be a problem, and then you could also go on to help more dogs. So definitely do the development course if you can, because you get access to the Train with Instinct course anyway. So it's kind of killing two birds with one stone. Hi, Ines. Ah, nice. Doing my job for me. Any more questions, folks? What are your thoughts on dual e-collars? The trainer suggested I maybe use two because he wasn't listening with one. I looked at him like he was nuts. Um, so Naz, um, again, as I mentioned earlier, a tool, even an e-collar, although despite how great it is, doesn't necessarily fix an issue like reactivity. Um, we need to address the underlying root causes and work to a proven system in order to fix the issue overall. Punishment is a part of that, but just using e-collar pressure is not punishment. On occasion, transparently speaking, there are dogs with various temperaments, various thresholds, various tolerances. Um, we may use, uh, a 2-box, so a 2-box e-collar, but that's pretty rare. Um, I myself work with— well, as part of the boot camps here at YCA, excuse me, um, work with 15 dogs a week, sometimes more. Have done for maybe the last year, and I've maybe two-boxed 6 dogs. So you're talking 6 dogs in excess of maybe 200. So that's a 6 in 200 ratio, uh, depending on what your dog's breed is, what their background is, what their temperament is, what their thresholds are, etc., etc., etc. There's loads of different components, um, and variables. Maybe a two-box would be appropriate, but not in every situation. And just adding more pressure into the situation without having addressed the root causes again, could make your issue worse. So I'd recommend booking in a call, a consult call with one of us. Use the link in the description, speak to us first. We can obviously discuss our courses and programs if you're a good fit, um, and then at that point we might discuss something like toe boxing. But I, I really doubt it's something that you need to do, to be quite honest, but maybe Maybe I wouldn't rule out— cheers, Enish! Would teaching my dog to play with me help her obsession with other dogs? Her focus is great until another dog appears and she gets too excited. Um, yeah, so utilizing play and food, um, are great ways to bring value back our side of the lead. And teach our dog that we're the most valuable thing in the environment. So it will help with obsessions with other dogs. Um, play is a really useful tool for loads and loads of different reasons. It helps with so many different things. Of course, one of the things being your dog's focus and direction, attention towards you. So I'd recommend looking at some of our videos, checking those out, maybe checking out the Behaviour Bible, learning how to play with the dog effectively and appropriately. Play is also something I talk about in depth on our webinars. So if you're free this Wednesday at 7 PM, come along and spend another hour with me, and then I'll teach you all about play, how to play, what cues to use, how to do it, what to do. Um, but yes, in short, it will help with their obsession with other dogs. It will help you re-engage and help you build good focus and a good relationship. So do more of it. But do it properly would be my advice. Uh, Reaver's Respite, do you have any protocols for encouraging calm states for dogs? Samson, my Mal, gets frantic when I go to leave. We play tug, but he's still whining, crying, and pacing when I go to leave. Um, so that's more of a FOMO thing in regards to if you're going to leave Samson, he starts crying, whinging and whining. I could— so in that sort of situation, I wouldn't necessarily recommend playing because you're increasing the FOMO. You're playing and then you're leaving, and then he's going to be like, hang on a minute, we're having such a great time and then you just left me, come back and play with me more. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing that. I'd recommend physically tiring your dog. A lot of mistakes people make before leaving their dog, um, or doing like restriction and confinement training, which is something else I'd recommend for you is not doing anything and then suddenly doing it, and then the dog's got all this arousal, all this energy to work through, all these big feelings to work through, which creates an issue which is of course going to exacerbate the crying, pacing, maybe even destruction, um, behaviors that a dog might display in that sort of situation. So do that, go for a walk and play in a different environment, in a different context, and then take your dog home, settle them, and leave. Something I'd recommend that you do is tethering and crating if you don't already. So tethering gives your dog the ability to self-soothe and not have access to you, but maybe still be able to see you. So that might just be tackling them on to a coffee table whilst you go into the kitchen and make a drink. Again, they can see you, they can hear you, they just can't get to you, and they've got to learn how to deal with that frustration and that desire to want to be with you, and they'll have to learn how to settle and self-soothe. Crating is a really good way to be able to leave a dog alone, keep them safe, and confine them. Chances are you're going to end up with some crying and some shouting. That's okay. They need to learn how to self-soothe and be alone. Um, then condition relaxation. As well. So something else you asked about, which I don't know is along the same— I would assume it's on the same vein, but teaching your dog a cue that will help them relax. It wouldn't necessarily work with you going to leave. Again, that your primary, like, uh, techniques with that should be confinement and tethering and getting them used to that sort of thing so they don't get so bad at FOMO. Um, but if you wanted to teach your dog how to relax and help them relax, especially something like a Mal, is you could do conditioned relaxation. And what that looks like in short is I might grab my dog by their collar. Again, lots of dogs don't like being collar grabbed, but it's something that's good to prep them for because at one time in their life they're probably going to be grabbed by the collar, whether that be at the vets or otherwise. I'm going to put my hand inside their collar and I'm just going to sit there with them and this isn't something that you have to do purposely. It could just be something that you do whilst watching the telly with them at night. And I'm going to purposefully stroke them. And what I mean by that is not just quick pets that will probably increase arousal. I mean, like, almost give them a massage, like stroke them all the way down their body from neck to, like, bum, down the leg, etc., and stroke down their legs. And what I'll do whilst doing this is I'll use a cue and I might say, easy. As I stroke. Easy, like that. And what I'm essentially trying to do is get them to relax. And when you know you've hit the jackpot is when your dog chooses to lie down and chooses to lie on their side and might even start falling asleep whilst you say that cue. And what you know at that point is you've then got a cue in which brings their arousal down, or should do anyway. So So if your dog starts getting a bit amped up, a bit more aroused, you could say easy and they'll remember back to the kind of conditioned relaxation you did. Knit4All, can you put a link for the Wednesday webinar in? Susie, can you do that? I don't know whether you could. Somebody will do it for you, Knit4All. I hope somebody who may be watching the webinar has a link for this week's webinar and give it to you. I hope, I hope, because I don't. Um, no, I was working line GSD. He's 9 months old. Uh, how much is the initial consult? You said training with Instinct. Um, initial consults are completely free. We don't charge for initial consults. Um, initial consults are used to understand more about you, your dog, your needs, their root causes for reactivity, the behaviours in which they display, um, what's going on, um, with everything. And then at that point, if there's a good fit for you and your dog for one of our programmes, at that point the trainer will then talk to you more about those programmes. You obviously said you were based in the States. The only programme that's really going to be a good fit there is our Training with Instinct programme, um, which is a 30-day course. And the idea being you start the course at day 1, and by the end of day 30 you're going to cafes, you're going out in public off leash, you're able to take your dog out, back out to the real world. But again, we need to do that initial consult first to see if you are a good fit and see if we can help you. If we can't, we'll be really honest, we'll tell you, and we might point you in the right direction if we can. Um, but Susie did mention earlier, she's dropped a link in the description of this live thing into the description of the, uh, I don't have the webinar link currently Yeah, fine. So check the description of the webinar to book in a consult call with one of us, and then we'll be able to talk to you. And again, the initial consult's free. Frank and Zelda, brilliant results from your bootcamp. Frank and Zelda, ah, nice, Frank. Glad to hear Zelda's doing well. Nitro, sorry, that didn't work. Uh, hi, 1.5-year-old Boston Terrier struggling with the balance between correcting when he's getting too excited seeing new dogs, but also he's now getting skittish when meeting new people. Any thoughts? Um, so again, we're coming back to that term correcting. Everybody loves the term correcting. Uh, really what's probably going to be more effective if he keeps getting excited, um, with new dogs is utilizing punishment. To say calm down, drop the arousal, and teach them what's appropriate, what's not. Again, dogs being overexcitable, rushing into another dog's face can get them into trouble, which if they get into a fight and they get pretty badly hurt, they could very quickly become unsociable, which creates you another issue. So just be careful about that. Um, more value your side of the lead, so more value in you than other dogs. By the sounds of things, your, your 1.5-year-old finds other dogs really, really exciting. Hence why he gets really excited and gets skittish meeting new people. So value your side of the lead first and foremost so they check in with you more, they trust you more, they want to work with you a little bit more, they look to you for direction. And treat and retreat and maybe play with new people. So utilise friends, family members, anyone like that who's going to be confident with them. You can get them to try and play with him, you can get them to feed him through treat and retreat. So play with him effectively would be a good way to build his confidence with new people. Again, tell them not to try and win the toy every time and battle him. If anything, they want to let him win more so it can really build his confidence. Um, and then treat and retreat. So treat and retreat, if you didn't hear earlier, is an exercise where you might hold the lead, so having back tied so it's a safe scenario and the other person, the new person, will start off throwing food behind him and so he can retreat and collect it. Then they might start throwing it down in front of him, and then only when he chooses to, he like chooses to approach them, do they feed him from hand. And that's a good way to break the ice between him and new people and hopefully make him a little bit less skittish. Hopefully that helps. Uh, Naz, if I hook my dog to a coffee table, the coffee table would end up in the kitchen. Fine. Yeah, pick something a bit more sturdier. Um, Aswan, do you think not crate training a male can work? Um, it definitely could. I don't see why you necessarily wouldn't want to crate train your dog. Primary reason being, right, at some point in your dog's life they are going to be constrained or restrained. Um, and most— more often than not, when that happens for the first time to dogs is it's at the vet's, and it might be because they're in for an emergency. They're going to be in pain. They're already going to be distressed. And if you then compound that stress by putting them in a crate, putting them in a confined space they've never been in before, it's going to make the issue 10 times worse. And then you might have to sedate them, or, um, yeah, I was going to say put them to sleep, but not in that manner. That's the sort of scenario you might put yourself in. So with all of my dogs from day dot, and more often than not at home, yes, they're free. I have them— oh, hello, Stark. Stark's coming to join the webinar. Brilliant. Okay, fine. Oh, and Darla's in too. So more often than not, my dogs are free at home. They sleep in my bed with me, but I always crate train my dogs. Always, always, always. And it's something I recommend everybody else do too. No more questions. Bugger off, Start. As you can see, Start's free. Can you put a link in for the Wednesday webinar? As Susie mentioned, she doesn't have a link for the webinar, but check back in the description of this webinar, this Q&A tomorrow, and there will be a link to the webinar there. Can anyone join the webinars? Yeah, but Helena, you've already learned it all. You don't need to. I taught you all of that on boot camp, and if you say I didn't, you're a liar or you weren't listening. Um, Richard Harding, I spoke to Karki last week about boot camp with my massive mix. I'll be in touch soon. I move tomorrow. Karki knows about it. Thanks. Um, yeah, our boot camps are getting booked up quite quickly, folks, uh, especially in the months of August and September. So if you do want to book in for a boot camp, I'd get in touch really, really quick. Uh, maybe fangirling here, but if you can get to do a boot camp, it works. Got a dog who is now off living his best life, who the vet wanted to put to sleep. Yeah, can't believe they wanted to do that. Um, Kelly, Sam, and Owen were fab. Um, thanks for the information, brother, really appreciate it. Expect a call from me at some point. Do you guys do these live Q&As often? I believe we do a live Q&A, uh, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Susie, correct me if I'm wrong, but The answer is yes, we do them pretty often. Um, boot camp made all the difference to us at some point. I'm interested in the development program. Realistically, what level of dog trainer would a person who completes the program be at? Um, quite a lot of people— when I say quite a lot, um, I think 90% of the students that finish the dev program go on to launch their own dog training business more or less straight away. Um, I don't know whether we've put together any testimonials yet of those guys that have started their own businesses, but I can see if we have. Um, also we've hired a few of them. So Sam, who works down at the South Coast K9 Academy, um, is an ex-dev program. Uh, Caitlin, who does a bit of work here now, was an ex-dev program. Uh, Lee, who's just started working here, is ex-dev program. But a lot of people that completed a program go on to then make their own businesses instead. So yeah, 100%. You end up at a really, really good stage. And if you need any help, say you come across a really complex dog that you're not quite sure of how to deal with, um, Kirkie would always be at the end of the phone to help you out. Really appreciate the insight. We'll definitely look at— be looking at a consult. Oh, awesome. Um, we use baby gates to keep Samson in the living room when we leave. He has a large comfy Impact dog crate to hang out in. Cool, nice, makes sense. Rubik's owner here. Oh, I was going to move that. Boys, you got 6 more minutes of my time, um, and then I have got a session with someone, so I will have to go. But if there's one last question, I'll answer it for you. Make it a good one. Stark, what you doing? Oh. Jacob, if you're watching this for any reason, you're— yeah, I don't know why Stark's in here. I've got Darla, I've got Ranger down here, I've got Darla there, and then Stark's over there eating something. So come next door and get him. Uh, Rubik's is only here. I was thinking of the dev program in the new year to help the local sheriff as I retire. What is the best time to contact you? Um, contact us anytime, Alison. Um, will it enhance the boot camp? Uh, dev program. Nice, cheers. Uh, so for those of you that maybe weren't listening just a moment ago, um, we help teach, uh, and mentor aspiring and existing dog trainers worldwide. I think we have dog trainers in every continent that we help. Um, the dev program is a program that's run by Kirkie. So Kirkie is the head trainer here at YCA. He helps mentor and teach all of the trainers that come on board, including myself. He runs a dev program of which he runs it every quarter in a cohort and you get 10 weeks of teachings. You do 9 lessons. So Kirkie does a weekly lesson where he gives you some homework, where he teaches you more about the theory. Again, it's very practical theory. It's not just all about dog behaviour or studies or anything like that. He's telling you what you need to know to be able to effectively train a dog. You get access to all of our online material, and then on the final week of your programme, you actually come here and you run a boot camp. So you actually get the opportunity to get your hands on dogs and teach dogs, rather than having to go around and beg friends or family to let you help them train. Would I make a good dog trainer, or am I just at a disadvantage being old and Welsh? Helena, the Welsh thing might help you or impact you, but the whole old thing— you're never too old. What characteristics do you see in a fragile dog? Oh, I could really upset some people here. I might plead the fifth on that one. I might plead the fifth. Oh, Helena, brilliant answer. Nice job. Uh, yeah, of course dogs can be born and be more, um, uh, more susceptible maybe to being of a nervous disposition. Okay, there are of course breeds or breedings that happen, um, where the dog is more likely to be of a nervous disposition. There are lots of things in which we can do to help with the dog's security and confidence and help coach them through certain situations. You have to be willing, you have to be open-minded, you have to have the ability, you have to have the knowledge. Often owners have a large impact on whether their dogs are going to be of a nervous disposition or not. Often doesn't mean always. I'm not taking shots at anyone. But in terms of characteristics, Windy, scared by movement, scared by a small noise, really noise sensitive, movement sensitive. Pressure sensitive. So you might stick a lead on your dog, try and move them, and immediately they might hit the deck and pancake. Um, those are often characteristics— can't be left alone— of a, of a, of a fragile dog. Um, yeah, dogs that are very sensitive to pressure in various forms and formats. But the owner, you, will have a large impact on what that looks like, and you can have a large impact on whether you can help your dog through that situation. But folks, it's been lovely spending a Sunday afternoon with you. Appreciate your time. If you did want to book a consult call, check out the description, book in with one of us. If you wanted to attend my Wednesday webinar, turn up tomorrow, look back in the description and there will be a webinar link in there for you where I'll be able to share some more insights and techniques and tools with you that you can use in everyday life. But otherwise, see you later. Have a good rest of your Sunday. Have a good rest of your weekend and take care. Bye guys.