EP 73: GLENN COOKE - The 3-Phase Blueprint to a Fully Trained Dog

So if you're after a perfectly well trained dog that you can take anywhere, to the park, to a cafe, maybe out for a run like Stark and I just did, we got Uncle Glenn in who's my podcast arch nemesis from over the pond in Australia. We put our differences aside in the podcast Ashes dog training podcast Ashes series for this next feature feature length tutorial for you guys. It's an absolute corker, mate.

Yeah.

And it talks about, you know, the importance of generalizing so our dog behaves everywhere and not just maybe in our kitchen or your garden like some of yours. So yeah, if you want a dog you can do more things with like I do with Stark, not to make you feel guilty or anything. Yeah, you're going to want to watch this.

Yeah.

Enjoy. Glen Cook, what are we talking about today?

Today I thought what we'd talk about is a concept that's very dear to my heart, something that I've been teach students to do for quite a long period of time now, probably through a 15 to 20 year bracket. And that is the concept of taking a dog from the very beginning of a journey in learning a behaviour all the way to the end of the journey to completion of that behaviour. And it's called the teaching training and proofing phase. And in some circles, some people now like to call it acquisition, fluency and generalization or maintenance. Depends on which circle that you travel with.

Gotcha. Okay, so where do we start with things? I've got a dog, I wanna teach it some new stuff. What's my job?

That's a great question. It's a really good question. It's a question that I encourage people, once they start coming along and doing lessons with me or if I'm teaching a new group of students is I want them to start being a little bit critical in their thinking process. And I actually that's a question that I ask of students. Like I say where should you start? And lots of people put their hands up and they say, oh, you should start with a SID or you should with something basic that's not quite correct. And that's it is to them. But what I want to do is walk them back a little bit further and encourage them to start thinking about the assessment process. Because I really feel that that's one of the most powerful and comprehensive ways to understand what you are going to do next. Let me explain in further details. So we all know through social media these days that there is an influence or even a glut of amazing dogs doing amazing tricks and skills. Right? So what we're primarily looking at when we see that is probably a process of entertainment, and it's also real skills as well. Like, people have done what we're going to talk about, but they've primarily selected the best dog to do the most impressive thing to entertain people for their benefit and for a sport that they enjoy or for popularity. And, like. So that's great. And I'm not downplaying that on how important it is for those people and their skill level, because they've certainly done some impressive work. But not all dogs are like that, as we know. And let me relate it a little bit to how people sort of comprehend the difference between watching a video of somebody walking down a road versus watching somebody doing parkour, for example. How many. How much time would you spend on social media watching somebody just walking down a road?

Very little.

Very little. How much time would you spend watching somebody do some amazing parkour?

Way more than I would someone watching walking down the road. Tell me, why did. More difficult. It's harder to attain.

Yep.

More dangerous.

More dangerous, yeah. Entertaining.

It's entertaining, of course.

Of course. So we're often. We're stimulated and we get our dopamine hits by watching those sort of things. Whereas if you're watching somebody walking down the road, you're gonna go, squirrel. Scroll, scroll. That's boring. That's boring. That's boring. That's boring. That's boring. But if you look at the concept of walking versus parkour, and I am going to get back to the point of dog training in a minute, but if you look at the concept of that, when you start discussing that walking is essential, we have to walk to get to a lot of places. It's a skill that everybody needs to know how to do. It's something that we teach little kids how to do. They learn it, they have a desire to want to do it. They're trying to pick themselves up off the ground, they're wobbling, they're shaking, but before even that happen happens, they're learning, like, just to roll as babies, you know, like just to roll over. And they're incrementally doing these shaping processes and skills to actually learn the concept of walking. So for them, it's one of the most important things that they've got to learn. But when we're looking at it from an entertainment aspect, it's not so entertaining because you do it every day once you've mastered it and you've got confidence in it. And that's a big key word is confidence. Once You've got confidence in doing it, you're going to what next? I've learned to walk, now I'm going to learn to run. Now I'm going to learn to do parkour. Okay. If you're possible to do it. If you ask me today to go off and do parkour, I'd say, I can't do it. I've hurt my back, I'm not in good shape. You know, like, it wouldn't be a good idea for me to do it. I'll end up with. With a further injury and it wouldn't be for my benefit to do it.

Yeah.

But if you ask me to go for a walk, no problem. Can do that all day long, as long as I haven't got further injuries or an incompatibility to be able to do it. So this is why I feel that when people are getting into dog training and they want to learn some of these processes, they really need to learn to assess their student. Who are you? Where's your head at? I love that saying. It's a basement jack song that I Often, anytime I'm assessing the criteria of a student, I'm always saying, where's your head at? What are you thinking about? What do you know? What can you do and what can't you do? You know, like, these are important questions to start asking a student. What can you do? So an example of that is, if we get a dog in for a training session and we're starting all the way at the beginning, I'll try something as simple as a sit. 90 to 99% of people have taught their dog to do some kind of sit. You know, 50% of people will probably teach a good down and 10% of people will probably teach a stand. If that. That's probably less. Yeah, that's probably being generous. Right. So you know yourself, you know, through the experience that you've had now and the time that you've started investing heavily into your career, you start seeing the same sort of processes with people in their dog training or even their own capability is sit seems to be something that's easy and a lot of times it's because the dog volunteers the behaviour by itself. So people are fortunate enough not to have much prowess in training and much of an understanding, but they certainly know how to pair something because old Uncle Jim or Grandpa told them how to do it. So somebody's given them like a. A baseline of information. It might be really good or it might be terrible, but still it manages to get somewhat of a sit. But we still want to assess that dog. What do you know? How do you. Do you actually understand it? So I say to the dog situation, this gives me a introduction to a story that I was going through when I was teaching a bunch of students. And I said, let's do the assessment. We'll bring a dog in. I didn't know the dog, never met the dog before. And I said, and I professed all this. I don't know this dog. I've never met this dog in my life. So the dog was brought in, the question was asked, or the command was given to the dog, sit. And I said it a few different ways. I said it passively, I said it gently. I said it at distance. I changed my demeanor. I changed my approach to the dog. Dog didn't understand sit at all. Nothing. Complete absence to the comprehension of what sit actually meant. Interestingly enough, one of the students, which I thought was a fantastic thing, said, what if he doesn't understand English? And I said, it's a good point. So I said to the dog, usi bang went into a sit. Somebody taught him in a different language. So you can't always assume. And it's a limitation on your knowledge sometimes that you think, oh, I know the answer to this question because the dog's not doing it. But just by changing that whole concept, that dog actually understood how to do sit really well and hammered its ass into the ground as soon as I said and gave the sit command. So I think sometimes you've got to explore a little deeper and you've got to be a little bit more compassionate when you're teaching or trying to teach or you're trying to work out how to assess. So the topic really is the assessment. So the assessment criteria. Criteria is one of the most profoundly important things that I think any new and budding teacher or trainer needs to understand is where is your head at? What do you know? What are you confident in doing? And, you know, what is the limitations of that? Certain environments will bear fruit, others won't. So you might ask the dog to do sit in a busy area. And the dog will not comprehend what you're doing because its value or its distraction in something else, it has a competing motivator, and it can't hear you. It's. It's literally deaf to. To your desires or deaf to your. Your command. Okay, let's call it that for this point. But the dog in that environment, it. It just. It has no comprehension. It's just like I'm lost to whatever you're saying. It's just a mix of word salad going through my head right now. Take the dog into an environment like this. There's. Well, this might even be a bit too busy for some dogs. A dog comes in here. There's lots of dogs been training in here. The odors of dogs, the odours of stress, the OD of, you know, excitement, adrenaline. All the dogs have been spraying that all over this environment. So once again, we might find that we've got a dog that's not comprehend or not compatible to learn in this environment. So I know I'm really going on about assessments, but I just don't think people give it enough credibility on a starting point. And in order to begin a journey, you have to have a starting point. You have to orientate yourself to a place where you can actually begin and start building on from that. Cause that's what you call the foundation. The foundation of anything that you're actually trying to do needs to be well established. We've all seen the byproducts of bad foundations. We've all seen what happens when somebody tries to. Let's say, for example, you know, like, I wanted to build something on this and we've got this board here, right? And I wanted to build something stable on this and have it last. Look, look at it already, okay? We've got things moving, we've got uncertainty in what's going to happen. So if I start load bearing on this immediately, and you know, teaching is load bearing because we're actually starting to stack on top of something that we need a grounding plane to do. First and foremost, we have to look at this and say, this is not suitable. This is not a good starting place to be. We have to remove the problem. We have to look at that because that's, that's fucking. Am I allowed to swear?

Yeah, yeah, sorry. Right you are.

That, that's. That is something that you have to take into consideration is do we have to remove something before we can add something? And that is something that I try and encourage students to look at from a deep perspective is please consider the proposition that it's not always about just hammering forward, it's about taking something away to begin with because that may withhold or prevent your student and I call dog students as well. Because we're working on an aspect of teaching two students. We're teaching the human student and we're teaching the dog student. Some people don't think they're doing that. But you are. You're teaching two students at once. You're Monitoring the behaviour of the dog. And many times you're monitoring the behavior of the owner as well, or even your own. So you also got to be a student to yourself. You've got to understand, am I in a, in a good position to teach this student? Okay, are they going to learn from me? Am I prepared to do this? Where's my head at? So this is why I keep saying to people and I keep barking on about it and going back to the process of understand what the assessment criteria is. So once you've done that and you've looked at your student and your student has presented you with all the criteria that you need to start building, it's got confidence, it's got motivation. That's a big one too, right? I mean, you probably talked to many other people who've made such a ordeal about motivation for all the right reasons.

I know a lot of you watching this, you're a dog trainer or even an aspiring dog trainer. And I have a mentorship program. We have actually two different versions, one for already established dog trainers and then a dog trainer development program for aspiring dog trainers. I know some of you are maybe looking for a directional change in the new year. And so I've put details of our dog trainer development program in the link in the description. If you click that link, it'll talk you how it works, who it's for and who is not for ultimately. So it might be of interest to you if you're already watching this video. Anyway, enjoy the rest of the video.

That you have to understand, if your student just isn't motivated by what you're presenting them. What have you done in preparation to understand your assessment criteria of your student? Because you haven't taken into consideration all the variables which will affect this dog's level of motivation. A dog that is a little nervous, even though it might present well to the opportunity of food, if the presentation at that point in time, the dog might reject it. It just might say, yeah, not now, mate, I'm not feeling good. And we've been in those sort of situations before. Anybody in your audience who knows that if they've had a shock or an uneasy feeling or they've even eaten a lot of food at that point in time, your motivation to eat or eat more isn't going to be high on your list. What's very popular these days is also introducing toys to training. And it should be, it should be a big part of a classic conversation that trainers, handlers and dog owners are having with each other. Because I really feel that the introduction of play is an important one. It's come, it's really a headliner these days. Like, people talk about it a lot and as I said, they should, but we've been doing it for a long time. We've been introducing play, but never really capturing the importance. And I think that that's the nice thing now that people are now starting to make people remember, hey, play is a insert that you have to have along the journey of dog ownership and the importance of building a relationship with the dog, teaching the dog that, you know, like you're allowed to play and you're allowed to do fun things and it's an important thing to bring up your motivation level and your desire to want to learn new skills as well. So I'm going to take a little break for you to ask some questions right here because otherwise I'll steamroll you and I won't give you time to have a backwards and forwards.

Well, I want to know. I'm more than happy. I'm all ears. But I want to start building out, like maybe a bit of a roadmap. And as always, people know, to excuse my spelling. So, like, we've got assessment first, right?

Yes, assessment first.

And then like we're gonna go to what, like, check in, like motivation.

Yeah, through the, the, the, the level of assessment. That's a really a springboard to start finding out where is your dog's motivation at?

So you got some questions that are coming off here. So motivation.

Yep.

Dog and person, right?

Dog and person, yeah.

What else are we looking for?

Environment. Or environmentals? I guess we could say, if we're going to be specific about it, environmentals.

So how tolerant that dog is to environmental change.

Exactly, yeah. So for example, if, like as I said, let's say, for example, you bring a dog that's never heard planes flying overhead, which we've got a few at the moment. Yeah. For you and me, because where we've had some level of adaptation to that, that's not a problem, that's fine. To another dog, if you take that in that level, the dog goes, oh, no, I don't like this environment to work in. And you're looking at the dog with disappointment and saying, but why mate? Because everywhere else I take you, you are ready. You have like a keen susceptibility to taking orders or commands or whatever it is. But what is the problem now? Because you haven't considered something that you have like an immunity to. Okay, you're not, you're not worried about that. I saw that the other day with my own dog when I brought a drone out and, you know, I was flying a drone round and he was looking at the drone the entire time and I'm trying to get him to correspond with me and he's basically looking the entire time at going, you're not looking at the alien ship that's in front of me. You know, like, it would be the same for us if, like a huge sauce that just came over the top with, you know, with Pat and I,

the whole you off as well.

But if, if we, if we would walked outside one day and there's this huge saucer just sitting there and we're looking up at the, at the sky in, you know, like in disbelief that this thing has suddenly appeared. I mean, that is, that is something that we do to our dogs on a regular basis and we just say, hey, come on, get over it. Let's, let's go. Come on, you want it, you need to do training. And that's where people start to inject punishment because they haven't considered that they haven't done their assessment criteria properly.

Yeah.

You know, like, I want to ask myself during the assessment, like, if we're starting, we can add socialisation here or socials, because that's, that's an important part of it as well.

Are you guys an S or a Z?

We're an S. Yeah. We're the Queen's English.

Yeah, that's true.

Yes.

You've.

You've just come from America. You're insulting us.

Yeah, that's true.

Sorry. So when we're looking at the comprehension of socialization, a lot of times what we're going to ask ourselves is, do you have any generalisation, like we might be dealing with a puppy where that's all got to be done by us? You know, like, there is an agreement between the breeder and ourselves where we're going to have a handshake agreement where the breeder is going to do a lot of work, hopefully, if we select from a good breeder, if we are going to a breeder, the breeder is going to do a lot of good grounding work for us. They're going to help us build this stable platform that becomes our foundation, which we can start load bearing on. Now, if they've done that right and they've got this puppy up to, let's say, eight weeks of age, where we're going to take over from there, the next part of that handshake journey for us is to gently start preparing that dog. So preparation through assessment as well, that's part of something that we also need to think of as well is preparedness. A. That'll.

That'll do any good?

Yeah, yeah, it works fine. So through being. Through preparation or preparedness, we actually want to know, like, what do I need to do next? Because that's a question that people have forever asked me. They've asked dog trainers of all different calibers, what do I actually need to do next? So the answer to that is everything within moderation, everything that you can basically think of that that pup will develop confidence around that entire situation. So in. In the preparedness for developing a pup, for that foundational work, we want to make sure. What do you like if somebody has a drone? Okay, but. But when we're talking about this, we've also got to say at the right calibration or the right distance to it as well. So have you incrementally considered how close you should fly that drone? So that's something that I didn't do, even though that I coach on this all the time and I tell people the importance of preparedness when we're doing these assessment stages. Because Mando, to a large degree is fairly immune to a lot of things. Like he has. He. He sees things that are novel and he kind of goes, oh, yeah, that's cool. I've, you know, we've done so many things together, but I never considered that the drone, even at the level it was because it was making whirling noises and everything like that. He was totally distracted by it. So I had to take myself back and say to myself, okay, this is something that you don't have to worry about now, because what I'm going to do is take it so much further back and introduce it to you. And then what we're going to do is we're going to work on a differential reinforcement. Okay. So I'm going to target you into ignoring that and staying razor focused on me. So target on me rather than this thing over here. Stay involved in the game. Don't worry about that thing over there. So it wasn't about punishment or making him feel like I have to be anxious about this thing being introduced or anytime that sound comes out, now I've got to stop what I'm doing. We had it way, way further back in the distance to the point where I could barely hear it anymore. And we just started playing again. Well, it was me, him, and I. I started playing a game with him, something that he loved, his favourite game, Tug of War. We were playing that in the Paddock. And as time went on, I slowly started with the remote control, just bringing a little closer and a little closer to one point. The entire time we were doing this, to one point, I saw his eyes shift over like this and I brought him back to the game and he went, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, don't worry about that now. Fast forward. When the drone is there, he starts looking for a game because we've changed the scenario and we've actually taught him that's worrying about that is incompatible to what we're actually doing. So don't worry about that. Anyway, I want to get back to this because we need to start flowing onto our topic header because we've talked about the importance of assessment and it can go much deeper than this. Like, you can go to. You can go to the seven levels of hell over assessment and really drive yourself into a point where you'll be focused, frightened to start. And that's the. You know, like, when we talk about confidence development and building, that's not something I want a student to feel concerned about, is because they won't start. And there's so much people that have lovely talent and they're wonderful, they're going to be wonderful dog trainers. But the issue is, is they're seeing so many things on life that get. What's that term? Identity. What's. What's that term? Anyone? Help me?

What is it? Imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome. That's the one. Thanks, thanks, thanks, ladies behind the crowd. Thank you. So, imposter syndrome. You know, a lot of times I've had people frozen with fear about when to start with a dog.

Yeah.

And they've come on the courses with me, they've received all the information, they've got scores of notes and everything like that, and they're just saying, I'm. I. I've read everything. I just. I don't know what I'm doing. So one of my joys, one of the things I really love doing when I'm working with people is I like to tease that out of them as well, because remember, they're my student as well, them and the dog. Sometimes I'll train the dog, sometimes I'll train them, sometimes I'll train both of them together. So I've still got to comprehend that I've got two students that I'm being a marionette over in a different scenario. So when that happens and when I'm in those sort of situations, I actually say to them, all right, well, where do you think you should start? And once We've gone through this assessment process and we've circled everything around there to a satisfaction level. I said, well, of course you're ready to start. This is a great place to start. Like, how exciting is this? You know, all this, and you've done it all. Like, you've taken your puppy or your rescue dog, and you've done a very valuable assessment on this dog. And you've. You've built your foundation. Your foundation is where you're ready to start laying your next level on. And you don't have to think above that. You don't have to. You know, it's nice to have a plan, and it's good to have. What's the Anthony Robbins quote? It's beginning with the end in mind. Okay. I'll attribute it to him because I heard him first say it. So it is great to begin with the end in mind, but realizing that you can be flexible within that as well, that you don't have to live with rigidity. And that's the thing that terrifies people is this level of rigidity is like if they see doing something on social media, then they're frightened to do it themselves because they're thinking, well, this is the way it's got to be done. Otherwise I'm going to be mocked and humiliated about it, and I'm going to feel so terrible within myself. So for people that want to learn to train, don't think about that. Just make a beginning, make a start. Have your plan start from here and backward chain it back and then look at it and go, all right, we've done the assessment. We're ready to teach the dog. So this is the first phase of training. So I'll write teaching phase. Beautiful. Correct spelling and everything. I got it.

Nailed it.

So we're at teaching phase. We've got our little puppy. How do we teach the dog? We've selected a right type of motivator for this dog. This dog likes food, okay? He's eating well, he's receiving treats off us. We've gone through a hierarchy of things that. That are important to the dog, and we found one that's practical, it's also healthy. Which shameless plug here with my wife, she would kill me for not saying that, but we've selected something that's healthy, it's beneficial, and the dog actually really likes it. Like it's saying to you, come on, mate, pay, pay. And you're saying, all in good time, my friend. We're gonna. We're gonna. We're gonna get there all Right. But first or first of all, I want to teach you to do something. And whether you're doing, let's say, a luring technique, okay, you're getting that little bit of food and you've got your dog's nose here, and you're just showing the bit of food for argument's sake, and you're slowly lifting it up at a level where that dog can follow you back. Now you might say, when is. How much is too much? When I'm first teaching a dog. That's a really good question. Why do you think that's a good question? How much is too much?

Because it's not us to decide.

It's up to your student, right?

Yeah, it's up to the dog in that instance. Or the.

You can have a pre plan in your head. Okay, you can plan this out. You have to know whether to lengthen it or shorten it based on the comprehension of your student. The excellence in teachers is knowing when to progress and when to pull it back. Because they're actually always evaluating and assessing their students. You never stop doing this. This is something that interjects into every stage that you're actually going. The assessment must start and must finish something that I tell people all the time, even people who come to me for dangerous dogs, or if they're just coming in for a. Like teach their dog a new skill or their student wanting to learn. Training is the student must always end the session better than the way they started the session. If you see somebody walking out, going, nodding their head, smiling, feeling good, their posture improves, the tail of the dog is up, the dog is happy. The dog is now coming to you. The dog is interacting in the environment. As a teacher should be very happy with the way that session went because you've got someone or something to understand. Hey, this was good, wasn't it? I feel good about this. I feel like we had a bit of a, bit of a block between us, but now this person who's now an interpreter for me, removed that and I've now feel different about the way my relationship is with this person. So teaching phase is very important. And when we get back to this, like an argument, take this is the dog's head, by the way, even though it's my hand. Okay, we've got a little bit of food, the food that the dog has selected and wanted, and it's appropriate for the lesson. We're getting the dog aroused by this. We're bringing it up slowly. And even, even things like being too high, okay. Can change their Whole adaptation of the process that we're actually trying to teach the dog. So we might have gone from teaching the dog to sit now of teaching the dog to jump up and people lose confidence straight away and go, oh, you do it. I said, no, no, no, no, no. Slow, slow down. Relax, relax. All right, I'm going to use a texture instead of my hand. All right, slow down. Just bring it slightly up. Okay. Slightly up like this. And I go, oh, yeah. But the dog walks backwards. Then, okay, come into the corner of a room. Okay. Use a barrier. Frame the dog in a little bit like this. Now lift the dog up. The dog bumps it. It goes, oh, that's okay, cool. And then the dog comes up and they go, adjust. Taught my doll how to do something that I didn't have confidence in learning before. Because when we look at it, Jake, and when we're talking amongst ourselves, our peers and so forth, we're already at a level where we've done this a hundred, a thousand, hundreds of thousands of times. So for us, we look at this and go, yeah, this is piss easy. But if you take somebody along their journey who hasn't learned how to do this well or isn't feeling confidence in this. Confidence is one of those big words. If they don't feel confidence in this, immediately, you rob them of their joy of teaching their dog how to do something, and it affects their relationship with the dog. So that in itself can determine whether this dog stays in this home or this dog is now put out to pasture. That's. That's something that I've seen over time. It really. It fucks with me emotionally over that. When I watch people destroy budding trainers, budding dog handlers, dog owners, simply because they just stole their confidence. They stole the ability because they didn't say to them, it's okay to make a mistake. It's. This is part of the learning process and part of the joy of learning. I've, like. What was his name? Invented the electric light bulb?

Edison.

Edison. I think it was Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison, yeah. Who said, in the beginning of trying to invent this bloody thing, I learned, like, several hundred ways not to do it before I actually found the process to do it. So sometimes you'll learn ways and you and the dog can have a bit of a game out of this sometimes, and it is frustrating and it can be a bit daunting, and it can rob you a bit of confidence. But if you slow down and just even incrementally get the dog to come up like this without Even completing bum on the ground. Great. That's a good place to stop. Okay, so one thing that I haven't talked about there, something that we should insert there as well, is while we're doing the assessment process, we probably should talk about while we're developing assessment and then learning what hierarchy or motivations the dogs are using, whether we're using toys or food. We should also teach the dog a marker as well. Okay. Teach the dog to understand the comprehension of. Like, when I've done good enough, you're gonna say a word such as yes or you're gonna click a clicker, and I can get to stop this and come over to you for food. So the dog starts feeling that whole dopamine process. Oh, cool. Okay. I've just heard that clicker going off. And this dog is not concentrating on doing the position. It's just concentrating on your guidance technique or your shaping technique that you're actually using. When we go into teaching phase and we're talking about. And we've developed all these other strategies which have been. You know, there's been a myriad of people who explain this so well. They explain it so well, so you can see other videos of other people doing it. Sometimes I don't do it the justice it does because I like to race through it, because so many people do it so much. They teach it with so much compassion, and they spend a whole lesson just on markers themselves. It is. It's very important. It has to be added to the language that we're using. And people are trying to change and modify the language itself, which is then also confusing people. Is what marker do I use? Because people say. Don't say yes. Say nice. Okay? Because yes sounds. So now just. Here's the thing, right? Is it's. It's. It's not proprietary. You can do what you want and use what works. Write that on the board, please, up here.

Right? All right.

Use what works. This is one of the. Yeah. In capitals.

Okay.

This is something that I want everybody to feel the freedom to go back to the entire time, because this is my mantra. I'm going to get a T shirt made up.

All right?

Because that's my. That's. It's not my saying, but it's the saying that I use prolifically throughout my entire process. Because if I tell somebody to do something and I give the instruction to do it that way, and they come back to me and saying, it didn't work well. But Jake showed me a way, and it worked really well. I said, use Jake's way because I'm not so fragile in my ego that I, and nobody should be right. If you're teaching somebody, you gotta, you gotta dump your ego. You gotta let it go and just say if, if another competent, good trainer who studied with other principled and ethical trainers and they've got a great ethos, if they've taught them to do something and it's working and it's bearing fruit, you would be mad not to use that technique. So that's why I say to people, use what works. Anytime they come back to me or anytime I'm doing something, if I'm working through like a process of elimination with my own dog and I'm going, yeah, that's not working. That's not working so well. Have I considered the environment? Yeah, I've done all this. I've taken the dog back to a Skinner box sort of level when I'm doing my own preliminary work. Because a lot of times when I'm teaching my own dog, I'm teaching my own because of my distance away from people or even my knowledge. I teach my own dogs how to do bite work. With me to start with, they learn holding barks, they learn bites, releases everything. They do the whole grounding with me and then I bring in other decoys to help me do, you know, like the external work. So they get used to other people. But I've got to go through that process of elimination. I've got to go, what's working and what's not or what work? What worked today and is that going to work tomorrow? Does that have the efficacy of working over a period of time? That's also an important consideration to have as well, is what works today may not work so well tomorrow. So you've got to be ready to be flexible. Write that down to somewhere. Be flexible. Be flexible. Yeah. Over my career of doing all sorts of different things, whether it be dog training or martial arts or guitar work or anything like that, all the best teachers that I'm working on, you hear them saying the same thing in their different ways. People use different types of language. But if you're listening to really good teachers, like you're listening to the high end people, they're all saying things like this. They're all saying, don't be rigid with what you're doing. You know, like they might question you, for example, of why did you do it that way? For example, my guitar teacher, when I started learning to play guitar, I was, you know, doing some finger work a certain way and he goes, can I ask why you're doing it like that? And I said, that's the way I've learned how to do it. And he said, that's good and it's nice, but you'll develop lazy habits from doing it that way. Can I walk you back a little bit? And can I show you a way to do it better to set you up for better work going down the the track? So he took me back to teaching phase because I kind of thought, yeah, I mean, I'm intermediate now. Like, I'm sort of breaking into that area where I'm doing really well with this. But I wanted him to. I said, yes, yes. I was willing to be flexible. Okay. I wanted him to show me how to do it right. And that changed everything from me. Just that little course correction was enough of a variable to change everything in my mind. And I went, oh, my God. I. I can't believe that I was struggling with all these sort of things and frustrated that I couldn't do certain skills and techniques. But once I had a good teacher that used with what works and was willing to be flexible and willing to teach me all those additions as well with something that I wanted to do, it changed everything. And it can for your dog training as well. So teaching phase is incredibly powerful. Incredibly powerful. And we have to consider, don't rush the basics. I've talked about this on our podcast many times. It's a tattoo I've got here. Can you see that on there? Yeah, yeah, cool.

If not, we can ping it.

Yep, ping that. It's what it says is chi, and it relates to my journey of doing Wing Chun, kung fu and learning about. I'm going to fast track this because I've done a whole episode with Pat on talking about it, but it talks about my journey of understanding from a high level teacher in the practice. He said, everybody wants to rush the basics. And what for? He said, I did when I was young and I was impetuous in my youth and I just wanted to race through. But that's not the way to do this. The way to do this is enjoy the teaching phase. Because the teaching phase is something that you're always going to think about, because you have to. Anytime you're introducing something new to the dog, you have to go back to teaching phase. Everyone's thinking of, I want to see the dog at the end of the journey. I want to make sure I'm getting those, you know, those level threes and so forth. But you still, you're still having a relationship anytime that you know like let's say, for example, you go into a trial and somebody introduces a new concept, something difficult, and you've never done it before with your dog. You're back in teaching phase. You know, you might only be visiting for a short period of time, but stay there as long as the dog needs. As long as your student needs that coaching, stay in that level. And then you'll assess the dog and the question that you'll ask your student is, are you ready to move yet? Okay, now you do that in your own way as an educator. You'll do it through observation. You'll look at the dog and go, yeah, yeah, you're good to go, mate. Cause I can see that you have. Now let's do an arrow here and write transition. You are ready to transition into another arrow training phase.

What sort of typical things are we looking at in the dog in the teaching phase that might suggest to us, huh, we're ready to move on a bit.

Acquisition. And that's why that phase is also called in other circles acquisition phase as well. So you call it what you want as long as you understand the meaning of it. So it doesn't. It doesn't. People have said to me, oh, we should change it to this, we should change it to that. It's. It doesn't matter. What matters is your comprehension of it, your understanding of it, and the understanding of this, the overarching understanding of teaching phase is what did you acquire when I was trying to teach you how to do this? Did you actually understand the principle, the core mechanics of what you needed to do? So remember before I was talking about, while I was jumping all over the place, which is not unusual for me, Jake, Let me just, let me just say that.

Oh, good.

So when you're, when you're luring a dog, okay, and let's say you successfully lured the dog in the position, that's not the only way to do it. But I've heard trainers online saying, when you're teaching a dog in teaching phase, you must only use luring techniques to train that dog.

Dog.

What was fun for me is this week, the week that's just gone by, I had a lovely lady that is an experienced dog trainer. She's got 15 years under her belt and she came over to join our company. She's going to start running our northern division up in, up in Queensland. I wanted to assess her, okay. So I wanted her to come down, spend the week with me, and I wanted to her to train dogs and show me what she knew. Okay. And then Also show her where the gaps are in what she's doing based on what we need her to do. And it was great. You know, like, she's knowledgeable and she's got. She's compassionate and she's great with dogs. She's got lots of confidence, which is fantastic. But she also knows where her limitations are, and that's. Let's write that down, too. Know your limitations. Anywhere you want to write that. You can just write, know your limitations. I think that's one of a powerful thing for anybody, regardless of the discipline you're doing. Just know your limitations. Because then it's not a. It's not something that you can fixate on and worry about and prevent you from going forward. It's just to say, all right, this is where I have limitations. This is where I need my teacher to come in and, you know, show me the next part of doing that, the next increment in the. In the stage going forward. So when we were working dogs and we were taking dogs out, she said to me, this is after about day two, she said, geez, these are different dogs than most dogs you see, aren't they? And I said, these are the dogs that don't make social media, but there's an abundance of them. This is literally the melting pot of dogs in the community. Like, 95% of the dogs out there that are available for training, that's these dogs, the 5% you see on social, on social media, that's like. Like Hollywood stars, you know, like you're watching Top End, Top Gear, sort of stuff. Fantastic. Love it. Admiration for it. But it's not real world, it's not real life. So I loved it that she got to see that. I. I mean, I was just gobsmacked when she brought that up to me. I. I had a moment. I'm sitting there going, oh, wow, this is so cool. And I said, all right, tell me about it. What's your. What's your thoughts and feelings on this? And she said, some of these dogs, you know, it doesn't matter where you take them or what you do. They won't take food and they're not excited by toys. And, you know, like, even if you animate yourself and you're friendly, she said, they're just, you know, like, I just want to go back and play with the other dogs. And I said, so can we use that? And she said, well, yeah, I guess. And I said, is that still a. Like, an acceptable reinforcer? And she said, well, in the absence of everything else, that's not working. I guess it is. I said, absolutely, it is. You gotta look at it and you've gotta understand what is your motivation. And then you gotta say, well, if you are motivated by that, maybe I can pre Mac you through that. I can teach you. You can have it. When you do this for me, you just need to do a little bit. She said, well, how do I lure the dog? And I said, don't guide it. Use physical guidance to guide the dog in position. Hold the dog by the collar, put your hand on the rear of the dog and gently bring the dog into position. I said, hold it there, mark it, let the dog go and socialize with the other dogs. She said, yeah, but other people say you can't do this. And I said, why can't you do it? And she said, I don't know. And I said, well, that's the questions that you do need to ask, but you also need to know the answers to those as well. Why can't you do it? And if you probably look at it, it's more about the limitations of somebody else's knowledge or their ego is invested in selling a product or service that isn't really helping holistically. And when I say holistically, I'm saying overall, because you've got to understand that's not using what works, if you don't consider that. But we can consider that because we're working. You know, there was an ad here, I don't know if you get it in the uk, the fish that John west rejects. Did you get that ad? It was about, long story short is a guy who goes and sees these salmon on a boat and he's looking at the salmon, he goes, oh, they, they, they look perfectly good. What's wrong with them? And he goes, yeah, well, this one's got a mark and it's, you know, it's a bit undersized. And he goes, so why don't we take these ones? He goes, john west want them perfect. They want the, the best fish that you can possibly get. He goes, oh, so these are the fish that John west rejects. And I remember that ad. I saw it when I was a kid, but I remembered that ad my entire life because these are those dogs, you know, it's like supermarkets who only have the, the correct looking orange. You know, like it's got to be the most perfect orange. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of oranges are discarded and thrown into backfill because they're undersized or whatever it might be. It's just insanity. It's it is insanity. So for. For people out there who are losing your confidence over things like that, you've got to understand, maybe the person that's coaching you isn't the best coach for you. Okay. And it's okay to leave sometimes if you know that somebody is holding you back. So I know that's not nice things to say on coaching school and so forth. But if somebody is not right for you and you can just feel that you're not really making progress. I did that when I was playing guitar. I switched midstream because the guy that I was doing with was looking at his phone more than teaching me how to train how to work a guitar. The other guy was sitting there and he's walking around, he's looking at me like this, and he's coming around and he's, you know, like, he's going, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, put your elbow up like this and move your wrist like this. And he's. And I'm going, you know, like, what are we doing here? Like, this feels more chiropractic than guitar playing. And he goes, but feel how it feels now. And this is something that, you know, through the evolution of. Of learning to teach and eventually train and moving on to proofing, this is something that we should be doing. We should be looking at, how do I show my student how to be flexible and how to move through things that they need to do to teach their student how to be at their best level? So luring isn't the only technique that you need to think about. You also need to think about physically guiding a dog in position as well, or a hybrid of both of them. If you are luring sometimes, say, for example, we're teaching a drop, okay? And I want to lure the dog down, and the dog is sort of going with me, and I just want to put my hand on top of it, which is compulsion, okay? It's. It's flat out compulsion when we're using, like, physical pressure. But it's such a gentle lesson that the dog goes, oh, oh, I get it. Okay. We're using negative reinforcement here. I get it. Okay. Oh, yeah, I can see bang to your advantage. So what I want to do to the student is I want to show you, hey, mate, I'm doing this to your advantage, okay? Just to advantage you so we can work through this quicker. Because I can see that you have preparedness for this. I can see that this wouldn't affect you emotionally. You're confident enough to do it. You're not fragile. We've gone through enough of an assessment process. I can do this comfortably in the teaching phase to help you acquire the knowledge to understand how to do it, to give you the tools that you can say, I understand, I get it. And that's when you have. That's when you have transitioned, okay? That's when you are here and you've gone from here and you've transitioned. Because I can see that you're wanting to do it by yourself. So when I've added the cue at whatever stage, because people say, don't add it at the start, add it at the start, add at the end, add it at the middle, add it whenever you want to, okay? If you want to murmur it as the dog is doing the position, fine. As long as a mistake is not occurring when you're giving the cue for the first time. So if the dog is wrestling and, like, contesting what you're actually doing, probably not the best time to give the cue, right? If the dog is calm and you can see that there is fluidity in what you're doing there, give the cue at that stage. There is, mate. I've tried it every way because I've had the luxury of working with other people's dogs in board and train when I'm the only person there working with a dog. And I've tried it. And let me tell you, there is no difference to adding it at the start as there is to the end, or is there is to the middle. It's all fucking bullshit. And what people want. It's proprietary and people want to trick you into. No, no, you can't, mate. You can't, because you'll affect the dog mentally. And they talk about, you know, like, the clarity levels of the dog. And I'll say. Now I say, prove it. Prove it. Show me. Because I'm calling bullshit. And the reason I'm calling bullshit is because I've got more dogs underhand than you have. In physically manipulating dogs, in luring dogs and doing it at all time, I can tell you it doesn't really change what's going on, because the dog goes, yeah, cool. I'm ready to mow through this. I love it. I'm eating it all up, okay? And then the next time you come out and you say to the dog, sit. And the dog goes like this, okay? Acquisition is happening trends, and we're not quite here. And we've just left this, okay? So we're in between. It's like train station platforms. We've left this platform. We're about to Arrive here, okay? We're transitioning through. And that's exactly what it means, we transition through. Now, once the dog has shown you, when you say sit and the dog goes plop and puts his bum down on the ground, that's all we're doing, okay? Something simple. We're making a whole lesson just on that something simple that the dog has now learned, okay? Because that is one exercise that we're teaching the dog. Because the minute we ask the dog to do something else, we're gone from shaping that exercise to then starting to get complicated on shaping and chaining. We're asking the dog to do, you know, something that wasn't compatible with the exercise to begin with? And that's where people have a problem because they say, well, I want you to sit and look at me at the start. All right? Now, you might be able to shape that, but just leave it basic to begin with. Just teach it nice and easy from the dog. Let the dog enjoy it, and then you can add it. And it doesn't take long. It doesn't take long before you can do things like that. Other people say, oh, no, it's very important. You have to have the dog doing this. You have to have the dog doing that. And I know that there are certain skills, and they're very talented trainers, and I've watched them doing it, and I agree with them. They've got a dog that's at such a high, motivated level. This dog would do anything, Anything like this dog would if it had bits of broken bricks, the dog would be motivated by that. Those dogs are wonderful. They will work so well for you. The other ones, you've got to do so much more, so much development. I mean, it's, it's. It's hard work, but it's not impossible. And you've just got to slow down and understand your lengths of length, of increments as well. So now we have gone from teaching phase. We've transitioned through. We're in training phase. What's your thoughts on training phase? Where do you arrive at when we're talking about that?

So I'm gonna start adding in some environmental draws to the dog, right? Depending on where the dog is, whether they've got, like, reactivity or whatever. I'm gonna start adding in incrementally, positively or emotionally positive draws to the dog and start teaching him that you have to do this thing so long as, like, we've acquired it cor. And the dog has fluidity and, like, coming back to here, I'm only going to Add the cue in when we've not got friction. If we've got friction, we need to get rid of the friction first before we add the cue in. And then once I've kind of transitioned over here, I'm going to start adding in some emotionally positive draws of the dog's attention. And then I might add in a little bit of duration too, and so on and so forth and start teaching him that even when there's other things that tickle your fancy, like, you still have to do this. And it's not so much like I'm still not going to add any real aversives until we get to the final phase maybe, but I'm going to start adding in a little bit of obligation to the command here too. Even when there's something over there that you'd like to go and interact with, I still need to hold you accountable to keep your attention over here.

Cool. Let's add up here. Increments.

Any good?

Yep. Maybe incremental. That's fine.

Yeah, fuck it.

What you were largely talking about then is introducing something incremental to the dog to test the dog's mettle on how much it understands what you were very patient in teaching the dog, watching the dog transition, okay, and showing an understanding. Like, I have acquired the knowledge of this. Like, you were really patient. You selected a right type of motivator for me or you even pre macked me into something. Now I feel good about this. I have confidence, I have confidence to do this position. So when I'm here with you in a suitable environment to start with, because we're still, we're still in prep and primary school here, okay? We're still in prep and primary school. And a lot of work that you watch people do, even when you're watching detection work and stuff, when they're still working on buckets and so forth, like little tubes and scent walls and stuff, that's all, that's, that's flashy and sexy, but it's, that's kindergarten, okay? You're watching a dog working through kindergarten and you can say, well, yeah, there's variable skills of that. But still don't lose sight of the fact that we can incrementally start raising the criteria of the dog here and we can say to the dog, all right, now I'm going to have another person walk in the room and I'm going to ask you to sit, all right? Now that might be too much for the dog to ask. So I'll say to the person, right, go up the other End of the room and just come in here. Being here with the dog for a while, where we're playing and where we're developing a relationship, and the dog gets to know you and knows that you're chill and he's had a chance to sniff you and do all these sort of things that there's times where people say to me, is that important? And I'll say, well, what do you think in the development of teaching somebody who's got the brain of a baby, what do you think? Do you think that that would be important for you to be able to comprehend that? Or do you think that this is. Is something that you just rush through and you just hope for the best? And they say, well, given. Given that, I. I can see merit in that. Yeah, let's do that. So I would say, well, I. I would too. I would. I would hope that you would give your student enough time to feel relaxed and let their confidence return. So by the time they've come back to you and says, all right, Jake, what are we doing? Okay, I can see you've got my motivator there. I want it. How do I get that? And you say, sit. And the dog goes, bam. And there's another person in the room. Fantastic. Okay, now let's say, for example, I can still see the dog has levels of motivation there. Okay? The dog still desires the reinforcer that you've got. All right, the person's over here. They've now walked up, okay? And the dog is accustomed to this. It's done five out of five sits. And then on the sixth time, we can still see the levels of motivation there. We've said to the dog, sit. And the dog has gone. I'm just going to look at this person. What do we do and what can we do? What are we justified in doing at this point in time? Because that's an interesting question I like to hear from different people.

This is where I might add, in a little bit of pressure over here, just a little bit of more guiding pressure so we have some momentum and a little bit preparedness. In case I need to make this command obligatory. I'm going to first ask myself, like, is that person an emotionally positive draw, or is it bringing up bad feelings? If he's bringing up bad feelings, perhaps, like, I don't want to go straight into pressuring that dog into the position. If he's bringing up good feelings, and the dog's just like, hey, your value is five bucks. He's paying me three bucks. And then I don't Mind adding in some like learning pressure there to say, even when my value's compromised, you still have to do the thing. And then I might teach the dog after through maybe like a jackpot or something. Hey, look, there was more, there was more at stake here. Like, you can come and be with me and sort of teach the dog. You have to do it. But I had 15 bucks for you all this time anyway.

Yeah.

And so that's something I'd probably look into. And again, it depends on. And we can refer back to assessment again whether that dog is responding out of like, hey, I'm really uncertain and I need you to support me through this situation. Or the dog's just like, this guy's offering me more than you are. Just that social interaction is worth more than the food you've got.

Let me ask you another question. On top of that, can you punish in teaching phase?

If we're talking about teaching a behavior, I can't punish a dog to learn a behavior. But if we're talking like, conceptually, I think I can say to a dog, hey, what you're about to do is dangerous and you need to not do that.

You're getting into a territory of abstinence versus action. So let me explain that.

So if we're just talking about creating action. Yeah, no, I can't.

Yeah, this is an action based question as well. If you're abstinence based, I would say absolutely, yes. Yeah, like if the dog, let's say, for example, if a dog comes in and jumps on you and you correct it for it, somehow, like some form of aversive takes place, I would say, now this is where people get hysterical and lose their fucking minds over it. I would say you're in your right mind to chastise and punish that dog. To use some sort of aversive. I do all the time. I teach my dogs. No, I don't want that. And you're not doing it anymore. I want that behaviour to go extinct. Absolutely. I want the dog to lose confidence in that behaviour and do something else. You know, and this is where we or people could say, well, what about a differential reinforcement not reinforcing that behaviour, but something else specific. And I could say, yeah, well, whatever. But you know, the, the I like fast tracking a dog through them because I can see them as real long term life problems. And these are these. You know, again, we're not talking about the super dogs, we're talking about the dogs. Where sometimes people are on the fringe of saying, do I really want to keep this dog anymore. Because he just seems to be a problem to me. He doesn't learn anything. He doesn't seem to be very smart. And, you know, like, your modern household will cycle through those questions. They'll fall in love with the dog, and they'll fall out of love with the dog and fall in love with the dog, and fall out of love with the dog. So, you know, that probably warrants talking about the action versus abstinence skill if it's an action. No, I can't justify any aversive at this point because you don't understand. It would be like me coming to you and saying to you, all right, now hang on. Before I do that, all right, if I walked up to you and just said, hey, Jake.

Yeah,

Anna, mate. Anna.

Yeah.

All right, you get what happens here? Tell me, how do you feel about that? Well, how do you feel towards me?

I mean, they're gonna not want to learn anymore, or I'm gonna maybe stick the nut on you or something. Right. Which some dogs might do, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

They're gonna chin you the chinnya.

Yeah, there's the word. Yep.

Because if we're just gonna piss the dog off, we're gonna frustrate the dog, we're gonna.

You'll lose confidence, we're gonna lose aggression. Yeah, okay. There's a lot of things that are happening there because all of a sudden my student goes, hey, my teacher's attacking me, you know, like. And he's. He's barking words at me. Like, I can see these verbalizations happening, but I can't control this. This is where I really see, like, to me and my understanding of training, this is where I find the highest level of cruelty. When people are trying to pass on a skill to a student or a dog is when they haven't explained themselves clearly enough. That acquisition hasn't taken place, and the student now feels in control of how to make that happen or stop it from happening. So what I want to do, and this is, again, using guidance here, is going, ana.

Good.

Yes. Treating. Okay, good. Yes. And then we treat. And now I'm going to get up to the transition stage. And we're like, you just transitioned then already? Yeah, that's what you did. Okay. So the minute I felt you take ownership of this and your hand starting to elevate, I'm thinking to myself, here we are. Now, I don't race into this. I don't race into this and just say, oh, he knows it. He's ready to be punished. All right. I just gently Go. Okay, enough. Good. Yes. Jackpot. Okay, we go off and play, and I give you time to think about it, because I want you to mull that over you in your head and go, the hell just fucking happen. Then I want to do that again. I feel good. I feel in control, okay? And then I'm like, you're standing at me going, let's do this. And that's what I like to see with my dogs, too, that level of preparedness where the dog comes back to me and goes, goes. I want to do the thing.

Like, we're almost looking for anticipation.

We're looking for the dog. Like, this is where the dog starts to really produce this dopamine. Because the dogs come back to you going, come on, do it. I'm ready. I'm prepared, all right? And you go sit. And the dog goes, bam. Or I say to you a nut, and your hand flies up in the air. Now, I can contest before court, okay? If it was filmed and I went to court and someone says, jake didn't know how to do it, I'll say, bullshit. Watch this. Yeah, we did this 10 times. He is in training phase now. I can use an aversive if he chooses not to do it. Okay? Now again, this stereo around punishment and aversives, you don't have to leap straight into physical corrections, okay? I can say to you, all right, mate, if you're not serious about this, then let's not do this. I had a coach of mine once when I was doing kickboxing, and, you know, like, I came in and I just. I was in a mood. I was being a dick. I was a young, young guy. And I just, you know, like you said to me, all right, Glenn, need you to do this, this, and this. And I. I started stuffing around. He goes, mate, if you're not going to take me seriously, I've got other people to train off. And I said, no, don't be like that. And he goes, mate, look, look, there's. There's four other hungry guys standing behind you that want to do this lesson. If you. And, mate, I. I was crushed, absolutely crushed. And I said, mate, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I'm sorry. And he goes, all right, well, that's the attitude you come into training with. He goes, don't. Don't come in with that one. He goes, if you want to go and punch the bag and kick the bag down there, don't do that. If he goes, my time is more valuable than that, mate, you should know Better. And I said, I got it. And he goes, cool. I never did it to him again. I was so disappointed in myself. I was shattered. Now, when a dog doesn't do that for me, I want the dog to have the confidence to understand why I got punished. And I insert that word in confidence, in reinforcement, confidence in punishment. Because that way I can control it. That way I actually have a relationship with it and an understanding and a fairness about it. Instead of this hysteric or about hysteria about whether you should use punishment or not, now my student says, I feel confident in the application of this. I understand you. I have clarity. Clarity. Write that down somewhere as well, because clarity is huge. Most people that you're interviewing should use and insert that word clarity as well, because that's a really important one about the relationship between a teacher and their student is developing clarity. That's all you're doing, is you're notching up the lesson enough for your student to be able to ratchet up with you like this, where you're going, I'm just giving you enough because I can see you're ready. And then you meet the criteria. Okay, here we go. We're ready to go up. We go incrementally. Now, one day I might say, okay, let's try this, and I bring it up to here, and you come all the way up and that's where we have a leap forward. And I said, yes, you were either meet it or I might come up here. You go, oh, I'm a bit lost. And I come back down to meet you. And I come back down to ferry you through. That's the time where I'm gonna carry you through the lesson a little bit and say, all right, where did I lose you? What didn't you understand about that lesson? Okay, again, I've worked with super teachers in learning how to train dogs and learning how to train people, in learning guitars and learning martial arts, where they've come back and said, where did you get lost? All right, let's go back there. And then they go, yep, no, no. Yes. That's the thing that you need to do. Ah, cool. I found the missing linchpin. I'm good to go. I'm feeling good about it. I understand what's happening. And then like I said before, the introduction of an appropriate. An appropriate aversive that's introduced to say, hey, don't do that. That. Don't do it. Okay, that has no place in this lesson. Don't do it. Alright, cool. Do that. All right. That is something that's certainly going to lead you forward. This one's going to take you backwards. Don't do that. Steal it from them. Snatch it away from them. So they go, yep, cool. But not at such an aggressive level. And again, this is where the hysteria comes in. Not at such an aggressive level where your student loses confidence. You still want them to understand. Yeah, I have the ability to control that. Cool. I got it. Thanks, mate. We're ready to move on now. I have a dog that it doesn't matter where, you know, like, we're in this room. I take the dog. The dog is happy to perform the situation. Okay, so now I could probably say I've just witnessed the dog, and we go, transition. This comes down here. Yep. Now, I've watched the dog transition into proofing phase, but put an arrow back here for me as well, please, to go back. Yeah, like that. So, right. Transition into proofing phase. So this. Yeah, once you finish writing that down, this arrow, we'll get rid of that will actually come through there. Like, this transition will sit in the middle. But I've watched the dog transition into proofing phase in all of the environments that I've produced in here. So I've taken the dog up the front. Does the sit. Taking the dog down the back there, done the set, brought people into the room. Does. Does the sit. Brought another dog into the room. Does the sit. Taking him upstairs here, does the sit. Taking him on the stairs over there, does the sit. I can. Again, I can testify that any environment in here that I've taken the dog, he has not only transitioned, he's definitely in proofing phase right now because he does the sit anywhere I ask him to do it. Like, he'll do it readily, rapidly. The dog loves it. Can't wait to do it. Okay. He'll put him up on the couch, sit, bang. The dog will go into a situation. It. Are we improving phase with the sit everywhere we go?

Yeah.

No. Why open the door and take the dog out there? You're back in training.

All right, Gotcha.

Okay. Because now what we've done is we've. We've switched the environmentals over to a place where the dog is going, oh, wow, look at all this stuff out here. Because I. I know all this. I have an intimate relationship, and I feel safe in this little skinner box that we've got here. You know, like, it's. It's known to me, and I know that you're gonna throw variables at me. So I feel confident. I am confident. But out here, like, wow, I didn't know that was gonna happen, and I haven't seen that thing before. Now we're back in training phase where we have to say to the dog, okay, let's. Let's just ease you into it, okay? And let's get you through this so I can transition you back to proofing phase out there. Now, when you do this in enough and different environments, after a period of time, this dog will go, yeah, here, there, everywhere. I just sit. When you say sit, I do it because I know nothing gets better in my life than doing this and getting the reinforcement from you, because you're really the control point for the thing that I want most. And you've shown me that by, you know, like, I did want that, but I didn't know how much I wanted this. Okay, so now you've shown me the relationship to that. I feel good about it, I feel confident, and I'm happy to do it. But more importantly, I've also learned what happens when I don't do it. And that's where I don't think that people have enough confidence in themselves to show dogs. This is what happens when you don't do something that you know how to do in an environment that I can see that you're largely confident in. If you are, then I question you, and I'm going to say to you, why didn't you do it? And what are you going to say? I didn't want to.

Something better.

And then I'm going to say, well, fuck you. That's not what happens, mate. When I ask you to see it in all these different environments, you got to do it. You know, like, this is not a request. This is now a rule, okay? Because life is also. Write this down to request and rules. Sometimes in life there are. There are hard and fast rules. And when I teach my dog to do something which I call a. Like a formal command, such as sitting, dropping, standing, you know, healing, and so forth, I'm saying to the dog, this is a rule now, mate. It's some. It's something that you have to do when I've asked it of you. I'm not asking if you're ready. I'm saying this is now a rule in our household, in our backyard, in our front yard, in society, it's a rule. You have to follow that as a rule where I'm saying to the dog, you know, come here, get over here, or something like that. That's kind of a request. Yeah. So I've gone here. So we can put in brackets here. Formal, And we can put in brackets up here, informal. So all of this combined, everything that we've sort of road mapped here in our strange little transition to get all the way back down to proofing phase. We've. We've taught the dog that I'm going to be very patient from with you. I'm going to assess you at the beginning. I'm going to find out what do you know, how do you feel about any given situation. Do you have confidence to do this? Okay. And if no, then I'm going to say, well, you're in luck because I'm going to teach you and I'm going to incrementally pace myself at the level that you actually understand. All I'm going to do is act here as a guide and a motivator and a coach to show you how to feel comfortable in doing that sit position in teaching phase. Because this is now an action, it's going to be a rule. All right? Once I can see that you have the acquisition, okay? And I'm going to bring you into the training phase, or the fluency phase that some people call it now. I'm going to introduce. This is the side where I'm going to introduce the operant side of learning, okay? You know how to do it. You know what happens when you do do it, but you've also got to learn what happens when you don't do it. And then I'm going to transition you or you're going to transition yourself. I'm going to see it happen. I'm going to bear witness to this phase occurring, that whenever I introduce any anomaly into the environment, you're happy to proceed and do the exercise and just remove that from your mind. You basically go, I see it, but I don't care. I'm going to do the sit. Then we've done all of this and we've learned that this is now a rule for this action, okay? It's not something where I'm just saying to the dog, hey, when you feel like it, sit down as a informal request, okay? Or if I just say to the dog, hey, I need you just to come up back over here, not do anything specific, just come back over here. You know, like, stop sniffing that over here. Just come over here. That we could say is, you know, it's informal. We haven't actually said to the dog, you must do this. Okay? We've kind of said, hey, do this. You can still, even when things are informal, you can still have a relationship where the dog understands, hey, mate, there could be an ass kicking behind this, you know. And I need to be careful when I say that to camera because when people hear me say that, they go, oh, you're going to kick the dog. I've actually had clients say that to me. So I try and choose my words a little bit more carefully. It's not about physically kicking the dog, it's just about making sure the dog understands there is an appropriate punisher for not complying with a known directive. And that's what the dog must. We've got to do the same things. We're bound in society. That's why we don't see men acting like Vikings, which we're very capable of doing, I might add. You know, grown physical men are capable of. And so are women, I might add. But we're capable of atrocities. But we have societal rules that keep us in line. We actually have an understanding of if you break these rules, here are the consequences for it. Okay. And there's also elevations to those levels as well. It can get really distasteful. Like you can go to a level that you really don't want to happen and in some cases beyond that, so you can kind of learn it happens slowly or it happens very quickly based on the level of my perseverance of wanting to do those behaviours. But we don't want to make any form of learning a new skill undesirable. This is all about learning the desirability of wanting to do it and to do it with enthusiasm, confidence and power. Doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't matter whether you're high level, competitive trainer or you're an at home dog with a person who's deciding the fate of their new rescue dog. Okay? We all have to understand that there are certain rules in order for you to be able to train your student to understand. What is it that I need to do to be able to comfortably get all the way here? Okay. Because this person has roadmaped this all the way out and they've also been flexible, they've used great increments, they've understood. Sometimes I, you know, like I've come at this with a centimeter approach, but I should have come at it with a millimeter approach. I just went too far ahead of my students. And then if somebody else comes along and says, hey, can I critique what you're doing there? Cause I can show you a better way, a more fluid way, like a more succinct way to have a confident relation or teach confidence to your dog, but a better relationship with your dog. Cause it's something that I actually know. And you go, yep, show me. And you use what works. But they can physically and spiritually show you what that actual exercise is. The dog gets it, you get it. You feel very comfortable doing it. And that, mate, I'll tell you what, in teaching people, in watching people really prosper and really watching them transition themselves into keeping the dog or becoming a trainer, this is where they go, oh, man, I feel so confident to do this. And that's why I said to you at the start of this, when we really began this journey off is a lot of this is about developing confidence within yourself and also being able to transition that across to your student as well. Because if they can see that you're confident and that you care and that you actually have their best interest at heart and that you live up to your. You know, like, if you make a deal with. With your student and you live up to it, they go, I love this guy. I actually love them. I love them with all my heart and soul. Because every time I'm around them, that anything that they tell me they're going to do, they're going to do it. They follow through with this. And if they punish me, it's on me. You know, like, that's my bad. I did the wrong thing here, and I own that, and I control it. And I want to make it up to them and also to myself as a student. I want to. I want to learn how to get through this so we can get onto this and even through this. Jake, when we're talking about in the training phase of introducing the operant side of it or introducing an aversive, we've still got to be. We've still got to exercise some compassion there as well. You know, like, we still need to make sure that when we're only using the appropriate level at that point in time. And it's the same thing when I'm using reinforcement as well. I want to use the appropriate level of reinforcement. I don't want to be excessive in either, because In Excess is not only an Australian band. See what I did there?

Yeah.

In Excess is not only. Yeah, it's not only the band. It's also. In Excess is where you generally find problems occur in everything that you do. So for me, you know, like, one of the things that I'm in excess of is I overeat when I'm. When I get stressed, whenever I stress, I'm in excess of doing all the things that my wife tells me not to Do. She says, don't do this because it will cause problems for you. But if you do it at the appropriate level, you'll get the nutrition you need. Even when I'm eating healthy. Okay. It's still the problem with being in excess. Okay. The whole premises of the, of being in excess creates lots of problems for you. So questions? Because we've sort of road mapped that out.

Let's just summarize over here.

Sure.

What's our end result now? What do we want to get to?

The end result you want to get to is now that you've shaped a behavior. Okay. So we've gone through some form of shaping, whether that be luring or guiding the dog through there, that we've actually got to the end there and decided, now what do I want to add to it? I want to tell you the story. I forgot about it. I want to tell you the story

so I can tell you.

Got to tell you the story. So I watched when I was a younger guy, I remember I was. And, and YouTube was fairly new. I watched this video of this Japanese guy who is this master potter. Like he makes this beautiful pottery. He gets on a, like a spinning wheel which he self powers with his leg and he pumps it round. He goes through this incredible process of harvesting this special clay that he's got. It was, was incredible. I was fascinated. I couldn't turn my eyes away from it. And was all interpreted through. They were speaking to each other. The interviewer and the, the potter were speaking to each other in Japanese and it had subtitles on the bottom. So I was reading it and I was watching the, the, the film clip. And he was making all these beautiful pots and they were like remarkable, remarkable pottery. And he had this bit of clay there on the bottom and he put it on the wheel. The interviewer said to him, what are you doing with that? Like, that doesn't look like much clay. And he said, he goes, it's not. And he said, but it just seems such a shame to throw it away. I figure that I'll make something out of it. And he said, but when I look around the room, what could you make out of this? And he said, I think I might make a saucer, but I'll make the best saucer I possibly can. And he proceeded to pump the wheel and just he was shaping this little pot with his fingers. And he brought in some tools, very important because we're balance trainers. Okay. So he brought in some like tools, he brought in some sponges and he brought in like this little Bit of wooden dowel. And he was very patiently, you know, taking on the shape from this lump of harvested clay and he started to turn it into this pot. But the symmetrical aspects of this were just incredible. And the time he took to it and the delicacy that he used it, you know, sometimes he was getting a little firm, sometimes he was backing off, off, but he made this beautiful looking saucer. And then right at the end, he used a bit of fish wire and he cut it off and he's. And the guy goes, oh, have you finished? He said, no, no, no, not yet. He goes, that was the. That was the easy part. Now comes the hard part. I've got to refine everything that I'm doing. Putting the edge to it, finishing the bottom, you know, like, making sure that everything about this pot, he goes, it needs to be perfect. Saucer. It was. So he's building it out and he's developing this little saucer. And I'm just thinking to myself, why would you. Why would you do that? Like, why would you have the. How would you have the patience to do that? But that's the difference between some people who settle for good rather than greatness. Because this guy was a master. He was great at what he actually did. But he took something that most people would go, that's good enough and that'll do. But he took it beyond that, that. When you looked at his finishing work, after he'd finished shaping it, got all the processes on, use the sponge, cleaned it all up, put his initials on it, glazed it, put it in the kiln. He had his own little brick kiln there, he did with his wood and everything like that, like all traditional sort of stuff. And he put it in there, and as it came out, I'm just looking at going, yeah, that's the best saucer I think I've ever seen. But his student said to him at the time, he said, like, why, you know, like, why would you. Why would you think to build a saucer? And he said, that's the only material I had available to build this. Otherwise if I had more, I could build a pot or I could build a vast. He said, but when you've got this amount of material, he said, look at what you've got and then look what you can build out of it. And he said, doesn't mean that you can't make something meaningful and something beautiful and something treasured just because you've got a little bit of material. And this is what a lot of throwaway dogs do. This is what People do and don't understand is just because they've got a dog that's not going to be an Internet star doesn't mean they can't discover how to build the best dog they possibly can out of that dog that they've got there. And then. And that's something that stuck with me. And I really wish that I'd downloaded that and kept it with me because I would have loved to have shown people the process of how we actually did that. But, you know, like, I was young, and at the time I was probably downloading people who can do like a minute and a half fart rather than. Than working on something that was more meaningful like that. Just stupid shit, you know, like that you go through at the time. So getting back to your question here, when you've done the sit like that, that's when you can start adding things onto it. Like some of the other pottery work he was doing when I watched him making a teapot is once he'd done the overall, like the cylinder of the teapot, then you can start adding bits to it. That's when you can start teaching the dog. All right, now that you've learned to sit. Sit, I need to teach you where to sit. Now that you've learned where to sit, I need to teach you what you need to do as far as giving me focus. So you can start with all the bolt ons, and you can start shaping new criteria and chaining them into the simplicity of a sit. Because if I ask people, what does a sit mean to you, they'll go, I'll put your bum on the ground. But that's what it means now, as opposed to mastery of the situation. And mastery of the sit has a different meaning to any teacher that teaches the skill. Some people will demand that it is a sit with focus. Some people will demand that it's a sit with focus and proximity to your body. So what does it mean to the teacher and what does it mean to the student? Well, that's the lesson, and that's what you've got to understand out of the process, is what did it mean? When I was engineering this and I began with the end in mind, what did I actually want it to be? Okay. And when I look through my notes of starting here and beginning with the end in mind, when we said this at the start, what did it mean at the end? And how do I get there? Because I've taught here, okay. And I've taught this beautiful sit, but I still want the focus and the proximity. Cool. I Can start teaching what proximity looks like. So teaching the dog that if you sit here, it's better. This is where you can use those differential reinforcements. Cause you can start teaching the dog through. Cause you start a lot with continuous schedules of reinforcement. And then you start using your variable schedules and you'll teach the dog. Well, mate. It only happens now when you sit a little closer to me. But it only has to be just a little bit closer to me today. That's all it needs. That's the lesson for today. I know you know how to sit, but I just want you to shift your, like get frustrated and poke your bum around that. And now we're going to go back onto a continuous schedule. Okay. Get you comfortable doing that for a period of time. Now I'm going to make you go variable again. And the dog goes, oh, why? I'm feeling uncomfortable. What did I do yesterday? Oh yeah, I went like this. Bingo. Jackpot. Okay, now we go back onto continuous. And the dog goes, this is pretty cool. Okay. I started out here sitting in front of you and looking at you. And over the process of a week I've learned that I can shimmy my way in and coming to sit by your side like this. And there's good pay in it, but it's fun. Like it brought my dopamine levels up. It made me excited about training. We're both enjoying ourselves. And now the dog's doing this beautifully. Okay. And the dog's sitting by your side. It sits well, it's sitting by your side. Now you go back to variable again. And the dog goes, oh, but I'm already close to you, so it shifts away. No, that's not it. Okay. That's not the behavior. So all we do is withhold at that point in time. We're not saying to the dog. Ah, we can say to the dog. We can use a marker to at that point in time to say the dog. No, that's not it, mate. Okay, so it can be have a. What do we call them? A non reinforcing marker. We can just say that that's not it. That's not it. And the dog goes, well, what is it? Comes back, that's not it either. And the dog goes, what am I supposed to do? Bang. Jackpot. Now it's the focus. And the dog goes, ah, these concepts are getting clearer and clearer to me all the time. You know, like the processes that we're doing make it more understandable. Like all I need to do is try different things. And then you get your dog to Become a journeyman in a behaviour where the dog starts to go, cool, I just gotta try different things, okay? It's not about being explosive in the behaviour or running away. It's just the investigatory side of behaviours to go, what is it that I should do next? And then you go, that's it, son. So proud of you. Bang. Here's everything like, you just won the Internet today. And the dog goes, wow, that's so cool, mate. You'll hear and everybody will. I'm going to talk to the camera a little bit now. On your journey, when you become a dog trainer, you'll hear a lot of people telling you there are ways to do it. And as I said before, sometimes there are rules and sometimes there are requests and there are certain things in life which are rules and certain things that you have to follow. But there is a lot of flexibility as well. And all I'll do to everybody that I want to help train a dog is always come back to use what works and whoever and whatever it is that helps you get there, you know, that's what you need to do on your own. Journeyman discovery is find out, what is it that I need to do? Where do I need to be? Who's the wise man in this village that's going to, you know, bring me the knowledge that I need to do this? Because there is, you know, I've learned from a lot of people and one thing I've learned is nothing is, is as hard and fast as what I first was told it was. There was ground for a lot of flexibility and there was grounds to look at different ways to do things or to back off behaviors a little bit or not to be so intense on my. My reinforcers or my punishers, more importantly punishers. Because, you know, like I said, I don't want to rob transition of my student. I want my student to feel confident the entire time. So when it does look back on the journey, it goes, man, that felt good and it still does. And I'm still so enthusiastic and like the world, you know, like it's fun and all, but this, this person, like they are literally the spear point to everything great in my life. So I don't want to stuff up here, you know, Like, I know that when I go out they're going to say golf and play and then I come back and say, what are we doing now? Cool, we're doing, we're doing cool stuff, mate. That's what we're going to do. We're going to learn some amazing skills. Together. Are you ready? Here it is. And here's the lesson of the day. And that's all you need to do today. Just focus on that. That little chunk. That little chunk. That's it. There's lots more in it. But, you know, we're sort of just road mapping through and a lot of time to sort of have a look at some of the considerations of things that I feel are important to start with in pushing through your journey towards the end.

And both relevant for humans and dogs.

Both humans and dogs. Because. Well, that point in itself, a lot of this is. And this is what I want my human students to understand as well. I like to try and make it as relatable as possible. And good teachers do. They try and get you to feel it yourself. So you're on the path.

Path.

You're not just standing like a automaton looking at it and going, yep, just push this button, pull this lever. You actually share in the emotion of it yourself and going, oh, yeah. Yep, I get it. I feel that I understand what my student is going through. I can see the frustration. I. I know where I made the mistake. That's really an important thing that. Let's write that down too. Somewhere. No, or let me write it down. Understand where you made the mistake and own it. Don't be embarrassed about it. Just understand where it was. People get really, like, they. They cover this up. Like, they get really angry or really frustrated or even nervous about this. Just go, yeah, this. That. That's where I. I made the mistake. That. That is incredibly powerful. Like, to own that and understand that and to actually be able to point it out and then be able to slice it out and say, all right, cool, let's get rid of this and we'll move on to the. Making the. The pathway more beneficial. Because this is going to come back in at some stage down the track again. Okay. Because every time we go down the path, okay, this is going to be an error. And we've just got to say, all right, let's deviate around that and get back on track again. And there's an error. Cool. Let's cut that out and go back on track again. And there's an error. And your pathway is going to look like this as you're going through. There's going to be errors all along there. And it's like, I think the problem is if it just keeps looking like this, because then we start getting into some dangerous territory, and then we get into some deterioration and learned helplessness because we're pushing a student into some dark and deep water and drowning them in it as well. So you've got to understand, like, let's not. It doesn't matter if we have one or two, but, like, if we're just here making mistakes like this, find a new teacher, you know, and this is where dogs do deserve to be out of that house because they're, they're going to deteriorate at this point in time.

Glenn Cook. Perfect. Covered a lot of ground there.

Hopefully it made sense.

Will do. If it doesn't, these two can make it make sense.

Great.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Thanks, mate. It was a privilege.

Yeah. Great to have you.