The video follows Michael and his young Kelpie, Loki, through a five‑day Reactive Bootcamp at Perth K9 Academy. Loki starts as a severely reactive dog—barking, lunging, and unable to walk off‑leash. The trainers (Speaker A and Speaker B) outline a structured program: Day 1‑2 focus on building a clear communication system using a reward marker ("yes") and a punishment marker ("no") combined with e‑collar clarity; Day 3 introduces high‑energy play to re‑engage the dog and make the handler the most exciting stimulus; Days 4‑5 progressively expose Loki to public environments (parks, foreshore, pub) while reinforcing neutrality and off‑leash reliability. Throughout, Michael provides testimony on the dramatic shift—from being unable to leave the house to running off‑leash at the beach, sitting calmly at a pub, and joining family activities. A three‑week follow‑up shows the changes are lasting. The video ends with a free training program offer and a call‑to‑action for viewers with similar reactive‑dog challenges.
Chapters
Imagine this: you've got a dog and you literally cannot walk him. Not like, oh, he pulls a little bit or he gets a little bit excited. I mean, you cannot take him outside without it turning into an absolute fucking nightmare. Barking, lunging, reacting at everything in sight. That was Michael's reality with Loki. And who's Loki? Loki is a young Kelpie. And if you know the breed, you know that they've got a lot going on upstairs. They're smart, they're driven, but they're very intense. Loki's reactivity was on another level. Dogs, people, anything moving— it set him off straight away. And recall?
Forget it.
It was literally non-existent. When Michael went out with Loki, it was like he didn't even exist. Loki was just completely gone, locked onto whatever triggered him. It's exhausting owning a reactive dog, and honestly, it's not fair on the dog or the owner to have to go through it. So what you're about to watch is 5 days of Loki here at Perth K9 Academy's Reactive Bootcamp and the transformation that happened over that time. By the end of the week, this dog was off the leash at the beach and chilling at the pub surrounded by other dogs. So without further ado, let's get into it. Let me walk you through what the week actually looked like and why we structured it the way we did. Because there's a method to this madness. You can't just take a dog like Loki and throw him into a busy environment on day one. That's not training, that's just fucking chaos. So what we always start with is the basics. Monday was about building a language, teaching Loki that yes means you got it right. Good job. That's the reward marker. Being able to communicate with him when he has done the right thing. We also brought in a redirect to start shaping where we want his focus and energy to go. On Tuesday, we brought in the P word. And what I mean by that is Punishment. How do we actually change the behaviours of which we do not want? I'm not talking about behaviours that we want to see increase. I'm talking about behaviours that we want to see decrease. That means introducing the other side of the scale. Not a reward marker, a punishment marker. Because a really good yes only gets you so far if there's no equally clear no. We also kept building on our e-collar work to start giving Loki some real clarity around what's expected of him when we ask him to come back. Loki is a very adorable dog, but a very spicy dog as well. He's one of our Kelpies that we've got. We've got a few Kelpie mixes. He's the only purebred Kelpie. Yeah, very, very spicy on the leash. Just a little bit, a little bit unsure, a little bit fearful, but that comes out in lots of barking and growling and lunging. But he's doing really well.
He's going to be a big success story.
I think his recall today is going to be absolutely spot on, which is going to be great for his owner to finally have control.
And yeah, he's gonna make some big progression, I believe.
So Monday and Tuesday, it was a great start. These first 2 days are always where you find out what you're working with, and honestly, Loki told us a lot. The big thing that we noticed straight away was that clear communication truly opened up Loki's mind. Once yes meant something to him, and then once no meant something to him, everything started to click. He wasn't just reacting and spiraling, He was actually starting to check in with Michael. It wasn't perfect, and it never is on day 1 or 2, but the foundation was there, and that's what really matters. If you give me 5 hours to chop down a tree, I'm going to spend 4 of those hours sharpening my axe. You do not build a house on a pile of sand. You first build a foundation, and that's exactly what we do for the first 2 days. Going into Wednesday, we made a deliberate shift. We wanted to bring in a lot of play because here's the thing with reactive dogs. A lot of the time, the handler has become kind of irrelevant to them. The environment is just way more interesting than the owner ever will be, and play fixes that. It makes you the most exciting thing in the dog's world, and once you've got that, everything else starts to get easier. Suppression without expression creates depression. We can't expect our dogs to just behave when they've had no outlet for for their genetic desires. Rather than letting those behaviours continue to come up elsewhere, we can use play as the medicine to what you've been trying to fix. Play can fix a lot of your behavioural issues because your dog finally has an outlet. And additionally, when we have that clear communication, everything is just gonna start falling into place.
Play is something that might need to be cultivated over some time. It's not something that all your dogs are gonna come out and do. It's something that the majority, like probably like 95% of reactive dogs, Will do. Want to be able to give them that same level of arousal, but in a constructive way, and that's where we're going to use play. And play can be the medicine for your dog's reactivity, but also for dogs fearful behaviour as well. Potential like genuine aggression. It can be the medicine for that. It's a fantastic thing if we do it properly, and it does not mean putting a ball in a chuck it stick while you're on TikTok and doing that.
If you're feeling guilty about your dog's reactivity, then I'm here to help. You're not a bad dog owner.
You've just been fed the wrong information. But fear no more. That knot that you get in your stomach every time you grab your dog's leash? Let's fix it.
We've put everything that we know into a completely free program, and it's going to help you solve absolutely all of your issues.
Did I mention it was free?
Click the button below and get access right now.
Ready? You ready?
Keep saying it.
Ready?
Now bring the toy out.
Ready?
Good, and start to move it and move around.
Good.
It's okay, it's okay. Good, keep moving, be fun. Throw it a little bit and then run after it with him. Good, that's it. Tiny bit of tug, steal it if he drops it. Want you to throw it again and chase after it. Nice, let him get it. Whoa, nice! Little tug, let go of the toy again and go, whoa! Good, bring him back towards you. So the toy is fun with Dad. I let you win, but then as soon as you win, whoa! And you're moving back and being like, come here, come play with Dad. After a really good session with teaching Loki how to play, we took him out for his first proper public outing. And I sat down with Michael afterwards to get his take on how the week was going so far. Let's have a watch.
Give us a bit of an idea of why you came to the boot camp. Why did you? Why did you start with us?
What problems were you facing?
So reactivity to other dogs, some reactivity to people as well.
Yeah.
Wasn't able to take him anywhere off leash. Couldn't take him many places on leash. We tried online training. YouTube videos, done the whole lot. Yeah. Gotten to certain levels and then just gotten stuck. Yeah. That's where we were at.
How's the last 2 days been?
Crazy. Yeah. Like crazy good.
It's a bit of a crazy experience, I think, sometimes because obviously, you know, he is a bit of a spicy dog, right?
Yeah.
Can be very reactive. But when you— I think I said at the start of the week, when you lay the foundations right at first, it's an easy process.
So on Thursday, Loki went to very public settings. We took him down to South Perth Foreshore. We took him down to Attadale Reserve. We took him to all of these very public places where he's gonna be working on his neutrality towards other dogs, his off-leash behaviour, and so many other things. We even took Loki for a staff hike with our own personal dogs where he did absolutely amazing. But as you can see, I'll just let the footage do the talking.
How's everything been since then?
Crazy.
Yeah?
Crazy. So we've just been on a bushwalk with Loki. And all the training dogs.
Yep.
That 5 dogs in total?
Yeah, I think it's about 5 dogs.
Yeah. And wouldn't have imagined him being able to do that ever. Almost ever. It was crazy. Having loads of fun. He's been better at home, chilled out. We've used the training we had to get rid of all of his unwanted little behaviours. Yeah, they're pretty much all gone within days.
Okay, great. So obviously we spoke Monday, Tuesday, I think. So we're laying like lots of foundations. We got him around some dogs at the end of Tuesday, but how's Wednesday, Thursday been? We've been out and about going to different places. Like how was yesterday being around loads of dogs going to public places?
Yep. So completely chilled out. He was able to just sit and relax. At the start of the training, he couldn't be in the room with another dog. And he's been off leash running around. Relaxing, just living his best life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Great. And it's awesome to see him obviously now being so reliable off the leash and even just not really caring about other dogs as well, right?
Yeah.
Doesn't even clock them anymore. No, he's a different— he's the same dog, but he's a different dog. Yeah.
Yeah.
All of the good stuff and all of the bad stuff gone.
Yeah. Okay, great. And it's still got a whole nother day as well, right? So it's the final day today. Go to the pub, that'd be nice.
Yeah, have a beer and see him relax. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's been awesome.
What do you reckon the biggest win so far has been?
The, the best thing about the training so far? Obviously we still got a whole nother day to go, but what's been the best thing?
Just him being able to— him being able to be a dog and just be off leash and run around. He's sort of the dog that you— the dog you want when you get a dog.
Yeah.
And then it kind of goes wrong. I think he seemed more reactive to some of the other dogs in the class, and I thought he might be the hard one. Yeah, but he's just been incredible. You guys have been incredible.
Yeah, but now he's now he's a superstar.
We caught up with Loki three weeks after his boot camp because we wanted to check in and see how he was going. We invited him down to one of our pack walks, and let's just have a look at how he's going now.
Biggest win since the boot camp is probably just being able to take Loki out and do everything that we wanted to when we originally got a Kelpie. So we'd seen. I think part of the reason we got a Kelpie was we'd seen. seen someone on a mountain bike riding around with their dog just cruising around free, uh, and never got, never got anywhere near that, um, until we'd done the boot camp. Went and pretty much ticked off our bucket list. So we had him running around with us on bikes, myself and my son, uh, took him to the pub that afternoon, and then had him off leash at the beach in the evening. Uh, so basically did 3 things we wouldn't have thought was possible before we'd done the boot camp. So it was awesome. Completely less stress. We can now just do things with him that we wouldn't have been able to do before. We don't have to take him out separately from the family because we have some control over him now. So we can go to the park with the kids. Other day I just had him tied up to a bench just chilling while we were in the park playing with our kids. So yeah, it's been life-changing.
And what you just saw is exactly why we do this. Watching Loki at the beach, just running free and being a dog, and then seeing him under the table at the pub completely relaxed while other dogs walk past. That just doesn't get old, ever. This is a dog that a week earlier couldn't leave the house without his owner absolutely dreading every single walk. And now Michael's got a dog he can actually live life with, and that is the whole point. If you're watching this and you're in the exact same position as Michael was in, Where walks are stressful, you feel like you've tried everything, when you're just not sure if it's ever, ever going to get better, I want you to know that it can, and we see it every single week here at our boot camps. If you want your dog to have a transformation like Loki's, reach out to us at the Perth K9 Academy. All the details are in the description, and we'd love to help you. If you found this video useful, give it a like, subscribe for more case studies like this one, and we'll see you in the next one.
