Is It Too Late To Fix My Reactive Dog? | LIVE Q&A

All right, guys, third time lucky. Let's see if this audio is finally paying off because, as you all know, not very tech savvy. But let's see if finally this audio is working. Hey, give me a thumbs up in the chat if you can finally hear my voice properly. I know it's a very annoying voice, but Give me a thumbs up if you can actually hear me. Let's hope you can. Yeah, we are. We're back. We're back on board finally. There we are. Let me go live on Instagram. Here we are. All right. Let me wait till we're live, and there we go. Finally, after bloody three attempts, I am live on your Friday night answering your dog training related questions when it comes to reactivity and aggression. So let's do it. Zike Zoo, Lindsay, Ashley. Hello, welcome. I hope you're well. Drop some comments in the chat. Let me know where you're from, what dog you've got, what you're struggling with. Excuse me, guys, if I sound a bit sniffly. I am struggling at the moment with hay fever and it is killing me. But let's do it. Let's answer all the questions that you would like. We're live on Instagram and YouTube at the moment. We're just answering any dog training related questions when it comes to your reactive dog. So tell me what you've tried before, what you're currently struggling with, and that way I can give you my honest opinion. And that's what it's going to be as well. I find that a lot of dog trainers kind of beat around the bush and don't give you exactly what you want to hear or the advice that you need to hear when it comes to owning a problematic dog. So I want to be very no bullshit when it comes to the answers that I want to give you. I want to give you the honest. um, answers to finally help you with your dog. I'm part of the Training of Instinct online. Awesome, mate. What dog do you have, um, and how far are you into the course? If you don't know, guys, we have a virtual program from all around the world. People do it from Australia and all across the world where we help them with their reactive dog, get them non-reactive off the leash, but virtually. So It's a very, very good program rather than just doing our boot camps. You've been here before, Lindsay. I'm pretty sure I've seen your name pop up a few times. You've got a German Shepherd dog in England. Lindsay, tell me more about your German Shepherd, why you're on the live, and yeah, what's happening with your dog. Do you think reactivity is ever cured? or just managed in a better way? Yes, absolutely. Reactivity and aggression can definitely be cured as such. We're going to have some dogs who always have a propensity to be, let's say, possessive, let's say, enjoy conflict. But it's how we deal with that dog, the outlets that we give them, And the communication that we have with them as well. So yes, certain dogs are going to be more likely to be possessive, to enjoy conflict more, to have aggressive tendencies. But if we have the right outlet, we have the right communication, we're going to be able to help the vast majority, if not all dogs, when it comes to their behavior. Border Collie Lab, 2 years old. Nice. What are your problems like, Zoo? What do you— why did you join the program? Zig Zigs, it's cured. Yeah, you've been part of the boot camp. Zig Zigs, you're here all the time. I love it. Very committed, uh, dog owner, always here looking for more advice. Metal Pro Oz, what crates do you personally use for crate training? Uh, there are loads and loads and loads of crates that you can find on the market. My dogs at home are personally just in like Kmart crates. Here at our facility, we use more heavier duty crates. They're double stacked up where all the dogs are staying during our boot camp. But if you— what dog do you have? And I can give you a bit more information about certain Certain brands of crates that might help you. Rough kennels is a really good one. They're a bit expensive, but good kennels. I have. Yeah, he can be a nightmare when people come to the house. Can't let him near people. Lindsay, have you done any training yet? I know. I remember you from a while ago that you were struggling. Whereabouts are you? Are you in the UK? Did you say? Yeah, you're in England. So. What's— Lindsay, what's made you not try training or not get help? We manufacture them. Oh, Metal Pro Oz coming in with a little bit of advertisement. I like it. Metal Pro Oz, while you're here then, mate, tell us about your crates. If you're going to use this as a bit of a marketing opportunity, might as well give you a shot. What's your— what kind of crates do you have? Who knows? I might might buy some from you. I have a one-year-old Aussie Shepherd. The last two months he is starting to be a bit more reactive to other dogs on the lead. What is the best? What is the best thing to do to avoid getting worse as he grows into an adult dog? Kate, I'm gonna ask you a few questions. So obviously you've got a very high drive working dog. What are you currently doing with that dog day to day? You know that your the dog that you have needs a very good outlet when it comes to what it does on a daily basis. So I guess let's start there. What kind of outlet do they do they have on a daily basis? Scott, after completing a boot camp, do you think it's possible to train my Malinois in bite work for security work? Fucking hell. Yeah. Scott, if you would like to do bite work and you would like to have a dog that can operate normally in everyday life, I would recommend finding a person who can work your dog only in prey. This is going to help you massively. Not blur any lines. Not that working in different drives is not okay, but basically find a good decoy for that. Without going too much into bite work, I would say to possibly avoid security work with your dog if you want them to live like a normal life and be okay with just the general public, friends who come around your house. Give me a little bit more information, I guess, and I can try and give you a good answer. And Scott, whereabouts are you? I'm guessing you're in the UK. How do we sign up to this? I have two dogs, pocket bully boy and a girl XL bully who never leave home unless vet visits from Yanchev. Well, cunning or conning? Tell me why you're not leaving the house with your dogs. Like what's the what severe behavior issues are not allowing you to leave the house? Oh, someone left— someone left a rude comment. What did it say? 9th? Oh no, I got abused apparently. Um, what are the criteria in a dog that you use to choose tools, and do you end up changing after training or not at all from prong to flat for owners that need it? So we are primarily going to use e-collars, um, for nearly every dog to get them reliable off the leash. So we want to be able to give dogs the best life possible. We want to be able to have them reliable in every environment. So we're going to basically train every dog who comes to us, if the owners are keen for it, with the use of an e-collar so that we can have them living the best life ever, be reliable off the leash, and being fulfilled every day. Where are we? Instagram aggressive towards people, public people and dogs. Connie, have you tried any training before? What have you done with your dog so far? Or have you done nothing? And it's okay if you've done nothing, but give me a bit more information so I can give you a bit more information. Like I said, guys, I am here to give you as much information as possible when it comes to your aggressive and reactive dogs. So feel free to drop as many comments, um, in the chat. Ask me anything you want— leash pulling, reactivity, severe aggression. Tell me what you are struggling with, and that way I can give you the best answer possible. We also had an XL bully in with Adam this week. His name is Cash, and Cash hadn't seen another dog in over a year. And all we had— and we all had a fantastic week. We highly recommend Adam and his wonderful team. Thank you very much. Yes, we had Cash in, a very, very aggressive XL bully who was trying to kill us on the Monday. By the Wednesday, he was walking around with me on the leash, and he had lots of outings. General public, sorry, in public went to different locations. He was at the pub. It was a great experience for him because here, you know, he hasn't been out in over a year. We can get you those kind of results as well, right? It's not hard. People overcomplicate dog training so much, but let's make it nice and easy for you. Okay, Carling. So what I would recommend that you do is message me, DM me on Instagram. I want you to send me a message, and I'm going to send you a link where you can have a free phone call with me because it sounds like you've got two pretty. Difficult dogs, and I'd love to have a bit more of a chat with you. It's completely free. It's a free chat, goes for half an hour. You can book in, we can have a very in-depth conversation about, yeah, you coming down and us helping your dogs. Happy Friday, mate. Happy Friday, mate. Taking a rest again, I see. Mate, I never stop. I never, never stop. That's okay. Hay fever's killing me. I'm dying, but it's all right. We— life goes on. It's like zoo frustration reactivity. I've been doing well, um, but she started to get more like a bully and wants to bark at a dog going past. Counter conditioning done, but now I feel like I'm managing. Yep. What— so frustration reactive at the leash, you've done a lot of counter conditioning, great. And it's fantastic to have counter conditioning as a tool. Um, to create positive associations with other dogs, whatever your dog is reacting to. Um, but differentially reinforcing something— so using differential reinforcement is a great thing to do, but it's only going to get you so far. Positive reinforcement is only going to get you so far. Constantly redirecting your dog is only going to get you so far. Keeping your dog under threshold for its whole life is only going to get you so far. Until eventually we need to be able to communicate with our dog that certain things aren't okay. You can't try and bite the person. You can't try and bite the dog. So holding your dog accountable for bad behavior is very important so that you can then just layer on rewards and live a good life with your dog. Sorry guys, I have terrible hay fever. I am dying. Canning will do great. Awesome. Yeah, give me a message and we can have a big chat. Oh, there's that guy's message. Apparently, you shouldn't work a dog in prey. So he was that. What a ridiculous statement. So somebody asked Adam, should I put my Belgian Malinois into bite work when it's a pet dog? And I said no. Probably not a good idea, but if you are going to do it, find a decoy that just works the dog in prey. So basically, that just means that the dog is going to find it a really fun game. They love it. They enjoy it. It's satiating for them. It fills their genetic. It scratch their genetic itch, and it's going to be very, very good for the dog because doing other things with that dog could have fallout in his everyday life. Okay, and I don't know what 1983 Marcher does for a living. And how many dogs he's trained. But let's just say he can fuck off because he doesn't seem to know much. Wish he came back and we could have a little bit of a debate. That'd be great. Where else are we? I booked into YCA on the seventh of September. The plan is to use dogs for work, but they had no socialisation before I got them. Like I said, mate, personally, if your dogs are living with you every day, just live a good life with your dogs. Give them an outlet through play. And when you go down to YCA, they can give you a better idea of what to do once they meet your dogs. When it comes time to punish, do you use the same routine for every dog? For example, social pressure and showing disappointment if the dog clearly doesn't care about it, or Tank's Max e-collar? So we have a punishment protocol that we go through with every dog who comes through our boot camp. We pull in different areas, we pull from different areas to make that event as potent as possible for every single dog. We do that on purpose because certain dogs are going to respond differently to certain things. In regards to the last part where it looked like you were talking about maxing out an e-collar, That is exactly— that is not what we do whatsoever. The point of conditioning a punishment marker is that we have to use the least pressure we possibly can. Lots of trainers here in Perth that I know don't do this. They use pressure in the moment and they just amplify dogs and push them further into behavior. Hi Adam, 18-month for you. 18-month-old GSD in the UK. He is what I believe is excited reactive to other dogs, but I don't know if it's safe allow him to interact with them. What is the safest way to find out? So let's get control of your dog first. Let's teach them a little bit of control, a nice loose leash walk, um, get them reliable off the leash, have good communication with them, a good yes, a good no, and then find some people who have once again social dogs and and have a safe interaction with one another. Don't try and do this at your local park where you don't know what that dog's going to be like. Okay? So find somebody who that dog— you know that dog is safe, and then you can then work alongside that dog and form a relationship, see how it goes, and then move on from there. Let's get 1983 Marcher back. I would love to have a conversation with that knobhead. My dog is scared of everything. Would your boot camp still work for her? She's a rescue reactive to people. We had a dog in this week called Jindy. Jindy's owner, Brody. How far did Jindy's owners drive? How far did Jindy's owners drive? Seventeen hours. These owners drove seventeen hours. I'll say that again. They drove 17 hours across Western Australia to come and do our bootcamp. Their dog Jindy was like a Staffy kind of country dog mix who was severely fearful, right? Very, very fearful dog. Teeth out, saliva everywhere. Didn't want me to go anywhere near it. Today and yesterday, I was playing with that dog. That dog was playing with me at the park. So we can get some amazing work done in these 5 days when you find proper training, when you find stuff that actually works and you find people with experience in this field. Our day-to-day with my 1-year-old Aussie is a mix of time in the crate or being tethered, sniff sessions, obedience training, tug sessions outside, I can't get them engaged in play anywhere else but our yard. So it seems like you're doing pretty much everything right, Katie. Do you have your dog off the leash? So play, fantastic. You're teaching them to settle, tethering, crate training, great. But are they off the leash as well? Do you do dedicated sessions if someone has a very precise problem? For example, fully trained dog, but one behavior is very hard to stop— cat hunting, etc. So you— no one usually has a very specific— pacific— oh my God, I can't speak— specific problem. It usually stems from a lot of other areas. Your dog is probably chasing cats because it doesn't have a good outlet elsewhere. Um, it's not off the leash. You're not satiating their desire to chase, catch, kill, possess things. That's what dogs are meant to do, right? They're predators by nature. Um, so playing tug with them every day is going to be a great outlet for that, and then will give you the ability to have that dog off the leash, which is going to tick a box. Play with your dog properly, tick that box, and then probably go through some punishment as well, um, to make sure that that's we directly tackle that problem. But in short, no, we don't. We run programs because we rarely find somebody who just has one issue. There's so many other things which are affecting the dog's everyday life. What do you, what do you do for severe separation anxiety, barking, howling, that wasn't fixed with regular protocols. We don't deal with separation anxiety, but what I will say, Victoria Buffet, is that I'm gonna rattle some fucking feathers here, but separation anxiety does not exist. I'll reword that. It rarely exists. Your dog has FOMO. It probably doesn't have separation anxiety. Real separation anxiety or anxiety in dogs is a terrible thing to see, but 99.999% of the time, Your dog does not have it. Your dog has FOMO. Your dog doesn't know how to operate without you. They're very— they don't really have a backbone. They're quite unconfident. You need to get them obsessed with play, build their confidence. You separate them from yourself more so there's not that severe FOMO happening. There's so many things that we can do to make dogs more confident. What is the loose leash walking philosophy at YCA? Does the dog get the whole length of the leash to do whatever, or is it a loose heel to maintain until freedom? There is a lot of debates about it. So it's gonna be very dependent on the dog, but most of the time, or what we'll get the dogs to do, or the owners to do, is simply just pick a side. They pick a side, and then the dog has the length of the leash. The reasoning behind this is people will slam their dogs into obedience. Okay, so you must heel, you must sit, you must down. But then what happens?