Struggling With Your Reactive Dog? Ask Us LIVE

How are we doing? No fancy studio and, uh, good lighting and good cameras today, so you've got to put up with my ugly mug, um, on today's call. But start engaging in the chat, folks. Give me some questions. We started a couple of minutes early, but shoot if you have anything for me. Good morning from Canada. Morning, Seb. How's it going? What time is it in Canada at the moment? 7 AM. Oh wow, you already been out with the dog or not been out with the dog yet, jumped onto this first for some tips before you go? Tell me, seeing as nobody else wants to talk to me, just you, Seb. Going soon, just got up. Nice. Well, perfect opportunity for you to get some tips before you go then, isn't it? What is your dog? How come you're here? I'm assuming they've got some reactive issues. Any tips on recognizing what sort of reactivity my GSD has? I think it's excitement-based, but I don't let him go close enough to other dogs or people to find out, just in case. Yeah, well, to be fair, Hern, it's, um, if your dog is reactive, it's probably not worth finding out if they are excited or anything otherwise, um, for a few different reasons really. One, because if your dog is frustrated by the dogs in a more excited way because they want to get to other dogs, and you then let them get to other dogs, You're then like letting them rehearse and reinforcing the behaviour. So then they'll do that more. They'll react to other dogs more because they'll really want to get to other dogs and it worked last time, so it's gonna work this next time, or they'll think it'll work this next time, so they'll do it more and they'll probably do it with more intensity should you not let them meet the other dog. We have a lot of people that turn up on boot camps and their dogs go absolutely sick at the end of a lead and they go, oh, they're all right as soon as they sniff another dog. And so that tells you that they've done that on a number of different occasions, but that then doesn't obviously help their scenario and situation where you might want to sit down in a pub or a cafe or something like that. So from that regard, obviously creating a rod for your own back if you, if you want to find out by letting your dog meet other dogs. Secondly, there's obviously the danger that your dog might be antisocial, fear-based, or maybe even aggressive or acting aggressively. at which point they might then do harm to another dog or fight, start a fight with another dog, and they might get themselves beaten up, or they might get beaten up by another dog, which of course isn't great. Yeah, so you've got a few different considerations to make there, really, when it comes to reactivity. Doesn't matter so much where it's necessarily coming from. Well, it does to a degree. For us as professionals, what we'll often do, say on a boot camp, one of our 5-day boot camps, the first thing we do on a Monday morning is we'll expose dogs to their trigger to see how they react and what they do so that we're then aware for the rest of the week. The methods in which we use are still fairly consistent. Obviously, there's some fine-tuning and some bespoke person-to-person, dog-to-dog, but we need to identify where the reactivity is coming from so we know what kind of risk that dog poses or what different things we might need to do depending on that dog's reaction. But for you in general, you necessarily knowing isn't necessarily going to help your case, if that makes sense. What's more important is that you kind of address it and you fix it and you know how to fix it and what to do. Yeah, I know that hasn't really answered your question, but there's just a few different factors to consider there. So, but there are some big giveaways, like if your dog continues reacting as the dog goes away, especially once they go out of sight, probably says that they want the dog to come back, probably. And there's a few different factors involved with that. If they stop reacting as the dog goes away and disappears, might mean that they're more fearful and they want that thing to disappear. But again, there's some different factors involved in body language and behaviors that they'll display that'll really tell you. But just a couple of quick ones for you. I'm gonna— well, I don't think your name's actually Mel, but that's what I'm going to refer to you as because I'm going to butcher your name otherwise. My Border Collie, 3 female, will bark at a lot at some people, but others can walk past her within inches and she won't even flinch. Depends on the context, Mel. What sort of context does she bark at a lot of people, or sorry, some people, and what sort of context does she not bark at people? If there's more people, is she better? If there's less people and there's more anticipation built in, is she more reactive? Yeah, context and environment plays a big, big part What you'll also find is there'll probably be a lot of reactive dog owners on this call today where if you take your dog to a brand new walk of which they've never been to before, far away from home, you might not experience any reactivity, or you might experience very little, or very little intensity. But walking around your block on your estate, if you live on an estate or something like that, you might experience a lot of high-intensity reactivity because that is where the dog's had prior success. Prior reinforcement, rehearsal. They'll feel more comfortable. So sometimes here again referring back to boot camps, the Monday or Tuesday boot camps, a lot of reactive dogs come in and some of them don't even react, and the owners will be like, "Whoa, that's magical!" No, it's not magic. It's just the dog is working out what their environment is, and then maybe by the Tuesday afternoon or by the Wednesday, especially as we intensify the triggers in which we put in front of the dogs to test them and put them in various scenarios, you often find they then start reacting and showing their true colors. But it's not uncommon for that to happen, Mel. But you might be able to niche down. But what also happens for a lot of dogs is they might start off with a particular trigger. Like a lot of people say, oh, my dog started barking at black dogs, or they started barking at big dogs or flat-faced dogs because they can't understand their facial expressions, etc., etc., etc. But over a period of time, through rehearsal again, the behavior becomes self-reinforcing and the dog will do it more at more triggers and the frequency will increase and the intensity likely gets worse. So watch out for that too because your 3-year-old might be barking at some people now but might start barking at a lot of people or everyone if you don't do something about it quickly. Hi Billy from Liverpool. Doberman, 2 and a half years old, walking great, recall, etc., but fixated on other dogs. I want him to be neutral. Okay, so really, like, what other behaviors other than the fixation on other dogs is he displaying? Is it that he runs over to other dogs, in which case, and you can't recall him back, at which point you maybe haven't got a great recall? Sorry to offend you. Or is it just the case that they stare at dogs from a distance? Because what you might find is that behavior will intensify, but the Trick really is going to be creating some engagement your side of the lead. One of the best ways in which you can do that, especially quickly depending on your dog's food motivation, is do lots of kind of disengaging, engage, disengage games. Create yourself a marker utilizing your food motivation to do so. You hear it a lot in our videos, we say yes, or you hear Jacob on occasion make like noises. Salient noises like noise, and that is essentially a way of telling the dog, one, they did something correctly and creating new behaviors, but also engaging with the dog and getting their attention. So potentially what you could do is pay your dog for disengaging with another dog or engaging with you and pay them with food, and that way you'll hopefully create a behavior of being less fixated on dogs. But just be conscious that your dog might start displaying other behaviors, or the fixation might intensify over time. depending on what you do. That makes so much sense. Thank you. I got a reactive Cane Corso and would like to train him better so we can, can go camping with him. In need to protect us. We got 3 dogs, 1 Dutch Shepherd who is loud but not reactive, high prey drive. Uh, is there more to your message, Seb? I believe there would be. Billy, thank you. No problem. You're very welcome. Thank you for turning up. Any other questions? Just shoot. But Seb, shock! You have a reactive cane corso. We know a few of those. So what are you trying to resolve? So if he's if he's reactive, what is he reactive to? People, dogs. Give me this, describe your most recent reactivity episode of which you've had with him, and hopefully I can help you. Good morning from Trinidad and Tobago. Good morning. Do you live there? Are you on holiday there? Have you got a dog, or did you just fancy popping along to this dog training live? Tell me. Hey, Path, how are you? Folks, you got to give me more questions. We're 10 minutes in, the questions have died already. There's 18 people. I should have 18 people talking in the chat, although I guarantee there are some faces that I know in here already. Helena, if you're here, as always, good afternoon. I got a problem with my GSP. What problem have you got, Path? You got a personal problem with him? Like you got some beef? Or— ah, um, how can I get him to concentrate more on me and not dogs on the fence or other people walking by? So is it the fact that your Cane Corso, he doesn't bark, he just likes to go for— Oh, so he's a lunger. Is he? Does he lunge at people and dogs? Does he? So he's not a fan. Yeah, okay, fine. So the first course of action that I would take, really, Is to create more engagement with you, although that's not going to fix all of your issues. You've got to teach him that the other behaviors in which he's displaying are inappropriate. But ideally, we need him to understand, like, yes, like, I want you to do that again. So that comes back to the marker that I was describing a minute ago with Billy and encouraging their dog to engage with them more, creating a marker, yes marker. It means we can give them clarity and show them what they can do, e.g., concentrate on you, engage with you, disengage from the triggers— people, other dogs, dogs the other side of the fence, etc. Um, but your dog still needs to know, and know the behaviors of which they're displaying, um, are dangerous. They could get him in trouble if he lunges at the wrong person, maybe catches them with teeth. Then that might be his last day on earth, to speak really plainly and transparently and candidly about it. So he needs to know that behavior is unacceptable. So he needs to know what no means. A lot of people think their dogs know what no means, whereas what they have is they have an effective interruption. They can interrupt their dog from doing something potentially with the use of a lead or the use of an app or something like that, or a no, but the dog will still do it next time. Whereas an effective no will ensure that your dog never does that thing ever again, and they really don't want to do it. So really, that's what your dog needs. I would talk more, to be fair, into the no. Like, we have a firm no concept and methodology here at YCA that we talk about quite a bit, but I've got 50 minutes. And we spend a whole day on it and lots of time on it on both our virtual course and our in-person courses. So unfortunately, I can't really do too much about that. But yeah, that's really what he needs. My suggestion to you potentially would be to book in a call and get that resolved sooner rather than later. How old is he? Tell me that. I think I bribe my dog too much. Like, he chews on my hand when I put his collar on, so I give him a treat to distract him. Obviously, I want him to break this habit, but I'm not sure how. Any tips? Comes back to what I was describing with Seb, to be fair. Teaching your dog a firm no. Your dog laying teeth on you should always be unacceptable. It's a rude behavior. Your dogs are very good with their mouth. They aim correctly. And any time in which your dog lays teeth on you— I know that some people refer to it differently, whether it be mouthing, nipping, etc. Whenever teeth is laid on skin, here at YCA, we define it as a bite. Again, as I mentioned at the start of today's live, behaviors that work will be rehearsed, reinforced, and then next time potentially done with more intensity. So if your dog's mouthing at you now, putting collars on, the chances are maybe one day they might bite you for putting a collar on or bite you for doing something they don't want you to do because they know it works potentially. So I wouldn't necessarily suggest bribing anymore or distracting with food. You've even defined that yourself as bribing. Potentially what I'd do instead to create a positive behavior is maybe show your dog their collar, give the— create them a yes marker, say yes, and pay them some food as long as they don't mouth you. And then I'd maybe practice placing the collar around the neck, maybe not even clipping it in. As long as they don't mouth you, yes, and pay them some food. So get them more comfortable and more relaxed to you putting things around their neck, placing collars on them, displaying behaviors that you would like to see again. But ideally, in your situation where your dog is laying teeth on you quite happily and quite frequently for putting collars on them, I'd suggest get to the bottom of that one. Yeah. I train her like this. Oh, nice, Baby Bubble. I think she got more prey drive now and searches cats in the evening. I think because I play, her searches and feeling somewhere else. I think because I play with her, she searches that feeling somewhere else sometimes. Um, I wouldn't necessarily say play has incited your dog's prey drive. I wouldn't even necessarily say prey drive is a bad thing. It's a really good way for your dog to fulfill themselves and enjoy themselves. Um, the most important thing around it is just control. And the ability to control it. So if you are playing with your dog quite frequently, ensure that you have an end of play cue, a really good end of play cue, because you can tell them to calm down and basically stop a behavior for now. In addition to that, what you really need if your dog has a really, really high prey drive is a really good recall. Like, for example, my dogs, I allow them to chase prey, whether it be pheasants or Birds or squirrels out in the forest, but I can recall them back and I can tell them when enough is enough. Cats, however, cats are a little bit different. I wouldn't, although yes, cats are technically prey for dogs, I wouldn't see them as a prey animal because they're somebody else's pet, and I'm sure if your dog killed somebody else's cat, it would probably be quite traumatic for you and the owner of the cat. Unfortunately, we've dealt with a few dogs here at YCA who's whose dogs have killed cats, and we've had to work through that and help them kind of get rid of that obsession. Yes, that's just something you need to be careful of, but that comes back to the no. Live here, have an 18-month-old female Belgian Malinois. She barks a lot at other dogs when she is inside the fence, and other dogs when I'm walking her, she just looks at them, but she seems to want to engage. So from inside your fence she barks at them a lot, but outside of the fence when you're walking her, she just looks at them and is a bit focused on them by the sounds of things from that message, Mark. Yeah, so what I'd suggest is put maybe a drag line on her when she's out in the garden or the yard, whatever you refer to it as in your part of the world, and ensure that you can stop and interrupt the behavior of her barking at dogs the other side of the fence. The chances are if she seems very fixated outside of the home too, she might start spilling over that behavior from inside of the fence to outside of the fence. So you kind of want to stop that from happening ideally. So interrupt it, manage it, stop it happening inside, and then hopefully outside it's not going to spill over into outside. And then outside, create more engagement with her, teach her a solid yes marker, get her disengaging from other dogs and engaging with you. You can find plenty of videos on our YouTube or inside the Behaviour Bible like Parth mentioned to To teach you how to do that with some food motivation if you haven't got one already. Anish, ah, good, nice. Unfortunately, somebody beat you there. One of our ex-clients who came to a boot camp, Anish, within about five hours of the live finishing last time had taught their dog a bang. So I sent them a hoodie. I did send them a hoodie. I promise you I did. But no problem. Maybe I should come up with a new game every week where you guys have to teach your dog something. Hi, what sort of engagement activities can you do with an overexcited 1-year-old female GSD mix before going on a walk? She needs 5 to 10 minutes before being normal. I play tug when I see another dog. So Adrian, from what you've said there, potentially what you're doing at the moment is managing your girl's reactivity. And reactivity is quite a broad term. It also encompasses over-social, over-excited dogs who really, really love other dogs as well. We see quite a lot of those here at YCA. So if that is the case, to be fair, tug or engagement games prior to a walk are not a long-term solution. Often we use them as a bit of a short-term helping hand. In a lot of cases. So for some people with reactive dogs, especially more larger powerful breeds where the owners necessarily aren't as big or as capable of controlling their dog, we'd suggest doing 5 to 10 minutes of tug prior to a walk to physically exercise their dog, make them a bit more tired, and also create some engagement before going out for a walk because it just helps you work through some issues. But from a long-term standpoint, All you're doing is creating a dog that's incredibly fit, can go for longer, and the likelihood is in the long term, the 5-10 minutes of the tug won't really make a difference because she'll just be fit enough to do it and then go outside. So I'd start looking into more long-term fixes. It depends where— does she have the opportunity to socialize with other dogs? What sort of behaviors is she displaying if you don't play with her? Like, how is she impacting daily life? Are you able to see other dogs without her kind of getting really overexcitable and uncontrollable? Are you able to engage her without playing tug around another dog? Yeah, a few different questions to throw back your way. Tay Tay, how to train a dog that doesn't care about treats or food at all? Food motivation zero. Oh, Tay Tay. Your dog's food motivation is not zero. If your dog's food motivation was zero, you wouldn't have a dog, you'd have a carcass. So they'd be dead. So your dog is food motivated, just maybe not food motivated in scenarios where you need them to be, or maybe is more driven by the environment at certain periods of time. So in terms of our food motivation protocol and increasing food motivation, Would be to create windows of where your dog can eat their essential food so that it's kind of a really simplistic relationship with food. You either want it or you don't, and it's tough if you don't want it because it goes away until the next mealtime. Pick a high-quality essential food, and high quality doesn't necessarily mean expensive. Often in terms of high quality, what we're looking for is we're looking for a high protein and meat content. Low carbohydrate content and high in calorie because that means you can provide less volume, e.g., less satiation for the same amount of nutrients that your dogs need and the same amount of calories that your dog needs. Typical brands of which we would on occasion recommend or know of and use on a daily basis: Millie's Wolfheart, Origin, Eden, to name a few. There are plenty more out there. There is a food comparison website. I think it's called All About Dog Food Reviews. Something. It rates lots of various different dog foods from wet to raw to kibbles, gives you nutrition ratings, calorie contents, etc., etc., etc. Won't go too far into that, but pick a good food. Split out your meals. So if your dog, for ease of life, eats 400 grams a day, split into 4 portions of 100 grams. You're literally gonna offer your dog that 100 grams of food If they take it, great, perfect. Then carry on feeding them in the next meal times. If they don't take the food, literally present them with the food. If they don't take it, it goes away and they don't get an opportunity to eat until the next meal time. And over a period of a couple or a few days, your dog's definitely going to start eating all of their meals and probably with some pace as well because they'll want to because they've been shown that they only have a certain window of opportunity to eat their food. And so they'll be more inclined to eat. And then at that point, you can start creating a marker should you wish to. But otherwise, that's how you'll create some good food motivation. But I tell you, I promise you, your dog is food motivated. You don't need treats. Treats and high-value foods, etc., lose their novelty very quickly and also don't allow us a lot of training opportunity, whereas feeding your dog their essential food provides a lot of training opportunity. And if you just keep it nice and strict, You won't then have to compete with novelty. He's 3, doesn't do it when we are not around. Um, they run away once and people found them and all dogs are happy as hell, no problem at all. Even going somewhere with car while I got— get the no comment. Yeah, so he's 3, so he's still got plenty of life left, but again, the behavior might intensify over time. Um, and if he doesn't do it when you're around Might mean that you're contextual to the scenario as well, which is often what we find with a lot of dogs. So it means that we need owners to be here when they're training their dogs. That's why we opt for that sort of approach. Yeah, I think I've excused his mouthing because it's not— it's just mouthing, but you're right, I should think of it as biting. Yeah, you definitely should. Put it this way, if I came up to you, and this is gonna sound really fucking weird, excuse me, I just swore on a YouTube Live again, and laid my teeth on you, even if I didn't bite down, you'd find me really strange. And you'd be like, what the hell are you doing? Get off of me. But because it's our dogs, we go, oh, that's cute, until it creates a problem. And then, yeah, and then you've got too far down the road potentially. So I'd encourage you to do something about it sooner rather than later. A to the A. I've got a 2-year-old cocker who is overly friendly around other dogs and people, lunges towards them and runs off, runs if off lead. Pain in cafes. Any advice? My ultimate advice would be come to a boot camp, but in terms of generalistic advice, uh, is train your dog a perfect recall. There's a few different ways in which you can do that. Obviously, we're very passionate about e-collars, um, and the use of them in order to train a bombproof recall. Really, they're the only thing that's going to give you that, the ability to communicate at distance. Um, train a yes, train a no, and then at that point, the world's your oyster for your dog. And you'll be able to take them everywhere with you. If you've already got a yes, brilliant. If you haven't got a no yet, that'll be probably the missing part of the puzzle which you need, as well as a bombproof recall, because that alone would probably fix a lot of your problems. So yeah, that's kind of my generalistic advice for you. You're right, mate. Yeah, I'm all right. You good? Been watching since January, already have a 4-year-old XL Bully. Oh, nice. And a six-month malle. Wow, okay, fair enough. That's a that's a heavy household. Wherever the pop goes, my mum jumps on her all overexcited in my XL bully. And whenever the pop goes to my mum and jumps on her all too excited, oh goes and bum rushes him. Any tips on how to make her a bit more chill and not erratic when puppy is out when I've been working on it? But recently. Yeah, so in terms of dealing with, um, dog's behavior, managing arousal, managing interactions, etc., um, there's a few different things in which we often teach people here, especially within Home Dogs. Um, having an enough cue, like an end of play cue, most frequently is really, really important. So I'm assuming you probably have been already with your boy, um, but do lots and lots of play, high-energy play. But have some really firm boundaries. So you get to high-energy play and you get to be this Malinois essentially when I say ready, when I start the game. Then at the end of the game, when I say to be a house pet, that's really, really important. The best dog here, I think, at YCA with a really good example of an enough cue or an end-of-play cue rather, so a kind of stop for now and Kind of relax is Kobe, who you can see on a lot of the YouTube videos. So if you've been watching since January, you probably should have seen a lot of videos with him starring in them. And try and find a video of him doing some play with Jacob and watch for the moment Jacob says like, all done, or finished, or enough. I can't remember what cue he actually uses. But you see Kobe go from this big Malinois beast who wants to fight and thrash around to a calm, level-headed, um, pet dog. So that's a really good example. So yeah, use play, teach a really good enough cue. Um, that way when your puppy gets a bit too excited, starts jumping around the house, um, jumping on your other dog, in-home dog, you can say, hey, enough. Like, because there might be occasions in which those behaviors are allowed, so it's not necessarily something you want to say no to. Um, you might want to play with your XL Bully, and your XL Bully might want to play with him on occasion. But he needs to know when to chill out, especially if your XL buddy is getting a bit mardy with it and potentially is going to tell him off and things might go too far. So yeah, start managing that and getting on top of that, um, sooner rather than later. But I'd say that's probably going to be your best thing. Plus, yes, the finish is hard. She's very possessive when we play tug. We play every day like shown in the Bible. Maybe you got a top tip to finish play because she does not out when she knows I finish it. Ah, right. So we don't see many dogs on a daily basis, but of course they'll be effective with it. Yeah, I know, I'm reading somebody else's message now. In terms of creating a solid out, you're talking about 2 different things, kind of, in a way. You're talking about an out, so spit the toy, and then you're also talking about a finish to the game. Those are 2 different things, especially when you're first teaching an out. You don't necessarily want to finish the game on and out because you'll probably poison your out a little bit. Your, your dog will expect it to be the end of the game, whereas they want to keep on playing quite clearly. In terms of building a solid out with your dog, um, you could do it a few different ways. You could use another toy, you could use a substitute toy and do some toy swaps. Um, again, that might make the other toy contingent to your out, which is the only problem with that. Alternatively, I would often opt for pressure of, of some description. So like annoying negative reinforcement pressure. So for example, a leash tap. So what I might do is have a leash on my dog when I'm playing. I'll say out, and then I'll leash tap until my dog lets go of the toy. A couple of quick tips for you. It's really important that tension comes off the toy. before you ask for the out and before you start leash tapping. Because if you're still pulling on the toy, the game is still live, the prey is still alive, at which point he'll be less inclined to let go because you're still playing. Whereas if you make it really, really boring for him, the prey's dead, you're not playing tug anymore, it's really annoying, and he's got this annoying leash tap that keeps going on. I'm not saying really firm, hard leash taps, just consistent, short, sharp taps of the leash. At some point, he's just going to be like, what is going on? He's going to spit the toy, at which point, tell him he can have the toy again. So he then gets straight away loads of positive reinforcements and then being able to re-engage the game, and you're going to go live again and start playing too. At which point, as soon as you say out, he'll just see it as a pause in the game, and the quicker that he outs, the quicker he gets to play again. So that would be the suggestions that I would make. I'm thinking about applying for the CWI course, but I live fairly rural. and we don't see many dogs on a daily basis. Will the course still be effective without the constant trigger exposure? Yes. So we have loads of people on the CWI course that live more rurally, that live in regions where they don't have many dogs, that frankly live in the arse end of nowhere, like rural Canada, rural Alaska. We can do lots of work and put in lots of foundations in the absence of triggers. Of course, there is going to come a point where you do need trigger exposure in order to resolve reactivity. But it's not the be-all and end-all and you don't need it all the way through the course. So yeah, apply, speak to myself or one of the other training team. We'll see if you're a good fit and if you're a good fit, we can talk more about it and get you guys signed up with almost immediate effect. We only release a certain amount of slots a month. So yeah, I just suggest getting on that one as quickly as possible. I'm not sure if Susie's on here. If she is, maybe she can drop a link to a call in the chat. and then you'll be able to book in to have a chat with one of us. I think there's a form that you have to fill in first. Susie, if you're here and not enjoying your Sunday afternoon, would you mind doing that? Thank you. Okay, I understand. I'll watch a bit more of Kobe. Yeah, watch a bit more of Kobe. There's some real good play demos on our YouTube, and I think in the Behaviour Bible with him, and he's a great dog to play with. Just come down to YCA and play with him, see it for real. Did the boot camp last week and the difference is chalk and cheese. Yeah, nice. We're still in the phase of reinforcing new rules and it's going perfectly. Ah, great to hear. Did you do the boot camp last week at Leeds or down at SCCA? Malachi, I've been watching Michael Ellis as well. He's absolute gold dust on the internet. Yeah, he is. Yeah, Michael Ellis is a very good trainer. Obviously, for those who don't know, he's one of the Jacob's Inspirations, and Jacob has done lots of work with Michael Ellis, went out to America not so long ago, did some seminars with him. Yeah, there's actually a YouTube video on our YouTube channel with him and Michael Ellis. How can I teach my 2-year-old GS fetch? She chases after it but stand there till I walk up to her and then pick it up, take her. I'll tell you what, um, Choup, your German Shepherd probably prefers tug anyway. If she doesn't want to play fetch, try tug. She might want to play tug. There you go. Um, What if the slight leash taps go on very long, like 30 seconds to a minute? Just wait until she does and say out again? Um, no, just wait until she says out. A lot of people believe their dogs are stubborn. I'll give you guys a different term for stubbornness, which also I suppose means the same thing in, in terms of humans as well. It's a learned behavior. It's not nature. Stubbornness is not like nature, it's nurture. It is a learned behavior. So if you ask your dog for something repeatedly and you only make it happen on the 10th ask, e.g., sit down— see it a lot, people ask their dogs to sit about 20 times before their dog actually sits. And then people wonder why their dogs are stubborn, and it's because they know you're going to ask for something 20 times before making them do anything. So my recommendation today, my top tip of the day, would be say something once and make it happen, whether that be sit, out, down, crate, bed, etc., etc. Perfect, thanks. I really appreciate the lives that you guys do. Yeah, you're very welcome. Hi, I adopted a GSD. She's very reactive to other dogs in class but fine if she has space. Uh, we have been told not to go to class. She lunges and barks. I play with her. How do I teach her to focus more? Um, potentially your dog doesn't necessarily need more focus, just needs to know that barking and lunging at dogs is, is unacceptable. She's not allowed to do it. That's not a behavior of which she's allowed to perform. And then you'll probably live a more happy life together, to be completely honest. Because by the sounds of things, she's fine if she has space, but closer to dogs, in closer proximity, she obviously believes there's a problem for whatever reason. The most important thing that reactivity always comes down to is prediction error. So in space, if she's fine, but as she gets closer to a dog, she either wants to meet that other dog or wants that dog to go away. If she barks and she manages to achieve either one of those goals, she's going to keep on barking, right? Whereas if you tell her, hey, stop barking at that other dog, and the other dog doesn't go away, and you show her that that other dog's not going to hurt her, she'll be more happily put in the presence of other dogs or in close proximity of other dogs. Vice versa, if you tell her, hey, barking and lunging at dogs isn't going to get you to meet that other dog, and we're going to have to sit here in the presence of that other dog with you being polite, and then in time you might get to meet that dog when I have the appropriate referee and tools. Again, you'll create better behaviors there. Um, Tails and Whiskers Pet Influencer Hex. Hex, what does that mean, like a curse or something? What is that? Uh, Kirky, Tiny Mel, Alicia, and Steve were superb. Yeah, nice. Yeah, they're all really cool. Um, who's your favorite? Go on, tell me, and don't say the coffee machine. Who is your favorite trainer? Go on, go on, tell me. Everyone has favorites. Don't lie and say I don't have a favorite. Don't lie. Tube, she loves tug, to be honest, so I'll do that more often. Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Any more questions, folks? Any more for any more? Come on, hit me. You've only got until 3 o'clock today. I've got some one-to-ones this afternoon, so you guys have got to really, really tell me. And get your questions in quick. Either that or I'll start singing. I made that threat last time and all of a sudden the questions started raining in. Uh, my GSD is so much better, no more launching barking anymore, but certain ones he still pulls towards. Okay, fine. What dogs does he pull towards more? Is there a kind of commonality? Small ones. Okay. And how did you get them better in the first place? How did you get them to stop lunging and barking towards other dogs? Can you explain what is a reactive dog? The definition of a reactive dog is any dog that shows kind of an extreme emotional response to the presence of a trigger. And that might be a car, might be a bike, might be a person, might be a dog. And that doesn't necessarily mean from an antisocial sense. Lots of people believe reactivity is just dogs that bark because they want to fight other dogs or potentially get other dogs to go away, for example. But a lot of the reactivity they deal with, I'd say it's probably 50/50 to be quite honest, either ends of the spectrum in terms of what I like to call like a sociability scale. So arbitrary numbers-wise, if you were to think about sociability, if that's even a word, from like -5, which is like antisocial, potentially even aggressive, to 0, which is neutral, neutral to other dogs, and then all the way to +5, which is more oversocial, wants to run up to every dog, barks and lunges because they want to get to every dog or every person, and they jump up and they're quite rude and obnoxious, which often gets them in trouble with even social dogs and especially antisocial dogs. Dogs either end of that spectrum pose a problem to themselves, other dogs, and just the general public in general. So on our programs As a bare minimum, what we aim to do is bring dogs to zero. We aim to bring them to neutral so they show more positive responses in the presence of a trigger, but it doesn't cause them to show either end of the extreme response, whether that be barking, lunging, growling, wanting to potentially kill other dogs and other people, or the, the lunging and the barking and the howling in order to get to Other triggers, we aim to bring them to zero. As we tell all of our clients, zero is not a long-term solution. That is not the end of the road because if you leave a dog at neutral, if you have an incredibly neutral dog who couldn't give a flying monkeys about other dogs or maybe even chooses to avoid other dogs to a degree, only takes one bad incident to slip your dog into the minus end of the spectrum. So the antisocial end of the spectrum, which means then they could become potentially aggressive or antisocially reactive. So you kind of want a happy, like, ground of on that arbitrary scale, like +2, +3. So they have a positive association with other triggers, whether that be dogs and people primarily. And one bad incident, one bad run-in is only going to take them back to neutral. It's only going to take them lower in. It's going to be easier to get them to where you need to be. That would be your definition of what a reactive dog is. I live in a country where e-collars and prongs are illegal. It's so sad. What would you use or how would you do the off-leash things? Path, speaking really transparently, we work with clients who live in regions where things like tools are banned because they themselves want to use tools with their dogs because they see the benefit of them, especially something like an e-collar. So we would rather teach them how to use it safely and appropriately Rather than them use it guessing and doing guesswork. So we find that really, really important. And we don't believe just because they're in a region where it's prohibited they shouldn't know how to use them. So we teach them how. But there are, of course, other things that we can do. Just because we don't have the use of an e-collar or a prong collar, we work with clients who actually don't want to use certain tools. We will still have other things at our disposal to get them to where they need to be, whether that be the use of another tool or some creativity within the training process. Tools are purely a catalyst. They help us get to the end result quickly. They add to the teaching process. They help us. They are not the be-all and end-all. They do not do the work for you. A lot of people believe that getting an e-collar, getting a prong collar, is going to fix their dog's reactivity. It's going to fix their dog's recall, their loose lead walk, etc. But that's just simply not true. We see many clients who have previously used all of the tools, and their dog is still reactive, or if not worse, from the poor use of tools. So yeah, tools are purely a catalyst in a teaching process. Tails and whiskers, especially when they bark. Yeah. So to be fair. In regard to your dog barking at other dogs that bark at them, I'm sure if we were walking down the street towards each other and I say, hey, fuck you, and you said fuck you back, uh, you would say fuck you back. Sorry. Um, so there's the aspect to it. It depends if your dog's goading the reaction, depends whether they're really being sociable or not. Because we speak to a lot of clients who say, oh, my dog only barks at other dogs when dogs bark at them. And then we watch their dog's body language, and their dog's body language is basically being an absolute knob. And that's the problem. That's Gode in the situation. So watch out for your own dog's behavior. But I'd get them around more small dogs if you have the ability to fix the issue, which you say you have done with larger dogs or different dogs, and you just need to work on the small ones. Get your dog around more small dogs, resocialize them with small dogs, use the techniques in which you've used before. If you're unsure and it's just something that's kind of just happened over time, I'd suggest maybe getting in touch. and maybe finding some ways to make your dog more resilient and capable of dealing with various dogs of different natures. Hello, are you only in Yorkshire? No, we actually have 4 or 5 branches around the world. So we have our Yorkshire Leeds branch, we have our South Coast Canine Academy branch, which is based on the border of East Sussex and Kent. Just outside Tunbridge Wells in a place called Wadhurst. Anybody knows it? Excuse me. We have Perth, Australia, and we have Northern California. So we have four branches in total, and there might be more coming soon, potentially. So put your requests in. Seriously, they're all great in in their own ways, and they're all equal. No, no, no. Come on, pick your favorite. favorite? Don't, don't do that. Come on, who's your favorite one? I promise I won't tell them. I'm lying, I will definitely tell them. I'll tell you who my favorite is if you tell me yours. Did a 4-week challenge, e-collar, playing prong, free walking, loves it. Oh, awesome. What you are saying happened to my GSD. Uh, I can't remember when— what I said or when I said it. My dog barks inside the fence but looks aware when we are in the road but don't bark. Yeah, okay. Yeah, as I mentioned, over time it might kind of go the other way. The behavior from inside the fence might start spilling out. So get in touch, um, do a call with one of our trainers, have a chat to us, and, and we can always see where, where things go. What is our success rate and how many dogs do we help each week? Oh, good question, Pam. So as you guys might know already, if you've been following us for a little while or seen any of our content online, we offer a full money-back guarantee across the board on all of our courses. So that means if you're not happy by the end of a course, even if you're not happy post-course, you go home from a bootcamp or you finish your course and a few months down the line everything regresses back to normal, for God forbid, we say to you, we'll give you a refund. That's how things work. We promise you, you're either going to get the results or you can have all your cash. With that, our refund rate across the board in all of our courses, I believe off the top of my head, is 2.7%. So technically in 2.7% of cases, we do not succeed. Speaking really, really transparently again, And candidly, in a lot of cases, it's because maybe somebody started the virtual course and didn't have the right— what's the right word— commitment to their dog. Speaking really candidly, speaking really candidly. And it means they say to us partway through the course, hey, this isn't for me. And we say, that's absolutely fine. And we part ways, no harm, no foul. Because we'd rather be in a position— we commit ourselves to your dogs when we start a course, and we want to get you guys to wherever you can get to, the topmost part, and achieve all of the goals in which you want to achieve. Part of the reason that you have to do a questionnaire and do a call with us before you can even onboard into any of our courses, whether that be online or in person, we have quite a thorough onboarding process is because we want to ensure that we can help you. And if we can't help you, we'll be really honest. We'll say, I'm really sorry, we can't work together. Maybe work with somebody more local, or maybe here's somebody that we know who can help you. And that's the situations that we want to put ourselves in. And that's why you can't just freely purchase or book yourself onto a bootcamp online, is because we need to ensure that it's the right fit first. And if it is the right fit, we sign you up. Because we know we can definitely help your dog 100%. So we only work with people we know we can help. And in terms of how many dogs we help each week, we have 18 dogs on a boot camp in Leeds. We have 10 dogs on a boot camp in Perth, Australia. We have 8 dogs on a boot camp in South Coast, and we have 8 dogs on a boot camp in NorCal California, Northern California. So across the board, my mental maths isn't my strongest strength, to be fair. That's 34 dogs, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong. And then we have across all of our branches, maybe up to 90 dogs on our virtual course every month. So we're assisting in excess of, say, 300 dogs a month. So thousands of dogs a year, different breeds, different backgrounds, different ages, different reactivities, different aggressive tendencies towards people, dogs, cars, everything. There's quite literally nothing I don't think we haven't seen as a team. And there's of course things in which I haven't seen, um, as Forger quite rightly pointed out. All of the trainers here across the board. We all talk to each other, we all help each other, and we all have a variety of different experiences and knowledge bases of which we can pull on if, like, the trainer you're working with in particular doesn't have expertise. So yeah, that's where that comes in real handy, is the trainers across the board with a variety of different experiences. West Midlands, maybe. Send Jacob a message, I suppose, and ask him to open up a branch in the West Midlands. It's way above my pay grade. Scroll up a few lines. Wish there was one in Melbourne, to be fair. Perth is so far away from me. Okay, good suggestion. We still have an online course that we can help you with that's run by the guys over in Perth as well, so you'd be on fairly similar time zones, who can still help you virtually. It follows the same curriculum as a bootcamp. Um, just takes a little bit longer, provides the same results. You get support one-to-one and in group format, so maybe something to look at. Yeah, your dog got attacked 5 months ago. Oh no, at 5 months. Yeah, sorry to hear that. Yeah, that can happen. So if your dog's neutral to other dogs and gets attacked, very quickly they'll become antisocial because it's just that history. Um, Do you stop a loud whining in front of the door or while putting on the collar with no, the no marker? Potentially, yeah. So when it comes to using your no marker, it's all about consistency in process. And so if it's not a behavior of which you can consistently combat utilizing your no marker, we wouldn't suggest using it. Whereas if you're damn sure you want to stop whining in front of the front door and you can manage whining in front of the front door when you're not there to provide the no marker or whilst you're putting a collar on, Yeah, using my no marker might be a way in which I combat it. However, if it's not a behavior that bothers you that much and you don't think you'll be consistent with it, or it's not something you can be there all the time in order to combat, then I would potentially opt for play cue. So your end of play cue is a bit of a pause rather than a firm no and says you can't do that thing right now. And so it will help a dog kind of chill out a bit. Outlaw, now he can be reactive and he's 2 years old. Yeah, exactly. Um, but Outlaw, 2 years, you've still got hopefully at least 10 years with him. Um, so I'd suggest doing some training and then that way the world can be your oyster. We're traveling from Glasgow, Brighton, Leeds. Uh, yeah, yeah, exactly. People travel from all over the place. We've had people from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, traveled to Leeds for a boot camp. So all across Europe, really. So yeah, stay locally, spend a bit of time with us, you'll love it. Use it as a holiday, holiday for you and your dog. And even had it not so long ago where somebody traveled to us from— where did they travel to us from? I believe it was Cornwall. So traveled to Leeds from Cornwall with their dog. And they spent the week with us on their boot camp, and then they actually booked themselves a week in Wales on the way home. So they came from Cornwall, came to us for 5 days, fixed all of their dog's reactivity, and then went on holiday for the first time in, I think, 4 years. So yeah, they loved it. If I get him, my GSD lives, uh, it's June, do I get him to ignore other dogs? If I could get him Loves his time off lead. How do I get him to ignore other dogs? Um, create neutrality to other dogs, creating appropriate behaviors, creating more, um, clarity of, hey, you can't go over to that dog right now. Um, you can do that with a recall, with a no marker, with an enough cue, with a leave it. You can create a leave it. Um, but just, yeah, depending on what your dog does when they do run over to other dogs Ah, right. Oh, he's been bitten twice. I thought you said he has bitten twice then for a minute. Um, yeah, if he's been bitten twice, what's he doing that gets him bitten? There's no smoke without fire. What's he done? He's walking with one dog at the moment, intact, very neutral. Nice, good. Yeah, make him some dog friends. Is the boot camp suitable for dogs that are hypersocial? My dog, my old positive-only dog trainer said that's what my dog is. Yeah, so as explained earlier, SM2, we work with dogs on a full spectrum from oversocial to antisocial. Boot camp is most definitely suitable for a hypersocial dog. We work with loads of them. Worked with a couple this week, worked with a few the week before, worked with a bully breed not so long ago who, yeah, absolutely adored people and other dogs, was just really full-on and was a bit of a bulldozer and had gotten himself into trouble on a few occasions and gotten himself into some scraps. So if he'd carried on that way, the chances are he might have turned antisocial. So we worked with him to give him a bit more neutrality and a bit more control and gave his mum some refereeing cues, and now he's happily walking off lead everywhere and anywhere he goes, going to the beach, going to town, all that sort of thing, whereas he couldn't do beforehand because he kept being a bit of a knob. Is there another online training like the 4-week challenge? So we run a virtual course that we call Training with Instinct. That's a 6-week program, so it's carried across 6 weeks, of which We give you a game plan for, personalized somewhat to your dog, where we aim to take you from where you are now to exactly where you want to be inside of that 6-week period. In terms of how much it is, that course is £1,500. Speaking plainly, you don't have to pay if you don't get all the results in which you want. However, my caveat being, we— I don't know enough about you and your dog yet. So I can't just sign you up off the back of this call, sadly. Um, my recommendation would be sign up to have a call, have a call with myself or one of the other training team. We'll chat about a little bit more about your dog, ask you a few questions, and by the end of that call, we'll be in a much better position to decide whether you are a good fit. And if you are, then we can get you onboarded and things and talk to you more about the money-back guarantee and how you can split payments should you require it. So yeah, but do that first. Outlaw, think what's wrong with my boys had more bad interactions than good ones. Yeah, and the problem is, Outlaw, is the more bad interaction the dog has and the more rehearsal your dog has of that, probably the more offensive they're going to be with other dogs or the more antisocial they're going to be around other dogs. So it's important to get ahead of that issue, give them some refereeing cues in which you can use around other dogs, teach them clarity through the use of a yes and a no, and then create yourself a situation where you can have interactions with other dogs and you can make them feel more positive about other dogs. There's plenty of dogs here if you have the capabilities to travel to us. That we can use as stooges and we can reintroduce your dog to slowly, which means they have some really stable, good temperament, sociable dogs to interact with. And then we can take you out into the big wide world and get you around more dogs like that too. Outlaw, the dogs where I live are wild, no correction from owners. Yeah, you see that quite a bit. That happens quite frequently. You just get that in some places, but at the end of the day, you can only control your dog, so it's the only thing you need to worry about. Folks, I have time for one more question. Who's gonna have it? No one. Outlaw, thanks. No problem at all, guys. Thank you for spending the afternoon with me. I hope you've all— mornings depending on where you are, if you're that gent in Canada. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Have a good rest of your afternoon slash evening. For anyone who is interested, how do you get in touch? Give me 2 seconds. Let me just post the link in the chat for you. For anyone who is interested in speaking to us to see if you are a good fit for the course and maybe how we are able to help you, Um, book a call, fill in this application form here. It will tell you whether you're a good fit or not. Um, how do I get this? I'm making a real mess of this now, aren't I? Perfect. For anyone who is interested, click that link, go to the bottom of the page where the application form is now, apply for a call with us. It will either be with myself or potentially one of the other training team or potentially with some people who have previously done a boot camp, so they'll know exactly what it's like to be in your shoes more recently, maybe even 6 months ago. They'll ask you a few questions, they'll chat to you for a bit, they'll try and understand more about your dog, and then going forward, depending on what the fit's like, depending on what's going on with your dog, they might say you're a good fit for one of the courses, and they'll discuss that course with you, and there'll be some plans, some next steps with you. So if you are keen, um, on working with us more, getting your dog to where you want them to be, being able to visit pubs, cafes, beaches, uh, fill in that application form now, um, and then somebody will be in touch with you within the next couple of days, uh, and then we can chat more. And it might even be with me, so we can chat some more. Otherwise, folks, have a good, lovely rest of your days. Um, thanks for turning up. Thanks, Jacob. Have a good one. Take care. Bye.