023 – Aggression With a Purpose – Ben Geurts, Kaizen K9

Who's the most interesting? Hello hello hello and welcome to another episode of Beastly Talks. I'm your host as always, Dean Helling and I'm incredibly excited about this chat today because I have a very special person joining me for this conversation. Probably one of the biggest names in Australian dog training I would say it is Mr Ben Gert from Kaizen K now. Hello, how are you my friends? Good I know how are you. Thanks very much for having me. No, thank you so much for taking the time to jump on. So it's actually I want to tell a little funny story before we get stuck into this. So I was sitting and I was trying to think of people to invite onto the show and have a conversation with and then for some reason one of your posts popped up and I'm like, oh, I should contact Ben and then I thought to myself, but Ben is like huge name. He's not even going to look at my messages, right? But at the time I had a little bit of French courage, a little bit of wine inside of me. So I won't like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm going to send Ben a message and I message you and when you got back to me, I was incredibly excited and wildly unprepared for you to actually respond to me. So I am very excited that you've actually taken the time to sit down and have a chat and I think it's going to be a really cool chat. So again, thank you so very, very much for jumping on. Not at all, my pleasure, like I said, thanks very much for having me. These conversations are always enjoyable, I think with the dog trainer. So it should be good. Yeah, and not just enjoyable. I think they're incredibly important as well in the way that dog trainer is going at the moment, but we'll get stuck into that a little bit later. So let's just start with, you know, it gives you a background story, introduce yourself, how you got into dogs, how Kaizen came about, add more importantly, what does Kaizen mean? Okay. So I had it, I get into dogs. Well, I've always liked dogs. We had, obviously we had lots of pets as a kid growing up, had some sort of affinity with dogs growing up. So when I was in the army, I met a guy on a course that I was on. He was a dog handler in the military police. He told me about the job. I was an artillery at the time and I thought, yeah, that's a way better job than this. Painting rocks and artillery is not such a, is a fairly tough job and the idea being a dog handler was way more appealing. So I transferred across. That was in 1999 and I've been in dogs ever since. Yeah, so I was in the Air Force after that. So the army originally, then Air Force, done a little couple of deployments overseas, little, been all over Australia in different bases and managing sections and been at the dog school as well. Did a little bit of time with this SAS as a dog trainer as well. And then worked with the WA Police for five years as their canine capability advisor. Been doing the dog sport since about 2000 and maybe around 2004. IGP was called Schutzen back then and it was called IPO and now it's called IGP. And and we're being mixed doing it's banned. Yeah, yeah, that's odd isn't it? You can't even fight a war in the dog. Yeah, no, it is a little bit crazy, but I want to get into that later. Sorry if you're interrupting. No, that's okay. And then probably been training in dogs in the pet industry since about 2015. I started doing that. So what's that? There's a bit 12 years this year. No, 11 years this year. Yeah, so it's yes. It's been all pets for a while now. So yeah, that's basically my story. I won't go into it too much because it's probably not that interesting to be honest. But yeah, that's that's what I've been doing. And I've just been of trained dogs do a lot of different things. I enjoy training dogs. I love the challenge of it. Probably in recent years, I've actually started to really enjoy training people more. And the challenge of training people, I used to just think I've got to train the dog and help them train the dog. And I didn't really focus on the people problem, but just recently I've sort of gone, hey, maybe focus more on the people problem and helping them do what they need to do with their dogs and motivate them to do all those things. That's a really reinvigorated my approach. And it's made things very enjoyable and very challenging again. So it's been good. And I think that actually brings up a quite a common problem that we tend to see in new dog trainers or dog training students is they go, hey, I want to work with dogs because I don't like people. And then you very quickly realize that being a dog trainer, you don't train dogs a whole lot. You train people a lot more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I train people to train their dogs. I train people way more than I train dogs. Yeah. And then and I think anyone planning on getting into the industry, I couldn't agree with you more. If you're if you're getting into the industry because you don't want to because you struggle with people, you pick on the wrong industry. That's like getting in a hospitality. If you don't like people, that's not the right call for you. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't I couldn't agree more like unless you work in a kennel maybe. That's probably the only time you're going to put hands on dogs with that actually helping people with the dogs. But yeah, no, it's having people skills is an incredibly important but kind of forgotten about art, I think, in dog training because I find a lot of dog trainers to be very kind of short and cross with people as if they're blaming them for having problems with their dog and you're like, no, well, they're actually coming to us for help. So how about we be a little bit more empathetic, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's and if I'm honest, sometimes I'm sure I come across a bit cross and a bit short with people and get a bit frustrated. It's something I'm still working on. But it is it isn't something that we as a dog, trying to really go to try to avoid because as soon as you start doing that with people, you start to lose them. They start to get nervous and I see it when I'm running a class if I'm getting a bit frustrated because we're not getting the result we're after. The people get a bit nervous. They start making more mistakes, not less. They can't learn that well because now they're getting too nervous. So it's something I'm still battling with. I've got it's good. I've got my wife sitting on my shoulder sometimes and she gives me the look. And then I know all ran it in. Yeah. Yeah. But it is because it's it's a very frustrated. I think training people to train dogs is the hardest thing I've ever done because you've got to balance the human needs with the dog needs and sometimes the dog needs X, Y and Z but they're not capable of doing that yet. And then we miss a we miss a moment and then we start going down the wrong path. And you've got to be super flexible to adjust to that and everyone needs to hear information in a different way. Run loads differently. So it's really, really challenging. But for that reason, it's very enjoyable. But for that reason also, I don't think many people are doing it that well. Yeah. And I feel like it is very natural to like a lot of dog trainers are usually very good with dogs, right? So they're very good at handling leashes. They're very good at timing, et cetera, et cetera. So it's very easy to want to pick up the leash and go like, hey, let me show you. But then kind of forgetting that the person doesn't actually learn anything in that process. And so just stepping back and getting better at explaining things and showing things. And like you said, most people need something basic explained in a different way. That is kind of just for them to actually understand. And that is definitely something I struggle with for a long time. Because I've always been pretty good with dogs. But never been very good at explaining things to people. But that is something I have kind of weren't over the years. So all right. So another thing on that point, yes, we move on is what I've seen a lot from trainers recently is this dog daddy approach of taking leads and showing someone how to, how to handle that dog. And it, it, it goes a bit even I think past like they're not learning. And it goes to what is the dog learning right now? And, and if, if I take someone's dog off them, and I go, oh, you're not doing it right, let me show you. And I'll give them a correction and I'll pull them into line. And let's say that dog was nervous of me. And, and now he's like, I don't know, I don't trust people, people are dangerous. And then I put a leash on that dog and I take him away and I beat him up a bit. And, and, and that they will tell you they're not beating him up, but they're giving him corrections. And essentially they're beating him up. They're not using their hands and literally beating him up, but they're giving all these jerking and corrections and choking him for trying to bite them or whatever. Then you're, you're confirming to the dog, people are dangerous. The dog, the dog thinks, oh, I think you're dangerous. And then you go, you are absolutely correct on very, very dangerous. And, and eventually in that moment, you're, if you know how to handle a leash, you're going to win. The dog's going to lose. He can't, he can't win that battle. So you're going to win. But all you did was teach him that yes, people are dangerous. Some of them might take you away from your owner and beat you up. And your owner also, maybe you can't trust them because they just let that happen. And actually you probably make this profound problem that maybe really, really lock a huge traumatic event and they've locked into the, to the dog forever. People are very dangerous. You can't be trusted. You're absolutely right. And you're also can't be trusted. So next time you better bite harder, bite earlier, fight harder, fight earlier, with less warning. So that's a big problem from taking the leash. So I will often demonstrate little tiny things with people's dogs, but only if the dog likes me. And only if I'm using positive reinforcement stuff. But if the dog needs to be corrected for something, I don't, I'm low to do that. I really don't want to do that. And I've had to save a couple of people from their dogs like safety first top things. But other than safety first, I'd rather really not take a leash off someone's dog to correct it. I'd really, you'd very, very, very rarely ever seen me do that. And again, it probably only be safety first for all those reasons. So I think that's really important for people to think about before they start grabbing the leads off the people. Yeah. And I think unfortunately, that is more a social media issue than I think a dog training issue, because it is very easy to string a dog up on a on a lead for, you know, a couple of minutes and just kind of be really harsh with them. And it looks like you're getting results because the dog just goes like, Oh my god, I don't know what to do. This guy is insane. What if I just do nothing? Maybe he'll stop hurting me. And then very quickly, it looks like, Hey, this super aggressive dog that lives to bite people now doesn't do anything. Just walks next to me. But a week later, all of those problems are back again. Like you haven't actually helped the dog in any way, shape or form. You just made, you know, 30 seconds of Facebook cloud happen. Yeah. And that's that's the problem isn't it with this with this force for your community because you know, it's hard to argue against that when they go, Look at this. This guy's a balanced trainer. Look what balance trainers do. And then you see that stuff. You're like, Oh my god, like you see the dog daddy just stringed dog up after dog after dog and the people are copying that stuff and doing that stuff and think that's okay because I call myself a balanced trainer. That's not balanced. That's just bad dog training. And then when the force for a community, these are the people that are yelling and screaming at the force for a community. You just treats, you're just shoving treats. You don't know what aggression is and how to deal with aggression. I deal with aggression every day. Watch me. Watch how you do it. Chuck Elyse on him. Chuck you mount. Be him up a bit. You see that now his walk and next to him in a loose lesion one session. That's how good I am. That's not good. That's really bad. And so when it's hard, that's when you, like I get empathetic to the force for your community because I'm like, Well, they got a point. They got a really good point. That's really bad. Yeah. So yeah, anyone that sort of is doing that sort of stuff, I'd encourage him to stop and rethink. And anyone that sees someone doing that stuff, I'll just go somewhere else. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. It's, um, dog training is so polarizing to begin with. And then obviously social media loves controversy. So the, where has you treated a dog or the more extreme on the first free side of things you are the more views you get. And so now it looks like we're either beating the shit out of dogs or we're just managing them for 20 years and you're like, Hey, actually, most of us are kind of in the middle and doing a whole different approach than that. But yeah, yeah, I don't know about you, but social media, it, in my opinion, it's the worst thing that has ever happened to the world and probably to dog training as well. It's a double as sword. That's for sure. Oh, yeah, I've run a lot of my business through it. So it's very hard for me to be completely critical of it. But short, it does a lot of bad as well. And I get sucked into the algorithm like anyone else. The next thing I've been swapping my phone for half a year, like, well, another half hour wasted my life sucked into the algorithm again. So it's, it's a double as sword. Oh, absolutely. And I'm just saying like I've gotten a lot of work from social media as well. But then yeah, I try to stay off it as much as possible, which means I'm not getting better at it, which means I'm not really helping because and I, I guess just to finish up on the social media thing, it's good dog training. In most cases is quite boring. Right. And so that's not going to get clicks is not going to get like so you like, well, if I actually want to get noticed, I have to start some kind of controversy. I have to start some kind of fight because that's when people give a jump on them, write comments and drive the algorithm. So I think that's a big problem as well for sure. But it's a good point. You make that good dog training is quite boring. It doesn't look dramatic. It looks underwhelming if you're doing it. Well, I think the change is gradual. Like it's not on you're never here me go in one session. I'm going to make get your dog walk in next month or lose lesion one in two sessions. That's if you're heads in that way of thinking, you just haven't been doing this long enough. You just not in not in the right head space at all. But if people want me to try my dog, they'll just see me do foundation foundation foundation foundation they'll be like, once you're going to do the sexy stuff, well, there's no sexy stuff. It's like foundation foundation foundation. Yeah. Yeah. I think about the thing as well, which is it's funny because like when I started in dog training, I haven't been in dog training anywhere near as long as you have. But when I first started out, I was looking for like the five minute YouTube videos I would teach you everything about reactivity. I appreciate that where a lot of people start. Like what is the secret source? What is the magic? Whereas now I'll sit and watch a 20-minute video of someone trying to get a dog to fetch a ball. Because I'm looking for that. Like what is that 10-second win though when the dog knows oh shit, I actually understand this. But that's proper nerd stuff that dog trainers look at. Most people don't look at that because they're like, I don't care. At what point the dog realizes that he actually has to bring the ball back to you. That is really boring and tedious. And again, like dog training can be really frustrating because you sit there and you try and you try to say to the over and over again, you try to explain to the dog, I need to do this very simple thing. And the dog kind of comes back and kicks you in the arse and you're like, I'll tell you. It is quite a frustrating industry at the end of the little day. Yeah, that's not strange. Well, we can talk about the industry to the cows kind of and I think we will at some point in this chat as well. But for now, I want to get stuck a little bit deeper into you. So I know that you are a knee-popo certifier. Is that what they call it? Like a teacher? Like call it a gold malt locator. Yeah, okay. But you've also done TWC, which is training with our conflict, which is I'm Balbama's training. Now, I want you to get, I want you to talk a little bit about what the two things are. But I also want to talk about the difference between them because it is quite a big difference especially when it comes to the use of electric collars. So it's kind of interesting that you've done both because to me they're very head-butting kind of ideologies when it comes to training. But start off by telling us what NEPOP is, tell us what training without conflict is and then we can have a chat about the difference between them and how they fit together in the way that you train dogs. Yeah, okay. Well firstly I think both systems are very good dog training systems. They're both very very very good. Bob Ballon and Michael Ballon are genius in the system they've created the absolute geniuses and Ivan Balavanov is an absolute genius at training dogs also in my humble opinion. So but they do butt heads obviously and there's the the zealots from each fraternity like to butt heads together and have little arguments or big arguments sometimes which I don't I find a little sad in the whole industries a bit like that a bit toxic sometimes but in reality what I like about the NEPOP post system and the Balan's approach is for their for their way of thinking that people are their own architect so when you do NEPOP you're taught the system you learn the system but then you are your own architect and that's takes a bit of courage for them to let people go out on their own and start pushing it in their own little direction but I really appreciate their approach in that in that regard. But what is NEPOP it is obviously the you know the party lines the system of training dogs which gets dogs to perform behaviors reliably on cue with heart and soul. What does all that mean? Basically in NEPOPO the system is based on the dog inventing the behaviors or giving the dog the impression he invents the behaviors so they use a lot of behaviors shaping and assisted shaping it's not just like free shaping it's they use environment and the motto is like help as much as you need the does little as possible but essentially they want the dog to think he's the inventor and ultimately he feels like he's controlling you that's how the behaviors should come together and the dog should have a little signature the NEPOPOP signature which is heart and soul is up tail high wagging eyes burning like cigarettes that's what Bart loves to say and I really like that and so that's that sort of got systems goal. TWC for me is instead of the inventing way that the balance do it TWC is the opposite and that it's all about controlling and guiding the dog he's not the inventor you're the inventor and you are always steering the rudder controlling him guiding him how to find his advantage how to get to where he needs to go rather than him rather than him inventing things so whereas I think NEPOPO is a very operant based system and TWC is a much more classical based system if that makes sense so that's sort of the major difference and then when you talk about the difference in using E-colors obviously TWC are like never use low stem it's low stems the devil but in NEPOPO they use a lot of low stem and the idea is that the low stem becomes motivating for the dog the dog learns to control the stem and enjoy controlling the stem by doing things and TWC that the really the E-colors is used as a smack the dog doesn't come back he gets a little smack the dog was thinking of doing the wrong thing he gets a little smack it's more punishment based a little bit of negative reinforcement but not really much and and it obviously train a dependence so I'm sure some trainers are going to lash out and whatever they always do that but mainly it's like a punishment like don't do that that's naughty I'll tell you to come back stop smelling the grass little nick and then they stop smelling the grass hey come back he comes back and then we're back back in the training so NEPOPO the TWC people and and they have a very good point here Ivan has a very good point uh some NEPOPO trainers or people that are doing a bit of NEPOPO are using too much stem and relying too much on the E-colour and think it's all about the E-colour and it becomes almost like a battle to use E-colour all the time and then you see these dogs are a bit suppressed there is a down there sort of being driven into behaviors but in not an inventive way and and that's not what NEPOPO should look like and so when people are doing that they're just they're just not doing very good dog training that's not that's not what it is and and and I and I sound really critical and maybe a bit arrogant there but I promise that by saying I've done it too I've used excessive stem in a dog or two and I and I've seen the result and at the end I'm like that wasn't right I fucked that up you know I need to be better and everyone everyone makes mistakes so but um yeah that's the the quintessential difference I think between both systems is NEPOPO is much more operancy and TWC is all about control and guide so it's much more classical yeah I think that's a really good breakdown of it and and I guess when I first came into dog training like nine years ago I learned from a lot of NEPOPO training so I haven't done the NEPOPO course but I've kind of I've learned a lot of I guess NEPOPO approaches to dog training and I think that overreliance on E-colour is a big problem like I talk a lot about E-colours I love working with E-colours I think they are probably aside from the leash the best dog training tool that's ever invented but we do see a lot of trainers who essentially they're not training dogs to do things they're training them strictly to listen to the E-colour so especially dogs that have you know out issues and unless you've stimmed them on the E-colour the dog doesn't out and you're like well now the E-colour is a cue for the dog to out it doesn't actually mean how you make you made a mistake it means this is the cue to out right those kind of things which I guess in the grand scheme of things for most pet owners and stuff that isn't really a big problem but and I definitely hear what you're saying about the overreliance on the E-colour and and and again I guess NEPOPO the way that I've heard it explained is negative reinforcement into a behavior explosive out into positive reinforcement so you kind of pressure the dog into the behavior and then you give them a big release with a big reward at the end which is where the whole heart and soul ID comes from the dog like really wants to do it and control the situation does that sound kind of about right? that's where I think people get a bit lost with it because I was the same so when I first did NEPOPO with with Bard I went away and I'm like right I'm gonna do NEPOPO where's my E-colour and that's what everyone does and then I got some results some okay some okay and I'm like but my heart and soul the dogs heart and soul's not there I'm looking at Bard's dog I'm looking at my dog and I'm looking at Bard's dog happy is up powerful super fast look at my dog it's okay but it's not like that what am I missing and then what I realized what I was missing is the the magic of NEPOPO is not the E-colour the magic of MAPO is not the stem the magic the secret to NEPOPO is the inventing that is the secret and then so what do I find I start getting better at NEPOPO I'm using my E-colour less I'm putting it on less I'm getting it out less not more but my dogs are inventing more I'm becoming better at letting my dog in fact I'm becoming better at letting him trip himself into thinking he's controlling me instead of me controlling him and then what I see my dog's heart and soul is going crazy is going through the roof and then I'm looking at Bard's dog I'm still envious I'm still not quite there but then I'm looking at mine and the difference is much less than it used to be so I think think the power in Napeopo doesn't come from the negative reinforcement, it comes from the inventiveness. And the negative reinforcement is just like the icing on the cake to bring that last little pow. But without that inventiveness, you will never get it. That's what the inventiveness must come first. And that's my experience over the dogs of trained. When I've not let them be as inventive, and I've finished the last step, but it never looks right. Then there were super inventive. When I finished the last step, it looks exactly what I had hoped, or maybe almost exactly what I've hoped. If that makes, hopefully that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. And that's really interesting actually because I guess I want to start by saying Bart Bellen and Ivan Balvano are probably the two best dog trainers in the world at the end of the day. So comparing yourself to that is certainly pretty high standard, which is good. But I feel like when you go like your jealous of Bart Bellen's dogs, I'm like, yeah, well, that's a pretty fucking difficult standard to meet right? Because they are such incredible dog people. And it's not about the timing, all the skill of training. I think it's more about the being with dogs. I think a lot of people get very focused on the technical side of things. I've the way you hold the food when you stem on the equaler, how you hold the slip, you know, whatever it is. But they kind of forget that dog she's want to be with us. And if you use your body to work with a dog, you actually get a much more powerful result just out of that. And just to give a quick example on that. So I have a five year old Malinois called Agnod. And I was, I trained him very much with play and a slick lead. That's kind of how I did all of his training. And he does everything super reliably in any setting. Very happy with his training. But now I have a new Kelpie puppy. And with him, I've done things very differently. I've used very little pressure at all. Like he is equal condition now more for a safety thing because we're on a farm with farm fencing and he can disappear. Essentially, so it's more to give him some off-leash freedom. But everything I've done with him has been very like you said, inventive. And so when I asked him to go to his play sport, he hits the play sport with such speed that it actually slides over and he freaks himself out. And again, like my Malinois doesn't do that. Like if I tell him to go to play, he goes to a place 100% of time, whether he's wearing any collar or not. But he and he will stay there for as long as I tell him to. But he doesn't have that kind of like I need to hit this platform at Mac 10 because I fucking love this. And I guess that's the kind of big difference that you're talking about there. Yeah, absolutely. Interesting. All right, cool. So let's talk about transferring from military dogs to pet dogs. I imagine that's quite a big shift in mindset. And you know, military dogs tend to be incredibly powerful and resilient dogs that you can even if you mess up with your use of pressure, you're not going to break the dogs. Now that is very much not the case in pet dogs. And so how did you find that transition from military, you know, cerebrators murdering dogs into your average fluffy, utility that has some reactivity issues after the dog. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't find the dog part that that difficult. And probably because in the military for the last sort of 10 years, maybe a bit longer of my career as a dog, probably our 10 years actually in my career in the military, the last 10 years of that. I was often raising puppies and I spent a few years at our dog training school. And often we had lots and lots and lots of dogs there, well, we always had lots of dogs there. And some of them were quite sensitive. Young puppies. And so I'd already had a favorite of experience sort of dealing with sensitive dogs and dogs that had some of these issues. So yeah, some of the dogs we had with monsters and super robust and super strong, but we also had lots of sensitive dogs as well. So transitioning with the dog wise wasn't that challenging to be honest. And like obviously in the military, we're pressing accelerator all the time, but in there when we moved to civilian dogs, we're probably pressing a break a bit more than we are pressing the accelerator. But the people is probably what I found the hardest is training the people compared to military. And mainly because in the military, you just go do that. And I often refer to myself as a military moron because if you, if I was learning a skill of you and you told me, put your left hand on top of your head, I would just go like that immediately. And I would probably then go, wonder why I tell me to do that in my own head, but I'll work that out later. And then you might say, put your right hand somewhere and I might move and I would do that immediately too. But what I found is civilians don't do that. They need to know why a bit more. So you would go put your left hand on your head and then go, "Huh, why are you telling me to do that?" I don't understand. We haven't got time for a chat. Put your hand on your head. Just do the thing. So the people has been the hardest challenge for me and the people, especially my last posting in the military was with the SAS as a dog trainer there. And I was there for two or three years, one and a half permanent and then about one and a half as a reservist. And training with those people is unbelievable. They're the fastest learners I've ever seen. They are unbelievable learners. They're just sponges for information and you tell them something once that not only can do that thing, then these other three things also make sense to them. And then now put piece all those together and they can do those too. So then when you're training with them, you're really spoilt and then you go and train with normal people in your life. This is way harder to teach these people. It's way harder. You have to be way clearer, break things down further. So that's probably been the biggest challenge is because it's adjusting to training normal humans. Yeah, fair enough. And I guess at the end of the day, if you like, if you think of it from a dog training perspective, a lot of military people are probably almost more classically conditioned, where they respond to something without even thinking they're just like you talk to do something you do to think. Whereas humans are much more operant where they're like, why the fuck do I need to do this? It's so true. I guess I'm sure. And I mean, we do know that a classically conditioned response is always going to be more powerful than an operantly trained one. That is just like you don't think about it. You do it out of reflex. And so therefore it's going to be more in-gram. It's going to be harder to break, etc, etc. But yeah, no, that's interesting because I guess what I've always said in my training, what I've said to some of my dog training students as well is that dogs are easy. Dogs want to get it right. They don't want to fuck up. They want to get it right. And they generally pretty easy to work with. But people are impossible because they second guess everything. They don't trust themselves. They disagree with you. A dog doesn't disagree with you when you correct them properly. They just call like, oh shit. Right, sorry, I'm in mistake. And they get on with life. Right. So yeah, interesting. Actually, so from there that brings us into another thing I wanted to talk about. So I want to talk a little bit about the use of pressure and stress and creating resilience in puppies. And I just want to jump into that now because you talked about some of the dogs you had were quite sensitive. And I guess a lot of people don't know this. But you know, military and police dogs, they are almost meant to overreact to things. They are meant to be on the alert when they're on the job to look for danger and etc etc. But how do you approach, I guess, introducing pressure and pushing puppies through things and creating building the resilience especially for things like sport work. A lot of it is coming through through normal life and not not molly coddling them and just letting them experience life. A lot of the resilience comes from that I think, a hell of a lot of the resilience comes from that and then the pressure and learning to be resilient through pressure does come through the training as well. We would use negative reinforcement for some behaviours pretty early but on purpose. Like the sit for example, we might actually push the puppies bum into a sit so it sits a certain way and we don't need to do it that way. There are many other ways to train and we don't need to do it that way but if you do it that way you get a more faster foundation for sitting a more responsible for sitting attitude and you've built a bit of resilience in your puppy because he's felt a bit of pressure and he didn't die and he's like okay I didn't die and we do that we take him for a walk and sometimes on a leash they go no I don't want to go and we just give him a little tug with the leash and a little bit of encouragement come on hey hurry up and then they go when they bite us we don't we just tell them not to they might get into some trouble a little correction with the leash and grow up them a little bit and I think all those little things help to build some resilience in any young dog and a puppy and that's something I think the force for a community is getting stupendously wrong is the telling people never say no telling people you can't correct your puppy you're going to make it aggressive and then you raise these power puffs that can't deal with any stress in life and don't get me wrong it's a lovely thought don't hurt your puppy you'd love your puppy don't you it's a lovely thought and if the world was like that it would be such a lovely place we'd have no wars and we'd have no criminals and no bad people but it's it is it is not reality it's not reality and and you know so how do we build resilience if our puppy bites us he gets in trouble if he bites the lounge he gets in a bit of trouble but we offset that by showing him he's a love and affection by playing heaps by taking him out places by by training him with food and mostly positive reinforcement everywhere and you want to make sure your puppy's happy but don't bite me you get in trouble don't bite my pants don't and come for a walk and leash don't bite my son you'll get into trouble and then the pup goes okay there's rules but but lost good that's sort of that's sort of how we build resilience yeah common sense and I yeah well common sense of just you talking about that hole never say no to your dog my heart starts racing and I get really furious but I try to hold myself back because I don't want to be a dog but yeah no it's ridiculous and it I guess the the one thing that I always explain to people is like how many times have you cooked food in your life right it is going to be tens of thousands of times right because a positive reinforcement is an ongoing process and never really stops but in that vein how many times we're touched to hop stove right probably one so twice and you go like wow that was a big fuck up and I need to make sure that never happens to get and the important part about that at the end of the day are you scared of the stove no of course not because it's contingent and you understand how things work and you go like oh I can produce my positive reinforcement I just have to make sure I don't fuck up by actually touching the stove right and so yeah it's you know and gets good I still go cooking exactly yeah exactly yeah and I absolutely think this is the thing the mull the mulley curling and my little baby and blah blah blah that is probably destroying way more dogs than any form of overuse of aversives I would say that is probably less of a problem than the ump to use of aversives myself so I don't know if you have any thoughts on that yeah I would I would tend to agree I think because of the prevalence of the force free stuff it's just it's just gone rampant now and um so that's really quite damaging to so many dogs and so many people so many people come to us and the people are broken and frustrated and the dogs two or three years old and they've been doing everything the trainers have told them um but the dogs just getting worse and now they've got this dog aggression or the human aggression or they can't go outside anymore they can't go near his food bowl they can't tell him no he they can't walk him on leash and and because they've been told you can't say no you can't because you're gonna get it because it's bad and and you you love your dog don't you don't want to hurt it you know don't do bad things and just get better treats and showing more love and you'll be able to love him out of this and it's and it's a train wreck but there's a but to everything and there's a flip side to everything the problem is you've got the dog daddy people and I say the dog daddy people anyone that's first meeting a dog a throwing a slip lead on his head and choking him out for me is just an incompetent dog trainer you're not balanced you're just not competent um and when you've got these people having the same argument mean you are having right now mean you are saying the same things they're saying about the force for a community it's so ridiculous look at these people blah blah blah if only the world was like that army that's ridiculous and they're said the same thing mean you were saying but we're not the same they're chucking a lead on and they're bashing a dog up and they're putting a collars on dogs and turning it right up pretty much without any planning or any full thought of well what can go wrong and and then when the force for a community point at that that's when I'm empathetic to them I'm like well look at that that's hard to argue against that this guy's calling himself a balanced trainer and he just put in a chocolate on this dog and hit it on a hundred um and for for showing complete a fearful defensive reaction to another dog and I was hitting it on a hundred that's that's terrible it's really that those people really are what brings their everything down because those people are are bad bad dog trainers that's bad dog training and they're calling themselves balanced and when the force for community he's trying to that's what they think yeah there's no balance there but that when the force for community he balanced trainers that's what they're thinking about and that's what that's what makes it very hard for people like us and honestly I think that's why the force for people are winning I think there's a couple of reasons for it so first of all the idea that oh you can do anything with love and pets and treats sounds like a really good idea which is all well and good until you have a dog with prey drive who realises it's a predator and something that you go like oh fuck uh we can't actually work with this dog that way like we can't just love them into not wanting to kill the cat kind of thing but I think another big problem as well is yes so you got the polarizing you got the dog that is that I just do and henish it to dogs and should be you know not allowed to go anywhere need dogs but then even within the balanced community that I would call balanced you know there's infighting everywhere like we can't even like when you have your organ ballabanos or your TWC is fighting the knee poke pose on how to use an e-coloured like that is such an incredibly nonsensical thing to fight over but while we're fighting over all of that the force for people are saying to politicians like hey look at what dog that is due to dogs that's what balanced treatments do and obviously legislation comes into play and we lose our ability to train dogs with any form of common sense so I might personally think that's where a lot of the problem stem from they are I don't know if you want to say anything on that before we move on but it is definitely a big problem yeah no I tend to agree I don't know what the fix is to be honest and I tried minding my own business for a long time and never speaking out against force for a community but the reality is this is what I try to say now If you choose a force for your approach, you're already wrong. You're just wrong straight away because you're just using an incomplete, nonsensical approach that's not real. It's based on the land of my belief where we can just love dogs and they're not predators that I know all dogs are good. There's no such thing as a bad dog. And I'll tell you, if you think there's no such thing as a bad dog, you've not been doing this long enough because they're some asshole dogs, that's the reality. Yep. And so that's just, that's just wrong straight away if you're force free. You're just wrong immediately. That's my strong opinion. But if you're chucking a slip lead on a dog, the first time you meet it, who's fearfully aggressive and defensive and, you know, reacting in a terrified, snapping at you, barking at you and you're chucking a slip lead on and choking him out and dragging him around and bringing him into line and showing how wonderful you are, you're also heinously wrong. It's, that's terrible. That's, that's a disaster. But if you have a measured approach, a pragmatic approach, and you go, look at some stage we're going to need, maybe to punish this dog for being bad when he chooses to be bad, but we've got to work on the underlying issues first and try and make him feel better about himself and try and really have a nuanced approach. And then you also, when you decide you're going to do a punishment, you really consider it first, what could be the result? What could go wrong? Is there a better way? What tools should I use? What's the best thing for this dog? What's the best thing for these people? If you're thinking like that, and you accept that sometimes I have to use some sort of a verse, which is a fact of life, then your head's in the game, and then you need to ask yourself this question, is it too much? How much is too much? When should I use it? And if you're not asking yourself those questions, then you're not in the game either. You can't just go force freeze wrong. I'll show you what to do. You just chuck an e.colon and zap him. Then you're also not, you're just not having a measured approach, which means your head's not in the game. And if we could just start talking about having a measured approach, then I think we would find you have, we have a lot more in common with the force for a community than than the dog daddy. Oh, yes. And I think the important word there, they use said that everyone forgets about his nuance, right? Because a version is going to happen one way or another. But again, it's the whole Goldimox approach, right? It's too hard. It's too soft. It's just right. Right? That's how you create a balanced stable dog. But yeah, it is an incredibly frustrating time to live through in dog training. Well, at least that that's my opinion. But before we get to angry, let's move on. So. So I want to talk a little bit about your thinking in terms of, so I want to talk about sport dog training. And I listened the last time I turned the idiot box on, also referred to as a TV in this day and age. I saw a couple of politicians that were talking about obviously politicians being highly skilled in dog behavior and training. We're talking about if you teach a dog to buy a guy and a suit and that automatically makes them super dangerous and must be controlled on the really high restrictions or even youth and ice. So let's talk a little bit about it. And what is protection sports and how do you begin training it? And then I want to get into a little bit more. Can those things actually help adopt that is reactive or feeful or aggressive? But yeah, like give us give us a brief introduction to IGP and how you begin training it and what it actually looks like. Okay. All right. IGP is a dog sport that originally started as a breed. So they actually for the German Shepherd. Many, many, many years ago, over a hundred years ago. And it's evolved into what it is today, which is a sport that has three phases, tracking obedience and protection. They don't even like to call the protection now. And it's again a bit of the woke world we're living in where everything's got to be softly, softly. Don't dare say aggression and don't dare say protection and don't give people the wrong impression. They call it character work now. But essentially tracking obedience and protection. It's a sport I really love and I love it because it's so bloody hard. It's a very, very, very difficult sport. Because you need three separate dogs and three experts. You need a tracking expert. You need an obedience expert and you need a protection expert. That makes it extremely challenging sport to do. Training wise, where do you start? Well, the best place to start is to do tracking as young as you can with your puppy. And then start your obedience as well. As the puppy gets a bit older, we start doing a little bit of grip work, a little bit of protection. And then we sort of growing all three phases at the same time. Common fault is people neglect the tracking because it's not so much fun. For some people at first, which I've done myself in my first dog and a tracking was woldful. But if you neglect the tracking, it will bite you in the ass later because I think tracking is actually the hardest phase of IGP. And the one that you should invest most to be timing, especially when you first get your puppy. The protection itself, IGP is unique in that. Your dog doesn't need to have aggression to do IGP character work at all. It doesn't need any aggression. A lot of IGP sport trainers now sort of they try to tap into the aggression for the barking. But the biting is not aggression. The biting is in the dog's prey drive or is play drive, whichever he may lean towards more strongly. And essentially in the IGP sport, you teach the dog to channel this energy into a sleeve, into a piece of equipment. And without that piece of equipment and without that all those antecedents, the dog would not be capable of doing any protection at all if you're trying to correctly. They're not like personal protection dogs, they're not military dogs, they're just sport dogs. And you can see that in now the all of our videos. Well, if we slip the sleeve, you'll just see the dog run off carrying the sleeve back to the handler. Yeah, look at our one. And if it was dangerous, he would let go and bite the decoy. Like he's not dangerous at all, he's quite safe. And he knows I'm doing this game, this is a rough game. And when I win my toy, I've won, but it's just a rough game. It's not, it's not real. They know very, very, very well. It's not real. They know that. They know they're playing a game. Even if their barking is in an aggressive mood, they still know they're not allowed to bite anyone. They have to bite the sleeve and they can only do it when the helper does something or they're told. And so it's very, very, very safe. And it actually makes dogs safer, I think. It doesn't really change your dog. It'll just make your dog safer. Yeah, so I guess, you know, we talked a lot about what we call controlled aggression and especially biological fulfillment. And I think a lot of people just don't know that, you know, a proper working line bread, Belgian malinois is literally bred to eat people. And if you don't give them some kind of controlled approach to get that out of their system, that is actually what becomes a problem. It's not the fact that you're training them to go after a decoy to bite the sleeve. That is the problem, right? It is the fact that they never get to do anything. And so yeah, I guess like, what is your approach? What are your thoughts on biological fulfillment? And how would you, I guess, personally to find the word controlled aggression, which is something we just hear thrown around a lot? Well, certainly your right and malinois needs to bite something. They're born with a very, very low genetically, very low threshold for biting. They'll bite something moves a little bit whack. And that's from puppies. I remember when I worked in the puppy development area in the Air Force, we would have a malinois lidar and people would one girl. Can I go say hi to the puppies and I go, yeah, good luck going there with those 10 puppies. And I'll wait for a few minutes till they start screaming and asking for help and then we would go save them from the puppies that were just attacking them. You never have to teach your male and male to buy. They already buy. So you better give them that genetic fulfillment and teach them the context of which they're allowed to do that because they're going to do it. And if you try to suppress that, it's going to back for her. So you got to channel it. Control aggressions at a difficult term on the other hand because I don't think most dogs are actually even malinois are actually aggressive. And even if they're biting, most of that's not aggression. Most of that is prey drive, play, play prey drive, a high play drive and they might be barking in the defensive aggressive type barking, but that's not true aggression in a sense of the word. I don't, I don't think. But I think a bit differently about aggression. Train military and police dogs for so many years. Like true aggression looks very different to what I see on a sporting field. And some dogs have, you know, they've got aggression. I'm a meseko. Then Bill, Bill, it's hoove. That dog was aggressive. But my sport dog's aren't aggressive at all. They're just, they're not aggressive. So it's not really aggression. We're controlling. We're controlling, we're controlling excitement. We're giving them their genetic fulfillment in the thing they have to bite something, but it's not real aggression. Real aggression is like police dogs, military dogs. And that really biting someone. That's so would you consider that vein. So in that vein, if we're touching a little bit more on that, would you? So I guess from what I've heard, and I've never trained police or military dogs, but how would you define true aggression versus prey? Because a lot of, you know, whether it is sports or a lot of the early kind of military training as well. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but is very much prey driven. So the dogs essentially trained to see humans as prey that they can take down that they can defeat. So how would you do? Like in your opinion, like what point does this tip into actual proper aggression? And what would that look like in instead of like a defense immigration or predatory aggression, I guess? That might be a difficult question to answer, but I don't like fully using all what I mean. I do know what you mean. It is a challenging question to answer because we start to get into other people's definitions. And I don't think definitions are all correct. And textbook definitions are obviously we're just putting in the words what we can see. And I don't know that we're getting that right all the time. And so if we look at the definition of aggression, it's like feelings or anger and sympathy towards something and intention to harm. So aggression, any dog biting a human is displaying aggression. And then what is it? What is his motivation? Is he seeking to kill that thing? Because he perceives it as prey. Well, now if that's how he feeling, you can probably argue that's predatory aggression. Is he just hating that thing and sees it as a competitor that he needs to kill because he just hates it and he doesn't, and he wants to win. We're now probably got true aggression and that competitive aggressive type dog. And they're very, very different motivations for biting. They're both aggressive because they're biting. They're doing, they're hurting something. They're trying to kill something or just holding something. And their head, they may well be trying to kill. But if you obviously the police dog trainers go to great lengths to teach the dogs a bit of certain way, so there's no chance of that. It's just that teaching them to grab a hold of the bag, I not let them go. And so I'm saying with military. So I find that in my experience, the military dogs, the higher prey dogs were better, more suited towards military applications. And you're right, we would try to reinforce prey towards people and perceive people as prey. And that's where I think people get really, really really get really wrong when they say play, prey drivers the same. They're not the same. They're completely different. In my, they're completely different. And you only need to see a pig dog hunting pigs. And then someone trying to play ball with him and he's like sticky ball, you're asked. But if you take him out and people go, oh, he's got no prey drive. Look, you won't fetch the ball. But then you take him out of hunter pig and he's doing it like his life depends on it. He's got plenty of prey drive. He just doesn't have a high play drive. That's a completely different drive. But some obviously sometimes those things blend together. But aggressive wise, I think true aggression is a bit different. That's a dog that's like he just he just hates things. He looks really pissed off an angry and and I think that sort of dog is more suited to police work because the variety and the pictures in a policing type role is huge. In a military role, we can really go, what does the enemy look like in this, in this, yeah, likely battlefield? What does the enemy go sort of where and how they're going to smell and what they're going to dress like? And we can try and recreate that picture. But police dogs have to be really able to engage lots and lots of lots of different pictures. That's aggression. True aggression is more suited to that. Yeah, so for me, those type two types of dogs, you could do some sport stuff with them. But they know when near as suited to it as dogs that have bred specifically to do the sport, IGP or whatever sport you ask because that's a very different motivation. My dog doesn't bite because he's aggressive. He bites because he thinks he's painless, really rough game. So it's not. Yeah, I don't know if that answers your question. No, I think that's a good answer actually. It's a, it is really interesting because so many people, I guess, I guess most people can't wrap their heads around, hey, you're teaching a dog to run up to bark aggressively, aggressively at this person. And then when they raise a stick to fight them, they bite them and you bring them to the ground. I guess a lot of people can't wrap their heads around that that is actually good training and not making a dog dangerous. Right. So it's kind of just elaborating a little bit on that. And I guess when I think of control depression, I think a little bit more about drive channeling. So getting the dog to go into that predatory state to go into that, I guess you could call a reactive state where they rush us up to someone, they barks them, but in their face and they threaten them like, hey, I'm going to take you on because I'm not scared of you, but then bring them back into an obedience kind of manner where they're healing around with you where they're doing all of this. So I guess from someone who doesn't do sports and has never trained a military dog, that's kind of my thinking that like, hey, go and threaten that guy and then bite him, but then come back and heal with me and be a good dog kind of thing. I don't know. Does that make sense? Well, it does. I think the sport definitely makes dogs safer. I try, I say to people, it's not going to change who your dog is and it definitely doesn't. And we really don't teach dogs to bite. They are the dog dogs bite. That's what dogs do. Like what do they say? Horses kick, cats scratch and dogs bite. So we don't teach them to bite. They already do that. We teach them to let go and we teach them they can grip their sleeve in a given set of circumstances. That only makes dogs safer in the general public, not dangerous, the exact opposite actually makes them safer. And dogs are predators. Like, again, this force for a community and I watched something so stupid the other day. What's that more on victorious still? Well, all aggression. She says all aggression is based on fear. Oh, no, yes, it's foundation. All aggressions foundation is fear. And I would say the exact opposite is true. zero aggression foundation is fear. And Roger Abrantis, who's the world's leading expert in Cain Undergression, says that himself. Aggression and fear cannot coexist. It would be a lethal deformity in evolution and whatever went towards something it was scared of with aggression would not have survived evolution that species would not exist. So that's how I feel about it. It's this sport, bite sports in general, all of them, I'm an IGP guy, but I think all the bite sports in general actually would make dogs safe, aren't not dangerous. And that is a super interesting one, because even if you like if we talk about Yuck Punksett and his blue ribbon emotions, right, two of those emotions, one is fear and another one is anger and like he says, they cannot coexist at the same time. But so whenever I explain kind of the correlation between fear and reactivity or aggression to people, I always used to term fear born reactivity. So the fear can lead to a point where the dog goes like, well, I'm back into a corner, I can't get away from this. I have to just try something else to try and get rid of you kind of thing. So I never say fear aggression, I say fear born aggression, which I know is a technicality, but I think it actually makes a big difference. And I got Victoria still well, dog trainer and TV personality who absolutely knows nothing about dogs should not be talking to people about aggression specifically. But all right. So that I want to jump into another thing now. So with a dog that is nervous, like maybe has poor genetics is a little bit nervous, isn't it reactive, has shown some aggression. Would something like IGP could, would it or could it be beneficial for a dog like that to actually build a confidence and to give them an outlet and say like, hey, there's a time in a place, but we can't be an asshole all the time. Yeah, I think I think it could be very helpful. And over the years, we've rehabilitated several dogs who have who displayed some fear born aggression like like like you described, actually like that, who displayed some behaviors like that. And we've rehabilitated them through doing IGP protection top training. And they started off trying to bite me. And after a few months of training, they're channeling into the equipment. And I'm literally patting them on the head while they've got a mouth full of sleeve. And they're very comfortable and they're wagging the tail and happy. And three months earlier, they were nervous and like lunging out of fear, desperation, please stay away trying to try to just do a quick dirty bite. And the IGP protection actually really helped them. So and it doesn't always fix everything, but it's one of those little stepping stones I can really help and be part of a bigger plan on rehabilitating a dog that's that's big fear, fearfully, fear got that fear born and aggressive top tendency. So yeah, I think it's really good. Yeah. And I think I guess one of the big problems especially with fear and anxiety is you cannot punish your way of fear, right? Like I always say, you cannot punish a state of mind. So if a dog's fearful and tries to bite you, you can't really punish your way that desire to bite in that state of mind. So that's where you have to go through the process of building confidence. Hey, let me teach you how to bite something else. Let me show you that we are a team working together. I'm here to support you in feeling safer, right? And I feel like a lot of that can be can come through really well in sport type scenarios. Yeah, I tend to agree. You certainly you can't punish that. That's why it's really when people punish a dog for looking and setting up preparing to lunge at a dog and then they punish that. That's I think that's typically full hearty. And it would typically make things worse. The dog will lock it inside deeper and then give you less warning and then you're like, oh, he does it out of nowhere. Yeah. How the ever does it, but when he does it, there's no warning. It's not and that's because they're punishing the dog for looking really at another dog. So he goes, well, I better not look. It's even dangerous to look and now you're making it worse, not better. It's usually a bit of a disaster. But on the flip side of that, some dogs end up locking it. So it was born from fear, but now it's turned into something else and they're a bit of a bully and they lock the way it makes them feel when they explode and everyone gets scared and runs away and the dog gets dragged away. And so now that they think it's a really good tactic and I like how it makes them feel, well, now we're in a different place. It may have been fear born, but the dog's taken it somewhere else now. Like bullies in life. Like most bullies in life start a bit nervous. They lash out one day, everyone acts impressed. They go, shit, that's a good tactic. They use that several more times. Then they start to really like that feeling. Oh, I thought great. It's just scared as shit out of everyone. Now they are looking for people to bully. And I think dogs do the same so just because the origins of fear doesn't mean that it hasn't become intrinsically rewarding. And then now we've got a two-pronged attack. We've got to say, you know, to allow to do that, that's a bad idea. But also, the ability is confidence at the same time and not just cancel that away. So that's why it's so complicated. Like fear, like dog reactivity and dog aggression. It's very complicated. It's not simple. And anyone thinking you can just give it tricks and everything will go well is wrong. And everyone thinking you just slap the leash on his head and choke him out. And that'll fix it is also wrong. Yeah, 100%. And I think that's a really good analogy with a kid becoming in the bully because on the flip side of that, what you could do is when that kid is feeling a bit nervous, feeling a bit out of sorts, you could take him to something like martial art or boxing, you could teach him to utilize his aggression in an effective manner and go like, hey, get in the ring with this guy who also wants to get punched in the face and beat the shit out of his other hand. And have it as a competition. And what you would probably, you would probably actually stop the kid from becoming a bully because he's like, well, I don't need to bully anyone because I know how to deal with this kind of thing. So I think that's a really good way of walking out. Absolutely. That's a really good point. No, we need to get into a big one. How often have you heard people say, my dog is protecting me and how often is they actually the case? I've heard it countless times. Countless times. This is one of those times where you say, if I had a doll up every time I heard that I'd be rich, I reckon I actually would. And I think it's basically never been the case. So when does that necessarily come from and what do you think is actually going on in the dog's head? Sorry, I interrupted you, though, but yeah. No, that's okay. Where did it come from? I don't know. People's romantic notion about dogs, probably too much movies and writing and stuff like that. And what's the dog really thinking? Well, typically, what typically we notice, the classic example. When my husband walks in, he doesn't do it. He doesn't try to bite anyone. He doesn't lunge at anyone. But when I walk, walking is very protective of me. That's a very typical case. And now, and my thoughts on that are typically that dog is just more nervous with that other person. And because they're more nervous with that other person, they feel like they're not safe and they're lunging to protect themselves. They're not protective at all of the person. They're just scared. They're more nervous with you. They're insecure with you because you're insecure because you're not confident because you're not not showing good leadership. So that's sort of typically what I've seen. I couldn't really say a single time where I'm like, no, no, the dogs definitely like rushing to your aid. I don't think that's I don't think I've ever seen it. That's not maybe maybe it doesn't happen. I'm sure sometimes it does. But I think often there's a resource guarding element. Yeah. And then mostly it's like, I'm, I'm just a bit nervous and insecure around you. And so I better take matters into my own hands. I'd rather not. I'm, yeah, scared, shitless, but I better do something because you're not going to be able to do anything. I think that's more, more than commonly the case. Yeah. I 100% I couldn't agree more. It's, it's probably I would say from what I've seen roughly a 50/50. It is, hey, you're not in control of the situation. You have no authority on me. We don't have good working relationship. I'm a bit nervous. I'm just going to blow up at anything that moves. Or it's the, you're my bitch. And if anyone comes near you, that's going to be a problem. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, changing gears a little bit. Sorry, I know that I've taken up a lot of your time and we are near the end. And I do very much appreciate you jumping up to having it checked with me. But I want to start talking a little bit about your thought and ideas on regulation in the doltrain industry. So obviously here in Victoria, where I am. So Ben is in Western Australia and Perth for those who don't know. But here in Victoria, if you do something like IGP or any form of protection sport with a dog, then that dog automatically has to be declared as a dangerous dog. Obviously, we are not allowed to use prom colors, but we are allowed to use E-colors. And then we recently had the ban of prom colors in Queensland. And now they're trying to ban prom colors in New South Wales. And from men Marie, I think you guys are allowed to use everything. You don't have any restrictions on tools or training methodologies. No, we can use anything here. So Wild West, mate. Yeah, good, good. So what are your thoughts? And I like asking other dog trainers this because I am very conflicted on it. But the idea of regulating this industry. So instead of just going down the route of banning everything, putting some legislation on how and when you can use it, like you can only buy electric colors from a certified trainer, etc, etc. Like, do you think, I guess what I'm trying to say is, what are your thoughts on regulation? Do you think it's a good thing? Do you think it's a bad thing? Is it going to lead to better trained dogs or worse trained dogs? I don't know. A lot of to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, look, that's a really tough question. And I may not be qualified to be honest. But I'm not a big fan of regulation in general. I think we're just in today's society. We're just over-regulating everything. I think it's a shame that we can't even go fishing without a license anymore. So not a huge fan of over-government regulation period. I may be a bit old-fashioned that way. And I think I look at the dog training industry and sometimes I like shit-winded regulation quick because this is a disaster. But then if you think about it, how is that more than likely going to pan out? Probably not for the better. Because who's going to do the regulate? Well, it's not going to be practical trainers who've been training dogs for many years. It's going to be some veterinary behaviourist who couldn't teach a dog to walk out a sight in a dark night. And they've got no skills at all. And no less than nothing about dog behaviour. And I'm quite critical that stupid, fricking whatever the whole that is. But they're the people that are probably going to create the regulations. There won't be actual dog trainers. Because we're not doctors. We haven't done six years at university. Like I didn't go to university on the dumbass. I just become a dog trainer. And so they're not going to get me to do any regulating or writing regulations. It'll be these veterinary behaviourists, which in the past, you know, a few months, three months, I've had about four or five, not exactly sure the number, puppies that on lock three different tops of medications from veterinary behaviourists. And now you're talking about these tools being banned. I think banning tools is never, banning things is never the way to go because that just drives things up to ground, makes people learn less about them. And I don't think it's for the better. It's definitely not for the better. And I've seen that in some military dog training applications. Great example of regulation, making animal welfare worse is years ago, in certain military, and I've got to be a little bit careful how I talk about this because I don't upset anyone. But we used to use the Keeler method of guard dog training. Have you ever heard of the Keeler method? Yes. Yeah, it's a brutal old-- So, anyone listening, I guess for anyone listening, it's a very heavily compulsory based training method that was used primarily for really strong and resilient dogs. That wouldn't easily be crushed. Yeah, so our system was based on that in the Air Force. Choke chains. And just basically ripping dogs heads off. And we used to get that screened at us. RIPPY's head off, put you back into it, hit him harder. That was all we knew. Thank God dog training is improved. And we know that's a terrible approach. And there's much better ways to do things now. Thank God for don't shoot the dog and all that stuff. And even though I'm quite critical or force-free, I still think that the advent of the power of positive reinforcement has been a great step in the right direction for animal welfare. However, dog trainings evolved since the 80s and we realised that we went too far with that. We went crazy with the force-free stuff. And now we've gone to more balanced approach. And that's the way that's the way it should be. But now we're starting to ban tools because of all the propaganda against tools. Think about this. Because they've banned the pinch collar in some states in Australia, the defence force will probably have no alternative but to get rid of the pinch collar as part of the tools. Now they've got dogs with more drive than ever. So we were getting dogs from the backyard back in those days. Just recruiting them from people's backyards. But now they're breeding dogs specifically bred to do the job, which is a way better idea. They've got way better dogs, way stronger dogs. Then the handler's a way safer. That's a way safer. It makes very good sense. It's a really good idea. But now they're probably going to have to go back to using a choke chain or a slip lead. Instead of e-collars. They probably can't use e-collars now because they're banned in some states too. So now the defence force, their hands are tied. They have to stop using e-collars because they have to travel around Australia. They can't use them in some states. So they'd better work out a way of training dogs without them period. You think the dogs are better off or worse off now because they're not using e-collars? Way worse. We're back to the killer method. And I can tell you, we could teach a dog to recall off leash from anything back in the late 90s, early 2000s. No problem. And we all were used as a leash and a choke chain. But the system of training we used was brutal. Brutal. Involved heaps and heaps and heaps of proofing using heavy corrections with choke chains. Heavy, heavy, heavy corrections with choke chains. And for sure we were injuring dogs all the time. With the advent of e-collars and bringing e-collars into the mix, we could achieve the same results with a fraction of the stress. So now we're going to regulate e-collars away and we're going to go back to choke chains, back to heavy compulsion. And it's an absolute train wreck. And this is because these, these, these outlets think, you know, banning tools is a good idea. Now think about that. The average pet owner, I want to have my dog off leash and take him for a big walk in the bush and let him off leash and go nuts. Why wouldn't you? What a great life for a dog to have. But there might be kangaroos. I want to teach him to come back and not go and chase kangaroos. We already know the force free approach won't work with that. Forget it. You'll be managing him forever. And I don't even care if some force free guy goes, "Look at my dog, recalling from a rabbit." That's great. You have one dog that you trained five million times to take a treat and suppress him so much that he actually did want to chase the rabbit and came back. And that's wonderful, but that's not a real thing for dogs to high prey drive and for many dogs and for many people. So what are people going to do? Well, they're either going to go back to using choke chains, heavy compulsion, or dogs will never be off the lead. How is that a good step for animal welfare? It's not. It's a disaster. So I think we need regulation, but I don't think we have the capacity to have the right people do the regulation. So therefore I'm very, very scared of things being regulated. That's what we do. That's the order we are standing at the moment. Yeah. Fair enough. And look, this is a question that I do ask a lot of treatments because I agree with you that who is going to regulate? It is going to be veteran herbivorous. It is going to be the RSPCA and everything's going to disappear and dogs are going to start being murdered in the tens of thousands because you can't say no to your dog anymore. And I guess, you know, one of the my thinking is if it was regulated, so if electric collars were regulated on a national basis, say here in Australia, it would be harder to ban them because they are kind of in a system where we can, like you have to follow certain rules, you have to work with particular trainers, you have to have education, that kind of stuff. So all of that would probably help reduce misuse, but it would also make them harder to get banned in the future, which is kind of where my thinking is sitting a little bit. But one of the things that you talked about as well is how banning doesn't work. We do know for a fact that after e-colors were banned in, I think it was Germany or Netherlands I can't remember, but one of the countries. And in the following years after that, sales to that country of electric collars increased on average 30 to 40% every single year. So now what's happening is the tool hat. Yeah, so these are numbers from e-colour technologies actually. I think that we are showing more of the same thing. Yeah, probably more of Germany, because I think that was about Chinese gold since they banned e-colours. But so now what's happening is the use of them is not going down. It's in fact going up. And more likely than not, abuse is increasing because a lot of trainers will be staying awake because they were getting fines, a back getting dog abuse allegations put out against them. And so most likely more dogs are being hurt by the fact that we said you can use these tools. So now more of them abuse by them, which is. Yeah, yeah. It's such a good conversation. But no, I think it's a. Yeah, sorry. In line with that one thing is it's it and when you ban them like like people that use these tools like electric colours is a great example. Most people that we we promote electric colours a lot here because I believe that pets really deserve off least freedom. And I believe the most stress free way of creating that is by training with an e-colour. So that's why we we promote them a lot here. And I've been to a lot of seminars 15 years ago for the sport. This is a really great example of how banning e-colours is not improving animal welfare. I've been a lot of seminars 15 years ago where they used e-colours. And if you use a e-colour for an out and you know what you're doing and you do it right, often a Nick here a Nick there at the right level at the right time when the dogs in the right mood is all you need. And the doctor will I better out when I'm told to out. Now I've been to a couple of seminars recently and because the state has been e-colours they're not using e-colours and what do I see dogs being choked off sleeves with slip lead. Those dogs aren't better off. They're way worse off now. That's way worse. It's not better. But and they train people. And people aren't. It's worse and people aren't batting in an oily. They're just like this is how it's done now. And I'm like what the hell are we doing here? And we're lucky in Perth we don't we can still use e-colours. So we're not doing that stuff. So I'm watching these very harsh corrections with slip leads and I'm like whoa man that's how we were doing it 20 years ago before we started realizing that e-colours make it much less stressful. And it's not a step in the right direction. It's a step in the wrong. It's backwards. We're going backwards. But that's really you know. So I think imagine if they did regulate it and it went down the path that you are hoping that would be great but I fear it won't. Yeah no that's the problem isn't it? And it's you know we all want to live in a fairy land of unicorns and brain boyfarts and all that but it life just doesn't happen that way unfortunately life is shit and then you die. Right. It's like it's interesting when you look at the police dog demos at crafts. Have you ever seen those ones at crafts? The UK police dogs. They used to do multiple attacks. Let go and read call emergency read calls. And now what do they do? Dog's dogs carrying off spitesuit jackets because they can't out them because and they're they're they're the selling point for force free dog training. That's what everyone goes. Oh but they use force free training in the UK. Do they? Do they? What's happening behind closed doors and think about the how powerful that example is crafts they're going to send their best teams to crafts. They're going to send their best team. Their best team did an out their best team carried the suit to the car in the middle of crafts in a demo in front of thousands and thousands of people. It's not working as it just doesn't. And I do. It's not very well. Yeah. No, exactly. And look, over someone who's not into sports at all, I do know for a fact that carrying a sleeve or a suit off the field is probably the biggest failure you can possibly do. It's not ideal for police don't that's for sure. It's not ideal. All right. All right. Man, I have taken up a lot of your time, but I am loving this conversation. Now, I have started doing this thing at kind of towards the end of my chat with people that I call Reddit is retarded. Now for those people who don't know, Reddit is probably the best website ever created it. Bung Man, there is a lot of nonsense on there. And especially when it comes to dogs and dog training. And so basically what I've started doing is I've started finding things on Reddit that I think is retarded in relation to dog training. And I want to ask actual dog trainers like yourself, how you would approach this and what you think of the advice given. So are you ready for this one? I'm ready. I can't wait. So this is under our puppy 101. So this is the expert puppy racing Reddit. Hi all. Actually, sorry, I should say the headline is in all caps, but inhibition is a scam. So that's where we're starting. Right. Hi, my puppy. My puppy just turned one last month. We go in May of last year. We know she was going to be a tough puppy. Like our pup is a blue healer mutt and we knew we were struggling with some biting. We have tried almost all methods of bite inhibition and nothing has worked. We have tried Yelpin crying saying out when she bites, use a no bark beeper, no shock, just the noise, putting her in time out, putting ourselves in time out using treats to distract her. Having her nose, it makes her bite more. We will not try abuse or shock methods. I was wondering if maybe she kept biting because she was bored. However, she does this when she has been thoroughly taken care of, played with, etc. She mostly directs her biting to me, her owner and my mom. I made a complete loss at what to do. Okay. Top question or top reply to this is, is she getting enough sleep? Biting can be a side effect of tiredness. We've got another one. This is my favorite. The other advice for stopping this is socialization with other bitypups. So Mr Ben Gertz. What are your thoughts on Reddit being retarded? Oh man. That's a bad one. But that's a bad one. But that's one that I actually have people daily that have got a 12, 18 month old dog that has gone down this path almost to the teeth. I see it almost daily. It's really, really, really bad. Really bad. But that's what they're doing. OK, what does Google tell me? Say, "Hour" and turn my back. Redirect to a toy. Say, "Skatter" and throw food on the ground. And it's just nonsensical. And my dad's not a dog trainer. And he never should be. But he's in his 60s now. I think he might have been in his early 70s. And 50 years ago, if the dog bit him, he gave it a correction. The dog got in trouble. The dog knew I better not bite him. And that was it. And I think Ockham's razor and trusting your instincts is the way to go. And no one's instincts tells them if the dog bites me, I should say, "Hour" and turn my back. Or I should lock myself in a bedroom. That's just-- that's retarded. Or squealing and running into myself to pray. To pray. Imagine squealing at a melon light that's biting you. What is it? Melan light. The melon light's going to go best day ever. Yeah, yeah. I actually did that with my boy Agno when he was a puppy, because I'm like, I need to see what happens if I squeal and pull away when he bites me. And his eyes turned black, like he was like a devil possessed in, and he'd latch onto me with every bit of four study at. And I still have scars from it. So yeah, that was fun. But OK. Interesting little fours. That sums up the fours. Advice doesn't it? Thumbs up perfectly. You just make the most of the most of the most of the most. Absolutely. All right. Mr. Ben Geritz of Caisen, Ken, I think you're so much for chopping on, Mewri. Just to finish up, do you have any closing thoughts or advice that you would give to dog owners, dog training students or other dog trainers? Is there anything you want to get off your heart? That they use equal and prove the dog training industry general. Go for it. Yeah. Yeah. For dog trainers-- and again, maybe-- I'm not qualified to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway-- for dog trainers, I think maybe criticized other dog trainers less and trained dogs more. And if you're a dog trainer, if you really want to test your skills as a dog trainer, find some independent standard to train a dog too, and then enter some sort of competition where you're assessed independently by someone else. And your skills now are assessed with no ability to use a competing motivator, with the daughter control, the competing motivators, and with no tools on your dog. Your dog's off leash, and you're being assessed to a standard. So if you're not doing that, if you're not getting assessed, and you haven't trained a dog to a standard to a good level and being assessed independently, well, I don't-- I would argue your skills really haven't been put on show yet. They haven't been tested yet. Because in InstaVideos, we can all make an InstaVideo. We do enough takes, and we've got the ball in our pocket. And there's nothing there. And the dog looks sexy and wonderful. And we're-- that's not dog training. That's-- that's easy. Anyone can do that. That's easy. But not anyone can be assessed off leash to an independent standard in a competition, put yourself out there. So that would be my advice to young dog trainers coming up in this industry. Prove your worth. Train more dogs, criticize. Other dog trainers less. Cool. I like it. I feel a little bit stabbed in the back because obviously I'm in the competition or sports room. Discuss I find it boring, not because I don't think I can do it. But yeah, it doesn't have to be a dog sport. It could be anything. There's so many things you can do with dogs out there. But I do agree, though. Like sports are how you assess who are the best. So that's-- I 100% agree. I just-- I am aggressively forward by sports, which is why I don't do it. Awesome. All right. Ben, how do people find you if they want to work with you, if they want to hear from you, social media? Tell us everything. I will drop that in the show notes as well, of course. But yeah, tell people how they can find out about you. OK, we are Kaisen K9. So that's our website, kaisenk9.com. Look us up. Obviously, we've got social media. We've got Facebook and Instagram. They're both Kaisen K9. And we are about to go around Australia delivering our dog reactivity seminar. So that's in the pipeline. So if anyone wants to get on board with that and host us for a seminar, getting contact with us because we're about to do our new dog reactivity seminar, take it around Australia. And I think we've got a bit of a different approach to most with it. And it is nuanced. We're not just throwing leads on dogs' heads and beating them up. But we're also not just throwing treats at them and hoping one day in 20 years' time, the dogs' like so old and fat. He doesn't want to do it. We really want to help people read but it's a dog. And I think the way we do it is, could help lots and lots and lots of people with their dog. So if you're a dog trainer, I think you'd really want to learn this style and this system. And I think it can really be hugely beneficial. So I really believe in it. So there's that. So jump on our website, get in contact with us and we can come out to you. Well, that is something I might be interested in maybe learning more about or even hosting. So I might get back in touch with you on that. But again, Mr Ben, Gert of GuysCanine, I know you're a very busy guy. And thank you so much for taking nearly two hours to talk to me about all this kind of stuff. I think it's super important. And especially hearing from people like yourself who have such a big presence in the dog training industry and so much experience. So I really do appreciate all your time. My pleasure, mate. Thanks very much for having me again. And it was good chatting to you. So I'm drawing. Awesome. Thanks. Exactly the same for me. So now to anyone listening, as you all know, the last thing I tell you at every podcast is go fucking train your dog. Goodbye. Thank you for tuning into another episode of Beastly Talks. I hope you found that interesting and that you'll join me for the next one as well. If you liked this podcast, please take a moment to rate and review it so that more people can hear about it. Or if you think this particular episode would benefit a family member, friend or colleague, be sure to share it with them directly. You can follow me on social media at Viking Dog Trainer on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Thank you for your support and keep training your dog. (upbeat music)