The transcript discusses patience in dog training, introduced by a guest who transitions from psychology to the dog industry. The conversation highlights that patience involves managing discomfort, not feeling good. Impatience often arises when owners anthropomorphize dogs, expecting them to understand cues without proper foundation. The hosts stress the importance of mastering basics, as advanced skills stem from solid fundamentals. Personal examples, like a BJJ coach emphasizing patience, illustrate how frustration can hinder progress. The guest notes that society undervalues patience, which combines skills like delayed gratification and impulse control. In dog training, impatience leads to reactive, unwise decisions, whereas patience allows for thoughtful action. The discussion encourages self-awareness to avoid projecting stress onto dogs, promoting a stoic acceptance of discomfort. Ultimately, patience is framed as a virtue that enhances both human and canine learning, requiring practice in personal impulse control to foster better training outcomes.
What's happening in the K9 industry? For all the latest news, views and expert opinions, stay right here for the K9 paradigm. You'll hear from industry leaders, experts, giants of the industry, learned colleagues, moveers and shakers, and the odd, randy guest. Get the latest insights and expert advice from both here and abroad from the people in the know. Now, here are your hosts, Glenn Cook and Pat Stewart, and I'm lofty Fulton, and I'm out of here. - Hey, Glenn. - Yes. The figure out why Jason has a website. Why is that? It's not exactly the easiest bloke to talk to. Well, let's try that. (phone ringing) Hello. Can I speak to Jason Balfehrd, Ferman, please? What are you doing here? Felt hurt! (laughing) Well, you heard it here, folks. That's the kind of treatment you'll get if you actually dial Jason from Onjik Dog Quip. So what you need to do if you want any leashes, tugs, harnesses, balls, reward toys, canine fitness and conditioning equipment, herm springer things, anything like that, head to ironswik Dog Quip.com. That's E-I-N-C-W-E-C-K.com because you do not want to have to talk to this guy. (laughing) - Plan, what are you doing? - I'm enjoying a delicious treat from Bright Spites. - The dog training treats? - The same. - I've heard that Bright Spites are not just healthy and nutritious for dogs, but they're so delicious, they're actually a very motivational form of training. - They are indeed. We've tested and tried them on site, and they work just great. - Well, how did you get a hold of those? Did you purchase them off of a website? I went to dog squad canine-services.com. - dot A U. - That's where people should go to get themselves some Bright Spites, healthy, nutritious, but also highly motivational dog training treats. Get them in your dog, y'all. (upbeat music) - Welcome back to the canine paradigm. I'm your host Patch Stewart. I'm joined in studio today by my co-host Glen Cook, and special treat. We have back in the studio for, I don't know, maybe the 10th time, birdie. - Hi. - Hello, everybody. I wanted to say good morning. (laughs) - What's our morning? - Yeah, it's our morning. - Hello, everybody. - You can say what we want. How many times is this that you're on? - Oh. - Half a dozen, I think. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Some like. - Yeah. - Not enough according to our listeners. - I love being on here, and I should maybe tell you this. I have big change ahead. So, from next year on, I will be no longer a psychologist with a practice on going to do dog stuff. So, I will have more time for the dog industry. - That's pretty cool. That's exciting. - Thank you. - And can you tell us about what you're actually gonna be doing? - So, after the ICP conference, which was super cool, like I really loved it, I got a lot of feedback that people interested in burnout, to burn up prevention and resilience. So, I think I'm gonna do a lot around that. A lot of online tools and workshops and, yep. - Cool. So, watch this space, everybody. - Yes, or follow my page, or go on Facebook and like my page. - Tell us about your page. Pause in life on Facebook or? - And it's P-A-W-S. Pause in life. - And dog pause. - Yep. Are you still gonna keep pause in life as P-A-U-S-E? - Yeah, but it will be a bit dormant for a while, just so I like options in life. - 'Cause that's the human practice, right? - Yes, the human practice and also the moving. So, who knows, maybe I get bored again. - Yep. So, pause in life, everybody go check it out. Speaking of pages, before we get going, we have something that we are contractually obligated to do. - Mr. Anderson. (laughing) So, Dylan Anderson of Get Barced actually got a canine paradigm tattoo. - Yeah, that was amazing, wasn't it? We put the call out and sort of goaded people into it and he goes, "Yeah, fuck yeah, I'm doing it." And next minute, he goes off and gets one done, right? And he's shined. - It looks amazing too. - It looks awesome. - It looks really good. - Yeah, it does look cool. - All right, so now I want to tell you all about Get Barced. - Yeah, okay. - Go and Get Barced. - From their website, at Get Barced, we offer a wide range of pet services from dog walking, pet photography and pet taxi. We have a large selection of options available to suit everybody's needs. Our dog walkers are fully insured and have a police clearance. - Wow. - Yeah, so they guess they won't steal your stuff when they come in. - No, they won't nick off the road today. - Into a van with your dog, like, P2D. - It seems as though. (laughing) - I'm a pilot. He seems to sell food on this website, accessories, bowls, toys, clothing. There's everything you could probably want in the dog industry. If you haven't already got it from Jason, head over to Get Barced. These guys are in Perth in Western Australia. - And ask to see a logo on each in. - Yeah, that's right. - It's Get Barced.net.au, Dylan Anderson. Congratulations. - Good on you, Dylan. - Well done, mate. Thanks for supporting the cause. - I love a tattoo on a whim. - Yep. - I've got a few of my own. - Yeah, yeah. - That's how he mad. That's how I talked to you the first time because I was sitting beside you at a workshop. I'm like, so I'm like, what's all of this mess about? (laughing) - It looks like a two year old has tattooed you. - But it's very cool. - I laughed the other day at your workshop how someone said, did Jane do those tattoos? - Yeah. - Like, just, I'm thinking, does that look like a Jane Stewart tattoo? Like, maybe if she was drunken on acid or something like that? - I think a lot of people probably haven't seen and I should post the photo of them. But it's funny because they look terrible, but they're the only tattoos I have that have a real meaning to me. They're important to me. - Yeah, I've regretted asking that question because I'm like, oh, that's actually really beautiful. Meaningful, I'm so sorry. (laughing) - But I get some stick. I remember one time being in a client's house, they were like, very wealthy people in a very nice house and we were talking about how it's going to be coming and going to train the dog and they're giving me keys to the house. And at the time, I'd been doing a lot of bike work and I had these scabs all over the insides of my arm. And I see this guy I'm sitting on his couch, he looks at me and he sees what it looks like track marks on my arm and then he looks down and sees the horrible stick men tattoos on my legs. And I was like, I could see it taking over his head and I said, we should probably address some. (laughing) - It's a bit funny. - I'm not a junkie, but please still give me the keys to your house and trust me with your dog. But you know who you can trust with your dog? - Dylan Anderson's. - Dylan Anderson's walkers who have police checks. - That's right. - They might, he might have some crazy ass tattoos, but it's got a police check saying that he's a police check. - So get barked.net.au. - That's it. - All right, that's enough. Carry on. So what are we talking about today, Bernie? - We're gonna talk about patients. - Okay, cool. - Not like patients as in patients? - Yes, not as in patients in the hospital. (laughing) I thought you were gonna tell us a bunch of stories. Let me tell you about this patient. Now that I'm not in the industry anymore. - Now that I'm quitting, he's like confidentiality. (laughing) - Oh my God, I think that will be worth it. - No man, no. - And everybody else is doing it. - Yes. (laughing) - We can go through the Facebook page, pick some names. Do you know this person? Tell us what you know about them. Fuck, confidential. - Can you please start putting ideas into people? (laughing) - Well, what am I about? - Let me tell you about a chronic masturbator called Pat. (laughing) - Shit. (laughing) - I'm dizzy, sir. - Sorry, sir. All right, carry on. - You know, I'm lost a little bit, but the reason I picked this topic is because I think most people would become much better if they were doctors or dog owners, if they wouldn't know when they're struggling with patients. We just had a great opportunity to attend Pat seminar on a week and we talked a lot about consistency markers and how the human has such a big impact on assessing the situation. And I sat there and I'm like, oh man, but if a person actually doesn't assess their own stress levels or their patients, they can really make quite big mistakes. I think you brought up a couple of examples how people were just amping up a lot in their training and actually humped their dog in a long run because they didn't have themselves in check. So, and I also know that with my dog Luna, a lot of buttons got pushed during training that for me trigger buttons to lose my patients and therefore I sometimes wasn't the best dog owner in that situation and I didn't make good judgment calls in my training. So I just thought that might be an interesting topic and also it's before Christmas, people are really stressed at the moment. So I'm like, maybe you should talk about it. - Yeah. - Yeah, it's a good topic. I've most likely mentioned it before but since I've been training with BJJ, my coach, Marcos, he constantly walks around the room telling all the white belts to be patient, all the time, but the high belts as well. Like it's one of the issues that most of us have there is that we get there and we get so frustrated that you don't know anything and you're lying on the ground and you're just trying to do ridiculous things and you become very frustrated, you become agitated and you start doing like unhelpful things to your practice. Like when he shows your foundation skill, you don't do it anymore because you're just working on trying to get this person off you and trying to win the round. And I mean, there's nothing at stake. There's no, there's no award, there's no ribbon, there's no trophy or anything like that. It's just you and the person you're rolling with. And when he's sitting, and you're basically blowing your lungs out while you're doing it, so you've got no energy completely fatigued and every now and then you can feel him come over and tap you with his foot and you'll just say, "Hey patient, be patient." You know, you could have patience and he keeps saying it as a mantra as he's walking around the room, "Patience, I hear him all the time, I actually love it." It sets me back in a nice cathartic mood when I hear him saying it. And then you start thinking, "Okay, I do, I have to breathe now, I have to think about this a little bit more." And then you start realizing, now I've got options, now that I'm starting to get there.
be patient. So yeah, it's a good thing. Do you know Bertie, the old bull young bull story? Not having grown up in English speaking. I wonder if that made it to Austria. I only know Ferdinand to bull. Yeah, so it's better. There's a story of patience and it gets around a bit, but one of my really good friends when I was in the army, he was a, his exceptional sort of soldier and became a team commander very early. And he had a much older way more experience to IC. And so there's a really good match because I really good together. So he was really, he was in charge, but his, his second in command was way more experienced than him. And he used to always call, they used to call each other the bull, both of them. And he was the young bull and the other guy was the old bull, right? Because the story is there's these two bulls standing on top of a hill, right? And the young bull and the old bull. And the young bull looks to the old bull and they're looking out over the field of all the cows. The young bull looks to the old bull and says, you know what we should do? We should run down there and fuck one of those cows. And the young, the old bull looks at him and he says, we could do that or we could walk down there and fuck them all. And it's a story of patience. Why make was the young bull and he was always like, let's go do this, let's go do this. And the old bull will be like, we'll do all that, but we'll wait until the time is right and we'll do it carefully. Yes, because I think patience is often associated with wisdom, you know, like you, you, you, you bring that a really wise side in you. And I think it's also something that society at the moment doesn't appreciate so much because I do believe that patience in the end is a combination of skills. It's not just one skill. It's like, for example, delayed gratification in pulse control, all these kind of things bring you to the peak of patience if you're good at it. But to me, actually, I had to look up in addiction and in Cambridge dictionary what patience means because I was a bit lost because there's so many ideas what patience really is. Do you want to hear the definition? Yes, please. All right. So patience is the ability to wait or to continue doing something despite difficulties or to suffer without complaining or becoming annoyed. So it's, you're actually discomfort when you have to be patient. It's not a state where you feel great about it. Okay. So for me, that was quite a turning point when I realized, hey, to be patient doesn't mean you feel great. To be patient is needed when you're actually maybe a tad uncomfortable or when you're restless or when you want to do something. And I think that's really important to acknowledge that patience means that you can handle discomfort. Can you read that again? Yep. Patience is the ability to wait or to continue doing something despite difficulties or to suffer without complaining or becoming annoyed. I'm great at vinging, but that's not patience apparently. Yeah. So I think it's that stoic attitude to what's okay. I can write this out and I'm quite accepting of the discomfort, but I don't amp it up. I maybe keep myself in check or maybe control my emotions. I can accept them. I can acknowledge them, but I don't make it worse. I maybe don't verbalize it. I don't maybe share it without a people or reflect on it because I think very often when we are inpatient, we project to other people or we steer other people up, you know, like when I'm inpatient, very often my husband Dan gets the brand of it. And I think in dog training, very often a dog cops it. Or often the not. Yeah. That's most common. And I think that anybody whose own dog would have experienced that on more than one occasion where you're trying to do something with the dog, you have expectations that the dog understands what you want where it completely doesn't. You know, there's absolute no recognition of what you're trying to do. But you're suggesting that the dog is somewhat anthropomorphized what you're trying to do. And this is the problem with anthropomorphism is that and that creates most of the impatience that people have is that they think, well, you should get me because you learned how to do this. Like you learned skill A, why don't you pick up skill B? And the dog is clearly lacking understanding of it in any way that you're trying to get it across. So the problem being is that then you'll say, okay, well, I've taught you this. You should know this. And then people start laying into the dog over it. And it's a it's a common problem around the world. It is. And I am, I don't know if you're aware of this, but a while back, I tried to do an online challenge for people work on their dogs impulse control and they learn to control their own reactions. And it was a big flop. No one was interested because it doesn't feel great. It doesn't make you feel good. But with our dog, we demand to work on this downstairs day or whatever. But when I'm like, you have to sit on that pillow, preferably learning to not buy into your thoughts and watch your breathing, they're like, I don't like it. I'm like, well, you make your dog do it all the time. And you have a very high criteria, you know, like the dog gets so many distractions thrown around and he just have to watch and is not allowed to react. But if I would put a mosquito in a room with you, you would be distracted. So I think it's quite interesting that we have quite a high expectation of our dogs that day. I don't know if impulse control is patience, but it looks similar to me. Yeah, I think so. Do you think so? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And I think, you know, in PSA, dogs have to be extremely patient despite genetically, maybe not liking it very much. Yeah. So I think it's quite impressive. And I also think PSA brings out a lot of patients in the dog going, if you want to be really successful because they have to ease the basics. Yeah. Well, as soon as you're explaining the definition of patient, that's why I asked you to go get on it. It's kind of a theme at the moment in my life and in the training and everything I'm teaching is trying to get people as into fundamentals as I am. And that's where people's patients gets tested when when they want to hear the the hear to hear the last 5% of what I have to say. And they don't realize that the last 5% is the first 5%. It's the same thing. It's like the fundamentals, the basics, getting that perfect, absolutely perfect. So the other stuff is really easy. And that's what I have a very hard time trying to explain to people to have the patients to develop the fundamentals and not just rush and try and teach the more advanced concepts to your dog in isolation is let the advanced concepts be a step from the basic concepts. Right. So you've got to develop all the basics, the absolute foundation exercises and then go forward to it. And at the moment, I'm a I feel like I'm a little bit of a one trick pony like it's all I'm talking about it. But I feel like it's it's I'm just noticing it being more and more important. But I think there is this expectation why you do certain things. So for instance, if you have to expectation that doctorine is there to be a hobby that's always fun, you're going to skip those skills of mastery because you go like, well, patient teaching myself patients is not fun. And very often there is, you know, when we show signs of impatience, there's signs of our ego being triggered or our expectations that this is supposed to be a joyful activity. Like when I got a dog, I thought my dog's going to bring a lot of joy to my life, which he has, but there are also moments where you are not enjoying this. Right. Like I think that and I'm very honest about this and I know my dog didn't enjoy me a lot of the time either because we had to learn to be a team and for us, it's the basics very often. And I'm a type of person I can be quite impatient. I'm naturally impatient. That's why I have to so much effort into meditating in all of that because in my job, I need to be non-reactive. If my stress levels go up, I will be reactive, which is not indicative of being a good therapist. So I have to really learn just to watch what's happening around me and just be still. And then really going to my wisdom part where I know what type of action is needed, not my first knee-jerk reaction, but a really good reaction. And I think that's really important to know that the reason why you should practice your personal impulse control is so that you can apply a position or behavior based on wisdom, not just on reaction. They're very different things because only wisdom will tell you when you actually shouldn't be patient. Like, you know, when the black wolf needs to come out, but you need to have be taken a step back to know like, is my ego just parking up? Is it in my previous past? Is it a story or tell myself why do I do it? And only if you have to control the ability to decide and analyze, you can help yourself better. It's a lot of combination of virtues, isn't it? Yeah, I think it's quite a difficult skill because it's so big. It's an interesting talking about this. I was teaching Ladybug a skill a while ago. I was sitting in the office doing it. This was over, you know, days, weeks and months of doing it. And Narell was watching me doing it and she was saying, you know, like she said, this is really frustrating to watch. Why don't you just do this and why don't you just do that? And I said, I could, but I'd rather her learn it long term than me just cheat through the experience. I wanted to actually understand how to do it herself. And I said, and therefore I have to be patient. And I have to just wait it out for her to do it. And I said, she'll do it. And I said, yeah, I agree. It's very frustrating to watch. And I said, the 20-year-old me wouldn't have suffered through this. And I said, but the, you know, the 40-year-old me will sit there and say, I'm going to, you know, I'm just going to wait this out. And it was, it was as much learning for me as it was the dog. And that was the important part of it is that I needed something to occupy my time and meditate on and think about things a little bit more systematically. So yeah, I could have cheated my way through it. But I think the punchline is only funny when you understand the rest of the joke. So that's kind of what I was looking at doing is, you know, Pat touched on that before, is you're trying to race to the end.
And you know, if you hear the punchline and you don't understand the rest of the joke, it's never been explained to you. It's not funny. You know, you don't really get what people are all laughing at or what the. That's me telling a joke. My family teases me. I always go to the punchline and had. Yeah, but the experience of the joke is telling the whole story and then getting to the punchline, then it makes sense. And that's where you get your enjoyment of it from. And that's the same thing when I watch people do skills building with their dog is that they understand the story from the start to the finish. You know, like they play that middle part out as well, that really does drag and it drops in the middle from time to time. There's plenty of times where I've been watching people training their dogs. It doesn't matter who they are, you know, whether they've been doing Napo pole or NDTF or whatever it is. I always remind them, if you're having a bad day and this isn't going well for you, it's to stop. You know, take the dog away, put the dog outside, go and have a glass of wine or a beer or meditate or go for a walk. Come back to it later where you're clear in your head and you're feeling better about the situation because trying to battle through that, the dog will lose that battle. You know, like you'll win the dog will lose and that's not the idea of it. This is a, this is a team game, not a one outdo as the other. Yeah, and I think that's very often the consequence of being impatient is that your relationship takes a toll. Yes. Right. I think that's very often the case and it just, I just wonder if that story after all and the young ball can be applied to one person, you know, that you have in the past, you maybe had a young ball, but no, you haven't matured and no, you have an old ball, especially in similar situations. So I just, I just think that patience is something that we really have to look at in regards to our dogs because I think you can only truly unlock your potential with your dog if you also know your own science when you're impatient. Yeah. Because I think nothing good comes from it. But before we go on with that, kind of just give a practical example of what you were saying, then. So I was thinking of it because I know the behavior you're talking about, ladybug, but with my own dogs, I wanted to teach them to balance on a bozo ball like two different balls with front legs, back legs, right? And I decided with one, I was going to do it slow and properly and the other, I was just doing it from a fitness perspective. Yeah. Right. So I just want you on there. I can get that dog on the Bosu balls and she gets the benefit of the balancing right. But in order for her to get on there the conditions have to be exactly the same. Yeah right. They have to be like she Understands it only she understands as an isolated behavior in that one context to do one thing with RAMio just Like freesheaped it and it took you know two weeks probably to get him doing exactly the time it takes yeah It takes time maybe two weeks to get him doing the exact same behavior that I had Valerie doing in literally in a minute Yeah, just blew it a straight on to it, but the end result is when I tell him to get on the Bosu ball He'll find the Bosu ball even if it's hidden in the garage and pull it out and get on it for her They have to be in the exact same spot. Yep. I have to like the conditions have to be perfect It's an isolated behavior It wasn't about patients for me. It was an experiment But it's an example of it if you'd want to just rush and show no patients and just get it done you It can feel like you get to the end. Yeah, but you're not really you know They don't understand it the way you want it. Yeah You're in a very isolated position. Yeah, and I like my especially again this relates to everything I'm doing the moment and the patreon episode that we just put out on that that road map is that what I want is for my dog to understand If I ask my dog to do something and he genuinely is confused I want him to have kind of a road map or like bread crumbs back to how he got there Yeah, so it's like okay I don't know exactly what you want But here's something approximating what you want and it's oftentimes as close enough Yeah, but there has to be those steps involved the patients to teach it that way Yeah, rather than just getting it done in isolation. Yeah, they understood the link in the chain. Yeah, so they understand they have a Intimate knowledge of how those links form the chain. Yeah, and it's I think for us having the patients to Bother with the foundation so that you you have it something to fall back on if if the finished product goes bad. Yep. Yeah I'm just just reminds me of one of my favorite sayings by a great E.J His name is John Cavitz in he's one of the most influential people in mindfulness and Mindfulness essentially is learn not to react learn to observe and not react and He says that patients is a form of wisdom It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time so it's very Anteigo Mm-hmm. It's very much you have to surrender to a degree here and you just have to commit to the process Yeah, you have to fight yourself. Yeah, there's a lot of times it's it's a very much an internal battle to hold back and not Act on that impulse as you were saying before. I mean I found it many times not just in BJJ or dog training, but just in personal life like you can feel yourself like wanting to surge ahead and You know using your old bull young bull influences like if you look at that yourself You kind of think to yourself. Well, this could be somewhat destructive if I act on the way I want to feel now whereas I've I've sit back and I'm a little bit more analytical. I can Survey it a little bit better and get a little bit more insight like I can use peripheral vision rather than just Binocular vision and see the whole thing rather than just one aspect of it Yeah, and I think it's also very often when you are stressed or you lose your patience all of a sudden this time component is much stronger and intense and it actually needs to be Mm-hmm like you there's some attribution in your mind It goes like this is really fucking important right now the consequences are so bad, but most of the time they're not You benefit from stepping away most of the time. Yeah But I think there is a lot in especially with dog training and the reason why I was very impatient in the past is I think there was a lot of What do I to think about me if I don't achieve this discreetly or you know How we had an entity after saying not one more time no more one more time? Yeah, yeah, and I think that is so against eager because you're just hitting that You know the time when it rents really well and you go like oh, I want to do it again But no, that's impatient in that moment. You know you have a better outcome leaving it at that very often Yeah, I think that was one of the the reason it stayed with me so long It's one of the best things that we ever used to Changes the mantra because so many dogs got fucked up because of that one more time and that you know That's just like a patience is because people and I get it because I mean jeez I've done this myself and at the mercy of the dog as well And this is where you just think to yourself the behavior was so good if I only just do it one more time and then if you're lucky enough To stretch it at one more time you think oh, I've just done it one more time maybe one more time But the problem is is that you keep doing it one more time until you break the back of it Do you know what I think that is? Why is that it's dopamine jackpot? So yeah, yeah, it's a good point So when you're on a consistent reward schedule you like talk about supposed experiment the light the world yeah The light the work the reinforcer the dopamine comes at asking at the light right? Yeah, now if we superimpose that over the the light is you giving the dog the command like ask you having the decision I'm gonna put the dog through the behavior the dog does it your reinforcer is the dog completing the behavior successfully Not and so then your dog means by it comes every time you ask the dog to perform the behavior makes sense So then what happens is when you when people go for the one more time It's never a problem of one more time when the dog does it great. That's fine But what happens is inevitably you ask the dog to do something one more time He doesn't do it But what do we know from dopamine jackpot is goes higher because you Will you were not reinforced you're into an intermittent reinforcement schedule which means next time you ask the dog to do something Your dopamine will be doubled because it didn't work last time you didn't get the reinforcer of the dog completing the behavior And so you then as the trainer have put yourself onto an intermittent reinforcement schedule and the reinforcement is whether the dog will do it or not and that's why people get caught in the loop of Chasing the one more time one more time one more time trying to get the dog to do it Yeah, and and when the dog does it they're satiated and they they stop right but it's the the less frequently the dog performs You know, maybe I'm drawing a long bow on this but I don't think so because it's observable right you see Sounds tangible when everything's going good. They're like yeah, this is good This is good and then when it's going bad That's when they start obsessively doing it the same way that like the you know the dopamine jackpot studies about gambling and so that's What's happening with the person they're gambling as to whether their dogs can I perform the behavior or not and they go over and over and over and above and That's that I think and this is why I get so obsessed with when I'm teaching Understanding the foundation principles of it because if you understand dopamine jackpot in the variable Reinforcement schedule it's fine to understand that in relation to how you control it on the dog But then you have to be able to take a step away from it and go fuck I'm doing it to myself like this is why I'm performing these This is why I'm chasing it the reason I am obsessively putting the dog through this behavior Even though I know it's not gonna fucking work Right even though I know there's very little chance of it coming off is because not because I'm trying to get it done Because I'm chasing the dopamine of asking for it and the possibility of it getting done and then being comfortable with your own internal quitting signal Yeah, yeah Because the dog is such an extension of yourself I think that's when discipline comes in right and I think that's with patients very often discipline is the thing Where you have to go like well, it's not about what feels good right now It's just do we have enough capacity to step away and go like what needs to be done? Mm-hmm, and that is what did you call it one time with Sapolsky in his book explains like where you're all your urges and desires push you towards one thing But you have the capacity to
control them. You said at one time here and we've talked about it before, but that's the function of that in training where you can go like I think it's a case there where you then have to your cognitive mind has to then go no I am being influenced by this the dopamine jackpot cycle I choose to break it rather than just like getting caught up and caught up and spooling up in it and it really is outside your control then you biologically Oh yes, no yeah There is a section of the brain. It's like a part of the cerebral cortex and I can't remember the actual name I should remember it but I need to read listen to that part But yeah, it's the part of the brain that determines grit. Yeah, yeah, where you that's it right where you then go shit And and that's why being educated on this stuff to the point where you can Identify it in yourself because we see it in dogs when we go. Yeah, look at we watch a dog spooling up after a series of commands We go look at him with surging the dopamine and then you need to be also out of the likes And I guess this is the function of losing ego is step away from yourself and then go fuck I'm doing the same thing to myself Unknowingly and choose to break the cycle of it, right? Like okay, I'm cutting myself off from that dopamine I guess that's why and this is probably a long shot as well I guess this is why socrates and great philosophers who are patient people and who are quite wise in their Assessment of human nature. It was socrates who stated know that itself You know, and that's one thing that I try and remind people a lot of the time as well is it's one thing to know Thyself but when you're dealing with another species you have to know that species as well You know and often say to people when we're coaching is know that dog don't just go through the motions Understand what you're dealing with because all of this matters, you know This is where we we the foundation start slipping away from us because we're in tune with ourselves Or if we're in tune with ourselves and we're not with a dog. We're out of sync. Yeah And I'm always finding it so fascinating because we in psychology I know a lot about behavior but we frame it very differently than the dog industry does so for instance for me I think it's also really important to know what type of internal dialogue that does that person have in that moment when they choose to ignore to be patient So that could be you know Something around a self-worth or something about proving yourself or in the past that you have people go like oh, you know Doctorating is not something good. There's not viable. There's no incomes that there's pressure So a societal pressure usually in some form away and I do know that in therapy most of the time people have an internal dialogue I'm gonna talk that in a second about that That this influences them to keep going so it's not just Dopamine there's also a framework around it very often Mm-hmm And that's what we work a lot with with clients because that's what you they had accused usually Why you keep going so unless you really classically can condition that's your way out because you can hear you can train yourself to monitor those Internal stories and buttons coming up mm-hmm. So they're kind of like the story before does that make sense? Yeah, I think so So I can give you an example so for instance then When I trained my dog for her complex skill and NDTF I New the reason why I was very often impatient is because I was worried about failing the course Mm-hmm. You had a timeline. I had a timeline. I had a lot of pressure already people looking at me and going Then I do waste your time dealing with dogs like why do you not specialize in neuropsychology or something else like there was already Distig my around it which empathize that failing story in my head So therefore I was wanting to rush it which is not the greatest thing to do at all I made a lot of mistakes like I got there in here and it was very proud of my dog and myself We learned a lot, but the reason the driver behind this was very much just thoughts are head around it in a story Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, I Thought it's also really interesting that we have different types of patients So there is a Psychologist called Sarah Schneider or Schneider. I don't know how to say her name Sarah. I'm really sorry. So I go both ways Yeah, I don't know which is that You're the you're the German speaker in the room. I don't think she's German. Anyway, Sarah And it comes in three main varieties and it is interpersonal patients Life hardship patients and daily hassles patients. Okay And I like them a lot because I think they're very applicable to the dog industry Mm-hmm. They're more complex models are there, but this one is very practical Let's start with interpersonal patients Interpersonal patients is patients with other people their demands and their failings. I think that's very applicable to dog trainers teaching dog owners or Dog trainer teaching other dog trainers, and I think that's very often what people really struggle with that's really really grind stem now So for instance a lot of people Get impatient when they consider other people as slow learners. I think that drives people a lot of the time crazy order have habits or That you feel like they make the matter worse with their dog or they don't put any effort into it like I think there's interpersonal Relationships can be really stressful to people that very often makes them lose their patients I think that one that the last one you mentioned was is one that in the industry that I think that's one that drives a lot of people crazy Is when they see that people have the potential to do it but don't like they they are very flippant about your guidance and what they actually achieve with their own dog it drives people crazy like when you can see talent but no Effort has gone into it. Yeah, that that really grinds people's it it does. Yeah, that's where I see a lot of people really That's where people need you bird because when they're exposed to that over a long period of time that really Grines them down. It starts wearing them down because they're just thinking is it isn't me? Or is it you and then they go into a bit of a bit of a doubt and they flatten out over those Type of scenarios. Yeah, and You're going to talk about that in a second because it's so hard to watch sometimes That you kind of move to free will from a person you gift in the best option to improve their own situation But we don't have a lead that we can control them all the time right with the dog. We have so much control People have to own free will yeah, and you have to accept that at any end of the day you do your best or you do an okay job And they still have free will and you're not attached to that right? Well, what's the saying that most people generate now is that you should never carry more than the client does So I said that a lot. Sorry. I said that a lot to my people because I'm like you can only be as invested as they're wanting to work That's the saying you should never be invested in the in the training of the dog and the client is otherwise you you're setting yourself up to fail Yeah, and look, I've been guilty of doing that many times because sometimes it's also about giving giving people hope Yeah, and showing them hey, I stick with you like I see this we can do this But you have to be aware what you're doing like it This has to be a choice in your behavior. It just can't be on autopilot This is where you have to have to patience to activate your wise mind and go like Am I using this giving hope as a tool or am I just doing this because that's my Initial reaction very different things one is strategically planted data one is just you following your reaction. Yeah, I think I find it helpful in that sort of circumstance to when you talk about being more invested in the dog Yeah Like I find it helpful to think about where I am a bad client to people and and calm myself down in that way. Yep. You know like I Am I'm fairly into health and fitness and I ignore a lot of the health and fitness advice that I get from people who are much healthier and fit Other than me and I know it to be true and I just can't be fucked. I like it in burgers You know and so the same way when I say to people hey, you've got to do this for your dog and they're like I can't be fucked Yeah, and like for us as dog people We rant and we call them terrible clients and we complain But that's just they're just the same as me where my physio tells me I need to do a particular thing You need to do this every day and I do it three times a week instead of every day I'm the I'm the loser in that he it doesn't affect him in the same way We say to people like hey if your dog doesn't get any better that doesn't affect my life You're doing this to yourself Well, we as dog people see that as like no problem. We can identify that But you are that bad client to someone else guaranteed Like I am very sure That I drove my own dog trainer crazy like she told me I'm a very difficult kind. I'm very aware of that and also I think that we have to understand that people have their own journey You don't change people's life stay changed their own life. Yeah, I feel that the best bit of advice I'm giving a lot of my Students now when they're talking to me about these things in class when they're sharing this frustration Just said just forgive them Just forgive them and move on because you'll just carry it around and it's the ball and chain you really don't need to be shackled too Because you don't know what they're internally going through or what is externally affecting or internally affecting them in their own life So they're probably doing the best they know and that's the limitation So give them give them everything they can take and if they choose not to if they actually choose not to do it forgive them and move on I think it helps give you a little piece in your life It helps me it's my it's my best advice to me So I suggest it to other people to maybe make their life a little bit more comfortable rather than overburden yourself with it Definitely because when you when you look at impatience in the context of interpersonal patience you need empathy to survive it because it's actually an active patience you need It's not a patience where where you don't do anything about it. It's no you need to know your strategy around and you need to know what to look for what to activate Right and we the main thing
with patients is you don't want to worsen your situation. You want to stay cool, calm and collected so that you don't go into your cortisol and adrenaline, that you don't just rush for it, that you can go like, "I can see what's happening." And slowing down is most of the time the thing that's needed. So is empathy. A lot of people in the dog industry, they call people when they're like, "Oh, that's a bad person, a bad dog owner." You label them. You don't know what's happening in their life right there and then. So you need to have empathy and you need to go like, "Well, maybe you had a bad week, a bad day." And I have a lot of respect for doctors because they very often don't get the opportunity to have so much rapport with their dog owners than I get to have. But you need to learn that as well, the dog owner will only tell you what's happening if they feel like they can trust you and you're not judging them. It has to be fairly neutral, I think. So interpersonal patients has to be mindfully active, that you know how to do it, how to forgive someone, how to be compassionate, how to have empathy, but not burn yourself out. You need boundaries and assertiveness at the same time, but you need to be able to have self awareness and you need to know what pops up for you so that you implement the right strategy. Yep, that makes sense. And with you. So the other type of patients is life heart-check patients. A nice term for this would be perseverance, you know, like you get knocked over in life and you just get up. You have to go through a really yucky process in something like a court hearing or a medical procedure or a diagnosis or a life change. And you just know this will be a long slog. You just have to get up every morning and make it happen without getting better, without, you know, suffering too much. There's a good Japanese proverb on this. I believe it to Japanese proverb, but it says fall down seven times stand up, hey? Yes, it was a very very like tattooed when I went to school, like I think I know three people. Yeah, I think about it a lot when I'm feeling sorry for myself and things. If I've had a bad chain event of life things going wrong, I often I think about that in my head like a chanted to myself because I think this can't go on forever, you know, like I'm feeling at rock bottom now, but you know, I'm experiencing such a low that there's bound to be a high coming soon. So I constantly think about this self. I'm falling down a few times, you know, I've just got to be ready to stand up on that 8th attempt. And that that sometimes gets me through bad days. Yeah, totally. And I think it is really good to have practiced that and but also recognizing that this is what you're doing. And there is this skill, you know, like compassion for others and yourself that helps it because we don't want you to suppress your emotions in that. Like, you know, like if I have someone who just lost someone to tragic circumstances, I'm not going to tell them you can't be sad. You need to agree if you need to process this, but there is a difference in grieving and amping yourself up into a state of too much. You know, we can help ourselves heal and we can do other things that prevent us to heal. And the idea is that if you can have gratitude in your life, if you can have compassion in your life to yourself and others, you probably have enough petrol in your tank to see it through. Well, it's only a little say like a life hardship. I guess it's a, I'm trying to, I'm thinking pretty hard about drawing the distinction between like the effects of like being patient, but also then seeing that hardship as a call to action, right? And that's the wisdom part again, right? Yeah. And you know, understanding, but you know, think about it from again, because we know that most people listening sort of know the terms that hardship is a form of negative reinforcement. Like and let it compel you to action. Like take, take the steps necessary to, to relieve the pressure in one way or another when that life hardship comes on. Then I suppose where I'm kind of spooling up in my head about this now is understanding when you're not in control of it, right? And that's where the patient's part comes in. So there is a difference between doing active behaviors and emotionally surrendering and using radical acceptance to the circumstances, to the situation. So for instance, if you have a chronic pain issue, I'd encourage you, heavily to do everything you can to better your physical position with any type of therapy you can get your hands on. But mentally, you have to settle into this might be taking a while. So you have to use radical acceptance in going like, Hey, this state might not change. I should not change my behaviors in trying to better my situation, but you might be in discomfort for a while. So how can you still have valuable, valuable life and how can you have fun and enjoyment in those little criteria maybe that you maybe have to learn to readjust or do differently, but the idea is that you don't look for that quick fix. I think when you look for that quick fix, that's where you, when people in hardship very often look for the next fix, but that's not how it is. That actually gives them false a false sense of like that perception is unrealistic. Like if I said you unique chemotherapy, we know you will have a couple of really rough weeks ahead. And if you go like, Oh, despite I mean, see you tell that will make me feel bad. I just will make me know even meditation won't feel great at my stage. So it's you have to differentiate between behavior and mental mindset, I think. Yeah. Yeah, that's and I think that's the virtue there is being out of identify which one you can which one's going to serve you. Patience or action. Yes. But for example, in my case, when I had my chronic illness, I was always more like just toughen it up, just work through it. And it worked totally against me because I was overshooting my resources. So it depends how you were also programmed as a human. I was programmed to never give up or always keep going. Yeah. But they can work against you in some circumstances. Yeah. Like Remy, you know, Remy is used genetically very prone to, I never give up. And now he has a scar on his nose as a puppy because he's like, fuck, this crate. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's it. But I think the hard part there is is identifying, yeah, when should you be patient and when should you keep pushing? And because I see a lot of people who like, oh, you know, this is my plight and everything happens for a reason. And I go, yeah, the reason is you make bad decisions and then you don't fix your fucking problems. You know what I mean? And identify. I don't think it's that simple. No, but like that's what I'm saying, like identifying when it is that simple versus like, okay, fuck, like I really have been dealt a bad hand here. And I just have to deal with it versus like, I need to take some action and fix the shitty situation. I've put myself in. I think generally speaking, even if people have given a really hard card to deal with that, they had nothing to do with as soon as you can be in charge, how you want to tackle it. And you sit down and you make that time to go like, what do I need for my needs to be met? Even if that's not perfect, you can aim for that. That gives people a great sense of I have control over this. Like if you, if you tell people who have a chronic illness and they have to go for a really long time to hospital, we're like, what do you want your treatment plan to look like? What is important to you? What are your needs? Is it that you are being hurt with the doctor? Even if you know that it's nothing they can do, but it's really important for you to touch base with someone. Then let's do that. So everyone's different. Everyone has different needs. Some people want to be left to learn. Some people need a lot of company. It's you need to know yourself. So the overall goal in life is to strengthen that really advice part in you. And you know that old bull, he gets better and better and better. That's the idea. Yeah. And what are the techniques for that? There's one more type of patient and it reminds me of delayed stress model called daily hassles. I think there's so many stresses, especially in certain times in your life where you just have tiny tiny little things that build up beyond your control traffic, not finding a car park spot, school ramping up, your kids have more activities. Just like you noticed the slow grind is increasing. And very often people snap with those tiny things. They keep it together for the big events, but for example if someone in driving comes in into their lane without blinking, they lose it. That's also something. The straw, yes, the straw that broke the camel's back. So they're different types. And what I want to show you now is to me, self awareness is the biggest advantage you can have to identify how you really are. And self awareness is actually not easy to do because it's quite a complex topic, but I was reading a book a couple of months ago and I think many from Maine has also read it because we talked briefly about it and it's called the unted it's sold by Michael Singer. And you have it with you? I do. Not that the listeners can see you holding it, but you've got it in your lap. Yeah, with my scribble you notes. I treat my books poorly. I write in them. I don't think that's treating a book poorly. I think that's really investing in a book. You know, like when you fold pages and write notes in the spine and stuff like that, I don't think that's treating a book badly. I think that's that you're actually becoming a part of the book. Yeah, I used them as a tool and I used a tool. But it's your book, right? Yeah, but sometimes I have to remember like, oh, this is Pat's book. Oh, that's right. That's right. I do the same. When I was at school, I don't know how true this story is, but it's what they told us, you know, how do you say shung su, art of war? Yeah, when they found his personal library, it was full of hundreds of copies of his own book. And they were like, oh, how's the ego on this bloke? And they opened them and they were other people's copies of his book where they had annotated and sent it to him and with feedback and he had annotated back and sent back to them. And they had had these like conversations through the text. Yeah. Yeah. So that was how they were trying to commit this all to annotate the shit out of the books. Like the author wants you to do this. Like it's because the book is the most authors consider their own work a conversation and that's how you have the conversation with them. Yeah. Annotated.
and if you can be bothered, you could imagine if you're an author and someone actually sent back a copy of your own book full of annotations that, "Well, I agree with you on this or have you considered this or whatever, most people might like to get that." Well, certainly, according to the story, Sunzu did. I love it, and you can never meet him off my Instagram. Yeah, I think you should read a book with a highlighter. Yeah, I take what's there. It's like I say with most things, if you search through the mud sometimes, you might find a few pearls. I've read books where I've just thought, "Oh, this is going nowhere, going nowhere," and it's like many things in life. And suddenly you'll reach a chapter or passage or a paragraph and you'll think, "Holy shit, life changing, just that little bit of information, that will change my training technique, my lifestyle could be anything." But yeah, read a book with a highlighter. Yeah, and to me, I have to write it out, so I remember because I remember that. I'm not good listening. Yep. I write it out very often. But the reason why I like this book and it made me very curious about it. Say the name again, because otherwise they're going to ask us a hundred times. And if anyone messages asking the name of this book again, listen to this. She is about to say the name of the book. And if it's not in the Canon Parodon book club, it will be soon. Yes, I will put a photo. The book is called "The Untettered Soul, the Journey Be On Yourself" by Michael A. Singer. Thank you. And the book, I like it a lot because it challenged me in a lot of ideas and perceptions and concepts I had. So it was a really nice take on it. And in therapy, we very often talk about the observing self, that instance in you that can observe what's actually happening in you. And he has a really nice paragraph to frame this. And I'm going to read it out to you. Larry Kron, if you're listening, this is what we talked about at the conference. Is that you want me to read some? He's going to read it. All right, let me sit back. Is your meditation track, Larry? Well, let's see. Okay, so this is from page 16, if anyone wants to look it up themselves. And this chapter will talk about the roommate inside you that instance that can observe what's happening in you. So Michael says, "To attain true inner freedom, you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them. No solution can possibly exist while you're lost in the energy of a problem. Everyone knows you can't deal well with the situation if you're getting anxious, scared or angry about it. The first problem you have to deal with is your own reaction. You will not be able to solve anything outside until you own how the situation affects you on the inside. Problems are generally not what they appear to be. When you get clear enough, you will realize that the real problem is that there is something inside of you that can have a problem with almost anything. The first step is to deal with that part of you. This involves a change from "out the solution consciousness" to "in the solution consciousness". You have to break the habit of thinking that the solution to your problems is to rearrange things outside. The only permanent solution to your problems is to go inside and let go of the part of you that seems to have so many problems with reality. Once you do that, you will be clear enough to deal with what's left. There really is a way to let go of the part of you that sees everything as a problem. It may seem impossible, but it's not. There is a part of your being that can actually abstract from your own melodrama. You can watch yourself be jealous or angry. You don't have to think about it or analyze it. You can just be aware of it. Who is a Dead Sea's oldest? Who notices the changes of going on inside when a friend tells you? Every time I talk to Tom, it gets me so upset. How do you know it gets you upset? You know that it gets you upset because you're in there and you see what's going on in there. There's a separation between you and the anger or the jealousy. You are the ones who in there noticing these things. Once you take the seed of consciousness, you can get rid of these personal disturbances. You start by watching. Just be aware that you are aware of what is going on in there. It's easy. What you'll notice is that you're watching a human being's personality with all its strength and weaknesses. It's as though there's somebody in there with you. You might actually say you have a roommate. If you would like to meet your roommate, just try to sit inside yourself for a while in complete solitude and silence. You have to write. It's your inner domain. But instead of finding silence, you're going to listen to Incessant Chatter. Why am I doing this? I have more important things to do. This is a waste of time. There's nobody in here but me. What's this all about? Right on cue. There's your roommate. You may have a clear intention to be quiet inside, but your roommate won't cooperate. And it's not just when you try to be quiet. It has something to say about everything you look at. "Ooh, I like this. Nah, I don't like it. This is good. That's bad." It just talks and talks. You don't generally notice because you don't step back from it. You're so close that you don't realize that you're actually hypnotised into listening to it. Basically, you're not alone in there. There are two distinct aspects of your inner being. The first is you, the awareness, the witness, the centre of your willful intentions. And the other is that which you watch. The problem is the part that you watch never shuts up. If you could get rid of that part, even for a moment, the peace and serenity would be the nicest vocation you've ever had. "Hmm." So the idea is that we always have a story going on in our head. Like we filter through life with stories, examples, experiences. Most of the time an outer voice has become an inner voice. So if you could just approach difficult clients or dog owners or scenarios or anything with this awareness that, "Hey, there's a story happening in my life and I just have to watch it. I don't have to act on it. You will be much closer to accessing your wisdom part." Does that make sense? 100%. Yep. I agree with all that 100%. I have not done a teach anything like this but I've experienced it myself. I use different language in that you should never be surprised by your own actions as what I sort of try and live by and try and understand your own motivations for things and analyze why you do things. I think for sure everybody can benefit from that. And the flow onto that to training dogs and in life is huge. It's massive because I think most of the time you do things in an unhelpful manner when we call it up in something. We actually forget what we call an impact model of values. Why are you here? You want to be most of the time a good friend with your dog. You want to be a good partner? Well, then act like one and listen to why the stories in your mind not let you be a good friend in that scenario. Yeah. I think something that I've tried to do in my life and I'm getting better at is at first you have to analyze your actions and understand why you did something. And then that analysis should try and move further and further left on the timeline to be analyze your intentions. And then you have like the five wise method like you ask why why why why why till you break it down. I'm not familiar with that but I'm like what I mean is like okay I've had all these experiences in my life and be true to yourself about how did I react to that right like what really happened because it has happened and you can analyze it. And then your goal is to move that analysis further left on the timeline like further back further back further back so that you can analyze your intentions rather than having to right now you can only analyze your actions of the past. But then you want to get to the point where before you act you can go why am I doing this is this helpful can I intervene before it's too late and then you might say yeah fuck it like I'm doing it. This is my intention or you might take a step back and go hmm why am I doing this and for me this is I learned that kind of stuff not in regards to your own consciousness or whatever but like as a planning tool for action like from my army days of military planning and understanding like what are the second and third order effects and you can't do that by looking into the future until you've done it many many times looking into the past where you can say we did something and this is what happened there and it's like you know the old like no history because history repeats itself all that kind of crap right so it's like okay this happened and I was at a time in my life where I wasn't in control of myself or maybe I was and I chose it whatever but it happened and now I can see what were the second and third order effects what did I put into motion right and now that I know that when I see that coming I can hopefully get my analysis happening prior to my behavior and go okay do I really want to go through this and and understanding your emotional state and and again this 100% applies to dogs like understanding what is likely to happen here and how can I intervene in a way that that that serves this emotion like because a lot of the time emotional reactions are quite the opposite of what you want in the long term I'm smiling and kind of laughing thinking about this because there's been times where a Pat and I've sat down to do a podcast or even been in the kitchen pre or post podcast and you know I'll say to Pat check out this and Pat will go you know like I'll rage over something that somebody's done.
and Pat will go, "Uh, well, there's actually like a deeper story to this. Like, if you look further into it, there's a reason why they did it." And like, I'm just, I'm being impatient at this point in time, and I'm just seeing the version that I wanted to see. We've had this conversation a couple of times now, and it's been a good education portal for me myself, because I've now learned to adopt that a little bit more. Like, look further into it, like, look at the second and third order of things, and I thought, "Well, maybe I should look deeper into it rather than just be so impulsive and see the part of the story that I want to react to." So, yeah, that was actually a good little life lesson. Yeah. I'm trying not to talk too much about Army stuff, because it's not that relatable to people on this show and stuff. But the truth is, I think that most people who have sort of been in that world, especially where I was, is you learn to know yourself because you need to know how you're going to react. And what happens is you find yourself in situations for the first time, unthinkable situations. You cannot hypothesize. And what will happen will happen. But then afterwards, you have to then go, "Okay, what happened? And how did I react? And how did I feel about this? And am I likely to be able to do that again?" And then you're good for when it does happen because you know, and whether your reaction is good or bad is indifferent. That doesn't matter. If you're in tension, my whole life, I thought I was going to be the guy that goes forward, and then you find out in the moment that you're the guy that goes backwards, that's fine, as long as you don't keep pretending that you're the guy that goes forward. Right? Like, you'll act the way that you act, and it's the same as trying to keep this related to dogs. It's the same with the dogs. You don't know what they're going to do until they do it. But then when they're done, you go, "Okay, like, now we know what's really bubbling around here, and we can manage that." And we have, I've had people with the same working dog world that are like, "Oh, these dogs know good because he doesn't engage." And I'm like, "Well, you don't have another dog to replace him with." So, like, it's fine. You can work the streets with a dog that won't engage because you know he won't. Just don't for one second think that he will. Until we can get a dog that will, but use these dog senses. If he finds bad guys, that's good enough. You're carrying a gun. But it's a big problem if you think he's going to engage and he doesn't. It's no problem if you're aware that he's not going to, and you take the steps to mitigate that. And I think then applying that to everything in yourself is understanding, "Okay, like, I feel a particular way. Be that roommate in his language and going, "Why am I feeling like that?" "Why am I feeling like this?" But what steps can I then take to make sure that this has a positive outcome for me in the situation rather than just like necessarily leaning into that feeling and having it cause the action? Yeah, and I think there's a caveat to, I think, very often when people are having a hint of how they wanted to react, but they didn't react. They're really easy to blame or to project their anger. And I think that's not the way to go. The idea is always like, "You contribute it. Better that is just by reacting. How can you change your behaviour? You can only control your own behaviour and your own state, right? But in a dog industry where I often blame people, "Oh, that dog owner didn't do that. So therefore I had the whole past for being angry. That's not it. That's not your job. If a dog would show you reactivity, you would go like, "It's a dog." That's why it does. You wouldn't go like, "Oh my god, I was personally directed at me. He would learn from it. He would learn, look at the behaviour." And most of the time is if you have felt a certain way, you have felt this way in a different situation the same way. So I can very often have people in therapy and they're like, "Well, where it triggers this week?" And they go like, "Oh, it was this." And they're like, "I don't understand. I overreacted my behaviour was way out of proportion to that trigger, to that stimulus. But then we do certain exercises. And then it comes back. Like, when have you felt like this before? And it comes back to a significant part in their life. There needs to have them be met." And it can be tight. Like, needs that are not easy to detect in a moment. They don't have to be super extreme situations, or small situations. But if you have been going through this over and over, this is how you are programmed to react. Yeah. We constantly talk about it here. And God, if we've done over a hundred episodes, we must say it in at least 25 of them. Why does a dog do anything? Is the better their own situation. And minute by minute, second by second, they're just trying to make their life better. But with dogs, it literally is second by second, they're just trying to make their life better. And as people, I think that we have to separate ourselves from your. Because we're the same. We're just trying to make our own better our own situation. And I think part of patience is looking at the long game of bettering your situation. And understanding, "Okay, well, perhaps I need to take what feels like I'm not bettering my situation for the short term in order to better my situation for the long term." And I think we have the capacity to do that. We should. Yeah, we have more tools than dogs. And I think, you know, impatience usually stems from a frustration, which means you need to have them be met or you haven't been heard. Yeah. And I think it's really important that we just briefly tell people what the symptoms of impatience are, just so that they can behave really look for it. Physical symptoms are that, you know, that your breast is changing. You may be breathing fast or shallow, that your tens, like jaw tension, eye tension, neck tension, shoulder tension, that you're jiggling your feet, like hyperventure or agitation, like you rest less, you're fidgety, or that your tone of voice changes, you snap, or you shut down, like you know yourself better. But they had a very brief ideas of how you showed that you're impatient. And a long one, if you keep doing this and you're knowing it, you probably do. you're not doing well mentally. Like you can have a long time impact and you might lose your resilience. It's really important that you know, hey, if I am part, if I become faster and faster, why do you do this? It's called, I learned this term this week. It's called "Harry Sickness". Have you heard of this? "Harry Sickness". Yeah, "Harry Sickness". I've never heard of it. It's a term. No, it's "Harry Spellt". "Harry", like H.U.R.R.O.I. like I want "Harry". H.U.R.O.I. Right. "Harry Sickness". And it makes so much sense. The term was coined by the cardiologists, Maya Freeman and Ray Rosenman. And it means that they know it is that many of their patients suffered from a herring sense of time urgency. And so they defined "Harry Sickness" as a continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time. Can you see that some people who should take a break, they just fill their diary up and they actually do more and they put more things on it. And she's looking at that. Yeah. So people with "Harry Sickness", they think fast, they talk fast and they act fast. And they really resist to slow down. They multitask and they have rush against a clock, feeling pressure to do get things done and getting flustered by any sign of problem. So I thought that's really interesting. I've done that in the past. Yeah, I can identify with quite a few people over that. Yeah. So yeah, and I think you know the idea is that if you want to learn how to be more patient, if you train your dog a downstairs, stay, then be fair to your dog and you do a downstairs, stay to whatever it looks like for you. But it is, you do some meditation, some breathing, you go for a walk. But if you do that to your dog, I'm telling you, most dogs don't like enjoying doing this. You are only to your dog that you work on your patients too. I think that's fair. Yeah, very. I think on the talk of meditation, we spoke about it on the weekend and like I am so far from an expert in meditation, it's unbelievable. Like I barely scratch the surface of the whole thing. But I know that the idea and the practice scares a lot of people away. But I also am critical aware that I think there's so many different ways to do it that people are and they don't understand. And it's just the concentration on anything. And this is like martial arts, for example, is meditation. Like when you're, this is why Jujitsu is such a cult, because when you are like rolling with someone, you are in that moment meditating, because you are trying to put out the unhelpful information and concentrate on information that is helpful to you. And you will get feedback that you're doing that if you do it well and if you do it poorly, you'll get feedback. And I think that anybody that's been involved in the pursuit of anything that is like requires a deep level of concentration has gotten the benefits of meditation from that. And you see people get caught up in sort of seemingly trivial sort of tasks like people who are painting, you know, assembling figurines and painting them meticulously is a form of meditation for them, because they're blocking out everything else in the world and concentrating on that one thing. It's their isolation for a period of time. And whether the term, I could see you scrunching your face, whether the term meditation is correct or not, but I think it's so important to have the practice, the ability of refusing to ignore. We're not refusing to acknowledge focused attention. Yeah, focus attention. So understanding that there is a distraction, choosing to ignore it and carrying on with a task, no matter what that fucking task is, is a form of meditation and is super helpful to everybody. And I think it's why people have hobbies and shit like that. Look, I don't want to get into the definition of meditation because I'm not an expert on it, but I know that the meditation community probably would define it into more layers and different things. But the idea is definitely, I think, for in regards to patience, I definitely think that if you learn to be in discomfort and doesn't have to be long discomfort, like for me that sometimes just means I'm sitting 10 minutes outside and I don't have a jump around or I have a mosquito or a fly.
coming around, I just try not to put my face, change my posture. That's enough. It's just learning not to react to life and it's just learning to go like, "Oh, the mosquito is biting me, I want to swap it." Just try to resist for five seconds. Just hold back. And over time, you become better and better, noticing what your body is suggesting to you to do and then you can get to have a choice what you want to do. So it's not that I'm like, "Oh my God, I want to be stung by 200 mosquitoes a day. It's just for me to train, have options, have choices and not just be an on-order pilot, have check-ins." Yeah. I just feel like everybody benefits from a closed environment where the consequences of distraction are low so that when the consequences of distraction are high, you've rehearsed it somewhere else. You have to, like, the key thing is that you practice for something that maybe happens in your life. I felt it at ease. You had a difficult day and you come home instead of your husband branting it. You go like, "I'm quite attjetated. I might be just have a shower before I sit down for dinner." That's a choice, but you have to have a check-in to realize that first. Yeah. And in the roles of, again, from my history is, the role of meditation is not to meditate when things go bad, but to use the skills that came of that when things are going bad. So you go, "Okay, there is a task that needs to be complete." And when you're alone and you're doing yourself, it's the focus on whatever you've chosen, focusing on my breathing. But now it's like, "Okay, there's a mission. It needs to be accomplished." And there are distractors because things go wrong on that mission. And there, that's one thing that is outside your control, but when you're focusing on your breathing and someone closes the door in the adjacent room and you notice that, and practice, "I heard that. I'm coming back to the original task of focusing on my breathing." That skill set is what carries over to, like, "Okay, there's a real task that I have to complete." And there are people who are actively trying to stop me completing that mission. I need to avoid them, stay away from that problem and stay on my initial task. And that's the, like, tied it back to dogs. That's the box. That's how I, like, show a dog that. So it's like, no one gives a shit. Like, when the world's falling apart, it doesn't matter if you can meditate. It's the meditation that will help you in that point. And with the box, it's like, when your dog sees it's problem trigger, it's not going to go looking for the box. It's going to go like, "Okay, I can get through this shit. I've done it before. I've seen this picture somewhere else. It's similar. I can something that approximated. I can use it now." Yeah, definitely. And I think it's also something that has to be reactivated every now and then. Like, I have to remind myself to meditate every now and then. And most people are like, "Oh, Bertie, you like it? I'm like, no." It's hard. It's hard work. It's an act of discipline. It can be boring sometimes. "Boroughness to my cracks." I'm known for surfing through different meditation channels, just so I'm not bored. And that's beside the point, essentially. Yeah. So, here's a plug for something that I don't get any monetary gain for, but I've used. And it's helped me because I've done traditional meditation. My first martial arts teacher, he taught me how to do it. It's hard. It's an extreme discipline to sit in a room and quiet your mind and blank everything out. That takes a lot of discipline. And unfortunately, it's not discipline that I have the luxury of affording myself all the time. But the Muse headband, the one that I've talked about on this show before, that Sarah Wysum has been working on. I believe she's still doing quite well with that. But this is a device where when your mind starts to activate and your brain waves start to pick up, it reminds you that you're going into that zone. Like, you can hear rain or thunder and lightning coming over the top of you. But when you're starting to still your mind, you can hear calm serenity and birds chirping. And the idea is the more birds that you can hear during the meditation process, the better you're doing. So, I thought it was woo-woo and bullshit when I first got it. However, within the spade of five weeks, I could go almost a whole session just hearing birds. And it gives you, it shows you your brain wave patterns at the end of it. Now, I was just focusing on that point on getting, because it awards you. So, you get actual awards for. Don't mean boom. Yeah, that's right. You don't mean for me. But the thing is, is the secondary implementation of it was that I was much calmer. I started to realize that I was more focused. I was less fatigued. I wasn't reacting to things as impatiently or as violently as not violently. That's not the right choice of words. But just impulsively. Yeah, impulsively is a better choice. But patiently. Yeah, so the whole thing was, I was learning to be more centered and I was making better and informed choices and didn't realize it. So, as a secondary effect of what I was doing, I realized, hey, this is actually really centering me. It's actually working. So, there's something to it. There definitely is. And if you go like, I don't want to do meditation, just take three deep breaths before you react. Yeah. Just, just, just, let's say count to ten, right? Yeah, count to ten. Take three deep breaths. If you only have three minutes, you can do the four, seven, eight breathing methods for three minutes that comes you down. But what my call to action is, please, if you teach your dog a downstairs, it's only fair that you can hold the downstairs as long as your dog. Yeah. Because, you know, in the end, we want that the dog benefits from it too, right? Yeah. I've seen it written many times and I agree with it personally, is never make an important decision when you're happy or sad. That's deep. I have to. I can see, I've heard it with anger, don't make important decisions when you're angry. Yeah. But that one. Well, I kind of reflect on it in many different ways because when you're feeling your best, you can be very agreeable. And then later when you sort of center out or, balance out a little bit, you can think, oh, you know, I sort of got hijacked on that while I was feeling quite elated and in a high state of a rousal. Same thing when you're feeling sad. Like, you know, if you make or angry, when you make a decision then, I mean, some of the worst decisions I've ever made was when I was feeling angry. Most people do. And that's where deep regret comes into it, where people, where you say it on, why did you do that? And I said, because I was fucking pissed off. And that's why I did it. You know, that's why I left my job or left my partner or all said this terrible thing to a close friend or something like that. So, yeah, something I reflect on. This is how it relates in that when you play shaping games with people, I feel like that's really important, less for the practical skills of the person doing the shaping. I don't think the person on the clicker really gets that much out of it. I think that the person that gets the most out of it is the person that's pretending to be the dog in the shaping games, right? Because it shows you the difficulty of trying to understand something when you're being taught it nonverbaly. And patience as a is so useful in training because you need patience with your dog and you need to understand the issues that your dog is going through. So when people play those shaping games, they always set really stupid criteria like there'll be per sunglasses on a table and they have to you know, shape the person to come into the room and put the sunglasses on the table. That's not helpful. What it should be is something totally counterintuitive. Like it should be pick a chair up and hold it over your head because you have the framework of like, okay, sunglasses go on my face, right? And then we're teaching a dog to heal and we're like, why don't you understand what healing is? Well, he has no framework under which to think like, this is what you might be teaching me. You have to go from little scratch, okay? So when you're playing those games, the point is the frustration that you feel is for you to understand like that's actually what your dog is feeling. And then you have to use these patience that comes of all the techniques that we're using in training to go, all right, well, let's break this down to a finest component and help the dog out. That's a technique, but what comes of the patience is going, okay, like, hey man, I get that I'm trying to convince you of something that is totally counterintuitive to you. And I'm only able to do that using tiny little increments of reinforcement to get you along the path to understanding ultimately what I have just decided for whatever reason I'm going to teach you. I think that's where the patience comes in and that's where people, they try and influence the dog too much in a way that isn't helpful, whether they use too much pressure or they try and compel the dog in a way that the dog isn't ready for because they lose patience. And that's where I think the patience in our industry and in the actual day to day use of it really is going to shine for people. This is I think. I think patience is important. I think if you identify that patience is a skill for your toolkit as a trainer or as a dog owner and you make it a thing, you pay attention to it, you're only benefit. Other than meditation, what techniques? Proper anchor. Yeah, we pants down, get you to care. I'm dropping my anchor right now. It's just a story today. Dropping it again. So centering yourself. Underbirdies chair, there's about four anchors lying on the ground. I'm about 200 right now. That or headspace is a good app. I think the biggest thing is that you do a techie before you touch your dog. Because if you see training as a way to increase your dopamine and some people get really desperate when they're stressed, they're like, I just want to train my dog. I had a shitty day. I just want to do that. I was not fear to your dog because you probably would benefit from a calm off period first just to know, hey, maybe I'm overshooting my criteria. Maybe my timing is off. Maybe my consistency markers is off. Just like, where am I at? And you have to consider that part of the training. It's not just about the dog. It's also about you influencing the dog. Good advice. Well, I was attending a really cool seminar on a weekend that people
I talked a lot about consistency and all those things and everyone's like oh my god If you do have the capability to fuck out a dog really up Yeah, and most people I think just confuse their dog I think there's so much of that like if only As you said if you could interview the dog like if you if only you could have the dog actually say like This is what I understand for you to be yeah, you're you conveying to me and you go oh actually I meant this and the dog will be like well that was unclear to me, right? And it's have the patience to break it down to its smallest components Well, that's it gets it that's it right because we're we're fundamentally asking the dog to understand our way of life Like it already well and truly understands its way of life like and this is the argument that I keep having time and time again With people all the time when people point out to me. Oh my dog is badly behaved I said it's not it just it's behaving the only way it knows how to do yeah, you know better in your situation That's it. Yeah, then that's that's the thing Well, I think if people have been patient enough to stick with us. We might wrap it up there Thank you so much for having me. It's always such an honor and pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for coming on It's interesting to have a a real meditation expert real no, I'm not an expert I just I try I tried to meditate but I'm not an ex well you're an you're a meditation enthusiast Yes, that's it talk about it with two dickheads with microphones. Yeah No, that's not it. I know that both of you have meditation if proof for that. That's true But I think yeah Developing that away from the dog and then using that skill That's kind of what I was trying to explain before probably not very well is like don't try and use those don't try and do those two things at once Like develop the skill away from the dog and then use the skill on the dog Yeah, definitely because otherwise you have emotional contagion and you impatient well transfer Yeah, understand it and then apply it. Yeah, all right. Hey, buddy. Thanks for coming on Yeah, it's always a pleasure for always welcome. Yeah, you just pick up your anchors on the way out. Thank you Yeah, just put your pants on If people have just started listening though, I have no idea that yeah, if you skip to the end like you got to the punch line Yeah, if you like that girl that didn't like our personal jokes and then ran away out of the Our Discussion group. How funny was that? And the last episode we're talking about that girl that I put in the group because she was in her She was in like a real fur baby mummy face. Oh, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then said like I was asking for advice on a breed of him was getting spanked by everyone So I was like hey going with this group up You can ask any dog training advice you want there and she was like no, I'm done got straight out of the group I went back to the other group and asked for some fur baby mummy pitches. Yeah, I was like oh god Anyway, but the fur baby brand that you recommend is really awesome. Yeah, actually yet. That's that's the funny thing right? It's such a say that but Karen from episode 54 She's got that fur baby aroma therapy, and it's actually really good my dog loves it. It's legit He I obviously I'm supporting her, but I sprayed that I wish that I'd filmed it because I thought she sent me a bunch of it to You know test out see if I did like it and I sprayed it on the dog and then he went crazy Rolling around on it and was like loves the smell of it and in the video that I put up I made it look like it puts him to sleep, but what he actually did was start rolling around all over it Like he's like I love this smell. I'm gonna smell like this forever So that's actually really good stuff for baby aroma therapy check it out cool. They're gonna website. Yeah, it's that for baby Romathera if you're a little come on. Yep All right That's it for another episode of Canon paradigm as always if you like what you hear Please like rate share subscribe do that through whatever subscription service you download us from If you want to support the show the best way to do that is via patreon three bucks a month gets you an extra episode 10 bucks a Q&A But you know you could always give more money if you like and you could get a t-shirt from t-spring That's a good idea to support us through that way. I'm gonna rep some cool merch Yeah, I'm wearing it right now. I've got the t-shirt and the hoodie on the rails wearing her I'm wrapping all over the place. Yeah, and we've got our stickers. Yeah, we're just giving those away Just throwing them at people sticking on the car when they come to seminars and they don't even know it's there Yeah, I'll bring a bunch of those with me to Vegas where I am next week. It'll whenever you I don't know when this comes out Maybe I'm already there, but get in touch with Michael Carpenter if it's not and if you want to get in touch with us The best way to do that is via email citizen email to info at the Canon paradigm calm Sit Glenn music (upbeat music)
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The host announces a career shift from psychologist to full-time dog industry work, focusing on burnout prevention and resilience.
Patience is defined as the ability to wait or continue despite difficulties, without complaining, emphasizing discomfort tolerance.
Impatience in dog training often stems from anthropomorphism and unrealistic expectations, leading to reactive behaviors.
Fundamentals and basics in training are crucial; advanced skills should build on solid foundations to avoid frustration.
Personal impulse control and self-reflection are essential for making wise, non-reactive decisions in training.
Summary:
The transcript discusses patience in dog training, introduced by a guest who transitions from psychology to the dog industry. The conversation highlights that patience involves managing discomfort, not feeling good. Impatience often arises when owners anthropomorphize dogs, expecting them to understand cues without proper foundation.
The hosts stress the importance of mastering basics, as advanced skills stem from solid fundamentals. Personal examples, like a BJJ coach emphasizing patience, illustrate how frustration can hinder progress. The guest notes that society undervalues patience, which combines skills like delayed gratification and impulse control.
In dog training, impatience leads to reactive, unwise decisions, whereas patience allows for thoughtful action. The discussion encourages self-awareness to avoid projecting stress onto dogs, promoting a stoic acceptance of discomfort. Ultimately, patience is framed as a virtue that enhances both human and canine learning, requiring practice in personal impulse control to foster better training outcomes.
FAQs
It provides the latest news, views, and expert opinions in the K9 industry, featuring interviews with industry leaders, experts, and movers and shakers.
Visit ironswikdogquip.com (E-I-N-C-W-E-C-K.com) to avoid having to talk to Jason directly.
Bright Spites are healthy, nutritious, and highly motivational dog training treats. You can purchase them at dogsquadcanine-services.com.au.
Pause in Life (P-A-U-S-E) is a Facebook page run by Bernie, focusing on burnout prevention and resilience, with plans for online tools and workshops.
Get Barced offers dog walking, pet photography, pet taxi, and sells accessories, bowls, toys, and clothing. They are located in Perth, Western Australia, at getbarced.net.au.
Patience is the ability to wait or continue despite difficulties, or to suffer without complaining. It involves handling discomfort and is crucial for making wise training decisions.
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