Episode 17: Failure in training

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 full-ton. And I'm out of here. Hey folks, if you like listening to us, then you're going to love Chad Mackinand Jay-Jack, who are coming to Australia to do their dog training conversations to Australia. They're going to be in Australia for May, first three weekends in May, hitting Sydney, then Brisbane, then Melbourne. If you want to buy tickets to that, please head over to my website, mskenals.com, hit the seminars tab and follow the Bouncing Ball to buy your tickets there. Thank you. (upbeat music) Welcome back to another fun-filled episode of the K9 Faraday. My name's Glenn Cook. I'm your host today. Joined in studio as always with my go-os, Pat Stewart. Hello. Today's topic, we're going to talk about failure in training. - Failure. - I think this topic came from one of our listeners. I guess the premises have a little bit of a background on it is what happens when you see that somebody else has been involved in a training program with a dog and perhaps the dog was put to sleep. You could have, or somebody could have, given that dog another opportunity to learn, which I have to say has been the case many, many times throughout my career where I've actually seen dogs prior to being put to sleep and colleagues have seen dogs that they have able to perform some magical turn around with a dog or not magical, but they've been able to turn the dog around from the state that it was currently in, which was currently displeasing their owner into a dog that they could enjoy. - And we can also talk about your own failures as well. So wherever you've come up against something, it's really a failure of being able to train the dog. It's usually a failure of it being able to train the person to train the dog and pushing them to the point where they give up, which I can speak about a little bit as well. - Yeah, I think one of the things that we really need to discuss in this point is where ego gets a little bit in the way. In future conversations, we are going to have a bit of a chat about the whole premise on ego and some of the ego's in this industry. I think that's a topic that needs to be discussed. However, it has been one of the catalysts that have prevented trainers from referring dogs on when they should have and they could have. They instead of saying, you know what, I'm probably not the best person to train this dog. They have been situations and especially when I learned more about, there's one premise that I think is a human being that you have to consider in many situations and it's a good one often thought about, but not always practiced on my behalf is that it's not always about you. - Yeah. (laughing) - Yeah, that's right. - It's kind of like one of those Zen quotes where when you sort of come to the end of your life and you become wise, not that I'm at the end of my life, but when you wise an up a little bit, you start to realize that it's not all about you and in training, often new trainers or trainers that have been isolated from quite a lot of things, they forget that premise is that it's not always about them and they start to think, if I can't train this dog, nobody can train this dog. - Yeah. - And they push and sell that point onto their clients as well, which is quite disheartening because their clients condition themselves to believe, if I go elsewhere, it's almost like a Stockholm syndrome where they're so encapsulated with their trainer and they've almost held them hostage over it that they start to believe and sympathize with their cause and they support them unfoundly without any research and without going and having a look on the market and seeing what else is out there. - There's a lot of tribalism in dog training. - Oh, perfect word for it. - Tribalism in how you identify as a trainer. So then you've got a couple of groups there, right? So what you'd say, who get labeled balanced and then you're forced free, so there's two different tribes. - Yep. - And then even within them, there's so many subcategories of say in the balance, this is how I do things, this is how I do things. This is the only tool I use. I train this type and this is the weird thing that they often clash with each other, but the worst thing is is they clash with themselves. - Yeah, that's just like, absolutely. And the problem, certainly you see it in that, say the average person has a problem with their dog, right? And they call it a trainer. They might look online and they see some flashy videos and usually that trainer will then have a moderately trained melanoma that can do a bunch of things or shape it or whatever. A dog built to be trained, specifically genetically engineered to want to work for something. So they're not that hard to train. And sometimes what they do, and I'm not trying to shift count anyone in particular or any groups of people or anything like that, but sometimes what they do is they swap out four dogs before they actually get that dog. - Oh yeah, of course. So they, - Wait, before we go ahead on that, I don't have any problem with that. And if you're trying to achieve something, that's right. - I don't have a problem with that. Like if you have said, I want to compete at high level sports. So you can't race F1 with a mini minor. - That's right. - You can't do it. And you have to come to the realization that the car that I've got is not built for the track. It's dangerous. It will never reach the speeds. I will never ever, I'll never be sponsored. I'll never achieve anything. I won't win. I won't even rate. And I'll be laughed out of this if I try and compete at this level. So if you've gone off to a breeder and you've selected a dog and you've realized, this isn't the dog for the sport that I wanted. And you've ethically rehomed that dog and you've done all the right things, which I know tons of people have done. I have no problem with you. - Yep. - So what I do have a problem with is when you are masquerading behind that and pretending that you've just stumbled upon it and all of a sudden that you're this wizard in training and it's so easy and any dog can achieve it. And it's a massive sales pitch based on a bullshit foundation. And it's a big problem as well when you aren't competing. When your dog's job is just to look good for you, that's when it works me. I've no problem with people moving a dog on for exactly as you've said, this dog I want to compete in export. This dog is not going to enjoy export, move it on. Why, this is, they're not going to enjoy be good at whatever. And that happens even, you know, as we've discussed in the breeding episodes, like there's no telling what's really going to happen. It could go either way, all good intentions. It could still come unstuck. I have no problem with people moving a dog on. I've seen people just jumping in on that argument before and saying, oh, you know, this is very unethical and you shouldn't be doing this 'cause a dog is for life. Well, a dog is also for a better life too. So if it's going to have a better suited life with somebody else. And as I say, if the transfer is ethical and it's agreeable by all parties and the dog is enjoying itself and living a more fulfilled life in a better situation, what is the problem? Yeah, you know, that's an interesting topic alone. A lot of say dog industry people like you and I, your dogs are really a little bit fluid in their ownership, right? They can come and go. And I've seen dogs that are in a great situation, really love it, happy family, well-trained, doing really well. And for whatever reason the dog can't stay there or the people moving on whatever. And it goes to another place. And it's just as happy, just as fulfilled, everything is going as well. So a lot of people, especially for people who have never given up a dog or moved a dog or sold a dog or whatever, can get really upset by that idea that a dog can be. Yeah, but dogs are happy to go with a gravey is. That's right. And look, the same thing could be said for children too. Just because your biological parents doesn't mean your best parents for those children. Sometimes children have been taken out of homes because the parents are a bunchish. Yeah, but even when things are good and to dogs especially, I mean, like my neighbor's kind of freak out that dogs come and go. And they're like, oh, what happened to that one? I sold him, it's gone. I ate him. (laughing) But they're like, I don't get attached. And like, yeah, I like the dog, but I've raised him for a purpose and now he's gone to do the purpose. Yep. So that's just, I mean, that's another topic. But it is. And people have asked me that about puppies before when they've come to buy puppies off me. They said, is this a hard day for you? And I said, it's bittersweet. It's one of those days where I know, I'm gonna miss the pup for sure because we've got to know the identity and the personality of the pup. But knowing that it's going to go into a lifelong house with people, it's gonna love it. That's the sweet side of it. And in re-homing dogs, sometimes it aren't suitable in the environment that they're in. I mean, we've had working dogs before. Where once the work is finished, we found homes for them. Yeah. And I was a friend of mine in Melbourne who's got a lab called Sonic. She was one of my detection dogs. And when we used to do all the bomb detection work. And she's very old now. She's towards the final stages of her life. And Amelia had to take her to the vet to the other day to get a check. She had a seizure and everything like that. But she is like a great grandma, age in dogs. And she has had the most wonderful life that you get ever asked. And she was a boy stress high level working detection dog that's lived out the rest of her life. So rather than her leaving the rest of her days in a kennel and possibly having a short and lifespan and so forth, she's gone into a family home where she had another dog as a companion, children, a great lifestyle, and she's living happily ever after. There's nothing wrong with that in that situation. Yeah. In my circumstances, the puppies coming through my hand is I like raising monsters. I have no use for them. So I'd rather enjoy the process of doing it. And then if I can put them into someone who doesn't need that, like police motor example, it's better for everyone involved. Absolutely. It's great working life. The dog is going to the situation it was designed for. - Yeah, exactly. - And thrives in. So, which is spoken about that for a few minutes so that you can understand that's not what we're talking about. - No. - Talking about when someone says, "I want a dog that's gonna make me look good as a trainer." And this dog is not fulfilling that. When in reality, it gives you an opportunity to do it even better. If you can show that this dog is not naturally inclined to whatever it is you want to do and you can bring it around to the idea of it safely, ethically, and still have a good time along the way. Then that is a better trainer than someone that's just getting rid of that one, getting another one, getting rid of that one, getting another, okay, this one makes me look good. This is the one I start making videos. - I totally concur. And it's often referred to conversations that I have with NDTF students because a lot of these conversations I have with many, many students. That's one of the things that we do regularly talk about is what I'm more interested in. And the person who I'll pay more attention to is a person that can train the untrainedable dog. - Yeah. - And the person who can take a dog that everybody else is saying is no good and it can't be trained and they can do something with that. Now there's a guy Lewis, he's seen a couple of videos that Lewis put online that he lives up in town, Phil, someone like that. Lewis is like he's doing things with these little two hours and stuff like that. Now he's doing little IPO movements with these dog and it's just for fun. You know, he's not trying to say he's gonna compete in IPO, it's just for fun. But these are dogs that you usually look at and go, "Oh, these dogs can't be trained in this type of things." Now when I watch people training dogs like that and when I've seen students do things where you think, "Oh, this looks too hard "and it's probably unobtainable." And they go out and do it. I'm very intrigued. - Yeah. - And that's often where I'll say to somebody, what did you do? And going back on that point too, I've often heard Bart saying the same sort of thing where he's seen a student do something and many people around the world have considered Bart like the grandfather of amazing training standards. Yet in a lot of the schooling I've done with Bart, he said, "I've seen a student do something "and I thought, hang on, that shouldn't be able to work." What did you do to do that? And then you'll go over. See, that's when you roll swap. And instead of having this unrealistic egotistic attitude, where he's just saying, "No, no, no, I'm the teacher "all the time, what you gotta realize is that role "is constantly swapping between teacher and student." And when somebody can show you and your students can show you right there and then they can do something which you may never have considered. They can say something or they can recite some sort of research that you've never heard, that you've never had access to. And when you do hear it, you think to yourself, "I've never heard that before." Well, and there could be a couple of reasons for that, right? It could be highly specialized area that they do all the time. So in that case, you talk about it, but he talks about that with tracking and I come in with a guy, a German guy's name that sort of showed him where he held me at razor, was it? No, it's someone else I can't remember. But basically, he was like, "Whoa, this is totally. " You're on the phone to him every day, heck did not. (laughing) And I mean literally every day. Not every day. Every second day. But so it could be highly specialized area or it could be outside the box thinking, right? So you and I can constrain by the framework under which we have seen and trained dogs. And it's difficult, both very open to looking at new things, but it's difficult to see it sometimes because you're looking at the world through the lens that you do. But when someone is new to an area altogether, even no matter how open-minded you try to remain, you can't be as open-minded as them because there is no scars, there is no frame or reflexes. Yeah, that's a very good point. And I guess you see that sort of same thing when you warden the army as well. Oh, 100%. That's exactly where I drew that from. And you get people who exactly those two things, highly specialized in an area to the detriment of all others where they're fucking retarded at everything else they do, but that one thing, they're the guy and no one else even tries to challenge them and they become then like a subject matter expert. And as I say, that's usually to the detriment of all other skills. Think of one particular skill, they focus on so heavily that that's all they're good for. There have been great mysteries all throughout life where people have pondered and painstakingly sat there day in, day out, trying to rudimentarily work their way through an issue and somebody's walked in and gone, "Oh, if you just did this, this is the way the one." That's right. And they look at it and go, "How did you do that?" Well, it's because they're not agonizing it over it in the same way. They're looking at it, like you said, they're looking at it with fresh eyes. So they've come in with a different perspective and they've thought, "Well, to me, it was obvious." But for you who are used to doing it in a certain framework, no matter how neutral you try to keep yourself an open mind, you're trying to keep yourself, that's actually impossible. You can't be neutral. You're scarred by your previous experiences. So when someone has no previous experiences, they are able to be really neutral and look at something and weigh up the balance of possibilities. And there's another way of looking at that too. Another consideration is the fact that you might have developed a standard that has worked very well for you for a period of time with a certain criteria of dog. So for you, for your work, for your platform, whatever you're doing, it works well. But you'll get those anomaly dogs that will come along every now and then, which I think are good because they challenge you. If you don't see them as a challenge, that's when it's a problem. If you're just looking at it as just to say, "This doesn't fall in my easy category of caching in." Then what type of trainer are you? You have to ask yourself that question because you've failed to. When we talk about failure, you failed to evolve at that point. Yeah. So we've digressed, but we brought it back around to that idea that there's plenty of people who, if the dog doesn't fit what they're preaching, if it doesn't fit the style of training they're doing, it can't be trained. And we see that easy distinction to draw in that as we say, "Oh, well, balance trainers say one thing and force free trainers will say another." And it is often the case that you might get someone say, "Well, this dog can't be fixed." And then another guy fixes that exact same issue 100 times a day. So you get that in those who camps, but even then within the camps, you get people. It's devised and devised and devised and breaks down even more into smaller groups, where people. I only. I train with this modality. I train in high-drive leering and you shape. And if I can't fix the problem when this high-drive leering or teach the behavior in this leering technique, then it can't be done. So there's an old belief when I started off in detection work, is that in order to reward a dog, it had to be with a tug. Yeah, right. And people would say, "Look, don't do food. Food is not good." You know, it has to be with toys, it has to be with tugs. However, there are. And people have got their reasons why they believe that. And there's still a lot of that around. There's still a lot of that around. Yet drive is drive. Ambition to get to your reward, the primary reinforcer. That's the point that people are missing in some of these things. I know I'm talking about a specific technique, but that was one of the things that. I didn't. I was too young at the time and too naive to question that because I thought, "I don't want to question it because then my peers are going to think that just being a smart awesome, being arrogant." But at one point in time, I did start to think about it because I started to see people who were saying, "No, no, I only train with tugs." And I thought to myself, "Well, what is it? Is it tugs or is it toys?" But then when you start to mature in your own understanding of it, you realize that it is actually a. When you talk about drive, it is actually a determination to get that reinforcer. So if you miss that point, you really missed a lot of points in training. You've become corralled into a framework that's quite dangerous because it's showing a level of ignorance that you don't really understand as much as you're preaching to people you do. Yeah. So that's a good way to explain. So using that drive to bite and the toy and that, so this replies to pet things as much. But in my capacity training, working dogs, I like good prey biting dogs, right? But what I'm happy to do is if a dog doesn't have a lot of prey and the people want to teach that biting behavior, and so long as it's for sport and they understand that this is not ever going to be a dog that is going to really truly guard or whatever, then I can teach that bite as a obedience technique and I can do that with food. I can teach it as just exactly like returning to a heal position. I can teach that the mechanics of it look like this. Is the picture ever going to be as good as a dog that likes to bite because that is self-fulfilling and rewarding itself? No, never. It's never going to be as good. But I can teach it in another way. And then there's even another way where you could go into defense and that's where I personally am not good at working a dog in defense in that way. I don't like doing it. And therefore, I've never invested the time and effort to get good at it. And I've seen people who are good at it and they're magic. So there's three ways then to teach a dog to bite. If we're just talking about biting a sleeve, the dog could have that desire in himself to do it and then you're not teaching shit, you're just sort of cleaning it up. Then if there is no desire to do it, you could teach us a learn behavior or you could push the dog to do it through defense. I really only like to do two. I can't do the third one, particularly well, I'm not that good at it. So if I've expired my opportunities to do those first two and they're not working now, then the third I will refer to someone else to do. And I know what's the problem. Exactly. I know people who do it well and can do it way better than me. I mean, I can do it in a half done it, but I'm not I'm not polished at it. And so I will just pass my smile instead of saying, this is never going to happen. There's no way for this to happen. I'm very clear with the people, as long as you understand this dog isn't going to choose this, but you can you can put it on command and there is that there is another avenue. I'm just not good at it. I'm not set up for it. But this guy is going to see him. And so you've said this in many conversations over many years. If you came to me and said, I want to do competitive agility, I've probably said this in early podcasts. I'll say and do to someone else. Yeah. I won't even waste your time. If you said to me, Glenn, can you teach me how to get my dog to jump over some barrels and go through a tunnel and do some zigzagging through poles and so forth? And if I said to you, is it just for your own interest or for, you know, just want to have fun like fun or a bit of a tactical work or anything like that? And you said, yes, no problem. But if you're telling me you want to get 100 points, I'll send you, I'll rate you or who works for me. I'll go I'll tell you to go talk to her. You know, if you want to go and learn about flyball, there's a couple of girls who used to work for me who are a Australian champion flyball. They know they're obsessed with flyball. I'll give you their number and tell you to go and speak to them. Raleo Wouldn't even have a clue. Never done it in my life. So there's no point in professing that you're The authority on everything when you're really not. Well, and no one listening would batten eyelid at anything We just said right talking about except people who believe that they're authority on everything. Well, when you're talking about teaching a specific behavior for competition There's experts everywhere and really I mean you get the odd dickhead right but really do people step too far out of their lane and think that they can do everything Yeah, that's good. What surprises me though is then when you talk behavior modification So when it's teacher dog to do people are like, oh yeah look I know this technique, but I'm not good at that talk to this guy when you get into behavior modification and it's teaching a dog to not do That's when people like no, no, I know the way and if this doesn't work, you're fucked and it's not gonna work Yep, right and it's the same process as the exact same thing It's just being specialized in a particular area, particular dog, particular type of drive enthusiasm fulfillment all those things you get really you're a product of your experiences. You see a particular Type of dog you get referrals from that because people have success They refer to their friend that's similar. So you everyone whether you want to or not ends up reasonably specialized because you You're funnel work it all ends up looking reasonably similar and then when you get something that's outside of it People then go, oh no, no, this can't work. I've the technique that I know it doesn't work Even though when it's teaching a dog to do a behavior They're like, oh no call this guy. He's wetter out at the me no problem But it's so rare for people to go, oh behavior mod. This is an aggression problem. I can't fix put it down That's what they say instead of referring on to other people Yeah, that's amazing isn't it that euthanasia is a control mechanism for somebody with a massive unchecked ego And to recite the words of an old mentor of mine boy Cooper He uses it quite readily and again, it's probably a word that I've said in this series before at some stage But he calls it if you were to interview a dog I've seen him do that in other way Before I really knew you were in a sort of video of boy doing that and I thought, fuck that is the best way to put it I think boy I've pushed him for years and many other people have to is to actually write a book on that premise It's called interviewing the dog because and if you don't do it boy, I will So get you as of when when's the countdown on I'll give him to the end of the year Okay, you're on the you're on the clock you're on the clock mate So out and plus we're going to get you on the show one day too and we've trademarked the name and we own the website and So you have to pay us for all the grotesque Actually, we haven't but before you while you're editing this please do that. Okay. Yep. Soon as um, yeah before it goes there Before it goes there it'll we'll own all the rights that and hopefully some shifty bastard doesn't do that to him because It's a good premise and boy is a very good thinking man in those type of aspects and when he said that And when you relate to that in your own terms if somebody was to come to you and saying You have to learn my style or die You'd say you're fucking insane Who are you and where are my options? Why have I only got these two short stars? Impossible for you correct And there's a lot of dogs and a lot of people who are Look, geez, oh, there's a lot of dogs who have been fertilized over yeah think good turned into fertilizer over People's rash decisions or very very poor decisions to do those type of things because rather than say I'm not equipped to deal with this I need you need to go and see ex-wiles there. Yeah Well, the issue was as well. I think people as I was trying to explain before people don't You've got your dog guy right? So people will stick I've had people contact me over multiple dogs and different issues Because once you're their dog trainer you're their dog trainer. Yeah, so And if they've got no reason to not believe you or think that your skills are limited and people I mean You've been doing this 30 years and we're only wrapping our heads around all the The possible nuances in dog training still there's more developing and just Understand that isn't that exciting. No exactly Isn't that wonderful but that even for the term that you can say that you've been in it for 30 years and you're still learning from people Yeah, they're still as you said nuances and styles that are developing and Modifying that you can think yourself how wonderful is it that I can be in an industry and a training platform that is Constantly being researched constantly being analyzed and there are new techniques new understandings new science behind it It is just fantastic But the average lay person or dog owner that goes to their trainer It's very difficult for them to ascertain whether their trainer is Someone that is constantly evolving and moving forward. Well, they get trained applying exactly or where their specialization lies and how Deep their knowledge is versus how thin their knowledge is so they'll never know what they don't know Yeah, so they've never looked outside exactly so it's easy for people to then say well their trainer said this is an issue that can't be fixed And everything we tried it hasn't worked and we tried three four five things None of them have worked the trainer said it can't be fixed it can't be fixed and now I'm now I've lost hope I have no hope in fixing my dog because the only person the person I look at as a Messiah of training can't help me And has told me so has given up on me or told me to put the dog down or whatever I basically have to And the average person doesn't think you know what I'm gonna get a second opinion on this because it's not we don't think of dog training like that It depends on you know how much they love their dog and whatever and what I find is if there's a A possible maintenance plan people will take that so They've got a severe behavioral issue with their dog They've had a trainer that couldn't help them couldn't fix it for whatever reason No matter who that is And then if they can live with the dog and they can manage it then they do and the dog has this shitty life being Never gets to leave the house because it's dog aggressive or whatever right and The reality is just if they had spoken to someone else might have seen the problem so and It really is not the fault of the owner It's really the fault of that trainer who didn't Compel them to say look I can't help you. I'm my my playbooks run out Everything that I know how to do is one option or things that I'm ethically willing to do They're done my playbooks run out, but this guy give him a call Yep, and then you might be first of all saving that dog's life or at least giving it a better life if that then can not just have to be managed so heavily You know what I've had quite a lot over the years which I really enjoy and I subscribe to a lot Is former students that I've coached who've run into problems They bring me up and said look I've got a private lesson. I'd love for you to take it over Only condition is can I come and watch and be part of the lesson? Yeah, and I say absolutely yeah And sometimes I've shared the fee with them and said well look you got the you know Here's a percentage of the of the fee sometimes they just say look just coming along Is all I want. I just want to come along and learn with you and study with you a little bit Whereas even people have in the past Ring me up and said you know can I compensate you to tag along with you and and do some training with you So I often tell people learning is available to out there some people may give it away some people may charge for it But you have to make inroads to make that happen whatever way it is yeah, and that's why I'm I'm such an advocate for going to seminars It may be a tapest course on what people have available. It may be a very abbreviated, but it's better than Not having that information available to you not being challenged on new thoughts and not having new considerations behind it And on the flip side of that I had somebody recently said to me. Oh, you know seminars can be very expensive Well, so can ignorance and so can traveling oh I've seen people who Wouldn't go to a seminar, but yet would fly over to the country spend time in the country and then hook up with the person to do A seminar with them over there and then rave about how fantastic it was when it was the same seminar They ran in the country where you're going to yeah, but on their defense to it They say oh well, you know, I wanted to go over there and I wanted to feel more special. I wanted to yeah I wanted to you know made for a really good Facebook post. I got 87 likes So on the flip side of this too when you're talking about people who get fixated with they get blinded by one trainer and they stick with that one person And you get the opposite person which what they call ask holes which are Ask holes which you get a person that asks so many people they get so many contradictory pieces of fire sometimes similar but mostly controversial They will then have no idea what they should be doing. They're not even sticking to any platform of training or any foundation work whatsoever So they're so confused. They don't even know where they began and where they finished They don't even know what's happening with the dog So they've become so disillusioned because and often what will happen is you'll get one person going No, no, don't do that for God's sake that person's a fool Which is Look to say that I've never done that before would I'd have to be lying Because I have frowned well there's some crazy shit there is some crazy shit and I don't I'm not saying it in a proud fashion I've said things before which I have sometimes regret often not Because the person deserve contempt But sometimes I've said things where I thought I maybe that was a bit of a harsh judgment and unprofessional on my behalf When I've come across ask holes. I just say to him. I'm not the person for you. Yeah. I just don't have I'm not trying to win people's affection anymore Yeah, I am who I am. I'm in my own degrees. I've been largely successful. I don't need people I don't need to have people swanning over me and rubbing my ego up anymore because I'm not that same person who I used to be. I enjoy Being praised as most people do when you recognize and people do have nice things to say about you or to you, it is a nice feeling, but I just don't seek that constant approval all the time. Yeah. Well, the frustration there is always that most dog training is a system, right? So when someone comes to you and says, "Hey, I've got this particular issue working through it," and you give them a plan. And if they are saying it's not working before the plan has really been enacted when they're on step one of step five, that's when they're paying the house. So it is a fine line because we're saying, "Yeah, you have to don't give up, go to other people, but if you're with someone that appears competent, you have a reason to. Oh, yeah, that's the person I mean. I'm not talking about somebody who's on a pilgrimage to. Yeah. So that seek further knowledge and improve their situation. Yeah. So I commend that person. Yeah. But so if you say, "Well, it's a fine line with people because not giving up too early before, sometimes things have to get worse before they get better, blah, blah, blah." There's all these reasons that people say, "Now, fuck your system doesn't work." And they go to someone else and they never got a chance to actually enact the system properly and go through it versus someone that's like, "Hey, I'm sticking with you till the end no matter what happens, right?" And the best place to be is somewhere in the middle, right? See through the. Give the train of the opportunity to work through their issue. And if they have a plan and they can explain it to you and you can hit some milestones along the way, then you're doing fine. Stick with that. Most behave like difficult behavioral problems aren't fixed in a day. Multiple sessions and really it can sometimes be a lifelong management issue, but if you're doggie they would get out and do the things you need. I'm thinking of aggression cases as the main example in that, right? If you can hit some milestones and see improvement, you're doing good. Stick with that. It's when you're doing no good and they say, "I give up or it can't be done." That's when it's time to go, "Okay, well, it's time to look at someone else. Get a second opinion." Or a third. Or as many as it takes, do it, find the person that can work in that area. As long as you're doing what they're saying, that the issue is. That does do my head in. I know exactly you're married to ask holes that you see. You say, "Yep, try this." And then you see them doing something totally different. You say, "Where the fuck did that come from?" "Oh, well, I saw this guy and he recommended this as well." And it's like, "That could work." What he's saying could work. I'm not saying it won't. But half of mine and half of his is not going to work. I can promise you that much. And then which one of us gets the blame? It doesn't matter. The person that the sufferer is your dog. Yeah, yeah. That's an unfortunate situation that I've seen all too many times over the years. And when we're talking about not working with a certain type of dog or somebody not being happy, I've had clients before that have said to me, "No offense, Glenn, but I've just found somebody who seems to resonate better with my dog than what you're at being." I have never taken, well, I tell a lie. In the beginning, when I did have an insufferable ego, I did find that highly insulting and would often challenge that concept. However, now and later years when people have said it to him, I've said, "That's good. I think that's probably for the best." So rather than fighting them, rather than getting upset about it, rather than turning the situation, because sometimes I find that when they finish with that person, they'll come back and I'll say, "Look, I didn't mean to offend you." And I say, "Oh, look, I'm not offended." I actually think it's good because an analogy that I use, again, to bring up my endotegies, and it's something I say a lot. Forgive me if you've heard me say it here before, but if you come to a GP with a bit of metal sticking out of your eye and the GP goes, "I'll just get some toys and pull that out." You'd have to question their integrity. But if they said to you, "No, mate, you're going to an optical specialist." You need an operation to get that out. And then you don't go back to that optical specialist just for a checkup. You go to your GP. So there have been times where people have said to me, "Can you train me to do this or can you do this?" And I've either said, "No," or we've discovered that I can't do it, or I can't do it to the whole liking of the person. They found somebody else, but then they've come back to me for other things. Or they've come to see me as a specialist and said, "Got a problem with aggression. I've got a problem with tactical work or something like that. I've been able to help them where other people haven't been able to do." And then they've said to me, "Would you be offended if I went back to my other trainer?" And I'm not at all. Because sometimes they can't afford the fees that I'm charging. Sometimes it's in practical for me to meet with that person or the distance they're traveling to come to me. Or they've just found that it's best whatever situation it is. So for that type of person who's going out and doing those type of things, I applaud them. I think they're actually showing an incredible amount of intelligence in their decision making, and they're not forgetting what the most important thing at the end of the day is. It's not all about you, and sometimes you've got to travel some miles to do the right thing by your job. Yeah. To use your analogy, the worst case scenario, and this is where the two camps, the main two camps I was talking about really divide, is when if you go to the GP and you go, "I've got something in my eye," and he doesn't say, "I'm going to pull that out," and he doesn't say, "I'm going to feel too special as he just goes, "You're going to die, I've annoying myself." Because that's what we sometimes see, right? You go, "I know there's a way to fix this. I could do it, but I'm not willing to. I'm sure it's hell-entgenre for you to one of those monsters that we'll pull that out of your eye." Maybe we'll just say some kind words to the object and see if it'll come out on its own. Yeah, exactly, right? Oh, it hasn't? Well, you have to go. You're going to die, right? That grinds my shit. That really drives me crazy because when dogs are put to sleep over people's biases, that really gets under my skin and pisses me off. And that's, again, that comes back to Boyd's Point before where we're talking about, if you do interview the dog, if you told the dog that, if you said to the dog, "Hey, we've got a really nice way of doing this, and if it doesn't work, perhaps we're going to drug you off your head for the rest of your life, or in your life." If you sat down with a person and said that to them, like, I'm going to transform you into a different person by giving you a drug, or I'm going to euthanase you, put you to sleep. You'd have to think what type of hell did I wake up on. We were, if somebody said, "Hey, if you do that, I'm going to give you a. We're going to have a tough five minutes." I'm going to give you a flick in the air, give you a. If you didn't do it. And then people say, "Well, that's hostile, and that's horrible." People will challenge the ethical notion behind that and get all upset about it. I've never understood that. And I mean, as much as the other camp can't understand what I'm talking about now, they just said. Look, I've asked that question to people before I said to you, "If somebody was to say to you, if you don't comply with this certain direction, I'll give you a smack on the hand, or if you don't comply with this certain direction, I'm going to euthanase you over a period of time because you don't seem to be following my direction." I said, "What would you choose?" Now, 99 times out of 100 people say, "Well, of course you'd take the smack on the rest if that was the chance." But then I'll get someone and he'll go, "Well, if you're going to smack me on the hand, so hard that skin would come off and that I'd be tied up to a wall." I said, "Hang on, where are you getting this from? Where are we going with this conversation? This is becoming outrageous or an outlandish in what we're actually talking about. What we're talking about is the operant concept in training. If you do something that is aversive, then an aversive action happens and you learn from it, you move on. You don't sit there and start saying, "Well, now I'm going to get pleasure in shackling your tour wall and beating you with a cane." That's not learning, that's torture and torment. I understand that. I totally get that concept. Again, I don't want people to think that I'm just all about capital punishment because you attract more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. My favorite belief is that we're all positive trainers. The only difference with balanced trainers is that they explore alternate methods when those methods aren't working for you. That's right. One of the specific example in dogs that I see very regularly is brachy dogs that have become dog aggressive. In my area, I see these at least two or three a month, if not more. It's almost always the case. In these sort of dog aggression things, I'm last resort guy. I love that I get referrals from the vet, but they give me the hard ones. I always say, "You know, I can do the easy ones as well. I charge the same. I have a much nicer day." I'm the last resort guy. We've had good people who are willing to look outside the box and they've had someone else come over who can't fix the problem and has only given the management techniques. Then I get called for these final aggression issues. I can tell you how often I see brachy dogs that people have been told, "Okay, you can't put a collar on this dog so a dog has to wear a harness outside the dog's friendly." It's a high traffic flow of dogs in my area. The dog sees another dog. He pulls into the harness and it rewards you. He enjoys it. He finds that reinforcing. Then through frustration, he barks at the other dog, owner's pulling back a little bit and he gets more reinforcement. He compound the frustration of wanting to engage with the other dog with the reinforcement of being pulled on his harness, which compresses his ribs which he enjoys and it tells him he's on the right track. Before too long, people have accidentally built a dog aggressive dog from a dog that just wants to engage with another dog by reinforcing that frustration bark. After trying to explain to people, you've taught the dog to do this. This is not inherent to your dog. Your dog isn't actually aggressive. He doesn't have, he's not a, like a, sort of throwback to some game hit dog that is built to kill other dogs. I know people can't see my head, but I'm nodding while you're saying this. He would see it all the time. It's so common. Then what keeps me awake at night and it really does piss me off. I get really upset about it is when people's biases then go, "Okay, well, that dog either then has to be isolated from other dogs." That kills me because the reason he was doing that was he wanted to engage with other dogs. He's frustrated because he can get there. He's probably at the core of it. very friendly. Right. And the other, or he has to be put down, right? Because he's so aggressive, it's too dangerous to have around. And he may well have been built that way, but you built him that way. So he's just doing what you taught him to do. He thinks he's doing the right thing. And you would not believe how often in these dogs, I take the harness off him, put a collar on and say, look, let's accept the risk for now of causing an airway problem on these dogs since we're going to put him down anyway or medicate him out of his life if we don't fix a problem. And the problem's gone. The problem's not there. And within a couple of very small, like leash pressure corrections, we can show the dog. No, no, that's unacceptable. Oh, you monster. Yeah, exactly. You're a horrible person. And we can show the dog. That's not what we want. And the dog was never that into the behavior. He was never that committed to the behavior. Anyway, he's doing it because he thought that's what you wanted him to do. It's been reinforced. And he thought that's the outcome you wanted. Again, it resonates so well with Esther's caption, it doesn't matter what you think and feels. It matters what the dog thinks and feels. And it's so often overlooked. Yeah. It's almost diabolical to think about how many times people are looking through that explanation simply because they don't understand it. Yeah. And they've been fixated on that concept of being indoctrinated into somebody else's theatrical ideology. Yeah. That they can't see what a mess they're making of their dog with something that can be fixed so simply. And it really is very frustrating that you get referred to as I have many times as the last resort guy. Yeah. You're that hard guy that you have to send to the school hard knocks to fix a problem. Now, if the dog came to you in the first place, there wouldn't be any need to go into harder training styles because the dog could be conditioned properly from the get go. That's right. And this is what is often overlooked. Now, I've been, look, I tell you one thing, mate. I would really, when we talk about things grinding again, one of the things that I really does annoy me is when I go and see well meaning, but very untalented puppy trainers who are doing things with puppies that they must not and should not be doing. I'm sure I've mentioned it before. I've mentioned it many times. I just can't remember where I say it because I say it so often. But to be a puppy trainer, you need to be a very educated person in canine behavior, not just somebody who's a nice young person, who's got aspirations of doing nice things for puppies. You need to be, you need to have your shit squared away. If you own a clinic or a training center and you're just hammering a square peg into a round hole where somebody doing that, you really need your head checked. Yeah. Because I've got contempt for people who do things like that because we've talked in previous podcasts about the importance of making sure that you do have that critical window secured. Yeah. Not only that, but your conditioning processes that you're doing with that pup from there on in are so relevant to the future of that dog. I mean, the future of that dog, keeping it out of being euthanized, euthanasia rates due to poor training program and poor socialisation off the chart. That's effectively why we have such a rescue and welfare issue is because people just giving up too easy. And the ability to give up is astounding. It's shocking. It's seen too much these days as acceptable. It is. It's okay. Divorce is acceptable. Walking away from things, taking the easy road, reaching for the pill over doing some hard work. Convenience is king. Yeah. And there just isn't that many people who rel, like relish in hardship and are prepared to put in the hard work for the outcome. And like, let me ask you a question right here right now. What joy do you take in punishing dogs? No. Other than the outcome of the dog. Correct. Good answer. Me too. Because as I've explained to people, even though I do believe in a balanced training method of training dogs, I don't enjoy punishing dogs. I never have. Never will. Fuck. We're getting into the ass on their argument. But yeah, here we are. The thing that annoys me about all that is I am for the most part of very positive trainer more than anything. Yeah. You're a lemat trainer like me. Yeah. At least in face, even minimally, aversive. Exactly. And these days, the work I'm doing with like existential markers, I'm turning dogs around without ever laying hands on them. But and they know they they survive in that behavior. You know, so my sister got a greyhound recently. That was an ex-racing greyhound and really had no business being re-hound with a cat. But she wanted it and she's got a cat and she's a vet. No, she knows what she's doing with dogs. And I went around and I've never I've never done any greyhound work before. What I mean training in this regard, right? Like keeping it off of a cat. And so I start racking my brain and I think it's my sister so I know she's going to follow through and everything I tell her to do. And I'm in a stay on top of her. Yep. In the most least invasive you could imagine, the worst that dog experience with a little bit of sleep lead pressure. That dog now lives with the cat happily. And this went from a cat I wish that I'd filmed it. This went from a dog that was so locked in prey at the side of that cat. It was just you couldn't break its focus. It was dead dead on these dogs are bread for. Yeah, exactly. And any other cat I'm telling you it's it's killing it. But this one in particular, we were able to teach that cat that that dog that that cat is out of bounds. Yeah. Well, is it survival mechanism? Yeah. And without ever laying hands on the dog. So it does frustrate me when people then go, oh, these, you know, these are the bad guys like that's no. We're prepared to if there's nothing else. If there's no other way, then we can do that. But that's not I don't turn up and go. Here we go. Like check chain on a way we go. Right. Anybody who's anybody in any type of training application, animals, children, adults, whatever. If you're not doing critical analysis before you begin, okay, if you're not doing an assessment of what you're doing, you're not worth your soul. And that's in any training program I've been in any seminar I've been to, anybody that I've worked with that's held any type of credibility. The first thing they teach you is start assessing what you're looking at. And same thing mate, I don't walk in there thinking this dog is just all about a beat down. What I do look at is I'll say it's an investigation. It's a crime scene. You're walking in there and saying, tell me what's going on. Describe it to me. Show me. Can we safely repeat it? Is there any video on it? What did you do? What were the situations surrounding it? So it is a proper investigation. You're going in there forensically to look at the situation and say to them, how can we, how can we get a picture of what the dog's thinking? Yeah. You know the way I explain it to people, you say investigation. I say when I turn up to that sort of console, I say, I'm doing a puzzle. Yep. Right. But you know, on the box of the puzzle, we know what it looks like at the end. We don't have that. So all we have is all these pieces all over the floor. You just got to look for the corners. Yeah. I just got to try and find what can I link to what? What goes together? What fits together? What just goes together? That's why I say to people this, so that's why I might tell you something now and say this might be why this is happening. And then in two hours, I could completely contradict myself. It's only that I've found more pieces that go together and understand it. But more importantly, the dog needs to know that too. Because the dog has a fragmented way of thinking. Exactly. And what the dog's thinking is what I'm doing is normal. Yeah. And it's rewardable. And it's okay because it's as I say to people, it's behaviour. Yeah. It's the dog doesn't think today I'm going to get up and I'm going to do some bad behaviour because I just feel like it. Yeah. What the dog thing is bad behaviour. It's not to a dog. So a human, the concept of good and bad behaviour is a human concept. Yeah. Not an animal concept. Yeah. To them, it's just behaviour. It's just part of existence. Yeah. I think that it's quite cold and most dog trainers understand this. Well, I hope that most do. But to explain to just the average Hed dog owner, the idea that your dog pleases himself. So why does a dog do anything? And it's to better his own situation. And that's it. Yeah. And no, he loves me and he think, no, he just betters his own situation. And so sometimes by cuddling to you and displaying affection or that, his situation gets better. So that's why he does it. I really wish I could find this footage mate because I've searched the internet. So if anybody is listening and they have this footage, I have seen it where I'm sure somebody showed me a dissemination when they came out here where there's a dog that prefers the company of a robot dispensing treats to them over a human companion. Yeah. Because they basically worked out. You're the one that's feeding me, not these ourselves. Yeah. And like it doesn't just have to be, I mean, that's a great example of food, but it doesn't have to be food. It can be whatever it is that dog, as we've discussed many times, rewards are relevant to the subject only, whatever it is that the dog likes. If at that time, yeah, if it's common, then the dog's situation is getting better. He's improving his own situation. And he's going to stick with it. And that's often the first thing that we ask a lot of a lot of students, do you know what a primary reinforcer is? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Whatever the dog wants at that time. Yeah. That's what also sort of, here's what grounds my gears is when the dog is just chasing those reinforcers. And we've never said, no, no, that's not valuable to reinforce. So you can't have that. And he's a punishment that outweighs that reinforcer. So you don't want to go after it. And the dog goes, Oh, okay, no problem. Like I'll bet on my situation. I won't put myself in that position again. And then fixed, right? And that's oversimplifying. It's never just fixed. Yeah. But there's elbow grease that's got to go into that situation. Yeah. But so long as your dog is actually a stable dog. And this is where this is where you then get people just, they just write the dog off as mental. And that exists, right? There's no arguing that exists. There are unstable dogs that really have no business being alive. And they unfortunately, sometimes you just need to use the answer. But rarely, right? Really. It's usually just a case of the dog is just like, okay, he's your advantage. I'll show you how to find your advantage. And dog goes, okay, I'm happy with that. I'll do that. Yeah. When you've got a dog that's resembling somebody like Charles Manson or something like that, that's usually when I say to him, time to go, there's time to go. There's not much that you can do with this dog that will. allow it to safely walk amongst public or enjoy a quality of life. I can't really, I can't really, I can't really, if we've talked about it here before, but like I've only done that a couple of times and I would do it. It's very, very rare. Yeah, and I usually tell people this is how I feel, but I'm going to bring in a friend. And I always get someone else to, and it's someone I know. The second opinion, yeah. But I mean, they're very welcome in both cases to go and find their own person to give them advice. Yeah. But I also want to buy from someone that I know knows what they're looking at. See, on the same way about medicating as well. I mean, I can't subscribe medication because I'm not a vet, but even in the situation where people are talking about medication, I think medication is reached for far too readily. And I question some of the ethics behind that. Yeah. So I know that it's definitely needed. And again, I'm not one of those people who just undermines science. I know there are clients of mine who have gone off and medicated their dogs and it's worked for the better. Yeah. I've seen the dog, I've seen the quality of lifestyle, telling, and I concur that that was the right decision to make. When we've talked about the list of opportunities for that dog at the time, and they've said to me, training has not worked. I have done this and I have done that. And I can see that they've done the hard yards. And they still love the dog. And there is an option for behavior modification, not a problem. Yeah. But when it's just the dog walks into the clinic and they're already pulling off a script paper to give them medication, that type of thing, I question it. Yeah. I think that for me personally, again, acknowledging that I can't give meds anyway, but so long as the diets in check and the fulfillment is in check. Yeah. All of it. All the catalysts are in place. Yeah. And they're still a still in there's a problem. Yeah. Then we can start discussing, okay, well, this is beyond anything I know. Before you're on anything, anyone I know, no, if you've looked around, okay, now let's go to meds because then certainly that there must be something wrong. But if you haven't addressed all the things that you can beforehand, then it's unethical, I think, to just go straight to meds. In some situations that has to be asked, are you just creating a customer for life? Yeah. Or are you really involved in making sure that you have a certainly, I think, there's an aspect of creating a customer for life. But you know, sometimes those meds aren't that expensive. And so like I remember it was all over Facebook and it was being shared everywhere about a particular vet doing that. And it was, it was on that expensive. So it wasn't like it was creating a customer. It was an ethics thing. It was just this is totally unprepared to do anything other than this. And so you get, here's the meds, this is what you get. Well, that's what I'm saying. There's, I do know people who've gone into consults, been either pressured or have elected to go into certain places where they've walked in there. And I've said, so tell me the process, how long was the discussion for them. They said, oh, they were pretty much writing the script for me before, as a whole before I even sat down. But they were pretty much describing a medication for me and didn't really want to see the dog or know much about it. They just said, you need to be on this. If you were to look through those lenses, every dog we own would be eligible. Right. So my dog, Valerie, she runs around, chases dust and she loves it. She has a wonderful time and and who she hurting. No one. And I can recall her through any of it. She does her bed against her any of it. But that's, she's fulfilled doing that. And it's her own home. Randy would be a nightmare for people. Oh, totally. And in some households, people will be saying, oh, this dog needs to be medicated. Yeah. Because he is busy all the time. Yeah. And he doesn't cause me any issues. No, exactly. And you know, you've got him for that purpose. Correct. That's it. I think there's a big problem in that as well when people are getting the wrong dog. Like, could you imagine, say, Randy or Remi? So, Remi and Valerie get along super well. He will kill her for a ball. Yeah. She knows not to challenge him for it. He couldn't see her. He'll go through her to get a ball. Or what, you know, a toy of any sort of kind. He loves her and she's actually very dominant over him. Yeah. But he can't perceive any of that once he kicks in the drive and sees the thing he wants. Nothing can get in his way. Or drives black's pain and fear. Exactly. So, anything that was relevant before, there were no rules once you were engaged in that high state of arousal. Yeah. So, imagine I'm a person who's got a dog like this and I don't know what I'm doing. And I call any trainer or better in any behaviorist. And I say, look, I've got this dog. He's sweet and he's great. Everything's fine. But when a ball comes out, he will kill anyone that has the ball to get it. He will go through any barrier. He will do anything that it takes to get that ball. There's like anything. He will jump off a cliff. He will bite another dog in half. He will do anything it takes to get his desired toy. That's, there's like, it's a monster. It's a psychopath. Yeah. How could you live with that? And I'm like, he's the best dog ever. I love him. He's the best. Yeah. Because I manage it. I only use ballers or a word. I've taught him that he can only have the ball. Astrid. He's his marker for the ball. And it's a reward toy and he's totally fine without the rest of the time. It just means that I have to be careful where I pull that thing out. And that same talk, when that person calls a veteran, they'll have to say, oh my god, that's terrible. We have to drug that dog and just came to the point where he can't even look at the ball because he's so doped out of his mind. Then you call someone else who has working dogs. They're like, I will buy that dog. How much do you want for him? Because I've got some work that he needs to do. Yeah. So it's just horses for courses. And I think a lot of the time, that jets glossed over. When people were meditating dogs, it's because they cannot fulfill that dog. It's the wrong dog for them to have. You just said it perfectly there. And that was an interjection I was just going to have. These are a lot of times people get totally inappropriate dogs when they need it. They'll go and get a blue heel or a kelp and want to put it in a small backyard and then wonder why it barks and runs around in circles spinning in its own dust or day. And was it chased the kids around trying to run them up? Exactly. In those situations, the better we can be as educators overall, all of us in those sort of situations. It doesn't matter if it's a family or friend, a loved one, a colleague, whatever. If you can see that they make an ill-informed choice in the breed of dog they're getting, then do something about it. It really is your duty of care as an industry professional to say, I think that is a really bad choice. Here are the reasons why. Not I think. I know that's a really bad choice. I actually, I'm predicting problems for you. Now, that's not always going to be the case. Sometimes you'll have a prediction and it won't come true. That has been sometimes the case in situations like I had a friend that wanted to get a certain breed of dog. I tried to talk them out of it. They got the dog anyway and they couldn't be happier. And they're lucky because I know other people who in the exactly same situation who have gone off and got that breed and then they've come back to me and said, oh, this is a nightmare. And I almost want to say, I told you so. Yeah. But I don't want to be that smug-ass when people are coming to you at that point and saying, how can I fix this problem? This is where I think rescue plays an awesome part. And when people want a really specific dog and when people want that, it's usually chilled out couch potato when they want specific to average person, right? They're not like us that want lunatics. And you don't know when you get a puppy how it's going to turn out. And there's so many different key events throughout that dog's life that will make it into who it is. There's genetics, there's nature and nurture in both in there. If you get an adult dog and you're going for rescue, you can just choose the one you want. You can take them home. But the issue we come into there, they game, we're off topic, but is most rescues give you like a two week sort of calling off period or whatever. But no one uses it. Everyone gets a dog and like, as they're going home, that's like, I love you, fighter. You're my dog forever. This is it. Whereas I try and tell people so often, I say, don't get attached to dog. Check out what he's like. Because like, if you're looking at working prospects from rescues, I'm sure you've done that in the past as well. It's heaps. A lot of dogs and a lot of industry people know who are working in those fields. Go to rescue first. Yeah. Exactly. Because they've got time to wait for a puppy. No, that's right. They want the package. They want that crazy dog that's doing back flips over tennis balls. Yeah. Like that. But you can, whatever your desire from the dog is, you can usually say to rescue. As long as they're good rescue people and they know that they live in the real world, you can say, hey, this is what I'm after and take the dog and for a couple of days, you're next and put one in taking me out. And like, you're looking after the dog in the meantime, so I'm looking for something very specific. Now for us, that's usually, I want the craziest one you have, which is usually pretty easy to find. But you say, no, I'm after a catch-tator. I want to dog with basically no drive that just wants to hang around with the family. And I want to try and find why is he here? That something's had to go on wrong. This dog's in rescue for a reason. I want to try and figure that out. Is it a problem we can fix or manage or whatever in the environment is going into? Perfect. Okay, this is the one. Actually, I can't wait to do our session with Dallas. Because I really want to do that. Yeah, I really, in case you didn't know, Birkowitz, is that your last name? I think so. I think that's sorry, Dallas. If I've just mispronounciated your surname. But Dallas, who's in Canberra, who's been in heavily involved in rescue for a lot of years, we're going to do a road show at some stage. We're going to go down to Canberra and talk to Dallas. Do some Canberra stuff. So we're going to hang out with the Canberrians and talk about rescue. So hopefully that'll be a good podcast, because I'm intrigued. I'd love to know some more facts and figures, because I'm not a rescue person. I've done very small amounts of rescue. I'm sure you've helped rescue with certain things. Yeah. But for people, some people, it's been a very disciplined lifestyle where they've given up a lot of their personal time. Yeah. Only to be held down by red tape and bureaucratic nonsense. Yeah. Well, there's so much of that in rescue. But as I was saying, so, that's where I find myself going to quite a lot for people who want a specific dog when you can just try before you buy, essentially. And people forget that they're bringing their dog home and they put a photo of it in the car on Facebook, and it's like, this is my new dog. And then people say, like, if it doesn't work out, then they go, "Oh, where's that dog?" "Oh, you're such an ass." Yeah, exactly, right. So the truth is, get the one that fits. Don't just get anyone. Don't get the one that looks good. It's exactly like choosing a puppy when you're getting one from a breed. I get the one that's going to fit your lifestyle as much as you can control them. But there's lots of things you can't control. Whereas if you get one from the rescue, the only problem that caviar does say to people then is he's there for a reason. You might not know if it's all right. So that's why I've come in many times for people to try and expose that reason. Okay. It's because-- Be sensible. Yeah. Well, we find, okay, this is the problem with the dog. He pulls insanely on the lead, or he's got a severe separation anxiety, or whatever it is. And maybe that's not a problem. But maybe for them, it's not a problem. Or maybe it's a problem that we can work on. Anyway, we get to try it out. And if it's like, okay, this dog never going to work out. We go back to the rescue and we say, hey, this one's not going to try it. Can we try another one? All right. And I've had good experiences doing that. I've also been told, I've been painted as a psychopath for doing that particular rescue. But most of the time, they're very accommodating in that space. Yeah. Look, again, it comes down to personalities behind the helm, doesn't it? Yeah, of course. The captain, the ship, is not always the same character. Well, the idea then was that all dogs are good dogs and just take this one. And I was like, well, no, that's not the case. I'm sorry. Yeah. Oh, look, I've seen some amazing rescue facilities. And I've seen some that are, it's basically the captain on the Titanic. Yeah. It's just, it's an absolute disaster. And again, it's a bureaucrat running an organization where they're making very, very ill-informed decisions based on trying to, I don't know. I don't know what I'm trying to say. Well, don't say it. There's a whole other, there literally is an episode of rescue. And we want to talk about that. We've gone so far off topic. We've just been re-emiling. I think it's good in that we really are hitting on that failure in training and how to avoid it in as many spaces as possible. So choosing the right trainer, choosing the right dog, choosing the right trainer, choosing the right way to train. And if it's not working out and you've given it a good shot and it's really not working out, go to someone else and there's a million things you can do before you a give up on the dog or b, put it down or c, which can be just as bad as living this terrible life of management where the dog is either trapped in a kennel and never allowed out because he's too dangerous to do so. He's a dangerous dog now or whatever, or just medicated out of his brain and he's basically a potato. Just a small caveat on what we're saying that in a situation where somebody like Pat or myself do actually come to a lesson and say to somebody that Euthanasia is a strong option, in those sort of situations, you have to consider that we've never arrived at that point lightly. No. Just sort of sat back and thought, I couldn't be bothered doing this. Let's just snuff the dog out. We've looked at it and again, this is where you were saying that you're bringing a friend along to your appointments. I think that's actually a great idea because it gives you two people that can have a analytical look at it and then say, yeah, yeah, this is not good. Yeah. There's only one circumstance where for me, it's the first step and that's like predatory aggression on a kid. I will not accept that in any way, shape or form from a dog. Unless the dog can be swapped into a working role where it's got nothing to do with contact in children. If that were possible, I don't know where that's possible. So for me, in the early days, I used to rescue a lot of shepherds and roddies that we would send into working roles that weren't suitable to be in a family home. So I used to just go around and sometimes people would just say, sometimes I have to buy something for people to say, just come and get the dog. It's going to bite my kid. So going to bite my kid and predatory aggression against the kid, I think there's a line somewhere in the middle. Yeah, but these dogs were, it was a train wreck way to happen. So in those sort of situations, we used to just go around and pick them up. And the role of the dog was it would never be around children. Yeah. I mean, even the contract of sale was that the dog was never to be around children. Yeah. They don't say well, especially when someone's pet has turned that way, I've actually never had it in a working breed like a dog that that was never on the cards. Yeah, for me, that's the end because there's no one go from there. If it's prey and you really want that badly and then it's just not worth the risk. No, it's going to happen. It's just a matter of when. Yeah. No. And I love dogs and we both spend our whole lives dealing with them, but no, no dog is worth a kid's life. That's all looking at your child with scars all over it. Yeah, exactly. And knowing that you could have done something about that, it didn't. Yeah. Defensive and like, there's lots of reasons why I would say, okay, I can see what's happened here. I mean, that's likely to happen again or kids can be our souls and they, idiot parents, let they dog, the push and push and push, the dog feels like it has no choice. That's a different scenario, even though I'd still am really against that. That's a different scenario. It's when it's a predatory aggression that that's a whole nother that catalyphish and that thing. Did you, did you happen to see that footage? It wasn't a video. It was just a, a caption of stills where a young child was drinking at the bottle with the dog and then one day the parent came in and scalped half the side of her head. Yeah. I got a lot of people slam that lady, a lot of people supported her. My take on it is that I don't think it's a good or a sound thing to leave toddlers with dogs. You just don't know. Yeah. And then the dog died for that. So you don't know if the kid did something and then you know, you'll have people say, well, it doesn't matter if the kid did something and the fact that the dog bit it like that means that the dog has to be destroyed. I'm not a parent and I'll, I'll, I'll state that up front. But I've seen people defend actions that their kids have, which I find highly questionable because it's their offspring and they'll allow it to happen. Now I'm not saying that that's right or wrong. I'm just saying that I've seen situations where I've been to consults where it's 100% the child at fault, 100%. And it's also at fault the parents for stupidity and ignorance that they're allowing this behavior to happen unchecked. That's correct because there's never the child's fault. Well, the child is doing behavior like a puppy is doing behavior. Kids are idiots and they are idiots. They are idiots. We, we, we accept that they don't have, they don't have responsibility till 18. Yeah. So you can't then blame them for anything before then. It's 100% the parents fault for allowing it to happen. Yeah. And in that particular scenario, I don't know there's people, I know the story talking about. And I don't know either and I don't know what happened. I just, my, my only advice to people in that same sort of situation, if you're telling me that you can trust your dog 100%, I'm telling you that you need to really rethink those statistics. Yeah. And really that goes back to what we're saying that a dog finds his advantage. And if the kid has, it could be anything, you know, like dogs punish each other like that on a regular basis. Yeah. And that is a normal practice for a dog to, and people might question me on that and say, do you think that was normal? Well, I mean, I've seen my friends, she's punished each other over that over certain things. I've seen dogs of mixed breeds, same sex, different sex, different breeds, different ages, all over life where there'll be certain thing that they'll one dog will challenge another dog, one dog will push a dog's pain threshold. You know, a bite will take place where they grab and thrash. And you say, if it was a child, if it was something with delicate skin, it would easily fly it like that. Yeah. In those sort of situations, all I'm saying is this is not to, we talk about failure and training, that's failure and parenting sometimes. Yeah. Because you're failing to recognize some of the whole mark signals that your dog is giving at that point in time. You need to pay attention. Well, I mean, that's exactly it. People fail to recognize that because they just don't know. They really don't know what they're looking at. And parents aren't telling their kids know enough as well. Yeah. They're not raising their child to understand what limits are. Yeah. Well, it's a training on training for everyone. It is. You find that you find that going down where the dog's uncomfortable and the kids may hit so first of all, of course, you have to stop it. But then you use an opportunity to show the kid, hey, this is what you're doing. And this is, you know, this is the path. This is where it goes. So this is an appropriate treatment of the dog and this is how you are allowed to interact with the dog. And this is how you're not. And I mean, we've talked about before, like it's something that I have to be so careful of. Like, my dog's 100% safe around kids. So long as nothing crazy happens and so long as I'm there, nothing crazy will happen. It's just when I would never leave them just to hang out unsupervised, totally unsupervised. I just wouldn't do until, you know, the kids are old enough at least five to understand, like, okay, there's some cause and effect to my actions because they're in the younger than I don't know shit. They're just stupid things and they don't understand it. I'd even question five. No, but I mean, at least five, you could leave them in the room. You know what I mean? I wouldn't be sleeping in the bed, sharing a bottle, but at least so that you can say, hey, this is what will happen because kids, they just don't link that shit up in regards to that lady with the dog. What I do want to say is that I'm really sorry that happened to a kid. Oh, it's ruffian. You know, it is and that's terrible because that mum will be kicking herself for a while for every time she looks at the scars on that kid. She'll be kicking herself. I do think it's brave that she showed the pictures. Yeah, you do think that. Well, it's good that she did because the people understand that's why she did it. That's why she did it. The caption she said, it creates awareness. So this wasn't a slam hurt. This is not a thing about her. It's just the thing in general, which I'm just saying to people, you just need to be more thoughtful about how you go about this because you've got to pick up on these things. You know, there's an old saying, dog bites, cat scratches and a horse kicks. And if you keep that in mind, through everything else, you'll be safe. That's what they do. The dog bites, the cat scratches, a horse kicks. Yeah. That's sound advice. Presume that's going to happen and take steps to make sure that it doesn't happen to you and you're going to be okay. Yep. Especially with kids. So we've gone around to talk about a lot of different things with our intent, what's the talk about? It's my trade and deep into just a rant. Once you get a angry, or not angry, just once you get a waffle. It's not anger. It's passion. Yeah, definitely. It's passion in things that we've seen over a collective amount of years and things that we've consulted on. Yeah, with our clients and we've seen many instances of these type of things. Of course, they're going to create passion in you. Something I did want to hit on just a personal story. I've only ever had one time where a client put a dog down while we were working with the dog. So between sessions and they were like spaced out sessions, he contacted me and said, "It got too much." And I returned the dog to the rescue who agreed that the dog should be used to nice. That certainly for me, I think, is a failure in training, not of the dog, because we're on a path, but of the person. And it was probably a failure in showing where we were going with it all. And certainly in that dog, it was a severe dog aggression case. But it could have been fixed. I could have fixed it. I left it showing the owner and I was happy that they were going incrementally. And what I failed to read was how tough the owner was doing it. And I thought, "Well, okay, because we'll make a step." Yeah, that's a good observation. Yeah, we're making steps going forward. And the dog, who knows, we can only play hypotheticals when we're now, but I was confident that we were hitting milestones and the dog was improving. But even a 50% improvement was still a nightmare with this dog, but we're going forward. And it got too much for the owner and he did end up returning the dog to the rescue, who then he was amazed at. So that, for me, I think, is worth talking about in his failure as well. And that you got to read the client as much as the dog. And that's where Bernie comes in. That's part of a big part of her workshop and what we spoke about with her is the dog part is often easy. You just don't understand how fragile people can be sometimes. Especially if you're a certain type of character. Yeah. There's a business saying that I heard many, many years ago, which I relate to common life, which is one person's trash as another person's treasure. So the way you view something is completely viewed differently by a different person. Yeah. So you might look at something and say, I can handle this all day long. Whereas another person could look at it and say, I would crumble under that. That would be incredibly challenging and quite a trial if I was to be involved in that situation. Yeah. So two people looking at it from two different ways that aren't often considering it from the other person's point of view. Yeah. In that particular circumstance with me, the thing that pisses me off about that was the failure in my part was there's a quicker way. It just was a, it was not the least invasive, minimally, adversity. There was a quicker way. We could have put a prong collar on that dog and we could have gotten quicker results, but we were going for very softly, softly because I thought that's what the client wanted. And it is the best way when done correctly. If you've got infinite time and which I was under the impression that we did, but we could have done it in a much shorter time frame and maybe got results that would have given him hope that it would get to where we wanted to go quicker and then you know, you might have stuck with the dog longer. So that is, I think that's the balancing point. There can be tricky as a trainer to try and surf that, that rim of like doing it the best way, especially in this day and age, where people conditioned to be so judgmental. Yeah. That, you know, any suggestion like that you'd be considered a monster. Yeah. So that can be really difficult and that's a failure point in training is making sure that you do it the best way, but also efficiently enough that it gets seen through to the end because it's no point like exactly like I did having this great plan that I'm confident it was going to work over a six month period and be a totally fixed, gone problem that we didn't have to worry about in the future. Whereas the, the two week option might have in that case been the way to go. Yep. And I know how to do that and I'm comfortable doing that. I just picked it wrong. I usually try and read the owner and say, okay, what are you more likely to follow through with? And what are you more likely to do? And we go with that because you know, there's got lots of tools up my sleeve to do these sorts of things, but I got it wrong. So that for me is a big failure in training. That's my fault. I accept that as my own. So that's really all the failure in training. I can think of, oh, you know, the working dog part that we spoke about once that, you know, sometimes dogs are getting washed out by one person and turning out by another. Can you elaborate on that when we're talking about? Yeah. Yeah. There was a situation a while ago and this is something I can personally relate to. There was a dog that wouldn't bite a rag, wouldn't bite a sleeve, wouldn't bite a rag, wouldn't bite a toy, wouldn't chase a ball. And everybody said to me, this dog's a piece of shit. That's the way they described it. And it's, you know, it's not that the dog itself is a piece of shit. It's just that it's a fray, probably a terrible phrase, but it was a phrase used in conjunction with its ability to work. So when I looked at it and I said to the owner, how long have you got? And he goes, oh, look, I'm keeping the dog no matter what. And he said, I'd like to do this just for fun. And I said, okay, can I experiment? And he said, go for your life. Do whatever you want. He said, I just want to enjoy the dog. And I want to see if there's any hope at all before I'm prepared to give up on doing this. So what we did was, yeah, the dog didn't chase balls. It was interested in tugs or anything like that. But what we did was we put a bit of meat on a bit of string and flung that round the air. Now the dog went crazy when we did this. It changed the perspective of the dog. And suddenly where the dog showed no interest in anything, it's the chase after it. Now, obviously it's food. It's desire was different than going around with just a wobbly bit of chamois or something like that on the end of the lead. But the dog really woke up when we started doing this. Now then what we started to do was we started to do a bit of a transfer where we'd have a bit of chamois. And if the dog showed any interest like it didn't have to chase it, it just had to look at it. We'd immediately start getting the meat out on the string. So what the dog started to understand was if I show interest in the chamois and go after it, then I can have the meat. Yep. Okay. So we started to show the dog words advantage-lied simply by transferring from one to the other. Yep. So three months down the track, we had the dog biting a tug toy. And I mean biting and hanging onto the tug toy and shaking and pulling. And everyone looked at it and said, "How'd you do that?" Well, I just went outside the square. I did things that were unconventional to what other people were prepared to do. And that, I think, in training is where you're breaking new frontiers and things is not looking at being conventional just because somebody said that's the way to do it. Yep. You've got to wake up and look at possibility. If you're ever going to be somebody in the training world, you've got to think about what you're actually doing and not just walk the path that somebody carved before you. Sometimes you've got to look at carving your own path in what you're doing. There was a good saying about that. I don't know who quoted it, but it's a quote that I do enjoy because those sort of things helped give me credibility as a trainer. Those are the sort of things that made people say to me, "How did you do that?" People that were my peers were asking me that question, "How did you do that? How did you make that dog bite the sleeve?" Well, the good thing was, is I had time. I had time and I had imagination. I wasn't looking at it with tied eyes and just thinking, "Just steal that phrase as dogs just shit." The dog wasn't shit. The dog just needed a different type of motivation. So the dog was never going to be the competitive dog that owner wanted, but he was sticking by the dog. I'm telling you now, the owner was a static that we got the dog onto a sleeve. So we got the dog onto a sleeve. Look, the dog would come off fairly easy, but he could not believe that six months prior to that, people were telling, "You'll never ever, ever get this dog on a sleeve six months into the future. I got the dog on a sleeve." Well, that's a perfect story because it closes the loop on everything we've spoken about here. We go back to the start. We say people changing our dogs. The reality is, if that's your dog and you just want to have some fun and do some training. Perfect. No worries. That's the way to do it. There's no need to get another dog in it. That journey is probably ever after. That journey is probably very fulfilling. The process of going through that for you, for the him and eventually for the dog. Such a good learning experience. Everyone has a good time. Sure, if you're going to work to streets or if you want to be a world champion, whatever it is, with a dog that's got a bite because it leaves the bite, it's not the right dog. You move him on. But in that circumstance, it's the perfect thing to do. It's a big win for everyone. The failure would be then moving that dog on and getting a new dog and becoming world champion. You're still an asshole for doing that. That wasn't your desire and what happens to the other dog that just gets put on the backburner. In this case, you got to come out. It's a perfect example of doing correctly what we spoke about at the start. See that? We tied all up. Even though we were just randomly and just talking shit at people. We're just talking shit and trying not to get too angry for an hour. We've tied it all back together. We've arrived at a perfect conclusion. Perfect. We won't say any more so we don't digress too much further. That's it for another episode of the Can I Am? If you like what you're hearing, the ranting and raving that we always come back to some sort of point to mad geniuses talking shit about going around in circles, but we do the circle completed. 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