Jay Wants Too Much, Liberty In The Yard, Teaching People

Acoustic solo Welcome back everybody, next level dog talk radio podcast, we just go, we should just give up and call it next level dog talk radio. Okay. Well, I mean, I don't want to change. I don't want to go change everything, but we should just stop worrying about saying it. No, no, we need to do actually, we need to get somebody that has like a good sounding voice for these sorts of things make like an actual actual one we can just put in there and then it's not like a plug and play. Like, welcome back. Yeah, but you know, a person that actually sounds like they're good at it. Instead of me. You're back from Nashville. You didn't. Oh, yeah. I was away in the hurricane. Yeah. You're like, what? That seems like forever ago. Yeah, Nashville was good. I didn't take Sue. And I really wanted to but I didn't because when we bought the plane tickets, we were not thinking about taking having a dog with me. And so it was like the first one had like layovers and it would be his first flight. So I'd really want it to be like a nonstop flight and not that crazy and like just to be able to get him used to it. And this would have been like a pretty good layover. And then on Sunday, it would have been like, because a lot of times what happens we get done at one, we have nowhere to go. Yeah, I have no hotel room, there's nothing to do. So I wind up just sitting at the airport for four or five hours until my late flight or whatever, if I get a late flight. And no, I don't really give a shit. I'll take a nap. I'll do work, whatever. But I didn't want him like sitting in an airport for five hours followed by a plane flight. And then we're leaving out of Boston. So it would be followed by another two and a half hour drive in the Boston airport, I have to say is not just huge, but particularly like congested and noisy. And it's not one of those like, so I mean, if I if I had a if I had a three hour direct flight somewhere, and back with him, I would I would do it. I'm going to do it. I just once we bought the plane tickets before I had was like before I started going like, Oh, dude, I'm gonna take him with me. And then I was like, like, that that's going to be a little bit much for his first his first plane trip. So yeah, or not first plane, your first plane trip in a, in a carrier. I don't want to create him and put him in cargo. Yeah, I could easily do that. He's done that trip before. I know he would survive it. I know he'd be fine. He's resilient. He wouldn't give a shit. But I just fucking don't want. Yeah, I really don't want to do that. I really don't want. I don't know why. I don't know what's the difference. We put him in a crate in a noisy. Well, the difference to me is that he's with me. So I am the one that with eyeballs on him. And like he's not out of our sight being handled by who the hell knows what's happening to him. Yeah, that's the big difference. So yeah, I just didn't I didn't do it. I also think it's a little bit, you know, you struggle with this, I think because you get into that, you know, absolute thinking or whatever. And you know, you wanted to bring them on the trips. But then there is the it actually would have been a much shittier weekend for him like he stayed here and we were like, out in the woods and like did you like he had a great, you know, however many days it was he would have had a really crappy, not crappy, but definitely nothing compared to it. It's also different if we are taking a trip where it's all of us going. Sure. That's a different thing. But if it's like he has to go on a plane and then is doing a seminar versus stays home with or even like the drive to the seminar I did in Canada, like that drive is different. He loves driving. Yeah, that's different, too. Yeah. So overall, it would have been it would have been worse for him. So I left him home, but but they are everyone is as a unit going on. This is gonna be a shit show, probably the first big adventure of everybody to the New York because that's driving it. We figured it was our, you know, good. Yeah. So we had we have probably a shortened version of what's up with Sue and Macy because you weren't here for a big chunk of the time. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. So I mean, we have been we have. What's happened with them? I feel like, well, I know what we did the other day. Well, so we had we had a we had a good session the other day that we put up. That was nice. It was Macy's first introduction to that's what I was talking about that I remembered I for some reason thought maybe there was something else but oh, they well there was the second porcupine incident. Yeah, that fortunately didn't turn into another vet visit. You know, you say porcupine actually correctly and it's porcupine. Yeah, but it's with a porcupine. No one says porcupine porcupine, but that's the way you say porcupine. Everybody does. Nobody says porcupine single person. My God says p o r k y porcupine. Nobody says oh my god. I don't know who says porcupine. Everybody in the world but you. Nobody says porcupine. I absolutely do not believe that's the case. I listen. We need feedback for this. We need to run a listener. I need to know who says porcupine, porcupine, whatever you'd like to call them porcupine porcupines. They almost got into another one the other day. I guess that was it didn't. It wasn't really significant training wise. It was just no but I think it shows that they did have learning experience because they didn't get full on they didn't get they didn't get it like no it was he had someone his foot. Yeah, you know what I mean? So like they were like popping out of them. They weren't like full on attack mode. Yeah. So if they could have easily so it's just my mom and I out in the woods. No collars on even no leashes. Yeah. And so if they could have gotten away from me and gotten around me and like, you know, the thing was just right there. So like, you know, anything I could have done about it. There was more dogs than people. Yeah. So you know, yeah, if they had really wanted to so there was that but I was just bummed that they even went after it again. Fortunately, I could all the quills that Sue got were in his front of his foot. So it's like he had just started poking at it. And I was able to pull him out with my hands this time. Poor little poor little porcupine. Oh, yeah. And so yeah, I was like fuck the porcupine about that thing. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, but yeah, so mostly the the training we did with them the other day was pretty good. Yeah, there was he Macy's first weight pull Macy's first got in his harness for the first time read introduce Sue to weight pull essentially. Yeah, I just I have done I've done a bad I've done a bad job and hopefully people will get not inspired but you know what I mean? Because I'm supposed to know what I'm doing and shit but like everybody messes up and especially when they get emotional and they want like the whole thing I always say want for not from Yeah, this is such a good example of such a good example of I wanted from so bad. And the only good the only good thing is, you are pretty aware of I can feel it. It doesn't take like, you know, a month's worth of sessions for you to realize it takes a couple sessions where you're like this is Yeah, and when I start to ask you what about this and this you're just like, I can't even think straight when it comes to this particular thing. Because you still want him to be able to do it. Yeah, I know he has potential for weight pull. I know he has potential for weight pull. Because he loves to pull he likes all other versions of pulling pulls the bike he pulls like a fucking monster when we do candy cross he likes low speed dig when we're on the belt harness like I know he enjoys the physicality of pulling and I know he loves doing get to me type stuff like recall to me jump on me the end of weight pull is a big jump on you make out party I know he it's like I know enough about him to know that if I could show him the picture properly he would absolutely love it right. But I also I am intellectually aware that you have to be very careful about your weight selections and you have to be very careful about Yeah, you know what I mean? Like how much pressure you were making were just bizarre. I wouldn't you tell me what you were doing? I'd be like, What are you thinking? And I don't even know first session I did with him outside of drag work, like the first trying to put him on a track and like, let him see what the picture looks like. The first time I did it, I made really bad weight selection choices. And I, I deluded myself because after you see something go bad, you're like, Why'd that go bad? Like, what did I what was that? And it's difficult for you to immediately go I must have been I like, I didn't immediately see my flaw of wanting from I thought I reasoned myself into this idea that I'm used to bigger dogs. And so the weight jumps are a little bit bigger. And I was making poor weight selections based on habit of what I am used to jumping. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like when you read like a workout program, and they say something generic, like, at the end of the week, if you make all your lifts go up five pounds on each side, that's not based on anything other than what the average person can generally lift. But that's if the average person is 150 pounds. If you had a 75 pound individual, you wouldn't want to make five pound jumps on each side, that'd be too big. And I logic myself into the fact that my poor selection was based on habit. And then I had another session and did it again, and was like, pushed him way like was making jumps that were way too hard. It's so the opposite. I mean, just in general, it wouldn't be great. But it's so the opposite of what this specific like, no, his specific dogs. Yeah, I just, and I felt it. And that time I couldn't go Oh, it was an accident because I'm used to bigger dogs. And it's not and then I immediately was like, I could feel myself like, I want him to do it. It's really tough, because like, I think you were really in I don't think this isn't necessarily not going to be the case. Like, I think, you know, the reality is like, Sue doesn't have nearly as much drive as you know, you were hoping or thinking or whatever, and you love him anyway, and you accepted that. But I think you were kind of still really holding out that weight pull might be the thing where he does have that natural drive that you were kind of hoping you'd have for everything because of all the examples we've had of that he likes pulling. So I think it was been very hard for you to kind of divorce yourself from that was sort of your last sort of your last hope as far as him just naturally loving one of the people doing the bulldogs, right, right, because he would do so many different sports, dude, he would do fucking my God, how much is this dog built for weight pull? Yeah, my God, but like, even outside of the pitbull world, like he would do all the joring sports and be in heaven, he would do lure coursing, most likely he would do scent work stuff like barn hunt, he would love you know what I mean? There's like, there's not it's not that he doesn't want to do shit. It's just that the games I love. He's like, Yeah, I get it. And it's hit or miss because he'll play them all but not reliably enough that you could take him to a strange environment. Like Macy has enough drive that it would overcome. Like Macy's a good sport dog for these games is a good sport. Like take him anywhere, show him a spring pull, he'll hit it on your fuck what's going on. Sue will hit it if he's feeling it under the right set of circumstances, which doesn't lend itself to traveling to a competition because you know, you're going in with a 5050 shot, right. And so it's like, I was I'm whole I'm doing the soccer dad thing where I'm holding out hope that he's going to play one of the games that I like, and not he's going to want to like I played rugby and wrestled and boxed in school or whatever. And he wants to play fucking lacrosse. And it's like, great for him. Awesome lacrosse, but like, I kind of really want to bond. Well, and there is also always subconscious stuff that we have going on. And I think, you know, realistically, like emotionally, this is a tough thing, not just from that one standpoint of, you know, this is what you were hoping for. But on top of that, the things that he naturally loves are now the things really difficult for you to actually do with him. Because of all the injuries. He'd want to go on an eight mile run and be in heaven. And I can barely I can barely do eight minutes. So it's there's so there's, there's always so much that goes into most of the stuff that, you know, but I felt it. I felt it. And was like, at least smart enough to go aboard. Yeah. And I haven't done it since and then got you to work with him. Because you're not as stuck in that thing with him as I am like I have a real I have a real bad tendency to want from him like I want him to do weight pull and it's not thinking yeah whereas I don't there's a portion of it that is thinking about him because I know that if I could show him the picture right he would love it just like if I could show him the picture of barn hunt right or lure coursing right he would love those things also. So there's some aspect that's not totally selfish but like far and away. The reason I'm fucking it up is because I am like, I want it. You know what I mean? And that's so bad. You can see it weight pull so hard. We pull I think is especially I mean, that is very much maybe more so than even any other stuff I can think of right at the top of my head. Whereas you get a lot of that thing that you dogs that pull happy and then you go to a show and the person wants it so bad. The dog is like, what is wrong with you? And then you see them like, I'm not doing this and they just shut down on the track. And the person is like, Come on, man. And like, if somebody else walked in and like, Hey, get out and we traded handlers and the person was like, Hey, pull it a if you want to buddy and the dog would happily pull because he enjoys pulling. But the person wants it so bad. It freaks them out. And it's like way too much social pressure. Well, my problem with Sue is like, he is so sensitive. Like he is so sensitive. Yeah, I don't think I'm doing it crazy bad, but I am definitely doing it. And I think he's very sensitive. And so like I had to make a had to make a handler decision and withdraw myself from that process and get you to work him in that zone. Because like, I want it too bad. And it's affecting my choices with him. Yeah. So like having you work him was a good choice because you definitely got him back in a good zone. And so that's what that's what he even it's a good zone yet, but I think he I think he could get well, it wasn't the pressure what you weren't you weren't you guys weren't having the discussion. He has a little bit to overcome. Not a lot. But I think he has a little bit of that, you know, like, you know, tendency to get freaked out still. Why do you want this so bad? Why is this happening? What's the big deal? But he loves this. Like we obviously would have asked of him was so little and he loves the celebration so much. Like, I think a couple more sessions like we did the other day, and he'll get a little more enthusiasm for when he's, you know, starts to feel anything from it. So did that did me also want to switch some of their walks from belt harness candy crosswalks to drags normal because we're working the same physicality like this, the physically it's the same, but mentally, it's not mentally, it's not quite the same. And I'd like to give him a better chance with it. So yeah, we need to when we're going to switch some of their candy crosswalks to drag walks, and you're going to be working on the track for a little bit because I need to not be involved with for the beginning process. Do you know what I mean? At least until I can get a handle on the problem I'm having a warning from him and not for him and you can get him to a point where he's enjoying it. And then maybe we can mesh back together and I can be involved in his weight pull. Yeah. But then you introduced Macy to to the harness. He did great because he was great at everything. But no, he actually that day, I thought was really interesting. The thing I had realized about him that and we talked about afterwards a little bit, he's actually a pretty soft dog when it comes. Yeah, which is really, he's such a bizarre mix. He kind of makes you feel like, you know, you're bipolar or something, because he's, you know, there's one ways he presents as this dog that super hard. Yeah. And like he is in some aspects, but then when it comes to handler sensitivity, when it comes to any sort of corrections, and by corrections, I'm not talking about replacing him on the placeboard. Yeah, like just in the very normal way one would do that. He becomes very soft. So you, you kind of have to be careful. And he really has you bouncing between these extremes of modulating your own self. Yes. So that was interesting. But he did do great with weight pull with weight pull. He did great with both dogs all time. He did great. I was pretty excited that day because I think we finally dialed in his stride. Yeah, we figured out I figured out I've been starting too far back. He needs about six or seven feet from the wall to get two good strides. Three good strides messes him up. He needs two good strides because then it puts him at the right speed to climb. Yeah. And we did some reps of really if starting literally right at the bottom of the wall to kind of gauge if he was climbing, you know, to get him to climb and to get him to climb and he was doing that pretty well. Yeah, we I'm putting a video on Patreon of that day. We did wall climb weight pull and some obedience that day. Obedience slap. So it was one of the things we had also realized is we need to put a lot more time in working these guys together. Yeah. So we tried to do that in a way that would also the other dog would be working impulse control. So we did place work while the other one was, you know, doing obedience or obedience or food work or something like that. But we both had cameras. Yeah. And both videotaped a lot of the sessions. And what I did, because I thought this was interesting, was I put one video up already, that was my perspective. And, and I put so I put one video up of my literally my viewpoint, my, my, my vantage point, my point of view of the sessions. And I'm going to put the same session up. But from your point, yeah, some of the some of the session, not every single one, but some sessions are actually really interesting to look at from to be able to look at from two different angles. Yeah, I thought so. Because as I'm, as I'm putting them together and putting them up, I'm like, Oh, shit, that's really interesting. I was gonna try to do like a split screen of the same, like two different camera angles. And one that's really hard. But then I actually got into the idea of seeing an entire session from one point of view, and then seeing the exact same session from another point of view, because it's weird, the shit that you see, and how it looks and like the lessons that you learn from different perspectives. It's really interesting. I thought it was really interesting. So that next post is going to go up today or tomorrow. So that was pretty cool. That was a good session. And so if you're doing wall climb, his stride length is about seven. Yeah, which is good to know. Because you can put them exactly where it's best for him. The thing is, in every other organization, adba and you know, DCF and all those places that do wall climb, you can put them where you want them with no like, you can hold them and restrain them where you want them and just let them go and let them run in GRC and level one, you can restrain them at 15 feet. And if you want somewhere other than you have to use, you don't have to, or you have to, you can't handle them. You can't put your hands on them. So like you could go stand at seven feet, recall them to front, get out of the way, let them go. You could tactical heal them to the middle, you can use obedience to get them where you want them. But you can't talk, you can't grab hold them and restrain them anywhere except at 15 feet. So like, if you want to start at the 15 foot line, you can go ahead and restrain them. And if you want, if you want something other than what you get, you're going to have to earn it through your obedience, right? So we'll definitely have to work on his obedience setup for his wall climb in GRC. Although he's ready to compete in any other organization, he's ready to go. In GRC because of his stride length and the difference between the start line and his perfect starting spot, we'd have to work on his obedience. But man, he's going to be a monster wall climb. And his outs getting good in that picture. You know what I mean? Flip him in, you out him, pass me the toy, put it back on the wall. Yeah. That's the only other thing that we've had come up with him that we haven't even done anything with yet. Actually, I had just told you, it's weird because since we changed how we were working with his out, which seems to be working well and progressing for his regular out. But then I noticed a, all of a sudden the out that he had that was so great, which is him spitting it out with me not still holding it, has now gotten worse. Well, in fact, so it's interesting because fetch is a non competitive game and his out was super clean and non competitive setting. So then we were using the we both stopped playing method when we're teaching him the out in his competitive game of tug. And he outs much, much cleaner. But I think what's happening is it gives him the picture of both of us have hands off, he starts to have the anticipation that it might be a competitive game. Now the other one's gone to shit. So he's, he's, he's, it's like his ability to do a non competitive out has gotten his tug out better. But the fact that that picture looks similar to the fetch out is making him get a little stickier on the fetch out. I think it'll all clean up pretty quickly. And I did a session with him the other day where I was working him through it. And then at some point, I was like, listen, we've given you a long yellow light, I think you have an understanding of it. I went, no. Came off the toy, gave him a little tap on the nose, and it cleaned it up much faster. So I think setting him a penalty, like, hey, listen, if you don't let go, I'm gonna say you're in trouble. Nothing crazy, nothing bad, clearly, right? But I think he understands it enough that I think he's ready for, if you don't let go, I'm gonna give you a little penalty. And I think that'll clean it right up. So I'm not worried about it. I think that's pretty much it with these guys. That's pretty much it with Macy and Sue. I did, I recorded a hour and some odd lecture on punishment that I'm gonna start working on. I think it's gonna go on Patreon, I'm pretty sure. It's not quality like I would be able to release it for sale somewhere, because it's like half the video in my head is cut out of frame, because it's focused on the whiteboard. Yeah, but Patreon people probably don't give a shit about your head. Yeah, I think Patreon people would be able, I think Patreon people would be pumped about the information more than they would be annoyed that half my head is out of frame. So yeah, I'm gonna be working on that. That should go out sometime in the next couple days, hopefully. And that's it with update bullshit. We'll be in New York. I'm gonna put Sue and his first SR in New York when we go to the seminar. Okay. You still have to, we still have some sort of bet going about who passes the SR first. No, I don't think we ever had that bet going. I don't think we did. All right, so let's see. We have a voice, a voice memo, I said a voice question, that's not how you say that. We have a question. We have a question, we have a recorded question that we're gonna get to, so let's play that right now. Hey guys, first off, wanted to say really happy to hear that the podcast is back. I've enjoyed listening to it, and I'm trying to catch myself up on all of the new episodes. I do have a question as I was catching myself up. I just listened to one of your recent episodes where you were teaching, you were talking about teaching Macy Liberty, how to be at liberty outside in your yard. And I have a two-year-old bully mix who she has very, very high prey drive. And I've been working on, she's great in the house at Liberty, makes good choices, but when we're outside in the yard, the second she sees a squirrel, a bunny, any other small critter, it's like her brain goes into another universe, and she's chasing it up to the fence. She's broken through the fence. She's barking. She's just going absolutely crazy trying to get that animal. Once the animal is gone or out of sight, as long as she hasn't broken through the fence, she kind of comes back to, and the whole time I'm telling her no. We've tried using the squirt bottle just to kind of get that boundary across of you can't be doing this and losing your mind when you see an animal and trying to chase after them. And she recognizes it once she snaps back to reality that what she's done is wrong. She lowers her head, her ears go back, but it's like we go into that same cycle over and over again every time there's another animal, like nothing is really sticking. She goes into another universe and she's off again. And so I'm wondering how you deal with kind of setting that boundary so that the dog can be at liberty in the yard safely if they have very high prey drive. Are you, you know, should I be putting her on a leash so that she can't get to that level of arousal and she can kind of be present enough to understand the training or the boundary that's trying to be set? Should I be working more with her in the play window where we're letting her kind of express that drive through chasing the Frisbee, the ball, the flirt pole, and reinforcing the enough command there so that it can carry over when there's an animal in the yard when we're in that window where she can be at liberty? How would you go about training that in a dog? The only other thing I will also add is she displays similar behaviors, though not as severe when there's another, you know, dog walking by the fence as well. We live on a corner street, so it's kind of hard to avoid seeing people or dogs on the other side of the fence, though it's definitely not as severe as when she sees a squirrel or a bunny. And I can kind of snap her back to me a little bit quicker. Thanks. All right, good question. Super, super common question. Like we get this one all the time. I think this is a ridiculously common one. And you kind of, towards the end, you kind of answered your own question. I'm looking over my shoulder. My voice keeps changing because I'm looking at my notebook. Yeah, you kind of answered your own question. I think there's levels to the answers to this, and I'll try to go through it. I think the very first one is set up the picture that you want to see in the first place until that picture becomes habit. Like don't let it happen. That was a long way of saying don't let it happen in the first place. So towards the end, you were like, should I just put them on a leash so they can't get to that level? And you're like, yes. That's absolutely the first thing. When I'm teaching Liberty, the easiest way to explain it, because if you take any dog, like this is damn near 100% efficacy, right? If you take any dog and stand on their leash, not close enough to crank them into a down, but close enough that they don't really have any options, give it 10, 15, 20 minutes, even on the most ridiculous dogs, and they eventually just go, all right, fuck, I guess nothing's happening. And they give up and they settle in, right? Stand on the dog. Some people call it a behavioral down. Some people call it sit on the dog, stand on the leash. Stand on the dog? Literally, they call it, like sit on the dog, they'll call that. Because they'll do it sitting in a chair. Oh, I've heard sit on the, stand on the leash or whatever, but. Yeah, yeah, so it's like. I've never actually heard a good sitting on the dog. No, I know. I don't know why they named it, whoever named it sit on the dog. I was like, don't sit on the dog. They mean sit. Yeah, yeah. On the leash next to the dog, but that doesn't make the acronym or whatever. So anyway, but that's what I mean is like, that is a common practice in teaching a dog to like, hey, settle the fuck down. And it's not by putting them in obedience because they're not under orders. They just don't have any options. And so they settle in, in the absence of options. And so what I'll tell people is, look, stand on the leash, teach the dog, listen, nothing's gonna happen right now. You're not under obedience. You're not under orders. You're not under command. Nobody's gonna play. Nothing is gonna happen. You just fucking chill. And they do. And what I tell people is, as they chill, like you give them a little more and more leash. Once it's reliable, once I stand on the leash and 10 seconds later, the dog's chill, then it's like, I'll give them a couple of feet more of leash and let them wander around inside that zone. And as long as they stay chill, the leash gets longer and longer and longer and longer until the leash is so long, it'd be stupid to put it on. And you let them drag a line around in case you need it. And after a month of not having to step on the leash, you fucking take the leash off. And now they know how to be at liberty in the yard, chill. But in that beginning period, if they start to get jacked up, you go, uh-uh, and then shorten the leash until they find their calmness again. So their arousal shrinks the bubble and their calmness expands the bubble. And that is just the easiest way to teach the dog how to do it. So you do it on a really long line and then eventually let them drag a leash. And if they start to freak out and you go, uh-uh, enough, and they listen, settle, cool, no problem. If you have to, you go stand on the leash and you just make it a consistent thing where you do not get jacked up when you're under enough protocol, you need a command, you do not get jacked up, you stay cool. You can be free, but you gotta stay cool. And you use the line to enforce that picture until that picture becomes habit and then it's not a problem and it's reliable. That is the number one way to make this work. And I think it is also the thing that people do the least and last. You know what I mean? They'll try to do recalls, they'll try to do obedience, they'll try to do tug, they'll try to punish, they'll try to do all this stuff. But the truth is, the easiest, most reliable way to do it is just get your line. And until they have a line of social responsibility, they have a line made out of cotton, you know what I mean? That's just the way it is. Well, I think in all the other things you just described, I think people are doing that thing where they are addressing it once the dog is already so far past that it's like you don't have the ability to use any of the skills that the dog might even have to begin to work on it. So it's like the really important thing for this specific example, I think is having the length, and obviously this will be different for everybody's setup, having the length of the line be where the dog cannot, where like their zone can't be any, what am I trying to say? Closer enough to the target? Yeah, to be within that, they can't automatically go into that, it's not a red zone or whatever. You have to have them far enough back that even when they see the squirrel or whatever it is, they are still in a mental place where you have the ability to actually work with them. Yeah, if they're physical proximity, it's like I tell people magnets, if the thing gets close enough to a magnet, it's gonna get sucked into it. Right. So like you have to be at that distance where it's like they see it, they're interacting with it. Even if they could see, right. They're dealing with it. So they still saw it. They're dealing, they're feeling the pull, but it's not such a strong pull, they're gonna get overwhelmed by it and get sucked away. So it's like you have a magnet that is, we'll talk about this, I wanna actually talk about this in a sec, where it's like you have a magnet that is your toy or your food or your social stuff that you're gonna try to reinforce them for doing something other than freaking out at the thing. But the magnet that you have has gotta beat the magnet of the other thing. And that means you're gonna have to get far enough away from the other magnet that your magnet can win. And every time your magnet wins, it makes your magnet stronger and the other magnet weaker until eventually they can be right next to that magnet and the magnet doesn't work because yours is so strong now. But it's a process that it takes to build up to that. It's process and it's slow, obviously, because you're, I mean, it's slow anyway, but you also have to think you are, the dog's had, I don't know how old this dog is, but the amount of, yes, the amount of, like we were just talking about before, like the pulling the lever in a slot machine, the amount of practice that the dog has had with that and getting reinforced with that game feeling. Freak out at the fence, freak out at the fence. Yeah, and now we're gonna apply this thing that is much more subtle and slow anyway, and we're having to overcome that. So it's not like a fast process, obviously. And so, well, we're jumping out of order, but that's okay. Differential reinforcement is what we're talking about. You're trying to reinforce something other than the other behavior, right? And so you can start with things that are easier to get by and on, like alternatives. They want to freak out and have a kind of angry scrap at the fence, I can give them a tug toy. That's more of an alternative than asking them to down. Down is totally and fucking completely incompatible with what they wanna do. So alternative behaviors, alternative behaviors are biologically or functionally similar and they get easier by and on. Incompatible behaviors are biologically or functionally incompatible. Down is incompatible biologically and functionally with rushing the fence. Recalling to a front is functionally and biologically incompatible with rushing the fence. So everybody usually starts with incompatible behaviors and I think that you should put a lot more effort into developing your alternative behaviors in the beginning because they're gonna get easier by and. Once the dog's skilled at doing alternative behaviors, he can play tug while that dog walks past or while that squirrel is there. Then you can start to go, now can you down in front of the squirrel? And you can kind of wean them off of alternative behaviors and wean them into incompatible behaviors. Because incompatible behaviors are harder on the dog but they're easier on the person because you don't have to get the tug toy and do all this bullshit. You can just ask the dog to down. You know what I mean? But I think it takes more work to get there and I think people should do the foundation work first of alternative behaviors first. That you can't, like to your point, you can't get any of that to work if they're too close to the magnet. So you have to get a leash. Yes. Yeah, I mean, that's a requirement. Like the dog has to be hooked up. Otherwise, there's absolutely nothing you can do. You can't do any of the training sessions if you can't manage their distance. Yeah. I mean, I think she seems to be actually in a good position because in her case, her dog has a similar behavior just at a lesser intensity for like the dogs walking by. So she actually is in a good position to be able to work the process and not have it just be the option is the dog is fine or a squirrel. Like it's, you know what I mean? That's going from zero to a hundred. She has a much better opportunity to use something that the dog still feels like that about, but like not nearly so different stratosphere. Yeah, so I would say the first step is to get a line on the dog. One, so you can practice standing on the leash and establishing what an enough window actually looks like. Their arousal shrinks the bubble. Their calmness expands the bubble. And just doing that can potentially fix a lot of these issues. Second to that, I would say condition relaxation because anytime a dog gets jacked up, if you have an actual, hey easy, a dog that is obsessing about the squirrels and you say easy and they can get themselves to relax, even though they're still focused on the squirrels, they're not freaking out. So sometimes just putting an easy on cue and teaching a dog how to condition relaxation is very helpful in these things. Not necessarily the automatic game changer gonna solve the puzzle, but I think everybody should be doing one line to teach enough and condition relaxation to help the dog learn how to relax. Those are the two things I think nobody does and kind of the absolute base foundation before you even fuck with reinforcement and punishment strategies. Like you should do those two first. You know what I mean? And I think they get left off. They get left off the discussion quite a bit. And then there's differential reinforcement. We just talked about that. Trying to teach the dog to do something else instead of freak out at the squirrel. And that'll be great if you can find a way to do it. The pros of differential reinforcement is it feels good to train. The dog can enjoy the process. I can enjoy the process. The downside of it is it takes fucking long time. You know, it takes a long time and you have to be good at it and set up your distance threshold so you know how close they can get to the fence and yada yada and all this bullshit. And then there is the occasion for like if a dog is freaking out to the point where you literally cannot get their attention and they won't take anything. And if they're outside in the yard at all, they will not take any reinforcer whatsoever and nothing else has worked. There is a time and place to interrupt that behavior because if you can interrupt that behavior in a way that gives the dog pause, in that moment of pause, you can insert the lessons of reinforcement. Do you know what I mean? Good punishment doesn't seek to just smash the behavior out of a dog. Good punishment opens the door for reinforcement because if a dog is just freaking out at the target, you can't give it reinforcers. It won't take them. It's freaking out. If you can give it a reason to just stop for a second and hey, stop, and for in that moment they're like I want to flip out but I'm not supposed to, in that moment when they're in that like on the seesaw trying to make the decision, then you can go hey, let's make this other decision and you have a chance to use differential reinforcement but you can't use differential reinforcement if the dog is just in attack mode. Do you know what I mean? But the problem is when I say use an interrupter and consider punishing their aggression at the fence in order to get to differential reinforcement, in order to have a gap in their aggression so you can start to do differential reinforcement, people hear that and think that's where you start. And to me it's last. It's like first you get your long line on the dog and try to build the habit of calmness through the long line. Second, you teach them condition relaxation so they learn how to fucking calm down and let go of energy on signal. Then you try to do differential reinforcement to the best degree possible and if absolutely necessary, you interrupt them to go back to the process of differential reinforcement. But I think when people hear that list, they skip the long line, they skip condition relaxation, they fuck around with differential reinforcement but it's kind of hard and annoying and complex and then they go to punish the dog. Well, and the other thing that makes this tough is especially if you're talking about, a dog being in the yard and this is like your everyday life, the tough thing about that is if you also during this time period are just letting them out during times you're not working and they're continuing to practice this behavior, it's gonna be extremely hard. So it kind of is a real pain in the ass thing where, okay, you have to decide how important this is to you because it is going to be a pain in the ass process to work because essentially you shouldn't be letting your dog out into that environment unless you do have them on a long line or unless there's something to prevent them from continuing to practice this behavior and that is the thing that makes it such a giant pain in the ass. You can't set the crackhead free in the crack house. Yeah, there's no point in doing an hour worth of training on it in the morning and then in the afternoon, obviously, you just wanna let them out. They're out there for three hours. It's completely pointless and that is the part that's like, ugh. That's the part that's hard, I think. The amount of work that it takes to set a habit feels intrusive and huge and overwhelming, right? But I think it's for a short term because if you can every single day, they do not go in the yard unless you are out there orchestrating. It's like they're a musician. You do not let them play that instrument unless you're orchestrating. Unless you're conducting, you don't let them play the instrument and then after a while, that's how they play the instrument and they couldn't even think about playing it a different way because that's their habit and it's like, it's really overwhelming in the beginning but if you can just get through it for a couple weeks, a month, it's like, you can really set a dog's habit in. The problem is when you let them play roulette, like when you let them play the slot machine and sometimes they get it and sometimes they don't, sometimes they get it and sometimes they don't. There's a reason that slot machines run the way they do. Fuck, bro. It's like literally designed to keep you pulling it. Yeah, yeah. And that's by not, when like variable reinforcement is extremely powerful. You know what I mean? So like really the first thing is, I think decide how big a problem it is. Do you know what I mean? Oh yeah. If you've got a really tall fence and nobody's making noise complaints and the dog's not busting out of the fence, do you know what I mean? Like maybe, maybe who cares? Do you know? Yeah. But if you're like, no, this is a problem. My neighbors are complaining. He's breaking through the fence. I gotta deal with it. Then it's like, you're gonna have to be willing to put the effort in. And I think you should put the effort on habit building, not trying to change decisions right away. I think build habit is the first thought. Then affect choices, second. You know what I mean to that? But yeah, it's unfortunate with a habit that ingrained, even though I like to start with differential reinforcement first before getting into any kind of punishment strategies. With a dog that's that cracked out and that insane with it, you might have to interrupt that behavior to give a long enough pause in their decision to do it that you have the ability to insert reinforcement. But then that gets into like really understanding punishment strategies, which I'm not gonna go into a super crazy long time on that because that's literally just filmed an hour something discussion about it. And it's crazy complicated. Well, hopefully that was at least helpful a little bit. Ideally helpful a little bit. Yeah, thanks for submitting that question, Rachel. Yeah. I appreciate it. All right, our last question of the day is a written question. And it is how to explain things to owners without getting all nerdy and jargony. Sometimes I feel like I'm overloading them with information. This is a question speaking right to my heart. I was gonna say. Yeah. So this starts with understanding the hierarchy of learning protocol. I just saw your face. I only said that to make your face do that. I only said it to get you to roll your eyes. Yeah. Yeah. So teaching people, teaching dogs is very similar in a lot of respects to teaching people, but there's a little bit of a difference because we use language so heavily when we teach people. And I think we get a little stuck on it, right? I think explaining things in technical terms is a great way for somebody to understand it. But I also think some people get super confused and freaked out by it. And they need you to make analogies and metaphors. They need you to like, you know, instead of going, okay, here's the deal, the punishment protocol, the equation for punishment is this. I'm gonna mark the behavior. I'm gonna interrupt the forward progression of the behavior. I'm gonna apply an aversive stimulus in the hopes of achieving punishment. I'm gonna reconcile, get back down to baseline. And then I'm gonna do a second trial. And everybody, unless they're really into that shit, about halfway through that, they go, dude, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, come on, man. What the fuck? If I say the exact same thing, exact same thing, I go, listen, man, I'm going to turn on my siren. I got to pull the car over. I got to decide on whether or not I'm giving this guy a ticket. And then we figure out whether or not that works by whether or not they slow down when they drive through town tomorrow. I just said the same shit. Like I said, literally the same exact process. And I can get both people to enact the same procedure. And I said the same thing, but one is direct and one is metaphor. Yeah. You know what I mean? So like, this is the thing, this is my teaching of humans advice that I'll give everybody. There's three different ways that people learn when you're teaching. Some people are auditory. You got to say it to them. Some people are visual, they got to see it. And some people are tactile. They have to feel it. And a lot of people are already familiar with those three things. But each of those three categories has kind of two subsets. One is direct and one is indirect, right? So what we just did was I can give you this auditory lesson that is direct. I can give you the science, mark, interrupt, apply the aversive stimulus, reconcile second trial. And that's like direct auditory lesson. But then I can see somebody's eyes are going to glaze over and I go like this, okay, listen, it's like this. I'm going to turn on my siren, pull the car over, decide on the ticket, see if it worked when he drives through town tomorrow. I just said the same shit, but that is an indirect auditory lesson. That's the land of metaphor and analogy, right? Same thing happens when I make a visual, I can look at somebody and go, look, I want to hold the leash like this and pull like this. And they're seeing me do it directly, but then they might not get it. So I can have a visual lesson and do something else. I move my hand a different way. I go, it's like kicking a soccer ball. And I explain it visually, but not directly through what I'm trying to show them. And then there's tactile. It's the same thing. I can have them feel the actual leash in their hand, or maybe I'm going to like play hot hands with them. That's not related directly, but it's a tactile lesson that gets them to understand something. So I think like when people say nerdy jargony, I'm getting nerdy and jargony teaching you about not being nerdy and jargony. But like, I think when people think that they're thinking of a way to directly explain something auditory, you know what I mean? I'm going to give you the actual science, the actual breakdown. And I think that's where you have to use an auditory lesson, but be indirect and that's metaphor and analogy and stories. Yeah. And then, you know what I mean? If that doesn't get through, you think like what most people do is they regurgitate the way they learn. If you learned indirect auditory and that's how you best learn, you try to teach everybody indirect auditory. And if you're a tactile direct learner, you try to teach everybody tactile direct lessons. And that's great because you'll reach a certain percentage of people that way, but you'll never reach all the people that way. And I think if you're a really good instructor, you think, okay, I can teach this concept to you, auditory, visual, or tactile. And I can do all of those either directly or indirectly. And then you'll never miss anybody because when you go to talk to them, if you're teaching direct auditory, you go, Ooh, I'm losing you. You switched to indirect auditory. I'm still losing you. Let me give you a visual direct. And then I'm like, shit, I'm still losing you. Let me go to visual indirect. And you work your way down. I think most people are auditory. I think a smaller percentage, but not by much is visual. And I think a very small percentage is tactile. And so it's like, start with what you learned from cause that's what you're going to resonate with the best and then work your way down statistical chances of learning until you get to like the lowest statistical shit, which is tactile. Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing you can do as a trainer is you can actually work through in your own mind, what all of your fallback, um, what are your metaphors? What are your analogies? Like so that you have them so instinctual. So it's not like you're having to come up with a new one for every individual person in front of you. You have your go-tos, you have your stories as your way to explaining. Um, cause I just, I feel like it's, you should assume it is almost no one when it comes to just the general population of people come into for help. Almost no one, unless they are an actual scientist of some kind themselves, or maybe an engineer whose brain happens to also really get geeked out on that stuff. Almost nobody coming to you once, once that type, they're not going to understand it for, you know what I mean? Like they don't understand it. Like it's, they want to want, they want to hear it in a way that they can understand it. And that is, yes. When I'm talking to clients, I do not talk about bridges and aversive stimulus. And like, I just, it's silly. When I talk to clients, I'm like, listen, you're a cop. You have to turn on your siren, pull the car over, decide on a ticket. You know what I mean? Like that's just a process. And so like, no, is my siren. Now I have to pull the dog over. Some dogs pull over from, some people pull over when they see the sirens come on, other people keep driving and you have to push them off the road. You have to have these things. Your only way to communicate this information is the way that, you know, you learned it, you learned it, or especially learned it to be able to get some of the certifications where like that is how you learn it. That can't be, I think that's kind of why this happens. I think it's actually much harder to be able to communicate this stuff in a way that is much more natural, like through story, through analogy. Like I think that's actually a much tougher than to kind of regurgitate the you know, what you, what you learned. Yes. And that's what, this is what, this is what happens. And I find this with newer teachers in dogs, but also in jujitsu as well. So it's like, it's not a dog training thing. This is like a, it's like a teaching thing. Yeah. That's what happens is you see these people that are like, um, they'll teach. So it's like a bell curve. It's like in the beginning, people that are very bad at teaching, they teach the way they learned. And if that doesn't work for you, they're shot. They're just like, I don't know, dude, that's the analogy I got. So like, if that doesn't help you, I don't know what to do. And then there's teachers that like have, uh, like, I think with science stuff specifically, they have an understanding of the science and it's like, they want to show you what they know. Beginning teachers in jujitsu crush people with details. They're teaching an arm bar and it's like, there's 10 really important details, but there's 70 details present, but 10 are really important for people. And they will give every fucking detail. And you're like, dude, people are bored. People are losing their interest. Nobody's into this. Like, why are you giving so many details? And I think it comes from their wanting them to know that they know it's not trying to impress. That's not the same thing. It's some people will go, you're trying to impress them with your knowledge. And I don't believe that's the case. I don't think they're like, I'm going to blow you away with my knowledge. I think they have all this knowledge and they want to give you all this knowledge. And so they're like really trying to give you all the details cause they're like excited about the details that they know and they want you to have them too. And it's like, it's like you get excited about a food and you're like, try this and they won't leave you alone. They want you to taste it. It's like they have all this information. They're wicked excited about you getting it and they're just going to give all this information to you. And even when you're like, I don't want it, they're like, just taste it. You're like, it's great dude. You're not going to believe it. Just let me say it again. And you're like, fuck dude. So I think, uh, I think it takes a little while for you to get comfortable enough that you're not like freaking out and trying to pour all this information into them just cause you're excited about the fact that you know it and you want them to know it too. And you want them to know, you know it. I think it takes a little while before you're like, I need you to have a certain understanding and I'm going to give you this information that's going to get you to where you need to be. Even if we don't talk about certain aspects, I'm going to get you where you need to be. I'm like, I see the bubble above your head and I'm going to make you see the right picture. Even if I didn't tell you about all the stuff, I'm going to get you in the right place. It's difficult because man, sometimes you get really excited about what you know. Like I get excited about information and I want people to have it. And it's hard for me not to just like staple their eyelids open and fucking make them watch a presentation. You want to be like, no, no, no, you need this, bro. You need this. And they're like, I really fucking don't. Well, the hard thing too, is I think if you think about in general the type of person that is interested in dog training, you know, they're interested, they are by nature, a person that's interested in probably understanding like dog training and like the science behind it and all that stuff. It's kind of, I think it is very similar to what we see in jujitsu where it takes people a while, like they get into teaching because they think they are, they want to give other people the information that, you know, has been so life changing for them. Yes. But in this, in this, the same exact thing happens where people don't quite realize the whole that I don't even know what percentage it is. A huge percentage of teaching has nothing to actually do with the, not nothing, but it doesn't have anything to do with imparting the technical information. There is this huge component of it that is not like in dog training, nothing about you training the dog. It is about you interacting with the person. It's about you being able to connect with this person. It's, it's the person to person connecting that happens. You know what I mean? So it's, but that part, my point to that is that part isn't necessarily emphasized when it comes to learning. Like you're learning how to train dogs and you're learning the science and how to understand it and get good at that part. But even within something like dog training, there isn't a whole lot of emphasis in something like, okay, how do you communicate this stuff to other people? How do you? Dude, people know like ridiculously complicated differential reinforcement strategies and they know all this crazy shit about dog training and they are utterly unaware that there's, there's three types of learners and direct and indirect like the psychology of actually like working with people. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I mean. Yeah. It's crazy. It's like if you're going to, unless you're going to be a board and train dog trainer solely and you're not going to do the go home lessons, you're working with dogs behind the scene and that's it. You never deal with other people. You need to learn how to teach people. Like you should invest as much if not more because training dogs quite frankly is not super hard. Do you know what I mean? But communicating with people who may or may not be receptive to the information and trying to figure out how to get it across And are showing up with their whole, their own history and story and whatever's going on with them and they're like, it's a lot. Like they don't even want to hear what you're saying. They just want you to validate to their husband that they're right. And the husband's wrong. I mean so much. It's like what? Yeah. There's so much more to it than just like, here's how you hold the leash. Here's how you get the dog to do place or something. So I mean, I think back to her question, I think one of the most valuable things people could do if they feel like that's happening of the, you know, overwhelming people is look through and figure out, are they talking from a place of like story and analogy and metaphor? Like do they have all of those things for the standard things you always end up going over with people? Do you have an indirect lesson in your pocket for every direct lesson you could teach, whether it's auditory, visual or tactile, like can you do it directly or can you do it auditorily? And breaking it down into those categories makes it useful for people because they can sit down and go, how would I teach this? And then you go, I always teach like this. And now you can look at it and go, I fuck. I always teach auditory direct. And then you're like, now how would I teach that indirectly? And maybe you have to like, I can't, you maybe you can't make it up, but that's where you go to a seminar. That's where you take a lesson. That's where you watch somebody's video and hear the way they say it and go, fuck, that's good, dude. Like that's a really good, that's a really good way to indirectly say that information that I keep trying to hammer directly. That's good. And that's where you hang out with other teachers, not even just dog trainers, like watch other coaches from other sports, watch other teachers of any subject and watch how they give information. It's like the principles that we say that I think I feel like about a bunch of different stuff. It's like the core principles are the same. So it's like you really can learn, you know, stuff that's going to, yes. Yeah. Yes. But specifically watch dog trainers, watch other dog training professionals, not, and not that I should even have to say this, not because they're even better than you at a certain thing, but like they say it well. So like even if I'm really good at teaching heel or whatever, if I tend to use, if I tend to use direct auditory and an indirect visual, and that's the only two ways I know how to teach heel. And then I'm like, shit. Okay. I want to expand it. I can look through and find other instructors who maybe if they don't even teach heel as good or better than me, it doesn't matter. I'm not learning about teaching heel from them. They say shit to somebody else. Like if they say this and you're like, fuck, that's a really good analogy or fuck. That's a really good saying, dude, Chad blew my mind in the beginning with just good lines. Do you know what I mean? Like it wasn't even shit that necessarily changed anything right away, but just like you're not done training the dog till you can trust them at Liberty, that line. And you're like, Holy shit. And another line I heard from somebody was like, uh, uh, danger lies in the transition between pictures. Like those little lines are like man thought provoking and paradigm shifting. But that's like an interesting way of saying something. So I think hang out with other dog professionals and, and, and observe other people teaching not with an eye of what they're doing with the dogs necessarily. Although that's obviously good to learn too, but not necessarily with an eye of what they're doing with the dogs, but with an eye of how do they explain it? Find somebody that teaches really well tactically and like look at them, watch them take a lesson from them. You know what I mean? Like to see how they word it to you. You know what I mean? Yeah. But yeah, that's what I think you should put as much effort into teaching people as you do teaching dogs. All right. Well, we've talked that one to death. So that is it for today. That's pretty good. And that's, that's two questions. Two whole questions. Two whole questions. Very impressive. All right. If anybody's going to be at the trial in New York next week, we'll see there. I'm running, I'm running soup. We'll see what we do with Macy, but I'm definitely running soup. And then that's it. If anybody has any questions, what am I supposed to say? I don't know how to end this. You always laugh at me when I'm trying to end it, but I don't know how to do it. Like, what are we supposed to, what would you say if you were going to end the podcast? Well, you should probably mention Patreon. Most normal people do that. Like, you know how Larry Larry's thing the other day when he was like, yeah, he's known me for five years. People always think, I think they always think we're exaggerating when we talk about our lack of even the most basic business sense. Like they think I'm being like, realize it's actually really our real life. And then Larry the other day after knowing how long has he known you now? Like years, years, five years. And he just the other day was like, I had no idea you even had a Patreon. Yeah. Yeah. It's stupid. It's ridiculous. And we do seminars together, which means I should theoretically be talking about it. And I just, so anyway, Patreon where we're putting a lot of stuff up there. I'm putting a lot more effort into Patreon. Honestly. Yeah. There's a lot more content on there now. Yeah. You need to get in touch with us next level dogs at gmail.com. There's also the podcast, a Facebook page. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'd like to see that get a little more actively. People aren't really on that, but that's all right. Yeah. Well, we'll get there. We'll get there. All right. That's it. Go fuck and play with your dog.