The fallout of punishment with Sophie and Riyukta

Hello and welcome to the Happy Dog Podcast. Welcome back. I hope you're enjoying this mini series that we're putting together. Last week we talked about the fallout of punishment-based training and it was very theoretical and so this week we are really lucky that Reocta has come on with her behaviour as Sophie to discuss her experience of using punishment-based shock collar type training with her dog and how that has impacted their training journey and how they've moved away from that and why they've moved away from that. I cannot thank Reocta enough for coming on and being so open and honest about the entire journey that they have been on. It's really helpful for all of us to have that insight into why we make these decisions, why we make decisions about the trainers that we pick and how that then has impacted their journey. I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope you get a look from it and if you've got any questions or queries please please do let me know. I'm going to start today. What we'll do is we'll get everyone to introduce themselves. I'm obviously Kim. I'm a trainer of behaviours but I know nothing about this case so I'm going to be just one of the listeners asking questions as they come up about the whole process. Sophie, would you like to introduce yourself first? Yes. Hello again. Lovely listeners. I've done this a few times with Kim already. My name is Sophie White. I'm a vet resurgent and a clinical animal behaviourist and we are going to be talking about one of my cases today. So this is a case that I dealt with directly and we're going to find out a bit more about it. Reocta, would you like to introduce yourself and how you fit into this? Yes. Hi. My name is Reocta. I am a professor at a university in London so I teach English and I am here today to talk about my dog's storm and you know all sort of sort of training methods we've used and how I found Sophie has been an absolute lightsaber and what I am today with him. Fabulous. Okay, right. Let's find out a bit about storm then because all I know is that he's a German Shepherd and that is like the extent of my knowledge. So can you tell us how old he was when you got him, when you got him from kind of that first, maybe that first month with him, what he was like, that kind of thing that we've brilliant. So yeah, so storm is a is a German Shepherd. He's a working line German Shepherd so he's Czech and we got him when he was about four months old so he's actually a lockdown dog. So he was bond during the lockdown in 2020. We decided to get him before the lockdown and then it just happened that you know we're supposed to get him at two months but the lockdown happened, we couldn't go and pick him up and there was lots of delays and we finally got him when he was four months old. He actually, so we got him from a from a breeder who at that time had seemed very reputable, had lots of very positive Google reviews which has since disappeared I must say, very concerning but yeah and we got him and he said he had some contacts in Italy and he was getting us the top line and you know lineage, 100 years of lineage and and Hipskos and all of that. And so he actually came from Italy so from from another breeder in Italy who this breeder in London worked with and this is all not information we had at first it was sort of information that we got slowly after we didn't pause it and you know things kept changing there were delays we didn't understand why there were delays then we realized he was coming from Italy so it was just all very shady and so we so by the time he came to us I think it was a little over four months and and he'd done this long trek from Italy as well so he come here he was very quiet and very reserved he was really like his body language and everything was always really stiff and he was very ill when he came to us so he had a stomach bug and he wasn't eating there were days when I've had to hand feed him kibble by kibble because he just wouldn't eat we taken it a vet and the vet said you know they put him on antibiotics they gave him panker they did lots of things we couldn't figure out what it was so he was just really ill when he first came and so he's that he's our second dog so I also have another golden retriever shadow he was he was a family dog we got him from somebody that we knew and it was very different because we got shadow when he was two months also eight weeks and shadow was really quick on you know training and things like that he pick up things very easily and we didn't find that with storm like like shadow learned storm's name but for storm learned his own name because that long just to teach him his name and it was just you know there was no attention he wasn't sort of engaging with us at all he'd like always remove himself from us and go and sleep in a different place he was so happy in his crate so I'm assuming whatever he was kept he like so we didn't actually have to do a lot of crate training with him because he can self-inter the crate all the time and he'd always like be away from us he got along with shadow really well right from the start so you know we didn't we were like oh this is perfect and he'd already follow shadow everywhere so he was more a dog stork than he was a people's dog which is very different from shadow who's who's a hugger cuddler he'll come and ask you for attention and come and like you yeah he'll like you know give me belly scratches and so that was really different and and because he was also very ill in the beginning it was just very confusing for us and it was a breed that you know I wasn't familiar with from from my husband he had no idea as well so we were just like maybe maybe japan shepherds are like this and maybe this is what is so there was a little bit of that so so he was very he was very quiet and reserved and very stiff when we first got him okay and the that's never find out what was wrong with him or was it just so we it took us about five months and they and they and they and after multiple sort of medicines courses of medicines and everything we found out that it was actually chardier is it yeah and yeah so we got him in August I think and it was in December that we figured it was chardier and then they started treating him for that so there was like so there was a lot of that that happened that he was really ill and you know and we just assumed it was he was nervous he was anxious it was taking him time to settle in and you know when you read they always tell you japan shepherds have sensitive stomachs as and if they if they're anxious it's sort of you know you can see it so so we just put it down to that we didn't think it was anything serious and the vet didn't suggest anything as well I mean I have to say again he's a german shepherd and he's a black colored dog there's a lot of prejudice that which is something that I have experienced firsthand it was something that we experienced with the vet as well there was a lot of judgment from the vet about where we got him from and she was like oh yes an Italian passport I don't know does he have all the right documents how did he cross the borders you show everything is okay there was a lot of that so we felt that we felt like we couldn't go to them yes any questions because there was a lot of that so yeah that was that was very difficult because yeah or we could go to her and you know she would give us she would advise us but there was a lot of like reservations around that and I mean to the extent where I think I think one of the vets have told us have you considered just giving him back to the breeder because you know you're having so much so many problems with him and at that point we we had even seen half of the real problems this was just you know a stomach issue a stomach you know and at that point they were just like do you not want to just give him back to the breeder because we because we don't trust what's happening here and there was a lot of judgment even even not just you know them judging the dog but they're also judging us sort of you know where they've bought him from picked him up from that kind of thing that's it's shame because the first contact you have outside of the breeder is often the vet and they should be the matter the breed all the way you got him from they should yeah everyone equally because you know people get dogs from all sorts of places but you have to treat the dog that's in front of you and not have that prejudices of the breed or the manner that people got the dog because the dogs are now let's help and support and get them off to a really great start yeah exactly exactly let the people import puppies I mean that's not an uncommon situation so they think you said the way storm looks I mean he's gorgeous but he doesn't help because I think I think he's in a picture room again he has like your absolute stereotypical needs a firm hand dog like he looks very working line he's you know he's gorgeous he's very intimidating you know he has that he's not the big fluffy shaggy like cube German Shepherd he's very much like you can tell he's working line yeah and I don't think that helps did you find you had any prejudice as well in terms of with your ethnicity having a dog like that because I think so I I've discussed it multiple times with my husband so my husband is brown as well so you know we always we always said do you Do you think it's us? Do you think there's a lot of prejudice attached to that? Where they just think, "Oh, these people come here, they don't understand how the rules and this land work and they just bring their own dog from wherever." I mean, it wasn't explicit, obviously, but I did feel it multiple times. Because I often think as well that we don't often see a huge amount of experienced dog owners from Indian and brown backgrounds, we don't often really see a huge amount of experienced dog owners, I'm sure they exist, obviously, but we don't see them. The snapshots we sometimes see are families who are actually quite scared of dogs and you know, aren't had to have experienced with dogs, so actually have very little experience and don't want to have any. And of course, there are small pockets like I've worked in areas where there's a lot of essentially guard dogs kept in gardens, a bit of dog fighting, some of not so nice circles in some areas. And I think that's kind of the bits that we tend to focus on, see, but of course, there are lots of families with great experience of their dogs, and as you say, you had Shadow first who is like lovely and super cuddly, like a typical dog. And I'd say, I wonder whether, again, there's that sort of, well, you probably don't know a huge amount and you've got this really full on dog, maybe, you know, actually, you don't really know what you're doing. That was definitely that. And I can tell you that I grew up in Ponsach house, my parents were really scared of dogs. I grew up in India and we've got a lot of stray dogs, so there's a lot of that attached to it, right, that dogs that bark are usually stray dogs. And German chapels are actually very common in India, but they are at Sophie, as you said, guard dogs. They're, they live outside the house. They're not family dogs, as in they, you know, live inside the house. So I've always actually grown up being really scared of German chapels as well, because, you know, when I was a child, actually, I had a German chap at the chase me. So I grew up really scared. So how did you get to the point of deciding to have one? Was it face the fear into it anyway? Or what do you do for love? So what is born, brought up in Switzerland, then he had a dog growing up and he had a Labrador who was really nice. And one of the reasons I decided to get a dog was after we saw, so the founds dog was called lemon and lemon and he was just, he was really nice. Here to book a Labrador, right? Like chill, easy going, you know, just so after that, so when we started dating, he just had one rule. He was just like, you know, if we have to be together, we have to get a dog. So that was this thing. So like I said, the things you do for love, and then, and then so we got shadow and and as Sophie said, shadow is, is, you know, everything he takes all the boxes. He's very chill. He's very friendly, loves to meet people, he loves to meet dogs. So it was, it was actually very easy with shadow. And I think that I just became overconfident and shrapnel wanted to German chapel. He always was like, I mean, he was the, we need to have three dogs, a golden retriever, a German shepherd and a husky. Okay. So we were on, on two. At this point, I've sort of hit pause. And I'm like, this is it. You know, so that is something that, you know, just on an aside that I, I regret is also doing some research about breeds. Like breeds are not just, you know, it's not just the look of the dog. It's also breeds that work for you when you need to think about whether they fit into their lives. So I think that was a very naive decision on our part as well. But we were just like, oh, German chapels are so cute. Let's get one. Yeah. And I think that almost that chalk and cheese, golden retrievers, like, say big doofalls, friendly, like overcudley. And then you've got the working line German chapels, which are much more hardwired to work and to, and to protect. And it, they are kind of almost the most opposites I can think of. Yeah. And I think it was interesting, wasn't it? Like the more information that sort of got trickle fed through to you about still. And actually some of the things that they were sort of selling as positives in hindsight, or certainly like, I think from Kim, like you're kind of you and my view would probably be, let's not go there. Yeah. Was that he was from a very good kennels in Italy, check working line. And some of the dogs from those kennels used to go to the Italian place in military. Now that is a very, very, very specific subsect of dogs. And of course, there's a lot of individuals, but you've got the breed generalizations. Then along with very, very specific breed lines. And if your breed lines are, got the skills to be sort of, you know, top level working dogs, that's not necessarily going to set you up to being an iZil pet in a particularly, you know, obviously, you know, we're in an urban area. There's lots of people, lots of cars, lots of dogs. That's probably not going to be their natural environment. Yeah. And there's something that I hadn't thought about. And, you know, we want to wear it off till it happened. And then you start looking up things and then you're like, Oh, but he's doing something that he's supposed to do. And I am being bothered, or, you know, I'm trying to change that. Like that's not how it works. You know, like I'm accusing him of something that he's actually supposed to do. Yeah. And I know, Safely and I have spoken about this. I'm sure in the past, where breed specific behaviors that are problematic in an urban environment are very difficult because you've got dog, he's acting completely naturally. It's just completely undesirable in a London park or walking through the streets and going to cafes. But it's tricky because the dog is genetically predisposed to do that behavior. And as soon as you start to prevent it and remove the outlook for that behavior, I always say it becomes like Wachemold and it comes out somewhere else. And it's potentially coming out in a worse environment or a worse way in a different environment and you're just chasing it round. So yeah. So let's, shall we start talking about some of the problematic behaviors that storm was displaying that kind of took you on this journey? Yeah. I think I think the main thing was his sort of reactivity. Again, I should say this is the term I learnt only after meeting Sophie because everybody referred to it as, Oh, he's an aggressive dog. So it was aggression. That was the word that was used. But yeah, so it's his reactivity mainly. So when we, so he is strange or reactive and extremely dog reactive. Okay. We were so before so now we live in a house. When we, when storm initially we got storm, we were the first two months that we had storm. We were actually living in an apartment. It was a ground floor apartment that had a little patio which sort of faced the road. Okay. Yeah. That's where they used to be and storm and there was a like like a fence and storm would always bark at anybody who walked along the sidewalk because you know, it was that yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he would bark and and we just bring him inside and he was really small then. Okay. Because he's four months old. So so we just, we just bring him inside and you know, or probably going like lift him and bring him inside. We were just like, okay, that's fine. And we were, we were in the midst of, you know, moving and packing and moving and so we didn't pay too much attention to it. So that's the first time, like now on hindsight, I realized that that was my first sort of, oh, this is a bit hard. Why is he barking at everybody and trying to like, because he was, he was small, he didn't actually make the end of the fence. But what he would do, he would do these vertical jumps as people were walking. And after points, so shadows actually very friendly. So he had a lot of dog friends. So when Biffle Storm, lots of people used to walk past our fence and like call out to shadow. Yeah. And we realized that after Storm came into the picture, they started crossing the road. So so Storm actually had a very bad rep around it. I'm sure that's that game. But my friend, he was like, why is nobody saying I do any more? So so we were there for two months and that's when we sort of noticed this. And shadow had a had a had a friend dog friend called Sky, who was a husky female husky, about the same age. So the shadows three now. So at that point, shadow would have been a little over a year. And they used to, they used to get along really well. And we noticed and this only happened once we were walking storm and shadow and shadow saw sky. He went to sort of meet sky and storm just absolutely lost it. He did this barking, howling and we and we just said, oh, so cute. He's actually really possessive of shadow again face, naively. Right. We didn't realize what was happening. So again, uh, proven just carried him and took him home. He was just like, I'm just going to remove him from here because he's barking. It was also like 11 p.m. walk. So, you know, everybody was sleeping and we were just like, oh, and we took him took him inside. And so that was the that was the first time we saw something, but we didn't think much of it. No, not something that you know, struck us as, oh my God, we need to do something about this. And then we moved into the house here and we weren't having guests because it was peak lockdown. Yeah. Nobody was coming in, you know, we didn't see anyone till December. So in the beginning of December, I think there was a little bit of, you know, there was like two weeks before Christmas, you can go and meet people. There was a little. And one of our friends was going to come and stay with us for like a weekend. Right. So we were prepping, you know, cooking, making dinner and everything. The doorbell goes off. And as we've always done with shadow, we go and open the door, whoever comes in shadow does a little sniff and he's already happy. So this time, same thing happened to everybody. goes off, we go open the door, shadow runs towards this friend, everything is okay, and storm just lunges at him and does like this ass nap. By then we've caught him because we realized this was just completely out of here. We've got him, we've brought him into the room and he's just barking excessively into this sort of almost like howling. Wow, it's high pitch, howling, and he just doesn't stop and we're like it's okay, you know, we know this person and and there was no, like I think I think that went on for about three hours or so, just continue his barking and in this time I've tried removing him from the situation. So now it's a house so we've got like an upstairs and downstairs I've moved him to the bedroom to get him to calm down, I've given him treats, he's not taking food, I try playing with the ball, he's not doing that, he's just not doing anything, he's just barking continuously. We even tried to go on a sort of walk together, but we were actually walking, he was you know always like turning and looking at this friend, he wasn't barking outside but as soon as we come into the house straight up starts barking howling again and this is like high pitch, it goes on for so long that towards the end storm goes into this, the only thing I can describe it as is like him having a panic attack when he's just like shaking and panting. That's when I came down and I was like I'm so sorry but you've got to leave. So we send the friend away, I was like I know you came here for the weekend but bye bye. So he left and it took him so long to sort of calm down, the whole night he slept at the door because every little noise and he would get up and he'd like did a lot of alert barking, he always did some alert barking but I think it is after that incident where it just everything was sort of you know was magnified and that's when we were like oh this is a problem yeah to do something so that they're like it's like oh we can't have people homes that's a problem. So what did you say what did you do what did you go back to your bed or so we didn't go to the vet because at that point I'd yeah and and and and the other thing about our vets as well as that there's always every time we see somebody knew they they've had a shock of stuff so we've always had someone knew so we didn't you know go to the vet but then I started looking up behaviors so there was Joe Heinz who I spoke to and she was absolutely lovely but but she said that she's not she doesn't work with German chapards so she passed me on to she gave me somebody else's name who I think Sue someone who specializes in German chapards but they were really busy they didn't have an point because it was like during December right but they didn't have an appointment and they were just like oh I'm booked out till this person so they would be on to someone else and then I started looking online looked for a you know trainer/behaviorist and we spoke to quite a few people on the phone first and a lot of them asked me about so it eventually comes down to breed of your dog where did you get it from and there was a lot of oh but he's a Czech working line German shepherd this is just how they are so there was a lot of just putting it down to his breed and saying this is just how they are and then we finally spoke to someone who said oh yeah you know we can try and work with him so we met them at Black Park okay and we did a little walk together and she wanted to see his bad behavior so we had to intentionally sort of expose him to like dogs and people and you know at that point because he was reactive to people as well he would bark and lunge at people on bicycles and joggers just anybody anybody who's close to us so walks at this point were really really tricky because yeah we just stopped walking in yeah we had a garden we'd like play with him in the garden and she'd had to install and play quite a lot together so so we were just like both of us were not confident at all taking him for walks because I'm guessing by this point he was a strong German shepherd he wasn't as quickly that he once was he's now a powerful dog yeah there's no way I could take him on my own you just like drag me so so we met this behavior a slushed slush trainer and she did that we did this walk for an hour she saw everything she said oh you could do this with the breeds every time he sees a dog you could give him breeds and we tried that he was still howling he was embarking there was all of that so we finished the session put him in the car and then she said why don't you go home and give me a call so we went home give her a call and and she just said there's no I don't think we can do much with him this is just his breed and you know you need to understand that there's only so much you can train certain breeds it looks like he was trained to you know be a police dog or an army dog and and there's a lot of that that's happened in his foundational age and it's going to be very difficult to reverse all of that so at some point you have to accept that this is the breed you've gotten because he's working line that must have been so demoralizing for you it was it was must be really difficult because so so what she's saying you have to just put up with it and and she said she's never have anyone to the house or yeah there was there was a little bit of we can try and manage this but I don't want to promise you anything you know that was I think I think it was a sort of disclaimer we can have these sessions but I don't want to promise you anything because I don't think we can do anything about this or there's not much we can do about this so that was very yeah like you said demoralizing so then I went back and looked at trainers and then and then that's where I made my the biggest mistake I've made in life with Storm so I just want to say for the record we're not going to name anyone yeah we're not going to name this training establishment because this podcast is not a name and shame about this training establishment this this podcast is to help people understand the fallout of certain training methods so we're not gonna I don't know the name of it so I can't slip up because I don't know the email for this world so I think but okay I've blocked it out and my mother like no no we're not gonna give subtle clues because apparently Donovan's name is like but what I just want to say you know we're not going to sit here and say this dog trainer blah blah blah I do plenty of that on my Instagram on different dogs I don't need to do it on here so I just wanted to put that out there that if you're expecting to hear a name we're not so yeah so sorry I just wanted to put that out there it's a big deal of course I think the way I the way we sort of stumbled on this was because what we got out of the last training session was it's a breed thing yes right so we then started looking at trainers who specialized in German chapeads and then you get a certain school of training that comes up hand yeah you know the the whole alpha who's the alpha yeah well could you try to German shepherd that is absolutely now with a why and and the and the and the big marketing of like your two-week board and train right two weeks if I cannot turn your dog into the into you know if I can't rectify all of his mistakes as they call it okay here's your money back type thing right so I so I found one of these two-week board and train things and I was like okay and these specialized in German chapeads and they have lots of videos on YouTube like before and after videos which is just amazing to look at it's like magic when you look at these videos right and you're watching these videos and you're thinking oh Stombs not even as bad as that like if they can they can work on this yeah you know this should not be so bad and I I first spoke to them because I wanted to see what they were saying and they were all like oh yeah of course there's no dog that we cannot train and you know we've had this and we found them lots of anecdotal stories of you know we've done this we've done that and I must say that at this point there was I I asked them about you know what sort of training do you do and they said they do lots of reinforcing training okay okay and at no point did they mention anything about punishment okay when I spoke to them but they do have so when you look on their website you can see that that in I think it was in the FAQ section where somebody says you know there's an FAQ about do you use an e-caller they were like yeah we put it on the vibration setting and you know it's not much it's not anything there's a little bit of sort of dismissing everything that you know about e-collars and so I spoke to my husband about this and I said you know these people sound lovely and they're like oh we can train any dog and that was just very refreshing and motivating that just come from a trainer who's like oh this is all to do with the breed and we can't do anything and you've had that you've you've had that message given from when you when you got him and you first to actually have that same message you've run trainers who have said we can't train gym or we don't train gym and you see someone and they say it's the breed so then you you see a website or you know some marketing and it says no dogs too you know aggressive because that's probably the word that they use more than we know dog is unfixable we you know here's your money back guarantee all of those things and it must look like a complete breath of fresh air yeah just somebody who's at this point it was just somebody who's telling us yes we can train him I actually don't care about his breed I can train any dog and that was just sort of refreshing at that point and we discuss the user me call us so I said I did see on the website that they're using e-collars I don't know how I feel about this and you know and and from now we said well let's not do the two week board and train let's do their eight classes they had like eight classes because then we can we can been involved. We don't want to give them away somewhere and then we don't know what's happening. So we said, let's do this. Very strongly and say we don't want to use any color. So that's what we decided. So we booked the session. They were able to book us in for the very next someday. We booked the session we went in. And the first thing we noticed was so at that point, Storm was, you know, barking at anybody who even looked at him, clanced in his direction. And this person just kept sort of this side. So they never looked at us face to face. They stood on their side. And in 10 minutes, she was able to sort of come next to Storm and touch him. He had his muzzle on. So she was able to come next to Storm and touch him. And I was just like, what's happening? Yeah. Well, she managed this. And then she said, now we can start training. Keep his muzzle on. But now we can start training. And she goes to her car, opens a boot and brings out this suitcase. Right? It's straight out of a James Bond movie. And then she goes, suitcase. And there you can see the E-Color and all of it's like some gadgets. And at that point, we sort of said, you know, we're not, we don't want to use this. Can we try some other way? Can you, you know, if it doesn't work, then we can think about this. And I still remember, she said, well, what do you want? Do you want to, do you want to make sure that he's, he doesn't attack anybody? Do you want to make sure that he's, you know, he's able to live his best life? Then this is the only way to do it. And she also said something along the lines of the lot of people who misunderstand E-Color training. I'd rather buzz my dog than have my dog run into the street and, you know, attack another dog and have to put him down. So she sort of, it's a false dichotomy. And I see that now. But in the moment, she built this trust up. She, she done what you know, and else could do by being able to touch him. See, she's built that little bit of trust in the question. No, she said she can work with him. In 10 minutes, she's managed to touch him and storms all, you know, very happy around her, which he hasn't been with anybody else. And then, and then she, and then she sort of shows you this false dichotomy, which is, you've got two options. You either use an E-Color, all he's going to attack another person or a dog and you're going to have to put him down. Which would which would you rather be, you know. And, and I don't know, looking at trouble, we sort of looked at each other and we were like, oh, I guess, okay. And then, and then the next thing she does is she puts it around your wrist. Okay. Right. And then she says, I'm only going to use it in setting one or two. And she presses the thing. And it's and it's and it's very mild on setting one or two. It's really mild. And and she was like, and, and this is for humans where there's only skin. He's even got fur and, you know, he's got hair. He's not even going to feel it. It's just, it's just the correction technique and, you know, how will your dog, but by, if you don't correct your dog, your dog doesn't know that your dog is making a mistake. How will you know and you're setting them up to fail if you have, if you aren't telling him where he's going wrong. So at the back of all of these things, we said, okay, you know, what? Let's try it. So we had the very first session, which is very chill. It was just a, we were, we practiced heel. Okay. And again, now in like hindsight is a great thing, right? Like at this point, I was like, why did I want him to heal? Why did I want him to walk next to me? There's no point of him walking, you know, by, by my side. Like, what is the point of this? Right. So, so we did heels. It was just a, it was a quick, so that because there was an intro, it was a quick sort of half and half, and a 40 minute session where we just like walked up and down and we just feel. And she just kept saying, every time he's trazed away, buzz him a little bit. So the first couple of times he did a little squeal. And then we were just like, oh, I don't like this. And, you know, I just was like, oh, I can't do this. And she was just like, no, it's okay. Keep going. And so the first two times we buzzed him, he did a little squeal. After that, he was walking in heel. So well, the entire time. And so we came out of him thinking, oh, so we buzzed him twice. And, you know, I know it, I know it hurts, but he's, he's walking next to us. He's listening to us, you know, because he was a dog that just never engaged with us at all. Like if he's barking at something, you can call him and you can scream and you can clap your hands and you can do whatever you can stand in front of him, you can body block him and he will, he still doesn't even make eye contact with us. That's how he was. And then now he's suddenly, he's just listening to everything I'm saying. And so she sort of used that as well saying, see, you only have to use it twice. And this is what I mean. Like this is all you have to do. It's totally will start working on this. Thank you. Do you want to explain why Storm behave like that? Do you want to give the kind of, yeah, I think like, a few things we mentioned about Storm as well is that he again, it fits with what you would want from him in his breathing. But he's exceptionally high arousal and very explosive in his behavior. So I was memorable when I, when I, when I read later when I come to Storrin, I visited you and walking away from him and he was standing completely calmly behind me. He was on lead and muzzled and being very well managed. I stepped away from him and then I just felt his teeth air snap next to my ear. So he literally goes from like completely still and then just like, and like, does lots of big snapping. He's very physical. Remember when we, we met at a field later and we were doing a word of dog stuffies and we were like, I don't think he'll be able to get over the fence. But like, you can never sort of tell with him. You think of physical super, super intense and you're very high arousal. So when you're high arousal, your brain is not able to engage with other things. But of course, if you use pain, that's a very good distractor. Even if you're highly aroused, pain is probably going to distract you to a degree. But if you're very high arousal, you're probably going to need to use more and more because it's not as easy to get through when you're highly aroused. And I think when we think about when people say, it's not much, if it wasn't much, it wouldn't change behaviour. Exactly what I thought. That's the point because if it was not that much, then I'm sure we probably early on, Storm's probably been shouted at or maybe had like his lead yank back when he was reacting. But why didn't that work? If it's not much and it's just telling him what's wrong, why did verbal correction or like a lead correction? I'm doing my little embedded. Why didn't that work? So it's obviously a lot more than that, otherwise it wouldn't have worked. And I think as well, what we're probably going to get into it later is the fact that he gets used to it, which is saying, and then what we hear sometimes here with these sort of dogs, you'll sometimes hear about the terminology of blowing through. So where high aroused dogs will push through punishment because they're so highly motivated to do the thing that we don't want them to do. Yeah, and one thing that happens with punishment is that it always has to be escalated. And so does reinforcement to some extent, but that's quite easy to escalate, given the different environments. But yeah, when you were saying about, you know, it was just one or two on your hand and I was like, for now, perhaps, like it's it's one or two on the scale today, perhaps. But what's what's that going to be in a month because it's it's one of the, but I, so if you know, know this because we are educated in it to a fairly high level. And so we understand it, but I can totally see how with your kind of story, the history that you had, and then you had this woman who was fixing it in front of you, like it makes complete sense. Yeah. Yeah. And I think from there, so we came back and I'm with a car ride back and we were just, you know, you're just so conflicted because you feel this is not me. This goes against every five on my body to use this tool and, you know, and and and our sort of takeaway homework was to practice heel and do and also to get him. So so so again, this is this is the thing, right? So there was a there was a, there was a, these are all red flags, which at that point we picked up on, but it wasn't enough to do something about where. So she said, don't only if you only use the E-caller when you're training him, then he will have a good negative associations with it. So have it on in the house all the time. And every time he does something, just, you know, get him used to that feeling type thing, which we never did in the house. So I've laid up light to the trainer when I saw him. I used to have my house all the time, but we didn't use it because we just couldn't like, I he didn't make sense in my head. No. I was just like, I'm not going to do this. So so so we did a second class with her. Okay, this was the this was the second sort of red flag, which is because she told us we're only going to keep it at that one or two setting and and and and bus the door. We only had it on that one or two when we were training him. So the second second week we were working on place and like stay. Yeah. So you'd walk away and you'd say stay and then you'd call him, you'd say come and so trying to work on recall. And every time I was doing it or someone was doing it, he wouldn't listen, but every time she would do it, he would listen. Now I feel perhaps she increased the intensity of it and was buzzing him. We just refused to do that. And and he would just not listen to us. And then there was a little bit of almost, you know, shaming the owner saying, you're not confident. You should do this confidently. Use that tone. Like listen to my tone. I'm not saying come. I'm saying, stop, come. You know, like this, an authority in my tone and there was, I was just like, I I don't know why it's not working. He's not coming to me. So the second session with that, then I came back from it again. We were talking about this and saying, oh, I don't know how I feel about this. There's no point if he's listening to us or not listening to us anyway, that defeats the purpose. Because she's not going to live with me, right? So I can't do anything about this. And it was in the third session where we were just-- So the third Sunday, we went there. We were walking from the car to the field. And he had his e-coloured on. Trouven was holding him. And we saw another dog. So at this point, that's the-- so till now, we only practice in the field where there's nobody else, right? So he's more likely to listen to you unless there's a bird that flies and then he looks away. It's not supposed to be destruction. So we see this other dog and he kicks off. He starts lunging. And she's there just like buzz him, increase it, buzz him, increase it, buzz him, increase it, and Trouven's holding him. And Trouven's just like, I have got this on maximum now. At that point, he's not helping, no squealing, nothing. He's just barking. So he's not even realized that this is happening. At some point, when I think it's gotten really high, like I can't even remember, like neither Trump like can remember how high it was. We don't have anything because she's just standing there saying, this is it. This is how keep buzzing him. He's going to look at you. The next thing he does is he turns around and snaps at Trouven's ankle. And at that point, I was just like, this is it. Stop, stop. Like I'm just starting and saying, stop. Pulled out the e-collar, shock collar. Just like, I'm going to go home. I can't. It was just too overwhelming for us, for sure. For the door, we were just like, nope. I'm going to take him back. I said, I told the train I'm going to call you later. And we'll figure this out. We just took him back into the car. And I was just like, nope, this is it. I'm not doing this. Like that was that kind of redirection that happened at that point. I didn't even know what it was. So he explained to me later what it was, the redirected thing. And it made sense. Because I think when I spoke to Sovi, she said, well, if somebody is really anxious or scared of something, and then you keep pushing them, they're going to turn around and push you back. They're going to-- And when they can't get to what it is that they frustrated about, they will redirect. And this is one of the things that happens with punishment. And it made so much sense at that point. But on the car I backed, I was just like, I don't understand. He's never done this to us. He's so sweet. Why is he turning it out and snapping it out? He didn't break skin because he got his jeans. But he still did. And it was just like, I cannot leave. He turned it out and attacked us. And that's when we just said, no, this is not happening. So we were like, back to square one, back to the train, forward, back to like, now what do we do? So how did you find the wonderful safety? How did you come across? So I just started looking at different training methods that brought out there. So we found the E-colour. And I just kept thinking, every time I find somebody and I'm like, this is really good. And then you look at the fine print, they're like, for some breeds, we have to use prong colors. And I'm just like, nope. Not doing this anymore. We're not using connexement. It obviously hasn't worked because he was buzzed at a really high setting and he still did not care. So I was just like, this is not working. Obviously, this is not working because otherwise, he would have stopped, right? If it did work. So I started looking up all these different training methods and that's where wonderful, wonderful Instagram comes in as well. Oh, yeah. I found Toby Project. So that's the Angry Dog in Toby Project. Toby and Kayla's profile and that's his profile. And there were lots of like, before and after videos and this whole world of like, force-free training, positive reinforcement. I started seeing all of these different things. And I said, you know what? I'm going to try some of these training methods because I'm just using treats, right? Like I can't do any more damage. So I'm just using treats. And one of the first things I tried with Tom having looked at Kayla and Toby's profile is offered durational engagement, which is a Vanty Dog Training thing. It's called bold. So essentially, you have some treats in your hand and you put your hand out on the right. Every time Tom looks at me, makes my contact, I click and I give him treats. And I just keep doing this. Because the main thing was that he was engaging with me. And this was way to get him to engage. And it just started working so beautifully. How was like, oh my God, he's listening to me. And then I started doing recall training. So I, you know, stand away from him. And I'd say, Tom, come. And he'd come. And I give him treats. I'd walk away from him. I'd say, Tom, come. And he'd give him treats. And he'd just keep coming. So if I'm in the house and I have the guard in the open, and I'm like, Tom, come, he'd come running inside. And I was like, oh, yeah, take all the treats. [LAUGHTER] And I was just like, oh my gosh, this is working. Like, have you seen this? Like, he's actually listening to me. And then-- so then that's when I was like, OK, I'm going to do this right. I'm going to go and find a close free trainer now. And then there was this also, you know, understanding the difference between-- again, this was from Kale and Toby's profile-- understanding the difference between a trainer, a behaviorist, and a veterinary behaviorist. So I did my research around that. And I said, I think what I need is a veterinary behaviorist, because there's obviously something going on there, which we need to try and, you know, we need to find out what's happening. So then I started looking particularly for veterinary behaviors who were force-free. And then I found wonderful, wonderful, Sophie. She was working in the area. I emailed her. And, you know, she was like, she was another person who didn't ask me about the breed of my dog. Didn't ask me where he was from. Didn't ask me about anything. We had an initial Skype session, and she was just like, yeah, tell me what the issues are. And I think it was that that, you know, there was no where to get him from. And, you know, how did this happen? There was none of that. Like, here was-- you know, I found someone who just wanted to help me and wanted to help Storm. That was what I got from my, you know, conversation with Sophie. She was just like, what is the problem? And how can we help them feel better? That was all it was. Yeah. And I was just like, yes, this is what I need. And that's how I, yeah, I found Sophie. Amazing. Well, let's hunt over to Sophie. So can you tell us a little bit about what you kind of found out in that initial Skype call the discovery that you-- just, I mean, you can be specific to somebody. You can also be a little bit general with this about the kind of things that we do like to know. And also, do you like to see the behavior that you're treating like when it's reactivity or not so much? So I think our first call was all like basically an inquiry session, which is really more for the client. It's not really for me so much. It's kind of an opportunity for the client to just decide if I'm the right fit for that. So obviously, we want to talk about the problems that are having the pet. But also, I think it kind of lets owners get an idea of guardians, have you like to purchase those, that you get an idea of whether you're the right match. And I think ultimately, it's that balance between being realistic but optimistic. Certainly, it was not a case of being like, yeah, we can fix all of the storms problems, and I worry, it's because we've done. We don't have any. But also, they don't need fixing. Like, he's not broken. But it's not a case of we can solve all your problems. But it's also not a case of being like, oh, let's hope this don't bother. It's finding that balance. And I think by this point, he'd already got a really good level of training skills and management skills. It's really to be working really hard on that. And he was really actually that relationship, certainly by the time I met the family, the relationship was really, really good. Like, he was really focused, really engaged, really happy with his little family. And I think that's obviously a fantastic place to start. So how we work is then, I then do sort of a two-hour video call. So we go through lots of history. That's when we find out sort of what about his background, what's happened, what we've tried, what's worked, what's not, etc. And sort of realistic expectations, what do we want to achieve, and what I have you. And then we do a visit. So when I went to visit Storm, we already had nice management in place. He was a mazel train, great, on his harness and long line, behind a baby gate, etc. And that gives you the opportunity to sort of, I guess, take a little bit more risk in terms of letting there be a reaction, but you never want to generate it intentionally. So one other thing, my gut feeling with Storm was it was really frustrated. So when he was reacting at the gate, I actually just walked up to him, because he's mazled on lead, etc. and he was a bit like, oh, what are you doing? OK. And then actually, having those safety measures and management in place means you can do that. And that lets you actually get more information. We don't need to be sort of facing off having him reacting loads and getting really stressed. But essentially, we found from Storm that he was quite happy if he was getting treats really, really quickly. But if there's any delay, so like trying to get the treats with mazel was quite hard, does any delay then react it? We got to the point where he was lying on the floor, and I was sort of sat on a stool, and yet we sort of stroke his back and have a little kind of stroke of him. But if I stood up, I said, if I walked away, he was quite relaxed and I was like, I'll try walking to the garden and then just see if he wants to come out and maybe see if he's happier with me standing up in a bigger area. And that was just too much stimulation as a rouse. And was just like, but he was not stressed the whole time. He's actually pretty relaxed. the vast majority of the time that was with it. And essentially what we then try and do is work out what's the underlying emotions and motivations. I guess the obvious thing is you know that actually he's quite scared of new people and new dogs because he didn't have any experience. But I think the bit that we kind of been missing before was also he's really frustrated, really struggles with frustration levels. And we also wanted to make sure that some of the medical aspects were covered. So his gut was kind of okay at this point. But we had a few little question marks about whether his back legs were okay. He'd been a bit stiff after his journey over from Italy. It was a few subtle little things which might suggest if there's some discomfort there. So, which is that? - Fairly typical than the German chap would we? - Yeah and I think particularly when we see dogs that travel, you know, if they're travelled by car for a long journey, they're probably in great, quite a long period. And if we don't necessarily know that and we don't, you know, and they then go straight into being bouncy, silly, jumping up on his back legs, trying to get over fences and stuff, it's quite a lot on your back legs. So we talked about that's about doing a pain trial. That actually didn't seem to re-impact to the behaviour much. So we sort of felt like okay, probably not in any discomfort because pain has a huge implements on your behaviour. And also from a welfare point of view, of course we want to rule that out first. Him being painful is more relevant than what is behaving like. And then we had a little think about, you know, how can we manage his kind of problem areas? And his problem areas really, it's not necessarily the fear because that's quite normal and kind of logical and we can work on that. It was more the intensity as a rousal and his frustration because they were the things that were really making the training and the behaviour modification hard. Yeah. So we tried some medication that helps reduce a rousal and that helped a bit. We were seeing, I think, but we had some success with like trying to reduce his barking at the door and things like that. So I think he was like terrifying the postman. Sort of throwing himself like full height against the door and sliding down it when the like the postman was there. So we had some success in those areas but we still felt like we weren't quite getting into it. So we then thought about using another medication which can help reduce negative kind of perception of events but also help reduce frustration. And I think that's when he really started to settle in and find life just a bit easier. Yeah. Syntra, I mean, I'm a big advocate for getting, for use of medication when we work with behaviour problems because for the way I explain it is it just allows us a bit of breathing space. It's not going to be the fix and it has to be alongside behaviour modification but it just allows us to have that little bit of space in which we can start to put a little bit of training because if the dog is too aroused, too frustrated, too fearful, whatever the underlying emotion is, it's really hard in those states to learn. You know, if I've got to have my blood taken which is my biggest fear in my life like sweaty hands just saying it and then someone's trying to teach me something at the same time there's absolutely no way that that learning is ever going to sit with me. So yeah, I think that's where having a vet behaviourist or a good vet and behaviourist team together is really important. So you, so we identified that frustration was the underlying issue with the with the behaviour that was being exhibited. So how, what kind of methods do you use then to start to reduce that frustration? Was it? We talked a lot about actually how do we reduce the frustration levels in general because storms actually quite frustrated generally. And again, if we think about his breed line, that's not that surprising because frustration and determination are two sides at the same coin. You don't want a shepherd, he's a working shepherd, if he can't get the people to go away, he's barking at them. You know, like you want them to be going, going, going. So it's not surprising, but he's at high levels of perseverance, high levels of frustration. So how can we reduce that? Not just around the triggers, but in general. So making sure, and again, this stuff that was already getting in place really well, but making sure he's got outlets for his natural behaviours, making sure he's well enriched that he's not having experiences day to day that are irritating him and making him frustrated by having to sit and wait for your food and, you know, actually being like, "I just want to eat it." We want to reduce all those little frustrations. It's situation is very feels thwarted or it's to say where he feels sort of unfulfilled. So we want him to just have as much opportunity to sort of express himself and feel like he's got, I guess, a freedom, yeah, to express himself and communicate with his owners and all those kind of things where you've essentially got a good working relationship and a good kind of home life where he's happy and relaxed. That's going to put him in by far the best state to then deal with the issues outside. And when you say that, I know from experience that a lot of kind of balanced dog trainers, the dog trainers on the other side from where I tend to sit will often induce, almost on purpose, a lot of frustration. They will make the dog work for all their food, they will have to sit and wait for their food until they're told they're released to be able to eat. They have to, they're not allowed to sit in certain places. They're not allowed to rest in certain places. You know, there are a lot of barriers put into place because the owner is trying to become this alpha dominant person and he was in control of everything. And then the dog has no outlets to just be and that must be huge. I mean, if someone put like a massive piece of chocolate cake in front of me and said just, just wait, I'd be like, what? For how long? Like, and I would get frustrated with that person. Let's just want to look at chocolate cake. Yeah. And I think it's about like, I think micro management is a really good way to think about it because as, you know, from our perspective of how we manage things, owners and families need to micro manage the environment. Yes. Whereas I think from the more punishment based approaches, you have to micro manage the dog. Yes. But actually, like, no one likes being micro managed. Just leave them alone. I'm talking void. Just let them just do what they want to do. Yeah. Particularly if you don't have any problems in the home. Yes. It wasn't a problem. Yes, he was quite a bit restless about, no, he didn't really like noise outside and we had a few issues, you know, working on like separation. There was no major issues at home when there was no visitors. He was quite happy. But don't let's move them. It's not ruined that. So by putting in things that are going to irritate him. So he's very lucky. He has a very lovely family who do, you know, obviously within reason. When do we want? It was just how to have a nice time, you know, there's lots of cuddles and kind of chill out and loads of enrichment, loads and loads of food, prep and stuff. They have a great time. Yeah. And actually that's really important for his emotional state and how we're then going to work on the problem areas because certainly by the time I'd met Rea, to actually have loads of those skills already. I think we didn't need to actually teach many new training skills. We just needed to get him in the right frame of mind and be able to sort of perceive the issue more from storm's perspective. Yeah, absolutely. I think I mean, I always try and look at all behaviour problems quite holisticly. So we will look at, I'll say to people, I'll talk about all sorts of random areas about your dog's life and I might never touch on them again or I might go into great detail about what and how you're feeding your dog. But you have to look at all the areas. I don't just go your dog reacts to people. So that's the only thing I'm going to ever talk about. You have to look at the the whole dog, the all the environments that they're put in, home, daycare, boarding, dog walker, staying with friends and family because it's all built up this big picture which helps you identify if it's frustration, if it's fear, if it's both, if it's, you know, and it's really important to get all of this background information. So a plan was put in place and now, how is storm now? Storm now is a completely different dog, I should say, which is great. We've had so many people over to the house as well. And thing with sort of meeting Sophie and spending time and sort of working with Sophie was also this understanding. We understood this idea of like aggression versus reactivity, frustration, reactivity versus fear based reactivity. And, you know, like understanding sort of thresholds. Yeah. Something I didn't get as well. I was like, I mean, it was just working fine. Why isn't it working now? Because, you know, you're working under threshold, you're working over threshold. And, you know, how distance is your friend? And, you know, how do you work with distance to try and get him used to things? Like the two things, I think when we went to Sophie, we said, so she said, what are the two things that you want to focus on? Like, let's stop there. And we said the alert barking and trying to have some people over. This was just sort of post-COVID. I hadn't seen my parents over three years, you know, province parents' hand comes. So they just live in Switzerland. And we were just like, nobody's allowed into the house till we get to know what's happening. So we were just like, we just would like to have people come at home at time. So, and, you know, we did things like Sophie said, the whole thank you thing when he barks at the door, say thank you, or blow whistle. And when he comes to you, give him treats, so get him to make positive associations. And we saw that alert barking just sort of, you know, at one point, like one of the things that, so we were talking about this yesterday and we were saying, oh, do you know the time we used to write a journal for storm because Sophie used to sort of keep in touch with us, like via this journal. And we sort of like had to look at it again and then where we started off into the end, we were like, "Oh, just, one reaction today to some noise outside. And that was just so, so we saw that difference, right? Like in the beginning, it was any sort of noise. He would bark at everything. It doesn't even have to be the postman. He just gave anyone like somebody shutting their door on the other side of the road. And he was, he would just like take off. So, you know, with the whole whistle thing, giving him treats saying, thank you, giving him treats. And we just noticed that, you know, that has just, and now it's almost nonexistent. If somebody, if there's an Amazon parcel and somebody brings the doorbell, he will bark. And I say thank you, Storm, that's fine. Now we just this thing where he doesn't wait for me to say thank you. He'll bark and he's come running to me just being like, it's a dog, you know, like, and I'm like, oh yeah, thanks. I promise. Yeah. I like that training method a lot, but it sometimes it's a trust the process one because a lot of people think, say the dog barks and I reward them for that and you're like, trust the process. You just have to trust this one. This one works. You just have to trust the process. And that's such a good point as well. This idea of like reinforcing, right? Like where you say that, oh, every time he barks, give him a treat, then there's the, there's the whole, you know, question of, but then am I, it doesn't not think that I should be barking. And then like, like, I remember having this conversation with Sophie as well. And Sophie sort of explaining to me that you cannot reinforce fear. Yes. Like that's just, that's not how it works. No, you cannot, like emotions, you cannot reinforce. So don't worry about it because that's the, that's the first thing you think of, right? Like every time he barks, it's like if my kid is throwing a tantrum and I give, you know, my child, whatever she wants, is she going to learn that if I throw a tantrum, I'll get this. And Sophie was just like, no, you have to think about the underlying emotions. Like you cannot reinforce emotions. And you know, it takes a long time, but it does work. And so we just, you know, I just blindly trusted Sophie and we went in and we saw the difference there. Now he's barking is almost nonexistent. Even the letterbox, like that was the other management technique. And even even the use of management, I was, because I think, you know, before Sophie came into the picture, I was doing some of this, but I didn't understand it. I was just copying whatever worked for, you know, in these Instagram profiles that I've seen, oh, this is, I'm just going to do it. I also didn't understand what the purpose of getting him to do these things were. Like what am I trying to achieve? Like by teaching him off of duration of engagement, what am I trying to achieve? Because he engages with me when nobody is there. But as soon as somebody is in there, he doesn't. So how do I get it to work on a practical basis? And that's, I think Sophie really helped where you've got this piece of training in place. Now how do we actually get it to work? Like what is the purpose of this, you know? So even the thing with the letterbox, so we have this little letterbox in the door, and he would just go absolutely burst it when the postman, and I was just like, oh my god, he's going to take this postman's hand one of these days. So Sophie was just like, just get a letterbox and put it outside, you know, and I was like, why am I thinking of that? So we taped this letterbox and we put another one outside. And that's that, you know, so he doesn't, and she also told us about getting him used to sounds. So we played these recordings on Alexa all day where he just like hear these sounds in the beginning, there was just like keen, his ears were always up and he was like, what is that noise? And then slowly got it, you know, getting used to it. And he was completely fine with sounds. Now it doesn't bother him. Yeah. Like looking in doorbell as well, like knock, ring the doorbell, give him treats, get him to make positive associations. That kind of conditioning that we worked on was just, it was like enlightening to me almost, you know, just like, oh my gosh, look at this. And you know, Sophie was saying, even like meeting his needs, I was, so I would see people do food prep, give him food in a carton box. And I was like, okay, I'm going to try it like it says, you understand it. Till it was explained to me that this is how you meet his needs, you know, he got, he's got shredding needs. So give him the boxes to shred. So he's gotten out of clip for this. Tug enough toys, you know, the squeaky chain, and the tug toys, like that sort of means his needs. And then, you know, we got him because he's, he's a dog that's easily frustrated. We were able to also use that then to sort of teach him to leave it. Yeah. Which was just like, it was just, it was amazing how just playing with him, like through play, we were able to sort of train him to leave it or train him to have some patience and not get frustrated. Otherwise, if I was standing at a distance and just moving this thing, you could see him just like, you know, and then now he's happy to leave it. So we played tug, if I say leave it, he'll leave it and, you know, his creations around all of this has, has been just, you know, it's improved drastically. So just all of these, so like now that's what I mean by some is a completely different dog now. One, I think I think the main difference we've noticed is, is our relationship with him. Now have a relationship with him, you know, like now I know he looks to me for comfort or, you know, when he's I'm sure about the situation before he starts, like before he stops off, he will like look to me to see if I'm going to help him out in a situation. Born I have with him now is just amazing. That's brilliant. And how, so when did you start working with him? Like how long is the process taken? I think it might have been sort of was it April 2021 or something like that? So it's important for people to understand that with training and behaviour, because we're working with emotions rather than teaching a sit or a week which can happen fairly quickly. That this is a process, it is, it's clear shape, but it is a journey that you go on and it's it's having that support with the behaviourist or that behaviourist that can support you along the way because it is it's full of ups and downs. So I love celebrating the ups, but I'm so supportive during the down bits as well and just helping people through those because it does take time and we're not going to promise quick fixes because and it's and it's not linear right? Like you know, it's not it's not an upward trajectory. There are some days where it's just not and and I remember Sophie saying as well, somebody just doesn't work just backup, it's fine, it's okay. I mean you're a professor, you know, it's the same when we learn, you know, some days I can sit and I can study and I can research for hours on end, hardly needing a break and then the next day or a few days later, I can barely look at my computer for more than 30 seconds without opening Instagram, Facebook, the news, Twitter, to anything to avoid doing the work I have to do. And dogs are exactly the same. So wake up and they've got headache and they don't feel like running around a field and it's fine. I know and I think it was just that just even like just the understanding of that, just understanding that this is what it is. It's not that, you know, I think I think one of the things that I've taken away, which really helps me is again, might be a cliché, but it's the it's the it's this idea that your dog is not giving you a hard time, your dog is having a hard time and that's just something I am, you know, it's like I've taken the heart and I always remind myself of that, you know, because there are days when some days you're frustrated as well, he's frustrated and you know, he can get to that point where you're like, oh, I thought we've got over this. And then I remind myself that he's not giving me a hard time, he's having a hard time. So I'm like empathize with him more as well. Like I'm ready to look at the source of what's actually causing him the issue, you know, what's the problem. So you try and get to the source as opposed to trying and suppressing just the just the outburst, right? Because that's no point of that. So all of these different things that we've been able to put in, like like I said, I've been able to have guests over like my parents have come to visit me now after three years and they're extremely scared of dogs. It took us a good hour and a half. There's a there's a guest protocol that we do. But if you like me enough to come and visit me in my house, then you just have to go through with this. Yeah, and we take time with Storm and which which also then means that we take that hour hour and a half where so so this was some of the things that we put in. We keep him behind the gate. We get, you know, like distances, your friend, we start off at this distance. He just gets used to processing this other person in his face. And then we slowly break down. And we do this thing where, you know, the guest will come. So we take him away from the gate, the guest walks towards the gate drops of your treats walks up. And then he comes and takes it. So we and we take our time with this, right? We take we take our time. We slowly bring down the distance that finally one day in the same room, you can get his mousel off. You can get the harness off. And he's perfectly chill. Amazing. That's a thing like once you're in with him, yeah, he's fine, isn't he? Yeah, like I think that's the thing is sometimes people rush it and then they're like, oh, they were fine. And then suddenly they react when the person like, got up. It's like because we've rushed that process. And he's like, that's a long process for storm. And then he's like, oh, you're cool. I say, this is fun. And I think as well, like we were talking about, you know, what have we achieved? Yes. Of course, they say he's got a bigger family unit now that he really likes. But he still doesn't really, he still doesn't really want to see lots of new people or he doesn't really want to see dogs, he doesn't know. But it's reframing that problem as well. It's about going, well, yeah, that is pretty normal, you know, and it's pretty understandable considering his genetics and his life experience. But we can work on it, but we also don't need to do all of that right now. You know, we can think about what are our priorities, what has the biggest impact on his welfare, safety, you know, family kind of functioning. Let's focus on those things. And you don't have to go walking down the street every day. If you're finds it stressful, don't do it. You know, you've got loads of other things to do. So I think it's about reframing that problem as well. He doesn't need to be perfect and he doesn't need to be fixed. He can have things he doesn't like as long as they are sort of safe and manageable. Yes, exactly. I think that's I think that's so true and I think that it is, it's about every dog being able to live their own life because some dogs like I've got a spaniel, she's not aggressive, but she if she never saw another dog in her life, she'd be more than happy about that. She will like she just on walks, she just pretends they're not there. So she just trots past as if she does not see them, it is almost comical because she just said, I don't want to engage, I'm not going to engage. If you sniff out, I'll tolerate it and then I'll move on, but I'm not, I'm happy, I'm not a dog dog, but I do like people or I don't really like people or don't I'm quite happy on my own, just like people. So it's exactly the same and just because, especially I suppose if you've got golden retriever, he's almost the problems that we often have with golden trees is that over friendly, they run across three fields to see a person, they'll, they'll, you know, walk over hot holes to play with a dog and they either have that kind of over exuberance of I just need everything to be so exciting and everyone loves me, don't they? And then you have a shepherd which generally aren't like that as a very general breed specific behaviour. So I think it is taking each dog individually and knowing what they're happy with and what they can cope with to be able to live in the world that we need them to live in. So, I think that we're talking about like client journey and sort of, you know, with that building that relationship with clients, I think one of the really important things is that people understand why they're doing things. Yes. People will buy into it much more and be far more honest about what they're doing if they don't feel like they're going to be judged if they haven't done it. But also why haven't you done it? What didn't you like about it? How can we change it so it's easy for you? And like there's no point trying to get someone to do something completely against their ethos because they're not what I want to do it. And, you know, it has to be something that works for everybody. So I think that's really, really important is to think about, you know, what makes your clients comfortable as well. So they actually really buy into it because ultimately they're adopting that lifestyle, particularly if you talk like storm, whereas it wasn't like one of the end that we just need to overcome. His personality and his temperament is quite challenging. So this is like a lifestyle thing. Yeah. And it has got to be something that you actually want to do and enjoy and get the benefit from. I agree. And because I'm a kind of person that you can't just tell me to do something. I do need to know why I'm doing it. You couldn't just say feed them a treat when they see a dog. I'd like, why? I don't have that personality. I have to understand. And if I don't, if I can't justify why I'm doing it, I find it really hard to carry out something. I do have clients who are like, I don't care why we're doing it. Yeah. I have to do. I don't want to know the nuts and bolts of the underlying psychological theory that you're using to change our dog's behaviour. I just want you to change it. Right through to people like myself who needs to know exactly why and every single piece of research that supports it along the way. You know, the more information I can have, the happier I am doing something, compared to just do it, doesn't really fit with my personality. So yeah, I think it is important to have that client buy-in. But also understand what they're, how much they need to know, how much they want to do. That is tailoring it, isn't it? Is tailoring it to the animal and their family. It needs to fit both to actually get everyone walk in and doing it reliably. Absolutely. Because otherwise they're not going to do it. No, and it's not going to work properly. Consistency is the only way that you're ever going to get any behavioural change along the way. And if you haven't got the consistency then there is very little to no point in doing it because it's not going to work if the dog doesn't know what's expected of them. And then anyone got any final things that they want to add to this conversation or we all talk out on it. We all pivot everything. No. I think it's just really nice for me to still be willing to talk about it because one of the things where when I talked to clients, I will say some, yeah, ultimately it doesn't matter what you've done because also you probably didn't know what you know now. So you can only make the right decisions when you have the information. But also you now are doing something different. That's the key thing. But I do think there's a lot of sort of shame around it. And I think one of the problems I think we have on social media is everyone's willing to tell you how things have worked. But people are willing to tell you how things haven't worked because they feel embarrassed. Yeah. Because if you want to say, actually I don't want to use punishment, you probably have used it and feel guilty for using it. So you don't really want to tell people about it. But actually there's no shame in that because if your journey has changed and you're now doing something that is working and is better for your family and your dog, then it's great if we can talk about that because I think there's a lot more people who don't want to use it but also don't want to talk about it. Yeah. I absolutely agree. I just wanted to say a huge thank you because being able to share such an individual story to help other people understand and to also help trainers understand behaviors and how people can can end up going to see punishment based trainers and how you know you were saying we're not going to use an equal but then how how it was kind of sold to you is the solution. Really helps us to understand when we're working with other people the the the journey that people have gone on in that way as well. And it is really important and I just want to say massive, massive thank you for being so open and honest and talking about it because it's helped me understand a lot more and I'm sure from all sides it's going to be really helpful for people for listening to you. Of course, I think as As Sophie said there is there is a lot of shame. I mean even just personally it's all thing that I am really ashamed of that you know I did resort to these these means and this is like I said I've sort of locked it away and put it away. Don't want to think about it because it's something that I feel really bad about you know that I actually put him to all of that especially now that I have seen the progress we've made you just think oh my god I can't believe I you know put him through all of this and and you know just seeing how well this whole positive training has worked on him we've got like desired results it you know we started off just saying if I could have one or two people in the house it would be great to now just having anybody being able to come into the house it's also improved shadows life so much right because I didn't like like things like enrichment and getting him to you know meeting his needs otherwise we would just take him on you know organized walks like we take him once at night and that was that but now so much enrichment involved and you know like we do so much with them we do these pattern games with them and we do so much you know all these mini training sessions we teach them all these small new skills and and shadows life has changed as well like in terms of you know food we don't we don't feed them in a bowl anymore yes right like like I don't think you know I've been in the last like year and a half or so I've never ever fed them in a bowl it's always like sort of enrichment toys you give them things to shred or you know you put it in like toilet papers have this whole like you know a cupboard of boxes and like you put things like that so and and and this is this is if not for storm then shadow would have just had his to walk the day and that would have been it so his life is his well and and storm obviously so he's he's so much more happier now and and I think I can say this now where you know like like I said I'm 39 weeks pregnant and I and I don't think if not for the journey I've had with storm with the help of Sophie I don't think I would have we would have made this decision to have a child like a lot of that is related to it as well well like I think we can do this because we've handled two dogs we've taken care of them and yeah I think they're completely different perspective on life as well just you know I'm more patient as a person I'm more empathetic as a person and all of this just comes from training storm we always talk about this and we say storm is probably not the dog that we wanted but he's definitely the dog that we needed in life you know because we come like as as people we've come so far as well and I think that's the that's the you know for me my main takeaway from all of this is as much as as I said I'm ashamed of the journey if I could have just you know met Sophie right at the start you would have been so much easier but I guess we had to go through that to understand what works and what did work and now you know I can tell you that with every five of my body I can tell you that this is the training method that works and so anybody so you know when you look on Instagram and people are like oh these false free trainers or you know false free doesn't work and positive doesn't work you just and and even though even the general perception about using meds yeah right yeah yeah that's the look down on as well so because everybody just again it's this it's this sort of false dichotomy where you know you use these meds and they just salt the entire time you know dogs and not that's not what it is have you know what you're talking about you know it's like what's there what's they're not to understand in sort of positive training it's it's based on the science and snacks how can you go wrong that's it that's all call it science and snacks well thank you so much thank you for giving of your time to go on the podcast and yeah just I can't say thank you enough for your time. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for everything. you