Training Without Conflict® 팟캐스트 에피소드 67: Clemente Grosso

make dogs and make dogs and people when they train, enjoy the work and basically evolve. That's kind of, you know, like just learn how to evolve and what to take from the old times and what to leave on the table. And, you know, yeah, it's a, it's a very, I mean, the times are very different today than back in the eighties and nineties and even, even early two thousands things, things change quite a bit. You know, we're seeing today a lot of ideological pressure from, you know, what's considered acceptable in training and, you know, things like that. But I'm sure we're gonna touch on this later on in the conversation. But to start, I guess, I have interesting questions. Like I've been thinking, we had, I just finished graduation weekend with, I'm not sure if I've told you, but you probably know, I have a school for dog trainers here and we just had a three days of basically certification and people come from all over the world. And that was, you know, yesterday, but funny enough, you know, even as I was doing this, I was still kind of thinking about the podcast and what we talk about because, you know, teaching people how to train dogs and us being so involved in IGP, it really, I think the two come hand in hand. They're very useful. Like, I think IGP in a lot of ways can and is an example of dog trainers around the world in any area of dog training. And I also think that a lot of innovative and, you know, different, interesting approaches come mostly from IGP or at least more than any other dog sport area. There's just very skillful people. And I guess, I guess where I wanted to start is, we're just going to go back in time and because it's really, it will be very interesting. Like in your experience all that time, let's say, let's say like in the last 20 years, how do you think training has evolved? Yes, this is something, something we lived. And so it's so interesting. I think in the last 30 years, it's it's more, it would be more interesting because in the beginning of the 90s, when we met in Belgium, that was at that time, was the beginning of the 90s. So more than 30 years ago, the average of trainers used to be convinced that the only solution to teach something to a dog was to put the dog under pressure and get the dog find the solution performing an exercise. And I'm afraid that this is still living. So sometimes we meet competitors and that still know only know this

this way of training. And this is why many competitors were not so happy about my judgment in the last World Championship. And it may be also the reason why I prefer to have this podcast after the World Championship because I was judging the obedience. And still from some countries, also important countries, we meet people that do not know anything else as for teaching their dog to perform an exercise. And especially in obedience, when the drive is not so high like in other sections, of course, we see everything. We see everything in the three sections, but it's easier to to be seen also from outside in the obedience. Yeah, obedience is almost, would you agree? It's really the obedience, I would think it's kind of like the mirror of who you are and how the dog sees you as not even as a trainer, but as a as your team member, right? As partner, right? Exactly. It's the section where it's easier to evaluate what is now since 10 years the goal of the of the rules, that is the harmony. We have been writing in the preamble of the rules. We are looking for the harmony between dog and human. And this harmony is easier to be seen from outside in the obedience, even if you see it very well in protection and in the tracking as well. But in obedience, it's easier because in tracking and in protection, there is a very high prey drive. Yes. And the dog is covering a lot of other emotions through the prey drive. I think they are very similar. I've been judging very big competitions like World Championships in tracking. And then on Sunday, I was going to the stadium to see the protections and the same attitude of the dog you find in the tracking and the protection because of the level of the prey drive. Yes. And the temperament of the dog is the same in the two sections. In obedience, you see something different. You see an interaction of the dog and the handler and you see many things that my point of view are very interesting. Yeah. And I think that the biggest progress we see in the training, we see in the beginning from the section B. And then it comes also to the other two sections. But what we have been seeing in the last 30 years is very interesting because in the beginning of the 90s, in the big competitions, the dog was supposed to do something very precise. That was the first request to be parallel, to be precise, to be in the right position. Maybe also to be fast. It was the beginning of the first request. But at the beginning was supposed to be precise. Then in the middle of the 90s… Because that was difficult on its own at the time.

Of course. And then it was starting to say, OK, we want it precise and fast. But still, the picture was very bad from the outside. And we both were going in places where they started to tell us, hey guys, look, the dog is not happy to be there. It's not happy to perform the exercise. And the system is not modern because it was just an avoidance training. And it was just a training based on fear. And the dog was waiting for a punishment. That was the philosophy. Yes. The difference between you have to do it and I don't care, you have to do it versus how can I make your wife doing it, right? Of course. And that was the start of the study of the operant conditioning and the Belgian studies in that day at the time were very interesting. And we started to read all what the autologists were saying about the behavior and the drives of the dog and the operant conditioning and the rewarding systems. And we have been both visiting people like Andre van der Gaten at the time that were just talking in the desert because at that time nobody else was really believing in this kind of way of training that nowadays is modern. But 30 years ago was maybe too much advanced for the modern times. Yes. This is what happens to our friend Andre. He started to talk to people that were not ready to understand this kind of words, especially in some exercise like the retrieve. The retrieve, I think, was a mirror of the time. In the beginning of the 90s, when I decided to go away from Italy for training, I have seen trainers suffocating dogs, performing every kind of torture, putting dogs on tables where everything was happening. And they said, this cannot be my sport, of course. And still, I'm convinced that I train not because it's not my job. I'm a lawyer. I train because I love it. And I have to spend a nice time with my dog and the dog has to be happy as much as I am. So this was what I was looking for, what we both were looking for. So it couldn't be just fast and precise. It has to be something different. So in the 96th was born the new IPO. In the beginning, it was everything was shooting. And then 96th was the new IPO program. And they started, I don't know if you remember exactly, I was competing with the old beach at that time. And it was the first year we had to put the dog's seat in the escape. Yes. And the dog has to keep seat until the command. That was the time. And we just were working on positive informants to keep the dog's seat, not just saying you have to sit when the helper is moving. That was the 96th exactly. And this period was very interesting for training because a lot of things

started to change. I was still not in the FCI commission at the time, but I was already training and studying as a judge. So it was interesting for me, I gave my exam in the 98th. So it was interesting for me to see what was changing in the training methods and in the requests from the rules. And so we started to say, it's not enough for fast and precise. We started to say, we also want the dog to show the pleasure to do the exercise. That is nothing. It's not enough. But still, we were talking about a kind of pleasure. And then in the few years after this, I entered in the FCI commission, I think, around 2002, 2003, something like this. So it's more than 20 years ago, we started to discuss about this in all the meetings, in all the judge seminars, because this was also important. And a lot of people started to, a lot of judges and delegates started to ask a step forward. It's not enough to show the pleasure. The dog has to really feel at ease, it shouldn't show panic, pain, stress in the training. And this went on. I can say, for me, one important day was 2015. Because in 2015, I was judging the world championship in Switzerland. And again, in obedience. And again, I was showing to the competitors that it was not possible to show a behavior with fear, with avoidance. Yes, I remember that one. And there was a lot of, I mean, there is still a lot of confusion and people think that we are going overboard. But at that time, it was really a lot of people were not understanding. Yes, disappointed because they couldn't understand deeply what I was trying to explain. Yes. And I feel like maybe I was using also not the best words to say it because I say the dog has to be more happy to receive the command. I don't think it was, I think people were just not ready yet. I mean, you know, any time there is that kind of change, you have to sit with it and think and then train and think and finally start to realize what's the point, right? But anyway, it was interesting to see because many dogs were really showing stress behavior after the commands, especially in the positions. When they received the command seat, they were looking around and doing things like this. I was just saying the dog should show more happiness to receive the command. And somebody came to me, his competitors, normal people asking what should the dog do? Move the tail. No, it's not just move the tail. It's a question of harmony. And then came the rule of the FCI. But it was already in the rule book that we were looking for harmony. But I started to ask myself and tell people what is harmony. Is it harmonic if I am

working with my partner because my dog is in a competition, is a partner. And I tell to my dog, I shout to my dog with body language, with bad body language, putting down my head and shouting and work and talking like the commander of the soldier that was looking very bad. This is not a morning, harmonic for sure. And then also if the dog was reacting to the commander, to any kind of command with stress, that means licking the lips, looking around, putting the head between the shoulders and other things. This is not the reaction we are looking for, of course. Right. But it was not already described in the rules. So people started to try a lot of things to train the dogs better, of course, and that was our goal. And also we were trying as FCI Commission, better wording to explain this, because the future was coming. And I think this process that now, after 10 years came to another important step, is a progress that is important for the survival of our sports, because we cannot think about torturing dogs to make them retrieve. That is something that is very pleasant for a dog. It's stupid. It's like punishing a dog to make him eat his food every day. Now the dog wants to have the food. We don't have to to oblige the dog to eat. That's not to be stupid. And the same is for the dog performing the exercises. The dog needed to work with us. And how can we accept that the only way we know to make him work is to oblige him, when he would do it for the pleasure to do something with us. Let me let me let me interrupt you here. And we definitely continue on this because it's a very interesting conversation. But when we started or when you started, obviously, looking into influencing and changing the actual judging and the rules that they have to take under consideration, the emotional state of the dog and, you know, why they are there and how they feel about it. Did it come from like the, was it kind of pressure from the animal rights activists or did it come from inside from people that train and see that this is a lot of ugly training going on? Because, because we know that when you see it in competition, even though it looks a little bit ugly, it's not the end of the world, but we can very easily tell by what we see on the field, how the training goes. And, and, and it's very dangerous to even, you know, even, even if there is a very beautiful performance in any other way, but emotional state is not right. And then you see all this, you know, byproducts in the body language that tells us that the emotional state is not right. If,

if that dog and that trainer get rewarded, that also rewards and reinforces the way they train. So that means we will get more of the same kind of, you know, probably unfair training because if a dog acts like that, there is something, there is for sure not, not enough clarity. But my question is, did, did the changes started to happen as a combination of the two or was it just initiative of the FCI working commission or was it pure pressure from animal rights or how, how did that push for the change evolve? I understand very well the question. I think that the, the pressure from the animal welfare organization came afterwards. In the beginning, the only pressure we had in the 90s was they were not from the animal welfare, but from the defense for humans. They were afraid the dog to bite the human. And so we had to control our dogs to say the dog sit before, don't bite before the command or think that. Yes. That's why you changed the, that's why you were talking at the 96 times. 96. Right. Was protection of children, of people, of public health. That was different. I think that the real reason why we started to make the changes was our passion. Not only mine, but a group of people that were dreaming something. And I started to dream it a little bit earlier because I was formed as you have been in Belgium in the 90s. So we have been participating to this dream. And we wanted to, to say, okay, it's possible to, to train like this and to go to the world championship with the dog train with the pleasure of doing the exercise. This was for both of us, I think, a dream. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, nowadays we are also have the pressure of animal welfare organization. And I can say, we are proud to say that mostly of the dog, of the dogs are happy to be in the field, would prefer to be in the stadium to do training that than at home to do nothing. Because dogs need to be trained. This is absolutely important. But this comes afterwards. Now, because of our passion, we have an answer for the animal welfare organization is not the opposite. We did not look for an answer. I think the sport itself was growing from the inside the answer. And the answer is the nice sport, the nice performance comes when the dog is happy, not only happy, but when all his feelings are focused on the performance, because he wants to do it. He wants to cooperate with men. And I must say that to go to this goal, you said in the beginning that IGP is one of the most interesting and complete sports, and I totally agree. But IGP took a lot of good ideas

from other sports. And one of this is the FCI obedience. Because in the FCI obedience, it's just obedience. You have no tracking and no protection. So that there are also different dogs nowadays. And this, I think, is a mistake of the modern discipline. I know really deeply the rules of the FCI obedience. I've been working, judging many times the World Championship also last year, the FCI obedience World Championship, starting from 2002. So I have seen 20 years of evolution of the discipline. And in the beginning, the discipline was wonderful, because you could you could do it with any dog. I judged it in a in a World Dog show, the obedience World Championship used to be inside the World Dog show. And I judged a poodle coming from Israel that got an excellent in the show and after the day after got an excellent treatment in the obedience class tree. And this, I think was really nice for the people for for the breeds and for the culture of dog training. Nowadays, it's some kind of mono breed border collie competition, because there are some exercises that are a little bit extreme. And this we don't need anymore. For this reason is a little bit more boring for people from outside. And there are starting to grow trophies like non-border trophies. And this tells you everything about the philosophy because border collie is a dog that can really react very fastly. Yeah, and can be really be very, very focused to the handler, but has other problems. This year, we have seen a border collie in the World Championship IGP. And I did not appreciate the performance of this kind of dogs, especially in protection, because we are not looking for this kind of breed in our sport. Yes. But keeping away from this discussion, I want to say that the obedience trainers had a lot of good ideas, and a lot of good good techniques, especially in the in the retrieve exercises. And they can do something really interesting nowadays with three retrieves and left and right and center and turn around and jump with the retriever without and show have been showing us that is very easy to have a dog that is retrieving or a dog that is stopping in different position when we ask him sit standing down and whatever happily without stress without punishment. So all this philosophy started to go inside the IGP training and brought a lot of good ideas. And maybe because also the the Malinois is not as hard as a German Shepherd and is more sensitive in the way that is in his relationship to the handlers, we started to get new systems. If you look deeply to the

different breeds in a World Championship, you will see that in average, the German Shepherd in obedience perform a little bit less than the others, not because of the breed, but because of the tradition of training. I have the idea that German Shepherd can stand everything. Normally they have good nerves, they are strong dogs, they can do a lot of nice things. And the trainers are not as sensitive as the others. And so sometimes you see, and of course, this is not possible to generalize. This is not true for everybody because we have seen this year a wonderful German Shepherd on the podium of the FCI coming from America. And it was a very young dog, but even performed a wonderful, very good obedience, one of the best obedience I have seen in the World Championship, and it was a German Shepherd. So it is possible to make a very high, very good obedience in the World Championship with the German Shepherd. It's not a breed problem, it's a philosophy problem. And I think that to answer to your question now, nowadays in the last 10 years started the last part of the upgrade of our discipline that is not only looking to the react, the quality of the reaction to the dog, of the dog to the command, but looking for a mental status of the dog. Nowadays, we are really watching the dog watching the behavior and judging not only his behavior is like the performance of the exercise, but the mental status of the dog. What I realized is that still we have 30% of dogs that are not at ease during the performance. They are nervous, they are barking, they are coughing, they are whining, they are under stress, they show the stress, they show the pressure, they show they don't like to be there, they don't like to shake the hand, the owner to shake the hand of the judge, for instance. Yeah. And some owners are afraid of this, keep the line back because they are not, they don't want to shake my hand when, before and after the performance because they don't trust the dog. So this is something we have to point out because this is not the philosophy of IGP. I want to see a dog that maximum jumps on me and say hello. That's the better option for sure. That's a better option, even if the dog is not under control, but not a dog that is not 100% safe. And we still see this, but also we see the dogs that cannot perform normal healing because they jump, they are closed, they are stressy, they are whining, and they have to bump all the time to have a position on the knee of the owner because they feel safe. And this is something that we have to start to look for. If the training is you are safe when you are

with your elbow on my knee, this is not training. This is not healing. We call it, we need a dog that is like in English in the States, we call it a Velcro training, you know, the Velcro stick. The Velcro. And we have seen it very often also in the retrieve. When the dog pick up the dumbbell, come to the handler, instead of sitting and presenting the retrieve and saying, hey, here is my dumbbell, take it because I will get a reward. I will get something. It is nice. We are playing together. A lot of dogs stick on the knees of the handler, like with the Velcro. All the head of the dog is sticking to the belly of the handler until the come out. And this is, for me, is a low satisfactory or high and satisfactory. Something like this dog is performing the retrieve, but it's not retrieving. It's just sticking to the belly of the handler. It's something different. Yeah. I think, I mean, I love the, well, I shouldn't even say, I was going to say I love the retrieve portion, but I just love every single piece of the IGP for various reasons. But I feel like even today, I think, at least trainers that are not beginners, but they're not very, very experienced, I don't think they understand the importance of the presentation. Everybody focuses on the actual speed of going, coming back. But they totally think that the presentation is a secondary thing and it's not that's important. And as a judge or as a trainer, it tells you so much in there. It tells you, I mean, it's packed with information, right? Almost everything. Of course. It's a relationship because the dog is there and in these three seconds, because it's a long time, three seconds, you see everything, what happens. And then when you say the out, it's the same thing. How does he present it? Does he go out and jumps half meter back? Where is my toy? Does he eat? I'm not sure if I should let it have it. You know, like there is a lot in there, but trainers always, for whatever reason, are focusing on the speed. And because maybe they are sticking still to the old rules of the nineties, but fast and precise, precise and fast, parallel and very fast. Yes. And too many, I think the responsibility of this has to be given to the judges. We have done the mistake while saying not fast enough. This is a mistake. We could say not enough motivated, not enough focus, not enough willing to come, but fast is something that we shouldn't use because that means that we want just something quick. This is not the purpose of the retriever exercise. The retriever exercise is the pleasure to pick up and the will to

bring to you. That is something totally different. It is an expression of the dog in relationship with with the owner. But still, 25 years ago, we used to say fast and precise. And still, And that's why everybody was trying to throw that dumbbell 50 meters away if they could. 50 meters away to make the dog run faster when it comes back. And that was so terrible because this is not what we are interested to see. We want to see the last three seconds that are the most important, like in the protection. How important is the transition phase? Yes. What happens when the helper stops and the dog is in grip? We see everything. Look, very dominant dog is will be pushing. Yes. Another will, the dog with a little stress will try to go away. Another will start chewing. Another will start performing something else. But in this second, this is less than not three is one second before the out command. We see so many things. These details are very modern, are very interesting because they give us mirrors to see the training methods, to see the behavior of the dog and the owner. We see the relationship. We see also the genetic disposition of the dog because when the dog is waiting for something, he knows like the out of the sleeve, the out of the dumbbell. Yes. We really can read in this one or three seconds, depending on the on the section, we can read a lot of things. And sometimes it can be... I love it. Yes. Sometimes it can be difficult for the judge to, even when we see something that it's not quite what we want to see, to decide to kind of say, well, I think it's coming from... Like, let me give you an example, just to step back a little bit how we were talking about, you know, giving a loud command or the dog kind of ducking a little bit, maybe the ears, maybe, you know, showing some uneasiness overall. It can come from a few different places. Yes. For example, even if we train 100% only through positive reinforcement, if the dog is confused because of the training, it will show that it's confused. Of course. Right? What is positive when you don't reward the dog because it's not performing, the dog will get stressed because of lack of reward. And it would be another reason for stress that is not the punishment, but is the lack of reward. And the dog can, after a while, can be even more stressed than the dog that gets the punishment and then performs. Yes. So it's not the judge that is up to decide what happens. The difference between the judge and the trainer is that the trainer is supposed to understand why,

because he has to solve the problem. The judge is not authorized to tell why. I cannot say why the dog... Yes. Some judges do and it's a mistake because it's... It's a mistake. How do you know? It's written in the rules. You judge what you see. Yes. You don't say why. You can imagine, but you don't say why. Yes. What you have to say is what I see is not what is requested. It is not enough harmony. It's not enough natural gait. It's not enough pleasant reaction to the command. It's not enough willing to perform and cooperate with the handler. Stop. We cannot say anything else. Then it's up to the to the trainer, to the handler, to the owner to understand what's going on and why and how to improve this. Yeah. Of course, this is when I am judging, when I am at home and I'm training my dog or I am in the field and I want to understand and it's different. I take away my hat and I like to understand why. Because I think that the future of dog training has to be guided by people who like training. Otherwise, if they only like judging, we don't step forward. Yes. Yes. I must say that there is a man that is very important in this moment for our sport, more than one. But the president of the FCI Commission, Robert Mark Schlager, is president since a few years after COVID he became president. But he has always been saying also as vice president something very clever. He was saying, put 10 pupils from the low grade school in the stadium and ask them what is the dog thinking. And they will tell you exactly what the dog is thinking. Because we are blind. Our mind is full of funny ideas coming from the old years, like speed and all this shit that we have been talking about. They can look at the dog and say the dog is happy, the dog is not happy, the dog wants to be there, the dog would like to be at home on the sofa and they will tell you the truth. Yeah, very true. Robert Mark Schlager said this a few years ago and started to repeat it. And it was very important for me because I had a dream. That was my dream. I wanted to bring this philosophy in our sport. I love the sport. And I wanted our sport to be fair for the dogs and fair for the handlers that love their dogs. This was important. When I started, I was 20 years old. And when they told me you have to put the pink collar to your beach, I had a very small dog, a very young dog, put the pink collar and start to suffocate your dog and say, you are crazy. I would never have done this. And now I can really say we have a chance. We have the people, the right people to bring the right philosophy worldwide. And

this is a nice moment, I think. And it's not so difficult because if you take away the glasses of of the competition and you put normal baby glasses, you can really understand what the dog is saying. No, no. I'm with you 100% and hopefully everybody listening. I mean, there is even, there have been interesting research and studies that they have done exactly this of when you just intuitively how much you can guess how another animal, it's not even just a dog, but even, well, let's not go to snakes, but even a rabbit or a cat or a dog or a cow, any of the animals that we are at least humans are more domesticated, how they feel and can we tell anything about their emotion. And when, you know, like people that are more trusting their intuition instead of getting all that knowledge and that almost can affect them in their own way. It's very easy for a human to tell to tell if the animal if wrong is, of course, not to great detail, but you can tell, no, this animal is scared. This animal is happy. This animal wants to run away. These are not too difficult when you are in your purest form and that's where kids are very good indicators, right? It's amazing. And to go back to this one where I was talking, how, so, so the way I see it, we have, we probably have few more reasons of why a dog can display during competition, this kind of undesired picture of stress and confusion and pressure or, but sometimes as we were talking, it can be difficult to say, is it coming from pressure? Is it coming from confusion? Is it? So we can, for one thing, for sure, unfair, harsh training with pressure like back in the day creates that picture. For three or only positive training also can create that picture, but that is because of lack of knowledge of training and not bringing clarity to what you want from the dog. So even if the dog is motivated, eventually they're like, I'm trying, but it's not happening. So you start to see that. And then there is another one and probably there are a few more, but there is the other one when maybe in training they look very good. Maybe, right? We don't know. But then competition day comes and it's a big competition and it's important. And not everybody as a human have that gift to to control their emotions and nerves and be able to show. So sometimes you will have somebody that's going to yell down because they want to, they purposefully want to put that pressure. Somebody will do it just because they don't even know that they're freaking out. They don't know what, I mean,

you've seen it many times, right? Of course. And so, you know, the saying many roads lead to Rome. Like there is quite a few reasons why we can see not so pretty presentation during competition, right? And that's where it gets interesting for me because I think, yeah, I mean, the more I train, the older I get. I like when I start to think what is the most important if I can start to prioritize. I think the most important part is how do you communicate, not so how exactly how do you communicate and how you train, but are you capable to bring clarity of what training is about? Because when there is clarity, things look different. Maybe it's less stress or no stress. Right, right. But stress is interesting, right? Because we all need some stress. Stress can be positive. There is a healthy level of stress and there is a chronicle where we, you, yeah, it leads to really bad things. But also, even when we are learning something, stress will come. Even if it comes, like, let's say, yeah, a perfect example of what I was telling you with my dog trainer students here trying to pass the test. So eventually on Sunday morning, we give them the test and you see them, they are stressed and nobody gets put pressure on them. They put it on themselves because it matters and they understand that it matters, right? Of course. So it becomes very interesting to, you know, I always am like not sure what position to take because I believe that any extreme is not quite right because, you know, when we say, well, the dog has some stress or the person has some stress, stress can be temporary and very beneficial or it can be a really bad idea, right? So I don't know. It's a, going back to what I was saying, I think it's a very difficult sometimes for the judge to, the judge shouldn't really try to make their mind because how the dog looks, it can be from quite a few different places or a combination of many places. I agree with you. I agree with you. What we try to put in the rules, it's something that makes it easy because we have to standardize and this is very important because not all the judges have the knowledge to understand the dog, but to, they don't have the experience, maybe not all of them and not the same. So we have to find the standard and some exercises are very helpful to do it. One very important exercise for me is sit in motion. You see so many things. I was fighting back again, 10 points in this exercise because it's so, so important, not just because the dog is missing the position and it's minus five, but because it tells a story.

And I think that more than 50% of the dogs, after receiving the command, are not focusing to the handler, but they're looking around. This tells you a lot. And then when the handler turns, the dog looks perfect. The second part is okay. After 15 steps, the handler turns back and the dog looks him coming back and says, oh, okay, he's coming. And this starts focusing. But in the first part, the dog is supposed to sit and the handler is walking away or running away in the long down. You see so many things. The word stress, I think, is not the right word. We try to divide the analysis. First part, reaction to the command. Is the dog willing to sit? Is it sitting directly? And is it sitting with the willing to sit? Or it shows that it would not like, and the last 10 centimeters is going down like a door that is not supposed to shut at the end. Yes. And this is something we have to do. And the body language. Is the dog showing self-confidence? Or is it showing some kind of reaction to the command? Like putting down the head between the shoulders, licking the lips and doing other things with his ears, with his eyes, and doing this kind of behavior. performing this kind of behavior. This is the first part. I don't, I cannot tell this is stress. This is a kind of reaction that brings also to calming signals. And this is a behavior that is not what we are looking for. We want a dog that is motivated, direct, self-confident, and at ease with his owner. I don't, I cannot describe the reason why, because I am a judge. Yes. I just have to describe that this is not what we are looking for. This is the first part. The second part is the handler is going, wait, what is the dog doing? We have five, five dog, five points to evaluate this. The behavior of the dog after the sit. And this is the second part is so important because it tells us a lot of things about the training, the relationship with the owner, the quality of the dog, the stress resistance, the stress resistance, a lot of things. Because if the dog is starting to look around and to do other things, instead of watching the handler, it cannot be extreme. Nobody will ask something like a dog like this, like a border collie watching a sheep. That would be stupid. We are trying to cut away from the rules all what is extreme. But a normal dog that says, okay, I have to sit here. I wait for you. Are you coming back? Nice. It's something that tells you a lot about the mental status of the dog. For sure.

And I think that the responsibility of the judges and of the trainers nowadays is to tell to the owners that it's not so important to sit fast or to sit parallel. But it's the mental status of the dog that wants to sit. Because it knows that you are coming back, something good will happen. At least you will come back. And this is positive. If we can explain this, then we made a very big step forward. I'm not a fanatic against the electricity or other things, because I know many dogs that were dangerous, that were not killed because a good handler, a good trainer could use some e-collars to teach the dog not to bite people. Yes. And the dog now have a normal life, thanks to this method that are better than others. So I'm not fanatic about this. But for sure, I'm fanatic against abuse of this. Yes. I'm fanatic about avoidance training. And I'm fanatic against the pressure and the dog that has to get out from a conflict. Yes. When there is no clarity, basically, again, right? Of course. Of course. This is the point. And I used to say in the 90s, every time the dog gets a punishment with the e-collar, it's not the owner that is pressing the e-collar, it's the judge. Because if you're giving him point for the performance, even when the dog shows what he receives, then you are guilty. It's like when I judge a show, I am also a show judge. And I have a lot of discussions about this. In the shows, many dogs are winning, many breeds are winning. Do you do all breeds? No, only working breeds. Okay. So, German Shepherds, the dogs I like in training, I also like in the show. It's just a question of culture for me. I'm not fanatic of shows. But as you know, especially in your country, there is a big problem that is called hypertype. So, if the boxer has to have a short muzzle, I will let the dog win when he has the shortest. And the dog cannot breathe anymore, cannot leave anymore. Or if the German Shepherd has to be well-angulated, I will have the dog over-angulated and the dog cannot jump anymore. And we have finished with the German Shepherd as well. So, we should find a dog that is sound, healthy, in harmony. And we let the dog win when he is over-angulated, over something. Yeah. The hypertype is not a mistake of the breeders, it's a mistake of the judges. Because if you let the dog win with a coat that is too long, in nature, wouldn't survive with this coat, you are destroying the quality of the breed. You judge, not you. Because you breed what you are asked to do.

I actually was a confirmation. I mean, I ended up being also working as a judge, but I started as a show judge at one point with colleagues. Yeah, not too many people know that. You see what happens nowadays with the colleagues. In the old times, it was possible to have a shoot from three. Oh, I had. Yes. With the colleagues. Yes. Of course, nowadays, it would be a dream. It's impossible to have a shoot from one. Oh, you open a bag of chips and... And the colleagues is away. And what happens to the long-air Belgian Shepherd? Yes. The black, long-air Belgian Shepherd was a wonderful one. Yes. But at the not so long hair, then a little bit, a drop of collie destroyed also the Belgian Shepherd. Because to make them more beautiful, more... ...show perfect. Yeah, of course. They destroyed the quality of the reactions. And sometimes we have to think about... A dog is not just like Frankenstein. You cannot take the brain from a dog and the body from another. It's like a human. It's a mixture of hormones, of balance, of the brain. Like I also think about this stuff all the time and... Yes, the judges and the kennel clubs, they have the responsibility. For sure, they have the responsibility. But I think, you know, I really have been thinking about this quite a bit. There's gotta be a better way to convince people that, you know, correct structure matters. You know? And the way I always think about it is... Of course. How did all these breeds ended up looking so funny? Because the working qualities stopped being evaluated. They kind of were evaluated. Then it didn't matter. Then... Like, like take the... Like I was... What was his name? Louis. It's the guy from Australia. He's a SV, a German Shepherd judge at the time. And I had him on a podcast and we were... Because of course, I used to have these dogs. I used to do, you know, Quantu Cantu Muts and all this stuff, you know? I mean, that's the era you grow up, you know all this. But... Of course. So when we were talking, I'm like, even today, we can change if we want to. And it's not by just pointing the defects, but actually exposing the problems. So like, if we put... Imagine if we put... Not even one meter, but let's start with 80 centimeters. A jump in the German Shepherd show ring. To where it's not only about the running, but... Let's encourage them to jump. It is like this because they are supposed to jump in the selection and then something happens. There was a very, very interesting test made by a very super, super trainer. Martin Knutzen. I think you remember him because in 2007, you won the World Championship in Torino.

I was the organizer and you were competing in my town and you were World Champion. At that time, it was possible to become World Champion for everybody. Yes. It was positive. I dream to come back to this era. But the best obedience was performed by a German Shepherd, a little bit long hair. And the handler was Martin Knutzen. A good friend of mine. And Martin was performing a wonderful exercise with a very happy dog. Very fast, but very willing to work with him. He got something like 99. It was wonderful because it was last day and it was so better than the others. It was not possible to reward him with 110. But it would have been worth it. It was really something modern. And when he was saying, Blatt, the dog was just bumping to the ground, but lifting the ears like this to say, wow, thank you for giving me this command. I think this for that time was really exceptional. Exceptional, for sure. Exceptional. For sure. The goal we were following. That was 2007. Then unfortunately, this dog got sick and died and Martin got a show dog, a show German Shepherd. Show Ryan, I mean. And they wanted to say, I can train this dog and he can qualify to the FCI. And he did it. And so he qualified and he came to the FCI with this dog in the Danish street. So that was absolutely exceptional. He showed he was a very good trainer. The dog was a normal dog. Good dog, but normal dog. Yes. At a certain moment, he started to train the dog for showing him because he had to, after coming to the world championship, he wanted to show the dog and say, okay, this is a beautiful dog. I can, I can enter a competition. And he started to train again, the dog for the trot in the stadium. And from that moment, training these muscles, the dog couldn't jump anymore like it did before because of the different training. It's interesting. It's interesting. If you train for our sport, you need explosive force, short time and explosions. So you would train with the ball up, uphill and downhill or something like this. If you train with a bicycle, you destroy an IGP dog. It's totally different type of training and of performance. This is, I think it's very interesting for us, the difference. And another, we should use one post-tag, podcast only for this, but another very important task is related to the proportion of the skull. The proportion of the skull is related to the behavior, very much related because the, the, the behavior of the dog depends on the level of neotenic. The neoteny of the dog. The neoteny is the quantity of puppiness, let's call it, of the, of the dog.

The dog more, the dog is close to the puppy, more, the behavior would be, uh, puppy style. Playful. The dog is similar, similar to the, the, the wild wolf. More, the dog would be wild style. We have to find a balance in between for our sport, because if we have a dog that is too much molossoid, too much, uh, neoteny, too much, uh, uh, big head and big bones and it would be lazy, slow and not focus for our purpose. Not, not so cooperative with the human, right? Not so cooperative anymore. But if we have a dog that is too much, uh, whippet style, too much wolf style, it will be very much, uh, prey oriented, but his nerves would not, wouldn't be so stable. Yes. And the reason is why, it is because the, uh, neoteny helps dog to keep the, um, uh, socialization window open all the life. Yes. A wild dog has, need fear to survive. Our dogs need a little bit of stupidity to, to, to, to, to play the game with, with humans. Has to, to, to stay puppies all the life. Mm-hmm . But all of this comes from the nerve system. And the balance is something that comes from the genetic because it's related to the hormones and to the development of the dog. Yeah. So for, for sure, if, uh, look what happened in the Belgian Shepherd. In the show lines, if you want a really elegant head, you will have a dog afraid of everything. You, you know, the, the typical expression of the dog looking around and in, in fear. Uh, if the, we want a dog that is really self-confident, that is really, uh, 100%, uh, uh, uh, at ease in every situation with noise in the stadium or whatever else you will have. Yeah. We'll have to accept a skull that will be heavier, a stop that will be, uh, will be deeper because otherwise the dog would not be as, as much neotenic as it should be. Uh, there is a, a very interesting study from the eighties made by, uh, um, uh, an Austrian, uh, uh, science, scientist, uh, Edgar Trumler that, uh, started to study the relationship between the body and, uh, the behavior and develop this in a very interesting way. And so others, there are more modern studies, of course, but this is the age when it started in the eighties. Mm-hmm . And still now inside the breed, we can select different behavior, accepting different bodies. Uh, when, uh, uh, in the Doberman story, when they wanted to have more, uh, stability in the nerve system, they had to accept more bones and heavier skulls. When the Doberman was too elegant, the, the, the behavior was also unpredictable. And this was the real problem of Doberman was not the aggression behavior was that the behavior was unpredictable because the dog was too elegant.

Yeah. And with this cow, with this behavior, and with this, uh, body, you can only have very fast and unpredictable reactions because it's typical of the wild animal. Yeah. If you want to have it more neotenic, you have to select him a little bit less elegant. This was the, the real problem of the, uh, of the Doberman breeders. And, and they found a balance in between. Now the Doberman is a nice working dog. You, we, we, we see it in, uh, every year we see the Doberman world champion in the FCI and normally he's performing very well, but finding a balance. And the same happens with the Rottweiler. I had this year, a wonderful Rottweiler, but it was molossoid, but not extreme. Right. The head was not short. Right. It was a dog, no? And looking for the balance is our goal. It should be our goal in, in, in the sport and in, in the, in the, in the selection of for, for, for beauty. Yeah. What is so difficult. I, I, I like judging the, uh, confirmation, but not only confirmation, but the current. That is the, the, the working test together with the confirmation of the dogs, because in this case, you see the overall picture. Exactly. And only when you are exposed to all the different components, you can, the whole picture comes to you together. Come together. And it's so interesting because again, we have the responsibility of all of this. I, I, I am a breeder of giant snouters. I got a very, very good dog from Belgium, from Vandergate. And that it was, I think, 19, 19, 19, 19, something like this. Yeah. I, I got a very strong. That's when we met. That's when I was still there. Of course. And, uh, uh, at that time, a giant snouter was a roost dog, beautiful for work. And this dog could go in a show or in a working trial. Right. It was the same dog. Right. Then the selection started to divide. And now we have over-angulated dog with long coat, soft coat, and other stupid things, especially with too much, too much angles. And these dogs are not capable to move anymore. Like if you watch to the behavior of these dogs, it's not just a question of movement. It's not just a mechanical problem. The problem is that to get elegance, to select the long bones, you have to move in the scale of neoteny from the molossoid to the wolf. And the more you move to the elegance of the wolf, the more you get wild behaviors, unpredictable behaviors. And this is the problem for living in the family or working in the sport. Both. The judges are not enough aware that their decision can affect the future of the breed and the behavior of the dog. And together. And we cannot separate this.

It is not true that the body and the soul are separate. They are one. And there is no way. This was a trick of the religion to tell this. But it's all together. We are one. Yes. Body and soul together. And it's valid for us, but it's valid for our dogs as well. And because a dog is the more genetically plastic animal in the world, no other animal can change from a chihuahua to a grey dane like the dog. We can change completely behavior and not only the size. We can even reverse our mistakes very fast. I mean, very fast. We need, let's say, 10 years if you have a good community of people that want to. If they want. But with the problem. I had a teacher that used to be the president of the World Snaut Organization that used to tell me something that made me think about. And this is something we have the responsibility to remember as trainers, judges and breeders. We are like people on a ship full of our gene pool. We have the responsibility to bring this ship to a harbor. If we start to take away a lot of these genes just because we don't like them, because we want more elegance, more this or more that. Everything we throw in the in the sea, we don't bring to the harbor. And there will be a day when we when nothing will be left after all this selecting, selecting, selecting. We have to pay attention about this. We have to respect the differences in the when I was starting to judge 30 years ago, almost 30 years ago. I was thinking that the solution was to find a perfect dog, perfect body, perfect mind, perfect character. This is stupid. Yes. It was something totally wrong. Now I understand that dog breed survive because there is not a perfect dog. Because of variation, right? Because of variation and because every breeder is looking for something different. Thank God we can let so many genes survive. Something will be perfect. Something will be not perfect. Doesn't matter. The differences are making the dog survive. That would be another very complex discussion. For sure. For sure. I was just talking about this. I think it was actually a podcast or something that I did. And it was about, I mean, we were just talking about my breeding program with Malinois and, you know, what I took away all these years of breeding and my experiences. Because I, you know, I was fortunate to be in Belgium and to be around a variety of people. And especially like, I mean, when I think about it, the time that I went to Belgium, it was the, that was the early boom of the Malinois. People only knew about it, but it was like a very curious time.

And anyway, like very much with what you are saying about elegance and the different, you know, structure, but also structure and temperament. And for example, and I'm sure this goes with every breed, but let's, if we stay with Malinois because it's, you know, my home base. And if we breed, like the first thing to understand is that there is a variety, there is variety of types. And you have more, and you have more, and I kind of haven't even thought of a better word because the Belgium used to use this word. And it's like, you have that more of a primitive type, which is, you know, big bones, strong dog. He's not going to come fast to you when you call him, but he will bite and, and he would not twitch if something sudden happens. Right. And then you have the other type that it's more of a, like going more towards the border calling, much more aware and very trainable and very willing to do. And typically you would combine these two and something nice will come out. And when that nice thing comes out, just as you were saying, then you keep breeding the nice to the nice. And it crumbles at the end. It doesn't function. Because we always need to make sure that we, we protect the different types. They have to be there. And then it's a matter of experience, knowledge and so on to know what you need to bring back. And I think this is what happens all the time. We see it over and over again with any of the working breeds. You will have a kennel name that will be super successful for as long as that stud dog is there. And then it moves. It's still the same line. It's still the same type, but it moves to somebody else because the breeder didn't know how to preserve it. Of course. But imagine something very easy to understand, but very difficult to apply. People come to a point, breeding a very, very good dog and say, I would like to have this dog forever. And try to do something they would do for the show. Use some inbreeding for fixing the type. But this is not functioning in the, in the behavior. It's the opposite. Because the inbreeding is reducing the mobility of the dog. Nature makes something beautiful. If you increase the inbreeding, they start, nature start to decrease the number of puppies per liter. Because if there is too much inbreeding means that it's too much crowded. And so the natural start immediately to affect the number, the expectation of puppies per liter. And to reduce also the lifespan. They will leave less. And the mobility of dogs. So if we want to have a dog that is really alive and perfect for working, we need less inbreeding, not more. We need to open the gym pool. Yes.

But if we open the gym pool, we are not sure anymore about what we get. There is more fantasy of the nature. Yes. So, I mean, there, there, there have been times where close inbreeding has, has helped. But, but it's not something to be taken for granted. It's a special, like you're opening a very special box that, that you need to know, and you need to know where you go from there. Assuming that it's going to turn out. Okay. So the point, I think it is a very long discussion and, and not the point about training, but for sure, the time where, when it was possible to use this kind of inbreeding was a time when dogs were coming from a very, very big outcross themselves. Correct. So point. Very good point. Very good point. Very good. It was not affecting anything. Nowadays, if we, you use inbreeding, you immediately see the damage. Excellent point. In the first generation, it's incredible. And we, we, we see this directly in the, in the eighties. We, we are lucky because we are not so young anymore. I see from the good point of view. If you go back to the eighties, the goal was to find the type. Every dog was different from the other. Now, days, if you go in a ring, every, every dog is similar to the other. Only an experienced judge can see the difference. That means that the goal was reached. Yes, yes, yes. But now the problem is to keep the variety of the gene pool. Otherwise they will die. I love it. You, you, you just brought an excellent point. Excellent point. Let's go back to the training stuff. I know, like, I know, I really have a feeling that we should have another one and talk about this. Cause I mean, we, we both are super interested in this, but let's go back to IGP. One of the things that you always hear when, I mean, anytime I go to any competition, there is always the, like, if, if somebody would critique a judge, there are few ways where people will critique a judge. And one will be almost certainly that's going to come up is, well, that judge, he hasn't trained dogs in 30 years, or he hasn't competed in forever. How can he judge me? And I'm curious to, to hear your position because I, I honestly can go both ways because I know of, I mean, I know of, you know, like looking into martial arts and, and other things in life that there, there is knowledge. That comes not from direct experience, but through observation. However, again, I, I see both sides and I'm very curious where you, what, what you think of. I have a very precise point about this. Uh, of course you cannot judge with something you don't know. Uh, this is why I started to become a, a monitoring judge. Oh really?

Uh, but I never, Jesus, I cannot escape from you. I never made the last exam. Uh huh. Because I said I will never judge, uh, discipline. I don't train and I don't compete in. And I think it was the right decision because I, I had, uh, a lot of good teachers. I was in, uh, attending, uh, one week, uh, teaching from Andre Varlet in the world championship of Mondioring. Something, of course, everybody would have loved. Of course. I have a beautiful, uh, writing from Andre that say, I hope you will finish your studies to become a judge. But I said, no, I'm not a trainer of Mondioring. So I will stop here. It was wonderful for my culture, but I will stop here. It was, uh, many years ago, but I really think that you should do something before deciding to. Yeah. To judge the discipline. And I think in most countries you have to. Yes. It's mandatory that you, you, you have that. According to the FCI rules. Yes. But, but what about. But from the other side is not, is not enough. Because being a good trainer doesn't mean you are a good judge. Yeah. Because maybe you are very sensitive. You can teach a dog, you have a good relationship, but then you have to understand what happens. You have, first you have to study. You need, you need knowledge. Yes. And this you cannot buy. So you have to read books, study and try to understand. And yes, because it's not easy, right? I mean, you have the, I mean, you have the, to understand the rules and the points, which is. It's mind blowing still how, how many high level trainers that are competing forever. They still intuitively can separate excellent from very good and good, but to actually break it down, they cannot. And it's training, right? It's like everything you have to train it. It's a long training. And what is difficult for everybody. And also for, for myself, when I judge big competition, you are in a field. The first dog is coming and you have 140. Yes. And you will be there in that field for five days. One day, sun is shining. One day you are freezing. One day it's raining. Or in the same time you have all, all combinations. All combinations. And a certain moment in the morning you are 100% fresh. And then after a little sandwich, you are a little bit tired. Yes. So you have to be aware that your status is influencing your judgment. Because if you are a little bit tired, you are not focused as you are when you are fresh. So you cannot be 100% sharp, sorry, like you are normal. Yes. And you have to train with a lot of discipline on yourself. I always make the same steps in the field. I try to find my points.

I try to know where I have to position myself to see the two dogs in the shot, in the gunshot. And then what is my position? Because if I do always the same movements, I'm sure I will, my mind will do her best to be always in the same mood. Keeping consistency too. Keeping consistency. In the brain. Yes. Of course we make mistakes. I always would like to be two judges in the field. Yeah. Because then we can make an average or we can discuss and it would be better. I've been fighting for this, but I did not get it at the moment. So if I am judging, I try to make less mistakes as possible. No mistakes is impossible. You are involved. Yes. Also with your sentiment, with your feelings. Your feelings in every way. In every way. No, it's normal. But judging is the result of long training on yourself. You're watching two dogs in the show, in the, in the, in many situations. Watching and reading the behavior is different from training. I, I judge a lot of BH, a lot of temperament test, a lot of good citizen test, a lot of things. And I will send you some videos about the Italian temperament. Temperament test. Oh, that would be cool. I also made, I also made a nice video about IGP. In the relationship between IGP and martial arts. The way you train babies. You're talking my language. It's interesting. You can, you will find a lot of things you will love. I think I will send you the link. I have a YouTube video. Yeah. Yeah. Professionally made by the Kanek Lab for, for showing this. But I mean, the goal of, of training is understanding dogs. So you have to, to see thousands of dogs. One day I decided to practice better in the, in the, in judging the, the tracking field. And I had an experience about my dogs, normal competitions, but I wanted to do a step forward. And I, I was invited in the FMS day to judge together with Ari Archon. That is for me. Jesus, I remember you guys judged me. I remember, I can break my routine there. I remember exactly. I, I, I, I, you were there. Oh yeah. And I made 130 dogs together with Ari. After 130 dogs, I started to go in the stadium the last day to watch the same dogs in the protection. Mm-hmm . That I always do. To try to understand if what I have seen in the tracking was comparable with what I have seen in the, in the, in the protection. Started to understand, to, to think, to read the behavior. At, in, at that time I made a step forward, of course. And I was already judging since 15 years. So, I mean, you have to train yourself. Otherwise you cannot judge. This is a point. But then there is another point. I think I am actually training my, my, my bitches.

And I am not a super trainer and I'm not a super handler. I am a lawyer. So I can, you can imagine I, I, I train in the weekend. Yeah. That's the thing. Some, I mean, sorry to interrupt, but sometimes people really think, well, everybody has to have like this. You know, and that's not, that's not the case. Just as you said, like people are not, not everybody has to just put all of their life away and do that. If, if, if you want to, to, to be successful at a high level, you have to do this. Yes. And I, I am successful in my profession. I defend, in, in, in court, very important trials for economy. So I cannot, I cannot spend all my life training in the field. So it's impossible. My bitch is working. It's a nice bitch, but she can do what she can. It's not possible to do more. And I am not an athlete. That's another point. I, when I was 25, I used to be the helper of my club. And then they told me, you will not perform in the big competitions because you are not physically fit. I am small and fatty. So I will never be the best helper in the world. It's impossible. You have to accept your limits. Yeah. And then, from, we should learn from the old Grecian. They, they were saying, the nauseous, the tone, know yourself. You will be happy if you know yourself and you know your limits. And also what you can do a little bit better than the others. And you will enjoy it. But if you don't go to the field, if you don't train your dog, and if you don't train also other people's dogs, you will lose the actualization of the training methods. Yes. In 10 years, everything is changing. Yes. If you have been giving your exams like I did in the 98, I think, it's prehistorical time. You cannot say after 25 years, you are still able to judge a dog if you have never been in the field. You have to know nowadays how you train the article in the tracking or you train something like the start of the post in the tracking or the position in the healing. Now we ask the dog to stay focused 30 minutes, 30 seconds before walking in the healing because the second dog goes down and a lot of people do not focus on this. And you have 30 seconds of the dog waiting for you to move. And the dog can be stressed, can be whatever, willing to do something and barking or doing other funny things. And you have to do it with your dog and you see how difficult it is. And then you can appreciate the result from the others. And if you don't train this with your dog, you will not see the difference from the old rules and the new rules. It's not a question of 10 points in the seat.

It's a question of all the requirements of the rules have to be applied. Also throwing the dumbbell. When we changed the rules, I went to the club and they said, OK, we do it with my dog immediately. And I have a bitch, a giant schnauzer, a little bit nervy. And so immediately she started barking when the steward was moving. Impatient. Yes. It's like what are we doing? And she said, I want to go. And so I started to do a work with sausages from my mouth to reward the dog that was silent. Instead of throwing directly to pick up the dumbbell because I had to solve the problem. And now I really understand because I have been touching with my hands what happened, throwing the dumbbell, how difficult it is on the A-frame. It's too far away. So you cannot throw it properly. And somebody has to reposition. So you have to train your dogs. All of this has to be practiced by the judge. I don't say the judge has to perform wonderful work because it's impossible. Right. And if you become the world champion, you spend so much time with your dog in the field that you don't train enough to be a good judge. Yes. You cannot do everything. And it's not even just that. It's just like then you have this dilemma of now you've done so well that everybody is searching to get your knowledge. But then there is the other group of people that want you to judge. And now you have to make decisions. Do I make some good money or do I go and judge? And both are important and it's not easy decisions sometimes. Right? Of course. You know what was very. And if you want to really to spend your time judging like I do, you need a good job to survive. And a good friend of me that is a colleague say, Clemente, remember how expensive are dog croquettes? You have to work for it. Because it's not my job. And it's a hobby and it's for free. And I would like to do it in the best way. And even doing it properly, you make mistakes and you have to improve. And every time I have one, two, three dogs, I say that I should have given one point less, one point more. When I would stop having this kind of doubt, I would stop judging. Because it means you think you are perfect and that's so stupid. Yes. And at the end. This is one reason why I, you know, like I, well, I mean, couple of reasons. One I already mentioned between like, I would rather teach people. Although I love judging because, because it's interesting. There is, there is something very interesting about it. But my problem with judging, my personal problem with judging is how my brain works. And I know that I will very often check out. Like, just my brain cannot stay focused.

No matter how interesting it is, there is a skill that you also have to have besides the understanding, besides everything else, to be able to stay focused for so long. And, as we said, you're still going to make a mistake. But I know myself and I know that I'm going to make too many that it will create problems. It's, it's, it's training. Right. You are, you are focused since one hour and 46 minutes. Exactly. You did. And there's no problem. So it's a training. Of course, everybody has a system. I was, I had a telephone in my pocket in the world championship and I have seen every day in the stadium, I was making 20,000 steps. It's a lot. Oh yeah. I, the moment I saw you the first day going, I'm like, okay, you're, you're up for a workout for sure. But it's a way to tell your brain. This is the way. Every day. Stay focused, right? Yeah. Stay focused and with your legs as well. Yeah. Interesting. You have to put brain and legs together and go. Interesting. A very famous judge of pointers told me, he is now 93 years old and told me, my brain would like to judge. My legs cannot judge anymore. Interesting. It's another point of view, but we are not separating even for us, not only for our dogs, the brain, for the body, from the body. Yes. 100%. You know what I was, I don't know when, oh, I know when, um, Hans Rudenauer passed away. And, and me and Marcus know it. I don't know when he was on a podcast or we were just talking somewhere. And, and I was saying that he was really good. And then he was like, somebody or, or Marcus, somebody said, well, but he hasn't trained a dog in a, no, people would say, well, he hasn't trained dog in, in a long time. And then Marcus was like, well, I, I know him. He would not miss a training session in the club, even though he didn't have a dog. He always stayed with the time and the evolution of the, the training and the sport, you know, and it's, it's so many different, interesting points about the quality that you need as a judge. And then what I learned, because I, I always, you know, talk about my, how my brain works and how I space out. Um, I know David Garcia and, and Harry and bunch of, of the really, really good judges, in my opinion. All of them would say, you, you cannot just judge every single dog as an every single dog. You have to have a extremely good picture of every exercise of what categories you're putting it. And then you're simply just watching where that dog fits in there instead of torturing yourself with every dog. That's not going to work. Of course. Of course. And it also depends.

This is why you have to see a lot of competitions and a lot of dogs, because you must have in your eyes. Right. I, I remember I was a team leader in, uh, Slovenia, two years old in the world championship FCI. Yeah. When the, an Italian, an Italian one. Yes. Uh, from sutural. And, uh, I was of course very proud and happy about the Italian dog, but I was watching all the other dogs. And, uh, with a little bit of excitement, you see many things because you are, have more adrenaline and you are more able to remember what you see. That is very interesting for the dogs as well. Not only for us, but anyway, we have to be aware of this. And I was watching the performance of a German shepherd female from Sweden that became a vice world champion. And she did a wonderful olden bark. The female, not too big, but with a really, really nice olden bark. And I have this picture in my eyes. And when I judge high level competition, I always say, okay, this was my perfect picture. She was consistent barking, dominant, self-confident, the perfect thing. I wanted to, the whole package was there, right? The old package was there. That was my 15 and was also the 15 of the colleague that was judging that day because I was not judging, but I was taking this picture in my eyes and I still have this picture in my eyes. And I had another one for many years before, but you need a picture in your eyes, a wonderful sitting motion. Yes. I have a picture in my eyes, a dog that received the command, go down with the back and say, wow, move the tail, focus the ears and say, oh, he gave me the command, sit. I have this picture. It is not a fantasy. I have a dog in my eyes. Yes. And my 10 is that dog. But then you have to have the other one because the 10 is always easy one. It's perfection, right? But you have to have the other ones and know how to divide them. Of course. Of course. This is a technique. That's the mastery of a judge. But then this is the reason why it's so difficult to give an excellent. This year, I really wanted to have an excellent. Of course. Then something happened. Of course. One missed one exercise, one missed another and say, oh, I'm sorry. I had the 95. This was my best obedience. Yes. But then in some 94, I had beautiful dogs, but with little details that it doesn't mean that you have to move from your line. Otherwise, you will make a big mess. You have your line. You have to find it and you have to keep it. This is an excellent point. Once again, there is no other way. And maybe people would say, okay, he's a little bit too strong, too hard. I don't know. Or too soft or can be whatever. This is not a big problem.

The big problem is that you have to analyze, describe, give a point and explain why. Yeah. And if you can keep the line. And when you look at the end of the competition, that you have still put the dogs in the places that they are. In the ranking. And of course, and this is where we were going with this, of course, we are humans and there will be something that will be off. And there is just human. You cannot. But overall, as long as everybody is where they should be or the majority, that's perfect judging. That's the goal. Right? And then every evening I go to sleep and say, maybe I would have given one point more, one point less. This is normal. And that's another interesting question. How do you think about it? Like, let's say you go through the first day and it's over. The first day is over. Do you reflect back on it or you try to just shut off, recharge and go for the next day? How does your brain function after the day, but not? In the evening, I think about the dogs. Not only in the evening, I still have in my mind the first dog I've been judging. I opened the world championship with the Polish giant snoutzer. Yeah. It was very good. And I had the joy of my breed, of course, in the beginning. Of course. And it was a very nice work. So I had some kind of line. Yes. Like a standard kind of, right? I gave him a middle very good. Yes. And then I had a lot of low good because of this, but it's life, no? Yeah. And then I try to keep concentrate because I focus very much on the place. I had to, I have to take my points, be always in the same position, try to see the jump from the same angle, because otherwise you judge and you give different points. Right. And also I think the adrenaline makes the difference because if you are nervous, not nervous, but excited, if you are more adrenaline, your sense are more sharp. If you are more relaxed, your sense go down. This is why people do not understand this, but this is why it could be useful to have two judges. Because it's very easy to concentrate to the dog that gets 95. Because you have a wonderful work and you start to have bubbles on your skin and you say, wow, I like this. And the day I will not have bubbles, I will stop judging. This is so important. You are waiting for this dog since hours and that dog comes and you say, wow, this is what he wants. And I like it. And you have... And you're kind of rooting for the team at the same time as you're judging. And the dog makes a mistake maybe, make a mistake maybe. And then you are, shit, I hate this because I had my perfect dog and then I made a mistake. Okay. What shall we do? You start calculating.

This is what happens. And this is very easy because you have a line. And then also the very bad dog is easy because you say this dog is... I will buy your Velcro word because I hate this kind of training. Not only the healing, but especially in the... And if I have this kind of dog, it will go for a low, very good. And somebody who is writing around, they don't understand my votes, but it will be always in my life. A low, very good. A low good, sorry. Or a high satisfactory. Because it cannot be more than the high satisfactory, this kind of retrieve. Nothing else. Stitching is not... It's such a big help. It has nothing to do with the willing of to present the dam. So when you have these two extremes, it's easy. But if you have a normal 85 point dogs, a normal 85 point dog, how many you have? 100. Yes. Because what is a very good in the average, the biggest number. This is a good. The middle good is the average. And you have 100 dogs like this. And you have 84 and 86. And what will a very good trainer do? Will take two dogs of his friends or his own dog and say, why did you give me 84 and you gave 86 to the other? All the time. Every time. And I take my judging sheets because I'm very open to this. It's no problem. I like talking to the handlers. They come to the tent of the judges and they take my sheets and they say, you see here, you make a little mistake here. The dog is very nice here. It is very bad. So it's written. So you get these points. This is why. And you say, I could have got one point more because my dog was better than the other. Maybe. Yes. So that's the problem. Why do you make more mistakes in the 85? Because you are not under. You're not excited. You have not the excitement of wonderful work. We have not the excitement of a very bad work. You don't have to concentrate. You have a normal work. And in the normal work, you feel very confident and you lose details because your system goes a little bit down. You are saving energy because you say, okay, I know this. This healing is boring. It's a middle good. I will give him a... Yeah. Exactly. I understand completely. 12 and a half. And then 12 and a half. And you start discussing about yourself with yourself. It is low, middle, whatever. Yeah. Look at the seat. Look at the behavior in the group and start moving. But you say, you would say, no, the dog is crooked. It's not 100% focus. It's not very good. Okay. Told. But it's not satisfactory because you keep the satisfactory for this kind of dogs. Yes. You have a very specific picture for that. And then you have the unsatisfactory in the World Championship. Unsatisfactory in the healing is a very bad note.

So you try to keep it for the extreme dogs. So it will be a good. Higher, lower. You have to focus on this. Yes. But then you start relaxing. When I judge the final in the Obedience World Championship, I did it four times, I think. You are, you have four judges, four colleagues, and every exercise, every judge is lifting the points. And everybody's looking to the points. Every exercise has 10 points available from five to 10. Then they are multiplicators, but everything is made by computer. You don't do it in public. In public, you have to say this exercise is eight, eight, nine, eight and a half or whatever. And four judges are lifting the points. And if three judges are giving eight and a half and one is giving six, he has to say why. Justify it. Yes. So you have to concentrate in the same way for all dogs, because otherwise you make more mistakes. Having a colleague is a reason to keep the attention high, to keep your cortisol level as a cost, as a cost. As continuous as possible. And to keep the same sharpness of your sense. Because you judge not only for the dog, for the public, also for the colleague, for yourself, for many reasons. In a very big competition, having two judges means having a more constant level of judgment, I think. And people would understand better and accept better your critique. So what do you think is, what is stopping, what is preventing to have two judges? Why are we not accepting that format? They do it in the FMBB, but then they make it extreme. Five judges in the field. And normally the supervisor is not the same level as the others. So you have a description of the work that is not in combination with the both. And so something is not functioning and a field that's too crowded is not functioning. So people start saying, we don't want to make the same mess that we have in the FMBB. This is one reason. And we also have seen in FMBB with five judges on the field still incorrect judging. Of course. Because of the home country, because of whatever factors. Many things. Second mistake can be, if you have a very dominant judge and a rookie, then the dominant judge is just influenced. So this is another problem. Then the cost, because the judge is not just the traveling cost, but you have a judge for one week. So we have to buy a hotel and everything and bringing up and down. So the judge is a cost for the organisator. If you have three plus two supervisors, it makes five. If you have eight, it's a lot. Yeah. So it's a big cost and we have problems about this also. And I think also a little bit judges like to be the prima donna.

You want to be in the middle of the field and say, okay, now everybody has to pass under my judgment. And I am a tough guy and everybody has to say, accept what I say. Sometimes that for sure can be a psychological problem, of course. Yeah. I made a proposal in 2019 in the FCI working dog commission after the championship of Vienna. Vienna. All the delegates agreed about this, but then we never acted. So we still are waiting to decide how to make it real. Interesting. And I think we are a little bit moving in this area. Okay. Yeah. So we are a little bit of a conversation at least. Yes. What is really positive is who has been judging with the colleague of the same generation. I have been judging a lot in foreign countries together with some colleagues. And I think it's always the same, of course, but we respect each other. We like each other. We understand. I prefer this exercise. You prefer this, but we can find a way in between. Understand each other. Why? Understand each other. Like Mike Groid. I've been judging a lot of times all over the world with Mike. And I have, I think he is a very good judge. And I like to be with him from two different points of view in the field. And then we make the average and that's, it's functioning. We tried it. It functions. We made it and we know it's possible. And every year we say we should do it. But then not all of the judges like it. No. It's also a nice way to make a colleague grow. Right. Because when you need more experience, maybe with another colleague, you feel more confident and you get the experience from another. It's what happened to me with Ari. Yes. I think it's more valuable. Sorry to interrupt again, but I think it's almost, I don't want to diminish the importance of like a judges training camp or anything. But just as wherever you were going, you and Harry judges together. I am certain that both of you, not just one sided, both of you grew from that competition and had some really good takeaways because of the interaction between the two of you. And it's different than a judges camp. It's always positive. The judge in camp is a big mess when you have 10 dogs on the field and it's very difficult. We make a lot of work on the video because in the field is difficult for the dog. It's difficult for the judge. You don't see everything you don't hear. And when you are in the middle of the field, you have to, you need all your senses to feel what's going on. Yeah. And in the judge camp, you don't have it. And the biggest problem is when the dog is starting whining, moving under stress and funny movements and other things.

You just, you cannot judge from the video and you cannot judge when you are 20 people in the field. I had the feeling that many dogs in the last championship were not at ease in the field. I had the feeling also from important countries and you have immediately the feeling because you are alone with the dog and the handler. Yes. You're right there. You are right there. You're hearing the dog and the person breathing. Yes. And when you finish, somebody asks you, why didn't you give him a very good, because it was very precise. And I said, no, this is not a very good because the dog is not at ease. A very good is something else. A very good is a dog that is at ease. Yes. Happy to be there. Want to be there. And he's showing to you. And this you cannot get when you are 20 people. You need to be one or two judges in the field. Not five. Even. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think five. I think two is a very good one. Yeah. And the more I've thought about it, I've been thinking so many different ways about this, but yeah. You know, since we are on that topic. I, I, I am curious, but I know anybody that's around the world that's in IGP probably is to some extent curious of how, well, there is two questions, but let's start with the first one, how, what is the path towards if somebody wants to contribute and take part and be part of like the working dog commissioner or, or contribute in any other way to the sport. How, how, if somebody has the time, has desire and potential, what would be the path to that? How? The, the, the working dog commission is a, a commission held by the FCI. So the members of the FCI are the countries, the single countries. Right. So every country is sending a delegate. That's the point. That's the first point. So the members of the, of the. But I'm talking like past the, past the level of being a delegate. Let's say, let's say you're living in Slovenia or pick, just pick a country, FCI country. And, and there is somebody that clearly can contribute to the sport. And it has the willing. It, it comes automatically. The sport need people, need energy, need people who want to work. Right. But need also knowledge and experience. So people start being useful after years. So you have to be consistent. When people come and stay many years in the commission, automatically they get involved. Yeah. Because they, they have the experience, the knowledge and they study and this, we live together. When we meet after 20 years, we meet the same people, the same group, two, three times a year, four times a year in different countries. And we discuss hours, days about the same matters.

We start understanding each other. Also the slang becomes the same. Yeah. Yeah. We talk each other with the same words and that helps a lot. And also with people who are not joining the meetings. Like think about Pierre Walsrom and other super judge is not the delegate of his country, but he's always there. And he's contributing in some way to the discussions, to the, he comes in the judge meetings. He does his own part. So would you say it's a matter of also that person themselves being active and curious and... We have many judge meetings. We have many occasions, no? There are opportunities. Opportunities to talk each other and to discuss about technical matters. Because it's very easy to get involved. I think it's just a question of time, personality, experience, unwilling, nothing else. There is not a door to open a key. Yeah. Because the door is really open. The point is just if somebody wants to come and say, okay, everybody's stupid. Everybody is clever. And I want to bring my own way of thinking to the system. That's that would be the mistake. But yeah. Yeah. If somebody starts training, judging and discussing with other people and respecting each other, because this is very important. Now, then knowledge starts circulating. I think that is a question of respect of each other because it's interesting. It's the best part of dog sports. I think knowing people, respecting people and trying to get the best. And it's very responsible. I mean, it's like, yeah. Yeah. So my next question to this, Clemente. The, the, how, and I'm sure probably happens in many different ways, but how do, how do the rule changes get suggested? How they evolve? Like for example, going back to mid nineties, again, when it was IPO. And, and as you mentioned the seat. And then, uh, I mean, there were a bunch of rules. I mean, we were clearly kind of trying to do something and then we just kept modifying and modifying. And that was for quite a few years that we, we just went through a lot of changes. Right. So today, how, how does that, how, how does that work today? Like how, how do rules evolve and how do we decide where we go? Like what happens? We have a, uh, first of all, we have a rule from the FCI that says not less than five years. Okay. Because you need a generation of dogs to check, to, to, to, to, to have stability, to have stability first of all. Second. And meaning never, never, never, no, no less than five years. Meaning once something is implemented. Yes. It has to run its course at least for five years, which makes sense. Right? Of course. Because you train a dog and you have to. 100% agree.

So, you have to, uh, a little bit of, of stability. Second point is don't go up and down and don't make big changes. But look for goals and try with little changes to, of the rules to lead to the goals you have. Right. Now, who is really putting, uh, clarifying the goals is Harry. Harry, especially in, in tracking and the protection is putting some kind of, uh, uh, uh, goal. And something very interesting is in the, what happened in tracking is not the problem of being precise. But, what is precision? The goal is the dog is supposed to solve problems by himself. It's gotta find the track. Find the track. Solve the problem and, and stay self-confident. This is our, what we want to see. So, the description of the work and everything is written in the rule has to be clear. No other kind of shit. It's not possible that after the, the object, you want the dog to step back. Because otherwise you take it away at the point because, uh, he's losing one meter of track. This is not the goal. The goal is normal. Normality. The dog has to indicate the, the article and then has to start again searching, showing the willing to, to search and not performing the exercise to step back or something like this. The dog has to be able to solve the problem, to find the track by himself without, uh, showing panic or other situations. And without changing his, uh, his attitude. This is what we want to see. And so if this is the, um, our goal, then we have to modify, a little bit the rules to lead everybody to, to, to, to, to this, to this, uh, goal without destroying the work of dogs. And then we are nowadays, we are saying, okay, we look what is extreme and we take it away. The dog too much focus on the, on the article. It's not. Necessary. We need a dog that is indicated, clearly indicating the article, not alpha point because it's touching with the nose. Yes. It's stupid. With the finger it touch with the finger alpha point. The dog has to be self-confident and happy to indicate the article. Finish. More, way more important than anything else. Than anything else. And the same is the protection. No more, uh, sticks to make the dog so close to the, the blind and the turn around with the A that it was, uh, absurd. Yeah. We want the dog that when you say go, it goes. When you say come, it comes. It has to be easy. And slowly we go back to the basics and we, we look for the, the, the, the main part of the, of the exercise that is always look to the mental status. Yeah. The, the emotional state, the understanding of the objective of the exercise and the, the, the desire to, to work. Right.

And I guess like, you know, because it, it goes, this goes everywhere. Tracking obedience and protection. And that's why I, I mean, all the people that listen, they're most likely all IGP people. And that's why we all of us love that sport because there is so many different components and we need to, it's just not easy. And it's a freaking amazing game to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and say beat the system, but to kind of come up with a solution to what the judge wants to see. However, it's very exaggerated. So, for example, as you said, with the starting from the truck, the article on the truck, and the dog kind of goes almost backwards before it starts to go forward. Well, we don't want the dog to just go five meters away and start trucking then, but we don't want him to go back either. We don't want the dog, when he's searching the blind, to make this unnecessary weird spin around the blind, which is also not direct recall. It's just going the other way. We want the dog, when in obedience you're running and you say stand, you want them to stop. And just because if you teach them to jump up and stop and you're successful, that's still not direct. And why do you think competitors always, instead of focusing on how I can make it by what we really need to make, why do we try always looking for some trick to make it happen? You know what I'm saying? I 100% understand what you say, and I have an answer that comes not from the dog sport, but comes from normal life. I like mountaineering, how would you say, climbing mountains. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have a small house in the mountains that is close to the Montrose, 4,500 meters, 600 meters. And now I don't climb to the top because I'm old, but when I was 20, I used to go to the top, of course. And if you have to go to the top, you need to follow a special path. Mm-hmm . And the special path is made by experts. You don't invent the path. And the path is beautiful because you always climb at the same speed, at the same level with the same difficulty. And you go up and down, up and left and right until you go to the top. But whenever you go to, you want to reach a peak in the mountains, you will find the path. You would sign signals on the way, colors, numbers to show you the path. But then you will see somebody crossing the path, taking the short way. Humans. And it's typical.

And normally after one hour, in the beginning, they go faster. But after one hour, two hours, you lose them because they are not following the path. At the beginning, they look faster, but they don't reach the peak because they lose energy or they miss something. Everybody should know it, but still, you will always find people trying to cut the path and go directly to the peak. They don't get it. I think it's psychologically is normal. You want to make it shorter. You want to find a solution. It's you need age experience and self control to understand that is not possible to find a short way. Right. Whatever you want to do, also judging is the same. You can ask a friend, let me become a judge in advance, help me to start early. I want to go there to try to stay in the middle of the field with the paper. Okay, it's possible. You say you're not a good friend if you make it difficult for me. So you have to help me. You have to do. A really good friend would tell you this is the path. Yes, going through the right process. Follow the normal road because otherwise you miss something. And at the beginning, you feel very powerful, but at the end, you cannot breathe anymore. I think it's the same. Everybody thinks he is very clever. Everybody thinks he can do beautiful things with the dogs and they start. And this is also more visible with the social media. Everybody says I have the solution. Look at it. You can with a little jump to start with obedience, with a little one centimeter jump, you can have very nice change of position. One centimeter. And when you run, you don't see the centimeter of jump. Right. You shouldn't see it. Right. But if you make one meter jump, everybody will clap your hands, clap their hands and say you are a great trainer. So they will start doing some kind of... Sorry to interrupt again. Which in some way, you got to appreciate the creative thinking, right? Of course. But you're missing the point. I think that what we are doing, it's so beautiful because it's so difficult. I don't know if you have a game called Monopoly in your country. Yes. I always say I like playing Monopoly because when I go to the prison, I have to wait one turn. If I decide that I don't wait one turn, I cannot play Monopoly anymore because it doesn't function. Yes. And when I take the card and say go to the prison and wait one turn, I have to go to the prison. This is Monopoly. Yes. And this is IGP. I want the healing to be on the left and not on the right with the shoulder at the level of the knee and not something else. We decided the same for everybody. It's like martial arts, like karate. I tried... I made the video. I sent it to you in your... You will find it

in your handy. I tried to compare karate with IGP and I think it's a little bit more similar to judo. because it's more physical. But what are we looking for when we are teaching the dog to perform a perfect grip in the middle of the sleeve? Is it useful for something? Why? In the middle of the sleeve, 90 degrees, perfectly... What is it? It's... We all look for the same performance. We decided to do it like this, with the sleeve like this, with the performance like this, with the grip like this. and we all look for the same result. Nobody can make it 100% perfect because it's a dog, it's impossible. And we need too many things, the genetic, the training, the helper, the... Absolutely. Whatever. But we all look for the same goal. And this is the beauty of our sport. That is a sport. The dog doesn't want to bite. The helper is his best friend. They try to say the best... With all the words I add in the video, you will find babies just playing with the stitchy balls, using balls like... Yes, it's all deflecting, like diminishing really the purpose of the training. Yes. Of course. And you do it in the baby training of karate and you do it with dogs when you use a ball with the magnet to train the focus. It's the same. The same. It's beautiful. But at the end, we are looking for an exercise that has to be performed like this. If I decide... Very famous training sometimes, trainers sometimes put videos when they make something totally different. And they say it should be beautiful to do it in another way. No, this would be perfect. Music healing. We have it. Healing of music, dog dancing, 100 different sports. We can invent a new one. Why is it so beautiful IGP? Because it's traditional. We have 800 steps track, we have 10 exercise obedience, and we have our protection with six blinds made like this, with two helpers. It's beautiful. And we can make it more and more and more modern by changing, slightly changing the small details, but our tradition stays. And if we decide that instead of making the stay, you make one-meter jump, it's like playing Monopoly without stopping at the jail. It's another game. We are not looking for the one who is the smartest and can make the dog turn on himself because one day somebody would say, my dog is like turning around me when performing the healing. Very nice, but you have healing on music. Yes. you can dance. Yeah, I like this. I like this. You know, though, like, I guess the, I almost feel bad sometimes for people that put so much time into trying to do something like this. Like, let's say, like, I don't know, let's pick the jumping stand, for example, or the tracking, the article, any of them. it really, when you think about it, it takes probably even more work or the same amount of work, but you're just changing the reason why you're

doing something, and the big problem starts to, I think it's a big problem, I don't know, you tell me what you think, that then a judge that it doesn't have the experience and the confidence and they see a dog doing it this way, they actually award the points that they shouldn't give to the dog, and now the trainer or competitor becomes very confused because one judge says, this is the most beautiful, excellent exercise, and the other judge instead of putting it even in the age category, says, this is a good exercise, I mean, I like what you're doing, just as you said, but that's not what we're looking for, how can we make competitors and judges kind of be on the same page instead of going through these difficult moments, like, is this even possible? I think it is a mistake of the commission, of the politics, we should keep always the same level of judgment every year, so people can come to the FCI and say, okay, this is the requirement, I will train for next year to perform like they are asking to me, not change. This is important. This is why I would like to have the second judge because one year we are judging two judges, next year the second can be the first and we have another one like the German Shepard. There is a continuation. Yes, find other solutions. I have some colleagues that judge exactly like I do. You nominated David Garcia, we judge in a very similar way. I have a lot of respect for David and we try to keep consistent so people can understand if you go up and down it doesn't function. But from the other side, I must say, I judge dogs that make a little jump or little things like this. And I deeply respect the work of these people because when the dog reacts properly, is happy, self-confident, does everything. It's a high level of training, no doubt. you must say it is nice. But it's not exactly what we are looking for. I'm looking for a dog that does it a bit less. Because this is our goal. You have to stay one term in prison because you take the car. This is the system. Then we have to be respectful to the people who show this kind of work. I can have a little problem when a handler comes with a stressing dog. When they come with a velcro dog, then I can give a satisfactory and I have no problem. When the dog is biting, when the dog is not social, when it's not confident you don't come. When you come with a velcro dog that is afraid, take the dumbbell, put the micro position because you are safe. This we cannot accept anymore. Then we can say I'm sorry. Always with respect, of course, because these people have been training and have an experience that maybe I don't have. I still respect this kind of handlers that present the dog like this. But I'm sorry, we are not looking for this kind of presentation. This can be 80. If you are years

with the dog to get 80, then you go on doing it. Otherwise, you have to find another solution. We are not looking for a velcro dog. I will buy your word because it's perfect. This is a different mistake. If you are just performing something a little bit exaggerated, I have to say okay, you are smart, your dog is happy, full of temperament, reacting quickly command. This is the nice part. But there is a little mistake. It's jumping too much. Jump is not part of the exercise. You should make it less visible to make all the exercise look excellent. ! it's big name in the sport and you believe that you are doing the right thing and then you put two years in training and all of a sudden you come to this crash of like oh I trained something purposefully and I made it look so beautiful but it's actually not what they want to see. but at the end nothing happens. I mean if you train with a super trainer and you do a super job and you have a lot of passion and you have a nice dog and you do your job and you have 300 points and you lose half a point every position you are losing one point a half two points out of 300 you will not crash good point I my duty is to tell you that tracking is finding the track and indicating the articles obedience is reacting to the commands doing what I ask you not something else not jump stay and if you make a mistake okay the dog stays yes but jumps how much will it cost the stay is a five point exercise because other five are for the recall yes when I put in the good what happens I take in one point away it's a low good maybe I can take a middle good one point forty sorry forty five zero point forty five points for this mistake and this is well paid so if you lose zero point forty five each position this is good payment for the jump absolutely absolutely this is respectful for the handler but this is respectful for also for who perform the proper exercise because I'm working now on the city motion of my beach I'm quite satisfied but it took me one year oh this is really the most insanely like like I used to say let me see you play with the dog now I'm like let me just see making sit out of motion you know it tells so much about it you know what I'm thinking also is that even though let's say how we are talking let's talk obedience and okay the one exercise the stand yeah minor deduction for the jump

and we can say kind of what you were thinking which is not you know I can see that however if the trainer puts this kind of thinking and this kind of strategy in one exercise most likely they are just thinking how to twitch the exercise all exercises it's not just one they're just trying to to make the shortcut everywhere because right and then the points start to accumulate that can be it's a question of philosophy also imagine all the handlers that need to touch the dog before the positions it's not for the dog it's for the owner because the dog knows the command knows everything so go to see a championship of obedience I judged last year in Latvia I had 100 dogs I think out of 100 dogs I had not more than five mistakes on the positions and the positions are different every competition one is running one is walking one is down one is sit one is recalling your dog one is going back to your dog and picking him up and you change every competition you never perform the same game it's not like us our game is more martial art always sit down and stay they change every time the system even too much but anyway they change everything they train just the dog to understand what you are telling to him if you say sit the dog will sit right I have a good friend of me she is a super trainer she was two time world champion she is really working very well now she has a wonderful parrot oh yeah I talk to her very often she is super and the parrot speaks very well Italian with her voice I'm always amazed that she just lets them free but that's a whole different topic she can control the parrot like a dog with one problem that sometimes the parrot is cutting the line of the himself but the point is when the parrot is giving the command the dog is executing so the problem is you have to close the parrot otherwise the dog will obey the command of the parrot instead of the handler because it's so similar she says sit and the parrot says down so what the dog will do that means that we are stupid if we have to touch the dog and do all of this to make it sit other trainers have a parrot that says sit to the dog and the dog sits without body language because it's a parrot It will not do anything to make the dog sit It will ! sit and the dog will sit so it's funny that parrot is teaching me a lot because it's really telling us that it's our problem not the problem of the dog understands and I learned a lot from Valentina because she is a clever trainer dog dog person as a dog person can be like hardcore and very intuitive you know no no she is definitely an interesting one and she did a lot for our sport she is not doing IGP

but the influence she had on the IGP not only my country is so high that a lot of exercises are performed in the way of Valentina should have done them and this is really positive we really changed a lot of things in the way of thinking and training watching their system of training yeah but I also think it goes both ways too though because like from IGP you know you are working with a little bit of a different dog with different drives and different you know and I think it's a that's the beauty of exchanging knowledge and collaborating and you know this like very fun part to do between us have you ever been to a competition for Decker no it's beautiful they they they only have one exercise they go under the ground and they must do a holden bark a real holden bark but the other side of the gate that is not a helper there is a fox and the fox is twice three times bigger than the dog so it has to be a real holden bark and the dog has to be real self confident and when Ari speaks about the active dog the dominant dog and try to hear the friends and see the body language you should just go there and see how a real dog is barking to the fox wow it's something we should learn sometimes after this you go to the IGP competition and you say whoa a 3-0 deck is barking more than this German Shepherd what happens not just the voice I mean the body language the self confidence the attitude the message coming out I totally get it and this kind of almost going to lead to going to some direction that I don't know if we go right now but I'll just touch on this and see where it goes because the reason the dachshund we call it in English dachshund whatever the real purpose of the behavior is there then it comes naturally pure so when a dachshund will be barking at the fox they have a very good reason to bark and there is a serious challenge and there is you know genetically and sometimes just from experience but they understand that there is an actual conflict and the solution to that conflict between the fox and the dog is I have to assert myself I have to do this when we put this into IGP context of the bark and holding the blind or the guarding on the open field and then we say well we can train the dog with a little platform to come so it's not touching we can throw the toy to the side I mean there is so many ways right but we are

losing in some way the meaning of that guarding and what I mean by this and not just me thinking out loud I might be way off but that's my thinking if in the blind or in the guarding there is some challenge and there is some conflict I call it conflict and I hope people don't picture some crazy shit happening to the dogs because that's not what I'm talking about but once we teach a dog just to perform the behavior as a behavior as a isolated behavior but losing actually the purpose of why they're doing it then it cannot look as the picture you're describing with the dachshund you I'm sure you remember I go back to 1992 what Andre should have told about this we think we can take a puppy and teach him the holden bark but it's impossible because the barking is not coming as an exercise but as an emotion yes and if it is a puppy he will never be dominant yes and he will learn to ask with his voice something the ball the whatever he wants we have to give the dog a chance to show the behavior we want and because the behavior we want is dominant behavior the dog need to be mature yes to have the age the experience the hormonal level of an adult and we do it as a puppy yes we are just locked in this that works right of course but it will be it will be typical no and the same would say Marcus yeah Marcus never met Andre but says many things that are very similar well because Marcus he's been this crazy because he's been around you he's been around me he's been around Carl Heinz which is very weird I think Marcus has his own knowledge and philosophy and would say something especially with Malinois and very often I see him testing a dog and saying okay this is a normal dog that is very positive don't work it wait this is very common from Marcus and I think he's very clever I have a lot of respect me and him I think we have like if I have to look into many trainers I find myself agreeing a lot with him in how he sees things let me switch the topic here real quick I want to bring the stick hit in the conversation how how did that happen why did it happen I guess it's bunch of questions why did it happen how and what do you think how is it affecting the sport as it is right now it's a long story yes when we both started training the stick was not soft it was a real stick hit and was hurting the dog and I think we did good thing to take it away

to put the soft stick because it was only psychological without pain and without physical damage because that was heavy I would have liked the broken stick that is not hurting the dog making noise but this is my personal philosophy I live close to France so I have both the knowledge from the east and west and in the western part they use the rings for to use this kind of broken sticks and I have seen a lot of good works made with this stick but this is another problem this philosophy did not pass through and did not go to the FCI the point is we had been talking for years and years and we say this is a weak point of our sport because people do not understand we have to take it away before somebody come and do it with force we did it and then what happened in the same country that was Austria when we had the biggest problems now is forbidden to do the training so they have to go abroad in Germany to do that's the irony of that right of course so it was not useful to take away the stick it we could have keep ! it because anyway the problem was not solved that is our experience I think I really think that we have to see things from the other side sometimes in dog life or maybe in life you have to turn the page and see the other side and sometimes it becomes more understandable in Italy we have another philosophy we work since in Italian Kennet Club we work since 10 years together with the government and with the Association for animals welfare and we work together and we solve problems together and very often the Kennet Club is not the problem is the solution they have problems with the turtles on the seaside and we have provide dogs to save the eggs of the turtles they have problems with wild pigs disease and we provide dogs to find the dead animals to burn them and to save the health of the others which is what we used to dogs for centuries right they had purpose but if you cooperate for years and years you are the solution you are not the problem they don't fight you and then we explain what we do in dog training also in our sport but we say this is the solution this is karate you never have a boy that is performing karate in the Olympics that is going to school and being mean with other other other children we never have this kind of problems true because it's discipline it's positive it's something nice for the dog if anything it makes bad kids become kids that function in society and become good yes this is the philosophy of my video you will I think you will like it we explain how nice can be the life of the dog and the life in the family if the dog is making sport and the stick it is nothing else than a test and also a ritual that is not affecting the dog at all but in reality we don't have it anymore so I don't think it would be possible to bring it

again in the sport because in Europe is a big problem and we have to fight too much so for the moment we cannot discuss about this so I just can analyze what happened okay in the big competition nothing happened because what we used to see with the stick it now we see with the transition phase and especially also in the watching phase after the out the dog is showing himself 100% and the stick it with a good dog is nothing it's just taking away the powder because where you really see the conflict is in the transition phase and after the out in the watching if the dog is really active motivated dominant self confident and whatever else but it's like in the retrieve sitting in front is different from the velcro and you see the difference and if the dog is not just asking for a ball but is not also nervous is not also chewing is not doing a lot of things and is there in front of you and say wow now I want to gain the sleeve you have the same that you could have with the stick hit I think at the end we make a selection and the ranking is the ranking and the best protection we had in this championship were the best protections so this is not so bad I think the stick kit is a problem for selecting the breed without you mean just evaluating the character of the dogs or what especially for breeding when you have a very low level a bad dog can stay on the sleeve when the helper does a nice job with the stick it is more difficult and what happened with the border collie and the shepherd in the world championship with the stick it they would go away without they are still there so what does it mean I think and this is a big part of my philosophy that the stick it is not testing how strong is the dog the stock the stick it is testing how domestic is the dog I mean when you test a puppy and you make him bite a toy if you touch the puppy he will have a reaction according to his genetics if the dog is very confident he will never stop playing with the toy if the dog is a little bit shy a little bit nervous that type of Mali very light very with soft reaction he will immediately chew or even lose the toy because the contacts of somebody else makes the difference so maybe we should start learning how to test a dog for breeding that is not just the old style like biting the sleeve attaching with the stick and doing like this but could be also play with a big ball and then accept the contact with the helper or with a tester or the judge and behave like you enjoy the physical contact when you are using your mouth and playing and I think we could get the same result that you used to have with the stick it I think that

it's genetic we have dogs that like the contact and are very comfortable with new things and we have dogs that do not accept the contact and are afraid of something coming from outside this we used to test with the stick it it was looking military it was looking a fight it was looking something different but it was not it was only a test of domestication level of neoteny level of self confidence with something that is new this was the stick it used to be the stick it I think I'm convinced because not from the IGP sport the IGP sport is super dogs is a problem you only breed good dogs and when you bring them to the field they have no problem with the stick it if you have ever a super dog that how I'm sorry He's super in tracking super in obedience super in protection but I have a problem with the stick it I can never see if the dog is super super the problem is with selection of the basic because this is very well explained by Eberhard Rummler says if you don't select it the dog will go back to the wild generation after generation you have to keep the more domestic and not use in the breeding the more wild and in every litter you will have always a little difference and if you select the most confident at the end you will have a dog that is a little bit more strong with more bones with more head because it goes together a bit like you said me before in the old the ancient type from the Belgian Shepherd but if you don't do a selection at the end you will lose the domestication of the dog and you will only have dogs I don't know if you would lose the domestication you just would lose the certain type and character you would have some it will morph into something that's gonna not have certain traits but not totally totally lose domestication is probably very it's too much I would need long time to talk about this but I think you would enjoy reading very very well in general not every dog has the same level of confidence with something that is new yes if we want him to survive in the wild we want him less domesticated if we want him to survive in the family we want him more domesticated if we if we grow up in the family of fox she will recognize all the family but when somebody else come in the house she would go ! out of the bed and will not come out until this man goes out from the house because of the fox if we want to select dog for the sport we need a very high level of domestication because we want the dog not to be afraid of something that he doesn't know and the contact with something that comes from outside when he is biting is a super test but imagine what

they were doing with the boxer the curing of the boxer the selection for breeding boxers was made like this you come with your dog with a leather collar you give the dog to another man that is taking the leather collar and you go away the helper go to the dog the helper this guy leave the dog that has to bite the helper where is the point he is not the helper he is not the prey he is the guy can I function independently from my owner of course but the boxer is a molossoid he's supposed to be 100% self confident in this situation used to be now with the show dog so they destroyed also the boxer with time we can kill every breed just by by showing the dogs it's easy and fast but if you take the real boxer the traditional dog it's beautiful he's a dog self confident dominant I love the real boxer and it's typical dog that he can do whatever he will never lose his spirit playful and self confident how you test it with somebody doesn't know and if somebody is keeping him he says no problem who is this guy I don't know I don't care I want a helper I want a bite this is more than the stick it ten times more we can get the same result for the breeding instead of using the stick it by using another system to test what is ! we are testing we have to be aware that we are not testing the resistance of the dog to the pain because the stick it is not giving pain we are testing something else that is the psychological acceptance of some new things coming from outside somebody is touching me and I don't know how but I don't care because I bite ! the sleeve This is the purpose of the sticky we can do it another way imagine Mondioring they do it with plastic bottles nowadays when the dog comes to bite there are plastic bottles all over they call the artifice in French right we had last weekend in Italy the world championship of FCI I watched that with the plastic bottle the dog is going inside and you evaluate the dog is going around or going directly through the bottles this is something you can evaluate this is more than a stick it it's a super test but nobody will discuss about because it's not the gesture of somebody who is beating the dog I think it was only psychological and with culture we can go around the problem and find a better solution very interesting yeah so I you know I would disagree with this I mean I've been so I don't know loud about not happy that the stick cook hit one away and many people many people are I think it it really took a very sharp curve to the program because a lot of us don't believe that the evaluation that we can do the type of evaluation anymore without it and here is let me give you some of my points and let's break it down and because it's an interesting one and I you know from a breeder perspective

from a competitor perspective from a pet dog training perspective you will see how that goes even to pet dog training so I have a few things and let me see where I want to start so the one maybe the first one to start would be we know I mean again like you you're clearly understanding martial arts I have I've spent half of my life in that too and imagine if it's a no contact sports always imagine somebody doing playing you know training jiu-jitsu and you're teaching the kid an arm bar but they never get their joint I'm not talking breaking their arm but they never get the feeling of discomfort of what happens when your arm is about to crack you don't understand from that point on I think what you're training for anymore and you also are not prepared if you ever gonna have to use your martial arts to basically how you deal with discomfort who you are in that moment of actual discomfort and there is to me a huge difference between a threat of showing hey look what I can do versus actually knowing what can be the end result through experience the other one is and and that goes from as long as I remember me training protection training and and we're talking all the way back to early 80s in Bulgaria with Russian military style training really crazy stuff and evolving to where I am today there has always been kind of like this two parts of it one is hey there is a stick let me show you that it's not going to hurt don't be scared the same thing with the bottles or whatever we can present the dog and say you can handle this let me show that it's just a big ritual or we can intelligently show the dog that what you're thinking that this can bring this comfort actually can but you can overcome it and I think there is way more value on learning that something can but you have a solution and you also when it comes to selection for breeding you are by by a big stretch way better off in your evaluation of a dog to know how they can handle and what they can handle another one is the

the the whole training aspect of it you know like like Mike Tyson has that very famous saying that everybody has a plan until they're punched in the face right and it's just a brilliant from yeah you know so from a training perspective when the dog and and again I want to be clear for everybody here because I know people listen to this and everybody listen it in the way that they want to take it to some extreme so I'm not talking about how we mentioned what was the little bamboo stick and you hit it and five days later the dog has blisters on his neck skin especially if it was a Doberman or a boxer you really see where the stick hits were I'm not talking about that we don't need that right we grow up but to be able to challenge to twitch the dog to basically say you motherfucker or say oh now the one that says you motherfucker it takes very interesting like like it's a this is where training also besides so I kind of you know the two different parts of it the one is the selection but then there is a big part that it challenges the trainer skill to be able to control the dog when they're in a different state of mind there now just let me do my job I don't want to listen to you this this got just got personal right now and not necessarily because again of pain it just enough that you're able to say what are you going to do about it and he's like screw all the rules I'm not listening to my so there is this really interesting and very serious component of what it takes to control a dog that doesn't want to be controlled at that moment and this goes like we can take it totally out of context from the IGP program and we can really move it all the way to pet dog training and behavioral problems where a dog wants to fight with other dogs or other people or whatever they're in a in a certain mindset that they say I'm taking care of this you see where I'm going with this yeah and it's such a tough one one of the one like like if we if again you and me can go back in time and and like not not our time but just the history the evolution of dogs and and you know bunch of people trying to start a fire and whatever the story was how it ended up but all the way from back then there were two reasons why we connected with dogs and and one of the biggest bait that humans

you know the very attractive things that we recognized from way back then was that the dogs can be protecting us in some ways and then we have the other dogs that we take them for a different reason like so what I'm trying to say is that the protection element goes way before any dog sports way before anything else like you you genuinely want if you feel that you need but you want a dog that can just say hey my house and have the courage to do that and I truly from all of my experience I do not for one moment can get convinced that if we don't challenge if we actually don't bring some level of discomfort but just make a big display of how scary it can be but it cannot be scary unless it's been experienced right so we're we're losing in selection we're losing something like we have to guess or as a breeder we have to do it on the side which makes things very complicated and a lot of times it will be very uneducated dangerous things that people will do then you have the training aspect which challenge everything which is which is really you know how we are talking about the FCI obedience or agility or anything else they're cool sports but they don't twitch the dog in the wrong way right and that's for people that are kind of old enough like us I think that that was a very interesting component of the game the one of really seeing hey what you got and the other one is what how we can improve our skills as a trainer and gain control without universally suppressing the dog but convince them that we are still a team and we're still together even though your blood pressure is off the roof and your blood is boiling but we still can function that's kind of you know I mean I can talk for a long time but I agree with you and I understand what you mean of course we should open a big discussion and we should use some a lot of people to get new ideas right I mean the traditional stick kit was a solution but we had to change it because the real stick kit was wrong the bamboo stick was pathologic this kind of pain for days and days was not useful for anybody this was not acceptable anymore this new soft stick kit I think was okay but people did not understand enough and anyway it was not bringing the real discomfort because it was just noise it was not a real discomfort depending on how you use it but

anyway if you do it according to the rules with a good dog it is not really seeing the difference I agree with you I am looking for a solution especially for breeding and I think that not for the FCI world championship it doesn't change because the discomfort comes from the difficulty to perform a track under the sun and with dry soil and there is a lot of discomfort for sure and you can test the dog in so many ways that you don't need to stick it when the dog is standing one week in the trail in the big competition doing the tracking doing the obedience doing the protection and doing the training and everything and at the end is still in the perfect condition then the dog is trained to stand any kind of discomfort not only more important than the soft stick I mean the real problem is breeding breeding is a problem but not only because you have to test the dog but especially because mainly breeders have no so much culture and for some breeds it was useful to have a judge that had a standard and also all judges do not have the same culture there are judges with more and judges with less culture so if you find an easy road the same for everybody and you have to test all the dogs like this it functioning you can have a ranking ! 6-5 what you want and you say the dog is reacting like this you make a you can control the dogs and you have a result if you cannot use a stick it you have to find another solution otherwise in a few years you can lose some quality of the breeding and this can be a problem then I think culture can always find the solutions because look at my I love giant snailser and in the last years we have seen wonderful dogs coming from the working lines and competing in the FCI they are really the only ones besides Shepard and Malinois that are still there still there this year the Rottweiler was nice but see you said the Rottweiler of course but they were world champions so anyway we had two giant snailsers one was world champion and the other just selected in the team we have sometimes also nice herder terriers that are similar for many things not just because of the beard of the beard but also other things what happened with the giant the giant is the only working breed that has no selection you can become show champion in an open class with no working test we can do whatever you want like the Malinois if you have a show Malinois you become show champion without doing anything because the dog is not capable to do anything normally they are just afraid but a few breeders with knowledge decided to build good dogs and they did it some are in Poland some are in Czech Republic in Austria in Germany absolutely I pay attention to

them too yeah a group of good breeders rebuild the breed and now it is a breed at the same level like the shepherd they really can compete and the world championship is nice not only because it's a wonderful family they are nice people enjoyable really nice feeling but high quality good judges good helpers everything yeah doing it the right way all around for sure doing what just the knowledge of the breeders nothing else and it's functioning so sometimes there are ways around to save to find solutions and to save what you are losing through the rules and I always discuss with the headquarters of the snout organization because I am a member since many years and I am a judge and I am a member of the technical commission of the international union so I discuss about this with the headquarters of course we have 10 breeds we have the miniature the standard the giant the salt and pepper and yeah all these kind of things and so you lose the focus on the working dog but 20 good breeders in the world not more can save a breed absolutely it's interesting it's what I told you in the beginning I used to think that there was a solution now I decided that it's wrong to find a solution for somebody else you have to let people work let the fantasy of the people go on just try to share a goal and people will do their best to get this goal what we have to do is just focus the goal it's like with the dog find the track show the article nothing else I reward you let him work I guess I don't know if I totally get it I 100% understand what you are saying and I 100% understand why as an organization and like why are we taking this path I get it the way you know I mean there is evolution right evolution is very powerful in everything and a lot of times we lose the along the way we lose the core of the interesting part the challenging part and life is not what in English we would say rainbows and unicorns it's not always we all every living thing has to overcome something and even this is even the more interesting part is even when everything is good in your life you kind of look for some challenge you look for some adversity like specifically some adversity because it makes you it's like a checkpoint it makes you who you are it gives you a reason how to how to function and I can like my fear is that in some years not too long in the distant future people that train IGP

they will train dogs to do all this but it will be very like the purpose will totally change like we will teach a dog to play the game of protection but we will not really teach a dog what protection is yeah it's a risk I agree yeah where do you think we go where do you think how do you see the IGP the future of it are you afraid that we can even just all end up doing agility agility at some point or where do you see it going now I I am allergic to agility I respect agility but I would never been able to train a dog for agility myself because that's really what I was trying to when I said that I'm going to bring it into sentences that's kind of like if the what was the distinction between IGP IPO Schutzhund and any of the other sports not protection sports but you know any flyball agility obedience and so on all the other sports are limited right because of that challenge of testing the character and testing the character not by treating it but basically saying I'm gonna you know I'm gonna poke you and irritate you and see what you're gonna do and that changes everything this for sure but even the one of the first things we have been discussing about is how similar is the behavior of the dog in the tracking and in the protection how similar there I'm touching you not by threatening you but by bringing you in a difficult place with insects that are biting you in a difficult place with heat with dry soil and other things and you will fight to get your way sometimes tracking can be harder than protection for a dog oh yeah no no no question no question that's why we like it is really interesting the behavior of the dog in the track I think that we will always have a dog that is fighting for his goal obedience is more soft has more to do about the relationship with the handler and other things but in tracking the dog is fighting as much as and we have so many ways to test the dog in this situation without having problems with the animal protection organization because they don't know dogs and they don't know how heavy can be a dog much more than biting his leaf it's really a question of culture and knowledge and training because if you train the dog in tracking you know what he's doing at the end is exhausting it's empty after a good track right and I think we will always find a solution man is a clever animal I hope so can adapt and we find a solution to select super dogs even without the stick it of course if we would find a way that copying sometimes something from or something

else to touch him to make changes to do something that could be interesting but we have to discuss it we have to try it to make tests and we have to start discussing about this and IGP people are very traditional very stick to traditions even when they don't know the purpose of the tradition it's funny sometimes the tradition is more important than the origin and I like studying the origins because they tell me a lot about the purpose that's good that's that's I mean it's a like I'm really enjoying the conversation we're having so you believe that IGP will still I mean like at least for close future people still will be able to do it's unbelievably growing okay I have the problem in Italy to organize the Italian Championship now we only accept IGP 3 dogs and we have more than 110 dogs I don't know how we can do it as big as a world championship and it's not just national and it's growing and growing and now I think we will organize also big competition big trial in December to start the selection for the team because we have more dogs we have more people more aficionados that come to the stadium and we have no parking not enough tracking fields and the problem is how big is growing the sport because it's so clever so interesting so fascinating people people start to understand it so we just have to say okay we don't torture anymore the dog to make it retrieve a double we test in another way we make difficult track on a hard soil and that can be enough to test your dog but then you can enjoy training you can enjoy working and the dog has to be tough to be selected ! for ! otherwise it would never succeed and people understand this and they are growing fast and do you are you are you do you know I mean you personally and also the working commission and I guess everybody is there a little bit of a fear that perhaps the sport is really shifting so much that it's losing that purpose that I'm talking about that may make people think of other opportunities and other options maybe creating something else instead and again like I'll bring the example since we were talking karate and stuff like there is you know there is a very big difference by watching the world champion of karate doing kata you know routine to where there is no it's just person on its own versus actual full contact karate right because the the whole the way you think about it the way you train about it everything just splits dramatically into different directions from that point on for sure the obedience routine is very similar to the kata for sure but then we have the fight we have the helper that has to perform even better and better and how many steps which way he has to fight the dog and we are working on it now we have

four helpers instead of two because they have to be very smart and this is good because then they will do a nice job on all the dogs because now we can have 160 dogs so we need fresh helpers and good energy so I think we are going up and down from one side we follow a little bit the karate style and from the other we keep the dog going of course the the challenge is changing and we have different countries coming nowadays the southern countries are getting better and better many good trainers went to America in the beginning America was not so well performing and nowadays you are shown the best team in the world championship so it's interesting in Spain what happened to Spain they are making a great job in the past they were not able to organize a world championship they did a super organization and they played a super game with the team and I think the ranking is the real ranking the first America second Spain and what happened but they did a good job for sure no question the Latin countries are getting more and more involved Italy is also getting bigger and bigger and we are seeing young coming back which for a moment we were losing young people the youngest competitor in the world championship was in my team and I was so proud about this because of the young guy that is competing and I gave him a very good obedience and it's wonderful it's a lot nowadays it's over the average so I think we have to be optimistic and then I'm looking forward in December I would go to China and really I want to see something because I have seen a good dog from China the job was nice yeah it was really nice so I think the world is big and we have chance to make it bigger we don't have to look for the traditional countries and traditional places because otherwise we lose our focus and maybe with new countries we can add more power more energy worldwide and we can spread our passion I think we have to think like this good good we should yeah no question no question I think man this was a lot of fun I mean I was really looking forward to this conversation and we just bounced so many time places and I really feel like we need to do part two eventually not right away but I know we can talk about so many different things that are interesting you know when we find each other around the world we always have that right together ! so ! ! any any last words for for people that are just coming into the sport and and like any advice of how to prepare and you know like how to look what to look for the sports and how to get inspired anything to tell anybody that's listening I would tell to the new encounters that a dog is not a car you don't buy a powerful car to get

high speed a dog is a member of the family and nowadays you get better results when you love him that means you enjoy he enjoys and that is the best part and I think that this is the real evolution of our sport if you love your dog and you stay together with pleasure we see it in the field everything is clear in the field it's not anymore a tank a military instrument something to perform or something like this it's an animal a living being that loves you and if you have a nice relationship you can enjoy it so I would suggest everybody to find a dog that you like and when you enjoy your dog then a big part is made the story of buying many dogs and then sell it because you don't find the right one and go on looking for a dog it was totally wrong I think we have limits as humans and our dogs will have limits as animals if we can stay together and get results we will enjoy I think it's the best part of our sport beautiful and really the very last one how can somebody that really wants to do well in competition how can they prepare as far as understanding the rules and the points and because if you don't you don't know what you're training for and I learned it the hard way I actually I was just like the majority of people that train you know I can tell what is excellent I can tell whatever but I never knew exactly the mathematics of you know the percentages of what's important and what is more important and so on until I actually went through a judges program but going through a judges program it's not doesn't make sense for people correct so what would be your advice to how can somebody prepare and also not waste time in training something that actually will hurt them eventually what what advice you will give of course I think it's a very important task when once upon when you went to a German Shepherd competition or just a German Shepherd training club you used to see people doing a lot of shit in the revere to make the golden bark really aggressive and a lot of shit to win one point two point less I think destroying all the quality of the bite and the rest of the competition losing 20 points to get one this is the typical question sometimes it's better to have a normal golden bark and let the dog have a good quality of the bite for the rest of the competition this is one of the typical answers I think in this case and of course Andre would have said if you let him grow maybe the whole bark will be fixed by himself without touching the dog because the dog has to believe that he is strong that another problem not just be beaten and react with active behavior to the pain that is not our solution but this is

a big discussion I think the easiest is that in our times it was difficult to find a master nowadays you have a working dog you have medias you have everything you just watch I do it always when there is a big championship I take some dogs I look to the dogs I look I listen to the comments of the judges I learn a lot and I think nowadays the details of the comments are very understandable insightful you can actually benefit from it right absolutely in a big competition can be the US power or the FCI world championship or whatever if you watch precisely what people are doing and you listen to the comment of the judge you understand what is the goal nowadays is open everything is open everybody can understand it's much easier at our times it was difficult to find a good bloodline a good dog a stallion or something to travel to go around the world to to ! Right right right it was difficult I was buying magazines paying all the clubs to get the magazine and to know who was winning nowadays you go in five minutes to go in Facebook working dog whatever and you have a clear picture everybody is a professor because I don't have to destroy a car traveling over the world to understand a little bit but again there is the good and bad from the social media because let's say a very common I know the moment I said you will agree with me but you will have a competitor and they will get some points that they truly deserve but they would not understand and they would think that the judge is just for whatever reason either favoring somebody or just purposefully screwing them they always think this is an old problem and then the whole social media explodes and it's like hey you're right and so you can see how somebody can get lost and instead of really taking it more seriously what the judge gives and critique and see do I need to change something or should I just get upset about it if you follow the leaders I mean the leader judges we have nominated many Mike Mike David Garcia and all these judges and you listen to the critics they are very consistent they always tell you what is the goal yes I think this is a big help and I wouldn't follow the critics of Facebook I would just watch the performance of the dog and listen to the critics of the most famous judges because they can help you to understand a lot so the same this year Marcus was judging the German championship people have to listen I think he has a huge knowledge is one of the maybe the handler in the world that made the biggest number of world champions 100% and he's done it with Doberman and a Malinois and a schnauzer and he's freaking yeah yeah a lot of and also my last Italian dog that was world champion stayed two years in his club nowadays you know people who has a lot of culture or Pierre Wallstrom I'm just nominated super judges with a lot of knowledge and if you listen to their critics you learn a lot so so so to

to kind of make it a little simpler even even just going to a working dog and watch world level competition but don't just look at the champion but look at all the dogs that actually have problems and the dogs that have different points and pay attention to what the judge liked and didn't like that already can be a big benefit instead of just going out and training without knowing what you're training for this is a big part and the second is that anyway you need a teacher in the life in my profession in my sport in everything I do I think the most interesting task in life is looking for teachers and you can have success if you find good teacher there is that saying I don't know I think it was whatever some out Paulo Coelho saying when the student is ready the teacher appears it's a cool one and if I put one after the other my teachers I really can say I was lucky but it's so interesting you have to be ready open your ears and listen I was 20 years old when I appeared in the house of Andre and his wife said it's impossible you cannot go home now you have to sleep took a mattress and put on the floor and say you sleep here and that was a start of many years of fashion and this is just because the first teacher appeared sometimes really the stars have to align there is there is a luck in everything in life right but you have to be ready like what was that other really cool saying that I don't think I'm going to remember it now but something like when the opportunity is there you have to be ready for it you have to you know otherwise you miss it in Italy we say when the train is passing you have to jump on otherwise yes yes you will lose it it's a little bit like this Clemente wow just a question of enjoying our passion nothing else right yeah not to forget that that's what's about yeah we love it this is why we do it man thank you this I mean I don't even know I lost track of time or anything and we're just talking I know we talked for a while but really thank you for making the time I think that this is these are the kind of conversation I think that a lot people like to hear and hopefully it helps everybody to understand better and grow better and improve and we are all in the same place we all want we love the sport we are all passionate and it's an amazing thing and I really thank you thank you for coming in and I truly have a feeling that we have to eventually some point who knows when but we have to do some more because I really thank you and it was a real pleasure and it's always nice to meet you all over the world and also online because we have to share a lot of nice memories

and good proposals for the future thanks man thank you take care to