에피소드 67: Clemente Grosso

That's probably from as far back as we go, it's been our view of how we can improve training and how we can bring clarity and how we can 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 very, I mean, the times are very different today than back in the 80s and 90s and even early 2000s. Things, you know, 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 going to 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 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. They're 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 we lived. And so it's so interesting. I think in the last 30 years, it's more, it will be more interesting. Because in the beginning of the 90s, when we met in Belgium, that was 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 under pressure and get the dog, find the solution, performing an exercise.

And I'm afraid that this is still, it's still living. So sometimes we meet competitors and that still only know 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 be seen also from outside in the obedience. Yeah. Yeah. 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, as your team member. As partner. Right? Exactly. It's the, the, 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, you see it very well in protection and in the tracking as well. But in obedience, it's easier because, uh, in tracking and in protection, there is a very high prey drive. Yes. And the dog is, 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, the level of the prey drive and the temperament of the dog is the same in, in, in the two sections. In obedience, you see something different. You see an interaction, uh, of the dog and the handler, and you see many things. My point of view are very interesting. Yeah. And I think that, uh, the biggest progress we see in the training, we see in the beginning from the section B. Mm-hmm. And then it comes also to the other two sections. But what we have been seeing in the, in the last 30 years is very interesting because in the beginning of the nineties, the, in the, also the big competitions, the dog was supposed to do something very precise. That was the firm, the first request has to be parallel, to be precise, to be in the right position, maybe also to be fast.

That was the beginning of the fast request. But at the beginning was supposed to be precise. Then in the middle of the nineties. Because that was difficult on its own at that time. Of course. And then it was starting to say, okay, we want it precise and fast. Uh, but still the, the, 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, uh, an avoidance training. And it wasn't just a training based on, on, on fear. And, and, and, uh, the dog was waiting for a punishment. Yes. That was the philosophy. The difference, the difference between you have to do it and I don't care. You have to do it. Versus how can I make you like doing it? Right. Of course. And that was the start of the study of the operant conditioning and the Belgian studies. And that they, the time were very interesting and we started, we started to read all what the autologists were, were, were saying about the behavior and the drives of dog and the operant conditioning and the rewarding systems. And we have been both visiting people like Andre van der Geethen at the time that were, uh, just, uh, talking in the desert because at that time, nobody else was really believing in, in, in, in this kind of way of, of training that nowadays is modern. But it's 30 years ago was maybe too much advanced for the modern times. Yes. This is what happens to our friend Andre and he started to, to, to talk to people that were not ready to understand this kind of, uh, uh, of words, especially in some exercise like the retrieve. The retrieve, I think was a mirror of the time. Uh, I, in the beginning of the nineties, when I decided to go away from Italy for, for training, I have seen trainers. I had taught her. 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. 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 1996, I was born the new IPO. In the beginning, everything was shooting. And then in 1996, it was the new IPO program. And they started, I don't know if you remember exactly, I was competing with the old bitch at that time.

And it was the first year we had to put the dog's seat in the escape. Yes. And the dog had 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 in 1996, 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 98. 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 fast and precise. We started to say we also wanted the dog to show the pleasure to do the exercise. That is nothing. That is 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, a lot of judges and a lot of 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 confusion. And there was a lot of confusion. 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, disappointing. Yes, disappointing, because I couldn't understand deeply what I was trying to explain. Yes. And 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, anytime 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 was 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, the dog was 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, competitors, normal people, asking what should the dog do, move the tail. No, it's not move the tail. It's a question of harmony. And then came the rule of the FCI. 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 as a partner? And I tell to my dog, I shout to my dog, blah! With body language, with bad body language, putting down my head and shouting and working and talking like the commander of the soldier. That was looking very bad. This is not harmonic for sure. And then also, if the dog was reacting to the commander, to any kind of commander 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 retrieved. That is something 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 eat the food. We don't have to oblige the dog to eat. That would 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. Yes, 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, was it kind of pressure from the animal rights activists? Or did it come from insight from people that train and see that there's a lot of ugly training going on? 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 it's very dangerous to even, you know, even if there is a very beautiful performance in any other way, but emotional state is not right. And then you see all these, you know, byproducts in the body language that tells us that the emotional state is not right. 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 enough clarity. But my question is, 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 did that push for the change evolve? I understand very well the question. I think that 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 a human. And so we had to control our dogs to say the dog sit before, don't bite before the command or think like this. Yes. The beginning was just... That's why you changed the, that's why you were talking at the 96th time. 96th 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 say, okay, it's possible 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. Of course, nowadays, we also have the pressure of animal welfare organization. And I can say we are proud to say that mostly of the dogs are happy to be in the field. Would prefer to be in the stadium to do training 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. It's 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 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 have 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 do it with any dog. I judged it 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 the day after, got an excellent in the obedience class three. And this, I think, was really nice for the people, 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, it's 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. Yes. 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. Yes. 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 techniques, especially 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, it's been showing us that it's very easy to have a dog that is retrieving or a dog that is stopping in different positions when we ask him to sit, stand and down and whatever. And then, you're happily, without stress, without punishment. So, all this philosophy started to go inside the IGP training. And brought a lot of good ideas. Yes.

And maybe because also the Malinois is not as hard as a German Shepherd and is more sensitive 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 the German Shepherd can stand everything. Yeah. 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, 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, nowadays, in the last 10 years, started the last part of the upgrade of our discipline that is not only looking to 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 behavior and judging not only his behavior, the performance of the exercise, but the mental status of the dog. Yeah. 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 don't want to shake my hand 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. Yes. I want to see a dog that maximum jumps on me and say hello. That's the better option for sure. That's the 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 a 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 training. 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 they come out. And this, for me, is a low satisfactory or high unsatisfactory. Something like this. The 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, 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 as 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? 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 a meter back? Where is my toy? Does he... 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 90s. Fast and precise. Precise and fast. Parallel and very fast. Yes. And too many... I think that 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 focused, 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 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 this was so terrible. Because this is not what we are interested to see. We want to see the last three seconds. Yes. 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. A very dominant dog would be pushing. Yes. Another... The dog with a little stress would try to go away. Another would start chewing. Another would start performing something else. But in this second, this is less than not three, it's one second. Before the out command, we see so many things. These details are very modern. They 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 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... 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. 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 the reward. And the dog can, after a while, can be even more stressed than the dog that gets the punishment and then performs.

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 is performing. 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 if 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 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 am 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. 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. Yeah. 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 bitch. 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 the competition and you put normal baby glasses. Yes. You can really understand what the dog is saying. Yeah. 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. 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 if the animal is thrown this. 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. To go back to this one where I was talking, so the way I see it, we probably have a few more reasons of why a dog can display during competition this kind of undesired picture of stress and confusion and pressure. But sometimes, as we were talking, it can be difficult to say, is it coming from pressure? Is it coming from confusion? So we can, for one thing, for sure, unfair, harsh training with pressure like back in the day creates that picture. For sure. Because of course, it's a few more, it's 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 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 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 and that's where it gets interesting for me because i think yeah i mean the more i train the 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 come in not not so how exactly how do you communicate and how you train but are you capable to bring clarity of what what training is about because when when there is clarity things look different maybe it's less stress or no stress right right but stress is a 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 uh really bad things um but also even when we are learning something stress will come even if it comes like let's say yeah a perfect example of uh what i was telling you with my uh dog trainer students here trying to pass the test so eventually on sunday morning we give them the the test and you see them they 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 um so it becomes very interesting to you know i 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 stress stress can be temporary and very beneficial or it can be really bad idea right um 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 to they a 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 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 or to their 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 to have 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 uh it tells a story it tells a story and

i think that more than 50 percent 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 the handler turns the dog is looks perfect the second part is okay after 15 steps the handler turns back and the dog looks him coming back and says okay he's coming and this starts focusing but in the first part when is 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 the not the right word we we try to divide the analysis first part reaction to the command is the dog willing to sit is it sitting directly and is sitting with the the willing to sit or it shows that he would not like and the last 10 centimeters is going down like a door that is not supposed to shut yes at the end yes and this is something we have to do and the body language is the dog showing self-confidence or it's showing some kind of reaction to the command like putting down the head between the shoulders licking the the lips and doing uh other things with his ears with his eyes and doing this kind of behavior performing this kind of this is the first part i don't i cannot uh tell this is stress this is a kind of reaction that brings also to uh 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 uh at ease with his owner i don't i cannot uh describe the the reason why because i am a judge yes i just have to describe that this is not what we are looking for yes this is the first part the second part is the handler is going way what is the dog doing we have five five dog five points to evolve evaluate this the behavior of the dog after the city and and this is uh the second part and is so important because it it tells us a lot of things about the training the relationship with the owner the quality of the dog the stress resistance a lot of things because if the dog is starting to do to look around and to do other things instead of watching the the handler it cannot be extreme nobody will ask something like a dog like this like a border collie watching a ship that would be stupid we we are trying to cut away from the rules all what is extreme but a normal dog that say 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

the owners that is 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 uh then we 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 and the dog now have a normal life thank 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 training and i'm fanatic against the the pressure and the dog that has to uh get out from a conflict yes this is 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 get a punishment with the e-collar is not the owner that is pressing the the e-collar is the judge because if you're giving him point for the performance even when the dog shows what he received then you are guilty it's like when i judge a show i am also a show judge and i i have a lot of discussions about this in the in the shows many dogs are winning many breeds are we do all breeds or or no the only working breed okay but german shepherds yeah the dogs i like in training i also like in the show it's just a question of of um 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 is 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 a dog over angulated and the dog cannot jump anymore and we have finished with the german shepherd as well so we should find the dog that is sound healthy in harmony and we let the dog win when he is over yeah angulated over or something yeah the appetite is not a mistake of the breeders is a mistake of the judges because if you let the dog win with a dog a coat that is too long yeah the nature wouldn't survive with this coat you are you are destroying the the quality of the breed you judge not you because you believe what you are asked to do i actually was a confirmation i mean i i ended up being also working fc you know judge but i i started as a a show judge at one point with the colleagues yeah that's not too many people know that

you see you see what happens nowadays with the colleagues in the old times it was possible to have a shoot from three oh i i had yes yes of course nowadays it would be a dream it's impossible to have a children one oh you you open a bag of chips and and then the colleague is away and what happens to the long-term the black long-haired belgian shepherd was a wonderful yes but at the not so long hair then a little bit drop of collie destroyed yes also the belgian shepherd because to make them more beautiful more uh show uh perfect yeah of course they they destroyed the 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 and from another it's like a human it's a mixture of hormones of violence you know like i i also think about this stuff all the time and yes the judges and uh kennel clubs they have the responsibility for sure they have the responsibility but i think um you know i really i've been thinking about this quite a bit there there's gotta be a better way to convince people that uh um you know correct structure matters you know and and the way i always think about it is how did all these breeds ended up looking so funny because the working qualities the way i always think about it is how did all these breeds stop being evaluated they kind of were evaluated then it didn't matter then like like take the like i was um what was his name louis it's the guy from australia uh he's a sv uh german shepherd judge at the time and i had him on a podcast and i had him on a book which is not her book which is not her book which is not her book which is not her book Because, of course, I used to have these dogs. I used to do, you know, quantum, quantum, moots and all this stuff, you know. I mean, that's the era. You grow up, you know all this. But 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's 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. 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, 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 team. 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 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 it was a different training. It's interesting. If you train for our sport, you need explosive force, short time and explosions. So, you would train with a ball, up, 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, I think, is very interesting for us, the difference. And another, we should use one 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 behavior of the dog depends on the level of neotenic, the neotenie of the dog. The neotenie is the quantity of puppiness, let's call it, of the dog. More the dog is close to the puppy, more the behavior will be puppy style. More the dog is similar, is similar to the wild wolf, more the dog will 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 neotenic,

too much big head and big bones, it will be lazy, slow, and not focused for our purpose. Not so cooperative with the human, right? Not so cooperative anymore. But if we have a dog that is too much whippet style, too much wolf style, it will be very much prey-oriented, but his nerves wouldn't be so stable. And the reason is why is because the neotenie helps the dog to keep the socialization window open all the life. Yes. A wild dog need fear to survive. Our dogs need a little bit of stupidity to play the game with humans, has to stay puppies all the life. 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 sure, 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 know the typical expression of the dog looking around in fear. If we want a dog that is really self-confident, that is really 100% at ease in every situation with noise in the stadium or whatever else, we'll have to accept a skull that will be heavier, a stop that will be deeper because otherwise the dog will not be as much neotenic as it should be. There is a very interesting study from the 80s made by an Austrian scientist, Ebegaard Trumler, that started to study the relationship between the body and the behavior and developed 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 80s. And still now, inside the breed, we can select different behavior, accepting different bodies. In the Doberman story, when they wanted to have more stability, in the nerve system, they had to accept more bones and heavier skulls. When the Doberman was too elegant, the behavior was also unpredictable. And this was the real problem of Doberman. It was not the aggression behavior. It was that the behavior was unpredictable because the dog was too elegant. And with this behavior, with this body, you can only have very fast and unpredictable reactions because it's typical of the wild animal. If you want to have it more neotenic, you have to select him a little bit less elegant. This was the real problem of the Doberman breeders. And they found a balance in between. Now, the Doberman is a nice working dog. We see it 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 molestoid, but not extreme. The head was not too short. It was a dog. And looking for the balance is our goal,

should be our goal in the sport and in the selection for beauty. This is what is so difficult. I like judging the confirmation, but not only confirmation, but the curung, that is the working test together with the confirmation of the dogs, because in this case you see the overall picture. Exactly. Only when you are exposed to all the different components the whole picture comes together. Come together. And it's so interesting because again we have the responsibility of all of this. I am a breeder of giant snouters. I got a very, very good dog from Belgium, from Vandergate in that it was I think 1991, something like this. Yeah. I got a very strong good dog. That's when I was still there. Of course. And at that time a giant snouter was a rooster rough dog. Beautiful for work. And this dog could go in a show or in a working trial. It was the same dog. 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 angles. And these dogs are not capable to move anymore. If you watch 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 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 these are 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. there is no way this was a trick of the religion to tell this. But it's all together. We are one. Body and soul together. 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 great 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 Snautz Organization that used to tell me something that made me think about it. 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 sea we don't bring to the harbor. And there will be a day when nothing will be left after all this selecting, selecting, selecting. We have to pay attention about this. We have to respect the differences. 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. 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, it 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 what I took away all these years of breeding and my experiences because 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 early boom of the Malinois. People only knew about it but it was like a very curious time. 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, if we breed, like, the first thing to understand is that there is a variety, there is a variety of types, and you have more what, 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 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 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 behavior, it's the opposite, because the inbreeding is reducing the mobility of the dog. Nature makes something beautiful. If you increase the inbreeding, nature starts to decrease the number of puppies per liter, because if there is too much inbreeding, it means it's too much crowded, and so the nature starts immediately to affect the number, the expectation of puppies per liter, and to reduce also the lifespan. they will live 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, but if we open the gym pool, we are not sure anymore about what we get. There is more fantasy of the nature. Yes. I mean, there have been times where close in breeding has helped, but it's not something to be taken for granted. It's a special, like you're opening a very special box that you need to know, and you need to know where you go from there, assuming that it's going to turn out okay. the point, I think it is a very long discussion 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. Good point. Very good point. Very good point. not affecting anything. Nowadays, if you use inbreeding, you immediately see the damage. Excellent point. In the first generation, it's incredible. And we see it directly. In the 80s, we are lucky because we are not so young anymore. I see from a good point of view. if you go back to the 80s, the goal was to find the type. Every dog was different from the other. Nowadays, if you go in a ring, every dog is similar to the other. Only an experienced judge can see the difference. That means that the goal was reached. But now, the problem is to keep the variety of the gene cool. Otherwise, they will die. I love it. You just brought an excellent point. Excellent point. Let's go back to the training stuff. I know I really have a feeling that we should have another

one and talk about this because we both are super interested in this. But let's go back to IGP. One of the things that you always hear, any time I go to any competition, there is always the like 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 hear your position because I honestly can go both ways because I know of, I mean, I know of, you know, like looking into martial arts and other things in life that there is knowledge that comes not from direct experience but through observation. however, again, I see both sides and I'm very curious what you think of. I have a very precise point about this. Of course, you cannot judge with something you don't know. This is why I started to become a monitoring judge. Oh, really? But I never gave Jesus, I cannot escape from you. I never made the last exam because I said I will never judge discipline. I don't train and I don't compete in and I think it was the right decision because I had a lot of good teachers. I was in a attending one week teaching from Andre Varlet in the World Championship of Mondioring, something that everybody would have loved. Of course. I have a beautiful writing from Andre that says 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 many years ago, but I really think that you should do something before deciding to judge the discipline. I think in most countries you have to. It's mandatory that you have the time. According to the FCI rules. But from the other side, it's not enough because being a good trainer doesn't mean you are a good judge because maybe you are very sensitive, you can teach a dog, you have a good relationship, but then you have to understand what happens. First, you have to study. You need knowledge, and this you cannot buy. So you have to read books, study, and try to understand. Yes, because it's not easy, right? You have to understand the rules and the points, which is mind-blowing still 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. 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 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 in that field for five days. One day the sun is shining, one day you are freezing, one day it's raining. Or in the same time, you have 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% shape, 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 shop, in the gunshot, and then what is my position? Because if I do always the same movements, I'm sure my mind will do her best to be always in the same mood. Keeping consistency too. Keeping consistency in the brain. Of course we make mistakes. I always would like to be two judges in the field, 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. In every way. In every way. No, it's normal. But judging is the result of long training on yourself. Watching two dogs in the show, in the curing, in many situations, watching and reading the behavior is different from training. I judge a lot of BH, a lot of temperament tests, a lot of good citizen tests, a lot of things. I will send you some videos about the Italian temperament test. I also made a nice video about IGP, the relationship between IGP and martial arts, the way you train babies. You're talking my language. It's interesting. You will find a lot of things you will love. I think I will send you the link. I have a YouTube video. professionally made by the kennel club for showing this. But I mean, the goal of training is understanding dogs. So you have to see thousands of dogs. One day I decided to practice better in judging the tracking field. I had an experience about my dogs, normal competitions, but I wanted to do a step forward. I was invited in the FNB to judge together with Ari Archon. I remember you guys judged me. I can

break my routine there. remember exactly. you were there. 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 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 protection. I started to understand, to think, to read the behavior. at that time, I made a step forward, of course. I was already judging since 15 years. You have to train yourself, otherwise you cannot judge. This is the point. Then there is another point, I think. I am actually training my bitches. I am not a super trainer. I am a super handler. I am a lawyer. I train in the weekend. That's the thing. Sorry, to interrupt, but sometimes people really think, well, everybody has to have this. That's not the case. Just as you said, not everybody has to just put all of their life away and do that. If you want to be successful at a high level, you have to do this. Yes. I am successful in my profession. defend in court very important trials for economy. I cannot spend all my life training in the field. 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. I am not an athlete. That's another point. when I was 25, I used to be the helper of my club. Then they told me, you will not perform in the big competitions because you are not physically fit. I am small and fatty. I will never be the best helper in the world. It's impossible. You have to accept your limits. We should learn from the old Grecian. They were saying, 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. You will enjoy it. But if you don't go to the field, if you don't train your dog and you don't train other people dogs, you will lose the actualization of the training methods. In 10 years, everything is changing. If you have been giving your exams like I did in the 98, I think, it's pre-historical 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 trekking or you train something like the start of the post in the trekking or the position in the healing. now we ask the dog to stay focused 30 seconds before walking in the healing because the second dog goes down and a lot of people do not focus on this. You have 30 seconds of the dog waiting for you to move. The dog can be stressed, can be whatever, willing to do something and barking or doing other funny things. You have to do it with your dog and see how difficult it is. and then you can appreciate the result from the others. 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, okay, we do it with my dog immediately. I have a giant schnauzer, a little bit nervy. Immediately, she started barking when the steward was moving the dog and said, what? I want to go. I started to do 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. 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. 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. 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 decision 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 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 I should have given one point less, one point more. When I will stop having this kind of doubt, I will stop judging because it means you think you are perfect and that's so stupid. And it's 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 it's interesting, 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 will create problems. It's training. You are focused since one hour and 46 minutes. Exactly.

And it'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. 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. Stay focused, right? Yeah. Stay focused and with your legs as well. Because 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 Hans Rudenauer passed away, and me and Marcus know it, I don't know when he was on a podcast or we were just talking somewhere, and I was saying that he was really good, and then he was like, somebody, or Marcus, somebody said, well, but he hasn't trained a dog in a, no, people would say, well, he hasn't trained a dog in a long time, and then Marcus was like, well, 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 training and the sport, you know, and it's so many different interesting points about the qualities that you need as a judge, and then what I learned, because I always, you know, talk about my, how my brain works and how I space out, I know David Garcia and Harry and a bunch of the really, really good judges, in my opinion, all of them would say you, you cannot just judge every single dog as on every single dog, you have to have an extremely good picture of every exercise of what categories you are 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 remember I was a team leader in Slovenia, two years old in the world championship FCI, when an Italian won from sutural, and I was, of course, very proud and happy about the Italian dog, but I was watching all the other dogs, and with a little bit of excitement, you see many things, because you have more adrenaline, and you are more able to remember what you see. This 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 holdenbark. A female, not

too big, but with a really, really nice holdenbark. 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 see. The whole package was there, right? The whole package was there. That was my 15, and it 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. 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, 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. 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 a 95. This was my best obedience. But then, in some 94, I had beautiful dogs, but with little details. 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 exercise. Excellent point. Once again. There is no other way. 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 when you look at the end of the competition, that you have still put the dogs in the places that they are. 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, oh, maybe I could have given one point more, one point less. This is normal. And that's another interesting question. How do you, 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 schnaltzer. 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, 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 tried to keep concentrate because I focus very much on the place. I have to take my points, be always in the same position, try to see the jump from the same angle, because otherwise you're judging 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 senses are more sharp. if you are more relaxed, your senses 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, a mistake maybe, and then you are 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 retreat. 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, hello very good. Hello good, sorry, or high satisfactory because it cannot be more than the high satisfactory, this kind of retrieve. Nothing else is teaching. It's not, it's such a big help, it's not, it has nothing to do with the willing of to present the dumb. 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? One number. 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's 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 this is the problem. Why do you make more mistakes in the 85? Because you are not excited. You have not the excitement of wonderful work. We have not the excitement of 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 12 points. I understand completely. 12 and a half. You start discussing with yourself. It is low, middle, whatever. Look at the seat. Look at the behavior in the group and start moving. But you say, no, the dog is crooked. It's not 100% focused. It's not very good. Okay. 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 have four judges, four colleagues, and every exercise, every judge is lifting the points, and everybody is looking into the points. Every exercise has ten points available from five to ten. Then there are multiplicators, but everything is made by the 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 continuous as possible, and to keep the same sharpness of your sense, because you judge not only for the dog, for the public, 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? judges? Why are we not accepting that format? They do it in the FNBB, 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 too crowded is not functioning, so people start saying we don't want to make the same mess that we have in the FNBB, this is one reason. And we also have seen in FNBB, with five judges on the field, still incorrect judging, you know, because of the home country, because of whatever, whatever factors. Many things. Second mistake can be if you have a very dominant judge and a rookie, then the dominant judge is just influence. So this is another problem. Then the cost, because the judge is not just a traveling cost, but you have a judge for one week, so you 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. 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. I made a proposal in 2019 in the FCI working dog commission after the championship of Vienna. All the delegates agreed about this, but then we never acted. So we still are waiting to decide how to make it real. I think we are a little bit moving. there is a conversation at least. Yes. What is really positive is who has been judging with a colleague of the same generation. I have been judging a lot in foreign countries together with some colleagues. Always the same, of course, but we respect each other, we like each other, we understand, I prefer this exercise, we prefer this, but we can't find a way. 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 think he is a very good judge. I like to be with him from two different points of view in the field, and then we make the average, and it's functioning. We tried it, it functioned, 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. It's also a nice way to make a colleague grow, 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 judges camp. It's always positive. The judging 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 it's 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 need all your senses to feel what's going on, and in the judge camp, you don't have it. the biggest problem is when the dog is starting whining, moving, under stress, 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 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, happy to be there, want to be there, and is 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, 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 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 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 working dog commission is a commission held by the FCI, so the members of the FCI are the countries, the single countries, so every country is sending a delegate, that's the point, that's the first point, so the members of the... But I'm talking like past the level of being a delegate, let's say you're living in Slovenia, just pick a country, FCI country, and there is somebody that clearly can contribute to the sport, and has the willing... It comes automatically, the sport needs people, needs energy, needs people who want to work, but needs 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, because they have the experience,

the knowledge, and they study, and 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, another 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, does his own part. The meaning is, so would you say it's a matter of also, that person themselves being active and curious, and, and, we have many judge meetings, we have many occasions, no, to, there are opportunities, opportunities, opportunities to, to, to talk each other, and to discuss about technical matters, it's very easy to get involved, I think, it's just a question of time, personality, experience, and willing, nothing else, there is not a door to open a key, because the door is really open, the point is, just, if somebody wants to come and say, okay, everybody's stupid, everybody's clever, and I want to bring my own way of thinking to the system, that would be the mistake, but, 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, 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, it's like, yeah, so, my next question to this, Clemente, the, the, how, and, 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-90s, again, when it was IPO, and, and as you mentioned, the seat, and then, 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, first of all, we have a rule from the FCI that says not less than five years, because you need a generation of dogs to, to, to, to have stability, to have stability, first of all. Second, and meaning 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,

a little bit of, of stability. Second point is, don't go up and down, and don't make big changes, 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, clarifying the goals, is hurry. Hurry, especially, in, in tracking, and the protection, is putting, some kind of, of 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 got to 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, 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 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, showing, panic, or, other situations. And, without changing, his, his attitude. This is, what we want to see. And so, if this, is, the, our goal, then, we have to, modify, a little bit, the rules, to lead, everybody, to, to, to, to this, to this, 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, is not, necessary. We need a dog, that is indicated, clearly indicating, the article. Not, half a point, because it's touching, with the nose, and it's stupid. With the finger, it touches, with the finger, half a point. 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, sticks, to make the dog, so close to the, the blind, and the, turn around, with the eight, that it was, absurd. Yes. We want a dog, that, when you say, go, it goes, when you say, come, it comes. It, it, it, has to be easy. And, slowly, we go back, to the basics, and we, we look for, the, 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? Of course. And, I guess, like, you know, because, 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. But when, rules, you know, even if rules, doesn't change, there is something, very interesting, as a dynamic, between, what the judges, think, and, how the, trainers, and the competitors, are finding, always, some way, to, to, beat, the, the, I wouldn't say, beat the system, but, 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 track, the, the article on the track, 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 feet, five meters away, and start tracking then, but we don't want him, to go back either, we don't want the dog, in, 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 make him, if you teach him, 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, to make it happen, you know what I'm saying, I, I'm, 100%, 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, I like, mountain, mountaineering, how do you say, climbing mountains, 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, to the top, of course, and, if you have to go, to the top, you need to follow, a special path, 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, to the top, to, to, to, to, you want to reach, a peak, in the mountains, you will find, the path, you will sign, signals, on the, on the way, colors, numbers, to, to show you, the path, but then, you will, see, somebody, crossing, the path, taking, the short way, 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 are, they look faster, but, they don't reach, the, 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, it's normal, you want to, make it shorter, you want to, find the solution, it's, you need, age experience, and, self, control, to understand, that is, not possible, to find, the 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, to stay, in the middle, of the field, with the paper, okay, it's possible, as you say, you're not a good friend, if you, if you make it difficult, for me, so, I have, you have to help me, you have to do, a really good friend, would tell you, this is the path, yes, going, going through the right, follow the, process, normal road, because otherwise, you miss something, and, at the beginning, you, you feel, very powerful, but, at the end, you, you cannot breath, anymore, I, I think, it's the same, everybody think, he is very clever, everybody, everybody think, he can do, beautiful things, with the dogs, and they start, and this, is also, more, visible, with, with, the social media, everybody says, I have, the solution, look at it, you can, with a little jump, start with obedience, with a little, one centimeter jump, you can have, very nice, change of position, one centimeter, and, when you, you run, you don't see, the centimeter, of jump, right, you shouldn't see, right, but, if you make, one meter jump, everybody, will, clap your hand, clap their hands, and, and say, you are a great, trainer, so they, will start, which, which, sorry to interrupt, again, which, in some way, you gotta 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,

Mondiorin, 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, is, we all, look the same, for the same performance, we decided, to do it like this, with the sleeve, like this, with 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, if the dog, it's impossible, and, we need, too many things, the genetic, the training, the helper, absolutely, whatever, but we all, look for the same, goal, and this is, the beauty of our, our sport, that is a sport, the dog, doesn't want to bite, the helper, is his best friend, they try to, to say, the best, in, with all the words, I had, in the video, you will find, babies, just, playing with, the, stitched balls, using, balls, like, yes, it's, it's all, deflecting, the, like, diminishing, really, the, the, the purpose, of the training, yes, yes, of course, yes, and, you do it, in the, in the baby training, of karate, and you do it, with dogs, with, when, when you use a ball, to, with the magnet, to, 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, a, 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, difficult, different sports, we can invent, a new one, why is 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, small details, but, our tradition, stays, and if we decide, instead of making, the stay, you make one meter jump, it's like, playing Monopoly, without stopping, in 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 doing the, performing the healing, very nice, but, you have healing, on music, yes, you can, I like this, dancing, yeah, I like this, I like this, you know though, we, like, I guess the, I almost feel, bad sometimes, for, for, people, that put so much, time into, trying to, to do something, like this, like let's say, like I don't know, let's pick the, the jumping stand, for example, or the tracking, the article,

and any of them, they, 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, the reason, why you're doing something, and, the big problem, starts to, I, I think it's a big problem, I don't know, you tell me what you think, that, then, a judge that it's, 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, and, it's a, how can we make, competitors, and judges, kind of be on the same page, instead of going through, these difficult moments, like, even, is this even possible? I, I think it, it is a, a mistake, of, 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, what is, this is the requirement, I will train, for next year, to perform, like they are asking, to me, not change, yeah, 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, to do in the German Shepherd, there is a continuation, yes, find other solutions, I have, I have some, colleagues, 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, we try to, keep consistent, and so people, can understand, if you go, up and down, it doesn't, it doesn't, function, but from the other side, I must say, I, I judge, in 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, it does, high level 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, in the, in prison, because, you take the car, this, is the system, then, I, we have to, be respectful, to, to, to, to the people, who show, this kind of work, I, can have a little, problem, when a handler, comes with a stress, when, 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 there's not, some confident, you work in a partnership, you don't come, when you come, with a velcro dog,

that is afraid, take the dumbbell, put down the ears, and come to the velcro 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, maybe, 100%, and have, an experience, maybe, I don't have, so, I still respect, this kind of, of handlers, that present a dog, like this, but, I'm sorry, we are not looking, for this kind of, of presentation, this can be 80, if you are happy, to work, three years, with a 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, to value, and it's not, I mean, yeah, yeah, and, this is 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, to the command, this is the nice part, but, there is a little mistake, it's jumping too much, yeah, jump, is not part, of the exercise, you, you should make it, less visible, to, make the, all the exercise, look excellent, I think this, should be, the right, explanation, of this kind of, description, motivation, yeah, yeah, because, I mean, it's so difficult, man, like, it's so difficult, sometimes, because like, you would have somebody, that is just starting, and they, want to do everything, right, and then they start, with, somebody, that is very successful, that is teaching, something, that it's not quite, what the rule, expects, but because, it's a big name, in the sport, and you believe, that you're doing, the right thing, and then, you put two years, in training, you're competing, and all of a sudden, you come to this, crash of like, oh, I, I, trained something, purposefully, and I made it look, so beautiful, but it's actually, not what I want to see, but at the end, I, 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, you do your, your job, and you have 300 points, and you lose, half a point, every position, you, you are losing, one point, a half, two points, out of 300, you will not crash, good point, I think you, you can survive, with this, good point, I, my, my, my duty, is to tell you, that, tracking is fine, in the track, and indicating, the articles, obedience, obedience, is, reacting to the commands, doing what I ask you, not something else, not jump, stay, yeah, yeah, 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, 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, 40, sorry, 45, 0.45, points, for this mistake, and this is, well paid, so, if you lose, 0.45, 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 sitting motion, of my beach, I'm quite satisfied, but, it took me one year, okay, oh, this is the point, 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're 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're 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, the, 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 stay, one is sit, one is recalling your dog, one is going back, to your dog, and picking him up, and you change, every, every competition, you never, perform the same, game, is 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, yeah, and, the parrot, speaks very well, Italian, with her voice, I'm always amazed, that she just, lets him 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, 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, to the command, of the parrot, instead of the, of the handler, because it's so similar, yeah, yeah, she says, sit, and the parrot, say 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, yes, other trainers, have a parrot, that say, sit to the dog, and the dog sits, without, body language, because it's a parrot, it will, it will not, do anything, to make the dog sit, it will just say, see, 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, the dog understands, and, I learned a lot, from Valentina, because she is a clever, clever trainer, she is definitely, a dog, a dog person, as, as, a dog person, can be, like, hardcore, and very intuitive, you know, yes, no, no, she is definitely, an interesting one, and, and she did a lot, for, 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, and this, is really positive, we, we really, changed a lot, of things, in the, in the way of, thinking, and training, watching, their, system of, of training, yeah, I, but I also think, it goes both ways, too though, because, like from IGP, you know, you're working, with a little bit, of a different dog, with different drives, and different, you know, of course, and, and, I think it's, that's the beauty, of, exchanging, knowledge, and, and collaborating, and, you know, this like, very, very fun part, to do, between us. Have you ever been, to a competition, for decal? No. It's beautiful, they, they, they only have, one exercise, they go, under the ground, inside, under the ground, and, 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, yeah, and the fox, is twice, three times bigger, than the, than the, 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 tree, heel, or deckel, is barking more, than this German shepherd, what happens, not just, the voice, I mean, the, the body language, the self-confidence, the attitude, the, the message, that is coming out, I'm, I'm, I totally get it, and, this kind of, almost gonna lead to, going to some direction, that I don't know, if we go, right now, but, but, I'll,

I'll just touch on, on this, and, and see where it goes, uh, because, um, the reason, the dachshund, what we call it in English, dachshund, they, or, whatever the, the real purpose, of the behavior, is there, then, it comes naturally, pure, so, when, when a dachshund, will be, barking at the fox, they have a very good reason, to bark, and there is a, a, a serious challenge, and, and there is, you know, genetically, and, and, sometimes, just from experience, but they, they understand, that there is, an actual conflict, 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, 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, many ways, right, but, but, we are losing, in some way, the, the meaning, of that guarding, and what I mean, by this, and, and, and, and, and, 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, a, isolated behavior, but not, but losing actually, the purpose, of why they're doing it, then, it cannot look, as the picture, you're describing, with the dogs, 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 hold and 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, he will learn, to ask, with his voice, something, the ball, the, the, 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 a dominant behavior, the dog, need, to be mature, yes, to have, the age, the experience, the hormonal, level, of an adult, and we, we do it, as a puppy, yes, we are just, and then he gets, locked in this, that works, right, of course, but, it will be, it will be typical, no, and, the same, would, the same, would, would say, Marcus, yeah, Marcus, never met Andrei, but says, many things, that are very similar, I have, well, because, Marcus, he's been, this is crazy, because he's been around you, he's been around me, he's been around, Carl Heinz,

which is very weird, I, I, I think Marcus, has his own, knowledge, and philosophy, and, for sure, would say something, especially with, with Malinois, and, very often, I see him testing a dog, and saying, okay, this is, he says, a normal dog, that is very positive, don't work it, wait, yes, this is very common, from Marcus, and I think, he's very clever, I have a lot of respect, now, me, me, me and him, I think, we have, like, if I have to look into, many trainers, I, we, we, I, I find myself, agreeing, a lot with him, in, in how he sees things, let me switch the topic here, real quick, I want to bring this ticket, I want to bring the stick hit in the conversation. How did that happen? Why did it happen? I guess it's a 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 it was hurting the dog. And I think we did a 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 Mondiorings broken stick that is not hurting the dog. But it's making noise. But this is my personal philosophy. I live close to France. So I have both the knowledge from the East and the West. In the Western part, they use the rings. They use this kind of broken sticks. And I have seen a lot of good works made with this stick. But this is another problem. And this philosophy did not pass through and did not go to the FCI. The point is, we have 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 comes 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. Yes. That's the irony of that, right? Of course. Of course. So it was not useful to take away the stick kit. We could have given 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 the problems together.

And very often, the Kennet Club is not the problem, it's the solution. They have problems with the turtles on the seaside. And we have to 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. Yes, which is what we used to dogs for centuries, right? Of course. 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 the school and being mean with other children. We never have this kind of problems. True. Because it's a 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. 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 happens. 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 it's there in front of you and saying, wow, now I want to gain the sleeve. You have the same that you could have with the stick it. 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 it is a problem for selecting the breed. Without the new rules.

You mean just evaluating the character of the dogs or what? Especially for breeding. Yes. When you have a very, at 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 Starland 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 stick it is testing how domestic is the dog. I mean, when you test the 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, if the dog is a little bit shy, a little bit nervous, that type of Mally, very light, with soft reaction, he will immediately chew or even lose the toy. Because the contact 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, touching with the stick and doing like this. But it could be also play with the big ball and then accept the contact with the helper or with the 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 neotenie, 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. It's 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, oh, I'm sorry, is super in tracking, super in obedience, super in protection, but I have a problem with the stick it. I've never seen. If the dog is super, it's super. The problem is with the selection of the basic, because this is very well explained by Eberhard Trumler. Eberhard Trumler 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 of 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 little bit. Like you said to 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 go back to the wild. I don't know if you will lose the domestication. You just would lose the certain type and character. You would have some... It will morph into something that's going to not have certain traits. But not totally. Totally lose domestication is probably very... It's too much. Yeah. I would need a long time to talk about this, but I think you would enjoy reading Eberhard Troubles. Oh, trust me, I'm on it. Very, 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 grow up in a family of fox, she will recognize all the family. But when somebody else comes in the house, she would go under the bed and will not come out until this man goes out from the house because of the fox. If we want to select the 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 goes to the dog. The helper, this guy leaves the dog that has to bite the helper. Yeah. Where is the point? He's not the helper. He's not the prey. He's not the thief. He's the guy. It's the, can I function independently from my owner? Of course. Of course. But the boxer is a molossoid. He's supposed to be 100% self-confident in this situation. Used to be. Now he's a show dog. So they destroyed also the boxer. With time, we can kill every breed just by, by, by showing the dogs. It's easy and fast. But if you take the real boxer, the traditional dog, it's beautiful. It's a dog self-confident, dominant. I love the real boxer. And it's a typical dog that he can do whatever.

He will never lose his spirit. Yeah. Playful and self-confident. And how you test it? With somebody who doesn't know. And if somebody is keeping him, he says, no, it's no problem. Who is this guy? I don't know. I don't care. I want the helper. I want the 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 important is what 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. Correct. 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'm biting the sleeve. This is the purpose of the stick it. 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 it the artifice in French. Right. We had last weekend in Italy the world championship of FCI Mondioring. I watched it. I've been seeing. 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 it. 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, you know I would disagree with this. I mean, I've been so, I don't know, loud about not happy that the stick hook hit one away. Me too. And many people, many people are, I think 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. 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. Because 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 jujitsu. 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're ever going to 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 a, there is a, 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 that goes from, as long as I remember me, training protection training. 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 is 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, 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 discomfort, 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 whole training aspect of it. You know, like Mike Tyson has that very famous saying that everybody has a plan until they're punched in the face. Right? It's just a brilliant from, you know. So, from a training perspective, when the dog, and again, I want to be clear for everybody here, because I know people listen to this. And everybody listen to 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. You know, I'm not talking about that. We don't need that. Right?

That's, we grew up. That's over. 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 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's, it challenges the trainer's skill to be able to control the dog. When they're in a different state of mind. They're now, just let me do my job. I don't want to listen to you anymore. This just got personal right now. And not necessarily because, again, of pain. It's 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 on, I'm taking care of this. You see where I'm going with this? Yeah. And, and it's such a tough one. And 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 one of the biggest bait that humans, you know, the, the, the very attractive things that we recognize from, 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, so what, 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, 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're, we have to guess, or, as a breeder, we have to do it on a 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, the training aspect, which challenge everything, which is, which is really, you know, how we are talking about the, the FCI obedience, or agility, or anything else. They are cool sports, but they don't twitch the wrong, the dog in the wrong way. Right? And that's, for, 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, a big discussion and we should use some, a lot of people to get new ideas. Right. I mean, the traditional stick hit was a solution, but we had to change it because the. Oh, I understand. The real stick hit was wrong. The, the, the, the bamboo stick was, was not logic. That this kind of pain for days and days was not. Oh, yeah. I mean. For anybody. This was not acceptable anymore. This new soft stick hit, I think it was okay, but people did not understand enough. And anyway, it was not bringing in the real discomfort because it was just noise. It was not a real discomfort, depending on how you use it. But anyway, if you, if you do it according to the rules with a good dog, it's not really seeing the difference. I agree with you. I, I'm looking for a solution, especially for breathing. And I think that not for the FCI World Championship, it doesn't change. Sure. Because the discomfort comes from the difficulty to, to, to perform a track under the sun and, uh, with dry, uh, soil. And there is a lot of discomfort. For sure. And you, you, you can test the dog in so many ways that you don't need the stick hit.

When the dog is standing one week in the, in the trail, uh, in a 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, to stand any kind of discomfort. For not only more important than the, the soft stick. I mean, uh, the, the real problem is reading. Breathing is a problem, but not only because you have to test the dog, but especially because main, mainly breeders have not 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. Yeah. So if you, if you find an easy road, the same for everybody, and you have to test all the dogs like this, it's functioning. You can have a ranking 10, nine, eight, seven, five, six, five, what you want. And you say the dog is reacting like this. You make, uh, you can control the dogs and you have a result. If you cannot use a stick kit, 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, Hey, look, look at my breed. I love giant snails. Yeah. And in the last years, we have seen wonderful dogs coming from the working lines and competing in the FCI. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're really the only ones besides Shepard's and Malinois that are still, still there. Still there. Oh, this year the Rottweiler was nice. Yeah. But see, you say the Rottweiler. Well, of course. But I was a world champion. So it's worth it. Sure, sure, sure. No. 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. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. They're similar, of course, for many things. Not just because of the breed, of the beard, but also other things. Oh, correct. Yeah, yeah. 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. No? 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. For sure. In Austria. In Germany. Absolutely. I pay attention to them, too. Yeah. A group of good breeders rebuild the breed.

And now it's a breed at the same level as the Shepherd. Mm-hmm. They really can compete. And the World Championship is nice. Not only because it's a wonderful family. They are nice people. And it's 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. Mm-hmm. 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 SNALT organization because I am a member since many, many years. And I am a judge. And I am a member of the Technical Commission of the International ISPO 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. Yeah. What we have to do is just focus the goal. It's like with the dog. Find a track. Show the article. Nothing else. I reward you. Let him work. I guess. I don't know. I mean, I totally get it. I 100% understand what you're saying. And I 100% understand why as an organization and why are we taking this path. I get it. And 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 some, 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, where do you think we go? Where do you think? How do you see the IGP, the future of it? Do you, are you afraid that we can even just all end up doing agility at some point? Or where do you see it going? No. I, I, I am allergic to agility. I respect agility, but I would never be able to train a dog for agility. So, it's not my aim. Because that's really the, 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 fly ball, agility, obedience, and so on. All the other sports are, are, are, are limited. Right. Because of that challenge of testing the character and testing the character, not by threatening it, but basically saying, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to poke you and irritate you and see what you're going to 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. Mm-hmm. 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, his goal. Obedience is more, soft, is, has more to do about the relationship with the handler and other things. But in tracking, the dog is fighting as much as in the protection. Yeah. Yeah. And we have so many ways to, to, 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 track for dog more, much more than biting his leaf. So it's really a question of culture and knowledge and training. Because if you train the dog in the tree, I know what he's doing. At the end, he's exhausting. It's empty after a good track. Right. I think we will always find the solution. Man is a clever animal. I hope so. He can adapt.

And we will find a solution to, to select super dogs, even without the stick hit. Of course, if we would find a way that copying something from Mongolia Inc or something else to, to, to, to, to, to make changes, to do something that could be interesting. But we have to discuss it. We have to try it. We have to, to, to make tests. And we have to start discussing about this. And, uh, IGP people are very traditional, very stick to traditions, even when they don't know the purpose of the tradition. It's funny. And sometimes the tradition is more important than, than the origin. And I like studying the origins because, uh, they tell me a lot about, about the purpose. That's good. That's, that's a, I mean, it's a, like, I, I'm really enjoying it. I'm really enjoying the conversation we're having. Um, so, so you, you, you believe that IGP will still, I mean, like, at least for, 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 three dogs. And we have more than 100, 110 dogs. I don't know how, how we can do it as big as a world championship. And it's not just a national. And, and it's growing and growing. And now I think, uh, we will organize also big competition, big trial in December to start the selection for the team. Because we need, we have more dogs. We have more people, more aficionados that come to the stadium. And we have no parking, not enough tracking field. Right. And the problem is how big is growing the sport? Because it's so clever. So interesting. Oh, it's, it's, yeah. Yeah. And highly addictive. People start to understand it. So we just have to say, okay, we don't torture anymore. The dogs make it retrieval. The dumbbell. 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. You have to be selected for this. Otherwise it would never succeed. Perfect. And, and people understand this. And, and they are growing fast. Do you, are you, are you. Do you, no, I mean you personally. And also the working commission. And, 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. The world champion. Of.

Karate. Doing kata. You know. Routine. To where there is no. It's just. Yeah. Person on its own. Versus. Actual. Full contact. Karate. Right. Right. Because. I mean. 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. In. For sure. The obedience routine. Is very. Similar to the. Yes. To the kata. For sure. But. Then. We have. Fight. We have the helper. That has to. To perform. Even better. And better. And how many steps. Which way. Is to. Fight. The dog. Them. 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. Real. Yes. Do a nice. A nice job. On. All the dogs. Because now. We can have. One hundred and sixty dogs. So. Yes. We need. Fresh helpers. And. Good energy. So. I think. We are going. Up and down. From one side. We. We. We follow. A little bit. The karate style. And from the other. We. Keep the dog. Going. Okay. Of course. The. The challenge. Is changing. And we have. Different countries. Coming. Yes. Nowadays. The southern countries. Are getting better. And better. Many. Good. Trainers. Went to America. In the beginning. America was not. So. So. So well. Performing. And nowadays. You are. You are. Showing the best team. In the world championship. So it's interesting. In Spain. What happened to Spain? They are making a great job. Yeah. In the past. They were not able to organize a world championship. They did a super. Organization. And they. Yeah. They played a super game. With the team. And they. I think the ranking. The real ranking. The first America. Second Spain. And what happened. But they did a good job. Yeah. For sure. No question. The Latin countries. Are getting. More and more. Involved. Italy. Is also. Getting bigger and bigger. And we're seeing. Young people. Coming back. Which. For a moment. We were losing young people. A lot of. Like. Really losing them. The youngest competitor. In the world championship. Was in my team. And I was so proud about this. Because. The young guy. That is competing. And. I gave him a very good. In the obedience. And it's wonderful. It's a lot. Nowadays. It's over. Over the. The average. So. I think. We. We have to be optimistic. And then. Okay. I'm. Looking forward. In December. I will go to. A judge. In 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. I think. The. The world is big. And we have chance. To. Make it bigger. We don't have to look. For the traditional countries. And the traditional places. Because otherwise. We. We lose our focus. And maybe. With the new countries. We can have more power. More energy. Worldwide.

And we can. Yeah. Spread our. Our passion. I think. We have to think like this. Good. Good. We wish. We should. Yeah. No question. No question. I think. Man. This was a lot of fun. I mean. I. I. I was really looking forward. To this conversation. And we just bounced. So many time. Places. And I. I really feel like. We need to do part two. Eventually. Not right away. But. But I know. Yeah. We can talk about. So many different things. That. Are interesting. You know. When we. We. We. We find each other. Around the world. We always have. That's right. That's right. Together. So that means. Any. We enjoy. Any. Any last words. For. For people. That are just. Coming into the sport. And. And. Like. Any advice. Of. How to prepare. And. And. You know. Like. How to look. What to look. For the sports. And. And. How to get. Inspired. Any. Any. Thing to. To tell. Anybody. That's listening. I would. Tell. To the new. And cameras. 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's. The best part. And. I think. That. This is. The real evolution. Of the. Our sport. If you love. Your dog. And you stay. Together. With pleasure. We see. It. In the field. Yeah. Everything is. Is clear. In the field. It's not. Anymore. A tank. A military. Instrument. Something. To. Yes. Or something. Like this. Is. 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. And then. Sell it. Because you don't find the right one. And go on. Looking for a dog. It was. It was totally wrong. I think. We have limits. As humans. And. Our dogs. Will have limits. As. As animals. Yeah. If we can. If we can. Stay together. And get results. We will enjoy. I think. Is 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. And. I learned that the hard way. I actually. I was just like. The majority of people. The train. You know. I can tell what is excellent. And I can tell whatever. But. I. 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. What would be your advice. To. How can. Somebody. Prepare.

And also not waste time. I mean. 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. When. Once upon. When you went. To a German Shepherd competition. Or. Just a German Shepherd. Training. Club. You. You used to see people. Doing a lot of shit. In the Revere. To make the. Yes. Holden Bark. Really aggressive. And. A lot of shit. To win. One point. Yes. Two point. Less. I think. Destroying. All the. Quality of the bite. In the rest. Of the competition. Losing 20 points. To get one. No. This is. The typical question. Sometimes. It's better. To have a normal. Holden 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. Andrei. Would have said. If you let him grow. Maybe. The Holden Bark. Will be fixed. By himself. Without touching the dog. Because the dog. Has to believe. That he is strong. That he has another problem. Not. Not just be beaten. And react. With. Stress. 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 work 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. Very. Understandable. Insightful. You can. You can. Actually. Benefit from it. Right? Absolutely. In a. In a. In a big competition. Can be. The USPA. Or the. 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. Is. Open. Everything. Is open. Everybody. Can. Up. Is. Much. Easier. At. Our. Times. It was. Difficult. To find. A good. Bloodline. A good. Dog. The stallion. Or something. That to travel. To go. Around. The world. To. Right. Right. Right. It was. Difficult. I was. Buying. Magazines. Paying. All. The clubs. To get. The magazine. And to know. Who was. Winging. Nowadays. You go. Five. Five minutes. You go. Facebook. Working. And. Whatever. And. You have. A clear picture. Everybody. Is a professor. Because. I don't have. To destroy. A car. Traveling. All over. The world. To understand. A little bit. But. But. Again. There is. The good. And the bad. From the social media. Because. Like. Let's say. A very common. I mean. I know. The moment. I said. You will. You will. Agree with me. But. You know. Like. You will have. A competitor. And. They will get. Some. Points. That they. Truly deserve. But. They would not.

Understand it. And. They would think. That the judge. Is just. For whatever reason. Either. Favoring somebody. Or. Just. Purposefully. Screwing. They always think. Right. This is a. No problem. And then. The whole social media. Explodes. And it's like. Hey. You're right. And. So. So you can see. How somebody. Can get lost. And instead of. Really. Taking it more seriously. What the judge. Gives. And the critique. Can see. Do I need to. Change something. Or should I just. Get upset. About it. If you. If you. Follow. The leaders. I mean. The leader judges. We have. Nominating. Yeah. Many. Mike. Mike. Groybe. David Garcia. Ari Archer. All these judges. And you listen. To the critics. They are very consistent. Yes. They always tell you. What is the goal. Yes. I think this is. A big help. And I. I wouldn't follow. The critics. Of Facebook. Facebook. I would just. Watch. To the performance. Of the dog. And listen. To the critics. Yeah. Most. Famous judges. Because they can. Help you. To understand. A lot. So. So. The same. And some. Marcus was. Judging. The German championship. Yes. People have to listen. Yes. I think. He has. A huge knowledge. He's one of the. Maybe the handler. In the world. In the world. Made. The biggest number. Of world champions. 100%. And he's done it. With a Doberman. And a Malinois. And a Schnauzer. And his freaking. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of. Breeds. 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. Oh. Pierre Wallstrom. Hey. I'm just nominating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Super. Super. Judges. With a lot of knowledge. And if. If you listen to their critics. You learn a lot. So. So. So. So. 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 then. 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 are 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. You can have success. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And. You can have success. If you find a good teacher. There is that saying. I don't know. I think it was. Whatever. Some. Out. Polo. Coelho. Saying. When the. Student is ready. The teacher appears. It's a cool one. Beautiful. And. If I put one. After the other. My teachers. I really. Can say. I was lucky. Right. But. It's so interesting. You. You have to. You have to be ready. Open your ears. And listen.

I was. 20 years old. When I. Appeared. In the house of Andre. Crazy. And. His wife. Said. It's impossible. You cannot go home now. You have to sleep. She. Took. A. Matras. And put on the floor. And say. You sleep here. And that was. A part. Of. Of. Many years. Of. Of passion. No. And. And this is. It's just because. The first teacher appeared. Yeah. 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. When the opportunity. Is there. You have to be ready. For it. You have to. You know. Otherwise. When the train. 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. Yeah. 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. For making the time. I think that. This is. These are the kind of conversation. I think that a lot of 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 really. A real pleasure. And. It's always nice to meet. To meet you. All over the world. And also. Online. Because. We. We have to share a lot of. Nice. Memories. Yes. And good proposals. For the future. Thanks. Man. you. Take care. you.