Training Without Conflict® 팟캐스트 에피소드 51: Jim Bradley

somebody else I was a little frustrated at the whole thing now in hindsight knowing what I know now uh I 100 understand what was going on but I didn't understand because I decided okay instead of going through a restaurant let me go find my own Malinois so I pulled up something called pet harbor it was like pet harbor or something pet harbor.com where you can search a breed at any shelter or rescue and pull it up so I pulled up a list of Malinois and uh there was one within a couple of hours of me uh and I went and I got I saw the dog fell in love with it got that dog here I had a Malinois I thought it wasn't it wasn't anything like a Malinois but I was perfect the dog was perfect the easiest dog you could ever have so I had a Malinois I could train a dog and I was an expert in Malinois and I would later learn how much I wasn't I just happened to have some sort of a show line perfect and she's sitting right here right now I just like the perfect show line easiest Malinois you could ever have and uh anyway uh so that sort of got me involved in the world and I thought I knew Malinois you know I had one uh anyway another one shows up at a shelter that so now I'd already been researching finding one of the shelter you know I'm getting one of these dogs so I'm on every list and anyway one shows up in Miami-Dade so I go down and get the dog the dog was adopted uh well really because I felt sorry for the dog and I I had one look just like her this uh sandy color or whatever it is look just like her so I went and I but I'm gonna get that dog and help that dog and help it find a home and then I uh contacted um I think mad rescue with the Malinois Dutch Shepherd rescue at the time and uh they were just starting they were some of them spun off from ABMR uh and started this rescue which was new at the time MBRR uh ABMR is the American Belgian Malinois rescue in Belgian Malinois rescue excuse me all right so that's ABMR that's probably that's probably the largest Malinois rescue uh and now I say behind it you have the Malinois and Dutch Shepherd rescue uh again a lot of these are offshoots of ABMR if you think there's conflict if you think there's uh drama in the training world enter the the uh the rescue world you know I think there's something about uh the fashion for dogs that brings out a lot of drama and people disagree with you know whatever anyway I'm sure we actually will get to those things because they're they're very interesting and they're I mean I'm quite familiar but it will be an interesting conversation and and people need

to know what's going on in this world for sure we need to talk about it but but go on go on but anyway so that's sort of my uh beginning so I began fostering that particular dog and uh turns out that dog was an actual Malinois so I was quickly over my head with that dog but you make it work and you try and figure it out and a lot of these rescues have a lot of resources and people you can talk to that to to help you and walk you through it uh as they were new and I was down here in South Florida where we have Palm Beach uh Broward County Miami-Dade we have some big shelters and there are a lot of dogs here so when you start out with a new organization they need people to go down and evaluate dogs so I would go down and evaluate a dog and the problem is you don't have enough fosters so I would go meet these dogs and they were well you know we don't have uh we don't have a foster available and I said well I just spent 20 minutes with this dog I've got all this videotape with this dog you know and you make a connection with these dogs when you go into the shelters and to leave them there I thought well what am I going to do now I didn't trust my own opinion so I made sure I took a lot of video at that time of the dogs always had video of these dogs so when they couldn't take a dog I said okay let me post this video and I would put some corny music to it and then I'd post the video and then it would get shared and shared and shared and somebody would adopt the dog he said oh that's interesting we'd go evaluate another dog maybe they couldn't take it they couldn't find a foster a foster dropped out I'd post that video and the dog would someone would see it and they'd go adopt the dog so I thought well this is interesting so I began to think all right let me try and develop followers who are interested in this breed because it's a unique breed um and people should know what this breed of of any dog they should know this breed before they go get one so my thought was all right I'm not a rescue I can't do what a rescue does a rescue is going to uh evaluate the adopters they're going to do home visits they're going to I can't do that but I can do better than what shelters do and what a shelter does is you want a dog okay great here you go 50 walk out but what I could do is I could find followers who are interested in the breed at least they could say Belgian Malinois and that's a start and it's better than what's walking into the shelters today and and walks in sees this dog looks like a little German Shepherd and gets the dog because one of the biggest problems is people go to a

shelter they adopt one of these dogs they think they just have a cute shepherd a smaller shepherd and the return rate on these dogs is probably about 50 percent and when you're down in Miami-Dade you know it's particularly bad uh uh for the return rates uh of these dogs so I really wanted to do a little bit better than the shelters were doing that could never do as good as mad rescue or the American Belgian Malinois rescue or a lot of these rescues but they were over but they're even then overflowing so I was always I viewed myself as sort of in the middle somewhere between the shelter and the rescues just trying to help the dog trying to get publicity and the other thing that happened as I went to the shelters is I was shocked at how amazing the dogs I was seeing was I had the same expectation as I began to go to the shelters that these dogs are broken but there's something wrong with them and uh and then I would go to a shelter and you might see three at a time three in a day and so you you go down you take the dog into the play into the play uh play area you videotape the dog and you play with it and here I was like I I'm relatively new to Malinois at that time and I'd heard all about Malinois and how difficult they were and I was taking these dogs out of their kennel with the help of the the the staff there and playing with them I'm saying does nobody see what is the dogs that are here uh and that was another thing that's a reason to start to I have to show people these dogs because if you look at the right just the pictures that they show on a website they tell you nothing zero I would go and I would look at it every time I would I would I would see a picture of a dog that's in the shelter in Broward or Palm Beach and I would immediately form some idea of what this dog is going to be and it was never right and I would go and I would meet these dogs and I would start playing with them and that was just I to this day it's one of the most fun things I like to do is to go to a shelter take one of these dogs because these dogs have been sitting in the in the kennel you know 20 nearly 24 7 they don't get out that much in any of these major shelters so you get a chance to take the dog out to play with it and uh and then I started you know again putting these videos out putting the music maybe starting to tell their stories a little bit oh where did this dog come from what's his story little bad whatever it is tell the story and then people started sharing them and then sometimes you know early years ago it wasn't as bad so I could put a video and maybe it'll get 500 views

but a dog would get adopted today it's much harder it's adoptions have slowed and I think there's a lot more malinois today than there were uh five years ago yeah there is a lot of them I I there is no question there is a lot of them and then I you know when I used to work early well late 90s in uh at san francisco and uh shelter at the spca and I mean people didn't have a clue what that breed is that they were just not they were not here they were just individual dogs across the country they just um I remember me just the easiest way when somebody asked me what kind of dog my dog is to say that it's a mixed breed so I can walk away because the moment you say the name or just like you get stuck in a conversation now now this has changed this is no longer the case I mean occasionally somebody wouldn't know the breed but that's not the case anymore um it was at the time you know any type of bully lab mixes that's that was the traditional dog that you would see 70 percent of the population in any canny shelter now it seems like malinois unfortunately are are competing for uh the most popular dog that gets thrown in a shelter and they are comparing to the bullies malis are very difficult in in this type of environment they they just cannot uh um not that it's a good environment for any dog but malinois are a little more edgy a little more temperamental and that just that claustrophobia drives them nuts in there so the presentation and I think there are their desire to their desire to be with a person uh is I so they're alone in the shelter they're just stressed that that attachment they have I think of yellow breeds is another thing that makes them crazy the energy level that makes them crazy and when you're in a shelter environment and you are spinning they consider that a quality of life issue and they say okay well he's not he's thriving this dog is not thriving in the shelter environment and that puts them on the list to be euthanized because they're just not doing well or they or their defensive characteristics they're going to end up being a higher tendency to bark through the through the uh through the kennel all right that's something that that gets dogs euthanized um I mean right now we're in a situation where space is where dogs are being euthanized for space all over the place so we're going to take the dogs that aren't thriving and the tucker dogs and the dogs that are not going to be adopted you know a mallin walking dog or any hey mommy come here it's my neighbor's dog is out uh anyway you're going to end

up uh a rate of euthanasia for these dogs so I think it's a special breed and um I love the fact that I'm on here because I think that many of your listeners their trainers your serious people they have an opportunity if they know what's happening to foster to do something you know you don't have to go these people don't have to go start a rescue go foster a dog or don't even foster a dog go to a shelter pull up on petharbor.com or one of these any search engines go play with the dog just do that you go play with the dog you just be very surprised at what you see I think in in the show and that's kind of how you get sucked into that rescue shelter type of work that sometimes sometimes is very heartbreaking that there is no sugar coating and and and when you get stuck there and you go and you take a dog out and then you go to work and then four days have passed and you're like I know that dog is not going out unless I go and take it out and now the wheel starts spinning and you're getting sucked into that which is good and bad um and eventually like I I really feel for for the volunteer people because they're they're just always really amazing amazing people regardless of you know if they want to have a prone collar or they are totally against a prone collar whatever that that's totally relevant for the moment but but just the fact that anyone can give a little bit of their time to go and take those dog out on a walk which they are just starving to get out like it's like the only good thing that they can ever see and it's a volunteer you you totally like within the first time you take a dog out you immediately realize how much you're contributing to the to the uh life of of any dog that it's stuck in there and then you're getting hooked and it's very hard to get off of this and the hardest part for them is when a dog gets put down and typically some of the volunteers try to find some backdoors opportunities to to save a dog but again you can save so many until somebody would have to be euthanized for no apparent reason besides just we really don't have any room and he's or she's been here for more than 10 months or or whatever their protocol is and it's heartbreaking you know i i'm stuck in this in a way uh you know i think there are plenty of times i'd like to not do this get off facebook and and uh you know go back to my normal life go kite surfing and doing the stuff i you know maybe play with a couple dogs here and there but so in a way i am trapped uh in in this because whatever this thing that i've created followers uh it uh it it helps the it's like i know

i am highly confident if i go into a shelter and meet a dog and play with that dog takes video go home spend a couple of hours on that video post it right give like an honest assessment of what that dog is there's a very good chance that dog is going to get out of the shelter like like i would say close to 80 percent of the of the time and my goal is to get the dog out of the shelter through to follower or to a rescue that i work with over somebody who's going to walk into the shelter because i know they're going to end up in a better home if the person at least knows what the breed is so you know every now and again i'll get a call from a shelter from a shelter volunteer or worker can you do something about this dog or that dog now i i take some shortcuts now say okay get me video of the dog i want you to play with the dog give me different angles throw some toys so you know you think about stuff for that but you know for for a malinois play tug with the dog i want to see a lot give me a you know 15 20 second clips a bunch a lot of them and then you put something together with music something that you can see the dog see the reaction of the dog see the eyes see how he responds now you have something that someone can look at like a foster okay maybe they're not a current foster for uh big cypress german shepherd rescue or mad rescue maybe they're an inactive foster but if i can put those videos and people can see with their own eyes this dog how it interacts how it reacts then a rescue is in a position to say okay i can see that dog i could see okay and they can send that video over to someone else to hey you're in an inactive foster take a look at this video what do you think would you take that dog and the person who's going to take the dog can say okay so that's like another thing that i try to do to to work with all the rescues to help them evaluate the dog give them an honest opinion of the dog what what happened to the dog how did it end here everything that i can tell them about the dog yeah any story is a good story earlier that we met through yeah i didn't want to jump ahead but i sent the video of that dog to you because i wanted your opinion so that i could go back to the rescues and say okay here is what this guy says about this dog uh here's why it's like this here's what's happening here i never expected first i never expected you to reply but uh i never expected to reply as you did uh which was quite uh uh yeah you said i baited you into that and i was looking for i'm i'm good with my decisions always i never yeah yeah uh but uh so i i think that there is

like all right i want to go back to take a step back because you talked about getting sucked into this uh into rescue and things like that i i'm i'm very specific i love all dogs uh but i i made a decision that i was going to focus on this one breed uh i'll be an expert in this breed and that is what i'm going to focus on so i've gotten good at going to the shelter putting blinders on going to k3 or wherever that dog is and going to that and just focusing on that one dog i don't have to save everybody you know there's that parable of the kid who walks on the beach and they're the starfish uh he's throwing starfish back into the ocean and a man comes up to him says what are you doing you could never uh you could never make a difference with all these starfish and the kid throws a starfish into the water he said i made a difference to that to that to that one and i think that's what you try what i try to do take one dog and make a difference to that dog and that's it that one at a time and if uh 10 000 people do that that's you know or no no it's amazing i don't want to come like i i probably came off as i'm trying to discourage people from volunteering which is totally not not what i want to say no but you're hitting exactly the problem you're you just i think it's a it's such a delicate and and it can be very very traumatizing to the people that come to help to volunteer their time and um looking back to man i have so many cool ideas of of what kind of changes can be done in in shelter and rescue environments that maybe sometimes i i just need to really sit down and and and and you know put all this together but but like what going back to the volunteers one of the the things is those people are such a they're just such a good-hearted people that ultimately sooner or later if they stick doing this for more than three months they will be heartbroken there is no question they'll be heartbroken and burned out what can be done about this is just as they come to volunteer to have a simple conversation that kind of you know i mean it's a psychological level type of you know like preparedness of what you're going to do so so you you have a little bit it doesn't just hit you one day as hard as it can be but but you have a little bit more of of realistic expectations what you're going to do and what sometimes the outcomes will be there and and i think if if this happens and it's done prior to to starting to actually really do do heavy duty volunteering uh uh have some really good like uh intro course that can um that can have more sustainable number of people that that will stay

longer in this type of environment because it's just really not easy uh the only problem with that is i think that i don't think people understand the connection that they're going to end up making right uh when i i don't think they really get what's you know they they're gonna go they see these you know they're just these random dogs and they're just gonna go in there so i you know yeah it's great to help a dog and they're gonna walk in i don't think they're prepared for for how emotion uh like when you see the wide range of emotions of a dog that's when you begin to truly appreciate what we're dealing with the gift that we have so you know someone has to be prepared to accept the knowledge that you want to give them before they know what's about to happen to them was like when i look at these like i'm i jeez when i look at these do i love i've never had a foster i didn't fall in love with and cry when they left uh it's uh it's really amazing i only had one it was a puppy it was like a five-month-old puppy it's the only dog i ran out of the house and threw into the car and then ran inside and locked the door the puppies i can't stand those but give me a two-year-old dog or three-year-old dog and then you see that wide wide range of emotions from the dog that you bring home to the shelter from the shelter who's afraid of you and who's you know shaking and then to see them make the transition to happy and confident and a jerk and just you know that's when you see that wide range of emotions i think it makes you fall for the dogs much more than oh there's a dog right yeah when you start to see like wow look at look this is amazing this is uh you know because most of my life i think i went through life looking at dogs and just oh it's a dog but you know but until you start to actually see it it's like it takes very little interaction but it's the interaction that makes everything connects everything uh i mean the volunteers is like uh you know they they they relate to the dogs one way or another and chances are a lot of times like i've i've spent a lot of thinking especially when i was working um you know in that environment there was always this question man like there's these people that i mean i was like they they must like and love dogs more than me and then i'm sitting back and thinking well how is that even possible when i'm just that it just cannot be possible but then i think of them and it's like okay well they work they come they go back to work they go they don't take vacation because that dog

they're just attached to uh and and some very often the people that go and volunteer they also need the dogs it's kind of like a two-way benefit like the the the you know how you would have therapy dogs a lot of volunteers will do that so they they are maybe they have some troubles in their life they they're going through some bad and and they would rather take a dog out and talk to the dog than than deal with humans again which makes it even more that's actually fairly common this is fairly common by the way i think that many people involved in rescue have some sort of trauma in their life um somebody had told me that and i thought i thought it doesn't sound and then as i the longer i stayed and got to know people more there really does seem to be not for all but many they seem to have a trauma so i think what you bring up is actually quite interesting and i think there's a lot of truth to that uh that that the dogs are helping them yeah and then and that's a lot of times some you know because of lack of education and the whole for three ideology and you know there is always these conflicts ongoing of well we cannot use aversive we cannot use pain we can know there is the fallout all these horrible words and so on and the people that volunteer there they they fight with everything they can because they're convinced that that is uh um the the good thing to do the the you know not not really understanding that sometimes you will save a life if you break through the ideology but that's a a different conversation maybe for later um yeah but no i i think that like the the people who volunteer uh the people who work in the rescues wonder absolutely fantastic wonderful loving caring people but it is infiltrated inundated infiltrated uh with the force-free id uh the force-free ideology because it certainly does sound good you know we we talk about that there there aren't a lot of people in rescue who were really in it for a very long time the burnout is real is real so you don't have a lot of like really grizzled veterans in the rescue world because they just get burned out so you have a lot of people who i think you know i think that in the rescue world we could do better about training knowing training understanding training and uh but when you constantly have a just new influx of of people you don't have yeah that turnaround is it's difficult just because you you eventually just like with anything you know you you have different levels you have dogs that are they're they are not your easy dog to take out on a walk they they need a little bit at least a little bit

above the basic level of uh understanding how to walk a dog and then the more experienced the person is there is that satisfaction okay i'm able to take the more difficult dogs out but as you're doing that now the pressure on you starts to be harder because those dogs are not easy to to deal with and and then with the tools and uh what is available or or what you can use or not use that doesn't help to to make the walk easy on on the dog and on the volunteer and here we go in a some really crazy loop that uh um then that dog starts to sit more and more in the kennel starts to go crazier and crazier absolutely and you see it in you see this in practice happening down at at something like miami date you cannot you cannot come in there with a pin a prong collar so there are dogs there are wonderful volunteers down there but they don't want to take that that dog for a walk they don't want to take the the the the dog we were talking about earlier for a walk i you imagine trying to take her for a walk uh when she was at the shelter right god bless the the girl who was in that video now shortly who who takes that who who would take that but she's not she wasn't a volunteer because normally they have volunteers but they can't take that they can't take that dog and no wonder why the dog is in is insane in the in the uh in the shelter meanwhile you put a prong collar on a dog you show somebody how to you know a couple quick things boom you got a dog you could walk on a collar and and and after you know five minutes later you could walk a dog on a car sometimes it's super easy at least in my eyes it's super easy it's like you just outweigh the cost and benefits and and if the cost is higher okay but but if the benefits are higher how can you why why would you be so stubborn because yeah it's unexplainable that's because they'll be a because because they'll be attacked because the the management over at a shelter i don't want to say miami day or any you know a quick one but but the management is afraid that they'll get attacked and it could look bad having a prong collar on a dog that somebody can bring this and look at this because it's such an easy thing to do to say look at this talk i mean i have them sitting right here yeah i use them i use them all the time but uh if if this is the deal breaker for somebody to be able to take a dog out on a walk in a control manner and allow the dog still to enjoy some freedom and and shake it off and and smell the roses outside and take him back out why why are we making such a big deal why are we trying to point this

fallout that are highly questionable nonsense i nonsense i i have no problem using the prong carl i any call any one of these dogs she karina up karina come come here mama i i use a pro i've used prong collars on every every dog here if i take the prong collar out you know no one's running from it right right but uh no one's running away come here mommy this one freya well you can't see but i think also because of that because of the the the ideology of the all positive training the criterias and uh like the when when they have to accept the dog or they have to try to work a dog in a shelter environment and they evaluate what they can do with the tools they're allowed to use then a lot of dogs just don't get accepted at the door because they would be considered difficult dangerous uh uncontrollable and and basically not rehabilitatable simply because it cannot be done with the dog training equipment that they are allowed to use yeah well you know there's there's two two one of the things i want to mention is you have a municipal shelter so you have a municipal shelter that are run by for example the county so you have uh miami data animal services care and control right they're open they're open admission they have to take every single dog no matter what they have to take the dog well that's always but now there's overpopulation anyway that's the theory is the municipal shelter takes every single dog there are the no kill shelters which are often run by rescues maybe like the humane society those are limited admission so they don't euthanize dogs but they also don't take they're only they're only going to take good you know they're only going to take good dogs so you have the municipal shelters then you have the sort of the next level down which are the humane societies which are no kill limited admission and then there's another type of rescue generally which is the foster based smaller rescues so uh so you have miami-dade palm beach county they're supposed to take every single right the bad dog that comes in is getting is going to the behavior section it's never going to show up on the adoption floor when you're walking through the kennels at miami-dade you're not going to see the bad dogs because they're in the behavior section okay uh a blast uh an email blast goes out to the rescues hey we have this dog uh here's a bite history the dog's getting euthanized and no one's going to see it um so but but you can't put a pinch collar on it no prong collar on the dog they're going to euthanize that's in the behavior section it's just getting euthanized so

there's there's very little chance to work and you can so you and you can barely get into even see those dogs or work with them at most of the most municipal shelters you know the way it works if you if a rescue wants to pull the dog from the behavior section that that dog is usually clutch pulled and dragged in put into a crate and that crate you give them a crate they put in the crate and put in your car nobody's touching that dog and i think you're seeing that more and more uh where dogs are not being touched their dogs are just being dragged in and uh and then um you know and and the rescues can't and there's too many good dogs there's too many dogs that are known that are in the on the adoption floor to spend any time with these dogs that are hidden in the behavior section so that's a whole not that's a whole nother world but you know if i was a rescue i who could well i could take this dog that i could see the gym interacted with and played with or i can take this dog well i don't have enough fosters even for the good dogs so these other dogs this there's really no hope for for the ones that end up in the behavior section that's another one like you know how um i was saying like i have so many cool ideas i think they're cool ideas about um advertising and letting the dogs being seen as in in a different light you know and i remember again man just working back in that environment a lot of times it will come down to how skillful someone is to write the kennel card with okay my name is this is my personality and and that was the the deal breaker and then so you can have a dog that you can get very creative and somebody can be very good at writing and somebody's not and you know but but that that time is gone we have we have videos as you said we have social media as you said like even when you like one thing if i have if i am like some you know running a shelter or a rescue group i would have video monitors i mean uh players and so if whatever if it's a kennel or if it's a little like a room type of environment depending how how much money that place is spending on the dogs but every dog will have a player behind i love it oh yes yes yes yes i love that dog does like yes he can go on the beach yes he can meet people yes he can lick other dogs yes he can play ball yes he can do all this yes he can lay down what you're seeing right now in the cage that's not the dog all right there my offshoot and i did this and it worked uh there was a particular dog who who showed horribly in in the kennel and this was down in miami he showed horrible in the kennel and

some networkers these are people who are like sharing the dogs etc begged me to get involved with this dog he wasn't a malinois maybe a touch of malinois but somehow i got stuck i got roped into helping this other dog and uh and uh so okay i go i meet the dog i make a cool video it doesn't get adopted i i make another one i do a photo shoot i asked my friend who's a photographer uh could you do a photo shoot uh gabby uh we do a photo shoot with this dog and uh you know so i can make another cool video with some great pictures but nothing is nothing's happening so i make i decide okay let me take one of these videos i want people who are in the shelter to come look at the dog but be able to scan the kennel card and see the video so i made my own uh qr code i mounted it on the on on the kennel wall this dog was one of the longest he was over there for he was in there for something like a year and if people walk by he just hid in the back of his of his crate and nobody nothing and then i put the kennel card up and a week later somebody scanned the card saw the video of him him and i playing together she adopted the dog the dog sat there for a year because anyone saw that this dog was just you know scary he was a little scary looking dog so again that's the sort of like what i try to do show people what this dog is outside of the kennel and and how it can play and and be a real dog so that was champ that dog's name was champ and malinos i mean like a i think with with our breed people have a i mean you know like you have to be realistic when you're talking about malinoa and if a malinoa tags you because you surprised it it doesn't it doesn't necessarily mean much besides being the breed and and knowing how to handle this kind of situation i'm not saying all of them are like that but that's not surprise it cannot be surprising to anybody this is the good and the bad that comes with the breed that's why they are so cool nobody but nobody who the average individual who goes and adopts a malinois from a shelter has absolutely no idea about that there was a dog woogie woogie uh got adopted from palm beach uh a woman you know he was going to be euthanized and a woman saved you know whatever say i don't know if he's going to be euthanized but a woman adopted him in Orlando i get a call like a week or two later uh woogie's on his way back here uh he he he he bit uh he bit her uh but the mother i said you have a picture of it so they send me a picture of it nothing you know this is like nothing absolutely

nothing and she's on her way and she somehow i get her number and i call her i'm like listen what that just happened to you was you got mouth that's it he just mouthed you no he's aggressive and i'm driving in the car right now and he is being aggressive right now he's he's attacking me i'm saying he's fighting my arm right now i said i said ma'am if a malinois is attacking you you would be in the side of the road mouthing you but it didn't matter she she kept driving she dropped the dog back off and the dog was immediately given three days three days and they were gonna nice the dog uh now fortunately she had sent me videos prior of the dog playing and uh i was able to put a video together of woogie and uh to so this is the dog and this is the bike she even sent me the so in the video is the is the bite which is a scratch so that dog is doing fantastic today so i think among people don't understand trainers this is a like um um you know depending how much somebody is working with dogs with bite history actually it's not even that i i don't know where i'm going with this like the criterias um for somebody but and i'm not talking somebody that is adopting a dog i'm talking about a professional trainer and when they say well this dog is really aggressive and then i look at the dog being really aggressive and i'm like what what are we talking about like this like i wouldn't even change anything about this dog um and then when i consider something as an aggressive dog in the eyes of somebody else this dog is to be euthanized in the next hour because it's there is no chance so we have a very different levels of of what aggressive dog is and what can be rehabilitated and what not i hate to say it and i don't hate to say it the force-free people that work in the shelter environment are in my opinion responsible for utilizing dogs that should not be utilized at all like dogs that are not difficult dogs to put back in the right track yeah and i don't know i don't even want to blame i don't want to blame the individual trainers but i think that it's the management of these of these shelters who who are based it's political you know it's all political it's it's you know the people who run the shelters to political appointment they have to worry about getting uh elected so it comes from the top it comes from uh them uh you know and they'll print out the pamphlets and positive only and the afs you know whatever they'll so you know they have these employees are limited uh they're limited to what they can do it's positive only that's all they can do so i don't want to

but but they are they are indoctrinated when you know by the shelter system and you know when they come in so i think that's where a lot of it comes from you know they don't have a choice but other than to be uh but but it's a mistake but i think it's i'm i i 100 believe it's a mistake because you you know even if force-free can get the result eventually eventually is not soon enough you have to get the results quickly because there are too many dogs that uh to let you know to let these things drag out for the weeks and months that it might take a force-free positive only differential reinforcement to work sometimes you got to tell the doc nope boom knock it off that's it and end the issues you know then you can address the deeper but sometimes you've got to stop the dangerous stuff first and go from there so even man i it's such a i i i knew we're going to be talking about this and it's an interesting conversation to have and i i'm sure a lot of the people that listen to my podcast will be interested in all this um and just the environment in any shelter that has more than 30 dogs in their facility which is pretty much every single shelter in the country the really good ones or or i shouldn't say the good ones but the ones that have done good pr and get good money and get you know they they can do a little bit better than some other places that are really run down there is like like everywhere i would go the dogs are just out of control frustrated and it's no matter how the shelter environment looks like the dogs themselves act like like how people will act in a jail and then the good ones focus on the enrichment side of things well what can we do well let's put the tv there let's put a a sofa and let's give them the mind games and whatever and whatever but it's all focus based on how we can reinforce good behavior and good behavior is very small percentage that you can afford to to wait to reinforce most of it is just bouncing off the walls and barking and making licks sores on themselves and doing all sorts of things to where we have to put them on trazodon and gap but teen and and all the other more serious psychotropic things none of it really works the way it should but why can they not try at least in one section of the kennel that they can say you know what what's the thing about this nonsense just bouncing off the walls and feeding from each other's frenziness it's just not allowed like like knock it off like everybody just knock it off

you know and and play with it and see the cost and benefit well you know uh dogs playing for life uh i have to commend those i saw those guys well first of all i saw those guys those those guys at miami-dade just knocked my socks off there was a guy there i wish i knew i wish i could remember his name this guy weighed about 130 pounds soaking wet tall skinny guy i don't know what his weight was but this guy was phenomenal they made sure to take every single dog that was in that shelter every single dog that was in that shelter they got him out into the play yard with the other dogs it didn't matter and he got him out of the behavior section there was a particular dog nina uh nino nino nino everybody was afraid of in there now nino i i found somebody who was uh going to adopt nino let's say nino it's not that's not his name but let's say i found someone who's going to adopt nino he was in in georgia and he was going to train him to be a look at he was going to try and train him to be a police canine so he was supposed to come within a couple of days anyway uh uh dog playing for life is in there they've got every single dog played with and then i said okay so this tall skinny guy gets up he says okay did we did we get every dog there's like 400 dogs in miami dade they got them all except for this one dog except for this one dog they hid nino in the back they didn't tell him so i was there but i knew i said what about nino the the jaws dropped no no no we he says i told you i want to see every dog so they're like oh boy they go and they bring him out now i you later you're going to see why they were all afraid of him but anyway they bring him out you know comes out the the all the employees are just making away because he's coming in he comes in that son of a gun he's like all right put him here i'll bring him in he opened the gate that dog came in and just played like a champ with everybody the people were amazed now sad story for nino he uh a couple days later i came back and uh somebody was taking him for a walk i i think an inexperienced uh vet tech had him on a string okay not a prong collar one of these strings these blue and white strings it's just nothing nothing you can't hold it you can't control the dog but that's what he took the dog out and the dog came out lunged at somebody and broke her arm and uh a dog was euthanized within an hour so that dog was on his way he was gonna hopefully leave within a couple days but it didn't happen but i anyway i i just talked about enrichment uh and i got off track there dogs playing

for life the enrichment bring them out having them play with other dogs but having them play with other dogs it's it's actually an activity that it's not the like the the enrichment what like like how they think of it is just let's put some cool things in their cages so they can entertain themselves and most dogs don't want to entertain themselves alone so no matter what kind of enrichment you're putting in there and how often you come more creative and you put new things dogs still especially those that are stuck in there they don't want to be entertained by themselves they want an interaction they want to to get out they want to do something with with a person with another dog or dogs or or whatever and and and that's it this is the you know well we cannot do that well we probably could but we need some different tools perhaps we need some different ideas of what we can do and not do in order to provide that kind of control and save the environment when the dog can thrive of course if we don't if we're not able to control it yeah that that's a disaster ready to happen right i mean um but yeah i mean i guess it comes down to you know having enough volunteers to to in to to to put any of this into place i think which goes back to i think it's a like and i i don't know i was talking lately with some of my graduates here and and there is a there are few of them um you probably follow some of them too but but like going to a shelters and doing some work and and trying to just help some some of them like dylan jones is one of them very good example yes and and then you know somebody from the the the shelter will kind of jump it's like oh why we cannot do that and and then it's like okay then what what can we do like show me show me how do we take that dog out because do we want to take the dog out or no and if we cannot we know what's happening with that dog it's doomed so can you take it out can you show us can you teach everybody if you have a better option just let's do it well i don't have well now we have a problem this is a hundred percent what happens in the shelters 100 what happens in these shelters they're run by bureaucrats you know and i think some of these listen i i love the uh i love the shelter employees the guys who run in the in the kennel staff um but sometimes the management of these places um i don't know if they're uh uh they've just been there so long they're they're just uh numb to it and don't even care but not all of them i think just as you said earlier some of them are just very reluctant to to go against the mainstream they're just sincerely afraid that

you know they're gonna get jumped by all these fanatics that they're abusing and and torturing dogs in their uh facility which again if you if you haven't if you can do something then do it and show everybody how to do it and let's get those dogs out let's train them let's allow them to have some quality time not enrichment but actual quality time of doing cool things so they can maintain some sanity it really comes down to that in the shelter environment but to simply say well no these barbaric tools are not allowed so we have the two the two and that's exactly we have the the two things it's like okay well we can use those tools and we can give the quality of life and interaction that i'm talking about or we can take them away which is fine let's take them away but i would have a problem if taking away those training equipment will take away with the tools the quality of interaction now you know it i think it comes down in the end to how things look how does it look uh and i think that's what the management of these places are driven by how will it look how will it look if i put this if if i put this on a dog's neck and somebody takes a picture of it you know how does that look because they're more concerned about their job about being than anything else and it's so it's such an easy thing to say oh my god look at that it's such an easy thing to criticize this yeah and it's in like like i i i man i i don't want to talk about the fanatics like like there is the extremists and you know anytime i'm against force free people i i keep emphasizing this i'm not against somebody that trains force free actually i admire when they try to find a way to do something in the way they want to do it but when we're compromising welfare and what i mean by compromising welfare is we're gonna euthanize the dog that is a compromising of welfare based on what we can and what we cannot do to change the dog so let's say me and zack george go into a shelter he's gonna take maybe 80 of the dogs i mean at best i i i don't think he is a at all i have zero respect as a trainer because i've not seen nothing of of substance as a trainer but but anyway let's say he can take 80 of the dogs out the other 20 or the other 10 percent he will have to do what is prescribed by the the ideology you're gonna the dog's gonna pull a little you're gonna take it back you're

gonna do that again and and you're gonna end up spending a lot of time just to try to put the leash on and perhaps get to the lobby of the shelter yeah and these nobody has time i will nobody has time in these shelters to do so if i or any other trainer can put a certain training equipment on that dog and take it out on a walk like on a long walk how can you convince me that you are on the better side of the story how you can't convince me you can't convince me uh you can't convince me i i've i've used prong collars you know the great thing about whatever i do is that i i don't have to answer to anybody i don't take contributions from anybody i don't have any employee i have one client that's the that shelter dog that's relying on me so i don't have to worry about pleasing anybody i don't have a client that i have to sell you oh you want to trade force free i care about one thing that one particular dog so i'm going to do whatever i can for that one particular dog okay and if that means using a you know teaching how to use a prong collar you know that's what i'm doing if it means using an e-collar i'll do that i rarely use an e-collar i don't have anything against them but i rarely use it i'll use a prong collar often but uh i'm going to do what's right for that dog because i care about that dog i don't care what you think about me i don't care how it makes me look how am i going to how am i going to address you this particular dog in front of me so i you know management of these places they're everyone's busy you know what everyone's busy trying to um either impress or keep their job or worry about or about one thing so uh it's uh frustrating it's frustrating do you ever get dogs dropped like directly at you or people trying to just really bypass all the the rescue and shelter what do you do in that situation sometimes i'll get um i've had dogs come directly to my house like for example uh one of the shelters down here proud county they know who i am if if a if a malinois or a uh uh a shepherd comes in you know they're full everyone's full they have my number so i'll often get a call uh hey uh so and so over at the shelter gave me your number uh they're full can you help me so i have them come and drop the dog off at me and i you know if i can take the dog i can't i i can't always take the dog but sometimes i can take the dog hold it maybe get it to a rescue sometimes hang on to the onto the dog so yeah sometimes dogs come directly to me yeah you're really deep into it i guess like i i always try to

to to have some boundary for myself um and even now i mean i always always always have some some problem dogs i mean tina is a prime example like at this point can she go somewhere and live her life probably but she's my dog now i i i've put so much so much in there there's no question um you know it's kind of kind of like what was that book the the little prince and the fox you know like you you spend enough time to tame me and and things change you know and this is like such a common uh narrative uh i have this little chihuahua mix now rocky i've had i mean i always had dogs another chihuahua i think you had one years years yeah that was wow that was a yorky at the time too oh you're right that was a uh man if i if i show you it was a six month old puppy that was just kind of bullying his sister and they ended up putting him on on fluoxetine at six months old a yorky chasing the other dog around no this is wrong i mean this is wrong on on so many levels like much more worse than than even just trapping a a shock collar on the dog you know because it's just a temporary something i don't know um but where i was going with this is you know it's a i always try to have a little boundary because there is that side of me that um you know like like it was very very hard for me like i i don't think i've even talked about this so much on on podcasts but uh it really traumatized me at one point in my life working at the san francisco spca and and then um you know the that was the time when the the whole force free movement really was picking up and it would just seem to be the right thing to do because it's a humane society and welfare and it just was promoted and marketed in such a way but ultimately when you are in it and you know the dogs that can be helped are now rejected and you know their destiny is yeah you you're gonna be put down in some matter of days and i was at a position that i had to evaluate and test dogs that are adoptable and accept them from the animal care in the spca and then work with them as long as they're there and probably give some help to the people that adopt them and so on and eventually it came down to me not able to accept dogs that i know that i can help and they have to be put down and and one day i quit and that same day was the day that i kind of realized what the the how bad i felt for how long i felt that way it's kind of like a you know some how some people get stuck in the daily traffic going to work and spending hour hour and a half in traffic until eventually maybe you change your job or change

something in your life and now you're no longer stuck in traffic for three hours every day and then you realize this when you're looking back at it you're like what the fuck i was doing you know it's a very very tough i feel you i i don't know how i i i feel for these i feel for these volunteers and god i want to shout out to uh marcella garcia bonini she is a volunteer down in miami-dade he goes to the shelter she does what i do meets the dogs videotapes that please follow marcella on facebook and instagram uh absolute angel to these dogs down there she goes there day in and day out filming these dogs just one after the other posting the videos but how she does it i i don't know you know i get to draw boundaries myself i have you know i have a great little setup here that i've kind of created i can i'll go to the shelter here and there maybe get a dog maybe i'll and i'll have a rescue to back me and then i can focus on this one dog that i have here i don't have to see everything in the shelters every day i do love going to the shelter and going straight to the kennel with blinders on to the dog i'm going to focus on because i know i there's a good chance i'm going to get that dog out if i go see the dog um but like to see all the bullies who walk by to see every dog that they're just not getting out that is home at least by focusing on and i would suggest like focus on one breed and then that helps you know mentally partition and say okay i don't have to i'm not going to look there let me just look at this one dog you know if somebody were to do what i do and just focus on that's good way of thinking that actually can keep you a little bit more protected and not as vulnerable to to your emotional breakdowns to say this is i am the expert in this part this dog i'm the expert you know i want to help you but i i just you know i i i can do better if i just focus on this one breed and i would suggest anyone who wants to help dogs pick a breed be the expert in that breed it's going to help you get dogs adopted people will pay attention to you more when they're looking and they'll start to reach out to you i'm looking for this dog then you start to adopt calling you it's easy to find dogs that need homes what's really hard to find are people who want to adopt uh what you're what you have being an expert in a particular breed people start to call you hey i've got a buddy i got a call yesterday a message yesterday hey i've got a buddy uh he's he's looking for a malinois got an 11 year old daughter should be stable okay great let

me put that you put that in my head and then you end up being kind of the person to go to if if somebody is looking for a you know just like if you know if if somebody wants to get a bmw it's gonna go to the bmw dealership right it's not gonna go to ford or and vice versa um i you know what also bugs me a lot is the and again i i i get more and more impatient with with the extreme views of ideology when the ideology stands above a life of a dog and and you will have a professional trainer that perhaps has the knowledge and perhaps can do something but the ideology is not allowing it to happen but why can you not stop for a moment and think that if you don't help the dog chances are it's going to end up in a shelter and that's the best case scenario and even when it ends up in a shelter chances are it's going to get euthanized so there is a lot at stake and it's mind-boggling to me that you can put ideology above dog's life i i don't get that i don't i certainly don't get that um i i can't see it i i can't i don't even know you know i don't even know where to go well you know what i think the problem is i think the problem is that i the people who've been sold the ideology believe it i think they i think they believe it i don't think they've you know they haven't gone to your course they haven't they haven't even tried you know i talk to people and um in rescue and they never they are afraid of a of a pawn collar they're like afraid to put a wrong collar on a dog all right they believe it they and these people who love the dog whatever and i i've had someone talk to me recently who runs a rescue fantastic rescue but um and she's having trouble with the dog and she's like you know i'm having trouble with this particular dog but and maybe it needs a little bit more than than we i said yeah bring the dog by let's you know see i want to see what the dog's about you know and maybe you might want to have a prong collar if you're having trouble walking the dog and he's going let's oh oh my god can can can you walk through with me i said yeah bring the dog over let's let's do that so they have all been so not all but many have been sold this bill of goods of the force free of how good it is and the fallout from uh from from prong collars or uh saying no to the dog someone said that the other day oh i was talking to somebody they said i shouldn't say no to this i'm like people are still telling people they can't say no to a dog i thought that was just but they're saying it's still it's still going on

yeah but i i you know so anyway i think a lot of people are just they're well-meaning uh and people in in the rescue world but they are they're and like i said it's it's it's you don't have the grizzle veterans because everyone burns out so you have a lot of newer younger people uh rescues can come and go because it's just a horrible business so everyone let's say everyone is new but a lot of people are new in the rescue world and they are listening to what the what the youtube algorithms put out which is going to be more of the force force free positive only stuff so i think there's uh you know that's part of the problem the rescue the rescue you know like local different places across the countries men there is so many different types there is there is a lot like and i'm not exaggerating there is a lot of con artists in this business simply getting money donations running shady practices shady practices that just pieces me off so much a hundred uh yeah a hundred percent they're they're they're you know i i am lucky i know i i work with like um a few rescues that i know really well and i and i end up working with those rescues who i see what they're doing um by the way i want to take a step back a second one one remember remember what you're saying i i like i i just i know i'm gonna forget this but talking about you know how i always defend one side i don't always defend one side i can tell you right now that there is this i i know of rescue places that every dog is trapped with a bar collar every dog is put in a garage in a crate and they're just having a miserable life altogether and yes that sucks and that's incorrect this should not be happening they should not be even in the business of doing any of this this is like total suppression that's not what's about i have to say that because sometimes i i always come as somebody that attacks only the the forsy ideology and then i i definitely um i'm so much against the the there is bad stuff happening you know you cannot be a rescue place and just trying to stock dogs and and keep them in crates with bar collar so they are quiet so the neighbors don't worry you're not having the environment you don't have the time you don't have the knowledge to provide a healthy life that can bring some future to these dogs it should not be happening then you know somebody as you said there is the other ones there's the good ones like uh uh i mean sylvia with her uh what was a rescue garage you know i mean every time we have a class and we have like the like expert trainers or whatever we get dogs from her and and they spend a week with

training and doing things and and i know what she does and i know her heart is in the right place and she may not have food for herself but they're fed their walk they're they're taken care of there's there's different levels and not everybody is the same i have to stop i i love sylvia sylvia is the best a rescue garage shout out northport i have one of her dogs right here hey mama where are you i emailed her the other day a day before yesterday just uh there was a dog with demodex in bad shape a little puppy and i i wanted to get her opinion because she is one of the most knowledgeable rescue people that i talked to and she is an exception there's there is sort of a grizzled veteran somebody who knows who knows uh rescue one of the smartest people so when i have a question or an issue uh and and i actually got to introduce through you with tina because whatever but uh she is one of the professionals in this business so when i have an issue and i saw this puppy i i sent the picture to sylvia i said you know tell me about this condition and what uh uh before i had a chance to type anything she said i'll take it and uh come here where are you well i gotta show you this well i think that's come here mommy mommy come all right she's around here somewhere i'll bring her out but she's a pathetic looking dog but i love her anyway that's sylvia and one another expert and someone who uh i wanted to make sure i gave a shout out to while you brought it's important no no no that that's all i had to say is just that there is there again just like with everything else you have you have a very shitty car mechanic that is just trying to rob you as soon as you go for oil change all of a sudden you're paying for your engine to be replaced and and and it's the same in the dog industry it's nothing different yeah and the trainer there was a trainer um over here i can't remember the york the company's name um and uh one of their trainers was videotaped helicoptering the dog choking out hanging the dog and there was videotaped of that dog and they eventually shut him down and they but they confiscated the dog and that was a dog uh by the name of arson arson went to the palm beach shelter you know some i get to do like some kind of cool stuff every now and again and when i saw arson had gotten confiscated it said okay it said that the dog someone said the dog had had bite work so okay he's had bite work so this is going to be a problem for like abmr or mad rescue because generally those two rescues don't take dogs that have done bite work uh or generally don't take dogs that have done bite

work which is uh yeah i mean to some extent it's kind of understandable it's it's this is a okay keep your thought for a moment but this this is a problem and and the problem is when you take a dog that has been trained and also has some problems and you're you if you're responsible and you take it seriously there there is a a certain level of of um risk that you are taking that you shouldn't be taking like you you cannot be taking risk within this job that you are in um so but strangely enough how many actually trained dogs end up in the shelter yeah very few uh none none uh oh well very yeah yeah i think those are probably the proper numbers you're talking about one or two percent those dogs are not ending up uh and that's another thing i want to touch about it in a little bit about training but but first let me tell you about arson so so the woman's dog who had helicoptered this dog and had bite work so now i've got a problem here's this uh here was a dutch shepherd uh that ends up in the shelter this had bite work and uh what do you do with this dog that you know has had bite work uh and uh so i went to go um i went to go to the shelter to go evaluate the dog and then another rescue nearby pulled it but i happened to know who she was i connected with her and i said i want to take this dog and i want to have the dog evaluated by somebody who knows what they're doing you know mike lorraine i think you know michael lorraine like lorraine yeah so mike lorraine is uh around here so i reached out to him and i said hey i've got this i didn't really know mike i might have talked to him once before or something but i reached out to mike lorraine and i said would you evaluate this dog and i i so i got the dog from the rescue that had just pulled him and we brought him up to mike lorraine and we did a super cool video of him doing bite work with the dog and um posted that video and uh when i posted the video tj dobbins at alpha pack canine alpha pack saw the video he said i'll take the dog so alpha pack canine trains takes takes some of what they do is take some of the shelter dogs and train them to become police canines so by seeing that video that i did with mike lorraine uh tj dobbins took the dog up to ohio and today that dog is now a police canine so that's like a super cool thing that uh you get to do you know one of the cool experiences that's that's exactly well man i mean uh i mean somebody like again i i not gonna i mean there's this extreme for three people that are actually against police having dogs you know so

i remember uh zach george zach george did some some obnoxious hack job video on uh on police canines that which was probably the most absurd thing i ever saw uh i don't know i don't know how many times he said the nazis the nazis the nazis you know it just uh it's ridiculous and and and the point is do you do you want the the whatever the if it's a criminal or whatever we're gonna find out at least we can find out later because it just gets bit it doesn't get shot and a lot of times they don't even get bit all they need to hear is come out stop or i'll send my dog and they're coming out we have a dog here come out like yeah you know but but it's a kind of it goes in a higher level of well do we need control and and do we need um laws to be enforced or no and it's like well we we're totally in a different planets on this so i i have no reason to talk to you about this you know um what do you think about the dogs that come to you and let's say you were not allowed to use the tools that you are using how successful do you think you would be i think you could eventually be successful it's just gonna things are just gonna take longer but you know what i it's hard you know i have six dogs here right now and strange dogs are coming in in and out i i think one of the hardest things to do if i had to be force-free and bring in new dogs you know integrate them into the pack you know i don't i don't have kennels i i don't really i have these kennels but they're pretty much just for quick management like they're not they don't sleep they they sleep in my house you know i got six dogs around the house they have to get along with each other i have to be able to correct the dog if he's staring down another dog that i just brought in from a shelter that's sitting in the kennel you know i have to be able to correct that dog because i'm never going to be able to manage these dogs together if i can't correct somebody so if i couldn't do them then i couldn't take the dog period yeah but they like if i felt that i would be then you're not fit to to even do this kind of work that would be there well i don't care let's show me show me what you're doing with these dogs you know show me what you're doing so uh that would definitely get in the way i mean and it's very in critical i was gonna say important factor i was just i was that's exactly factor in the whole part of of everything that we are doing with with these dogs it's about time or everything it's like 100 this is exactly where i was thinking and you have to be very

consciously aware every single second that that clock is ticking yeah i have a i have a full-time job like i wouldn't be able to do you know do what i do here if i didn't have a full-time job somewhere so i have a full-time job i have six dogs i have a life also i have things and responsibilities there's only so much time in the day and i don't have that much time so i've got three fosters three of my own dogs here time there's just not enough and and that's it so you have to be effective and move things along quickly and if i thought that it affected my relationship with any of these dogs well you know then maybe i'd have to think about it but to the extent to the extent that i use uh correction uh corrections not one of these dogs are intimidated by me afraid of me uh there's no fallout involved and you know so that's all just nonsense and i think there are people who who maybe never who are so afraid to correct the dog are so afraid to use a prong collar um like they believe that that's going like that's real for them it's real just like just like i don't want to go into politics but just like the you know all the all the the women shaving their heads and and doing all these things after the elections you know like i don't want to ridicule them i really don't it's very real for them it's very sad yes yeah yeah yeah i think that's a it's a real feeling so i only you know i know what i know i i mean i know through experience working with dogs in and out in and out um what works and and the these dogs love me i love them and the fact that you know i might put a prong collar on there and pop their collar it doesn't it doesn't even nothing i mean nothing so why do you think you know why do you think how they feel such a gap such a separation and animosity in between us between the force free and the and uh sort of the balance training what is it i don't know i think uh i think uh some people care more about how they look to other people than they care about the dogs uh you know because i would highly doubt if anybody and again that that was a conversation i just recently had with dylan jones when he was here uh for his uh expert thing and and and uh we were talking about something where you have a dog in front of you and you have ideology that you're behind and your ideology is failing but there is something we can do how do you where do you go at that point when you have that dog looking at you and you're standing for the ideology um that's not gonna help how do you justify that you're not gonna help the dog or at least not gonna

make an attempt to yeah i i i don't think i i don't think that they believe that using a prong collar is i think they are convinced that they are doing the right thing that if you go put this prong collar on you're gonna ruin the relationship and that's i think they truly believe that right right but i'm talking about that like there is it's not a uh an exception there is there is cases that are happening daily it's like no you you literally have a dog in front of you that it's his clock his time is up and you've done religiously and you've searched for advice and you've done all of your homework and you say well we tried everything and somebody says well but would you want me to try something that could work yeah no we can't it's not it's it's not in the it's we can't do that it's against uh i you're asking somebody who doesn't understand who who can't understand it himself all right i think you almost do anything you can it's gonna you know i would think that everybody would save the dog's life my guess is that everybody that is faced with this direct situation that they are attached that they have some attachment even even like i know like i have it's like no it's actually your dog and you can utilize it or you can try something just like somebody is dying of cancer do you try horse medicine or not what what do you do with your kid that's dying from cancer and everybody gave up you would you will try i would i think there's a very powerful psychological thing that happens and it's it's us versus them uh that we are genetically or our minds are pre-programmed to have an us versus them this is a very and it's a very powerful yeah it's a very powerful emotion and and it probably maybe overpowers uh overpowers but what i'm saying is i agree with you but what i'm saying is it should break in those situations when they're directly affecting it's your child or it's your spouse or it's your dog and you have to make a choice to try something alternative and give it a go or don't yeah well maybe in private they try it but in public they don't it's your child or you know i i uh by the way you know yeah you get so wedded to an idea that we are committed we are absolutely committed to something i i think that plays a part in it too that we get sold something or we are we believe something it's very hard to make that flip in your brain to say i'm going to try something else we sell ourselves you know unconsciously when we sleep we sell ourselves on these ideas that we've convinced ourselves of and then it becomes very difficult to um to undo that

what are things that you would give uh like some advice to people like yourself that are stepping into the the type of work that you do what kind of advice would you give them in terms of um like how to i mean yeah how how to like like any of the kind of bullet points that you think you you must know what you're getting into and then uh um how to how to navigate through that whole uh um i mean it's a it's a very special niche of industry that you're in yeah i can't even because i can't even explain what i necessarily do um you know i don't there's no job title for it i don't have a job i'm not a five i mean i have a you know job outside of this um what my i think the the first step that you make is you go to a shelter pick a dog uh meet that dog and tell that and and be that dog's advocate okay that's where you start one dog you don't have to save anything after that you go and you save this one dog okay great i'm i'm gonna save this one dog okay how am i gonna do how am i gonna save this one dog i don't have to save all those other dogs fine he's a cute dog he's my i'm gonna i'm gonna try to help this dog now how do you do it okay first thing is you got to go meet the dog play with dog play with the dog evaluate the dog what's the dog like get lots of pictures lots of video okay then go home and stick it into any program dump it all in there you don't have to be a genius just dump the video in there put some music to it post it on facebook and ask people to share it share it with and then you know share it with your friends share it with a rescue whatever contact the rescues hey i just met this dog here's what the dog is like here's the video because this is what rescues need to see they just they don't want a picture they need a story here's the dog's story this dog was found over here in the everglades dumped it's got a broken leg it's got to tell this dog story let let other people know what the story is bring them into it and then it gets them invested into the story and then so that you're just the advocate now there's a good maybe you'll find an adopter maybe somebody will see that because it's so easy to go to a shelter and adopt a dog it's got all the shots it's it's vax it's uh it's health checked etc it costs 50 so someone can go walk in and if they see that dog it's a healthy normal dog walk right and adopt it if you post it the right person sees it or a rescue sees it and they just or a foster who oh i can foster for this this uh organization you've got a real chance because

otherwise just a very good chance no one's ever going to see that dog there's a very good chance of that if you if and and i would say like thing that i did it really all sort of just folded as i just happen to pick the pick a breed it just happened to pick this particular breed happen to become you know an expert in this breed people in rescue see me as an expert then they take you more serious and it just kept growing and in a relationship with all so i'd have a relationship with all the rescues he'll take one of these dogs and not everyone that's the other thing not everyone's going to take a malinois most small rescues don't will not take will will generally not take a malinois but they're at least smart you know smart enough to realize okay my foster can't handle that dog um so and then when that happens then the rescues start contacting me i have a malinois can you help me so sometimes they will end up with one anyway can you help me uh because now they know i have followers who are interested in malinois so they'll contact me and then i can say absolutely let me post your dog so then i you become this clearing point for this particular breed because you're the expert in this breed there could be a hundred of people like me all over the country doing this there could be there could be 10 more people doing what i do in florida let alone texas and california and i wish that people would just copy whatever it is i'm doing there's a woman jennifer um she's out in california east valley she's doing something similar to what i do except i think she does it better uh she's going in there she's looking for high drive dogs really in general uh and uh so jennifer is uh so every time she has a video i make sure to share jennifer's video uh from the east valley so and i don't want to just share of a dog like this dog needs help i want to share the video the story i want to follow the dog's journey from the shelter to the rescue or to the adopter and i want to i want i want people to follow me because they're going to get more than just a desperate dog and then the next desperate dog i want them i create i'm trying to because i'm trying to create a following of people interested in this breed i want a reason for people to follow me and you're going to see you're going to follow the story as as it unfolds and that's kind of a cool thing or something different uh so i always try to make sure i sort of close the circle with any dog here's the dog i just met the dog i post the dog and the rest

then i start getting you know people interested oh okay they're going to pull the dog send me pictures send me videos uh how's the dog oh that went to the vet it had a broken leg it had this what's happening and then then you have something i think that's interesting and worth following so how do you so so i don't have any you know i mean that's what i do and then i start oh another thing is you start to meet the trainers this is for the malinois i think more important than anything because what's failing the mountain these dogs is that they're that first of all the average trainer out there is pretty pathetic okay who's generally out there training uh pet dogs yeah they're going to be the force-free dogs or the force-free trainers um they're pretty poor and they're not really equipped to to train these dogs any trainer out there oh they're going to teach the dog to sit staying down whatever but i think it different world like the sport dog or the world the protection world the the uh the police work those are the trainers you want people who learn from that in from those people and learn from that group that's who you want to train your dog and those trainers are out there but people don't know them they just hear they just i don't know they uh they they've got a heart off of a starbucks wall of some force-free trainer and then they they use them to train their their high drive malinois that they accidentally picked up from somewhere yeah yeah kind of like uh like uh victoria stilwell when she had this whatever her show was with the with the police dogs uh the night whatever it was i can think of the name it's total disaster they had to have uh non-disclosure agreements just just because it's just like they cannot say how how silly and ineffective all of it was you know you know you know what is the another big problem that i have it's that kind of puts people off is some some of the people that work in a shelter some of the volunteers some of the rescue groups and people like yourself that actually are so frustrated and angry at people like myself i've been breeding dogs since 1989 like i have bred a lot of dogs in a lot of people i am the reason why there is dogs in the shelter because i want to i want to talk about that because people will buy a dog from me instead of going to the shelter and get a dog and i don't think they're first of all the first of all i have a lot of dna i uh often do dna tests on many of the dogs mad rescue does them so i see a lot of uh i see a lot of

dna tests so i see their relatives and i see who's related to who and they'll show you know 30 different relatives and you sometimes see where the dogs come from so you know i've done that with a with quite a few dogs and i've never seen a vatoja dog or a dog that that i could tell came anywhere from you your dogs are not ending up in the shelters and and i they're not even breeding i can't even see where there's breeding i would expect that i would have seen maybe but i don't see that what i do see is i see many of the rescue dogs being related to each other uh that keep ending up so there are some breeders and i i i wish i could better figure out the puzzle where are these backyard breeders where because that's you're seeing relations in these dogs that came out of miami and then this dog that's over at big cyprus and uh rescue and this one over at mad rescue is related and i've messaged people oh where'd you get that dog from oh it came down from here but you don't see it really coming from the now that's number one so your dogs aren't ending up there number two i think it's critical that you have excellent breeders who really know what they're doing to keep the the genetics of the dogs healthy this is critical to have so you absolutely need ethical breeders who are making sure these dogs are going to the right people that the genetics are solid so you need this otherwise the breed is going to decline uh so i have no problem with ethical breeders backyard breeders on the other hand the kind that you see down in miami the kind that you see that are selling dogs on craigslist because i see the the the the females that have been breeding and overbred landing in the shelters because that's what's that's when you're when you're on there buying that 500 dog or four this is what you're doing all right so i have serious problems with the backyard breeders i have zero problems with excellent breeders who are doing the right thing and if something goes wrong with the dog and the you know are going to take the dog back and all that sort of stuff that that that a great breeder would do in the rescue world i think you're right i think people are uh i think many hey look if you saw what some of these people see on a regular basis when you walk into the shelters you could you could almost understand but i don't think they have the perspective that i have or at least you know i i operate in a different world working specifically with malinois but if you look at these general rescue people who are you know they're

rescuing all mixed breeds and things like that and i could just imagine they would be crazy about anyone breeding any dog ever but i come from a different uh i guess i have a different perspective working with this particular breed that have a particular purpose yeah that's where very well said and but it goes even deeper than that some people get attacked simply they're not breeders they just wanted a pure bred dog it's like shame on you when there is so many dogs in the shelter how do you deal with that one i i if somebody i i don't uh that doesn't if somebody wants to spend the real money you know spend actual money yeah as long as they don't go on on freg's list or buy it off these crappy uh uh uh facebook groups you know i i i'm not hey listen i i i don't i try not to get involved i i try to focus on what i do not you know not change what everyone else is doing if there's any influence that i try to have it's it's to say hey look at these dogs foster one of these this is awesome you know that's where i try to make any impact or influence anyone to say fostering is actually pretty cool to foster a malinois probably like the cool like absolutely one of the coolest things you could do to take a dog from and and i would say this to gosh i'd say this like to the trainers who are watching this you know we all they all have you know many had demo dogs all right now they saw they get a whatever you know the tosha east you know german or european demo dog or whatever don't do that go to a shelter get a malinois from a shelter use that as your demo dog because when you can walk in and say because if if i take a you know beautiful incredible dog that i just bought and i paid ten thousand dollars for and and i showed somebody they'd be like oh well of course he's that you know but if you go to a shelter and you pull the dog and you you you teach a shelter dog to do sit stay down people are like oh that dog gave him a shelter yeah i go to i go to i go to the mall the mall around here and um i walk you know to socialize the dogs or just to teach the so i go to the mall every time i go to the mall somebody stops me and wants me to train their dog and i don't train dogs i just do this is just sheltered that's a that's a shelter dog like you'll be it's people are so impressed that you taught a mallard one that you got for shelter how to heal wow yeah i mean you just put a very cool twist on this i like like it's really uh uh i mean it's a win-win situation and it's it really speaks it's like the perception that people

have volume for the trainer because just as you said it's not like this yeah of course it's a highly trainable dog and whatever no i'm not impressed but there is this one i got this guy from the shelter i love it i love it hopefully people people that do this demo dogs take that under consideration that's a brilliant i mean i mean even just for their business for their marketing it's far better than than doing something with you know it's just not as impressive it's just not at all yeah i just got it from shelter better yet you know uh uh yeah so if i mean i could i i said i'm in in my re in my my other life i'm financial advisor i don't train any dogs i don't train i don't nobody pays me to train i don't take you know i don't take money or anything from anybody but i get i get message like almost every day to train a dog if so if i was one day wanted to retire and become a trainer it could happen like that because people see people see me with the you know i make the silly videos and they're sit you know we play around with the dog it isn't to show anybody how to train a dog it's to show the dog like and that's really all my videos are about it but people think i'm some wonderful you know they're they're people who who don't you know who think i'm some wonderful trainer because the videos i make and yeah i edit them a little bit you know there's not you know that's one of the things like sometimes i tell you like with the you know i mean you've gone through through my program the the training without conflicting and a lot of times after the written test the trainer has to do a practical and they're like well i don't have the dog and i'm waiting for a client and and that's what i would do i'm like why would you wait there's there's dogs and dogs and dogs waiting for attention and interaction take it from the shelter make it adoptable maybe you will end up maybe you'll end up with the dog just because as i said you put the time and and time that's what time does you know and these you know you could do it so easy it's so many of these municipal shelters that most everyone has it where you could just walk in and shelter a dog you don't have to get in you know and then you walk in say okay i want to foster i want to foster a dog and uh yeah great well and they'll hand your dog you go home with the dog and when you're done you can take the dog back if you really but after you put some training on the dog then you can find a rescue pretty easily you know then you can contact any rescue and say look here here's what i've done with the dog boom the dog goes to a rescue they'll

find a home for it uh um or you just put it or see i mean even better than that you know you post it hey i just trained this dog we were just working with him and post it on your facebook it's a great advertisement uh for your business you know it that goes better i mean it's really way better advertisement in my book i would be like as a trainer i would be far more impressed we we do accomplishing something with a dog that everybody's giving up on done than having this highly trainable specifically bred animal for for for something it's just that's that's easy yeah it's and it's so it's so easy to train these dog it's no it's so easy to try for any malinois is easy to you know it's easy to train so if there's one you know you got them from the from the shelter but you look brilliant when you do it to to to people who don't know you know to outside people to to clients they think you're brilliant because you trained to a rescue malinois you know and uh you know what is a really big problem at least for me in the last i'd say five years i mean it's been there kind of lingering but it's becoming more and more pronounced and that's the going out of country and grabbing all these stray dogs and rescuing them from being stray dogs and sticking them in your apartment for eight hours a day when they had a a freedom they had they had a life could they get run by a car sure did they eat or did they skip two days yeah questionable but i don't know why how i don't know how i don't know how we're importing i don't know why we're taking these dogs i think first there is a lot of uh uh there is again a little bit of a i mean there is some people that do it for just because it's kind of misguided in my opinion as i said like like you're taking the freedom away from from a from a animal that really really really appreciates freedom it is like like the the ultimate abuse as far as i'm concerned but um so when they come from a foreign country you're saying the ones that come from any of the stray dogs like like you know go to greece bulgaria whatever you know any eastern european where the turkey um i'm not talking okay they're stuck in 20 of them in a cage and they're gonna be meat they're gonna be dinner that's a different thing but but even then it's we have to fix it we have to fix our own problems first right right go to miami i think there's some crazy number like 30 000 stray dogs in miami okay i don't know if that's true but it's something like some absurd number they have 700 seven last i heard i heard something today they have 700 dogs in miami

dade they have the new shelter and they have the medley shelter which is the old shelter and both are both are full so it sounds high when i heard that number but it's got to be at least 500 straight 500 dogs then you've got a guy like junior who's down at redland dog sanctuary who's got a hundred dogs down there and the dogs are being dumped all over the place down in the redlands okay let's fix this problem let's go to texas let's go to uh california and let's fix these problems before we start importing more problems i believe a lot of the imports there is some there is some scheme there is some like like it's a money kind of laundry like like i don't know that there's something to do with that uh i'm not i don't want to really open this but but there is uh there's gotta be something because it just doesn't make sense when you have as you said dog right here in your eyes in your backyard that you can do something with and you're going out of your like like doing this crazy thing okay now there is situations i mean there is different like um who was the one that was like this incredible story and i know you would know it um the guy was running a marathon somewhere i don't know was it china or was it somewhere in sahara whatever i mean it was like a long marathon and a little dog got stuck with him and kept running and the guy was like okay they're gonna give up and give up and whatever the dog never gave up it just kept going and eventually the guy was like okay i'm taking the dog he takes the dog he took the dog the story ended up being really i mean it's a very happy ending but from there somehow the dog got lost because it was with somebody that they were just taking care of the dog temporarily and he went on the street and eventually social media exploded i think i want to say it's china or but i'm i might be mistaking but somehow they ended up finding the dog and eventually again the dog came back and they took it back to the country and and it's just beautiful story but that's very different than done yeah than taking plane loads of of loading of plane loads and bring him here when we're not taking care of the dogs that we have here you know and um the other thing that down in my down in the idea of the stray dogs you know when i was i was in brazil and the stray dogs seemed very happy over there the stray dogs i see down in miami i don't know if the conditions are different we have mosquitoes we have heartworm we have infestations when i see the dogs that come that are that are that are stray taken from the

everglades and they end up in the shelter those dogs are in horrible shape so these people who are dumping dogs down into the everglades uh the dogs are going to die you're not giving those dogs you're not giving some wonderful freedom to because they end up with heartworm uh uh and uh infest infestations and they end up dead and that's but down in miami that's like they're literally closed to intake they don't want to euthanize any dogs so they they're literally closed to intake and that's also i think broward county and palm beach as well for the most part they're closed to intake so now you just have more dogs populating the streets and it's like it's an ex it's a problem that's just getting i think worse and worse i kept thinking there was hope but i i i don't see any uh uh hope so let's stop importing dogs right right it's just not not not the right thing to do like it's not the right thing jim what do you think about how covet played or did it play a role in in everything i a hundred percent played a a hundred percent played a role in this uh a friend of mine used to have a car mechanic and uh uh it was just shortly after covid and he calls up the car mechanic he said okay i want to get my oil changed he says oh i'm not doing that anymore i'm gonna i'm a dog breeder now you're looking for you know every so many people became dog breeders for because for that brief window you could get the ridiculous amounts of money so there was i think there was an explosion of dogs uh and then there was probably another umlet you know and i think that that was that was a big problem now the and the thing that happened is you had covet dogs that were poorly socialized at that time which are now behavior problems so you have them ending up in the shelters because now they're and as people had gone went back to work um so now you have a problem with that so people have gone back to work uh and then now you have now you have dogs that weren't properly socialized that are problems so they're going into the shelters so covet was uh you had it was a brief window where you had all these wonderful pictures of shelters being empty for you know for uh for a couple of months and then it just uh it just didn't work it just it just didn't last yeah that was recently um i i actually downloaded it uh it was somewhere on the news a couple of months ago it was a a really reputable like a very good place in in colorado somewhere a shelter and and they were in the in the local news talking about how they ended up with way more that they can chew on and and

dogs that come in end up i mean clearly a lot of dogs that end up in a shelter they come in with some issues but instead of trying to rehab them the issues get amplified or they even add more to it to the point that i i know that even if they don't like to talk about a lot of the shelters are kind of up the wall like okay what do we do how like like whatever you're telling us that it can work and all the again going back to enrichments and all positive and all that it's not really we're not even closely trying to manage just manage forget about improving their lives but even maintain where they came in you don't i don't think there's i don't think there's a real desire to fix the behavior of dogs and shelters it's easier to say this dog is a behavior problem and to euthanize the dog because we're euthanizing dogs for space anyway so it sounds a lot better if you're the administrator that we had to euthanize this you know we tried everything we tried you know it was all you know positive only we did we did everything the uh you know we're supposed to do and we just couldn't fix this dog so it's not our fault we just had to euthanize the dog so they really don't my own opinion is they really don't care if they fix the dogs it's just a good way it's just a great way to show people oh look what we're doing we're you know here we are and you know yeah here we are we're we're doing everything and we're rehabbing dogs it's because it's just show so yeah well show it with no you know don't show with the pinch collar because that might look bad and we don't really care anyway because we're going to euthanize you know we have to euthanize them anyway so it's better euthanize a dog with a behavior issue you know and we couldn't fix it well we tried you know so i know that sounds a little skeptical but i honestly believe that's that's where we're at we're not because if you fix the dog where's he going there's still not enough there's still not enough space and um so but like the your your idea again going back to that idea of a dog trainer having their demo dog and and that hits home for me because as a malina breeder it's pretty much i wouldn't say daily but at least a weekly thing somebody's going to be hey i need i need a puppy or a little bit of kind of younger dog it's going to be my demo dog for my business that that's comes so so frequently um the same thing would be well i'm going to this dog training school and i need the malina to learn with and it's like it would be so much cooler and and

really like you're doing something so cool getting a dog from the shelter and going through this route with yeah i mean i would love to have a patosha dog you know that would be so much overkill for me i'm not dog sports and you know so that would be overkill for me but oh my god it's like the amount of one and two year old malinois that show up in the in the shelters fantastic awesome dogs that show up routinely i could get three probably right now at any of the shelters around here literally just walk in like i can't go on to pet harbor because i can't see it because like you know there's only so many dogs i can i can have but i know that if i go there i'm going to play with the dog like that's cool dog okay right may not it's going to have a different per i can't tell you what the dog's going to be like that's one of the cool things about these dogs they're so different from each other well anyway that's another topic but um yeah i don't see how more trainers aren't just walking and getting it getting it and uh hopefully we we gave some ideas to people because that's like a like i totally i i and um when i'm thinking and most people that kind of follow me and know about me they they either know me as the defending electric shock colors or high level competition trainer or in some of them i'm animal abuser and whatever but i have a i have a pet training business for since like 2000 yeah i don't think i've ever done any demonstration with my competition dogs which will blow anybody's mind if they see me do something i mean they would absolutely blow their minds when you regardless where you are if you see this kind of level of training like in close up it's it's very different very different but it would never cross my mind to bring one of those dogs to demonstrate what i can do to get a client to come and and trust me with their dog because it's not about that well i well plenty of i i see it all the time and people like sometimes get reached out you know looking for a demo dog or this one's looking for i i thought this was going to be a demo but it didn't work out like well how could it not work out it's a malinois how you know whatever uh no i think uh well again i i think even if you don't want a demo dog go get a malinois out of a shelter and uh train it work with it and uh and just get it adopted just put it out there that's like a what a great business card you know who wants to see the typical pet uh trainer ad nobody but if you're putting out a dog for adoption that you just adopted from the shelter you know you're

going to get shares someone's going to share that video please share the video so i mean i'm not telling anyone how to market their business because i'm not a dog but i need some marketing and it's brilliant i mean i i totally totally i i because i just a lot of people i yeah i just know what happened to me like i could train dog i could professionally train dogs and get enough business uh just because of what i do and i thought well geez if i ever did that i know i know the direction i'd go with it uh and then you're doing something good and uh and even if you don't do that just i i think that it's i think this idea that these shelter dogs are broken is is so exaggerated and i think it's exaggerated because the average train most dog trainers are subpar so it's a lot easier to say oh the dog was broken you know it's shelter dog and the dog was broken a really good trainer is going to be fine with the overwhelming vast majority of dogs from a shelter a poor trainer yeah well okay that that dog is broken so i think that's what what fuels the narrative a lot of bad trainers who just it's easier to blame the dog uh because the dogs that i i i don't i don't i'm not screening dogs for the most part i go to a shelter if i've got space the dog's going to come home with me and i i am not having issues with the vast overwhelming majority of dogs just walk in and they're and they're just like okay yeah you're gonna take a dog hey freya as she has freya's digging holes uh as uh uh so i think that's over i think it's overstated and i think the other thing that happens is there's a bias you know that that that that crazy story you know that that that story of a of a of a shelter dog that did this or that you know something bad happened those stick out those stick out in their mind but all of the boring stories that i have well i got this dog from the shelter he was awesome got adopted he's having a wonderful life okay that doesn't resonate there's no there's nothing interesting about that but that story is over and over and over and over again and then yeah there's the other crazy stories like even tina you know tina is an exception it's such an exception and the only reason maybe we should talk about tina a little by the way guys is the the little black dog that i'm i'm sure even by name you know her but she she will she's like one of my high high like like the the most problematic child probably and and in terms not of killing people or or anything like that but just having just demons in her head for a long time like extremosities and you know anybody that hasn't

seen the videos of her um highly recommend them they're there on youtube but yeah the only reason that you saw tina uh is because she was a dog that was completely different from anything i'd seen up up to that point and to this and and to this day and so i was at a loss when i met this dog to figure out what am i looking at in this insanity that i'm seeing i couldn't so i sent it i sent a little video that i had and we put it to crazy train and i sent it to ivan and and other trainers to say tell me you know what what what do i see here happening so i want to make sure that people understand that you know tina is not the typical shelter dog she's the exception in the unusual exception because i don't want to perpetuate this this myth of broken shelter dogs but but but tina is that broken shelter dog you know one that one in probably a hundred that really is broken and the only reason why you have that dog is because i sent up there's something with this dog and i sent it to you for that for that purpose so going back to tina i met tina uh i was evaluating other dogs and somebody came to me and she begged me to go meet this dog and she had uh that and i so she said so i said okay i'll go i'll go meet tina we were at the shelter and uh so we went to go meet tina and uh i said okay let's go to the play yard oh no we can't go to the play yard with this one it's she's she's a problem we have to go to the to this other area you know away from the shelter because she's just nuts and uh tina so we get tina out of there she's bouncing off the walls and her eyes are darting all over the place and she's licking her lip licking the and looking the lights and just so i i've never quite seen that before anyway she takes us on our a little walk a run to this special tina's special place and tina goes charging into the sawgrass after she gets there and just starts tearing at at the saw the weeds and the bushes and she's just going but it's not playing it's anger and frustration multiplied by 500. yeah yeah it was i'd never seen it i saw i'm like what am i what am i seeing here and that's when i sent it to you i never expected your reply and i never expected to say uh uh i'll take you know you asked a couple questions how old whatever it was um i'll take the dog i i i i almost fell off my chair at the time and i said okay so whatever we had to we had to arrange it and um it's a beautiful story her story it's actually a beautiful story of of i didn't know like i didn't know um the the the reason i took her it was very much the same reason as you were puzzled and i saw

something very very extremely disturbing in her and then there was that question i i didn't recognize disturbing uh until i had her in the car until i picked her up at the shelter and i put her in the car and i i didn't want to put her in a kennel in the car because i was afraid i wouldn't be able to get her out of the kennel when i got to you in tampa four hours away i'm buckle her into a harness because i do not want to be faced with trying to get this dog out of it out of a kennel so i buckled her into the back into a harness in the back seat and we began our journey and it didn't take long for her to step on the on the buckle and for me to have a loose tina in my car it happened multiple times and she was bouncing off the walls every time a truck came by anything came by and she was absolutely possessed i think is the best word like i don't think people under people i don't think people understand how crazy this dog was and that's when i realized it when i was driving over to you i i thought what have i done no you when you when you when you came in you were like i'm ready to take her back and and put her down because i i don't see what else we should do with her no no what i said to you guys what i said to you i said i said i said of course all right i had a conversation with myself the entire way i said okay um there's no way he's going to take this dog like the look in her eyes she was absolutely crazy i felt horrible for this dog i said there's no way this guy and i didn't know who i didn't really know who you were since i didn't do sports and things like that so i'm driving this dog and i'm thinking this is a problem there's no way he's going to take this dog i just committed to this dog to get this dog out i cannot go back to the shelter with this dog because it'll be euthanized or it'll be stuck in the shelter and i will not going to put this dog back into that shelter to live in the conditions that it did for any longer because that dog was suffering in that condition i am not capable of handling this dog at that time at that time i was not capable of handling that dog at this time and i said and nobody had adopted that dog so that dog's time was running out there was no rescue who was going to take the dog nobody wanted to adopt the dog i couldn't handle and so it's the first time i thought i think i have a choice to make with this if he doesn't take it what am i going to do am i going to euthanize it there am i gonna what am i going to do and that was really it was that was really a watershed moment for me to you know to

try and help a dog and then realize holy i'm over my head deep and uh so i said i went there and we i finally dropped the dog we i get to you and i said i said look i now i kind of understand what i'm looking at now having spent four hours with the dog but i said if you can't work with this dog i will come back in two weeks and i will euthanize her myself and you said she's not dangerous i think she's going to be okay my heart i just oh what a relief what a relief i drive home i think oh boy i don't think i'm going to see that i don't know what's going to happen here the next day you're on like well i got this dog this is a problem and i'm like wow son of a he put that right out there right like right away the next day like didn't hide it said i got this thought i don't know what we're gonna do but let's figure it out it was a uh an emotional roller coaster for me too because i i was genuinely very sad for her then as a trainer i was like okay this is a challenge but there are some moral and there's some there's some ethical decisions here to be made like we like where are we going you know what what really can be done and how far i want to go before we real like it was a toss-up in all along it was a toss-up yeah you were pretty clear about that you know that like can i fix it what i'm you know like this was this was this was never you never looked at that and said oh yeah i've got this taken care of um you were in all your early videos you were pretty much like like figuring it out like okay how we figuring out the puzzle that's uh you know i i i i've heard you use that expression like i tell you like for for everybody listening because even though they have some some of you guys have seen videos of like i the first few days or week i i was just trying to see what do i have i mean what what is going on i mean it was like a it's totally insane so here i am in my training room she's off leash and she is just licking the floor and i have a big training room and she's just licking it in in this like i've never seen obsessive compulsive behavior like this then going through the walls then all of a sudden realizing the defense are going and making shadows and then it was raining so outside she's just attacking like anything there was a no none of the behaviors was even goal oriented in any way and as i'm making the video i'm like okay she she has to i mean she has to just somehow wear herself out and stop and stop and as i'm filming there is a timer right and i'm watching and i'm like okay we're 50 minutes

on this madness i have to stop her um and that happened in few situations just to just to for me to understand that the depth of of possession that she she she it was really really really really just scary sad you are bringing back memories of that drive that four hour drive to tampa it was the worst thing i ever did i thought what have i done what have i done and i got this dog in my and and that's exactly what she was doing looking up at the looking up at all the lights that are that are flashing by and with these bug eyes in her head and i'm like holy cow and she's just bouncing off the walls you know as i'm driving you know i say i don't know how people i want to say you know how people drop dogs into the into these everglades but i'm telling you that dog had me like bananas as she was breaking loose and was going crazy like i could see it i you know couldn't see it but i could almost see like holy cow this is four hours of this to you that's i realized wow what what a terrible mistake i've made i am i am so over my head uh on this dog and uh and and and like to think that i i have to am i gonna have to euthanize this dog probably you know it's probably it's probably the right thing to do because i couldn't see myself addressing that and what i so i don't know if i don't fast forward but when i saw you with her several months later and i thought what he what holy cow that's what i said okay i want to know what everything that guy knows whatever whatever he did to to make her to fix this or to manage that i want to know i mean i was that's when i became uh one of your biggest fans when i saw what you did to that dog if people only knew if people only saw what i saw or you saw like you can explain it to them but until you've been there um i've never seen a dog like that to this day i never saw him before yeah i'm i'm kind of i i don't wanna i feel like i'm ready to take on something similar like her although i don't even think there is gonna be ever anything like her that that's just extreme i i i've never seen another tina i i've never i i i've seen a lot of dogs there's there's i've seen dogs that look like her but um i haven't seen a problem dog look what i see aggressive dogs you know that's something i'd like to i'd like to do better with a really aggressive dog but i don't know if there's you know what the problem with aggressive dogs are there's too many good dogs there's too many good dogs that need help um that you could spend some time doing some just like basic training and get adopted and then to invest time into this is you

know there's tough decisions in in rescue like you almost have to just let them go you almost have to let the aggressive ones go because there's just not enough adopters yes that's that's what i'm saying that's that's the heartbreaking part of of what you're doing and what anybody in in this area of work is going through it's it's this that their decisions to be made daily and and a lot of times those decisions are really heartbreaking i i've seen you know i've seen i i thought i had a dog almost adopted and then then the dog freaked out and uh they were they were getting ready to spare spare neuter it or something and the dog i don't know the day before just went after some went after one of the one of the vets or something vet techs or something like that and i had to tell the person hey look this is what happened and the person backed out and the shelter was like listen we think we're going to put the dog down he's asleep right now and uh you know a lot of a lot of the almost with all behavior problems the the unfortunate thing is that um it's always just a little bit too late by the time the pet owner realizes that they need help they have let it go for too long which makes it in some cases very very difficult to to make that change uh uh if if pet owners were just a little more more acting a little more untimely manner a lot of problems can be stopped like really controlled but uh by the time somebody says okay well i have a problem and and you start to gather the history of the dog and the history is going for not for a month not for six months but for three years and it's progressively going to the point to where now now where where are we going um i i wish that pet people you know can recognize those a little sooner but that's just a wishful thinking that that just never will happen head owners the average pet owner is the the average pet owner is so poor is so bad at understanding dogs it it's absolutely shocking and the average adopter is just it's just idiotic what happens and it's heartbreaking because you'll you'll hear about a dog that got adopted a malinois that got adopted and just something stupid happens they do something dumb the dog nips them and the dog goes back to the shelter and gets euthanized just you know oh i i just i don't know i i reached into the to the you know so they just get the dog home from the shelter the dog is on edge doesn't know what's going on and was well the dog was hiding in his crate and i reached in and i i grabbed this collar to pull him out you know it's like do dumb things and also the dog

will turn around and nip them well the dog's aggressive like on the day that the dog got home and they'll reach in they'll grab the collar they'll do something dumb and then boom it's a death sentence for the dog and they'll just do stuff like that oh well the dog's aggressive just like i think another you know one second i mean alexa turn on gazebo lights that's there we go i was gonna think we gotta stop the podcast beautiful so another interesting problem with with this whole adoption process is the most often than not the shelters are like okay they they there is this facade i i wouldn't say it's for say i mean they are truly trying to scan and and see if the home is they're trying to get the dogs the shelter the municipal shelter they are trying to get the dog exactly that that's it now the rescues are different the rest even in the shelter even even though they they seem like they're very strict and they're making sure that the dog's gonna be you know that that the the owners are capable and so on they do a very poor job of giving some help and some instruction of how to handle any dog regardless of good or bad or how big of a problem or no problems what do you do in the first week or two weeks or a month when the dog comes from shelter environment to your house if i had a business or you know one of the things they should do every dog every dog should have uh a dog collar with a telephone number on it and there should just be one business out there and their specialty is helping you know when you're having a problem with the dog because most of the problems you see are just they're just they're they're they just happen over and over again so you need a hotline hey this is what ha you know this is what happened uh and so that and then real trainers are on the other end really helping you to keep that dog one of the things that i do and i is is when a dog gets adopted whether from the shelter or the rescue is and i'm i'm involved with the dog is people message me all the time oh i had this issue like you know i had a guy called me the next day after he got a dog he's like oh this dog has been crazy he was barking all night and i you know and every time the dog barked i went in there you know i gave it a treat and then it shut up for a little while and i'd go back to bed and he start barking again so i'd go in i'd give it another treat i was like all right well congratulations you just trained the dog how to bark and call you because and like this is what they're you know so this is what they're doing okay you gotta say okay stop doing that you're teaching this dog you're

rewarding this dog uh uh you know bark i'm coming i'm gonna give you a treat that's what you just train the dog to do not to be quiet yeah no no you know like the definitely some kind of lifeline can be of of of very very helpful very very helpful um but i'll tell you sometimes i when when i am just need to check out and and just for entertainment purposes i would go on social media or youtube and i would watch some of those hotlines and ask me anything kind of trainers that start just so bluntly just giving advice and and most of the time is the the worst advice possible only to demonstrate their knowledge and and maybe follow certain narratives of being balanced being force free whichever camp they are but but some of the advice and some of the those those people i find extremely dangerous because illiterary for me it's like okay i'm having this crystal ball and you're asking me a question i'm gonna tell you exactly how dangerous your dog is and how you suck or it's like no like this is such a dangerous uh uh advice and and you're dealing with people that really are calling for help and you have zero information you're just sucking from your fingers something to to make yourself really big expert of dog training so there is a danger of those things and i i watch them just for really sometimes it's just very entertaining when i'm not looking at it as from from that point of view of the person that needs the help because the help that is provided it's really there is no help it's about me being i know everything and i'm going to tell you before you even ask the the whole question i'm going to tell you how wrong you are or or what you should do and it's just as bad as the dog going to the veterinarian and it's like oh yeah let's put him on fluoxetine let's let's psychotropics because he's a bad dog anyway i don't know it's a tough one but uh if there was a uh if there was a person that would that would do this kind of lifeline that it's not about them looking good but actually sincerely trying to help and not following an agenda and say well no you've been training it because you're using thing is you're going to end up with if you're dealing with the municipal if you're dealing with a municipal shelter and politics and uh people vote and you're going to end up with probably you're going to end up with uh force free i mean that's but even the other way around jim i mean even it's like oh no you need structure and let's just hammer him and let's just show him who's who it's like how do you know just because somebody's telling you something you

cannot take this for face value and just all of a sudden write a whole prescription up this cannot be more wrong i think the value of trainers is underestimated is completely underestimated and unappreciated by the average individual this has to change you know and i this has to change i grew up you know i grew up in the 1970s we didn't you know i guess we were sort of uh uh lower middle class nobody had trainers you had a dog it was good or bad it went to the it just went to the shelter or it didn't or it was just the bad you know the the only trainers you know lassie you know a tv a dog on on tv they lassie might have a trainer but that was like so out of out of out of this world that someone can train a dog to even sit her down it was just around it has to get to another level where people have to appreciate what trainers are actually capable of doing a good trainer what a good trainer is capable of doing and there are too many bad trainers that i think are giving the good trainers like like a like a guy like dylan jones who's next level there are too many average mediocre and nobody can tell it's hard for the average individual to tell the difference between that average mediocre low you know pet smart trainer to another you know the pet owner can't tell so one of the things that i'm trying to do is spotlight like exceptional trainers uh so that's i think it's so important for this breed so one of the things i want to do is find really good trainers and meet them and videotape them with the dogs like i did something recently with a guy eric good i'd heard about i'd heard about eric good i said oh who is this guy looked into him a little bit and he trains for the fort lauderdale uh uh police department so i reached out to eric i said eric i'd have to meet you talk to you a little bit take some video so i made a video you know these are exceptional dog malinois are exceptional dog they need an exceptional trainer boom and i so to to i get to promote other trainers because i don't care i'm not competing with anybody i'm not doing any any uh i just want what's right for this breed and for this dog so i get to do stuff that other trainers you know everyone's trying to you know promote themselves i don't have to promote myself at all but i can promote others who are out there no no that's super cool i i you know i'm kind of laughing a little bit because uh you surprised the hell out of me with one of the videos uh because of course i've watched your videos and i share whenever i i run into

something to to try to help out but but there was one you actually had bambino doing ring sport with with your rescue dogs oh yeah yeah i mean he's like top of the top of the line decoy and this is a this is an exact example that people have the ability to have a guy like bambino uh downright uh uh uh uh downright uh i'm sorry i forgot bambino i forgot uh downright all right it'll come to me uh people have a chance he's right in my backyard the people around here could train with that guy like that's phenomenal okay and they don't know or they go to the pet smart or they or they go to the pet smart they don't know the difference they don't know who bambino is and but and they don't know who the pet smart is so what do they know so if i can promote somebody like bambino or eric good or my friend john narditzky or any of these trainers and and a lot of these guys help me too you know no but like i i mean for example he's like my go-to decoy when i'm doing ring sport in fact he's like we have a bunch of sessions already scheduled for for like december and whatever and and then to see you playing with your dogs with with the high of the highest level expert trainers in doing this stuff it's just so cool to see it was i i cannot even imagine how i didn't even message you on this one and he was great you know bam and he's the reason because i had so i had that dog storm that came out of miami was just a super solid strong drivey dog and you actually played with storm when i when i came to one of your uh sessions you played with storm at because storm i believe i said this dog can be this dog can be a police canine i i like and that that's a dream for i think any one of these rescue dogs too and uh but i needed to promote him a little bit so i knew bambino i could i could take this dog over to bambino and so bambino did a session with uh storm just phenomenal it just was phenomenal look it was such a cool video so i posted that video and uh uh and uh t uh uh tj dobbins over alpha he saw the video there was one where the doctor went in boom fell and rolled over jumped up came back in again and tj saw that he's like i'll take that dog so he went up to ohio trained to become a police canine and today is a canine in indiana and that was because of bambino i mean him and kim you know i mean very cool people and and not just them it's just anybody that it's in this high level sport training it kind of goes both ways i mean i admire that you seek this kind of knowledge and and you get excited because it's it's definitely exciting but also for this type of people that are

literally i mean they're like the high-end sport like really really they know their craft coming down and saying oh sure i'm gonna do some cool stuff with jim and his rescue i mean that's admirable you know absolutely you know that's uh if there's a secret that i i mean if there's a secret that i have it's not that i'm a good dog trainer or great at rescue or anything like that it's that uh i'm humbled enough to say to anybody i have no idea can you help me and all these guys like eric good or or uh john narditzky or bambino or you uh boom come right up and say yeah i'll help you out here you know so then then if i can promote and so i like to in the video say okay this is such and such trainer you know because i would love nothing better that the people who i respect because i'm only going to people who i respect who i think are really good so then i get a chance to promote their you know to help promote them and i hope they get some business from helping me and i so that's another thing i'd like to continue to do to meet exceptional trainers highlight them because these dogs need exceptional trainers and not your typical run-of-the-mill they need re so that's the sport trainers the protection in my eyes it's really silly it's very very simple to to to see high quality training and proven trainer versus somebody that has tons of followers and likes and they're doing it for the wrong reason you know very much for the wrong reason uh but there is a huge confusion it's incredible the confusion of how people are totally lost of who is who and somehow you're managing this they have no way you're managing this you you are really on the right track of of whatever you're doing research or it's intuition or whatever it is but but you're you're making good choices you know yeah well it's uh yeah yeah i mean here i am like i i said relatively new in the dog sport world but i've gotten to be guys like you and bambino and all these guys like mike lorraine just people who are just the just the best in florida and around and that's been super cool to be able to do that um because of this special breed uh you know that i've been just i just dumb dumb luck sort of fell into whatever it is that i do be nice to to just all of us collaborate and not fight about stupid oh prong color is bad no this is whatever like like yeah uh yeah uh i i you know and i try to keep my head i try not to get involved with the politics and the rescues the or the back and forth i just do my own thing and um you know i'll use my prong

collars i'll do what i'll use i'll do what i think is right i'm not afraid to show anything thing ground that and and nobody but i i about the dog in front nobody but i i've but i also realize i'm fortunate because i have a different outside business that you know job that pays me so nobody nobody owns me i don't can't no one can go ahead shut me down shut my facebook okay you know you're not gonna no one can do anything to me so i'm just gonna keep you know but i don't have a big following or you know some you know but uh i i no rescues um you know i tell you one thing i i do want to touch upon is anything that i do is so much of it is because of the rescues like sylvia uh like mad rescue like abmr all of these rescues are really that what does the heavy lifting um in in most of this so i would say to anybody you know the easiest thing to do is hey fill out a foster application with any of these organizations big cyprus german german shepherd uh rescue in uh in naples or sylvia or mad rescue uh and there's tons of other great rescues all over the place foster a dog that's super easy to do they pay for the medicals they uh um they'll find an adopter you know and train the dog and you so you got to foster it you know get a malinois i think that's a good way to to to even wrap up our conversation like the message really is help one dog in in any way you think you can but you can for sure there is something you can do to help one dog and maybe you will like it maybe you will not but imagine if everybody helps one dog will you help one dog you spend a few weeks or a couple of months with one dog you have given that dog another 10 15 years of an amazing life because you took a few weeks a couple of weeks ago then some like i i know there are dogs all over the place that are living lives because i took them for a couple of weeks and i had a great time with them and then when that dog leaves all right you're gonna you're gonna tear up it's gonna be sad but within a couple of weeks that dog is already bonded to the next person and you're gonna go meet that dog and the dog's like sorry i'm with him that happened to me and that was that was really a relief i always thought oh my god these dogs i'm the only person who can take this dog as part of my fan no they move on and then they click to the next guy and then i had a dog i wheeled out of miami day with broken legs after it was hit by a car took care of this dog lived in my house for months and months took him to the vet live with my i went to see that i met that dog six months later

that dog didn't want anything to do with me it was like i'm with this family now and i thought that was beautiful it really did uh because i'm like okay i feel better about all those other dogs that i worried about i think we wrap this up i wanna i wanna really i i i don't know i i really admire your passion and and just who you are as a person for the dogs thank you thank you the only reason that i wanted to to have the conversation and and hopefully your story inspires people and hopefully as i said everybody helps one dog at one point in their life the the what you get back from this it's it's something very special and and i think you you drove that point tonight so um thank you uh thank you uh i i i wondered if i was had 20 minutes of stuff to say so i'm a little surprised my friend hopefully i see you uh for everything and i hope so and i would have loved to do some but i would have loved to come up because uh you you've created a very special place over in your uh at your uh doors open always you got it all right my friend take care cheers all right bye bye you