에피소드 14: Michael Shikashio

with different rescues and anybody who's done a lot of that knows that the uh rescues end up sending you more and more difficult fosters if you start getting known as like the home that can deal with that and you're sustaining all of those fosters so uh i saw i saw though a real need for the dogs that have behavior issues because most of them as you might know get surrendered or given up on or face worse outcomes uh because they can't they don't have the help they need and there's not at that time even and still now but even then was there was just not a lot of information about aggression and that was something that i started to see more and more of i thought what a better way to help these dogs than to learn about aggression and behavior so i kind of jumped headfirst into that which got me into training and you know one thing led to another it was just more and more training and then like you um natural progression you start working with you know more and more clients and then you start teaching other trainers and then you keep going and you know you have a school and you know it's just it just balloons from there but it's always been the focus of aggression uh and that's always been my passion is is focusing on the behavior side of things and aggression and um and i haven't really branched too far out from that honestly uh people ask me you know you like dog sports or nose work or any of that stuff you know i dabble but i don't i am nowhere near that is not my um my focus at all so and that's that's probably not a bad thing especially like i feel that i'm spilling myself all over the place and and i'm sure you you are running out of time and i i am running out of time this is like finding time is probably one of the the hardest things for me um so since you started did you did you actually end up keeping any of the foster dogs because that's kind of normally what happens the most difficult dogs end up not going anywhere but staying with us right yes definitely definitely i had a couple of them uh dobermans um you know it's funny though i started out in lab rescue doing a lot of labrador retrievers and you know they you get all kinds of mixes of labs of course everybody everybody thinks it's a lab but it's something else uh but but they had um you know i started getting a lot of other rescues that wanted to that started reaching out to me so just started getting a little bit in dobermans you know i've always loved dobies so um yeah had a couple dobie fosters that ended up being mine um another little minpin pug mix four things yes uh that

my ex-wife that was my ex-wife's idea though at the time uh and she she landed in the right home because she was um a terrible dog when we first got her she was about 14 weeks old when my ex-wife brought her home and the first thing first thing she did was she you know i had this yellow lab at the time sweet just think the sweetest old girl you can imagine for a yellow lab just couldn't hurt anybody but she spots my lab so she gets in the home she's like huh that looks interesting so she charges over latches onto her ear and would not let go full-on bite hold shake from this little 14 week old minpin pug mix of course so you know clearly a lot of other homes would have been you know given given up but uh she ended up in the right home so we worked with her and she ended up she's actually still alive today um she's um i think close to 15 now that's the thing with the little dogs they they go forever it's a good yeah it's yeah interesting because i have similar i have um i had a but it was a yorkie and eventually at 13 he died from some weird out immune disease that um you know but but they were brother and sister and he was beating up on the sister and the owner you know they they went to um uh animal behavior is like a certified and and started it was it was just too young um like six month old puppy and and in my opinion was a little bit too young to be put on any psychotropic medication at the time um it ended up coming to me for training and i fell in love and i was like how do we convince this woman to to let me have the dog since she has already the sister and he's the bad boy so to speak you know and uh somehow we convinced her and i ended up with him um it's one of the dogs that i it has a special place in my heart there um so you you're in a one of the i should say like uh you know a unique place in in the force-free world and especially with the niche that you have and um you know obviously there is there is some pressure because everybody looks up to you um and of course we we all can be wrong sometimes but um i think we come from a different different i don't know if different camps is the right word but you know we i'm i'm sure we're gonna find a lot of things in common and we're gonna find things that maybe we will have different views on as we have the conversation um how how do you feel with the being in that position and and i'm sure every dog trainer every person that does anything with dogs at some point doesn't deliver and and like how how do you how do you go about situations like this or have you had even this

yeah it's an interesting question because you know i never would have if you asked me even 10 years ago um you know i that i'd be teaching other trainers or traveling around the world doing workshops and speaking at conferences i was like i would have said no way there's that's just not me it's not what i want to be i like helping the dogs uh but then of course the realization comes to you that the best way to help more dogs is to educate more people about how to help dogs so if you really want to reach out and and help a lot of dogs then teach all the people that are working with dogs as best you can especially with aggression issues so um yeah i never would have thought that it would have kind of amounted to where i'm at now and you know it's interesting that i mean definitely you have a very very unique position in in yeah and it's come through several different channels i think um i you know i was president of the i double abc for about five years so i think that sort of helped not only my career but helped me understand sort of the politics of dog training and um you know how to navigate conversations in a uh in a you know non-confrontational way yes uh in my previous career as well so i think i've had some benefits to uh help me where i am now and how i can educate others but also do in a way that's uh not creating more divisiveness because i'm sure you agree we see plenty of that in our industry so i wanted to really focus on let's let's try not to have that divisiveness i mean it's a it's a small enough community as it is uh that we don't need all this fighting with each other as we especially now we're seeing it so so much with social media uh but i think being in a position also comes with responsibilities right and one of the responsibilities i took on is to say how can i how can i build more bridges rather than tear them down uh in this industry and i think that's very important um so i actually don't i actually you know people put me into certain camps you know believe it or not people actually think i'm a balance trainer sometimes you know i don't but i actually don't put myself into either camp i never if somebody says you know what kind of trainer are you i never actually describe myself as force-free or balanced i just say i'm a trainer i'm a dog trainer and i think that's helpful to you know bridge some of that divide because you get as you know i've been i'm sure you know you see these extremes on either either end right of either camp or even in the middle sometimes you see these extremes that are very damaging to our industry so

yeah um yeah interesting good philosophical question to start the conversation with um like um i wish i wish this is not the way it is with with the that's very strong divide between us um and and there is i don't know if it's similar to just everyday politics in the world but um um sometimes i feel that you know we we get flooded with the two extremes and most people in the middle actually are perfectly okay to be in the middle but um the the very strong opinions on the two sides are trying to pull everybody not to stay in the middle which i don't know if i'm right or wrong though that's a that's just my opinion to it um i i believe that we should be able to talk like just like how we are talking right now i know we will disagree on things and that's totally okay and i think we as long as we like what i hope that i get out of this conversation and and my audience and hopefully people that listen to you is to hear each other different points of views and and not necessarily agree but just understand what's the other people um view on certain things and i think it's a the right thing to do and for some reason it's very hard to to for us to come together and have this kind conversation or even um like i don't i don't know like i'm sure we like i've had i had uh simon gabois i had i've had some people but i never really wanted to ask difficult questions simply because i i in some ways i really like the conversations and i want us to keep going and and you know like for example if we end up banning electric color then we burn electric color do i agree with it i i have my opinion i wouldn't agree we can break this down but but for us not to talk about this important issues directly with each other and like like really discussing and and not not fighting very respectful conversations and going the roundabouts um it just doesn't make sense everybody like i think we get so uptight and and um them yeah it's it's just like extreme extreme views i in anything them are not productive and um yeah it's an interesting one yeah yeah extremism is is kind of never a good thing really i mean and we see it and i think you you made a good point there about how you have you know again if we were to just create like this line where you know you have one side that's very focused on one type of training method the other side's completely against that right and you have those extremes they are trying to pull from the middle and the reason why i see it is because they need backup they need somebody to to sort of um continue arguing their message for them um and to agree with them

or to like their posts or to share their their comments and things like that and unfortunately a lot of times those people get a lot of attention because what they're saying is you know it it brings out emotions in people and it brings out lots of comments and you know shares and people start talking about it so it becomes news in our industry in our little industry here and uh and that's unfortunate because that's what gets people's attention it's like the argument of the week then it happens on either extreme i see it happen you know whether it's balanced or force free trainers um either doing it to each other or doing it to the other um you know the other end of the extreme and it's uh that's unfortunate because really when you look at the vast majority of trainers they are actually kind of somewhere in that middle area they don't want to actually fight they just want to have they just want to go out and train dogs they want to have a good time they want to have good conversations they don't want to jump into this extremism and if we put everybody including the the extreme sides i think we all try to do the best we think we are doing for the dogs like i have no doubts in my mind that no no matter on which extreme side and and who is in the middle i think most of the people have the the heart in the right place so to speak um there is certain people that you know it's clearly marketing and and money above anything else but that's that's just human nature that's normal but i think all of us are really the majority of dog trainers are really here for the right reasons trying to trying to help dogs and at the same time learn to be better doing it um and that that's where the conversation yeah absolutely i mean and you'll you don't see i mean the extremes again are i think you're right i mean nobody gets in this at least in the right mind saying you know i want to go and hurt dogs i mean it's terrible all around and it's a terrible business model but it's also obviously questionable from um you know ethics standpoint and all the other things that we can think about when it comes to harming animals but nobody jumps into it for that and that unfortunately sometimes people will jump onto that this evil person or this person's doing these awful things to animals when they see a particular tool or technique or something like that but nobody starts out like that they they're just meaning well for the animals you know including myself you know i was uh i guess you would consider if you were to label it a crossover trainer you know

so i started out wrong collars e-collars choke chains uh when i first started out and i wasn't jumping in saying i want to jump in and hurt all these foster dogs right and it's just uh it's sad that um you know sometimes that's that accusations there uh because it's really not the case i mean there are of course those extreme examples of somebody that is abusing animals or but that's so far and few between you know on either side you can see uh you know trainers in certain methods hoarding animals are doing awful things in the name of you know and not using any of those tools but they're doing other really terrible things from a quality of life standpoint yeah very true yeah it's a good good points um uh yeah the the crossover trainer that's uh i think it's also one of the typical things again on both sides um uh trainers will say well yeah i used to be force free i used to be all positive but it didn't work out for me i needed to have results and i went this way and the other way around uh my opinion my take on this is that i have no doubt that i i i've been training dogs for for more than 40 years um i know you i know one of your people you look up to and you learn from was uh trish king i i was at a time in um that was way before gene donaldson came to the san francisco spca but i i worked there for about five years and it was very exciting time this was like early 90s and she was inviting in napa all these trainers from from uk and from like i i mean we somehow got exposed to to everything that was coming up that whole wave of of you know like it was just super super interesting and motivating and motivating for everybody um where i'm going with this though is the um i kind of sidetracked like like when we say that it's a i'm crossover trainer i somehow believe that it's unfair to say that something all together as a package is not working and that probably we're just learning from not the right person or learning very specific approach that that doesn't expand and doesn't lead to to more opportunities and options and we don't understand them and i'm not talking i i'm very sincerely talking about uh every side of this uh position um because i don't know like i don't know how much you actually know about me and if you've seen any but i'm i mean i i'm very good at shaping i'm extremely good at and a lot of different kind of dog training and i i would say that i am very familiar and i stay up to date probably more than most apd team members combined like the member community like i that's all i do i'm

interested in dog training and and i'm interested in all sides of those training because ultimately i want to know that if i'm failing and i'm doing everything i can is there something else that i can do and and and then cost and benefit of course and welfare where we draw the lines um but that's that's just how i i think of when we talk about the crossover trainers like um i'm interesting like so when you when you started you you basically went the traditional route like most people and and eventually you you found the the force free and i mean it was 20 years ago yeah it was all still kind of the it was probably a little bit earlier than the big wave when when it was just yeah if we went all crazy i mean me included i mean seriously we were like wow this is just this is it you know and it's just this is it you know and i mean it's just this is it you know and i mean it's just this is it um there was there was a point where it's like okay can we do everything one way yes we can most of the time as far as how much effort and time is spent it's also should be taken under consideration and i'm not um and for some reason and i don't know how this happened but we started to divide more and more and more instead of okay well this is all very good stuff how can we all incorporate the best of all sides and make the ultimate training understanding training um and i don't think this is happening anytime soon if ever which is super sad like i'm honestly very sad that this is where we are and and just because everybody is even afraid to talk about it and yes they're difficult questions they're difficult conversations but if we don't have them we we stay in our bubble and that bubble can expand and expand but we still stay in that bubble um yeah like i i don't know yeah there's there's lots of good points you make because you know i agree i mean it's it's sad what's happening now i think you know fast forward to today it's because of social media and just how fast information spreads and how fast conversations spread to rumors accusations arguments conflicts spread very quickly in in our world now i mean overnight i mean it's hard to keep up sometimes right and uh versus you know you're going back 20 40 years ago you know you in sort of in the uh it's interesting to talk about california too because it is kind of the silicon valley of the dog training world when you think about uh san francisco marin um and all those areas where it was really amazing the time i'm sure i wish i could go back that and

and experience that because there's so many good trainers came out of that area and uh it's there's so so much happening i mean so many advances in just the dog training terminology and techniques came out of that area of the country so so and it's still a very special area there's still lots of talent uh in that location but yeah it's it's definitely think about the old days you know you would you would transfer information you'd have to read a book you'd actually have to sit down and digest 100 pages 200 pages of a book and not go on social media and see you think you know it all after watching 10 instagram videos right or somebody's tiktok videos you get these trainers now they're getting most of their education from quick little 30 second one minute video clips and they're never getting the full picture and included in that is all of the politics and the messaging of the politics and uh trainers actually building their whole brand from the politics of it and that's unfortunate you know and that's but that's the how the algorithms work that's how the culture works right now they're surrounded they're creating their own unique cultures that are bolstered by likes and shares and all of the follows that continues to reinforce them so they can the positive reinforcement from their own messaging so they think their messaging is beneficial working truthful powerful and the only thing that it really is is the powerful aspect in the sense is it's it's really tearing down bridges um especially in the younger generation right we see it in the much younger trainers coming up maybe they've been training two or three years they jump into the politics of it and so you see this this dichotomy of of you know the shifts just the further divide happening because they they just want to keep winning their arguments as you know yes as one would do as a 20 or 20 year old as i've been there before too uh but now unfortunately we don't know they don't they're not jumping into the books they're not putting in critical thought into what what they're saying you know at least we had even back then you've got things like yahoo groups you remember that there's a little bit more discussion versus you know quick comments at least you had to put a paragraph together back then now it's just like you keep your limit i wonder if those they have to be still existent i don't think anything goes away they're gone i wish i i would actually have a good time going back to look at my old comments and archives you know to see what i would said 20 years ago i probably would die i think a lot of people die laughing if

they read whatever 20 years ago but that's how it is you grow you change but yeah those those are the good days wow you took me away yes very interesting because this i i bet you those are they have to be like nothing goes away once it's on the internet it doesn't yeah they archived them i think they archived them but they gave everybody a chance to archive them but um i don't think you can actually access any of the old messages anymore they kind of you know as yahoo also true true fine i think they dumped all of it so so tell me with um yeah i have so many questions that it's it's very hard to even pick where to start like you you obviously found that you're successful without the use of aversive to a great extent since and and i i'm actually speculating here i'm not sure if you completely have abandoned the use of aversives or or that's still a possibility at some point yeah so it depends how you define aversives i think that you know so if we're talking about all aversives no i mean that's impossible to do right um and so we have to be realistic about yeah aversives are not only naturally occurring but also something a trainer might incorporate especially when it comes to an aggression case where it's dangerous right there's there's no avoiding some situations where an aversive has to be used to stop the behavior because your safety or somebody else's safety um is there um that being said though you know it's it's important to me when i'm working with aggression cases to really focus on the emotions the underlying uh what's happening inside the dog so to speak whereas you know many other cases you don't have the same potential for risks using aversives when we're looking at modifying the underlying reason or the motivation for the behavior so you know the difference between a dog jumping up on grandma that comes over the house just excited to see grandma you know there's emotions involved but it's generally not going to be fear-based or anxiety frustration all the typical issues that can function as a motivator for aggression so i'm very careful about what i'm doing with a dog when it comes to what's happening underneath the hood so to speak so because as you know you know the associations um can be easily dogs are really good about making associations with the oddest strangest thing sometimes you have to be careful they don't latch on to something in the environment that we're adding in to that context or that antecedent arrangement in which the dog starts to perceive that as part of the picture so it's not to say that that happens all

the time at all it's just there's a there is a risk of that so um so yeah so the question about aversives is is are they completely off the table for me no um and i don't think they'll they'll ever be and i think as somebody like yourself that's been around for a while you know you have it's not again we're talking about extremism right it's never good to go into that that hole of like i'm gonna never ever use aversives ever again in my life it's not realistic i really like that um and yeah it shouldn't it's not even just aggression i mean i i think any dog training we have to be very careful it's so easy to to just suppress and stop a dog from doing something does that mean we change the dog perception of that no does that mean that um it's not gonna uh regress and wake up again in certain times since we haven't really changed the perception of course most likely it will happen um but as you say sometimes it really is very much needed for for the safety of that dog and another dog or anybody around them to be able to stop it and when we you know the the i think the good thing about sometimes with the with those extreme cases again like just like you said dogs jumping on somebody or or a little puppy peeing on the carpet you know this like it's amazing that people still do stupid shitty things to puppies and dogs you know it's really it's amazing but that's it's changing but it's still there and i think i think that's just humans we you know sometimes we i don't know what why we act this way but when we when we talk about like extreme cases i think suppression is like we have two choices in my opinion or maybe uh let me back up we have three choices because we certainly can use medication um but if we if we decide to go all differential reinforcement and without stopping a behavior chances are that it's going to make it very difficult especially especially if we cannot pinpoint the triggers or we cannot control them then suppression is a very uh almost needed at that moment and interestingly enough that most likely is going to open the door to other behaviors that we can actually reinforce now so uh as as strange as it sounds like in my opinion sometimes suppression actually opens the door for good behavior to happen so we can reward them and and move on to um and that's sometimes my my uh struggle with the two extremes because it's like okay well no we're not going to suppress we're going to wait for this and it's going to happen and we're going to keep reinforcing or the other camp is going to be no we're not going to waste time with this we're just suppressing and if it

happens again we keep suppressing and ultimately as i just explained in most of the cases the answer is right in the middle because we need both options what's your take yeah i think it's important to and that's the that's the issue right it's it's when there's um there's not enough in in that in that trainer's options of what what to do if a b or c happens right so let's use an example maybe um a dog that's you're working with that has dog to human directed aggression issues and sometimes it's dog to handler aggression even if it's the owner or something like that um and it's got a strong history of reinforcement for doing that behavior so strong negative reinforcement contingency is happening with dogs biting the handler and whatever the handler was doing taking them to somewhere they don't want to or touching the dog and so whatever it is that's that the dog is doesn't want to happen so they bite and then you know so the tourist sense you know would be like okay just let the dog do it we never want to punish anything which is ridiculous when you think about it right so if a dog's latched onto your arm of course you're going to do something right and so uh putting a stop to that behavior could be doing something like i teach in my workshops in an emergency situation is a straight arm you know you get to have the dog unleash you put your arm you hold the dog out to your side straight on very classic defensive handling technique and you know it's interesting to me i actually had to navigate some of the politics of that because i'm you know a lot of trainers come to my workshops not just force free but i have you know trainers from all walks of life but i did have to preface that this is an emergency handling technique because it's you know it can look like all right what are they training as a showing as a training technique but you do get of course you know you can't avoid behavior change when you're doing an emergency technique so it's a perfect example of okay do we just go with i need to be force free and never punish or use any aversives or do i just let the dog latch onto my arm so it's obviously a kind of an extreme silly example but it's it shows you that there are times where when it comes to aggression we need to do things that actually stop the behavior you know just having the dog on leash as you know is is going to is kind of a management tool but there are elements sometimes we have behavior change that happens just by having the leash on so um yeah i think i think

it's important to understand when those techniques need to be used safely because the other argument you see is of course let's set the manager let's set the environment correctly if you set the environment correctly then we should have errorless learning right um but that's you know almost impossible for the average pet owner to do you feel right they can so we have to put them with those tools feel about errorless little learning i think it's a nice concept to strive towards and i think um understanding uh you know why we would want to do that is important you know to help to lower frustration and there's arguments of course about teaching dogs resiliency but let's side table that for now but just if we're looking at do we want to reduce frustration do we want to avoid extinguishing behavior which can lead to frustration and aggression um so i like it i just think just like anything else it requires critical thought of when to be doing that because what as you've seen i mean what we see sometimes some the the new technique of the week or month or whatever it is comes out and everybody's like oh i want to learn about that and then they that's all they talk about and that's all they start doing is okay which is okay if you're gonna do with your maybe your own dogs and you're learning but it shouldn't be you shouldn't be practicing right something new with all of your clients dogs and then instilling that message and then spreading it on social media like you're this new hottest thing doing this message this technique or whatever that's where it's it becomes problematic and um that's where of course the other camps are gonna start firing away and be like oh gosh look at this silly errorless learning thing what are they doing with that what if the dog bites onto you but that's they're not training an aggressive dog in that context maybe they're just teaching the dog how to put their paw in a box or something from errorless learning so it's it's so much boils down to critical thought and just kind of asking questions rather than just taking a gun and shooting at that person right and we're doing for just showcasing there's something they're learning at the same time time i i just kind of it's a interesting topic for me and we can we can stay a little bit on it because i i'll give you my take and we'll go back and forth like um i mean we know it it came from from skinner early on because he he obviously didn't believe that punish it wasn't for skinner wasn't even a moral issue it was he he sincerely openly believed that punishment is ineffective which uh yeah i it's

obviously not the case but i think that's what stimulated him to to to do the errorless learning and play around with it and i mean hats off it's genius in his own ways of what he did he did a lot of good things he did a lot of controversial things uh but uh i when when i watch old videos and now now it's so easy on youtube but when i had to learn about it it was uh it was uh i had to make a very big effort to get to this kind of videos um and they never really went obviously every experiment that he did the idea was to to transfer it to humans so human learning benefits and and human society benefits and so there was i don't know if you've seen those videos they were very cool of errorless learning um and they are not even computers there's some kind of weird typewriters that the kids at school were doing and you know when he was working on up to a certain level but then the more complicated the task became um it it never took off because if if it was to take off that's one thing that i think the market always tells you where things are going and if it's working or not working just like i always say this this about the you know no nobody had to force us to switch phones nobody had to ban the flip phones nobody like end of story correct and and the errorless learning yeah kind of stopped at some point and i'm not again like everything that i say sometimes people think i'm against and i'm not against i do i play with everything just because it's interesting to play with but in my opinion the the ultimate learning is a trial and error um like we go even before skinner to thorndyke you know with the cat experiments in the box and like the classic instrumental learning experiences and i think trial and error is a very much needed to to speed up the learning and is there stress in it of course there is stress in it but that stress is very easily overcome when you're successful so it's up to the teacher to make sure that creates the environment that you're successful and and then that stress is actually a very beneficial to you because you you learn much faster and you come out with a decent level of confidence at the end right um that that's just how i feel about the that specific topic and i play every once in a while with errorless learning but if i need to like if i need to make something i feel especially with the dogs some of the dogs again like i i work with just like you with with a lot of different dogs different breeds different different different different issues but i've been breeding malinos for since 89 and selected for for what

malinos are really good at so these are highly highly motivated animals that if they are not successful and they know that something is not working out they can get very frustrated um and so not that other dogs don't but with with malinos it's very pronounced so they're like i i need to i need to figure this out right now and and errorless learning somehow it's um it blows their minds depending again depending what we are talking like everybody you know like like this old philosophy uh i think was played or something like we all can draw a picture of a dog and we all gonna have a dog but we all gonna have a different dog that we envision so i'm sure as i'm talking i'm picturing something in my head that some of the people that listen are are seeing something else and there will be argument yeah yeah because it's not a very as familiar um term in the dog training community i think as some of the other things that we've been bouncing around over the last decade or so it's it's been around for a long time it just hasn't made it into the dog training community and over until at least the last couple years maybe even less um yes depending i guess in which circle you're in but i i think for me it's it's actually a good exercise not so much for the dog but for the handler uh the trainer to become aware of their own training skills their own timing their own mechanics their own setting of criteria setting of the environment i think that's very helpful for them uh to see those things and more importantly to recognize when they may need to switch gears depending on the dog they have in front of them based on the emotions that they might be reading through behavior and body language so is that errorless learning stressful for this dog or is it something i'm doing as a trainer that's a mistake that's being stressful for this dog or do i need to switch to another modality in which could be more communicative to this dog kind of it reminds me of this um i remember attending this one conference many years ago and um these really really uh brilliant clicker trainers were there uh giving a uh seminar and they were very skilled with their mechanics their timing was just just spotless however one of the things that really stuck with me is you know this was during the um after hours sort of question and answer and answer after the talk and yeah and uh well it was still on stage so they were still in front of the audience but uh they were asked you know so if you were to tell trainers one thing to stop doing

uh with your dogs what would it be and the answer just you know was shocking from them and they were like stop talking to your dogs and for many of us like you just shake your head like you you get what what they mean in that context of yes if you want to have clean mechanics and let the clicker do the talking that's what it applies to but i can see a lot of trainers heads just go like being blown up like oh my god actually never want me to talk to my dog again so you can see how these messages get misconstrued and i think errorless learning has that same kind of potential for miss uh you know misinterpretation it's not as um yeah militaristic as it sounds and i think it's another thing that can hone your skills but it's certainly not something i would i would strive for with my clients or you know it's it's something to just you know play with and then become better at as a trainer and it's going to hone your skills but uh definitely don't want to make that your only tool or your philosophy because that could go dangerously wrong i think in some cases but also cause a lot of so clicker let's let's hit this one because it's another good one what is in your opinion the the the best of the clicker and what is the worst of the clicker like what what does it bring that it's really really really really beneficial and what can be that it sucks in a way have you thought of that yeah i you know what i guess it depends which lens i'm looking to is it for the just the aggression i would say general aggression or just in general to start with the aggression is always complicated i think it's been a yeah talk in generic terms like that yeah yeah and well in short the short and sweet answer to with aggression cases i hardly ever use them because it's it's just one more tool for my clients to carry if the dog's already clicker savvy i'll probably use it but i'm not going to have more things that the client has to learn verbal marker works just as fine in most aggression cases um they're doing other things like sports and you know all the other things where clickers are useful i like sure but uh so that's my short answer there but in terms of the you know the whole community the doctrine community i think it's been a wonderful uh tool to introduce to us you know from the other animal training worlds i think it's been a brilliant uh way for us to get very good at our mechanics timing um learning how you know just the system of marker training but it's been a great addition to the dog training world it amplified um so that and that positive reinforcement the power of positive

reinforcement through shaping it really amplified that at that time yeah yeah definitely definitely yeah it was kind of it was definitely a cool new thing at the time right even though it wasn't quite so new at the time but it was new to the dog training community and uh i think it was a wonderful thing of course i mean we saw so of course saw many many great things come out of it but um a negative you know it's um i think the negative is just it created purists clicker purists so in other sense you get the extreme again of somebody saying this is the only way to train and you must use this if you're not using this right but either ignorant or evil person depending on the tool you're using so that was the unfortunate side of it of the politics of tools you know and that can happen with any tool of course we see it happen with all the tools that come out but uh clicker training especially created a a segment of um purists i would say in a small segment there's plenty of people out there using clickers i don't want to certainly demonize anyone yes and i use clickers all the time myself if it's for other aspects of training but yeah there's i think that was if i was to pick one thing where something negative came out of it that would be it but i i would say that's you know as you've seen with with any tool people people i have my my take is to defend it i actually have two i mean obviously i agree with you on the upside of of you know it's it's a as as yeah there is no question the downside um one one of the things is that it's almost the same as somebody holding a remote control and just because everybody's holding a remote control for electric or shock color whichever word you want to choose we immediately put them in the same it's like not that this is the person and the trainer you are and that's very misleading that's very misleading and with clicker i think it's the same thing like just because somebody holds a clicker in their hand it doesn't make him a good trainer it doesn't make him a bad trainer but somehow it's through through time that these misconceptions and perceptions about holding a clicker versus holding a remote caller it puts you in a certain category of not even a trainer a type of person you are and but it can be very very very very false misleading uh start to to look at the person yes yeah yeah it's like walking into into a bar and let's say in between new york and boston it's somewhere in connecticut and you either have a new york yankees hat on or a boston red sox hat on you know you are immediately put into a category

and the same thing happens with tools you see a video with a trainer using any of those tools that that tells you just the tool they're using at that time it tells you really not a whole lot about that person we're very which is sad very quick to jump to search you put this immediate label up the other one the other one that i have that it's a little more in the actual training aspect is that the clicker in in a lot of ways forces you to detach yourself from the emotional side of training and focus on the behavior itself and only the behavior itself but good training really good training cannot ignore emotions like you have to be able to attach certain emotion with certain behavior if you want to success to be a very good trainer and it's something that very rarely is talked about um but or or when it's talked about there is you know i mean every single dog trainer talks about emotions today you know that but but actually attaching behavior to a specific emotion it's a very very different topic and i think clicker kind of challenges you to to stay present and not to focus strictly on behaviors because that's not ultimately that's not dog training of today right that's and i'm so glad that people are going back to looking at dog's emotions because there was a small period of time there where you know the emotions were really pushed off to the side or completely uh not even talked about uh which was really sad to see but yeah i think again it's it's it's changing again to step we were recognizing the rich emotional lives of animals especially dogs and uh but yeah i i think you're right it's it it can feel very mechanical for lack of a better word or you know unemotional when you're just holding something in your hand you're going through the mosters and you can see just what that story i was telling you about the clicker trainers that were saying don't talk to your dog i understand the context or then you want to be a good trainer focus on that one skill so the talking doesn't distract you or elicit other behaviors where you think it's what you're doing with the clicker that i get but but you should if you want to learn that yeah just just focus on the clicker training first maybe get good at your timing then then incorporate the other stuff you know like how you use your body language or like how you're talking to the dog or the emotions that you're recognizing in the dog it all starts to add up to this robust picture uh but yeah it's it can get i think um but yeah when people focus on that one thing too much they can sort of lose sight of the

other things and it's it's what we've seen in different sciences and different lenses of looking at behavior you might have heard me talk about this before but you know if somebody's deeply into a particular behavior science such as aba or ethology or you know depending on what lens they look look to it can sometimes lead you down a path of not forgetting but not incorporating some of these others in sciences as much as we should yeah it's this is yeah very very good point um and it's i don't know like i my my opinion regardless of what all trainers talk about but when i see when i see people train dogs i think they're stuck in in not even in like the more modern type of behaviorism but the skinnerian behaviorism and um a lot of times we get we really as trainers get stuck and not you know yes we do talk about the theology yes we do talk about evolutionary psychology but when it comes down to actually doing things most trainers like oh i'm the dog trainer i can fix stuff no you cannot fix stuff that's baked in your dna for who knows how many hundreds of thousands of years like the best you can do is try to guide it somewhere to where it's not a problem anymore but but it's typical um i think young dog trainers um um or trainers that are yeah i don't know but it's out there it's for sure out there that uh not not respecting the the genetic makeup not that not respecting the um the environment and and and basically say okay we will fix it it's like no it's like you will fix some you will stop the dog from something and it's gonna either pop out somewhere else or you're gonna mentally just crumble the dog's brain because that that's not what we do right that's that's not the point of dog training yeah um how do you feel i have another one yeah yeah i told you we can talk all night so you tell me when it's plenty but in the force free community and and again like i'm not i i understand that you're not quite in the extreme but you're probably the first person that i have access to you know have that conversation with so i'm very interested to hear uh like there is i i don't i don't want to sound funny but it almost seems like like the same the same probably goes in the other extreme but like the force free people it's like who is more force free it's like no i i'm like a different level than you like this is you you're not there yet where i'm going with this do you how how do you feel about telling the dog no don't do that some some you know because this i know it's a problem for many

yeah unfortunately i don't know i don't know where that i mean it got really extreme where i think it's again the the culture that was happening and the politics as well and you were absolutely right it's sort of like this pedestal who can be the most force free who can be at the there is something like this right spectrum where you do no wrong for sure definitely definitely and well we see it on both sides right you know you see um you know it's just but it's unfortunate yeah so there's this pedestal like i can be higher i can be more force free than this person i'm not using any kind of aversives i'm choice and control agency and you know which are important concepts but it again the extremes is where the problem happens and so there's this whole conversation about saying no to a dog and you know it's all at the all of these conversations really they require more critical thought because 99 of dogs you can say no to and then you're like okay i won't do that or i understand what you're saying it's communication and we do it all day long even if we're not saying no to a dog so let's let's just what if we just look at the dog a certain way are we sure if like we get disgusted with something or ups or frustrated with something just our facial expression alone whether we know it or not is communicating to the dog so we are saying no many times and these including these people that are putting themselves on this extreme pedestal of i never do anything well let's really test that let's see are you able to hold no facial expression are you able to never breathe a certain way because your dog is certainly going to pick up on those things and so um yeah for some reason no is like another four letter word but fortunately that's also coming back into okay we can say no to our dogs we're not saying no and then like doing awful things to them right we say no and it's communication i mean i guess at some at some point you know it has to unfortunate so so it doesn't become just no and then it becomes a scream and then it becomes there's got to be some some sort of consequence which ultimately will make the the that disapproval um um condition punisher correct i mean that's really what it is and and nothing really needs to happen yeah of course we can add some aversives of of any source of aversives or or as you said your demeanor changes your the dogs just like there was some very cool studies of um i don't know where there was but that's another thing like i just law i'm obsessed with studies like completely obsessed but there was a very good one at that probably early 2000s

and it was about people that actually don't have dogs and that don't just just person that is not around dogs and they give them uh pictures or videos i can't remember of different dogs behaving in a different way showing displaying different body language it was unbelievable how everybody knew that that dog is afraid okay uh fear and and the dog's gonna bite me and why is it gonna bite me was a little bit sketchy but in the overall like the affect you know of of emotions everybody knew and is capable to read the dogs and um so yeah i i think it goes obviously both ways right so it's very easy for a dog to to know my person is not happy right now about whatever it is and then that gets paired correct and then it becomes that's going to be paired with an aversive and for some maybe they are just too oblivious and too confident and like i have whatever my mom's talking maybe the consequences gets to the point to where ah i know what you mean i respect it now um but that's a good to know that uh things are changing because i think we can go so far before we we totally lose our minds and and and we end up not being able to control dogs and if we cannot control dogs then then we cannot have dogs anymore right yeah yeah i mean and i think yeah this yeah unfortunately and we can jump into that topic of you know choice and control and agency and how that's become somewhat mainstream now which in some ways is a good thing but also i get questions about um you know what what do you do in an aggression case obviously you can't let a dog like if i took one of your protection trained malinois for instance and just took them out with me in public you know and am i just going to give that dog complete agency and choice and control just let them do what they want and then i'm going to hope my my cues and i'm get good stimulus control on that dog is going to work out or or what happens when that agitator comes towards me right and you've trained it to bite you know that's a perfect example of where it's not reasonable to give dogs and that happens of course all the time with our clients we that's what we put management in place for us to to prevent that choice and control in some scenarios so again there's another example of where the extreme take on it and this is i'm going to give fair credit to the to the forest free community of course like they're all running around saying just you know just let the dogs out loose and nobody use leash but but there is a i have seen that conversation where it gets a little extreme where there's uh unfortunate expectations about what you know what we

should be doing how we should be talking you know communicating with our dogs the management uh we should be i mean there's has to be so it has to for sure like every person that lives with a dog okay i have to back up again i hate to say every and like put everything because it's just never the right way to do it but oh my god i it's very hard so you're learning that but for the right language how about that um dogs have to they have to follow certain rules in order to to to to to everybody to actually live peacefully in the family and everybody to like the dog and not the dog to end up in a shelter or to be put down there there has to be some structure and some rules and i think we have to agree to that now where it gets tricky is how do we go about establishing rules and we get to get even more tricky is the unfair comparison between a certain dog that has some very mild minor like like a i wouldn't even say it's a problem because you can you can tell them not to do it or you can live with it and it's no big deal either way but then there is a different dog in the different situation that is just simply not acceptable or or we have to encourage them to do something different and somehow we zoom them into the same pot and we say well this worked for the little dog or for the easy problem dog it means it's universal that happens that's that's a problem a big problem when you think about it and you know if we just take a step back from and look at all of the dogs right so if we look back if we look at all dogs in general so we look at the 1 billion or so dogs on the planet 750 million or so are not owned by anybody so there are technically no rules in the way we see them as trainers put on those dogs but there's plenty of rules on those dogs have to navigate the society the culture they're in whether they're out in the desert somewhere or they're in a garbage dump in mexico or places it depends on their culture so every there's there's rules everywhere right but then we expect them to have rules in our environment which is our home so the average pet dog or you know and um then that can even even in those that we take those 250 million dogs that are sort of owned many of those are still have plenty of freedom in other countries but in places like the us we know there's extreme restrictions on dogs and we have to look at the rules that we place in those cultures and then you look at the micro culture of our home environment so you that the home in new york city is going to be different than a home in rural kentucky right and so i think again

this critical thought process is to come in when we're talking about things like agency and choice of control and in the culture of that dog that individual dog and that's where again the arguments just run wild because if you have a trainer out again in right kentucky arguing with a train in new york city there's almost no point in them to having a conversation about rules and structure because it's two totally different environments and maybe the dog in new york city is a malinois and the dog in kentucky is a cavalier king charles spaniel it's almost not worth having the conversation at that point because you're talking about how to grow an orange in florida and talking about how to grow an apple in connecticut it's you know you can have some maybe conversation but it's not going to be it's going to be pointless if they keep hammering oh you're an awful trainer because you're not doing you're not giving that dog agency in new york city that malinois poor dog you know it's being restricted so terribly how dare you and the other one is also i think in in our society even being kentucky being new york there's still some similarities and and this is the sometimes very unreasonable expectations of a dog how to behave in the house to to the point where you it makes you wonder why do you have a dog because that's like you really don't like dogs do certain things they you know like if you take all that away from them like what what do you make out of them like how how can this dog live a fulfilled happy life meaningful you know and and you know it's just like i mean i don't want to go into too crazy but i i think it's a big problem and somehow we do fail in educating a lot of trainers of of hey it is okay he he's a dog this is this is what dog don't do um sometimes this is not acceptable and as long as we can control and say okay this is not acceptable right now or or you can change it in some ways but to to totally be on their ass and and it's like no you cannot do that you're gonna stay in place and you're gonna whatever and the person comes to visit and you you go to place and it's like why like it's it's the dog is just as happy that somebody's coming to say hello now you can teach them how to behave around but putting them away it's unless we're talking with some again extreme aggressive cases then it's a different story but and then again like making the dog i don't know like um sit when you open the door it's like okay no i i walk out first it's like really i mean that i was just happy to go out and have fun with you with you you know he has

no no problem who's gonna walk out first at the door like what what are we doing yeah um but there is it's a big thing and it kind of goes into which i also want to kind of hear your take on this the whole dominance thing because that that's kind of obviously where this is going i guess with you know oh no he's gonna wait for his food and i'm gonna eat first and he will never have food from the table it's like i i surprise probably a lot of people with my dogs that i compete and i do so well with because yeah sometimes they take food because i give them from the table some most of the times they they're on the bed and i tell them to get off the bed because now i wanna or whatever but there there is like a i like to give my dogs a lot of slack and be dogs and just like as much as how i live in the house they have pretty much the same rights of the house assuming that there is some rules and there is times where you say hey slow it down right um but dominance that's another big for for so many years a big topic a big big fight of of extremes where do you stand on this because dominance is also very difficult sorry to yeah it's um because again kind of like i was saying you and i can draw up a dog and we have a dog but they don't look the same obviously because we imagine something else um and i think that's the dangerous uh uh problem with when we talk about dominance but so so like i think you know that the whole theory is based on the idea that dogs are pack animals and this i don't know how we can argue it we can we can put a different word social but they they live in a number of dogs or in families of humans but you know they they're they're together so they're where i'm going with is there is certain level of hierarchy and clearly like nobody seems to argue that there is submission right like you can recognize it immediately when a dog is submissive but so if there is a yin there is a yang i'll let you talk yeah the unfortunate thing i saw well even before i started training i think it was already happening but right the the whole dominance or d word is how they even described it so people don't even want to talk about it uh which is sad because it is a thing it's um i think it's because of the messaging that was coming from some trainers that were applying i agree 100 yes very ugly and very stupid dumb things no question like we we should not sugarcoat this there is no no place yeah yeah just yeah and and it's sad because you're blaming in a way that you know scientifically sound term actually started

getting blamed for what the trainers were doing so the messaging was wrong and anytime you're trying to sell anything to anybody whether it's a concept or a product and for the messaging wrong is going to get and if it's bad messaging especially they're going to ban it or cancel it right in these days so that's what happened with with dominance and um because of you know people taking it to extremes and doing bad things to dogs in the name of dominance uh but dominance does exist and unfortunately it's one of those things in the dog world that didn't get talked about enough or don't talk about it i think you know don't even educate yourself about it because it's a bad word but it is it's you know again i i absolutely agree with the force-free community that there is like unacceptable and up just like heartbreaking unacceptable behaviors that happen every day because of this idea of i i am the alpha and i am gonna teach you a lesson and i am and and so on but ultimately i think they ended up throwing the baby with the water yeah and it's and it's an important concept to understand especially for any trainees working with dog dog aggression cases i mean it's something you really have to pay attention to and the dynamics and the social relationships that can happen in a home whether it's two dogs or 10 dogs you really have to know what you're seeing there yes you can often get away with if you just want to go with a straight you know abc contingency evaluating how we want to change the behavior that's that'll help but it's not going to be the whole picture um because dominance exists in the dog world and if you if you study dogs and that was the other unfortunate thing too when we saw a lot of again skinnerism come through into the dog training world which is a good thing nothing bad with that at all it's just that it pushed everything else to the side including ethology and if you look at any other science you know that looks at animal behavior they never say oh dominance doesn't exist of course it exists in in many species and including dogs um it's just again the messaging was all wrong and how how to apply it to dog training and dog behavior so um yeah i think it's important to to know what's happening i know i think we especially when it comes to resources of course how to apply uh the knowledge and understanding to behavior cases especially in those dog relationships we have to be super careful we also have to be careful too in our messaging to clients you know because they have their own ideas right they have their own messaging and marketing in their head and so we have to

sometimes unpack it and help them understand because it can what they could be doing is harmful or maybe they're not recognizing something so yeah one of those sets it's just a strange thing that that that's that occurs in the dog training culture uh when a bad word comes out i like to talk about it i i agree to talk about these i think it's it's critical to talk about it and and because if we because if we don't talk about it i think i think it's subconsciously we we we know it it's a fact of nature we we we we can we can even just say the right things because society expect us to say the right things so we are one of the the group but ultimately we on on subconscious level understand that this is not necessarily the case and if we go if we take it all away or if we just focus on that both are wrong um like for example alpha roll man i mean it sounds horrible right and it is horrible but you have seen it i have seen it anybody that has been around dogs have seen a dog rolling himself in an alpha roll so to speak just to show uh we're cool no nothing and i'm not saying that this has actual application as a yeah the the family member or the dog trainer that they should do what the dog already understands because it's totally misused and it's there is no like i i absolutely just so we are clear on this there is no place for us to do that there is so many better ways to establish uh um who is who in the house in a much gentle and and much and i think we need to teach this but at the same time to say that that totally doesn't exist that's where it becomes that's where people start to be like hold on you you just went too far i've seen dogs i've seen wolves i've seen lions i've seen zebras they all submit to somebody and it and it does a disservice to the education of the community but also discredits whoever's saying that you know it kind of says well let's imagine like imagine if we start talking about something else like predatory behavior a predatory motor sequence for instance and we just started saying oh that p word doesn't don't talk about the p word because that's a bad thing predation or predatory behavior because you know dogs can kill cats sometimes or something like that and then you have imagine if you had a subset of trainers be like they they ascribe to the predatory model of dog training right and that way they train is like to grab a dog and bite them on the back of their leg like their prey or some some ridiculous thing right and imagine right how that could impact things and like oh don't talk about the predatory motor sequence that doesn't exist

it sounds ridiculous when you say it but that's what's happened with things like dominance and other concepts in ethology that do exist you know breed specific behaviors for instance you know and fortunately that's also shifting in the right direction again but at one point we saw like oh it's all about how you raise them or how you train them and sorry that has nothing to do with the breed and you're just like sometimes you're like where did that idea come from and again we're going back to extremes but yeah so um yeah it's uh we do have to like i like i think like the the conversation you and i are having right now i i totally love the conversation and and again like you can absolutely disagree with something that i say and i'm i'm fine with that but what that's gonna the way i'm gonna benefit of that is even if i don't agree i will understand where you're coming from and i have the opportunity to actually converse with you and ask you how did you come about that to where if we if we just start putting slogans and statements on social media we don't have the conversation we completely move away from each other forever it's kind of like the expanding universe yeah that's exactly it just what i was saying before and then you get more likes and more shares and people right positively reinforcing your 10 word meme that says something that's very you know critical to another party in the dog training industry what's it going to do it's just going to burn that bridge and you're just going to both you're just going to dig your ditch a little deeper just to drench in more to your thoughts and your mindset without ever asking that other person hey tell me your side of story teach me more about that you know or teach me more about how to use that tool yeah so i can understand it and i can choose whether that's that's what i really let me understand right i i know it's a wishful thinking but that's that's what maybe i don't know maybe this is some some kind of a start and maybe we can keep talking and we can you know again we absolutely don't need to agree on everything but i think i know i can pick up stuff i'm sure you can pick up stuff and i know everybody that's listening can pick up stuff and and we grow and we evolve to become better for a important cause ultimately um um how is like yeah absolutely absolutely i don't know if i touch this but let's go punishment punishment so we have like it's a very widely accepted in in the force free community if we if there's going to be any punishment it will be negative punishment which means we will withhold

a reinforcer a reward and and and so on yeah um um then we have the positive punishment which obviously is some use of aversive we have timeout all all few different variations of timeouts which are some can be very very very um which is just just just really bad idea but um again i don't want to go to that extent but how how did negative punishment become the go-to approach for the force free community i think because it's not positive punishment i mean for a simple answer but um yeah it's because of the tool usage right and the politics at the time so with things like e-collars or prong collars that people were you know taking issue with is that the mechanism is of course it's negative reinforcement but positive punishment is in their mindset that's like oh that's a positive punishment tool shaker cans squirt bottles and it all falls into this kind of lumped into this category of oh so if these tools are really bad in my mindset because of the cultural influences that we're having in our conversations and these memes and social media i was talking about that puts into the mindset that okay all of this is going to be anything in the positive punishment category is by virtue bad so um so then of course negative punishment well that's not so bad because it's withholding a treat for instance so on paper you're like oh of course that's that's much less bad but is it right and not you know i'm not to say that uh you know i'm going telling everybody to just go start using positive punishment of course not but it means that we do have to have critical thought because somebody withholding a treat from a dog can actually get dangerous in some cases yes i agree this that's exactly where i was going i'll let you i'll let you finish your thought but that's exactly what i was going with to to where i think yeah no question yeah positive uh negative punishment works no question positive punishment works there is place for each there is always one better than the other yeah yeah i the problem and i tell you the problem with positive punishment but the problem i have with negative punishment is that it's solved as this benign thing that we can do randomly and it's okay the dog's not you know we can punish it but at the same time we're not cruel we are not torturing it and the the welfare and the moral ethics and so on we are actually preserving and that's really not the case in some instances it's it's just a soul there's uh yeah we can punish and it's it's benign and it's not benign um um i mean there's very good studies when we look at neuroscience and how the brain functions and and

and ultimately the way the brain perceives negative punishment is really not different at all as how the brain perceives positive punishment it's an aversive response and an emotional uh state that creates the same the same emotional state with the same uh uh yeah and we have to my point is we have to be that's an aversive we have to still be careful how we do it and when we do it and how often we do it but somehow we are failing to talk about this or at least i have the feeling that the force-free community fails to to to accept it as or or or to to say what i just said i'll argue that it's for me it's it's not so much either community not under it's it's more of a misunderstanding of those particular contingencies and what's happening i think we see the same argument oh yeah from balanced i guess if we were to label the balanced community sometimes the argument is you know about you know what the difference is or you know using positive punishment sometimes even the misconstrued as positive reinforcement or mislabeling of it and that's the unfortunate part of those things is that sometimes people are having trying to have these conversations they don't really haven't studied the you know applied behavior analysis and those degrees you get these odd arguments and you're just like okay so first i gotta explain what this is and even then it's confusing for that for somebody just learning it so um but yeah i mean negative punishment can be much more aversive to an animal so it's not us it's not up to the trainer to decide what's worse for the dog it's the dog's decision is withholding a treat worse than you know a stem from a collar that's the dog to let us know they're gonna let us know loud and clear if we're good at watching if we're good at listening and that's the argument that's being missed and and if we got together as a community and said hey why don't we get together and actually talk about what the dogs are saying to us not what we think we should be saying to each other right because we can argue that point all day long you and i could be like oh no you got to use this collar well we're not going to know until we actually start working with the dog the dog's going to tell us loud and clear hey this works i don't like this and you're doing this wrong right the dog's gonna tell us positive punishment it's a little bit more obvious the dog immediately like immediately tells you the things went wrong and and um you know um right but but this is where it becomes very difficult for me to understand how because i i believe that i'm just as if not more

like i i want dog trainers to treat dogs with utmost respect and dignity and do whatever it needs to be done but there is a big but you cannot cross certain lines because oh this is a hard one for me to even talk about and it's going to go back to what you just said some sometimes it's a it's truly just a matter of education and some people have put time to to learn and to study and to get better and some people are staying on a very surface of things of dog training and they see that somebody does that they see that it's not just somebody but there is now the bunch of likes of that somebody and then it becomes a norm and then it becomes you know the dangerous and the uncalled for approach becomes a norm and then as a response to that we take another extreme and then we're just playing this ping pong how do we end it like how do we how do we come to ultimately as as we started that conversation we all have the best interest of the dog at heart but we keep growing apart any idea how do we how where do we go what do we need to do i think i think there's the needs to be a whole lot more showing and doing instead of criticizing and spending our energies attacking the methods of others and and especially when it's done to grow someone else you know your own platform if you're doing that out there and you know criticizing others work because that works too that gets attention like it's likes that gets people focused on you know especially if it looks like what you're saying is right some sometimes the person's absolutely right but i don't think that's the way to to grow yourself and to grow your brand to grow the message to to build the community to build bridges i think it's gonna just do the opposite so i think the messaging that i tell anybody that you know that whether they're just first starting out or maybe they are on the sort of main stage maybe they are doing conferences and webinars and workshops and they're teaching other trainers is to continue just just do what you do you know just show the world that this is how i train if you like it great i'll show you more if not that's okay too not everybody's gonna agree with me and some people will attack me at the same time for doing what i'm doing but i'm never gonna actually just go back and try to attack those people because it doesn't make sense to do that it's a waste of energy unless it's a you know there's of course certain examples where you have to defend yourself but most of the time you can just ignore and just keep doing what you're doing you're

going to have much more influence and people are going to see that people are going to see that messaging that you're doing can you be kind to others without criticizing them can you show your training and do you do what you do and show that you care about dogs true in a genuine way without doing it in a marketing sense or worrying about money or worrying about how do we all just do it you know just show everybody else what you're doing and that's that's you know something i i've been striving to do for a long time you know and it's and it's the message i'll just keep doing you know you'll never hear me attack how do you reach the other side from each side this is this is like really the problem because again like how how that analogy that i just yeah earlier mentioned with the smartphone and the flip phone you know like when i think when when something works and we can show and demonstrate this is why we have workshop this why we invite people this is you know that's where we share ultimately all dog trainers want to be better and i i want to believe that no matter what ideology and what's the narrative and what somebody follows when you see a better way and i'm talking about ultimately a better way not just like whatever a quick fix and all this uh you know salad type of words but actually really a better way how do you not take it yeah so why are we not able yeah to share and say hey i think i have a better way and maybe somebody questions you and say well i don't think so because there is this way and it works better and then we start to talk not fight but actually talk and then we take everything under consideration then we say well okay we have is the dog gonna how the dog feels well what emotion stress uh reliability we take everything under consideration then we take how important this is do we do i mean is it really that important or is it okay because again as i said my dogs that i win world championships with if you see me on the street you will hire a trainer for me like seriously but i totally get what you're saying why can we not do this i totally get what you're saying um i think it's amazing i think it's amazing yeah yes we we need what we're doing right now i mean you and i are having a conversation right yeah and and it's a good conversation right and and we're agreeing on 99.9 of everything we're talking about because that's you know we're just talking things through and we're talking about you know things that could be controversial on a facebook page somewhere or

somebody's instagram feed or any other forum but you know the conversations like this happen because you know you reached out to me and then you know of course as you say of course i'm gonna talk to ivan and and so right that's what we need to see more of and then if we the more you see that you know you kind of lead by example right you're leading by example and that right right let's face it too you know you have an audience i'm sure many balance trainers if we were to again let i i wish we could get away from those labels at some point in our lives but you know again we'll just use them for the sake of this conversation but i think you might have balance trainers listening to your podcast and of course yes we'll know that they're gonna give us hard time for sure of the force free trainers coming on some will give us hard time they're getting exposed to the exactly exactly yeah and that's so they're getting exposure to each other's message right hopefully that's that's the whole point of that that was my idea of what i wanted to do and and i think we're making it happen like i'm super happy of having conversation and and i'm honestly like a hundred and twenty percent okay if we don't agree on certain things because i i think it's absolutely this is humans like we we don't have to agree but disagreeing doesn't mean let's go into war let's understand each other why we disagree and and and and if you have a better way or maybe i don't want to take this way but if it's a better way man how do you not take it if if you're a dog trainer and and there is something that somebody does better in in as a package and you're like no i i just cannot yeah i get my my brain cannot comprehend that this is even possible it's a message i always tell you know i try to leave my students is that even if you don't agree with everything you're seeing the trainer do which honestly it actually should be you know if you agree with 100 of somebody else's training that's you know that's kind of saying something that maybe you there's something we're not being critical enough with our own thoughts but i think if there's so much you can learn from from other trainers regardless of their training methodology you know i've i did it all the time growing through my careers i don't care less what kind of tools people are using i want to go see somebody experienced in their craft and their what they're doing their focus and you're going to learn so much almost all the time you know so if you go to a workshop it may not be again somebody that's

training methodology you necessarily agree with but you're going to be able to pull little things and you can be a good consumer of course i'm not saying just go attend every workshop willy-nilly but you know if it's something that might interest you you're going to learn and i try to instill that into my students all the time just because it's not maybe you know what we would classify as a force free trainer let me tell you there's there's a lot you can learn from from other trainers out there um especially if it's it's in a a particular area that you don't focus on like dog sports for instance is totally different for me or nose work it's not something i focus on or agility but i'm going to learn a lot when i go watch those people even regardless of you know their training methodology so i think um i think that should be another take-home message for the whole community it's just like keep learning from each other and stop criticizing like you know just ask questions you know ask those questions that come from curiosity hey what are you doing there without the hey why are you doing that kind of tone behind it right right that we often see and that's the other thing too is that i think uh you know besides learning things when we're going through our career as dog trainers like body language behavior we should learn one of the skills we should learn is people skills of how to just have a conversation because yeah let's face it when we're working with dogs we're working with people and if we don't know how to work with the people and have conversations then we're screwed right we're not going to make much of an impact for that dog if we really care about the dogs we really should care about the people we're working with yeah the people aspect this is actually probably 70 in my opinion um yeah if not more sometimes right yeah yeah it's it's no question so that's the the to go back to where we were like seeing something and experience something once it's not sufficient to scratch off everything about an approach or or or and in fact you can even again like think of force free think balance thing through whatever the training is but when you when we look at something and we look at something we we we really if we want to learn we need to look at the most the the most brilliant approach of that approach that didn't sound right yeah but you know because as it like like somebody that says well yeah i'm doing this and the master doing this is so different and we we fail to to search the source and finding the source so to speak is not so easy because everybody today is the source

so we have to use intelligence we have to but but we shouldn't give up because clearly every aspect of dog training is successful and clearly every aspect of dog training um is not harmful and it's not necessarily you know it can be and it doesn't have to be like i i know that i can put make up a big bat and bring two or three or four or five dogs this was something with michael ellis we were talking and they will have no colors no equipment whatsoever nobody will ever be able to tell how those dogs are trained it's just there is no no way um and that means that when you take care of the emotional state when you make the dog like something to do when the dog understands that there is rules that there is boundaries there is there is concepts but at the same time they flourish and everybody says that they flourish and everybody says that the dog is whatever but then you watch the video and it takes no more than 10 seconds to see a dog in total misery and then you realize that it's just words but that's not everywhere it's a uh i think we need to just continue to search and not give up and not scratch off something because i really there is there is excellence in every aspect of dog training and that's that should be be so interesting to everybody it's mind-blowing that it's not that we actually kind of protect our own so to speak not to open that door yeah right yeah like oh no that doesn't work yeah that doesn't work or oh no that's that's just like yeah you're just torturing dogs yeah let's come in the middle you got to kind of protect your political party so to speak right you know or else you're you're sort of being a traitor to your party but yeah and then that's you know you immediately again going you immediately see that red sox hat if you're a yankees fan you order it just creates a visceral emotional response in the human the trainer about what that particular if you see a person using a tool you might see the dogs being very happy but it's the tool that you see it's so funny you have this analogy because i have a like we have a seminar coming up tomorrow with with a friend of mine um sports seminar and he's the kind of guy that he would wear his he he wears the baseball caps and he would have he has them all and different day it's a different hat yeah because he loves the sports yeah yeah and he respects the teams and there is sometimes a better team and there is sometimes a team that loses and sometimes you root for this team and sometimes you but ultimately you're about the game yeah and but you're loyal to your team right it's also i and

i'm realizing that we probably have listeners to this all over the world so red sox yankees may not make sense but if let's use the world cup just happened like if everybody just came with their argentinian gear hunt all right that's gonna that's gonna immediately evokes especially if you're from brazil so yeah it's unfortunate that the dog train community is the same in the sense of a lot of times the same of of this clashing based on just surface value without digging into more curiosity you know you know what is interesting to me is that we because we don't have this conversation we start to rely on what science says and depending which science you look at like i i can promise anyone that questions this that there is science that says this or this equally it depending which studies you start to listen to and which references you start to dig into um it's not a one it science doesn't really say unless we have a an objective when we make a study to come up with a certain outcome which is not science anymore but ultimately we on this planet at least from the the most primitive single cell organism to us dogs included obviously we are programmed being evolution being designed whatever we want to choose to but we are programmed to respond to approach something good something pleasurable and avoid something dangerous or harmful this is a fundamental law in our planet for good or bad and to to pick one of the two is just like it's not complete i there is always a better option than the other one sometimes there is equal options and when there is equal options we should be able to choose the most dog friendly option there is no nobody should ever question that right right um right but gosh i i love that we are talking this like i i've been waiting like i i have invited so many people to to try to to convince them to talk to me and somehow they think that i'm gonna either be just angry and and disrespectful and and what i i don't i don't know why but they like and i'm not gonna give the names but it's like really i have i have approached so many people and it kind of goes to a certain place maybe we do a conversation and then we do a podcast and if else true yeah i think it's a it's the culture it's it's i blame it on the culture that we are experiencing right now is that that's what everybody's experience is you try to jump into a conversation online with somebody and what are they met with often not even the funny thing is it's not even directly from that person sometimes it's from that person's followers they jump into a thread and so you think you kind of get this mindset oh okay

that's how all of these you know these people from this other camp or other side of the politics are going to behave towards me so i'm not going to jump on a podcast that's really sad again to think about that and that's why i so strongly focus on that message of just being open you know like with my workshops i don't i never advertise this is a force-free workshop this is a balanced workshop i keep all that language out of it and including when i even give my presentations i don't use any of those terms because i want everybody to feel welcome because i know that there are some balanced trainers that attend and they're open to learning and i'm open to teaching if they're open to learning i mean that's as simple as that and it's sad that they would feel and if some of them have come up to me and said you know i was a little nervous about coming i wasn't sure if i was going to be like attack i'm kind of the outsider or these other things i'm like that's not how it is there at all you're welcome you can ask questions and even if they ask questions that might indicate they use certain tools i'm not going to attack them or or do anything like that i want them to feel welcome and that's the unfortunate thing we're seeing again that's why i can see where there's some hesitation to maybe even come on to your podcast is because of that it has nothing to do with you it has everything to do with the the community and the the politics and the atmosphere which is that right the culture of things so um and going back to what you're talking about science too right we see the same phenomenon happen when um there's miscommunications and and that's the tough thing about science too it's not a requirement for dog trainers to be invested in learning from the different scientific lenses and even how to read a paper i mean right you look at the people cherry picking papers or studies or or articles sometimes as science you know you get an opinion piece sometimes oh look at what the science says and you're like well this is just a op-ed in new york times or something and they're using that as like their their argument to bolster their arguments so um without again i don't know you know maybe it's just this they don't want to seem like they don't know what they're talking about they just want to continue arguing the point but they sometimes are just actually hurting their credibility when they're taking you know somebody that is an academic or does know science simone gadboa is a perfect example he gets sometimes criticized on his own threads just because he's

talking like an academic academics are the way they talk to each other and argue point is very dry and it might seem very mean but that's just how they communicate in that community it's never critical and like it's called name calling it's just like show me their the data or as you know they ask questions like that but that's just good curiosity no i this is you're so right like you like if you if you make a paper you should be able to stand up confidently and answer questions and sometimes you may say i don't know and sometimes you can see that maybe you kind of when when around this in the study or no there is no study in there is no perfect studies we have to start there there is there's just no question that it's very hard and especially especially in the dog kind of science you know it's it's hard to get grants it's hard to even get volunteers sometimes you have and then the difference between survey versus actual 50 dogs versus thousand dogs study you know that they have different weight and we need to take that under consideration um but that's with the science but like even when you think owner just just your normal pet owner ultimately what they want they want a happy dog and if they come for help they need to see some results sooner or later and hopefully sooner than when the dog is already eight ten years old right um because they they will lose patience and they will give away the dog and what happens is these pet owners start to bounce they they okay this is what's available this is what i think it's really the best thing because that's my access that's my algorithm that feeds me that kind of training if it worked great if it didn't work we go to the other side and then we say and somehow this worked and now we say well all of this in the past is a bad thing to do regardless of which side you're taking it's such a wrong uh a way to look at things and we have to as trainers we we need to start to have this common ground and and and look at things together and just because whatever trainer was using a certain approach and that didn't work we cannot blame the whole approach we cannot blame the whole you know you know you know where i'm going right i know exactly where you're going yeah yeah yeah it's the again it's that's the issues when it's really the tools that that are being used as such you know team markers you know they're they're they're like those logos the red sox the argentinian logo whatever you're talking about it's unfortunately that's the what's happened in in terms of the politics of the

industry you in the labels too force free and balance it's created this this this is already a bad idea yes i agree with you this already puts you in in the corners you know right yeah like it it doesn't matter how brilliant like if somebody's really entrenched in a certain camp just putting that label on anybody could be the most titled whatever whatever awards and accolades you can give somebody it doesn't matter then it's all thrown out once you find out oh they're a balanced trainer oh no no no i know i know i know i can't follow that or i can't explore any further oh they're force free trainer oh no no no like i don't do any of that stuff so uh they're just you know they're just too extreme and then so it puts this immediate wall up that stunts learning and it's sad because there's so much you can learn from some brilliant trainers you know again here's an interesting thing too i'd love to get your your thoughts on this is that you travel a lot right you give a lot of workshops and you you you meet a lot of people in a lot of different areas and but the things that are interesting to me is when you go to conferences or you have those conversations after the workshop and you discover that really there's not as much of an extreme as people think there's a lot of actual trainers that people think are balanced which are they're actually much more force-free than you realize and the vice versa the people labeling as force-free they're actually much more balanced than you realize and if we were to again use those labels and have that particular picture in our mind of what that means but it's interesting if that's why i i really implore people to just like get off the social media just i mean spread the good message on social media but just have these conversations like you and i are having or go to these workshops go to conferences get them after and have them after hours so after hours are priceless when you when you lose your guard you have a drink you have a cigar and you mingle with people and you talk it's it's the best you almost never see arguments there right you never people don't start arguing when they do even when they do it's a different level of it's actually intelligent argument with respecting each other yeah it's it's actually very productive arguments and um i will tell you because i have you like my my whole way of training and that was early 90s and i called it training without conflict and it's it can be very misleading obviously title training without conflict really in on the surface you would say well this is a force-free approach so i would get a lot

of times when i go to europe when i when i'm outside the country purely force-free people and guess what i'm like no this is i'm i'm sorry that kind of misled you but guess what i'm totally capable to keep you in a force free and help you if that's what you want and then we stay there but then what happens is interesting because then there is the curiosity of human nature it's like well but what would you do not that i want to happen with my dog but what would you do and now yeah we are talking and then you take what you want to take yeah and then they then they can speak intelligently about why they may not use it correctly and you cannot like you you don't have to ultimately it's somebody's choice to you know and for for the most part and again i i mean you you obviously understand that i i i'm i i have no restrictions of ideologies i i'm a i'm a dog trainer i i don't put myself in any any place i i train dogs and i try to do the best i can for every single dog and person whatever that is um and sometimes there is moments just like i'm sure you have to where the cost and benefit is like it's just not worth it like we were going in a place where we should never go so what do you want to do when when this happens it's very interesting and it's not like the whole thing about my training without conflict sometimes i get it from both sides and and it's really what i what it is is that i take the conflict away i think i i tend try my best to have an approach to where the dog understands what i want them to do and they're never put in this position that position that they're in no man's land and and start to flee or fight or or you know just because they they just have no idea what's happening and this is the conflict free that i'm talking about um but as i said like we you know we have a bad idea when we talk about even when we say today negative reinforcement it has become just as i mean it's together with positive punishment it's a bad idea in in some in society period not not even dog training but negative reinforcement is like think of all the games just think of any any game that's cool there is an element of a negative reinforcement dogs playing what what do they do it's all negative reinforcement it's like you avoid an escape and you win or lose and it's cool you know you play hot hands with a kid and sometimes you lose sometimes you win and you actually want to play again when it's done right when there is a way out when it's clearly way out you actually grow up and you love it um and i i i don't even know where i was going with this but um

it's just this labeling of everything to to it's like okay no this is this is a bad idea and or so so from the force free side okay this is a bad idea from the balance or traditional term it's like well this is not gonna work or that's gonna take 10 years it's like like but how about maybe there is something in between in both there is for sure there is you know let's look at that it's interesting what can happen like the damage that can occur when a certain let's use negative reinforcement for instance comes up in the community in the conversations that swirl around it sometimes you have a a few parties in that argument that are really hammering the points home about how it's a bad or a good thing depending on what it is and they bring in all these studies and all these things to bolster their point which may or may not be accurate sometimes in terms of application to that to that argument and then it takes a long time to fit to kind of repair that damage you know like the term negative reinforcement it got lumped into oh you know like of course you know the force free trainers were saying oh the e-collar trainers are using negative reinforcement you know and applying the stem and then removing it and then then they started going on and on but they forget that they are also using it in many applications without even realizing it and so it got this four letter word sort of right and became a bad thing and so it either got didn't get talked about or it got talked about in there in a one in just one lane okay it's always bad it's never a good thing uh without realizing that it happens quite often and i think talking about those examples we're having this conversation so i think you know i guess my thought process there is it's who's who's discussing it and you know which conversations we should be listening to when we have um when we're sort of debating a topic like negative reinforcement we need the problem with social media is to get the conversation gets so muddy and so yes and there is almost difficult for new people to follow that they're going to be like oh this is just a headache so i'm just going to latch on to what makes most sense to me and sometimes it's the false um issue or the false yeah you end up taking a side presentation of it yeah and yeah exactly and then then that's what causes damage it takes a long time to repair that look at dominance right look at the word dominance and how long that's been a bad word um and negative reinforcement similarly you know uh and and it's not to say we shouldn't be educated

about what to know about the potential issues with negative reinforcement in some contexts but it's not always this bad four letter word that we can't talk about and not to mention that even i don't know what was it like in this the 70s or whatever this was already uh a movement where you you you absolutely can look at negative and positive reinforcement as a one thing and you you you know you shouldn't uh um um um um you know like if if if there is negative there is positive automatically you you will find it on the other side you know oh yeah yeah that's but yeah when when something i think it's the words and it's the lack of under like trainers not not not having enough courage and possibly not having enough education to where they just stick to the words and the narrative and the mantras on each side yeah it's like okay no we are training this way and this way but then you look at the dog and it's like okay but it's it's everything that you say it's not what i see so i i will be interested in the same approach but with somebody that has the mastery and the skill to show me and i know that it exists yeah it's and you can't fault the younger trainers these days you know i never blame them for just not you know understanding it fully or uh really maybe they have the false impressions because it's where they're getting their information from and they're digesting that you know you really these days have to be a good consumer of information and know how to uh separate the good stuff from the bad stuff and and and that's difficult right because there's so much influence in our messaging and we have much more short attention spans for the messaging we're getting uh through social media really any learning aspect it's much more uh micro rather than macro and i will put your yeah i never fault younger trainers you know you you help them it's better to just give them the the tools to like know how to dissect and really digest information and know what we need to throw out and what we need to keep and where to get good information from and how to you know um to seek out good sources um to look at the science that's available to us and i don't want to that's a skill in itself right so a lot there's a lot of that the trainers new trainers have to put on their plate at first right and that makes it more difficult than probably when you and i first started yes it was very difficult for us but i it's just as difficult for them because they have too much now and and it's not easy to and the short attention span and and and the rush for the next

baddest thing and and yeah it's a challenging environment for sure i will say though i will give the young generation credit they have access to information though at their fingertips and if they are good consumers of information they can become a very very knowledgeable and insightful and in a very short time i see it and i saw it actually in other countries you know when i went to i gave a workshop in brazil uh last year or earlier this year and i got all of it there that's how i remember it was earlier this year and uh the but the training uh the the knowledge of the trainers there blew me away you know they knew about concepts that um that i didn't think that they would have heard of and they knew about those things and and in the terminology i was just blown away by their the level of knowledge and it's because of their access to information now everything's online where previously you know even 10 years ago they would have had to order books and had them sent over to brazil and all this stuff so it's it's impressive the younger generation their their knowledge but again the the key is how to how to really dissect and digest proper information have critical thought that's another big part that's um really important is to really be able to analyze what are you seeing you know what are you reading what's really happening here and why is it happening this way uh and are you curious enough to ask further questions in a nice and kind way right without attacking anybody i think that's uh that right there says a lot about a lot of these younger trainers if they can do that then they're going to be very successful we are of course seeing that in some of these younger trainers a lot of talented knowledgeable brilliant trainers which is for sure it's exciting it's exciting but i'm scary at the same time but i we have to help them to not to keep them in our bubble we have to we have to allow them to learn like we really have to allow them to learn or they they learn on their own i think um i mean you know ultimately we're gonna talk some some level about electric colors or shock colors and and like the the way i feel about banning of the colors and i i'm from europe i i grew up there and i you know that's where my dog training started i i was in bulgaria originally then i moved to belgium for a bunch of years and and eventually to san francisco um and so so i and i go all the time and i know i i just know that banning something doesn't work it makes you feel good that you do it but it ultimately doesn't work and it's not just for electrical i think it's for everything that gets

banned it doesn't go away if it's working the problem that i see and and it's not even a speculation on an argument just because it's banned it doesn't go away it never goes away if if it can work yeah and the biggest problem that happens is people start to hide there is not enough education and they start to do bad things just because they don't know better because now it's hidden now it's taboo but somehow again your subconscious is like okay well there there is something about it that it's clearly working and i'm still feeling the need to do it because it works better than something else unless we can show that that's not the case and i think this is what we we are failing because in certain areas i am 100 percent in agreement that we have to show and everybody will accept that yeah there is a better way and we don't need it perfectly no like we will not need to ban it but then there is the times when that comes and europe is it's the most strange place in the world right now because everybody that used electric colors and i promise you this because i i i am i'm in all sorts of circles of dog training from from animal shelters to pet training to search and rescue military like like everything and i am 100 percent that anybody that did it and that worked for them and wasn't shown a better way they're continuing to do it they just hide it including army and police which is you know that the people that have to uh uh um you know uh um control the and regulate the laws they actually have to hide because we have failed to give them it's one thing to say well sciences and and or avsb or whatever the the it's like okay no there is a better way but if we if we cannot show the better way this is a problem and this is you know like i i am all for it show show let's go the better way um because it's a very dangerous road to like i see it all the time in europe um there is there is just a a very a very uh very it's it's underground and it's all the same nothing has changed it's just you cannot there is nothing you can do like no matter how many laws you said you you you pass um when you ban something what ends up missing is the education to do it better or to like in my seminars most of the time i i take remote control away from people because they just they're trigger happy it's like just knock it off that's not dog training like it it doesn't it's just from anywhere you want to look at it that's not dog training and it doesn't like like look at your dog this the reason you're here and you need help from me it's because of the things you're doing to your dog

let's take this away and and see i will show you a better way and when i show a better way i cannot force them to use the electric collar anymore i think this is the the right approach to to be taken not not by legislation not by uh um what science says we we need to be very proactive and demonstrate that there is a better way and sometimes there is sometimes maybe there isn't but not everything good is that good and not everything bad is that bad yeah so my curiosity of course which is good in this conversation is and i don't think this has ever been asked or anywhere that i've seen is though what do you do or what is your messaging or your approach to when you have trainers that are using e-collars but are doing it much differently than you and doing it in a way that you wouldn't and that could be construed as you know damaging or you know abusive or any of those characteristic words you might see in the the conversations online how does that resonate with you as somebody that you know feels they're very proficient and not going to be doing those things clearly you're very experienced with them what do you what do you do as yourself and then also as the computer community other trainers that are like yourself that are using them not in the way that you're seeing it and then that's what much of the either general public or the trainers that aren't using those are going to attack and go after and say see i told you so like what is your message if if i understand how do you respond to that right like i i i'm in constant war with people that hold remote control uh there is you know like um in in this environment there is a lot of very well-known trainers that uh i openly disagree with um um when we when we look at a dog if the dog is stressed if the dog is not doing things with you because of doing things with you because of the enjoyment i think it's a it's a problem and the the biggest problem is the the world salad that is used and and and it's sold as okay well this is the spirit and this is whatever and and i you know so many people or whatever ultimately that's not the case when when somebody needs help trainers record most most of the trainers recognize that they need help and they they search for help and um it really comes down to understanding learning you know just just learning concepts like i was going to say animal learning but it's just learning concepts motivation emotions um all reinforcements all punishments genetic predisposition pairing a behavior with an emotion making the dog want to do something understanding

that your dog's not gonna do just like i'm not gonna be as good in basketball as michael jordan was ever no matter of what you're gonna do to me and and you know pick your barrel see what you want to wear and understand like like one of the biggest things is and this also goes when i do aggression stuff it's like understand what i call it home base what is the home base of the dog like like how we talk of you know the big five in in humans um it's like you go to an atm machine and it's dark at night and somebody taps you on the shoulder one person will turn around and punch his grandma without knowing and apologize somebody's gonna run somebody's gonna freeze you're gonna have different and and this is what i mean by home base and when you try to go against that it never can be productive but the person that's gonna punch his grandma you know grandma can say hello son it's me end of story right a lot of aggression problems can be just done like this like i had a um just two days ago i had to go to to a client and the problems that they were having of course the dog they don't have too many visitors the dog comes at the door barking and whatever yeah we can we can hammer them very easy and we can stop it we absolutely can stop it what do we do what what was accomplished nothing that we actually reconfirmed to the dog that these people are bad instead of trying to change their perception and and and have them look forward to somebody coming which is very easy to do once you start thinking this way i'm sure you're using strategies like this yeah that same dog so we went and and of course there is also food and play and and a lot of time play like most people i you know most people don't think of like i'm very big on play is my specialty if i have to say if there is a something that i'm really really understanding very well that that would be play um so when you compare food versus play play can win every day and very quickly because you're not a food source you're you're a playmate and when two dogs meet the dog the one dog play bows and in that same instant everything is clear my intentions are clear and this is what the problem is with a lot of uh uh uh uh pet owners and and dogs it's like that very it's one of the most difficult things i think to uh um um for somebody being a dog being a dog being a person to to understand in that very instance what is someone else's intention in that moment and if we master that and there's so many cool ways to do it the problems are not there no more but yes we can suppress it or as we can throw food all over the floor

we there there is ways and some will work some will not but there is some better and some are not better and depending on the you know the case to case um we we need to look at that but anyway that dog that i'm telling you it's it's like a some mix i don't know looks like some mixed shepherd dog and was very very very very cool dog and i'm sure the people that i'm talking about they they probably will listen to this um um the the other issue the dog has is every time the the husband goes on the bed and tries to hug the dog the dog growls and maybe snaps but never really beat him and jumps away so it's the easiest thing it's like just announce yourself hey i'm coming to the bed i'm gonna touch you there is no surprise and and again it's this like understanding the home base of the dog to begin with puts you in a position where you can actually can make the dog trust you and not get surprised and not get to react in the way he's genetically programmed to react in that situation um so yeah i i have no idea a lot lots of uh to read in between the lines there too uh yeah you know it's i think we're talking about the e-collar you know conundrum um um and the banning of some reason for people to be like okay let's let's just stop him yeah and and some one of the things where i mean you know i have a school for dog trainers and and some of the most important lessons is you can stop dogs i can teach you how to stop dogs when the dog goes back home or if it's in home lessons and they stop suppressing little by little that behavior comes back and when that behavior comes back a few times now the whole random schedule reinforcement puts it in a very special place and at this moment we have a very difficult situation only because we have failed to change the dog's perception of that environment and and i always will insist that yes sometimes we need to stop it but it should never be the end we need to change perception that's that's what when we're talking about behavior problems that's what it is and when we cannot change perception then we need to look at manager management is not hard it just needs to be accepted when it's explained well because even with management sometimes we think as doctrine i'm sure you have this sometimes we're talking yeah management let's this is a case where we're not going to be able to convince them otherwise let's just manage it yeah but with the long-term management a lot of times the dog starts to loosen up its guard and starts to be like you know what i'm gonna try a little bit i'm gonna test a little maybe and it

starts to grow and starts to deal with the situation it starts to improve instead of constantly poking on see this is your problem this is your problem and then it just makes it worse instead of improving it's a big big issue with with um so some some dog trainers have big problems with that yeah it yeah i mean it it shows um again the messaging has to be delivered well and then the education has to be there to recognize when that's a problem right um because the root of root of all behavior problems is it's it's usually a lack of something the dog's not getting or it's you know we're not meeting that dog's needs and or the dog is just simply scared of something in the environment or it's something that's causing that you know the dog to feel threatened uh and if we don't change that we can suppress it all day long right but it's if we don't change how the dog feels about it from an emotional level you never really get get to the root of the problem you never change it and that goes for whatever tool you're using right um but again come back to the e-cola conundrum is that we we when when you see it used improperly you can actually do what we don't want to do which is you know pair more negatives with it or not achieve the outcome we're trying to do is to help the dog feel better around that particular situation if we have this in person we would be cheering right now yeah yeah perfect yeah yeah how about like like in my experience of all those years i really feel that one of the one of the problems is that a lot of the the dogs with problems being reactivity aggression like i actually don't like the word the reactivity but that's a whole different conversation you and i both another reason to cheers yeah yeah but but most of the dogs they just need some some just basic rules and basic just say this is this how the world works this is you know just just some basic training whichever way you want to take that basic training but you don't have to as i was saying like no you don't go on the bed no you're gonna do sit stay for 30 seconds or two minutes before i let you eat or i go first at the door and all this like a lot of the problems that the majority of what pet owners think it's a problem it's quite easy if it stopped in early on to just get some understanding that the dog is a dog and this is what we can do to make us function and work and play and live together and the problems are gone of course we have serious cases but they are not that many right they're not that many if there were that many people would not own dogs

there is there is selection there is breeding right yeah yeah how how do you feel i mean do you think similarly or yeah i think it's i i think thankfully again another thing that it used to be dog trainers were just known for let's teach sit down stay come he'll lock you know all those typical commands that we would teach them but i think it's shifting now a little bit more again in a positive direction let's understand what this dog needs let's understand what we as humans have created here and breeding and genetics let's understand the different roles if we're going to take a livestock guardian dog and put them in an apartment in new york city you're going to have probably problems or it's not going to adapt well to that environment so for for many pet owners i'm glad we're seeing like understanding of you know hey it's really not such a big deal if my dog gets up on the bed or gets on the couch or you know barks at the door to let me know somebody's there those are normal things to expect from a dog it's it's because we're we're faced with the responsibilities humans we're bringing these animals into our environments in our culture a little microculture sometimes and sometimes they're from these completely different worlds and we we lose sight of that expectations and i and that's one big part of the messaging i'd love to see more in the public is like if you get a dog from a rescue let's try to find out what the environment was like for that dog for maybe the first year or two and what we're bringing them to and the amount of management that we've just put on that dog that might have had much more freedom earlier on and we're seeing some behavior issues in the problem in the home no wonder why because we've we're taking them out of and putting them in such a foreign situation which may not seem foreign to us because we're human and a house is a house regardless in our mind of where you put it but for the dog it is completely different in many cases and so i think educating that part first before the sit down stay come you know heal should come first and understanding the dog's needs and what's normal behavior for that particular dog that breed the where we got the dog from the dog's age all those characteristics first and foremost then layer in the other stuff to help you solve what's usually as you mentioned a very straightforward issue do we have extreme cases of course but fortunately like you said they're far and few between and if you do even in those cases if you do things well with with understanding that dog's needs and adapting that

dog to the new environment we just put them in then you're going to see results regardless so um yeah and i think i think similar similar message of what you just what you said there about finding outlets also focus on finding an outlet for for this dog to do something they you know they're just living thing they they're like us we need a purpose you don't you life without meaning it's it's not nothing like you know then then you then you start doing dumb things then you go into drugs or you just do bad things and it's normal because you just there is no no meaning in your life you have nothing to look forward to yeah also i think in in another way we we tend to always blame the dog but the dog is stuck with us in the house with this family and that family like if if a pack in in you know straight dogs you know if things are not right they either gonna straighten out or they're gonna break the pack and they're gonna move away yeah and in our situations we're like no we're gonna fix it it's like well no you have a for lack of better word a very crazy family that the dog is just doesn't know how to function there there is just no you know and and we try to fix the dog when the dog is not the problem in that situation yeah it's our expectations as humans right and like let's look at maladaptive behaviors you know you see a dog doing something that just is not normal behavior and then we blame the dog oh we've just got a crazy dog but he you know again going back to you know the 750 million or so dogs that aren't owned by anybody you don't see the maladaptive behaviors there you don't see spinning tail chasing shadow chasing compulsive behaviors stereotypic behaviors you don't see hardly any of that and rare occasions you do but it's it's so uncommon because they're in natural normal environments living behaviorally very happy most of the time and then we we have these weird expectations don't ever bark at the door don't ever bark at that window at somebody going by the house where you've done that for you and all of your ancestors and all your brothers and sisters and cousins are doing the exact same thing anywhere else on the planet and now we don't want that and we're going to do something awful to the dog like punish them or squirt them on the street don't be on the tree oh yeah don't be on that tree just be on that tree and so yeah i mean i'm sure we agree on that that we just have on a real unrealistic expectations sometimes and that's you know again our job as trainers um it's just to continue that helping

clients understand that message of you know the this is let's focus on what your dog needs first and understanding your dog then i'll teach you all the other stuff to to maybe solve the dog's problem jumping up on grandma when they come over you know so tell me a little bit about the school or is is it a school or is it just it's uh so i have um yeah i guess i would call it a school um you know i have uh an online course for for trainers working looking to focus on aggression right so it's anybody that want to work and it's not um i don't have any prerequisites i have some pet owners come through so i've never i've never uh wanted to have something where people are certified to work aggression cases it's just more of um educational piece really so teaching others yeah that really big focus is staying safe too you know you see a lot of trainers getting bitten and doing silly things that compromise their safety or other safety so a big part of the course is on that but just just just helping dogs with aggression issues you know whether it's a pet owner or all the way on up to you know really well-known trainer everybody's kind of taking the course and taking what they need for what what they want to fill in gaps in their knowledge so it's meant it's really designed for that so i don't know i guess you would call it a school but not necessarily designed as that although i do have a mentor component where i um help trainers work through different cases but so you also collaborate with quite a few trainers which is very cool uh yeah i i don't i'm not necessarily even trainers i mean there is just a quite a bit of a range of of people you're collaborating with and that's yeah i think um again another thing you know i want to bring in the message is because there's some as you know there's sometimes you don't know about somebody and they're a hidden gem right but they have incredibly uh insightful information about dog aggression or just you know it doesn't have to be just you know dogs it could be neuroscience or applied ethology or different lenses that we can help use to help us understand dog behavior much more so i i that's you know i learn a lot you know on my podcast i've had a lot of different guests from different backgrounds but it's it's an educational tool for me so i'm kind of self-serving in that way but um yeah i love collaborating with others i don't i the worst thing that can happen to the industry is to be to hide you know and you know how this was 20 years ago i was like oh no i'm not gonna tell you my secret oh no that's proprietary to me

where now we're seeing the opposite of course is the more you can spread information and give value to people is how you get uh more well known and get the message out there but i i love collaborating with others and i i also love providing that stage for maybe somebody that isn't as well known to to be able to to share their knowledge or talk about their message that maybe they weren't given the opportunity before so i actually recently just put out a call for um speakers writers uh podcast guests webinar presenters um all to be done through my platform to just again if maybe you never know you get discovered so i i've got about like 150 different applications i've got to comb through at the moment um but it's all you know people from around the world some you would definitely know if you you heard their names with others you would probably never have heard of them but they've got really interesting things to talk about so um yeah collaboration is the name of the game it's always been for me because it just it helps to spread more information where um you know needs to be talked about sometimes more and sometimes there's some really new ideas so yeah it's been been very a great great fortunate opportunity for me the podcast like sometimes i i mean i i you know like i as i said like i i just cannot stop learning and and it's just what i do some people watch you know tv some people stay on youtube i i learning and and you know this is what's interesting me so there is times when i listen to some of even like your podcast i'm like man i wish i can talk to this person too like i have some questions and whatever but i know that it's very difficult to convince somebody to talk to me maybe this can change because it's i hope it does open some doors i'm sure it will actually i mean this is this is what has i've seen it actually happen over and over where you know if i um talk to somebody that maybe somebody's avoiding um it just let's have had some brilliant conversation to where i'm like man i i i i wish to be part of this conversation you know it's just like because it's it's interesting that's you know yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah like simone gadwa very interesting guest to have on i know you had him on and uh i did i did you could talk to him for days i mean he's just we were we had a very good conversation um i think i think he kind of at some point in the conversation he i i didn't want to i did not want to like we do i'm very open i'm uh and i hope you you see i'm very respectful but i'm i

i'm asking the questions that are interesting to me so we can have this conversation like with him i did not feel that i can put him in a situation like this because he he would feel uh not at ease and and at the end somehow um the conversations just kind of took took direction towards you know using uh all sorts of negative reinforcement and punishment or in the color i can't remember and and then we kind of abruptly had to stop it and i understand sometimes when you when you cannot talk about it and when you feel that you don't want to talk about it it's nothing wrong with that you know like like i can ask you a question and you can say well it's just i have an opinion but i don't you know it's okay i respect that yeah and and i i certainly don't want to speak for simone but i can totally understand the dynamic that might be occurring there because he is no stranger to being a victim of uh you know the attacks on social media i've seen it happen on his facebook wall and it's just because he's an academic like i said before he he says he speaks his mind in a certain way and he's not arguing if you read read what he's saying he's actually not being critical he's not calling anybody name he's not being disrespectful it's just that it comes across that way in in to some people so he gets attacked and he gets called insensitive and all these other names so i can see where he that what what happens is not just to simone but everybody else i know that it has had these dealings on on it it creates this wall so you don't feel comfortable speaking to somebody that might be maybe outside your camp or are you a little bit defensive or you're a little bit oh where's that question going are they trying to be in a public forum like this it can be it can definitely be exactly but it's a it's a tough especially like you know if you're a tologist or evolutionary psychology you know like you yeah in in one side you have you know what you need to answer but at the same time a quick answer is going to lead to a lot of questions and actually problems yeah because yeah it cannot end there and it's uh these are the difficult moments of of you know and and that's how it is it's it's totally okay i had a very good time with him like i i actually plan to invite him uh on another conversations because um you know we had some very interesting common topics to talk about he's super intelligent and and um again the the etology aspect the the notes work and all the stuff like a lot of commonalities and i think i think this is our this should be our goal to find commonalities

first yeah and and then break down and then okay well we can disagree it's okay to disagree yeah absolutely um but yeah that was a um i guess how how much of electrical are you've done in the past if eddie like what what is your like um i've had like if you don't feel comfortable no no i'm always open and honest with this and my experience with it um i've been to some good um i don't want to call names i tend to hesitate but i've been to some good ones and some bad workshops there's some there's a well-known franchise that maybe is using e-calls differently than some other e-calla trainers but this is going back about 15 years ago now so the technology then was a little different as well so um my experience is rudimentary if i was to put any kind of term on it i'm certainly no expert although i do understand how they work and i've kept up on the advances and and what people are doing with them now versus 15 years ago so it's definitely different it's evolved so um yeah that's that's my experience with them and i will uh i never try to hide the fact that i use them definitely use them um use them extensively you know when i was more of a traditional trainer he said he did use it and he said that um you know it didn't work for him and and that's totally okay and it's yeah you know um for for me they worked i mean they worked well in a lot of circumstances um but this is when i was taking on all kinds of cases i wasn't just taking aggression cases um the pattern that i saw when i started shifting towards um you know other methods so i was i was almost strictly e-collars prong collars uh not so much choke chains there was even 15 years ago we're falling out of favor um so like the ball hard collar i don't know if you remember yeah yeah so those limited slip collars um so that's what that was sort of so far back with chalk chains to where yeah what's her name barbara woodhouse yeah oh yeah way back yeah yeah way back um yeah you have to write a history book someday on training i'm sure you're going back 40 years you really have seen quite a bit of change especially especially from growing up growing up in eastern europe which yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean influence of a very different approach and moving to belgium moving to san francisco yeah i mean and then and then touring around and giving workshops i mean you definitely have soaked up i'm sure a lot of dog training culture that probably not many people have seen in the experience of the the change in the politics and the community and the culture of

everything it's it's you know i know i've seen on 20 but 40 years that's that's a lot of of exposure to different changes so fortunately and unfortunately it's a long yeah yeah so so yeah um yeah i ended up shifting more towards what i'm doing now because of i saw the effects of with aggression cases especially yeah um and the issue i was seeing is when you have somebody that doesn't know what they're doing with those tools or is using it poorly the fallout the side effects as they would call it and um so i you know i shifted more towards you know of course the methods i'm using now which is using positive reinforcement or classical counter conditioning typical strategies and uh seeing that it's hard you can screw those things up as well it's just harder to so in the hands of somebody that's newer to training or your clients it's going to be harder for them to screw up their dog or do something uh awful it's not to say they can't you can certainly use food coercively you can use food the wrong way it's just there's less of a chance of it so um and you know just i mean positive reinforcement and there's you know like and again just just i i don't even know if it's worth going there but there there is a big you know there there there are issues with positive reinforcement some of the issues are um you know when we when we begin to reinforce everything we lose the in in i cannot say this word i never can say the intrinsic intrinsic intrinsic yeah the internal right aspect of it because ultimately this is the cool thing in dog training that we should look into is how do you okay use your reinforcements all reinforcements use your punishment all punishment but look forward to how can you make the behaviors themselves reinforcing and joyful to to be performed yeah because then then this is a next level of interaction yeah that the dog actually looks forward to and you look forward to and these are just your stepping blocks to get there that's the ultimate goal right that's that's the ultimate goal when you're working especially in aggression you want to change how that dog feels about the particular situation they're in in the first place and if you do that where they're looking forward to that situation you've solved your problem because there's no reason for the dog to display aggression if they're feeling good about the thing it's it's really that simple and it's unfortunately hard to explain to to some folks that are just stuck on you know i gotta stop this behavior well let's talk about how your dog's feeling in this situation that's how you fix the issue um so

yeah and and i love you know play is you know oh i love that you mentioned that and um because that's such an important aspect too of the work that we're doing that isn't talked about enough it gets talked about but not enough you know i think it's going with positive reinforcement and like the focus on food all the time play gets sidestep and play is so powerful when it comes to aggression cases as we know you know dogs don't play and be fearful of something at the same time that they want to bite right it's it's either or whereas some dogs will eat and be fearful of something at the same time so play is a great barometer but that's a perfect example of hey are you looking forward to this you're going to tell me because you're playing with me so now i know i'm done the right job i've set things up well as a trainer i've managed things well i've created the right environment and now you're playing um it's working so that's you know it's such a beautiful barometer when you are able to play you're accomplishing your accomplishes so so much more because you know for for and i'm talking for more interactive play with toys because yeah when you when you this is my my some of my concepts you know like when you and any game think of any human game any any any play has rules otherwise there is no play right yeah and when the rules are broken there is consequences and to maintain play you have to follow the rules you're always going to try to bend the rules you're always going to try to break the rules but there's going to be always consequences and that's the beauty of the game and next thing you know just by playing certain games in a certain way you're accomplishing far more than any basic obedience training because you're teaching very friendly interaction something that comes very naturally and this is a a big problem with with the industry even even some of the marine world trainers you know they like teaching teaching play to reinforce it with food to play when when not understanding that play is a primary reinforcer like you go to young panscap and and all his rat stuff and like but now we know that play is an innate system it's not a like you don't need to give a treat to convince a dog to play it's harder to convince a dog to play in some cases but if you accomplish that you're not both of you are achieving something special yeah and it's just so beautiful um yeah i'm i'm like it's one of my obsession play like like you can have like the way i divide games it's also competitive and

non-competitive games and i'm talking toys we of course can rough house and there is that kind of games but they're they're limited simply because we have a thin skin and then we tell the dog how hard he can go but the dogs want to go hard so when we have a toy in between as long as we understand that the toy is the object that we play together with it's not it it doesn't have a different meaning um then then play is a you know like like you can play competitive games of of you know possession games what i call it and and you can you can make a very shy insecure dog grow confidence like we like we do it all the time or you can have an aggressive dog that true games you teach them boundaries and rules and and and you know this is um it's to me it's one of the most interesting and powerful ways to to interact um i'm obsessed with it like clearly yeah i can just go off on this forever but you know what i have in mind is how about we do electric color and we take the opposite sides like i will like you will tell me why electric color is good and and if you if you want to play and i will tell you the opposite i will take the side of the force free and take the site where it's a it's a bad idea to use electric color like how would you in the context of playing no no just just in in dog training in general using electric color um if you would bring the good side of why electric color may have a place in training um that's a good question because of my my thought process has evolved so if this would be a question it depends on when in my journey you've asked me so at one time i would have been totally yeah so 15 years ago i've been all i could i could give you 100 reasons and then it got it shifted to where i became this really vehement force you know again that term force free trainer they're like oh no don't even use that word around me to now where i haven't taken it off the table completely where i'm saying there's a potential i just don't know yet what it is other than potentially something where it's dangerous where you can't have any kind of where you can't be in the picture with a dog meaning they don't know you're there and it needs to be an environmental punisher for the dog versus you being associated with you so i'll give you an example let's say you have a a livestock guardian dog on a farm that is uh purchased you know obviously for livestock guardian duty so not necessarily a pet dog but just you know a farmer that has a livestock guarding dog protecting the flock okay so the dog's doing its job but it also

has this behavior where it's learned to bite at the sheep's legs it's got this odd behavior where it's like all right i'm biting at the sheep's fur and the farmer's getting mad and says okay i need you to stop this problem because i it's a it's affecting my life the dog is damaging my products my my sheep right and so how do you stop that are you going to ask the farmer to go out there and play with the dog or are we going to do a differential reinforcement strategy where the owner's gonna or the farmer's gonna reinforce the dog for alternative behaviors like what's the positive reinforcement strategy there it's not going to be counter conditioning because the dog's not afraid of the sheep so we're not changing them underlying negative emotions there so and the reason i'm setting this case is it's a case i actually used an e-collar on probably about 10 years ago going on now but and it's kind of the last time i've had to use one but i still haven't come up with a strategy in a positive reinforcement based paradigm where it's not a management or getting rid of the dog right because that was what the farmer told me he's like i'm gonna i'm gonna kill this dog actually right because it's a utility so again just for the listener's sake this is not a pet dog and that's a quite normal concept for a livestock guardian dog in many farms although some of them are pets as well so they of course care about the dog but this case this case this dog was just like a utility a tool so what do you do there right what's your options you can the dog's gonna be put to death by the farmer or maybe returns to the breeder if that's an option or what what's our positive reinforcement strategy i can't think of one so sort of long-winded answer to your to your question but that's where the uh positive of that tool in that particular case could be and uh that's critical thought there and uh and it's something i've talked to many other trainers about that but no one's able to ever come up with a positive solution other than management like we'll muzzle the dog but that doesn't take that doesn't equip it to keep the coyotes away uh manage the dog well that doesn't keep it equipped to keep the coyotes away um get the farmer out there do some training well that's not what the farmer wants to do and it doesn't make sense because the guardian dog is going to be out there 24 7 protecting that flock so um so maybe throw it back at you maybe you give me the the negative in that scenario if there is one um there is a lot of

negatives a lot of negatives a lot of negatives um i i was just gonna add to this one because i have a very very interesting case of a dog that was gonna be put down in miami and i took her it was found on the street like an extreme ocd case like extreme i mean i i have some videos for anybody that wants to see them on youtube um on youtube um like she like in my training area she would start to leak the floor but it's not leaking it's actually just dragging her tongue and when i first got her it was evaluation time and i i was just like okay i'm just gonna film and see see where we go with this probably 15 minutes and finally i was like i have to stop the poor thing because it's this is just not right like she she could not stop then i took her in the house and she was chasing shadows it was just like like an extreme extreme extreme extreme case like um i took her to a very well-known uh uh behavior specialist here and which i actually way back in the 90s went to uh cornell to do a uh like summer aggression uh that they used to have this kind of uh camps and and she was one of the presenters on psychotropic meds and it's like very very like top and and she was like you know this is for sure in my top five not in any order but in my top five in my all experience and i i was you know i i didn't know where i want to go with it i just want the dog to see if we can help the dog or or euthanasia is the right thing to do because it was it was not like i will send you links and i'll post the links and it's very very heartbreaking to watch um for a very long time well so it there was the choice do we go psychotropic medications and i have a i'm i have a little bit of um you know um they have place in certain cases but i think um i think in a lot of cases they're they're uh very easily prescribed very um you know kind of rushed without uh like veterinarians sometimes and and i know they're doing their best to do the best thing that they can for the dogs but i sometimes i feel it's pushed a little bit too fast and too soon before some behavior modification or with some combination of um long story short i we we started her and and of course you know you know well there is there is quite a few side effects of psychotropic medications so you know like loss of appetite and and just kind of getting a little zombie like and so on but depending you know you have to play with the doses and never it's it's just a you know it's it's not an easy thing and and a lot of times it's successful i ended up like that dog and this

is i i still have the dog with me right now um we we had to do a lot of interesting things i i had to go very deep in in all of my knowledge that i have and and look for help everywhere i really like bottom line i wanted to help the dog um um she could not play but she would chase cars she would attack dogs she would lick floor she would chase shadows she she would not she has she would exhaust herself to the max and then she will drop to sleep and she will wake up ready to go right away again you you i'm sure you you know dogs like this but this was a very very extreme case and i spend a lot of time so it's been six months now and she turned around but it was play and it was electric color and it wasn't an electric color in terms of like hammering her and suppressing but enough to just stop that thought process to where she could be like what else do i do um and we're at the point now that you know you you you would tell that she's an active dog but you would never ever tell that she she had these issues um and and this kind of cases you know even though there's some individual separate cases they i think they teach us that we we need to stay open-minded and and pick and choose the battles and and see what is the best and if that was not working out i i certainly would have went back to psychotropic medication or we would have auto-euthanized the dog because like again i i don't think sometimes it's it's just the right thing to do as sad as sad as it is um um but on on the on the bad side of electric color it's very easy to use like you you become what people call it very trigger happy it's like oh it worked for this so let's do it for this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this is a big problem another problem is that we are not looking to change perception we are focusing just kind of how we debated the clicker and and focusing on behavior electric color automatically forces you to suppress or use it as a negative reinforcement to where you're asking things that are not possible for the dog and you continue to demand believing that uh they're gonna become resilient to it and and it's gonna be some miracle and ultimately you have a awful picture to look at yeah to where you you really need to take that color away from that person um but even when this happens the problem is that that person and we see them all the time in social media they would use baseball bats and and flip the dogs and throw you know on the floor and and like most of the most horrific things that lately come out on on social media abusing they're not with electric

color and this is my fear that when we take electric color away it can we we're not changing people's perception how we're talking about changing dog perception we're not teaching them how to be better we're just taking one tool and they resort to something that actually it's far more damaging um or or equally damaging it doesn't it doesn't you know we don't solve the problem it just makes us feel good but the trigger happy suppressing suppressing suppressing and demanding for a dog there there is a big cell on the electric color that if we teach it if we condition it and if we show it then they become resilient and they become very strong instead of breaking down and i have a huge problem with that yeah to where um um like like like i i probably am more upset and more angry than than the force free community about certain uh approaches in dog training with using electric color um the idea again of anything that we do with dog training is to to not be able to tell what you've done it's like you have a very outgoing happy and enjoyable dog around but again even when i'm saying these words they are used so much and then you see 30 seconds of a video and you're like no that's not the dog you're describing yeah it breaks my heart watching that video and listening to you because it just doesn't come together um and somehow the suppression and the belief that we can fix anything with electric color is a big problem yeah a big problem but there's an addiction there can be an addiction factor to it because it's a quick fix right you see something so put something in somebody's hand whether it's the bat or the e-collar and then they have a punishment paradigm that they're gonna gonna reach for punishment because it's a quick fix in their mind it looks like it works now now on the other side i i also with the quick fix i actually think quick fix is not a bad thing if we can yeah if we can if it's truly fixed but it's not the problem is especially in aggression cases it's not truly fixed right i think we need to change we need to come up with a better uh definition of this quick fix is not a it doesn't serve the purpose because yeah i'm all about quick fix yeah but yeah but it was that but not to sacrifice the the mental state or physical state of the dog if we can quickly fix something yeah why are we wasting time we need a bet we need a new term we definitely need a new term i usually have good i usually have good uh analogies for this but i'm coming up blank on this one like a different term for instead of fix yeah we got a quick uh suppression or or quick something catchy but

yeah but it makes sense though it doesn't it is not a quick fix most of the time it's it just quick uh it looks good on paper yeah yeah there's gotta we need to come up just like with the reactivity stuff it's just so much well reactivity so vague right and then we when and then we are already we have a very extremely vague definition and now we are prescribing what are we gonna do oh yeah yeah but no i i um you know as much as i'm for electric color i'm just as much against um as i say many like in in this other side of dog training i have a lot of enemies if you want to put it that way simply because i'm you know just because i use electric color and you use electric color we are absolutely not the same we we don't even look at dogs the same way yeah yeah um but it's a there is a reason why electric started to be used in research it was a it's just the way it works you know it it it it it it can trigger the brain to go fuck panic but actually when done right nothing happens besides you get the that whoa and then we move on to all the good things that we can do um um i yeah it's a it's an interesting conversation maybe maybe we do that someday in person it can be very interesting too it's a much deeper thing i think to talk about that one but um the option back in the day it was what you you hit them you poke them you air puff them and you break their wings you broke their legs you blind them in all the experiments and just for the experiment's sake because that was a long time ago nobody cared that much about the the whatever the animal was in the box but they wanted to make the studies so they came up okay we need to on one side we need to make sure that we have something that can be replicated so if we say that we are using that kind of level of intensity of aversive then that's what we are using and then they have to be able to you know and and one one of the the most beautiful things is when it's not overused and this is a must emphasize explicitly that it cannot be overused uh we can you know very easy stop some some nasty dangerous problems and then add on top differential reinforcement and then attach different emotion and purpose in a different direction um and it speeds up the process and this is why i'm talking that quick fixes uh you know it's an interesting yeah it has to be it has to be defined correctly what do you mean by that for sure when you bring that into a conversation because it could easily be uh validation for somebody one of the

problems with any of us if is the the argument most most um force-free trainers would have and and you might be also is that you you put it on yourself and you say well that hurts but that really doesn't tell you anything because it depends on the the motivation of the dog it depends on the genetic position of course because sometimes you you just are going against genetic makeup and certain things you you're just very stupid and cruel to try to change and suppress yeah but if you park your car in the wrong place you might get a warning and that might be plenty for you or you can get a ticket or you can get your license suspended for a week or for a year or but it reaches the level that it's needed to control your behavior and sometimes reaching that level is unethical exactly it should not go there but that's education that's that's where i have huge problems with them yeah yeah because you can you can see it you're you're been doing it for a long time you're able to read what the dog is communicating to you and how they feel about it and so that yeah i agree that that you know that that example i guess of somebody putting a collar on their neck or something and look and it hurts this much i'm sure it hurts to that person at that moment sure but what about the dog the dog's going to tell you and the same thing can happen with food right and the dog's going to tell you oh this food's great or not or this is working for me here or not based on their behavior and body language that should always be our barometers data what's the dog telling us you know and um you know but of course with the versus you know as we were mentioning earlier that it's the the issue is the the potential for the associations that create negative which we won't know until we know how to look at what we're seeing rather than just saying it's a blanket this is always going to be this way or it's always going this food is always going to be reinforcing or e-collars are always going to be bad for the dog right and that's unfortunately taking out the critical thought the measurement is what the dog tells us right yeah and so you know again it's not to say i'm saying oh i'm suddenly an e-collar trainer it's not that at all i just i want to put some critical thought into this conversation that way we can have these conversations folks like you and i understanding more and having and educating others about understanding you know where you're coming from you know it doesn't say i have to go out and use those tools but it doesn't say

you have to do anything you you know because you you're using them in a way that as it's from your background it's from your education of seeing these things you're able to have this conversation intelligently where those blanket statements do not put in any kind of conversation to it just it stops the conversation right there when you're doing that stuff you know when you're showing these examples so to speak of how a tool works it shows actually a gross misunderstanding sometimes and i'm not that i really i don't i when i and of course it's very subjective looking at yourself you know like you have your false idea of who you are and whatever but i i i don't see myself i don't think of myself as an electric color trainer i look at things as if i if i need it i still will is there a better way what is the better way how is it better yes there is a better way boom it's it comes naturally very easy and probably for the most part i wouldn't jump on an electric color it's not a one of the things that i always say and i one of the reasons why a lot of people don't like what i say about electric colors because i kind of go against the the some of the the norm of what it is right now accepted what somebody the level the amount of electric color used in one session regardless of what level it's used i probably would use it in in six months and that's like if we have a you know some click counter of how many times they do it in one session it's uncalled for there is no like we we have to understand we need to try to make the dog want to do things because they want to do things create that in a dog don't otherwise it's a yeah it's some form of slavery it's just not right there is no no even even if you do it right it's still you're not making the dog you're not becoming creative how do i make the dog want to do this with me versus no i have this thing that i'm gonna just make him do it yeah yeah so easy would you say you've in your growth or or your through your journey would you say you've used them more in uh over the years and since since their evolution they actually probably haven't been around for 40 years or at least the modern colors um would you say you've used them more less or about the same right just my own curiosity in terms of you know the the this is good because just as i have questions you should you know it's perfectly cool that's that's what's about so i i have um i i remember my very first days of it it was in belgium and it was it's called teletuck and it looked like some james bond like freaking like yeah like this cubes on the dog's neck and

they're like oh we're gonna do this to your dog and i'm like can we do something else it's like no no this is how we do and luckily like they were trying to set up my dog so they can teach you the lesson right and for whatever reason my dog decided that he's gonna be good so he didn't get it man what a relief that was yeah like this that i i rem this was i mean we were talking 89 1989 and i remember it by minute how it went down um as you said things changed and i my my my current approach is and this is probably a difference in how lima or i don't know how i think there is a new name now in the force free it's not lima i can remember now what but you know when we're talking about uh least the worst if minimally you know um i i my my thing is if i know like let's let's pick a human analogy if you are having pneumonia and i we know like we you go to a doctor or you have a pneumonia and you're getting over-the-counter medicines and you're doing all holistic stuff and you're you're about to check out and die when you actually should be on a certain treatment and we know that that treatment is gonna help immediately i think it's very unethical at that point to go that ladder when we know when we know yeah that this is not the case like you you play soccer and you hit some rock barefoot and i'm talking europe now being a kid and your feet are bleeding and you get some infection and next thing you know you have a gangrene and it's like yeah they need to take your foot they need to amputate your foot because what is the other option um but this should not be taken lightly and it takes experience takes education and and and and this is where it gets very difficult very difficult yeah but that's the operative words yeah education and experience to know that right i don't i don't agree with either situation because like if we do it carelessly it's absolutely wrong and if we are taking time with a behavior that we know that we can stop so we can help us to start our differential reinforcement and and the whole program um but we are waiting we're actually making that behavior more stubborn and ultimately we don't even know where we are headed yeah i don't know this is just thoughts yeah and and you know it's a it's a it's a um i don't want to say controversial but it is a debatable topic still even in the force free community this does so lima least intrusive minimally aversive that actually originated from steven lindsay yes and his in his works and the applied handbooks and um it evolved and changed uh still with the same

acronym i think it's an important uh tool for especially new trainers to think before do because as you know regardless of which methodology or which camp they're in they should be thinking about what they're doing first and i think it's a useful tool there i think you have it also a valid argument though that once you become experienced and you have 40 years behind you of training you don't need to kind of your thought process is already solidified you don't need to be like oh am i am i following the right product do i know how to use this technique properly of course you do you've been doing a long time but somebody that's new been training a year they need this framework they really it's they need some guidance on what to do because if you look at any other profession or career where where where there's this much going on with our our protocols and strategies we're putting in place with a living being there's a big amount of education so if we were talking going back to the doctor analogy if we were both doctors for instance we'd have a level of education where all of the terminology is going to be flowing back and forth we're going to agree upon the same thing because that's what they teach in medical school dog trainers though a lot of them haven't gone to any school or they do go to school maybe it's a different school in the terminology the language being used is differently so the conversations can be very different especially when it comes to um making choices about the protocols and strategies we're putting in place to a dog depending on the the level of aversiveness or not and that's where i think an important framework is beneficial to our industry to help the trainers understand you know hey think twice about what you're going to do before you do it to a dog because it can impact you know everybody so yeah so i agree with lima i do think though it's still there's some debate about no no it's dangerous we cannot i cannot say that it's not dangerous like it is definitely but again we we cannot throw the babies with the water i think we need to talk i think we need to talk and we need to get better it's it's the best way it really is the best way yeah that lima definitely needs to be talked about and hashed out between the two communities as well because a lot of the you know arguments are like oh look at the balance trainers now you're saying oh yeah this is their excuse to use aversives or you know and right vice versa it's like the you know it's oh it's a force-free like thing

that they're saying now this is their way of getting tools banned and so there's a lot of false arguments unfortunately in this conversation but that's again what happens when something an old concept becomes new again i guess if you were going to put it in a way it's it's an old concept but it's it's i think that's what happens when we are not talking when we're we're just go growing apart that's yeah yeah yeah so yeah it's it's definitely something it's a useful tool it has it should be talked about more i think it's going to be impactful but the uh the misconceptions around it and unfortunately clouding the usefulness of it so you know i just got a sign from eric that we have like two minutes left on memory cards like we've okay all right so yeah wow i'm surprised i i think i i don't know if i hold the record amount of time but i really thoroughly enjoyed this conversation so i i cannot thank you enough i don't know i don't know how much you like this i love this conversation right now yeah i i very much enjoy somebody yeah yeah um i i hope we we do again and i i actually hope that we actually do meet in person and do some training and whatever you know yeah like um it can be very cool um i'm gonna we we're gonna list every all of the things and i hopefully it created some interest to my audience and and they look up and look you up and and uh you know there is there is things to be learned there is definitely things to be learned dog training you know we shouldn't we shouldn't stop it's it's just how it is i think that a good take-home message is just hey just talk to people you know get get out from behind that keyboard and just have a conversation you'll be surprised what you learn about people you know man thank you for accepting the the invitation and again like one of my best conversations um you know with somebody that may not agree on everything but actually open to to talk about things you know that's like i i love this this is this is what it's about yeah so um yeah thank you my pleasure thank you thank you for the the opportunity i'll i'll be in touch uh okay we will do something all right looking forward to it for sure take care all right ivan take care so Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.