에피소드 4: Dr. Ian Dunbar

from the SBCA and I suddenly put it all together today so that was really really funny yes it's uh so yeah I I went I started working there I worked for the guide dogs for the blind in San Rafael and and then it was just the commuting and everything it was too much so then then I changed and I started working at SBCA Richard Abazino was still the director at the time that I started but um at the end he I don't know if he retired or what happened but there were some changes that that's when the kind of kind of quite a bit of changes happened at SBCA he retired yeah then the director came from um St. Hubert's in New Jersey and he took over I think but you know Rich Abazino was there for years and made it a very unique um and for me fun place to work back then I mean the hearing doc program and um that was the first of its kind of like raising money for a program and they did a lot of that you know rather than saying oh please give us money for unwanted dogs they would pick a program like food for dogs living with people you know with disabilities or or with AIDS and and they did a lot of really cool stuff yeah one of the the really interesting things now it's uh it's a common now now it's you know it's almost very trendy and every shelters that know how to make money they you know they have the same model but at a time when he started probably nobody even believed that people will spend so much money and like to see dogs in in that kind of environment and and like he had a a vision that was completely new at the time and he made it happen there were only about back then about a half a dozen humane societies around the country that were really uh progressive like in boston in wisconsin um and a couple in uh obviously you know peninsula humane san francisco and then um marine humane and they were really doing good stuff from a behavior viewpoint but they didn't call it behavior they called it education and then it was actually marine humane society this is a little known fact that the very first off-leash puppy class in the world was taught at marine humane society yeah they they asked me to come up with a you know really unique and different way to train dogs and i did and then it was uh pat campy and um and what was the other lady's name it was trish trish something right i can't remember it you're talking it's the the the one in nuvaro um yes that's right yeah i think it's uh trish but i cannot remember her last name at the moment either but they they got 20 puppies and they said ian this won't work we're gonna let them off leash i said yeah and they said oh wait we can't

can you train it so i said yes i commuted you know across the bridge and uh taught that puppy class and then i thought you know that was fun and i found it serious i thought that's what i want to do in my life it was just so much fun yes you know training was always dealing with problems people wouldn't go to class till they had a problem but now we got them at three months and i could tell you well this is what's going to happen and i'll tell you when i see it beginning happening here like first week in class i would say i can now name three dogs who are going to bite their family members when they're eight months old it's so obvious you know the dog won't approach it backs up it ducks its head and you would locate the problem and just resolve it so fast and it was safe and it was fun you know it was a it's one probably one of the most fun things i've ever done in my life apart from the canine games um but the puppy classes are just they're brilliant it was a revolution for sure it was like oh well i mean people wouldn't even think to to do anything with puppies or let them grow up or let them do this and and as you say yeah eventually we can have some serious problems and and you can yeah and then people would say oh it's in the breed or he'll grow out of it you know no he won't you know this will get worse and worse you know your puppy's nibbling on your carpet your eight month old dog will destroy your house and anyway it was fun so with the puppies since we're talking about this how how much what is your take on environment versus genetics that old but always very interesting debate well you know i have three answers to that question you know like if i were talking to a breeder i would say they said should i breed this dog i would ask them questions like how long did his great great grandparents live for let's breed a dog that has longevity and it's you know it's four bears um have you ever had a behavior problem with it has it ever been sick and usually with most breeders i say no i wouldn't breed that dog so when it comes to picking the dog to breed prior to conception i am an absolute ruthless geneticist okay as soon as that sperm goes into that egg i say well forget genes the gene team's had its chance everything now comes down to behavior and training and socialization and so that's why people think i'm like a rabid you know socializing environmentalist i'm not i'm realistic genes before we breed after we breed socialization my answer to say students when i lectured at cal um would probably take 10 weeks in a course

they're both important and they they intertwine and so you can't take genes on their own you like let's say we had two litters let's pick um bull terriers and golden retrievers and we say well bull terriers act like bull terriers because they were bred from bull terriers and golden retrievers are saying i said yeah but bull terriers had a bull terrier mum and bull terrier litter mates so the first thing you got to test is a cross fostering experiment we put one golden in the bull terrier letter where quickly he has to learn put up or shut up you know it's a different type of play here then we put a bull terrier in the golden litter and in a while he's like on his back and smoking dope and wagging his tail and he's calm and waggy you know so we have to check what is the effect of the social environment well of course the biggest aspect of any social environment is the owner why because they are the trainer and educator they are specifically changing the environment to change the dog and i think a lot of why serious became famous was in my research i realized that you could change temperament overnight we saw this a couple of times watching our puppies grow up and so i thought wow you know breeders or new puppy owners be really interested to know this stuff so when i started serious i said yeah it's about manners training but also behavior training and temperament training we don't test temperament we test it and train it and try and mold it and change it so if a puppy is too uppity we'll calm him down if he's too nervous we build his confidence and i found with puppies temperament is comparatively easy to mold but because back then in the dog fancy they wouldn't even think of training a dog till it was six months or a year old right you know especially if it were a working dog or going to be a competitive dog and so to me they missed the whole time when the brain is incredibly malleable and and that was you know the second reason i came to berkeley i came to work with frank beach to study sexual differentiation in dogs how sex differences and sex develops differently in males and females but also to join the diamond rosefights study on how environment changes brain anatomy and this research fascinated me i discovered it in the mid 67 tell us a little bit about this that that would be interesting to go a little bit it really is and just changing the environment and changing of course the social environment you put a rat not just in a cage on his own but with another rat and the number of cells

in the brain produce dendrites connections synapses but without that environmental stimulation neonatally and say before three months millions and millions of brain cells die off so that's what's happening here in real time when you pet a dog when he sees a child when he plays with another dog you're forming synapses in the brain a lot of people think a synapse is oh this cell plugs into this one no the dendritic spines move you know like an elephant's trunk and the more stimulation you get they waggle then boom they plug into another cell and you've got a connection and that happens in real time in the same seconds with a short lack time of when you're handling or petting a puppy and so yeah for me everything was about temperament molding or temperament training and speeding them up slowing them down you know having said that a border collie will always be a border collie and the basset the basset in the same way a dog will always be a dog so if you want to say well what are the effects of genes on behavior say well it's a dog it's going to bark chew dig bite waggle you know but you can mold that behavior the extent to which he's going to do these doggy things so like read you have i mean you pick the ultimate um oh ferrari of dogs for a ferrari sport um having said that a ferrari is probably not a good car now a mini you pick a mini not only is this fast and can accelerate but it can move back and forth okay and the ferrari of dogs would be the german shepherd beautiful dog when it works but they're going to spend a lot of time in the shop because they're so sensitive and tuned to work as a pet dog they can they can be over sensitive and become fearful usually of strangers and so yeah you pick the right dog you know for the sport that's not to say you can't make him better i mean i love when when i look at trainers the trainers i love uh they pick a dog any dog best dog for the sport or worst dog for the sport that's saying they're doing agility and they pick a french bulldog or a basset you know instead of a border collie i enjoy both the trainers that take these dogs and make them better yes they don't just rely on the dog's natural skills they refine them and they can turn them on and turn them off like that so that dog can change jobs like we put on a hat right i'm a policeman now now i'm at home drinking a beer and when people can do that with a dog that garners a lot of respect from me and so i i get a lot of joy out of watching the lesser known breeds compete apart from it being hilarious i mean can you think of anything funnier

than the basset doing agility but that that's a lot of the point of it you want people to react when they see your dog competing either going wow or like oh that's so cool it's so funny it's making me smile right now there is a well not right now but let's say in the last five ten years quite a big of a movement in science i'm sure you you um are aware of um uh uh richard dawkins which is from he he had this wonderful book um the selfish gene and then the the other one which i really really recommend to everybody is uh robert plomin the blueprint that's where the reason of asking environment nature versus nurture that again as you said medieval age question but recent years right now there is a lot of data that comes out that really proves the genetics the genetic predisposition in dogs or humans or anything it's it's far more important and i think robert plomin was the one that has that one saying that parents matter no parents are important but they don't matter that much meaning that it is very important how somebody is raised in the environment but ultimately what you are programmed with what you come with that's your that's where you're gonna that's your home base and that's where you're gonna end up going if you're left if you're allowed to right and so there was some interesting twin studies i mean that this becomes now so popular to where it was actually i believe it was in england during the world war and a mother leaves kids just just infants newborns in a few different places uh orphanages and what happened was um um they all got picked up by completely different uh uh people like some some were like very intelligent very accomplished people and some were just um middle class uh families and to make that story short what ended up they kind of meet by pure accidents in the university eventually and they end up liking the same things and they just pretty much they you know being identical twins raised in different environment not much really change them from being the identical twins which was um um almost like really a beginning of of that um paying way more attention to the genetic side of of what we come with and understand that the you know we can guide and we can control and it's much easier to understand and guide and control what comes naturally genetically than trying to fight against it and try to make something that it's not programmed to be right yeah which is what so many people do with dogs yes

um especially for companion dogs all the things it's been bred for they say what you're never going to run and lunch and chase in this town again but that's what i was bred for it's what my great great great great grandparents did yeah it's um but it's um but it is where ultimately i would say um as i said a border collie is a border collie malinois is a malinois but socialization training and environment has to be all important because it's all we can do and so i think if um your followers say read my stuff on breeding which we have we have free courses on dunbar academy there's one for breeders you'll think guy this guy is tough yeah i wouldn't breed 90 of the dogs out there if only for longevity i'm sorry you know i've had three purebred dogs die at seven that's not right and so i would like to live till they're 14 so the first thing i would select for is longevity which if you think about it is the best overall indicator of not just physical health but also behavioral health yes it's a healthy mind body mind of course yeah you don't live long if you bite your owner yeah and so i'm pretty tough when it comes to genes but that is just a quick choice to make shall we breed these two dogs and once that's done i'm everything for me is socialization and training and the effects can be enormous and say let's put it this way the best way i can describe it is say we take a golden retriever and malamute and we either socialize and train them or we don't there will always be that same difference on any behavioral variable between goldens and malamutes but that this difference but the difference between are you not socialized and trained or you are is the difference between the pavement and the top of the empire state building that's the way i look on it you'll always have that genetic difference it'll never be overridden but the difference that comes from socialization and training and quite simple things so you could take a highly trained obedience dog but you didn't quite socialize him properly so as he's performing a lot of people start clapping and he freaks and years and years of training just go down the toilet and so to me always the dog's temperament comes first as the solid foundation the terra firma that we build the foundation on which for me would be sit down and stand stays on top of that we'd put centrapidale attraction does the dog want to be close to you and on that where we build all the fancy stuff that we're going to do whether it's snazzy healing or hunting and i find a lot of people in working professions

they have a dog that doesn't have basics and so like hunting dogs how many of them do you know don't have a recall right it's ridiculous you know you never put a recall on your puppy because they don't i remember a lady was interviewed in in england on tv she'd won many international hunting competitions with her golden and um the producer of my tv program then interviewed her and said what do you think of this new english chap who's teaching these off-leash puppy classes you know what do you think so oh well you know number one training is not a game you can't possibly train a dog six months to a year old okay so it is serious now as she's saying this to the camera she's sitting on the floor at her home with a pheasant wing in her hand teaching a puppy to retrieve the pheasant wing as she's saying you can't play train puppies she's play training a puppy and that's probably why she won all the trials and all her competition couldn't compete because she kept saying oh i would never train a puppy but she did and she was you know so you know that it's oh it no question it's really especially today it would be a shame not to just to wait for a puppy to grow up and and not to do anything that that would be just wrong like really that would be um i always give those examples of um you know i'm coming eastern europe bulgaria back in the communism time like in romania the orphanages there were just so many kids like i sometimes even in my classes have the show those videos on youtube of um those kids that had zero interaction with no no no parents no no conversation no play which play is essential to for you know like if if you don't think about training forget training but not to play with a dog or not to play with a kid at that age you completely will will will put a limitation of the brain development i'm really amazed when you know children or puppies grow up in a really impoverished environment but so many of them somehow cope they get through and i think because of that then people don't think early socialization is so important but what i tell them is yeah that dog is coping he will never be what he could have been you stole that from him when he was a neonate or a very young puppy or baby so he will never be what he could have been but yes the coping mechanisms of the mammalian brain is unbelievable and it can withstand an awful lot of early damage um but it often leaves a lot of scars when people don't do the work when their dog is fearful of people you see that is a self-reinforcing process in the same way that socialization is self-reinforcing

like say with crazy labs they'll approach anyone and say hello hello i'm a lab pleased to meet you i love you i love you which means they'll be more likely to do that tomorrow so socialization is continually reinforced but for standoffish puppies they're not socializing today because they're standoffish but i'll tell you what i'll be even more standoffish tomorrow and less likely to socialize so that the fact that dogs can cope and we can manage problems oh we put them away when visitors come to a house or we coddle them on leash when they walk but the sad thing is they miss the real joy of life being a dog that you can be walked off leash and you can sniff and you can do have lots of freedoms because the owner has socialized you and basically only have one command that works sit you can go a long way with an off-leash dog if he just has an emergency sit and no matter what he's doing um you can get him back under control sit then you've got options you could call him because now he's looking at you and he's proven you're in control because he just sat he's being compliant you could do a recall or you could do stay or you could walk up to him or you could run up to him and do the recall yourself because the environment's going downhill so rapidly a bunch of children are running up to him sit i do the recall put him on leash my dog's fine and you know so we can go a long way by just at one emergency command with a socialized dog but when you don't have that so like now i worry so much in covid there's going to be so many eight months 10 month old puppies that are scared of their own shadow and their quality of life is going down the toilet so you know i've posted a lot of free webinars on neat ways to socialize your puppy during the shutdown with social distancing simple things like have all your extended family and friends who you want the dog to like as an adult send you a used t-shirt and then we're going to have a zoom and whenever you talk you're going to let your dog sniff the right t-shirt so we can hear the person he can smell and then we praise and give five treats and for the children we give 10 treats and it does that work i don't know but i would definitely try it out interesting and then we can socialize you know socially i tell people it's wonderful to teach dogs now instead of being social loons that you walk them and whenever they see another dog they want to run up and greet it and they want to jump on people we now teach dogs the default greeting is no greeting but we set it up we get all our family and friends to come to our house and walk the block

clockwise spaced out we're going the other way with our puppy what he's going to meet 20 strangers but we know these strangers and they know what to do so as we approach they stop and we sit our dog then they walk by the default greeting is no greeting occasionally after five laps and a hundred greetings we practice we practice we say to the dog sit stay okay say hello and the ersatz stranger knows call the dog and have it sit before petting it and keep it you know we now could actually socialize better trained dogs because of the social distancing an arm's length six foot leash that's a nine foot distance instead of six feet so we can do it we put our minds to it there there are ways to socialize but it's just not being done and we have two hidden problems which i call them adolescent onset surprises separation anxiety and fear of people and why because the dog looks normal in covid times when you're at home with him no what happens when you go to work and the kids go to school and he's left at home alone he will freak but they don't see it now and then the fear of strangers we don't see it because the dog's at home vet doesn't see it till the pup's probably about six to eight months old so it's why i've always for me socialization and training is just everything because it's all we can do now and yes i prefer prevention someone called me out on this day today i was reading one of the comments on a question i answered last week and it says all i ever hear is prevent the problem it's easily preventable easily solved when the animal's young and so i said you know the training protocols are the same even if it's an adult and that's what i do yes it will take longer but it's all we can do and so i i love that quote by i think it's attributed to confucius you know the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago the second best time is now yeah let's start training now and because we can pull them rounds we i've just worked recently with two dogs scared of their own shadow raised in way up north in montana uh they both come around and quickly because we are troubleshooting them every day and is it stressful for them you bet poor dogs but day by day gets easier on them we can now introduce them to a stranger in about 30 seconds when they first met me it took about three hours but they've now both met you know one of them about 40 strangers and the other one several hundred and it's getting quicker and quicker and easier and easier each time not as quick as the puppy and puppy class we're going to solve this problem week one so we can only do what we can do and the time to do it

is now but i find so many people will offer excuses for training without realizing it's an excuse you know will he grow out of it well he was abused when young my view is no he won't grow out of it unless you train him if he's abused by young well that was terrible but let's now get him over that abuse now you know i find so many people don't train they say things like oh well he's an afghan or a pet owner says oh he's a malinois and they don't even try to train and it's such a shame i think but i don't get on people's case for that i'm not the sort of trainer who says then you shouldn't have got a dog in the first place i find a lot of sort of holier-than-thou trainers out there speaking down to owners and and not helping them if someone comes to me with a dog my job is to advise them how best to train that dog a stupid choice right now not in puppyhood because they've got that silly choice right now so when you have uh i mean i i hope we agree and in some places where we have the like you would have a genetically weak dog and there is ways to recognize that and there is no question that training and socialization and just interaction is critical no matter what but there is certain limitations right because they cannot overcome like let let's for example take the the sudden loud noises which is a very common part of a test right i um so i i mean i've been breeding dogs since late 80s and and we breed a lot of dogs um i also was in the at the guide dogs very closely very interested in the their program which was yes it was uh by the time i think his name was uh clarence paffenburg he made the the little puppy testing and and and in his book he actually paffenberger popularized the the work that was done by scott and fuller at bar harbor main so he just wrote it in a way that the average person could understand and of course at san rafael they took that on board totally so in the 50s they were actually pretty advanced in terms of raising the puppies but i find from going back it's not changed that much since the 50s and i think with like the new revolutionary stuff that i've learned about socialization especially neonatal stuff um is it's astronomical on what it can do to a dog whether he has brilliant genes or not and by the way what would i do if a dog i would consider was genetically defective well i would spare or castrated immediately and i would include in that if a dog required say an elective cesarean to be born yeah i would do the cesarean then i would say maybe we should think of

castrating and spaying the entire litter plus the mum yeah you know because veterinary science is for the survival of the individual not for the progressive destruction of the breed so that's how maniacal i am about genes but as a pet i would say well he's castrated so he won't pass these genes on but let's give him the best shot being a pet and if i knew his like lineage in terms of breeds i would say just so you know starting at five months and maximizing at eight months this dog will spook out to sudden noises so when he is a neonate and the ears are barely open at two and a half weeks let's subject him to every noise he's likely to hear including loud noises because they can't hear them too well you know they feel the vibrations hand claps balloons popping you can buy apps for every noise there is let's turn it up to 100 decibels you know let's handle these neonates to you know it's over and over and over let's hit them with it and people who are doing this now um my my favorite trainer in the world um is russian she lives in um indianapolis and the way she selects her dogs especially bred um and all they come from humane societies because the dog she competes with um was a little white pit bull that they found in the humane in in a shelter and it um that did uh very well competing against the military and the police i think she was the only non-military police individual and she came second and everyone said no you really came first but you hadn't got a uniform so we couldn't give it to you but the selection is extreme but the way she raises these animals the videos of it um and you you can your your your listeners can google her name julie case um i'm trying she has a facebook page and you'll see her socialization videos and you will not believe it what she does with these neonates three weeks old she's got a whole bunch of kindergarten children handling the puppy passing as they clap and sing songs and then they have the room which is the floor is covered in balls and crinkly paper and collapsed garbage cans and seesaws and this is where the puppies are being socialized um in man the number of brain cells which are making dendritic connections and living there compared to living in an apartment it never goes out the brain cells that are dying so when we now look at the means available for so so they i think the military you know cotton on to this but the way they did it was too silly i mean what's it called the military system where yeah yeah that's super yeah six exercises each one is what 15 seconds long and done in true military fashion we will repeat this

five five times for five seconds you know what have you it was the right idea but not 0.01 percent of what you should be doing then neonatal stimulation has an enormous effect on the dog and i call it what i say is my analogy is it gives your dog padding to withstand all the ills that the world is air to all the weird stuff that's going to happen children running up tripping over and head butting your dog when he's chewing a bow the dog was like been there done that yeah when i was four weeks old and and when they talk about socialization people i don't think really understand what we're talking about because of what they say well you shouldn't do it for more than 20 minutes no i do it till the puppy passes out then he falls asleep for 45 minutes while his brain is making a permanent trace then he wakes up he's ready to go again and if you want to understand i think what is right for dogs and puppies in terms of experience and exercise watch them play to the exhaustion which is what they'll do it's what every litter of puppies does they wake up they yawn they pee they oh they scratch they pee they poop and they find another puppy to bite on and they do it till they're exhausted they go to mom and suck until they fall asleep they play until exhaustion that's what we're not doing to puppies we're not socializing to exhaustion or giving them experience to exhaustion you can't do too much with the puppy because you'll just fall asleep it else it went right having said that i don't mean to say you frighten the living daylights out of an unsocialized puppy but if you've been doing it since neonate hood neonate hood or since he was a neonate through puppyhood no you can scream at the puppy shout run down fall over and do all this high level socialization you know i got caught out by this right here about three months ago i went in the training room and i tripped every single dog in training spooked i thought oh my word yeah you know we used to do that in puppy class we don't even do it in serious now an exercise in serious puppy training was i do it with the kids i say look here we can play a joke on your parents when i go you know from that children's song a tissue a tissue we all fall down i think in america they say ashes ashes all for them when i sneeze i want you all to fall down some of you to go still and others to pretend you're having a fit and it's a joke on your parents and i watch what the puppies do what do the puppies do well the first dog to hit these children are pit bulls followed by labs like as if

they say it's not my fault it's not my fault lick lick lick lick lick lick i'm sorry i'm sorry lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick you know, litter of neonates should be in every kindergarten class there is. Then we'd have fewer dog bites, especially dogs biting children. I know, like, for me, like, I look at it again. I used to believe I wanted to, even in that military program and some of those, you know, neonatal programs. And I did quite a few interesting, I mean, with me, it was very easy because I have, like, again, I have every, like, all the dogs and the females that I breed, they're, like, at least by now, who knows, maybe 12, 13 generations of dogs that I know that I've bred. So I did, there was a time where I was really trying to see if this, because it's so hard to know if something, how do you know if that puppy was sound to begin with and we didn't need to do anything, or it was not sound, but it actually what we did at an early age truly helped and changed. And I, there were times early 90s, I split leaders in two. And I did with some and I didn't with some. The ones that, like, I did not find much, if any, difference in development. The most change in development I found with the dogs that had a, just a more of a normal interaction and when play was involved, any form of play. That really made them very confident and very curious and ready to explore and ready to interact. And the ones that did not have a chance to play, they were very observant,

but you can see them always judging, always thinking a little bit. And eventually I decided to, even in my training program, to stop the, like, using the cotton balls and tickle them and put them in the cold. And I stopped it just because I never really saw a change. And there was a time where I really, and eventually I decided that that's such a bad idea. But I was, there was a moment that I wanted to breed two very unsound dogs. And I was, like, just completely always aware of the environment. And we know that it kind of comes in. There is some genetic predisposition to that. And I was so close to breed that and see what I can do if I, like, go just crazy with that early on programs of development. And I never had the guts to do it because it's, especially I breed Malinois. And when you have Malinois that are not sound, the problems that you have are different than Labrador that's not sound. That's an understatement. I think the example you give is when you talk about, say, sound sensitivity. If a dog is sound sensitive, and that certainly has a genetic component to it, because we bred them to be sensitive to sound and to respond to it, sometimes going back to the flock, other times going out away from the flock to protect it. But then we bred them to be sensitive to sound. What I have found from puppy classes is we can prevent the dog from becoming oversensitive to sound as an adult in a way that will severely change its temperament and behavior. Because if you think about it, reactivity to sound, you have a totally different dog there, say, a Malinois versus a bloodhound or a Noofie. You know, slight sound and your Malinois is like, and the Noofie is like, it hasn't even moved, you know. And so a tiny genetic physical difference can have a massive effect on temperament. So the way I sort of step back and look at husbandry, if you like, which is raising and training, first is what is natural? What do dogs do at that age in the wild? Well, neonates, not much. They wiggle, they pee, they poop. We usually require stimulation to do it. They don't have many senses, but they can smell and feel. So that's when I would introduce dogs to strangers. One sniff, they know you're a stranger and they can feel you. So, and the feel, I would get rid of the seven of the 13 most common bite triggers, you know, the collar region, the two ears, the muzzle, the four paws, the ghoulies, hugging and looking in their eyes. I would start looking in a Rottweiler's eyes before his eyes have opened. Why wait till they're four weeks old when you can do it at three and a half weeks? He's like, is that a human face?

And I'm looking in his eyes and puffing in him, you know, smell my breath and all that stuff. So there's one way to look at it. What is natural in the wild if the dog were left to its own devices? How much would it play? How long would it play? What would it do? Well, it would do everything to develop social savvy. One of the most complex skills there is. When you're walking your dog and he sees another dog, he doesn't know. How does he know instantaneously whether he should look at that dog or not, whether he can approach that dog or not. That a well socialized dog can tell that in a flash. And they know whether to go still and just look away. So the other way I look at it is how can we prove it? Well, if we did a genetical breeding study, it would take 20 years. It would take now a lot of gene sequencing stuff and probably cost a few hundred million dollars. Well, that ain't going to happen. However, how quickly can we do a study on training? Very quickly. As opposed to studies, say, on cognition. They take forever and your effects require very sophisticated statistics. If I did a study on training and my favorite studies are what I call test, train, test. You're going to have this dog for 25 minutes. So I test his comprehension on, say, verbal commands. Sit, down, sit, stand, down, stand. Five times over, verbal commands only. If the dog doesn't sit, I repeat the command. I repeat it to a maximum of five times. If he doesn't sit, I then lure him to sit and carry on with the next one, which is down. OK, so that's my test. Sit, down, sit, stand, down, stand. Verbal commands only. Multi commands, commands if necessary. Then I calculate what I call the response reliability percentage. So if I repeat it five times for each sit from the stand, I've got five repetitions, five responses, divided by how many commands did I give? Well, I'm only scoring up to six. Five verbals in the lure. And I come out with a percentage. Well, a lady who's starting one of these studies in England just said, I got a dog. He won't do anything. What do we do? I said, OK, here's the protocol. You say, sit five times, no response. You try to lure him, no response. He has a score of six, but zero responses. Now you physically move him into the sit for the next position. So we go on. But you're getting a score of zero response reliability. Brilliant. Because this is the pre-test. Imagine now what just 20 minutes lure reward training is going to do to this dog. I can improve that from zero to about 70% in 20 minutes. And so when we're doing research on training, the effects are enormous. A dog that won't let go of a retrieval toy.

We can change that in one session, you know. But this is the research that's not being done. Instead, people will talk about, oh, well, is it this gene? Is it bred into the dog? Was it his grandfather? Or we should do a study on this or studies on cognition in learning. My view is it'll take forever or cost a fortune and your p-values won't exist because you need sophisticated statistics. I'm going to produce data in 20 minutes by just training six dogs that my p-values will be 0.01. So if I graph out the histogram scores of the pre-test and the post-test, the same test before and after training, you will see daylight between the two bell curves. We don't need to do statistics on this to know that the p-value is going to be 0.01. It's going to be so significant. This is the training that I so wanted trainers to do. And it's why I started the APDT Foundation, to raise money to give as prizes to trainers that have done research on dog training. Because at the moment, what I find in the doggy world, in the training world, so many people are proselytizing it like I am now. I want to listen to that. I want to see you doing it. So what I've been doing the last two years is filming me training, and I'm now changing careers into an editor. Now what you will see is one minute before, one minute after, a dog playing with that same dog in a dog park with hundreds of dogs around. But you can also see real-time training of how long it took me. And with that dog, it was about two hours and three sessions. That is a dramatic change. So, you know, I want people to see the data before and after. And if you're interested in that, you want to know how I did it, here is the real-time training with no edit. And so, you know, instead what we're getting, say, the foundation is giving grants to people to do studies in universities, where half of the money goes to the university, and they're doing the wrong studies. They're all on cognition. I don't want that. I want studies on training so that we know when we see this video, we see these data, we see this video saying, I really want to see how this guy did it. Yeah. We know who to listen to. So, like, that's gone. You see, in your world, you have that. It's called competing. Right. And when I got into this field, every single person at my seminars was competing in obedience. A few of them in tracking, a few, very few in Schutzen and so on. But they all competed, and they know what an NQ is. They know what a zero is. And because of that, we maintain standards before going out in public in the trial or in the pet dog sense before walking on the street.

But now people, you know, they won't test the dogs. I've tried to get people to do it in class, and they say, oh, no, what if my students fail? And I tell my trainers, then I'll fire you. If your students fail, I mean, that's obviously a reflection on the teacher. The teacher. I was joking, of course. But I think it's the best way to learn when we test everybody's students. And now we know two things, you know, how good you are at training dogs and how good you are at teaching people. Because I find a lot of dog trainers don't have stellar people skills. In fact, the opposite. They're very disparaging of their clients. You shouldn't have got a dog. You never should do that. That's inhumane. And no, my question is, can you train the dog? Prove it. And when I've seen that a person can cause behavior change in a dog, then I will listen to them and watch them. And then we can have a meaningful conversation about the techniques you use. And I'm not the sort of person to say, I don't like that technique. You're a horrible person. I would say, you know, another way of doing it is this. Shall we try that and see which is quicker and easier and more effective? Then we evaluate what's enjoyable or not. But I find many trainers make value judgments on others without. And if you think about it now at workshops or conferences, when did you last see someone train a dog on stage? See, this was the way the APDT used to be up until 1999 in San Diego, when we had 1500 people at the conference and the presenters were all training dogs on stage, dogs from the audience. And I love that. I mean, one of my favorite people to watch, whether you've ever seen her on stage, Sue Sternberg. She was hilarious. I think it was San Diego where she's teaching dogs to retrieve. So she says, well, I don't have a demo dog because I've come from the East Coast. So I'll pick three dogs from the audience. And she picked something like a beagle, a husky and an Irish wolfhound to train real time on stage. It was so hilarious because she has a bag with treats on the floor with the beagles in the bag. So she puts the bag on the table. So this Irish wolfhound runs off with it. The whole thing was just funny. Yeah. But in the end, she had three dogs that would retrieve on cue. That's a trainer. You kind of started something that I want to come back to this, to where the whole problem of, which is, it's a very big problem, the divide between the dog training camps and which way is better and which one is not a good way to do.

And I wish that we can find a way that we can train, compete, and see what works the best for the dog, which dog is happy, which dog is comfortable, which dog. Like, it's not that hard for us to work together. But somehow, there is a big divide in the community of dog training. And we all have, I mean, I have my own theories of why this is. Again, I mean, I've been training dogs for quite some time. And I come from Eastern Europe. We used to train dogs. I'm sure you trained dogs the same old school way at one point, where, you know, you used the leash and jerk and release and so on. And it was how it was done. Then the 80s came. And then people got excited that, wow, we can actually, don't need to always do this kind of training. We actually can make the dog enjoy the training and make the trainer enjoy the training. Eventually, some of the books came. Karen Pryor's book came. You know, and it started to change on a big scale what we can do. And I think a lot of trainers, including myself, I mean, I went all the way with it. And I was training pretty much without any use of aversive at one point. But in the competitions that I competed in, it was a limitation. Like I, and not just myself, but I would see that limitation of, okay, we can definitely, we know that we can train a dog. But if we have some element of negative reinforcement, the training can become a level or two higher. And the negative reinforcement, especially for the sports that I do, becomes very important because we have to deal with competitive reinforcers on the field. And it's not possible to always control the environment. It's not possible to always use negative punishment. It's not possible. Okay, I wouldn't say it's not possible. It is possible, but it is very time-consuming. And it's not as effective in some instances. And I always, I am, I, anything that comes out, anything that's new, anything that's old from early 80s to today, anything that's of importance in dog training, I have studied at to a level that I understand what is going on. And anything that I see that works, I would, of course, take and use. No question about it. And I believe that many trainers will do the same. And this is where, what you were saying, like we will have, somebody will give a seminar or some study is going to come out.

And we're going to say, well, this is, you know, this works better than this. But then if you don't present it and you don't show us how to do it, or if you show me how to do it and I am doing it, but I am not successful, then I should be able to come back to you and learn a better way. And this is my question. When we always say that there is a better way, but we are not out there promoting that better way. And not proving, and not proving that it is a better way. And I think this will always change the dog training world. I don't think, I think it's this side of just clashing and not working together and always saying, well, our way is better, no, our way is better. But what is your way? What exactly? Just show me what you can do. Because if your way is better, I have no ego. I'm taking it all and I'm using it all. If it's better, there's no question in my head that I wouldn't do it. Right? And so I have, I don't understand why this is, when we are saying there is a better way, but it's actually not explained, and then we don't have the tools or the understanding how to deal with it. And it is different to have a dog that's doing competitive obedience than a dog that is doing a protection sport. And it's bred for that, and it has an element of aggression and a whole different chemicals at work at that moment. And it has to listen at that time. I think it's very, it's, in my opinion, a very high level of training, only if you are able not to just squash a dog, because that's easy to do. Everybody can do that. But actually, to find a way to control and guide a dog that is in that high level of arousal. And as I said, all the chemicals are just at work in a madness. And the dog really wants to do something that you are asking him to do something else. But finding the way for the dog to do what you want while they really want to do something else, without showing that avoidance and suppression and, you know, just pure compliance with eagerness, without the, I'm doing it just because I'm afraid that you're going to jump on me. I'm not interested in that kind of training. Yeah, I mean, it's like people too. My view is like in a company, my son runs it now. We've never had an argument. Does he do everything I want? No, he's in charge of the company now. He makes decisions. And sometimes I totally disagree. We, you know, there's, and so it comes into conflict. I want this done, but it's not being done. But I'm not going to argue about it. I say, well, let's do both and see which one works better.

But back to the dog training thing, the way I see it, because I look back, you know, pretty much to the 60s about this. And I never trained the formal way. I'd never seen it until I saw Barbara Woodhouse on the telly. And I thought, I don't believe what you're doing. No, I thought it was a joke. I thought it was a comedy program. You know, I saw it in a pub. I grew up on a farm. My dogs are off leash. And when I walked into my first obedience trial, my dog was six months and one day old. I had to borrow a leash. I didn't even own a leash. I didn't think about it, that in novice you've got to heel on leash as one of the exercises, you know. And so I had to borrow someone's leash. And so I always trained off leash and was very comfortable with it. But anyway, the way I see the whole dog world, and when I look back, I do so with an incredible amount of joy when I think, you know, the privilege I've had to be here at this time, the wonderful people I've met and watched. But I also look back with a lot of sadness because I think I saw the peak in dog training in terms of coming together and people learning quickly was like the end of the 90s, the beginning of the new millennium. And so when I started the APDT, first in Canada, then the US, UK never worked because they wanted to exclude everybody there. The dog people are very exclusionary. But then, you know, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and so on. It was an open educational organization. Now, if you're educating people, who do you want to educate the most? The professors. No, they know a lot. You want to educate the people who haven't got it, who haven't had the privilege to know what you know. So we welcome anybody, no matter how you trained a dog, come and learn these methods. And we do the demos on the stage. There are tremendous togetherness at the conferences. You talk to everybody. The evenings were just so much fun. It was ridiculous. It doesn't exist now. It just does not exist. We used to have balls and dances and pub nights. skits we would put on. It was a fun place to be. Now, it's not so much. I wonder if the internet has something to do with how things changed. It started to happen in the 2000s. And it had to do with becoming theorists. And I'm sad to say I was the first person to introduce learning theory to dog training. A friend of mine said you should call it learning secrets because it is a secret to most people. So we brought in a bit of science. But this was meant to aid the practice of dog training, not meant to be something you argue about in lieu of actually training the dog, which has happened.

Online, I see many discussions about, well, which part of the quadrant are you in and all this stuff, rather than how can we use our learning theory, our learning theory, not the one people are focused on, because that's over 50 years old. It's 50 to 100 years old. The learning theory, everyone is treating as gospel, creedal. It's like it's in a little red book. Oh, no, no, no. This is negative punishment or this is positive reinforcement and de-da-de-da-de-da. And it was meant to be refined. But the point was we put it on show, not just at the conference, but I put on what's called the Canine Games, an event where we had eight teams, nine dogs and handlers on each team, and all the competitions, nine of them, were off-leash. This is it. This is the final performance. And it was so wild. Like we used to hold it in the Sky Dome in Toronto. You know, 30,000 people there. And we did it with the Credit Valley Dog Show because they were losing supporters. So I said, well, I'll put on the Canine Games if we can get more people to come. Well, the noise we were creating, we got music playing, blaring, 30,000 people shouting and screaming. The people in obedience came over and said, could you keep it down? Our dogs are spooking. I said, well, ours are. Look at this team. All the handlers are less than 10. And they've got their dogs under control. Off-leash. You know, this to me was the great equalizer. Because then you knew you wanted to listen and watch these people and learn from them. But that has gone. There are no competitions. And I think, in part, I feel responsible for it going the way it did. I didn't notice what was happening again. The rift coming back. The tremendous animosity and hatred. And the APDT even changed from an open educational group to being exclusionary. No. Like it was in England. When I tried to start it in England, I got 500 names who wanted an APDT in England. So I gave it to a good friend of mine. I won't mention his name. And he started handling it. The first thing he did was took these 500 names and deleted 430 of them and said, well, they can't join. We'll pick these 70, of which seven said, I don't want to be along to this association where you're throwing out people before we start. And the APDT in the UK took about 20 years before it built up to the 500 number that I gave them back in 1994. And this whole exclusionary thing. No. You will never change someone from excluding them from your tribe, as one totally positive dog trainer calls it. Go and join another tribe. No. If you care about dogs at all. Dog trainers are precious.

And the way I explain it to people, when I'm talking to a dog owner, if you see me do it, you won't believe how I'm turning to the nicest person there is. I'm nodding. I'm smiling. I'm trying to seduce this dog owner to do it my way. I've got lots of tricks of the trade that I learned from the bozo game to convince them to give it a whirl. But when I talk to it, why? Because I don't want to deny their dog my education. And if I belittle this owner, they aren't going to do what I suggest. So I think their dog suffers, and that's my fault. But when I'm talking to a dog trainer, I'm talking about ruining the life of 2,000 dogs. Because I don't have the people savvy and kindness and empathy to talk to another person just because they're doing it differently from me. It's like people that get pissed off because you vote the wrong way or you belong to the wrong religion. Right. You know, I like talking to people with different beliefs and learning from it. And I will be totally civil. And that's not because I'm English. It's because I am who I am. Let's chat about it and learn. And so we stopped a lot of people learning because we wouldn't allow them to come in. But we then stalled ourselves learning because the whole theory behind clicker training or positive dog training hasn't changed in the last 20 years. Whereas what we're doing at Sirius changes every year. I mean, we use techniques now that, say, are so fast for dog-dog reactivity. You know, you say, I'm going to click away for three months? Are you kidding me? I'm going to give this dog its life back again today. Let's let him off leash and go for it. Because I've convinced myself it's safe. I'm not cavalier. I wouldn't do it if I think the dog was going to chew another dog up. But just the growly-wowlers and the fights and all that, the argy-barges. No, let's stop that and teach this dog how to react around other dogs so we can get him back in the dog park again off leash. That's what being a dog is, sniffing bums, running with other dogs. I mean, that's what they should be doing, not on leash being held fearfully by the owner. So, you know, I'm a great believer in can we do it in one session? And I think a lot of trainers got stalled. Half were prevented from learning and joining the reward-based ship, if you like. You're no longer welcome because of tools you use. And those that stayed stopped learning and forgot that, as I tell people, we don't bicycle to the moon. We used to walk. We discovered horses, then bikes, motorcycles, cars, planes. Now we have rocket ships.

There's a thing called advances in technology, and it's happened in dog training. But I find now, you know, fewer people, say, listening to me, if I told them, oh, I would use a DR-102030 on that. You want to speed up a Bassett's recall? You'll have the fastest Bassett on this planet. You've got to use a differential reinforcement that has four levels of feedback. And it changes according to the quality of the behavior with every response. Response. We recalculate. Obviously, that can be done with an iPhone app. But I have a simple formula that allows you to do it five reps at a time. Then you recalculate. But you will speed up any dog's recall. So it's the fastest dog on the planet. OK? I mean, we actually did train up a Bassett. And he was competing in the K-9 games where you had 64 dogs start. They raced one against the other, two dogs at a time. And the winning dog that sits across the finish line goes through to the next round. And we had a Bassett that got into the quarterfinals. A Bassett. And in one of the preliminary rounds, it knocked out a Border Collie. Because the owner thought, oh, I'm drawn against the Bassett. Oh, my God. What a joke. It was ready to go. And they forget how strong Bassetts are. They don't push from the back. Like, say, Shepherds or Malinois. They pull from the front. And that Bassett was over the line before the Border Collie owner had even realized what had happened. But then the next owner up against the Bassett knew what they were up against. And he got knocked out at the quarterfinals. But, you know, that's what we need to do. Change behavior quickly. When you look at my criteria for training, it's got to be easy. Or else the owners can't do it. The owner's not you. They don't have 40 years experience. They're not champion of the world. They're an owner. But they bought a Malinois. You know? And so it's got to be easy. Or else they can't do it. It's got to be quick. Or else they probably won't. Dogs aren't their life. It's equivalent to a VCR to them. Turn it on. Turn it off. And the sooner we as trainers get used to that, instead of holier than bowing them, though you shouldn't have got a dog, the quicker we can help people out. It's got to be effective. Sounds dumb, right? No. Not if you count leash jerks and you count electric shocks or you count food treats week by week. And what you find is they don't change. Well, if they don't change, it's presumably because the behavior hasn't changed over here. The behavior hasn't decreased in frequency to zero. Over here, it hasn't improved to 100. Yet you're still shocking, jerking, or treating at the same frequency.

Well, isn't that evidence to you that this ain't working? What you're calling a punishment or a reward isn't a punishment or a reward. You know, that's why quantification is so important. It's why I play games, because it is the most ruthless quantification there is. You know, as in the old obedience trials or walking dog trials or gundog trials or tracking or what have you. So I competed the canine games for people. And when you have 64 dogs, how many first place dogs will there be? One. The fastest dog in the tournament. There'll be a silver medal. There'll be a bronze medal. That is ruthless quantification. And that's what we need back in dog training, but not so much ruthless, my dog versus yours, but you and your dog versus you and your dog. What's your personal best? You'll only know if you count for time. And then when you best your personal best, that's the time for you and your dog to celebrate. You know, they know you're working for a team. And I've met some dogs, you know, when you were talking about competing, where I am convinced that these dogs actually got the thrill out of the competition. This was an obedience, though. But not only were they trained what to do, but they had the thrill of doing a good job. It was obvious to me that the owner, who at the time was the best trainer in the U.S. and then became one of my puppy trainers, Susie Blueford, or not to say the best trainer in the U.S., but she had the highest ranking arch dog. Let's put it that way with the most number of points. And that dog, you could see him. He loved healing properly. He took pride in it. He was showing behaviors that you weren't asking him for. It's like if dogs have pride, I don't know, but he seemed proud of his owner and proud of his performance. And I say it's the holy grail of positive or reward-based dog training is you don't use any external reinforcers at all. The response becomes the reward for the dog. Doing it is sufficient. And you see this a lot in, once you get to bite work, say, in Schutzen, they will go at that with more verve than they will with the obedience or, say, the tracking. And back when, I used to counsel some Schutzen trainers back when, and so I looked at point spreads in the three disciplines. Bite work, you've got a tiny point spread between the top ten dogs in bite works like that and tracking like that. In obedience, it was colossal. So if you just make sure you first compete in novice kennel club obedience, you will kill Schutzen and obedience. This was back then, not so much now.

Who is going to make up that point spread, even if they come first in bite work and first in tracking? Mathematically, they can't. You know, it's very different now. Obedience is a big thing in Schutzen now. But back then, 40 years ago, it wasn't. The obedience was totally sloppy. And so it makes it a winnable sport with not the best dog. It's kind of like our elections in the States. Yeah. But it's, we've got to get back to people doing it. And this is where, years ago in the 90s, I went to the AKC and said, you know, the novice exam in the AKC is the best exam for a companion dog. It's wonderful. Quick sits, one command, solid, rock solid stays. Walk by your side on a loose leash. I mean, hello, why don't you just change it and offer the same exam, but people can talk to the dog the whole way through. And, you know, this one command only thing ruined what could have been, I think, the most fun, attractive sport out there. Because it's a very well designed test, which has been copied in many other dog sports. And even if you like, between exercises, offer a treat or throw a tennis ball or play tug. For owners. And instead, no, this whole thing, you only give one command, you can't praise. I mean, it's how to make a misery out of something that's enjoyable. It's like, oh, we have a difficult exercise here, dog training. I want you to make it really unenjoyable. That was AKC obedience. Why didn't they change the word, you know, and have a, like, pre-novice where you could talk to the dog? I mean, they do have a pre-novice of sorts. But you can talk to the dog all the time because that's what a pet owner wants. And you can give treats. You have 10 treats, say, per trial. And the whole dog world would be different then because we have to, people have to do it. And as I tell everybody, dog behavior doesn't lie. I can look at your dog and your dog barked five times. That's a fact. Why he did it, we can argue forever. No, he's abused when young or he's lonely or he has anxiety. No, he barked five times. Solved that problem. Teach him to shush after one bark. Behavior is observable and quantifiable. Testable. So we can test what people are saying. You know, there's too many people blabbing at the moment and not enough people posting videos of what they're doing. So what do you think? Where would, like, if we try to, like, I'm certain that we cannot get everybody together. There is, there is, there is always going to be extreme on each side. That they will not want to ever agree or listen to anything different than what their ideology tells them to.

But I also know that all those, the majority of dog training and people that love dogs, they don't necessarily want to be in these extreme places. And they want to do the best they can for their dogs. And in my opinion, the best for a dog is whatever the best for that dog is. And it shouldn't be based on ideology or if we try something, and it may work with 50 dogs, but it doesn't work with that dog. Do we not want to try something else that maybe has a chance to? And how do we, how do we get everybody, because if we all start to train dogs together and actually share ideas instead of just saying, no, my way is better than your way and your way is better. But we actually start sharing ideas, and we have some competitions to where it's really, as you said, it's like, no, we can prove this. It's easy. You watch it. You know, it's not, I don't listen to it. I want to see it. There's got to be a way that we can get back to making dog training exciting, because there is a lot that we can learn from, from everywhere. Yeah. I mean, I think the Canine Games was one of the best ideas I ever had, but I had a stupid business model, and every year I did it in a different city. So I started in San Francisco, moved to LA, then to Washington, DC, then to Chicago, then to Toronto. Now, when I was in Toronto, we stayed there for four years, but I was only doing one event, so I never developed an audience, you know. The only place where it happens regularly is Japan, where it's an annual event. They have a league there, and then an annual playoff, because it is the most hilarious three days I've ever seen in my life. You know, we have nine games, which all improve the dog's value as a companion and improve its quality of life. So like in the woof relay, you have five dogs. Each dog has to bark three times and shush. If he barks a fourth time, the whole team's disqualified. Five dogs have to do it. Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof. The world record is 7.2 seconds. Pretty good, eh? That is? Yeah. And so, and my favorite event was Dancers with Dogs. And in the event description, it says, you have two minutes to complete your performance. No, you have 30 seconds to set up. You have two minutes to complete your performance. That's all it says. And the things we've had there. We've had like drill groups, you know, seven owners, seven dogs. We had a guy came on, dressed as an accountant, carrying a briefcase with his dog, a collie, wearing seven veils. And the music starts. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And he strips and dances with his dog. You know, we've had plays.

We've had humor. And it's amazing what people come up with when you just say, you've got two minutes. Do it. But I have a list right here, actually, of things I tried and succeeded in. And a list of things I tried and failed. And so things I've tried and failed. Canine Games, my fault. I should have had it in San Francisco and kept it there every year. Building up to where it's grossing a couple of million every year. And then it spreads. I should have done that. Maybe in the future. All sorts of things. The zero calorie treat. This was a puffer that puffed the odor of liver to a dog. You had 30,000 puffs in one treat. Ideal for vets or groomers handling dogs who want to treat a lot without feeding it. You know? So I tried all these things and they... Interesting. So what happened there? People didn't get it. I tried to sell it. And then people said, oh, you're teasing the dog. And now I would say, no, I'm not. Smelling the treats. Far more rewarding to the dog than actually eating it. They'll sniff it forever and then... It's gone. It's heading to the dog's anus already, you know? And so, you know, trying things. And like more recently, you know, people are moaning about this trainer on TV and that. So I started a program on an old website called Dog Star Daily. It's still there. You can look at the stuff. Yes, I see. And it was called America's Dog Trainer and then World's Dog Trainer. So I wrote to hundreds of trainers and said, look, I know you don't like what you see on TV. Here's your chance. You have 30 minutes. Okay? To show what you do. I couldn't get anyone to do it. What I have there, I thought I'd do series after series. Trainers around the world and trainers in the States. I think I only got like 10 of each. And then I thought, well, I'll put on puppy pantomimes. Another failure. So a pantomime is a very, very English thing. At Christmas, it's a play like Cinderella or Puss in Boots. And all the women are played by men. And a lot of the, all the women are played by men. And a lot of the men are played by women. And you're in fancy costumes. It has a lot of famous people doing it. Like soccer stars and, you know, motor aces and what politicians. And you all take part in a panto at Christmas. So I had this contest. And it had a massive money prize, a thousand bucks or something. The best video and the theme was something like summer fun. And you'll see it's still on Dogstar Daily. We've only posted the top 10. But it was so much fun. These people, just some of them, the top five, just went overboard. Some of the others were pretty dorky. But they made you laugh and they were fun.

And it was people having fun with their dogs and doing stuff that was really cool, you know. And a couple of the dogs were incredibly well trained. But, you know, we picked it for not just technical merit, but artistic impression. Like with the, you know, I think we got to bring those things back. And because when I try stuff like that, I'm always too long. You know, like 20 minutes. No one wants to watch a show for 20 minutes. They want to watch a dog trainer for one minute. Then if we had 100 different dog trainers doing the same thing, teaching a dog to sit stay. You know, but you've only got one minute. Okay. Off you go. And it can be real time or fast forward. My son does that a lot when I'm training stays. You know, like I think in one of our serious videos. He fast forwards this dog. He's not responding to an all or none reward training thing to find my face and look at me. And he's just sitting looking at my bum. And he does this for like three minutes. So Jamie just fast forwards two and a half minutes. Then all the dogs said, oh, that's not your face. And he comes around and sits front looking at the face. You know, and this stuff was fun. And we, I think, you know, dog training just got such a bad rap in the media and especially on TV. And when I look at dog training programs on TV, it's like watching grass grow. They're formulaic. They're boring. That's not what dog training is. Dog training should be razzmatazz and fast. But showing how to do it and showing how the trainer, back to what you said about training dogs, we need a plan A. It needs to be quantified and tested. What is the quickest, easiest, most effective way to teach, say, a one minute sit stay? But for the occasional dog where that doesn't work, what's your plan B and your plan C? And we must teach owners when things became totally 100% absolutely positive. The trainer wasn't teaching the owner what to do if the dog misbehaved or was noncompliant. It's all very well saying, well, turn your back on the dog that jumps up. But no, the owner wants a solution now. How about just telling the dog sit? End of problem. So we have to deal with noncompliance and misbehavior. And I find a lot of trainers are not doing that. And I would say a lot of arguments in dog training are straw men. They aren't actually arguments about dog training at all because often both extremes haven't trained their dog. And think how many conferences you've been to. Let's take, say, a shot collar conference or a clicker conference where the dogs are wearing shot collars or being clicked at. You shouldn't be seeing that in an educational conference.

So they obviously aren't training tools. They're management tools. But they obviously aren't there because that shock is not a punishment. And that click is not a secondary reinforcer. It's being totally misused. And these are the people arguing. It's not about training. We can have a discussion about training because you take certain pride in certain people. Like I remember one of my books, Dr. Dunbar's Good Little Dog book, that was named after a good friend of mine who sadly died, I think, last year, Martin Dealey. And when I first saw him train, as part of my TV program, I'm at a county fair in England. He's working in a 40-acre field. He takes three dogs from the audience and teaches them to retrieve off leash, all of them, just using his voice and the tennis ball. And my producer says to me, you're crying, Ian. What's wrong? And I just said, this is just so beautiful to watch. This guy is training three dogs off leash just with praise and a tennis ball. It's magical, you know. And we can take joy in other people doing it and doing it well. And we can take joy in a final performance. But we must see and evaluate and quantify the final performance before we can argue about methods. Right. Because what is the bigger abuse? And Kelly, I think you got the wrong Dunbar for this interview. It should have been Kelly. She's the Malinois person. But there you go. She's always said, what is greater, more abusive in a dog? To solve the problem quickly using something that could be a little scary or physically painful or not solve the problem and live with it, giving the dog grief every day, even if you're just in a huff. Denying the dog your joy and companionship because you haven't trained the dog. And so, you know, I don't like these straw man arguments about training when the dogs haven't been trained. I want to see proof of training. And the good old day was cool, man. I learned, you know, I was a doggy expert before I competed. Well, I never actually competed. I partook of obedience. I was not a competitor. I was in there with the Malamute, right? The third time in the ring, I learned what it was about. I went in the ring six months, one day, six months, two days. Partly just flew by. I thought, this is easy. Then we failed the down stay. And I thought, ah, this is an interesting problem. What do I do if my dog breaks a stay when he's 35 feet away but I'm not allowed to talk to him or signal him? And it challenged my brain. And I worked it out. And so I continued then lecturing to, you know, competitive people. You know, because I learned things like get the problem out of the pattern.

So let's say you have a problem with a dog holding a retrieval object or a sleeve in his jaws and he's got problems like he's munching on it. Keeps re-gripping. I would say don't solve this problem in the pattern you're doing. You know, in competitive obedience. Get it out. You've got to do it with toys. And you do it in your living room. You're sitting down and it's off. Take it. Hold it. Good dog. Thank you. He held it for one second. Now build it up to two, then three, then four, then five. Then do it with every object in the living room. Your car keys, your wallet, a cushion, a toy, squeaky toys. That's a hard one to hold and not squeak. Then you've got it. Take the object perfectly and hold it. But don't do that retraining in the pattern because if the dog makes a mistake, you get frustrated. That frustration poisons the pattern. And then you have a dog whose head goes down and you say, let's compete. And he's like, no, because you'll only get mad at me. You know, because, you know, some people in obedience and a lot of the working sports, you're dealing with the most sensitive breeds out there. Yeah. It's like I've seen dogs where the owner just goes, and that dog goes flat. Well, number one, let's socialize and get used to your moods because you're obviously a moody, testy person. So we want a dog that doesn't give a damn. But when you go, you son of a bitch, the dog just says, don't confuse me for someone that gives a damn. No one with the exercise, you know. Very, very interesting. Yes, that's like you did talk to, you were at the last conference with the IACP, I think, right? What did you think of that? It was like going back in time. I've never had so much fun in my life. There were, you know, I couldn't do too much drinking these days now, but the partying and the dancing till two in the morning. And I talked to everyone. Nice. Because I was kind of a black sheep coming in. But sadly, I did it because of Martin Dealey. Because when I got there, he already died. So I was down there five days, expecting to spend them with my old buddy. And I was pretty much on my own because I went on my own. But yeah, it's anyone who's training a dog. I like to look at what they do. See, I'm not the dog trainer in the family. You know, that's like, you know, Kelly, my former wife or my girlfriend now, they train dogs. They put in the time. They work with it. What I'm good at is watching, observing, quantifying, and then saying, here's your problem. Just change this. You'll find it's different within the realms of the techniques they use. So, God, on Facebook, people went apeshit when I mentioned this.

I just mentioned something like Petco had taken shock collars off the shelves. Oh, my God, the abuse I got. Because I said, personally, I've never used a shock collar. I never will because I don't like electricity. And I don't know whether the dog feels it the same as I do. But I know what happens when I feel it. And I wet my pants, you know. And I said, however, I've given many lectures on how best to use them. And they just went crazy. And so I had to explain afterwards. They said, because most shocks aren't punishments by definition. If we shocked a dog for, say, jumping up, well, we'd expect him to jump up less. Therefore, we shock him less. Eventually, not to jump up at all. Therefore, we don't shock him at all. It's not what we're seeing. We're seeing lots of shocks. Therefore, it is not an aversive punishment. Maybe a little aversive. But it's not punishment in the sense of causing the behavior to decrease in frequency. And so that's where, and I would do the same with someone with a clicker. I would say, oh, my God, you're clicking like a maniac. Refine your criteria. You should only be clicking one out of three approximations to the behavior. Otherwise, you won't improve in quality quickly enough. You know? And I feel the same about punishments. If you use them, you shouldn't be using them again. Otherwise, you haven't trained the dog. Right. And why it was that. So let's go back and rethink that problem. And there's many little things that you can change, you know, to make that better. Like, oh, you know, in the heavy-duty competition world, I'd say, let's get really unbelievable impulse control on a dog over stupid games first. Because it doesn't matter if you screw up here. But when you say sit-stay, I want that dog to be not just solid as a rock, but relaxed as a rock. Because he knows there's no way you will release him until certain things happen. I call these combination unlocking cues. Like, for example, you know, in competitive obedience, when you're doing the stays and they say back to your dog, and they say release your dog, most people, before they release their dog, they heal one step forward. So the judge says exercise finish, release your dog. Well, instead of saying free dog, they go heal, one step, sit, free dog. I did something slightly different, which no one ever saw. I would go back to my dog and take one step backwards and heal. And so in any stay, my dog knew unless he does a one step heel backwards, he's never going to say, hang loose. And this was my hand signal, which my hand would never do by accident, you know.

And so that to me is the joy of training, watching someone and making what they do better. Because I'm good at seeing glitches, you know, I don't have the patience to put in. All my training now is done in 25 minutes and I'm filming it. Because I want you to see what the dog was like here, what he's like now, 25 minutes later. Sometimes one session only, sometimes three. I think that's a great idea. I think for the most part, a lot of trainers are just stuck in this endless repetitions and drills that completely disregard dog's intelligence and don't think that the dog can actually grasp some concept in a very brief interaction. And dogs are so capable of this and actually makes it, the whole interaction and training and learning makes it so much more interesting for a dog when you stimulate that little brain in the way that something needs to happen like right now. We don't need five weeks to learn something that can be taught and practiced within minutes. It's very nice to hear that, you know, that's a very, very good approach. And I think in every, almost every dog sport, every kind of dog training, there is this idea that we have to keep repeating and build this muscle memory. And just like, they're just not smart enough to understand what we want. So we need to just keep going forever and ever and ever. And the dogs get bored and they lose motivation. And they're like, okay, this is just the most boring time. Training really has, you know, slowed down. It used to be the old way. Remember, wait till they're a year old, put them on leash and keep going to class for three years. Then hopefully you'll get one leg in novice or something like that. But we speeded it up with luring. Then it started to slow down as it lost its voice. You know, it lost instruction. Then it lost praise. It was placed by clickers. And it really slowed down to a standstill of getting stuff done. And so, you know, I love it when, you know, we really now accelerate the training process. And so I now do it by trial. And so I tell people, you know, by the eighth trial. So when I'm working with any dog, here's what I do. I say, hello, dog. Here's a treat. I step back, say, dog, come, treat. Then step back, dog, come, sit, treat. And I step back, dog, come, sit, down, sit, stand, down, stand. The fourth trial. So I've done four trials. The dog's got four food rewards. Given me 10 behaviors. Come, come, sit. Come, sit, down, sit. Sorry. Come, sit, down, stand, sit, down. How did I make it 10 behaviors then? Well, they have the original come. Yeah. Come, sit, down, sit, stand, down, stand. Yeah.

So 10 behaviors for four treats in four trials. Now I do four more trials. Same as trial four. I step back, come, sit, down, sit, stand, down, stand. Come, sit, down, sit, stand, down, stand. Four trials now. So after eight trials, the last four trials gave me 28 behaviors. Okay. For four treats. So I'm looking at the response treat ratio. Okay. How many responses I get for a single treat. And then I put the food in my pocket, step back and say, come here, sit. With my empty hand. And they come and sit. And I phased out the lure by trial nine. This is the first session. Trial nine. That food is out of my hand. Think now, though, all the people that use food as a lure. How long does it take them to phase it out of their hand? Never. They're bribing the dog. They don't think about it. It's crazy. I don't think about it. And that's why speed is such an important thing to measure. Because, you know, I really get owners. I always used to say that, you know, I tried to devise training techniques that were dog friendly. But now I try to design techniques which are people friendly and dog friendly. Because I get it with people. They want it done yesterday. They don't want you to tell them they shouldn't have got a dog. Or this will take forever. Or you've got to be patient and consistent. They don't want to know that. They want a training technique where they can get it done in a few minutes and be inconsistent. And that's what we have to deliver. And that's what we have to creatively. So how the hell can we do that then? Without compromising the dog's behavior at other times. That's very simple. We have, you know, multiple names for the dog. For one, I give suggestions. Like, hey, Hugie baby, come here. It means a suggestion. It means a suggestion. Like a stop sign in Florida, you know. And you don't have to do it. But most of the time the dogs do. But if I said Hugo Louis sit. Or in his case, it would be Hugo Louis a seat. It would also be in French. He knows that is not a suggestion. It's a must do. And we can whisper that command. Hugo Louis a seat. Because he knows I will follow up. Because I called him Hugo Louis. It's a must do. And the interesting thing, when you follow up, you don't even have to raise your voice. If you just follow up until the dog does it. And then when he does it. So let's say I had to ask him five times before he eventually sat. But when he does it eventually, I say, thank you. Now he has to repeat the whole exercise. Come here. Sit. And he has to keep doing that until he does it on a single command. Because people are hung up about that. Never do you repeat the command.

I don't give a shit if I repeat it ten times. If I have to repeat the command, you repeat the exercise. And you do it following a single command. And the dogs learn. When he calls me Hugo Louis, I have to do it on one command. No matter how many times I repeat it. So I might as well do it on the first command. You know, it's so simple when you think about it. And how did I learn this? That's how my grandpa and my dad trained me. Trained me. They would ask me once. They never shouted. Never hit me. Ever. I did it, man. They said, Ian, shush. I was quiet. We had certain respect back then. But without raising the voice. And I think that's wonderful. You know, with dogs and with family. Because we can now communicate when it's a deal breaker. If I use a different name. Like, you know, kids do it all the time. You know, Johnny. Johnny, don't touch. Johnny, put that down. You know, Juan Carlos Haddad. So not only do they change from informal name to formal name. But they change languages. And Johnny does it immediately. Now, sadly, he's doing it immediately. Because he's likely been smacked around the back of the head. You don't have to. You just have to follow up. And they just learn. Food seems to be a big part of the reinforcer or reward that you use. Do you move into. Because it's a good starter. Yeah. You see, owners can't use affect. They can't use tone. And I love being silly. And I'll, like, talk to the dogs. Like, Rafa, how are you doing? Hey, good dog. Now, sit. And the dog will do it. Or I use air treats. That's my favorite. And I go, off. Off. And the dogs, off. And then I say, take it. And the dogs go. And just eat this pretend. You know. But people can't do that. So a food lure gets it done quickly. Teaches the meaning of words in the quickest way possible via hand signals. And a food reward is that short-term starter reward. Because you couldn't praise a dead cabbage. You know. They can't praise. They can't say thank you. The knee-jerk human foible is to ignore the good and punish the bad. Bitch at the bad. All the dog does that's wonderful. We totally ignore it. Then he barks once. We get over his case. Same with kids. Same with spouses. Same with pupils. Same with employees. You know. And so the food goes straight to the dog's brain and motivates them. From an owner who is like, sit. Sit. Or they're doing. Here's their hand signal. This will be funny because I'm being. I'm on camera. Instead of going, Robert. Sit. Upwards. In front of their nose. They go, sit. Sit. Sit. Well, you can't sit. They're pointing at the dog's butt. Over his head. But he doesn't have an eye on the back of his head.

And, you know, he doesn't have the cognitive wherewithal that pointing down means you want his butt down. Instead, you get the nose to follow up, just like a horse. Lead it by the nose. The rest of the body will follow. So it's only to start them off. But we phase it out in the very first session. Food as a lure. It's on the table. I won't let them have it in their hand. I won't let them have it on their purse and say, food bags on the table, middle of the room. There's your distraction. You have to call the dog away from it. I'll get the dog to sit and look at you. When that happens, you say, good dog. Go and get a bit out of your food bag and give to the dog. So we use the food initially as a lure, then as a distraction and as a reward. But we're always playing games to see how many responses we can get for a single food reward. Like how many puppy push-ups till he fails. So what would you do to increase motivation if, I mean, certain dogs would have really crazy food drive and some dogs would not be so... And especially when you have a person that can get excited and can get motivated enough. How do you... Where do you go? We use rewards like most people have never even thought of. So just very quickly because we're approaching two hours. Yeah, I know. I know. So very quickly. I use the food because the novice owners need it. But we quantify phasing it out. We go cold turkey on the lure. And the food then becomes a reward only, but it's at a distance as a distraction. So that can be done a number of ways. Either a friend of yours is holding it. So if you say good dog, because the dog's sitting and looking at you, whenever you say good dog, they will give the dog a food reward. But we're always building how many responses, how many heel sit sequences for a single treat, how many come sit sequences in a row. Say 25 one step sequences, come sit, come sit, come sit, cross the room for one treat at the end. So we're always increasing the response reward ratio. But then the easiest way to phase out of food, and if the dog doesn't like food, you train the dog to like food. It's no different than a dog that doesn't like children. You train it to like children, you know, by following food by something the dog likes. Like what? Off, take it with a bit of kibble, chest scratch. Off, take the bit of kibble on the couch. Off, take the bit of kibble, throw a tennis ball. So now that bit of kibble, you think about it, it's not like a clicker, which is only a secondary reinforcer for a treat. The kibble in my book is a secondary reinforcer for everything remotely enjoyable for this dog,

because he has to come and sit and take a bit of miserable kibble. I don't use treats at all. I don't. It's just, it's junk food. You know, you eat the kibble, and that could mean what's coming next could be fetch, tug, jazz up, settle down, tag. That means I allow you to run away and I chase you on the couch, chest rub, sniffing another dog's butt, you know. It's all followed by taking the kibble. Sitting, sitting, looking at me, taking the kibble. Then we play the interactive games, fetch and tug. Tug's my favourite, because the tug's next to you, and it means nothing to other dogs in the dog park. So you throw one tennis ball and you could have a... But tug only means something to my dog. And again, the tug is a mega secondary. Sit, take the tug, hold it, don't pull yet, and then thank you, and a chest rub instead. Occasionally, sit, hold the tug, and pull on it, okay, when you give the cue. So the tug is a secondary that, you know, sort of means a lot to the dog. So the interactive rewards. Then I look at what's really reinforcing to the dog. Most people classify these things and activities as behaviour problems. Sniffing, sniffing a dog's butt, pulling on leash from my Malamute. That solved forging on healing in one session. When I put pulling on leash on cue, and if he healed, I would say pull, okay. And I was a sledder. You know, I was a member of the Norkel Malamute, you know, club and cross-country skiing. I've got a Malamute, pulled me uphill now. It was brilliant. So it could be the dog likes running away. You know, if we ever watch dogs play, what do they do? They run up to a dog and jump on it. Then they turn around and run off and want to be chased. So we play tag. Off, take it. You take the tag toy. When I tap you on the head, you run, I chase. Periodically, I say, Rover, come. To continue the game, you have to come and sit. Or I just say, finish and walk off. They learn that very quickly. So you get quick recalls. But the reward is, you can run away and I will chase you. Jazz up, settle down. Put craziness on cue. All dogs need it if they're locked up in an apartment. So we go, jazz up, settle. Jazz up, settle. Jazz up, settle. Before you know it, you've got the quickest settle in the world. So, you know, and once you get to the working world, it's inevitably their sport. You actually start off, as I say, a winner there because you know what the dog's going to love doing. You're like biting the sleeve or the full body suit, depending on which sport you're playing. You know, or running and doing hurdles. You know, going over the palisade.

That you already know when you teach the dog how to play these games, the games will be absolutely self-reinforcing. And we know that from how hard it is for novice trainers to hold the dog back from any bite work. The dogs are barely in control. Okay, so the control and the impulse control, I would have taught from other games that don't involve the dog's jaws. So this dog is, when you say chill, man, he's chill. I love to see, I love to see a violent competitive dog. By violent, I don't mean aggressive. I mean a dog that's really into competition. But one word from the owner, chill. I once had a guy come to a seminar in Seattle. And he was there early. And I was talking to him. He was having a sandwich, his breakfast. And I said, oh, are you in the workshop? I said, yeah. I said, where's your dog? He says, up there, his malinois had climbed a tree and was lying over a branch like a lion. I said, it's funny. So he says, oh, you want to see him? Called him down. Gave me a little demo. Then he says, chill. And the dog just dropped like a rag dog. I mean, it was impressive. It's wonderful. But how do we train him to drop like a rag doll? By giving him what he wants to do. You must use the problem as the reward in training or you won't get anywhere. And in the companion world, it's pulling on leash and sniffing another dog's butt. You've got to use that as your reward for sitting and looking at you. So like when you like just I know we need to wrap up, but I just remember to ask, like when we talk pulling on leash and talking pet dogs, what is what is your take on on the no pull harnesses that are becoming popular right now? Well, if people know how to use them as a training tool to solve the problem in a couple of weeks and then they're no longer necessary. Cool. But it's not how they're used. So if we let's talk about two different tools now, say a shock collar and a gentle leader. What do owners do with them that is too stupid for words? They get it out the package from Amazon, put it on the dog and use it right away. And in one trial, they've ruined it as the training tool because the dog has learned you can't run off with this collar on or you can't pull with this, you know, halter on. What you should do is put them on, let the dog wear it for two weeks and still misbehave. Then what you do is you add in another cue and it can either be a verbal cue, a formal name for the dog. Now, I like a scent cue on the dog's collar. So what I do is I rub the dog's leather, flat collar with mink oil with one drop of perfume in it. Any perfume will do. It's unique to the dog.

So you let the dog sniff the collar and put it on. It's like, wow, collar smells totally different today, whatever. And then instead of now the dog going off on his flat collar but wearing a halter or a shock collar that's not functioning for a week so he gets used to it. I don't know what it is, but it doesn't do much. The day you put on the scented flat collar, you connect up or you hold the controller for the shock collar. It's the same principle no matter what the tool is. And a couple of, whoa, you can't run off with this on, this smelly collar. Because now the dog thinks, the only difference, the dog's thinking, what's different? I could always run off. I could always pull on leash. What's different is this smell. So now you do that for a month, okay? And now you'll find now the dog's not running off or pulling. So now we let the dog wear the shock collar and let the dog wear the gentle bleeder. But it's not connected anymore. He's on the flat or he's off leash. And you find now you've got the control. Yeah. And so now we take off the various tools and give it to someone else. But people don't know how to use them. And as I said, I've never used a shock collar. I never would. I don't like the idea of shocking dogs. And I think that if we're saying, well, it's the only way to control this dog, I say, well, why don't you get an easier dog? Maybe the dog is too much for you. Or sit down and let's have a think tank. How can we control this dog? How can we control this dog in this situation where he's glassy-eyed and gone gaga over what he wants to do and we can't get through to him? And I would say, yeah, we can do that with most dogs. It, of course, is easier if you know that you're breeding this dog to compete in obedience or rally or working sports. And so you do this stuff early on and get your reliable off-leash dog. So the way we train in Sirius, the dogs are off-leash from beginning to end of class. And it's silly pet dog training, but they're reliable off-leash. And so now if the owner puts a leash on the dog, he walks on a loose leash because you train him off-leash to follow and heal. You know, you've trained him off-leash to do sit stays. I mean, that is the big game changer to me. When you've trained your puppy off-leash, when you now go into, you want a really good companion at home, where you go into some really good dog sports, you have such an advantage knowing your dog's reliable off-leash. You may lose some points, but you'll never lose your dog. And I learned that in the third trial when Omaha ran off. He didn't run off. He left me when off-leash.

Oh, no, that was the third trial. It was the fifth trial. He leaves me when healing. See, I'd suddenly, as a dog expert, learn what competition is, got problems to solve. So this one, I'm healing away with him. And he just goes, woo-woo, woo-woo, bunny hops twice and walks. He jumps over the ring, through the next ring, through the next ring, into the fifth ring, where he joins a golden retriever, healing with his own. I'm not kidding. And so I continue my healing pattern. I don't know what to do. I'm a novice to obedience, right? And I actually had to hop over the ring myself. And I say to the judge, do I keep walking? He says, no, no, like this. Well, now everyone at the show, including 200 people from the Malamute specialty watching me compete, are all looking at this Malamute off-leash and another ring, going, oh, it's a Malamute, you know. And no stewards will go up to take hold of it. So I said to the judge, what do I do? Do I call him back? The judge said, you could. I said, oh, yeah, no problem. Omaha, sit. And he sat five rings away. And the whole show went quiet. So I started looking around, thinking, well, I failed the off-leash healing, but I've got the distant sit down. So I've got his attention now. So I said, Omaha, come. And he comes, jumping over the four ring ropes to move through the, you know, the three rings, five rings, rather. And he sits in front, sloppy, but he sat. So I had him finish. And he sat. And the judge is looking at me. I remember his name. His name was Al. Oh, no, I've just forgotten. It was Al someone. Anyway, he put his arm around me and said, Dr. Dunbar. That was embarrassing. I'd lectured at every frigging club, right? And he said, Dr. Dunbar. He said, you have really amazing off-leash control over your dog, apart from when you're healing. I said, yeah. I've got a healing problem lately. I think he's getting bored with the healing. It's just too repetitive. But I'm thinking about it. He says, but he sat five rings away. Why didn't you tell him to sit before he left the ring? I said, oh, you can't give a second command. Because it had been drummed into me, you know. In the obedience class, I was taking. You'd never give a second command. I honestly thought it was a cardinal sin and that the AKC could say, castrate me if I gave a second command or something. But it's kind of stupid if you think about it. Your dog's running towards a cliff, chasing a seagull, and you say, Rover, sit. Oh, damn. I mean, of course you give a second command. And it doesn't, and I've tested this out over and over, it does not delay the dog learning. If you train it properly.

Because when I started with Zuzu, her first time sitting at a distance, I gave her 22 commands in a row before she sat. Now, because her problem was, if I said anything, she'd run back to me at high speed and sit in front. Now, I wanted to sit at a distance. So Kelly had her on leash, and I'm way off, like 35 yards. And after 22 commands, she sat. That's how I started. But by the end of that walk around Point Isabel, one command, she sat at a distance. So when you actually quantify, you realize, no, you can't unlearn something you haven't learned yet. If a dog doesn't know what sit means, you know, you can't have, like, you know, an unlearning of that. It won't take longer to learn what sit means. It doesn't matter. And I demonstrated some workshops. I go up to a dog and say, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down. Now I'm going to teach the dog what down means. Rover, down. Lure, treat. Do it again. Come down. Lure, treat. Come down. Hand signal, treat. Come down. Hand signal. Come down. Hand signal. Come down. No hand signal. Now the dog does it. You know, and it's just as quick. So, so you're, you're, I think we're on the same page here with, when you start teaching something, you pretty much, you, you start with giving the cue, giving the command. You're not waiting for a, yeah. Yeah, I do the same. Yeah, because we're luring. And if we know we're going to lure so we can call the behavior anytime, then let's not miss the first trial. Say, Rover, sit. Lure. Yes. It's always a little bit strange for me how people are afraid to put a name until the behavior is supposedly perfect and then we name it. You can rename it as much as you like. I mean, I met some obedience competitors who would go through 10 names for a command and 20 names for their dog. Because in the course of training, because back then there was a lot of leash jerking and what have you, they were poisoning a lot of names and cues. So once you've got it, build on that. And the way you do that is you'd be new name, old name. So you'd say, you know, Hugo Louis, a seat, sit. Well, he knows what sit means. So that's kind of like a verbal lure. So always the new name comes first. So the new name doesn't have the poison of the old cue, but it has the knowledge of the old cue. And so, you know, no, I, with being mainly a trainer of pet dogs where I know time is of the essence. I can't say I'm going to wait for a few trials. No. First trial, we use all seven commands. You know, come, sit, down, sit up, stand, down, stand up. And that's seven different responses. And we use them on the fourth trial all at once.

But because we're luring, you see, when clicker training start, there are a lot of people who said, oh, you mustn't lure when you're shaping. It's not pure shaping. That was, I was under a lot of pressure. People were saying luring was wrong. I said, no, luring makes it quick. Luring enables you to teach hand signals within just half a dozen trials and verbal commands with most breeds within 20 reps. And a verbal command is hard to teach or hard for a dog to learn. They will learn an eye blink, a facial expression or a hand signal so fast. But actually a verbal command in neutral tone. Very, very difficult. Yes. Yeah. Well, look, we should wrap this up. My bladder's bursting. I need a beer. I'm fed up with this water. It was so much fun chatting to you. Thank you. I'll see you again after many years. I'm going to put on the, below the podcast, all the information, how people can find you. Any, anything specific with it? Right now, I'm guessing it's the dog, the academy, right? Oh, I have something you can give them for a nice freebie. So Dunbar Academy, it's a subscription site. If you give them a secret code, which is GG. So when they sign up, it will ask them for their credit card payment. They enter the coupon code GG. They get their first month for free. Well, if they binge watch, they can go through one fifth of the site in one month for free. And then they sign off and their credit card won't be charged. So they get a whole one month for free. Or if they want to stay on, it's, what is it, 20 bucks a month or something. So the coupon code is GG. Perfect. Do you have any book that you're working on, new something, or you do? I just wrote a doc training course and exam. And it's a very peculiar course because it's all, it's about 200 questions. Very short questions with short answers. So you take the exam first. Then you read my answers and you take the exam again. And then you listen to my answers. Then you take, so you take the exam until it's perfect. It's really no different if you think for an obedience competition. We know the questions beforehand. It's a matter of training the dog to perfection. Well, I think it's a nice way to train people. So I train them by answers. That was exciting to do and actually designed it for veterans. But I realized it's going to be useful for dog trainers because it's stuff that's not written down anywhere else. But most exciting, two weeks ago, I started a new book. And it's going to be very different. It's about nowhere is this stuff written down. And it's hidden in a lot of my seminars.

But because you'd have to watch them for days and days to get these little nuggets out. So it's a book about how there's so many things we've been doing wrong for a long time. And we're kind of stuck where we are. And training should be about always questing for a better way. Quicker, easier, more effective, more enjoyable. And it applies, obviously, to the teaching of people, too. So that I'm really excited about. Jan, thank you. Thank you so much. And next time we'll talk about my difficulty getting into Bulgaria. I heard something. That's a different conversation. We have to leave that one for next time. Yeah. Thank you. Take care. Thank you so much. Thank you.