Garret Wing: The Art of Canine Training

0:00:12 I’m Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:15 We’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:19 And helping me in this episode is Garrett Wing.
0:00:24 Garrett is the founder and owner of American Standard Dog Training.
0:00:29 He has over 17 years of experience in law enforcement.
0:00:34 He served as the commander of the tactical investigations unit, senior police canine
0:00:40 unit supervisor, patrol canine handler, and narcotics canine handler.
0:00:44 This basically means he knows a lot about dogs.
0:00:50 So with his extensive experience in law enforcement, dog training, and instruction,
0:00:56 Garrett has become a highly respected figure in the field of canine training and handling.
0:01:00 If you’ve ever wondered about what it took for a dog to be in the canine unit, you’re
0:01:02 about to find out.
0:01:11 I’m Guy Kawasaki, this is Remarkable People, and now here is the Remarkable Garrett Wing.
0:01:18 When I walk past a canine unit, can you just tell me what it took for that dog to be in
0:01:20 that car?
0:01:21 How did they find the puppy?
0:01:22 How did they train them?
0:01:25 Do puppies fall out of training?
0:01:28 Is there a rejection rate and how long do they serve?
0:01:29 What happens when they retire?
0:01:32 I just want to know the whole story of canine units.
0:01:35 Typically, they’re born often overseas.
0:01:38 They’re pairing up championship leaders.
0:01:45 We’re talking about dogs that have competed in sports overseas such as Shudson, IGP, Mondio
0:01:49 Ring, depends which country we’re talking about, but they have different variations.
0:01:53 In other words, they’re protection sports, and these are typically civilians who, instead
0:01:56 of going golfing on the weekend, this is their passion.
0:01:58 This is what it’s all about for them.
0:02:01 After work, they come home and they start training dogs.
0:02:06 They need to continue to produce offspring, so they’ll have a litter, and then they’ll
0:02:08 typically take that litter.
0:02:11 They’ll get a few of them and they start working those dogs as young puppies.
0:02:16 Now, as those puppies start to develop around six months, eight months, nine months old,
0:02:21 10 months old, they can really dial in on which ones have it and which ones don’t.
0:02:23 Which ones are going to likely succeed?
0:02:24 Which ones are healthy?
0:02:26 Which ones have the drive?
0:02:29 What ends up happening is they don’t want to take a puppy.
0:02:32 If you’re competing in the sport, you obviously can’t compete in the sport with an eight-week
0:02:34 old dog.
0:02:39 We can’t compete until maybe that dog’s 12 months old, a year and a half, a little older,
0:02:43 but you don’t want to hedge your whole bet on one puppy because it’s always a roll of
0:02:44 the dice.
0:02:47 So they don’t just pick one puppy and then invest all their time and energy into that
0:02:48 one puppy.
0:02:51 God forbid, it’s not healthy or it doesn’t have the drives they need.
0:02:55 So they’re going to spread their bet or hedge their bet on a handful of puppies.
0:03:00 Now, what ends up happening is once they develop these dogs to a certain age, now they’ll make
0:03:04 their selection and spend most of their time on that one dog, maybe two dogs.
0:03:07 So they want to take that one dog to the championship.
0:03:09 They want to title that dog.
0:03:10 And there’s different levels of titling.
0:03:13 This is not my area of expertise, this is what they do over there.
0:03:16 They’re going to try to put all their energy now into the one dog.
0:03:20 Now, what happens to the three, four, five, six other dogs that they were grooming, they’re
0:03:22 going to just throw them in the trash.
0:03:26 So what they end up doing is we have folks over in the states who are considered like
0:03:31 vendors and they will fly over to Europe, meet with their contacts there and say, “Hey,
0:03:34 I’m a vendor for the police and military.
0:03:37 We’re constantly looking for the best dogs that we can get.”
0:03:41 And so they’ll visit those kennels over there and those kennels are now basically bringing
0:03:45 these dogs back or saying, “Hey, this dog’s still excellent.
0:03:47 It’s still an A plus dog.
0:03:48 We just don’t have anyone that’s training it.”
0:03:53 The owner of this dog decided to go with this one, but we have plenty left over.
0:03:54 Which would you like?
0:03:56 And so the vendors will then import those dogs.
0:04:02 If you want to talk price, again, not my area of expertise and it constantly changes, especially
0:04:07 with the political climate and whatnot and import fees, but you’re talking on average
0:04:11 $3,505 grand depending upon the quality of the dog.
0:04:12 What’s the genetics of the dog?
0:04:14 Oh, both parents were champions.
0:04:20 And so anyways, they’ll import those dogs maybe a handful at a time, a dozen at a time.
0:04:24 Then they’ll end up stateside because the police departments locally, they’re not spending
0:04:32 money typically to send their trainers overseas for a one or two week paid travel to check
0:04:33 out these dogs.
0:04:37 Furthermore, if you haven’t developed good relationships with the folks over there, they’re
0:04:39 just going to pawn off their leftovers.
0:04:42 They’re not so good dogs because they got to get rid of those dogs too.
0:04:44 They got to get rid of the good ones and the not so good ones.
0:04:48 So if you come over unsuspecting or you don’t speak the language, they’re going to hide
0:04:50 the good ones and only show you the bad ones.
0:04:53 So we’re typically, as police departments, relying upon vendors who have built these
0:04:56 relationships over decades.
0:05:01 And so they’ll bring the dogs over and then that’s where we come in, where we as police
0:05:06 canine handlers and trainers will meet with, usually we have a vendor, a preferred vendor
0:05:09 that maybe the department’s been working with for decades or sometimes there’s multiple
0:05:10 vendors.
0:05:13 We keep our options open because it depends what they have brought in lately.
0:05:14 Then we will test the dogs.
0:05:16 Now every department tests their dogs differently.
0:05:21 Some departments go to the vendors on their home turf and other times will say, hey, look,
0:05:23 we’re going to buy like six dogs.
0:05:27 Can you make a trip down here, however many hours of travel that is and we’re going to
0:05:29 test whatever you have.
0:05:32 Also the vendors start to know what each individual department is looking for.
0:05:36 Some departments want harder, tougher dogs.
0:05:37 And so they’ll know to bring that.
0:05:41 Or if you have a good relationship with them, say, look, we’ve got four handlers that need
0:05:42 dogs.
0:05:44 Two of them are veteran handlers.
0:05:45 You already know what they want.
0:05:47 They want something similar to what they had last time.
0:05:49 They want a German shepherd.
0:05:50 They want a Belgian Malinois.
0:05:51 They want high drive.
0:05:56 This guy likes to compete with his dog in police canine trials and competitions.
0:05:58 So let’s get him something real turnkey.
0:06:03 Oh, we also have a brand new kind of rookie handler happens to be petite, whether it’s
0:06:08 a female or just a smaller frame male, a, uh, probably don’t want that 120 pound dog.
0:06:11 You have something a little more on the small side, like a pocket rocket.
0:06:15 So all of this is taken into account and then the dogs will be tested.
0:06:20 Now we can talk about the kind of testing we do, but we are typically examining the
0:06:21 dog’s drives.
0:06:24 What kind of drives are we talking about?
0:06:29 It could be prey drive, hunt drive, fight drive, defensive drive, just their overall
0:06:30 courage.
0:06:32 Also their social drive.
0:06:36 We used to not care about social drive, but it’s a new age and we used to think we wanted
0:06:41 the biggest, toughest, hardest dogs and just a little bit about my background.
0:06:45 I was a police canine handler and police canine supervisor for the city of Miami police department.
0:06:48 My father and stepmother were also members of that canine unit.
0:06:54 So combined we probably have, I don’t know, 30 or 40 years of experience in the canine
0:06:55 world.
0:07:02 So when we go to test dogs, especially back in the day, we just wanted tough dogs.
0:07:08 But over time we realized, we used to think if you got a tough dog, you either had to
0:07:12 get a tough dog or a social dog and it was hard to find a dog that was super sweet with
0:07:17 people and your family could pet it and other police officers could pet it, but it would
0:07:19 still be a good police dog.
0:07:22 We used to think, no, we’re kind of, we’re going to go into backyards, we’re going to
0:07:26 go on tracks for murder suspects, rapist, armed robbers.
0:07:29 I’ll err on the side of a harder dog.
0:07:31 He doesn’t need to be pet by anybody.
0:07:35 He just needs to bite when I need him to bite so he could save my butt in the backyard.
0:07:40 Well I would say, at least during my tenure, towards the end of it, we started to switch
0:07:46 because we would get these kind of almost unicorn dogs like robots, turnkey, super social,
0:07:51 but if you said the right word and you turn that dog on and put them into the right drive,
0:07:55 at the drop of a hat, they would go into action and handle business.
0:07:57 And so we tried to get more social dogs.
0:08:02 There’s no reason to have a dog that is so hot that nobody can get near it.
0:08:06 And we’ve had dogs like that in the past that get so, they’re so dangerous to be honest
0:08:11 with you that even backups can’t get close enough to you as a handler to back you up.
0:08:15 So now you end up going into a backyard and we always say, hey backup, do me a favor,
0:08:19 stand about 30 feet behind me because we might be using a 15 or 30 foot lead.
0:08:22 And so you got to give that canine dog and the handler some space.
0:08:26 If you get too close to the handler, the dog’s going to bite you, the SWAT backup just as
0:08:28 quick as it’s going to bite anybody else.
0:08:31 But the point being, sometimes we still get dogs like that.
0:08:35 We tend to try to get dogs that have all the drives and yet they’re clearheaded.
0:08:36 We like a clearheaded dog.
0:08:38 Anyways, we’ll do the testing.
0:08:39 We can get more into the details.
0:08:41 Some of the testing is pretty cool that we would do.
0:08:44 And yes, some of those dogs get maybe washed out in the sense, we’re telling the vendor,
0:08:47 hey, thanks for bringing these 12 dogs.
0:08:48 We’d like these four right here.
0:08:54 Now other departments might come along and maybe they’re a softer, kindler, gentler department
0:08:56 or they haven’t been in the game long enough.
0:08:57 They don’t know what they’re looking for.
0:09:01 And so same thing, the vendors are like, hey, this is a great dog.
0:09:05 It’s a dog we might rate as like a C plus, maybe we’re not taking it, but if they want
0:09:08 to take it, sure, maybe it turns out to be a great dog for their purposes because all
0:09:14 they need is a dog that looks pretty and shows up to the school demos and can catch a ball.
0:09:18 We need a dog and a department that we work in that needs to be everything and handle
0:09:19 business.
0:09:22 So we were very selective on what dogs we would get.
0:09:26 And oftentimes too, even after we selected the dog, you might be a month or two into
0:09:30 training, call the vendor up and say, ah, yeah, this dog’s too much.
0:09:34 Or hey, we tested this dog and we thought it was good, but it doesn’t quite have what
0:09:35 we need.
0:09:36 We found a problem.
0:09:37 We also would test for health.
0:09:41 And so health issues might pop up and there’s a certain level of guarantee from the vendors,
0:09:43 but we try not make that happen too often.
0:09:48 It’s just bad business to constantly take dogs and actually mess the dog up in your
0:09:52 training because you can mess up a good dog with bad training, send the dog back.
0:09:53 The vendors don’t like that.
0:09:55 They don’t want to do business with you anymore.
0:09:59 Anyways, then we do, I’m trying to, I never asked me a question without expecting a 30
0:10:01 minute answer, but this is my passion, this is what we love.
0:10:05 So then after selection, they passed that selection.
0:10:08 We’ve now selected them to go through a canine training.
0:10:14 Every state is different, but in the state of Florida, we do what’s called a 480 hour
0:10:15 canine certification course.
0:10:18 The dog and the handler must go through that.
0:10:22 On average, it takes around three or four months and we’re following a state standardized
0:10:26 curriculum that hasn’t probably changed much in 20 or 30 years, but what work back then
0:10:28 is still working now.
0:10:32 And we are getting the dogs trained to do tracking, to do what we call area searches,
0:10:35 which is using their nose to find a hidden subject.
0:10:41 Obedience obviously is a big portion of it, agility and just general control of the dog.
0:10:47 We build the dog up so that it can pass certification and then typically the better agencies will
0:10:52 do what’s called, and this may be a little risqué, but we, soon as they’re certified
0:10:56 technically you can hit the street and go handle business.
0:11:03 However, a lot of agencies will hold the handler and the dog back for above and beyond training,
0:11:05 which we often call dirtying the dog up.
0:11:11 And what that is, the state certification is the bare minimum standards, if you will.
0:11:13 It’s all textbook material.
0:11:19 Do this, do that, make sure your dog bites the guy in the suit and when you recall, he
0:11:20 recalls.
0:11:24 In fact, the entire test that’s done for certification happens on a training field.
0:11:28 Well, if anybody’s been in the game long enough, the training field is one thing.
0:11:31 The street is a whole other thing.
0:11:38 And so after the dog passes its kind of ABCs, then we say, okay, now let’s make it real.
0:11:43 Let’s now focus on, and by the way, at this point, we need the dog under tremendous control.
0:11:46 Beautiful recall, beautiful obedience.
0:11:51 We try to maintain that, but when we talk about dirtying a dog up, we’re kind of saying,
0:11:53 hey, get ready for the real deal.
0:11:56 You might get in a fight tomorrow with a real bad suspect, he might punch you in the face.
0:12:02 I don’t want, when we’re in a backyard, the police dog for the first time ever realizing
0:12:04 that you might get hit too.
0:12:05 So we have to prepare the dogs for that.
0:12:11 We start exposing them to any type of scenario that you can imagine to prepare the dog for
0:12:12 real life encounters on the street.
0:12:14 And I’ll just give you one example.
0:12:19 In certification, it’s on a sanitary field with a guy in a Stay Puff Marshmallow suit,
0:12:20 right?
0:12:22 The big body, the big bite suit and dogs are very visual creatures.
0:12:27 While in the street, it’s not going to be a guy running away from you in a big old puffy
0:12:28 suit.
0:12:33 What it’s going to be potentially is a guy hiding, let’s say, in the bushes, maybe with
0:12:34 no clothes on.
0:12:37 Maybe he’s shed a lot of his clothes because he’s trying to get rid of whatever it is we
0:12:39 saw him wearing.
0:12:43 Maybe, and this happens a lot, you’d be surprised, guys will break into homes, they’re running
0:12:47 from the police, they bail out of a stolen vehicle or an arm carjacking vehicle, you
0:12:53 go searching for them, they’ll find an open door, they’ll go in and start taking a shower
0:12:55 in somebody else’s house.
0:12:57 Just like, “Oh yeah, I live here, man, I’m taking a shower.”
0:12:59 And while they’re taking a shower, you’re like, “Hey, what’s the address?”
0:13:01 And they’re like, “Yeah, I don’t know.”
0:13:08 Anyways, has your dog ever bit someone with no equipment on in the shower with the water
0:13:09 coming on them?
0:13:14 And you’d be surprised, there’s a lot of hard-ass police dogs who’d be like, “Nah,
0:13:15 I don’t feel like getting wet.
0:13:17 I don’t feel like slipping on the floor.”
0:13:21 A lot of dogs, even police dogs are a little terrified of slippery floors.
0:13:25 So these types of things we do over the coming, not just weeks and months to kind of dirty
0:13:30 them up, this is what training is like now for the rest of that dog’s career.
0:13:36 It’s all about getting that environmental exposure, showing different pictures, biting
0:13:40 a guy in a river, biting a guy in an attic, biting a guy in a tree, biting a guy under
0:13:41 a car.
0:13:42 And I keep saying, “Bite, bite, bite.”
0:13:46 But that’s what we’re preparing the dogs to do, to be able to make a physical seizure
0:13:50 on a subject that’s either refusing to come out or that wants to fight the police.
0:13:58 So that’s kind of how we get the dogs from overseas into our training program and then
0:13:59 on the street.
0:14:05 And the only thing I missed was pre-COVID, we used to get what we would call turnkey
0:14:06 titled dogs.
0:14:11 These are dogs, you remember we go back to the folks who maybe have a handful of puppies,
0:14:14 they raise them up, they select one, then they take that one all the way across the
0:14:19 finish line, try to get it as high up as they can in competition and get all the titles.
0:14:25 We used to buy title dogs, give or take $15,000, $20,000.
0:14:28 When those dogs came, they were fully mature, two, two and a half, sometimes three years
0:14:29 old.
0:14:32 Pretty much turnkey, we called them Ferraris.
0:14:36 You put a competent handler behind the lead there, you could pass certification like the
0:14:38 same day.
0:14:40 You have to put in your requisite hours, but those dogs are ready.
0:14:42 In fact, you know what often happened?
0:14:47 We’d give rookie handlers the turnkey dog and the dog was actually worse three or four
0:14:50 months later than it was when we first got it.
0:14:51 How do I mean worse?
0:14:56 Little rusty, not as clean and sharp as it came right off the boat because those folks
0:14:58 over there don’t play, they want those dogs perfect.
0:15:03 It’s like if I gave a gated manual Ferrari to someone who didn’t know how to drive a
0:15:07 manual and I said, oh, just good luck to you, go drive that.
0:15:09 It might have some dense on it.
0:15:11 You might have burned up the transmission.
0:15:14 That kind of what happened, we give these turnkey dogs to someone who’s never worked
0:15:16 a dog before and their timing is off.
0:15:20 Their leash pressure skills are not there and the dog ends up getting a, I mean, it’s
0:15:21 still a great dog.
0:15:23 It’s just not as sharp as it used to be.
0:15:25 That’s what we used to get back in the day, title dogs.
0:15:29 Then when COVID came, you couldn’t title a dog in Europe because you couldn’t have the
0:15:30 competitions.
0:15:31 Everything was shut down for like two years.
0:15:37 So it was a really weird time in canine world where we couldn’t get two-year-old turnkey
0:15:38 dogs.
0:15:41 We were getting what we call green dogs, which is what I described to you earlier.
0:15:43 Green dogs meaning they don’t really know their name.
0:15:45 They don’t know how to sit or down.
0:15:47 They just know how to bite things.
0:15:52 They’re just like very raw, animalistic, think of if you had a 10 and 12-year-old boys and
0:15:56 you just let them raise themselves on an island, like almost feral.
0:15:57 That’s what we get.
0:16:01 And then we take the best of the feral dogs that are just high drive and we say, okay,
0:16:02 I like this one.
0:16:06 Then we put in all the training, the obedience, the out command, the searching, the tracking,
0:16:09 the explosives or narcotics, detection, et cetera.
0:16:10 There you go.
0:16:13 Why do you have to get these dogs from another country?
0:16:15 How come we don’t just have them here?
0:16:16 That’s a great question.
0:16:23 There are vendors here that will take a lot of these import dogs, take the best of them
0:16:26 and have their own breeding program.
0:16:30 However, I think it’s one of those, if you want a Ferrari, you got to go to Italy.
0:16:32 I honestly don’t have an answer for you.
0:16:38 I don’t think there are some, there definitely are some breeding programs here that are just
0:16:42 as good as the breeding programs over in Europe.
0:16:44 It’s just past practice.
0:16:46 But again, I think it depends where you are in the country.
0:16:49 There are some police departments that have their own breeding program.
0:16:52 But there’s a lot of expense in that to raise your own puppy.
0:16:55 And we don’t even know until the dog’s six, eight, nine months old if it’s even worth
0:16:56 anything.
0:16:59 Now, if you have a litter of eight and four make it, well, now what do you do with the
0:17:00 other four?
0:17:02 What are you going to do with the dogs that don’t cut it?
0:17:05 And so I’ve got to find homes for them.
0:17:10 When you have a litter of puppies, what can you tell at the puppy stage?
0:17:12 Is there already dominance going on?
0:17:14 Do you want a dominant dog?
0:17:16 What’s the characteristics you’re looking for?
0:17:18 I think it depends who you ask.
0:17:22 But even when you look at a litter of puppies, six, seven, eight weeks old, one of the tests
0:17:28 that we encourage our customers to do, because sometimes we often help customers procure
0:17:29 a dog.
0:17:30 Find a breeder.
0:17:31 We’re talking about police dogs right now.
0:17:33 We’re just talking about dogs in general.
0:17:34 And they’re working with a particular breeder.
0:17:36 We help get the right breeder.
0:17:38 And then now they get the pick of the litter.
0:17:40 Well, how do I pick the one I want?
0:17:43 And so it all depends on what you’re looking for your lifestyle.
0:17:49 But when it comes to the dominance, absolutely, if you throw, let’s say a ball or a toy or
0:17:54 even better a bone with some meat on it, but there’s only one bone and there’s eight puppies.
0:17:56 Not every puppy’s going to get a bite of that bone.
0:18:01 You’re going to see the top one or two dogs out of that litter, maybe three, letting everybody
0:18:04 else know, hey, this is mine, and you’ll probably have a pretty clear winner.
0:18:07 And that’s going to be repeated over and over again.
0:18:09 And there’s some theories as to how that happens.
0:18:16 I find it very interesting, but what makes this puppy more dominant than his brother
0:18:18 or sister right next to him?
0:18:23 The thought process behind that is that when the mother’s feeding them, more milk comes
0:18:25 out of the middle teats.
0:18:30 So there’s more milk and what makes a dog more physically capable and more mentally
0:18:31 capable?
0:18:35 By the way, dominant and alpha type dogs are not always the biggest, though sometimes they
0:18:36 are.
0:18:38 They’re the smartest.
0:18:42 And so they say that what is it that makes a puppy develop?
0:18:44 Why did this one develop better than this one?
0:18:45 Why is one the runt of the litter?
0:18:48 Obviously, there’s some genetics in play, of course, right?
0:18:51 Who got the luck of the draw when the sperm hit the egg?
0:18:57 But also when it comes to feeding time, the stronger dogs already are going to fight their
0:19:01 way, crawl and fight their way to the middle teat to get more milk.
0:19:04 They’re also in the middle of the bunch, so they’re flanked on either side and they’re
0:19:07 getting warmth from their brothers and sisters.
0:19:10 What happens to the guy on the end or the gal on the end?
0:19:13 Less milk, less warmth, less development.
0:19:15 And so that’s where you might get a runt of the litter because they didn’t get as much
0:19:16 calories in.
0:19:18 They didn’t get as much warmth.
0:19:22 And so their brain and physical development was not on par with their brothers and sisters.
0:19:24 Now what do you want for a police dog?
0:19:26 Very interesting conversation.
0:19:28 There’s alpha dogs, if you will.
0:19:30 What I like is a beta dog.
0:19:34 Now beta is often referred to in a negative connotation, you’re either an alpha or you’re
0:19:35 a beta.
0:19:42 Now actually, alphas are super tough dogs, very smart, and they don’t like being second
0:19:43 to anybody.
0:19:48 So if you get a real strong alpha handler and a real strong alpha dog, they will clash for
0:19:49 their whole career.
0:19:50 Right?
0:19:54 It may not happen every day, but every time, every once in a while, that dog will literally
0:19:55 turn on the handler.
0:19:57 Here’s an example.
0:20:01 The dog’s in full drive, and it’s very hard to explain what a police dog in full drive
0:20:02 is like.
0:20:10 It’s like having a 1,000, 1,200, or 1,500 horsepower engine in a car, rip-roaring, ready to go.
0:20:12 And you better hope you’ve installed some brakes on it.
0:20:15 By brakes, I mean obedience, some level of control.
0:20:20 But the dogs have serious drive, one of them being bite drive.
0:20:24 So when they get frustrated, and they want to bite someone, and this happens in real
0:20:30 life all the time, you get a suspect that’s run from the police, he’s putting off a ton
0:20:32 of what we call fear odor.
0:20:36 This dog has been trained his whole life to find and bite.
0:20:37 It’s his whole purpose in life.
0:20:43 It’s beyond a game, it’s their life’s mission to satisfy their urge to track down basically
0:20:46 a prey item and capture it.
0:20:50 And so their urge to bite, they’ll literally chatter their teeth, and they’re building
0:20:52 up and they just want to go for it.
0:20:56 Now what ends up happening is sometimes at the end of that track, remember, the handler’s
0:21:01 full of testosterone and adrenaline is just dumping.
0:21:02 All the backups are like that too.
0:21:06 The dog’s seen this picture before, this all, by the way, happens even before you get to
0:21:10 the scene with the lights and sirens, the dog goes, it’s on, the dog gets its own type of
0:21:11 adrenaline dump.
0:21:15 And so you’re in a backyard, it’s all culminating to this point, and the dog knows, I’ve done
0:21:19 my part, I found this guy, I’m going to take care of business.
0:21:24 Problem is the guy’s giving up, the guy’s on top of a shed, and maybe this is the worst.
0:21:28 He’s not giving up, he won’t come down, but the dog can’t get to him.
0:21:32 And so the dog’s building frustration like, man, I know you’re there, man, I can’t get
0:21:33 to you.
0:21:35 And they finally hit a limit, you know what they do?
0:21:40 They turn and bite the backup, they turn and bite the handler, oh yeah, it happens a lot.
0:21:42 They have to unload.
0:21:47 The best way I can explain it, remember, they’re animals, we’re animals too, but we are our
0:21:57 most animalistic when we are enraged, when we are frustrated, maybe if we’re drunk, right?
0:22:05 You combine all of that, and you might say, why would a guy ever smack or hit or punch
0:22:09 his own loving girlfriend, and a guy that would never do that?
0:22:12 I’ll tell you how that happens.
0:22:18 He’s enraged, he’s frustrated, he’s got adrenaline pump in his system, he’s about to fight maybe
0:22:22 another guy in the bar, and the fight’s probably over his own girl.
0:22:27 And his girlfriend’s trying to hold him back, but he’s already determined, I’ve got to unload
0:22:29 on this guy.
0:22:32 Anything holding him back might get an elbow to the face, it’s not even personal at this
0:22:34 point, it’s get off me.
0:22:37 And the dog sometimes goes, will you just let go of the leash, man, I’ve got to go handle
0:22:41 business, and sometimes they get frustrated, they’ll reach back, they’ll bite the leash,
0:22:46 they’ll bite the handler’s hand, so that hopefully the handler lets go, and they can go handle
0:22:47 business.
0:22:48 Wow.
0:22:53 So that’s what we call sometimes too much drive, uncapped drive, and we’re constantly
0:22:56 with a really high drive dog, we’re always riding that razor’s edge.
0:23:00 We want full horsepower, but sometimes as you know, if you go around a racetrack, you’re
0:23:02 going to go off the racetrack if you go a little too fast.
0:23:06 And is that why you want a beta, not an alpha?
0:23:07 Alpha is.
0:23:08 Ah.
0:23:09 Yeah, so thanks for circling back.
0:23:14 If you have two strong alpha males, meaning the handler and the dog, they’re just constantly
0:23:19 vying for who’s the boss, and there are some police dogs out there, you might correct the
0:23:24 behavior, you might teach the dog a lesson for that day, and the dog, and you may do this
0:23:28 in training, it may happen because it’s planned, or it may happen, and you didn’t suspect it
0:23:29 to happen.
0:23:33 But one of those situations comes about where maybe the dog gets frustrated and he wants
0:23:37 to bite, but sometimes in a training and in real life, it might not always end in a bite,
0:23:41 so the dog doesn’t get what he wants, and so he’ll do something stupid, let’s say.
0:23:44 Be non-compliant, go after the handler.
0:23:46 The handler corrects that behavior and says, “Don’t do that.”
0:23:50 The handler wins that battle, and then you got to repeat it all over again the next training
0:23:51 day.
0:23:55 And so there’s just these dogs that they’re just too tough for their own good.
0:23:58 Now, a betadog is what I call second in command.
0:23:59 It’s the general.
0:24:02 It’s the general’s right-hand man, however you want to look at it.
0:24:10 Very strong, very confident, physically fit, just a tougher, bigger dog, but likes being
0:24:17 second in command, loves to, doesn’t want the alpha role, loves being second in command.
0:24:20 Now what often people think about as a betadog is what’s considered an omega dog.
0:24:21 That’s the runt of the litter.
0:24:26 A lot of folks out there actually have omega dogs, and this would be the sign that you
0:24:27 have an omega dog.
0:24:30 There’s this, it’s what I call alarm barking.
0:24:36 Someone knocks at the door, an alpha or a betadog is going to put a deep guttural bark.
0:24:39 An omega dog usually does, you could call it an omega howl.
0:24:43 It’s, they’re scared like, “Hey, so where does this all come from?”
0:24:48 In the wild, wolf packs have alphas, they have betas, and they have omegas.
0:24:51 Omegas are like super anxious dogs.
0:24:54 They’re usually on the perimeter, and they are so quick to sound the alarm because they
0:25:00 had generally just anxious dogs, so there might be a crack of a stick 50 yards away.
0:25:02 The omega dog’s going to start howling immediately.
0:25:04 It’s like paranoid.
0:25:07 An alpha and omega is going to, excuse me, an alpha or a betadog is going to get up and
0:25:08 see what’s going on.
0:25:12 Now here’s one more thing that I find super interesting, and I read this in a book, it
0:25:16 in the name will come to me in a minute, but it’s a gentleman who spent time living with
0:25:19 a wolf pack in the wild for months.
0:25:23 And so this is what he gained from it, among many things, but this is one thing that sticks
0:25:24 to me.
0:25:27 When he was trying to make inroads with the pack, he couldn’t just show up one day and
0:25:28 be part of the pack.
0:25:31 He would hang around, get near it, try to follow them.
0:25:38 One day, one of the pack members came over to see who he was and what he was all about.
0:25:42 And when you think about it, this gentleman poses a threat to the pack.
0:25:48 So who from the pack, who should be selected to go check on that guy?
0:25:49 That’s not going to be the omega.
0:25:50 It’s too scarce.
0:25:52 It’s not going to do that.
0:25:56 So most people would say, oh, it’s the alpha, because he’s the toughest and the baddest.
0:25:58 No, he’s the smartest.
0:26:02 He basically, hey, beta, you’re big and bad, go over there.
0:26:07 And oftentimes I think of betas as kind of dumb jocks, big and bad, but just ready to
0:26:08 take an order.
0:26:14 So when he went to go check that pack out, the beta male is what came over to him and
0:26:19 basically checked him out to see if he was a threat or you are your friend or foe.
0:26:22 And furthermore, are you tough enough to be part of us?
0:26:35 And anyways, very interesting.
0:26:38 Let’s suppose God forbid one day I’m a suspect.
0:26:43 And I’m in a backyard and you are hunting me and this dog shows up, okay, knowing what
0:26:47 you know, what would a smart suspect do?
0:26:49 Give up.
0:26:50 Give up.
0:26:55 Yeah, there’s no, there’s nothing you can do really to hide your scent or evade it.
0:26:59 These dogs have thousands upon thousands of years of development.
0:27:02 Just they are, this is what they do.
0:27:05 It’s very hard to hide your scent signature.
0:27:11 And once the dogs on you, if the dogs trained right and it’s got the proper genetics, we
0:27:15 train these dogs to not give up no matter what we call it the 1%.
0:27:18 We train our dogs for the 1% say what is that?
0:27:24 The kind of the argument goes rough math here, if you have 100 suspects and you pull a police
0:27:29 dog out, right, you got a guy he’s not given up, you bring the dog out, you make the announcement,
0:27:33 the dog barks around 50 people out of the 100 to say, you know what, man, I don’t even want
0:27:34 to mess with that dog.
0:27:36 I’m giving up right now.
0:27:41 Then you’ll have the other 49 or so who will say, I heard the dog, but I’m going to keep
0:27:42 in my hiding spot.
0:27:44 Maybe he won’t find me.
0:27:45 Yeah, maybe you’re right.
0:27:47 Maybe you’re not.
0:27:50 Dog finds you as soon as it bites you, they don’t want to play.
0:27:54 We’ve had full grown men, they pee themselves, they poop themselves, and they scream for
0:27:58 their mama, which I always find funny, grown men screaming for their mama.
0:28:01 We could laugh about it or not, but it’s like, they’re terrified, you’re actually getting
0:28:05 eaten by another animal and it’s not an everyday phenomenon and it hurts.
0:28:06 But what about the 1%?
0:28:12 The 1% of the guys that mentally deranged, they’re on drugs, they’ve been to prison before,
0:28:13 they’re ready to die out there.
0:28:16 They are not going back to prison no matter what.
0:28:19 You could put a dog on them and we’ve encountered them in real life, I’ve encountered them.
0:28:22 The dog is biting them, it doesn’t matter.
0:28:25 You think the dog would handle business for you and it’d be over.
0:28:27 Nope, it’s all hands on deck.
0:28:30 You can bite them, you taser them, taser’s not working, you pepper spray them, it doesn’t
0:28:31 matter.
0:28:35 You’re going to fist fight for your life and you hope the dog stays in on the fight
0:28:40 and a lot of dogs will, it’s all conceit for them when we train this for them.
0:28:44 All this is a game of tug of war, by the way, and people ask like, how do you get a dog
0:28:46 to bite someone?
0:28:49 It’s just an elevated game of tug of war.
0:28:53 We teach them as a young puppies, you see this little piece of rag or this little jute
0:28:55 tug, just bite it and hold it.
0:28:59 They’re natural prey draft to bite and hold and chase things and then we transition that
0:29:03 from small little pieces of equipment to larger and larger pieces of equipment as they get
0:29:06 bigger and their mouths get bigger and they get rid of their puppy teeth.
0:29:09 Now they have adult teeth, now they bite the bite suit or the sleeve.
0:29:12 It’s just a big old toy.
0:29:17 Then the trick is now that we’ve got you biting this big bite suit, now we have to find interesting
0:29:22 ways to teach you if the person’s not wearing a bite suit, you can still bite them and it’s
0:29:24 okay, it’s just a game.
0:29:29 Then you have some dogs that go their whole life thinking it’s a game and then they’re
0:29:33 in the street and they get punched or kicked in the face.
0:29:35 These bad guys out there now, they’re not getting any better.
0:29:39 They’re stabbing police dogs, they’re biting their ears, biting them on the mouth and the
0:29:44 last thing you want when you’re in an all out battle in the backyard, you don’t need
0:29:50 a police dog backing out on you going, “I’ve had enough, this is not what I signed up for.”
0:29:53 We’ve seen dogs do that, very scary to have.
0:29:57 Can you imagine, it’s you and me guy and we’re going in, you’re a trained police officer,
0:30:00 I’m a trained police officer and then we didn’t plan it, but this guy’s not going to jail
0:30:05 and we got to get put hands on and as soon as you get punched, you’re like, “I’m checking
0:30:08 out Garrett, I’m going to go to Dunkin’ Donuts to get a coffee and donut, I’ll see you in
0:30:09 a bit, good luck to you.”
0:30:16 And sometimes we’ve had dogs, I’m sure you’d hang around for a while but that happens and
0:30:19 we don’t want that but what we train our dogs to do is that’s what I said, we’re looking
0:30:24 for those dogs that maybe a little lean towards being a little too much to handle because
0:30:26 these are the types of dogs that thrive.
0:30:30 They’re like, “Oh, punch me in the head, no problem, I’ll just bite you harder.”
0:30:33 And we need dogs that can stick it out for that two, three, four minutes or whatever
0:30:36 it takes to get this kind of custody.
0:30:43 My last canine question, which is earlier you said something like, “Now that you want
0:30:49 dogs that have some social skills and the kids can pet them and all that kind of stuff.”
0:30:54 And you said you say one magic word and that turns into an attack, so like literally you
0:31:00 say one word and bada-bing, bada-bang, now that dog is a weapon.
0:31:01 Yes.
0:31:02 Is that a secret word?
0:31:05 I mean, is it only a handler can say that?
0:31:13 No, it can be literally made up words, it can be a sound, it can be, oftentimes these dogs
0:31:18 are trained in either Dutch commands, French commands, German commands, “Hey, but here’s
0:31:23 a fancy one, you know the French command to bite someone or to attack?”
0:31:24 It’s attack.
0:31:29 It’s not really a secret, but it’s more to it than that, it isn’t, it isn’t because
0:31:32 usually there’s a build up to this and the dogs are really interesting, man.
0:31:36 They love their routines and habits and there’s cues, right?
0:31:38 Everything’s with classical conditioning.
0:31:40 Everything you do to train a dog, whether it’s a police dog or a pet dog, it’s all
0:31:43 classical conditioning, meaning pairing.
0:31:47 And we go back to Ivan Pavlov, ring the bell, present food.
0:31:50 The bell didn’t mean anything to the dog before, just like the French dog, when it
0:31:54 hears attack, they don’t speak French, they don’t speak English, that word doesn’t mean
0:31:55 anything to them.
0:31:59 A lot of people tell their dogs, no, I’m like, does your dog even know what no means?
0:32:03 Because you just told it no, get off the couch and it’s still on the couch.
0:32:06 So it’s either not listening to you or more likely it doesn’t speak English, it doesn’t
0:32:10 know what you’re saying because no has no, there’s nothing behind it.
0:32:16 Anyways, back to Ivan Pavlov, he found that the secret formula is ring bell and exactly
0:32:20 a quarter second later, there’s room for error there, but around a quarter second later,
0:32:25 if you ring the bell and present food, you will now classically condition that the bell
0:32:26 means food.
0:32:27 How do we know that?
0:32:31 Because after so many reps, he would ring the bell, no food in sight, but the dog salivating.
0:32:32 So it’s a mind trick.
0:32:34 The bell equals food.
0:32:38 Now that’s technically what the attack command would be, and it could be a bell.
0:32:43 You could ring a bell and say, except it’s not bell equals food, it’s bell equals bite.
0:32:47 And so we create that phenomenon if you will, but there’s more than just the verbal cue.
0:32:48 They can smell it.
0:32:51 They hear the police sirens and they get jacked up.
0:32:55 When you put the tracking harness on, a lot of times that means go time.
0:32:57 They know what that equipment means.
0:33:01 With our police dogs, I always find this an interesting fact, both for my father, myself,
0:33:04 they don’t know what day of the week it is.
0:33:09 So if you work a Thursday night shift, they don’t know that it’s Thursday, but they see
0:33:13 you get out of the shower and you’re going to get dressed and they kind of look.
0:33:16 They’ll wait till you put the pants on.
0:33:18 They will walk over and smell the pants.
0:33:20 Is that the polyester pants that my dad goes to work in?
0:33:21 Yes, it is.
0:33:23 And they’re like, they’re ready.
0:33:28 They start waiting by the door or some dogs would take a nap, like a little pregame nap.
0:33:31 But they smell to see what you’re wearing because it’s classically conditioned.
0:33:34 When I smell polyester pants, we’re going to work.
0:33:39 But if they come over and smell blue jeans, man, I’ll go chew a bone because dad’s not
0:33:40 taking me tonight.
0:33:43 So all of that’s classically conditioned.
0:33:44 It’s pretty cool.
0:33:48 And speaking of Pavlov and classical condition, is that the role of the clicker?
0:33:51 I saw you in many videos using a clicker.
0:33:52 The clicker is now the reward.
0:33:54 Just hearing it.
0:33:55 Yes.
0:33:56 Yes.
0:33:59 It is all about what we call marker system or marker training.
0:34:00 That’s different names.
0:34:01 It all means the same thing.
0:34:03 I like to use the marker idea.
0:34:04 Some people call it clicker training.
0:34:07 The whole point by it, you’re exactly correct.
0:34:11 When you first click, it doesn’t mean anything to the dog.
0:34:13 But when we expose it, it’s click.
0:34:14 And guess what?
0:34:19 The secret sauce, a quarter second later, preferably present food or a treat or a toy.
0:34:21 Click equals party.
0:34:23 Click equals awesome.
0:34:28 And so what it allows us to do is consider it a bridge so that if you’re 50 feet away
0:34:33 from a dog, for instance, and you tell it to down and it nails it, dogs kind of have
0:34:35 horrible short term memory.
0:34:40 And so they say you have a three to five second window to let the dog know whether it did
0:34:42 right or it did wrong.
0:34:45 And I think the difference between a good trainer and a great trainer or in this case
0:34:51 a good owner and a great owner in this forest communicating with your dog is timing is everything
0:34:52 in dog training.
0:34:55 I don’t think three to five seconds is like on the extreme end.
0:34:59 I like to mark behaviors within milliseconds.
0:35:03 So we say down, the dog drops into a down.
0:35:08 We need to be able to communicate to that dog at the speed of sound.
0:35:09 I love that.
0:35:12 So the second he hits the ground, we’re going to click.
0:35:16 And that’s letting him know what you did right there was perfect.
0:35:20 Now let’s contrast that with we tell the dog down, he drops into a down.
0:35:21 We’re happy with that.
0:35:25 We’re so happy that we walk over with food to pay him for that down.
0:35:29 By the time we get over to him, he breaks it down, comes into a sit and maybe takes a
0:35:31 couple of steps towards you.
0:35:34 Once he does that, he breaks the sit and the down, he’s in the city, comes towards you
0:35:35 and now you pay him.
0:35:36 What did he get paid for?
0:35:42 Did he get paid for the down that was 20 seconds ago, or is he getting paid for breaking?
0:35:44 And that’s the beauty of a marker system.
0:35:50 One advantage would be the ability to mark literally like a timeline right here is where
0:35:51 you did perfect.
0:35:55 So when I walk over and pay you 20 seconds later, you know what I’m paying you for is
0:35:58 for the click you heard earlier.
0:36:00 So it buys you a little more time.
0:36:06 Don’t dogs figure out that how come sometimes there’s a click and I get food and sometimes
0:36:07 there’s a click and I don’t get food.
0:36:09 I’m confused.
0:36:10 Sure.
0:36:11 Two ways to answer that.
0:36:14 One is when you click, you always give food.
0:36:16 It’s a guarantee of payment.
0:36:17 It’s a promise of payment.
0:36:18 You will get paid.
0:36:24 However, when you get more advanced in training, we bring up the idea of, there’s a scientific
0:36:30 name for it, Robert Sapolsky is a neuroscientist, I believe, and he does a lot of experiments
0:36:35 with primates and things like that, and they’ll put them in like a skinner box and they’re
0:36:39 hooking up things to the brain and checking blood, but they’re really looking for dopamine
0:36:40 dumps.
0:36:42 So he talks about like the dopamine hit.
0:36:47 And so what they found is when you introduce, let’s say, let’s just go with that for a
0:36:48 minute.
0:36:51 And he has a really killer, maybe 15 or 20 minute video on it on YouTube where he talks
0:36:55 about variability of rewards.
0:36:56 And we can talk about this.
0:36:58 I find this so interesting.
0:37:05 If you put a monkey in a cage, and if he knows that every time he pulls the lever, he’ll
0:37:10 get a treat, some kind of banana or whatever he’s into, you can check the dopamine levels
0:37:11 of that creature.
0:37:16 And then maybe in the very beginning, it’ll be excited about this game, but then it stops
0:37:20 being fun for the animal because it’s so repeatable.
0:37:21 It’s so known.
0:37:24 I’m going to pull it, I’m going to get something.
0:37:30 He says, but when you introduce the idea of maybe you might, you could, you might not,
0:37:32 it makes them crazy in a good way.
0:37:35 They start pulling this thing and they’re pulling and pulling and they’re pulling.
0:37:37 They know the pulling will work.
0:37:39 They just don’t know when they’re going to get paid.
0:37:44 The way I equate that to is people do not go to the casino because they know they’re
0:37:45 going to win.
0:37:49 They go for the hope or the chance that they might win.
0:37:53 And this I find, I love this is the example I use, hopefully you like this.
0:37:56 This is where the idea of the clicker can get charged up.
0:38:01 And we say the clicker is more powerful than the actual reward itself.
0:38:02 So what are you talking about?
0:38:04 Whether it’s a clicker, there’s verbal markers.
0:38:07 You can use yes in place of the clicker, whatever.
0:38:10 What we end up doing, let’s just take this example.
0:38:14 You got a 40 year old guy, doesn’t leave his house very often.
0:38:16 He ends up going to Vegas for some business trip.
0:38:17 He goes into a casino.
0:38:19 He’s never played a game in his life.
0:38:21 He goes in, he’s got 20 bucks to spend.
0:38:22 He goes, well, I’m here.
0:38:23 I might as well play.
0:38:26 He’s got 20 bucks in the machine and he pulls the lever.
0:38:33 When he pulls the lever, the lights and sounds go off and like 30 grand comes out and he
0:38:34 gets a huge dopamine hit.
0:38:36 He goes, Mike, this is amazing.
0:38:37 And he really needed that money.
0:38:38 It’s perfect.
0:38:39 So he calls his mom, his girlfriend.
0:38:41 He goes, I just, you believe it?
0:38:44 I just won 30 grand on my first pull and he’s set.
0:38:45 He’s done.
0:38:46 He takes that money and he runs.
0:38:50 That would be the dog’s first exposure to click reward.
0:38:55 Now what ends up happening is he ends up spending that 30 grand and now he can’t wait to come
0:38:56 back into the casino.
0:39:00 So he comes back a couple of weeks later and he goes to that same machine and he brings
0:39:01 another 20 bucks.
0:39:05 He puts the 20 bucks in and he pulls the lever, but nothing happens.
0:39:06 Let’s all try again.
0:39:08 Of course he’s going to try again.
0:39:09 He’s feeling lucky.
0:39:10 He keeps pulling.
0:39:11 He keeps pulling.
0:39:12 Man, nothing’s happening.
0:39:19 He pulls and that same sound comes on the lights and everything, huge surge of dopamine.
0:39:20 He’s already pulling his phone out.
0:39:21 He’s calling his mom.
0:39:22 I won.
0:39:23 I won.
0:39:30 I knew I was a winner and then he looks to see what the payout is, $5, but he got the
0:39:31 dopamine hit.
0:39:35 He got the same dopamine hit, whether it was five bucks or $500,000.
0:39:39 He still got that hit and that’s what ends up happening potentially with the clickers
0:39:40 and we do the same.
0:39:42 So we do variability of rewards.
0:39:44 When we click, sometimes you get one piece of food.
0:39:49 Sometimes you get 30 pieces of food and then we always end on, guess what?
0:39:51 Click a gambler on a jackpot.
0:39:55 So the dog, when it comes out to train with us, never knows when the jackpot’s coming.
0:39:59 There’s also different markers called duration markers, which is to let the dog know again
0:40:00 at the speed of sound.
0:40:01 I like what you’re doing.
0:40:02 Keep doing it.
0:40:04 You’re on the right path, but I’ll pay you soon.
0:40:06 I’m not going to pay you for this one.
0:40:07 You just keep on doing that.
0:40:08 So we might tell the dog down.
0:40:09 It’s holding a beautiful down.
0:40:11 We’re going to let it know good.
0:40:13 Good is what we use for a duration marker.
0:40:14 Some trainers use it.
0:40:15 Some people don’t.
0:40:16 I like to use them.
0:40:17 I like what you’re doing.
0:40:18 Keep doing that.
0:40:22 When I walk over, maybe the dog’s held it down, stay for 10 minutes, yes, or click.
0:40:38 And then I give it a big old jackpot and say, this is all your hard work paying off.
0:40:40 I want to move into broader areas.
0:40:42 I got the canine part now.
0:40:45 So can you just address for me?
0:40:49 How accurate are these stereotypes of dogs?
0:40:51 Should everybody be afraid of pit bulls?
0:40:54 But then every time you hear that story, there’s a counterpoint.
0:40:55 No, it’s the breeder.
0:40:56 It’s the owner.
0:40:57 It’s not the pit bull.
0:40:59 Pit bulls are not inherently bad.
0:41:04 So are there stereotypes that are actually true about dog breeds that people should be
0:41:05 aware of?
0:41:07 Yes and no.
0:41:11 And very sensitive topic, depending upon who you’re asking.
0:41:13 Yes, but again, a strong no.
0:41:16 I’ll give you an example, golden retrievers.
0:41:19 It’s like America’s golden child, that in the Labrador.
0:41:24 Generally speaking, they’re great with families, great with other dogs.
0:41:28 You don’t really see Labrador’s or golden retrievers doing police work.
0:41:29 You never see that.
0:41:33 Yes, they do explosive detection, but I’m talking about utility dogs, or other words
0:41:34 apprehension or bite dogs.
0:41:37 You’re never going to see a Labrador or golden retriever do that.
0:41:38 Why?
0:41:40 They just don’t have the genetic predisposition for that.
0:41:41 They’re retriever dogs.
0:41:45 In fact, their golden retrievers have what they call a soft mouth.
0:41:50 They were trained or genetically selected over, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say maybe 100s of
0:41:54 years, 100 or 200 years, however long they’ve been developing that particular breed.
0:41:58 I’m not a golden retriever expert by any means, but they didn’t want the golden retriever
0:42:02 or other retriever type dogs to go out there, find the duck that they just shot, and squish
0:42:04 it and crunch it on the way back.
0:42:06 They wanted that soft mouth.
0:42:11 So when you try to take a golden retriever, I’m not saying it couldn’t be done.
0:42:15 Really going against nature, mother nature, trying to get a golden retriever to bite a
0:42:16 bad guy really hard.
0:42:17 Could they do it?
0:42:18 Yeah.
0:42:21 Maybe you could probably over train it with that perfect dog.
0:42:22 You might find it.
0:42:28 Now, one of the meanest dogs I’ve ever met in my life was a Labrador retriever named Bronco.
0:42:30 That’s a mean son of a gun.
0:42:34 And he was an explosive detection dog.
0:42:40 He had some of the worst, what they call food aggression and also barrier aggression.
0:42:42 So he was okay with you when he was out of the crate.
0:42:46 As soon as you could pet him, and he’d like it, as soon as you put him in the crate and
0:42:50 close the door, he’d spin around and fire off and let you know he’s my crate back off.
0:42:52 You put food down, back up.
0:42:53 Mean son of a gun.
0:42:56 I would never let that dog around any of my kids or anybody else’s kids.
0:42:57 But he’s a Labrador retriever.
0:42:59 So there’s variations on a theme.
0:43:02 Yes, generally speaking, like we’ll talk about pit bulls.
0:43:06 I think pit bulls can be some of the sweetest, nicest dogs on the planet.
0:43:08 I’ve not personally owned any.
0:43:09 I’ve trained a ton of them.
0:43:10 My old roommate had one.
0:43:12 That dog wouldn’t hurt a fly.
0:43:18 However, if you get a pit bull that isn’t properly trained, maybe with improper genetics,
0:43:23 and they have tremendous drive, what makes pit bulls so dangerous is they have incredible
0:43:24 levels of drive.
0:43:25 Remember we go back to that.
0:43:28 They have those 1,500 horsepower engines.
0:43:31 Not all of them, but a lot of them do.
0:43:38 And because of how they bred those dogs back in the day, they wanted those dogs in the
0:43:45 pits to first go after rats, bears, and then other dogs, and maybe not in that particular
0:43:46 order.
0:43:47 We did a little research on it.
0:43:49 Like where did this come from?
0:43:56 And then they outlawed the blood sports over in the UK with the pits going after each other.
0:43:58 It still happens to the state underground.
0:44:03 I call it misplaced prey drive, and it still runs in the bloodlines of some of these dogs,
0:44:10 where through man’s genetic breeding selection, we have six dogs came out of this litter.
0:44:12 These two are too soft.
0:44:13 These two got it.
0:44:17 They’re going to continue that down the line, and what it could be is what I call misplaced
0:44:18 prey drive.
0:44:23 I’m not saying this perfectly, but you understand, man tinkering with the breeding program.
0:44:24 That’s how breeds come about.
0:44:27 Anyways, golden retrievers didn’t exist 10,000 years ago.
0:44:33 All breeds come from the wolf, a chihuahua comes from the wolf, 99.9% of the same genetics.
0:44:37 In fact, the chihuahua and a great dane, 99.999% same genetics.
0:44:43 Anyhow, point being pit bulls have sometimes what I call misplaced prey drive, meaning
0:44:47 they look, we would think nothing of my personal dog.
0:44:50 If he sees a squirrel or a deer, it’s game on.
0:44:52 And we’d go like, yeah man, good for you.
0:44:53 Go chase that squirrel.
0:44:54 That’s what you’re bred to do.
0:44:55 You want to chase things.
0:44:56 Good for you.
0:44:59 What happens, however, and I’ve seen it a few times, and it’s scary when you witness
0:45:02 it, where a pit bull, and it doesn’t have to be a pit bull, and they’re not picking on
0:45:03 that breed.
0:45:07 But some of these dogs have a misplaced prey drive where they look at another dog as a
0:45:09 prey item, and they go, I want to chase that.
0:45:13 I want to chase that down, grab it by the neck, and shake it, just like I do with the
0:45:16 squirrel, except I want to do it to that dog.
0:45:19 And it’s an anomaly that they just kept breeding.
0:45:22 I don’t know how it came about, but it came about.
0:45:27 But anyways, going back to your original question, yes, there’s generalities, but rottweilers
0:45:29 can make great home protectors.
0:45:33 There’s also rottweilers out there that are big, fat, and lazy and wouldn’t hurt a fly.
0:45:36 So yeah, you’re hedging your bet when you get the right breed.
0:45:41 But there’s no guarantee that even if you get the breed that kind of fits your lifestyle,
0:45:45 so you hope, there’s no guarantee that the dog will be exactly what you want now.
0:45:52 So we always say when it comes to dogs, I’ll end with this, 50% genetics, 50% of what you
0:45:54 put into it training.
0:45:56 That’s how you can get the dog to be where it’s going to be.
0:45:59 But you’ll never get a chihuahua to be a police dog.
0:46:03 The genetics aren’t there, but you can have a dog with perfect genetics, primed and ready
0:46:08 to do X, let’s say police work, but if you don’t put in the training, it’s not going
0:46:09 to get there either.
0:46:10 Okay.
0:46:18 So if it’s 50% genetics and 50% training, what happens when you go to the humane society
0:46:20 or you go and you rescue a dog?
0:46:22 So you’re not sure about the genetics.
0:46:25 You’re not sure about the dog’s history.
0:46:28 I tell you, we’ve had several rescue dogs and they were great dogs.
0:46:29 I don’t know.
0:46:34 Are you telling me that rescue dogs is like rolling the dice, you know, you’re just shooting
0:46:36 crabs there?
0:46:40 That’s exactly what I call it, but it’s a roll of the dice.
0:46:46 Even when you go to a reputable breeder of any breed of your choice, it’s still a roll
0:46:47 of the dice.
0:46:48 You don’t know what you’re going to get.
0:46:53 Yes, you’re hedging your bet a little more, but there’s no guarantee.
0:46:57 The benefit though of, here’s how you’re hedging your bet a different way.
0:47:01 When you buy a puppy from a breeder, those puppies are eight weeks old.
0:47:05 You get that kind of rough idea what that dog’s going to be like, but that’s kind of
0:47:06 like me.
0:47:11 I could go to the preeminent researcher, scientist who studied human behavior and understands
0:47:13 childhood development.
0:47:16 And I can say, we’ll go to a nursery and I’ll say, you see all these babies, they were just
0:47:18 born in the last 48 hours.
0:47:20 Which one of these is going to become a CEO?
0:47:22 Which one’s going to become a drug addict?
0:47:23 You don’t know.
0:47:24 You don’t know.
0:47:25 Now you could look at the genetics.
0:47:30 You could see who mom and dad are, but even that doesn’t predict everything because, again,
0:47:32 that’s the nature versus the nurture.
0:47:34 Why is Elon Musk who he is?
0:47:35 I don’t know.
0:47:37 Is it how he was raised?
0:47:39 Or is it something genetic going on there?
0:47:42 Are his kids going to turn out to be successful like him?
0:47:43 Who knows?
0:47:45 Now what happens when you go to a shelter?
0:47:49 The good news is where you can hedge your bet in a different way is now some of these
0:47:53 dogs are already six months old, one years old, two years old.
0:47:58 Now we take that same person, the researcher who knows human behavior.
0:48:02 Now I get him in a room with argument’s sake.
0:48:07 It’s a whole room of 20 and 30-year-olds, maybe 40-year-olds, and I’m like, look, I’m
0:48:12 not going to tell you what these people do for a living, but you can spend 15 minutes
0:48:13 with each of them.
0:48:14 You can test them.
0:48:18 And that researcher will probably be able to tell you, hey, who’s a drug addict?
0:48:21 Who tends to be shy, outgoing?
0:48:23 Because your personality is set.
0:48:25 Why am I saying all of this?
0:48:29 Dogs are fully physically and mentally mature around two years old.
0:48:34 But the older they get, meaning six months old, nine months old, especially around 12
0:48:37 months old, the personality is pretty set.
0:48:43 So we just use the contrast of babies in a nursery and a room of 20, 30, and 40-year-olds.
0:48:45 What about that middle ground?
0:48:51 Maybe a 10, 12, 14-year-old kid will still have a much better idea at 10, 12, or 14-years-old.
0:48:52 What is that?
0:48:56 That’s the puppy around six months, eight months, nine months, 10 months old.
0:48:59 We’re going to have a much better idea what that puppy’s going to turn out to be.
0:49:03 That’s why you’re not seeing police agencies, among many other reasons, selecting eight-week-old
0:49:05 puppies and crossing their fingers is going to be a police dog.
0:49:09 No, we’re going to hedge our bet by waiting to see how their personality develops.
0:49:13 So when you go to a shelter, that’s the added benefit is you can meet with maybe that dog
0:49:15 that is two, three, four years old.
0:49:17 What you see is what you get.
0:49:19 That’s the dog’s personality.
0:49:20 Can we cheat it a little bit?
0:49:22 Of course we can.
0:49:28 Just like you can come across maybe a 30-year-old who has been addicted to smoking for the last
0:49:32 five or 10 years, there’s still hope that we can get him to quit smoking.
0:49:37 So if you have a two- or three-year-old dog that’s in the shelter and they have habitually
0:49:41 been peeing in the house, you can break the habit, right?
0:49:42 They’re probably in there for a reason.
0:49:44 A lot of these shelter dogs are in there for a reason.
0:49:50 There’s some bad habit, jumping, barking, biting, bad potty training.
0:49:52 Bad manners in general.
0:49:58 A good trainer can go in there and get that 50% that was missing, the training, and see
0:49:59 what they can do with it.
0:50:00 There’s no guarantee.
0:50:04 There’s some dogs that are a lost cause, and I’ll end with this, and I think this will
0:50:07 really blow your mind.
0:50:10 Because we get these calls a lot with dogs.
0:50:11 Hey, I’ll give you an example.
0:50:14 Hey, I have a four-year-old dog right off rip.
0:50:17 I’m like four years old, pretty set in their ways.
0:50:19 In fact, the older they are, the more set in the ways there are.
0:50:23 It’s a Rottweiler, again, breed or not, it doesn’t matter.
0:50:25 And it’s bitten six people.
0:50:27 And the last two, it’s sent to the hospital.
0:50:28 Can you fix it?
0:50:30 I’m like, oh my God, man, I don’t know.
0:50:32 There’s no guarantee there.
0:50:37 We might not fix it, but we might get it to be more manageable, help you understand what’s
0:50:38 getting that dog.
0:50:41 But anyone coming across, say, 100% I’ll fix that, they’re lying to you.
0:50:42 Because we don’t know.
0:50:43 Because this is where it makes sense.
0:50:45 You ready for this one, guy?
0:50:51 If I gave you, and I went to the most, again, preeminent, behaviorist, psychologist, so
0:50:53 you could be a whole room full of them.
0:50:59 And I hand them a 40-year-old pedophile who’s committed crimes in the past.
0:51:02 And I say, can you fix him and make him not a pedophile anymore?
0:51:03 I don’t know if you can do that.
0:51:05 You can do a lot of things.
0:51:09 But would you ever trust that human in a room with your kid?
0:51:12 No, just like I probably wouldn’t ever trust that four-year-old Rottweiler.
0:51:13 It’s already bit six people.
0:51:15 I don’t care how much training you throw at it.
0:51:16 Can we make it better?
0:51:17 Yes.
0:51:18 Would you ever trust it 100%?
0:51:19 No.
0:51:24 Are you telling me these dog whisperer shows, it’s like bullshit when they take this, in
0:51:28 the first part of the thing, they take the Rottweiler, it’s bitten six people, and then
0:51:32 at the end of an hour, this is a perfect family dog.
0:51:35 Is this like all bullshit in Hollywood then?
0:51:36 No.
0:51:37 No.
0:51:39 I mean, of course, there’s a little bit of movie magic going on because it’s not happening
0:51:41 usually in one hour.
0:51:45 A lot of those shows, they’re taking the dog and taking it over a month or two or whatever
0:51:49 it is, and bringing it back, and yeah, absolutely, you can have, we’ve done this, we’ve been
0:51:53 able to do this, and yet honestly, sometimes you can do it as little as 15 or 30 minutes.
0:51:57 You can absolutely transform a dog.
0:52:02 Sometimes what we find in homes where these dogs are wiling out, they’re just misbehaved.
0:52:06 It’s just basically a lack of leadership and a lack of know-how.
0:52:07 What would the example be?
0:52:11 You remember those old Maury Povich talk shows, and whether it was Maury Povich or not, but
0:52:16 they bring those kids in that are like 15, 16, 18 years old, and they’re really just
0:52:19 bad kids, mouthing off at the mom.
0:52:23 Mom seems to have no semblance of control, usually a single-family household.
0:52:29 There’s just no one putting rules, and this kid’s out of pocket, sneaking out, maybe getting
0:52:30 pregnant at a young age.
0:52:32 You know all that stuff, and then the drill sergeant comes in.
0:52:36 Remember that, and then the drill sergeant would come in and get in the kid’s face,
0:52:40 and now this hard kid that was mouthing off to everybody in the audience, and Maury Povich
0:52:44 himself or whoever it was, all of a sudden starts crying.
0:52:46 You see a completely different look on the same person.
0:52:48 It just depends who’s in the room.
0:52:51 Now, and then they said that kid away to some kind of boot camp.
0:52:56 It comes back two, three, four weeks later, back on the show, and it’s hugging their mom,
0:52:58 and it’s apologizing, and it’s like there’s a transformation.
0:53:00 Does it work 100% of the time?
0:53:04 No, but yeah, you can absolutely have some huge transformations.
0:53:11 It just, that’s what I love about dogs is they can be molded, and they can change very
0:53:18 quickly with proper leadership, with proper tools, with proper timing, all the good stuff.
0:53:21 But a lot of owners just don’t know what to do.
0:53:23 They’re like, “I was just reading one today on Instagram DMs.
0:53:28 My dog’s jumping on me, and it jumps on me, and it bruises me, and I tell it no, but it
0:53:29 doesn’t seem to help.”
0:53:32 I’m like, “That’s because your no doesn’t mean anything.
0:53:33 You could tell it banana.
0:53:35 It’s not going to stop your dog from jumping on you.
0:53:39 It’s a self-rewarding behavior, it jumps on you, you fall to the ground, the dog gets
0:53:42 enjoyment out of that, thinks you’re playing.
0:53:44 Maybe you pet it when it jumps on you.”
0:53:46 So, of course, that’s not going to stop you.
0:53:49 In that specific example, what are you supposed to do?
0:53:54 Sure, so a dog that has bad behaviors, pulling on the leash, jumping on your counter and
0:53:59 stealing food, jumping on you, these are all typical behaviors, maybe chewing on a couch.
0:54:04 All of these are in the same category in the sense that it’s a self-gratifying behavior.
0:54:09 So, if you just leave the dog to its own devices, it’s going to repeat it, because every single
0:54:13 creature on the planet, humans included, not to get too deep in the science of this, but
0:54:16 we’re talking about operant conditioning, right?
0:54:23 Either the behavior is reinforced with a reward or it’s diminished with a punishment.
0:54:29 If your dog jumps on the counter, even if you yell no at it, if it grabs your sub sandwich
0:54:34 and eats it, and I cannot wait until Elon Musk gets that neural link for dogs, I want
0:54:38 to communicate with him, I’d love to hear what they have to say, and I say this to owners
0:54:39 all the time.
0:54:44 I said, “If we put neural link on your dog right now, and I asked your dog in your home
0:54:49 with you, your husband, and your kids, hey, Fido, who runs this household?”
0:54:51 “Oh, I do.
0:54:53 Who’s this lady right here, your mom?”
0:54:54 “Oh, she works for me.
0:54:58 She scratches my belly and she picks up my poop.
0:54:59 What about this guy?”
0:55:00 “Oh, he’s an idiot.
0:55:01 He just sits on the couch.
0:55:02 He does nothing.
0:55:03 He’s useless.”
0:55:06 I’m like, a lot of times, these dogs that are out of control, no leadership, no guidance,
0:55:10 just like you might say a kid, most of these kids that are out of control these days lack
0:55:14 of good parenting, strong parents, I’m not trying to make this a sociological political
0:55:16 discussion, but you see the same thing happening.
0:55:21 Raising and training a dog is a lot like raising and training a kid, but how do you fix it?
0:55:25 Well, self-gratifying behavior, so a lot of trainers out there, especially the ones
0:55:31 you just see on TV in this softer and gentler and kinder society we live in would say, “Well,
0:55:33 you just ignore the behavior, it’ll go away.”
0:55:34 That’s a lie.
0:55:36 It’s plain and simple.
0:55:39 If you put a sub sandwich on the counter, what happens is the dog knows what happened
0:55:40 last time.
0:55:43 So not the best short-term memory, and we’ll come back to this in a minute.
0:55:46 Remember that it means short-term and long-term memory in a dog.
0:55:48 Long-term memory in dogs is great.
0:55:53 Next time they smell that turkey sub sandwich on the countertop, they go, “Man, I remember
0:55:54 what happened last time.
0:55:56 That sub sandwich was on the counter.
0:55:57 I jumped up.
0:55:58 I ate it.
0:56:00 I felt better.”
0:56:04 Dogs are always trying to improve their position in life at every moment of every day.
0:56:05 So they smell that turkey sandwich.
0:56:07 Of course they’re going to jump up and get it again.
0:56:09 There was no consequence last time.
0:56:13 So now what we have to do is institute a positive punishment, is what it’s called.
0:56:17 This is going to confuse some of your listeners, but on the operant conditioning chart, the
0:56:20 only way you change behavior in both humans and dogs and every other creature on the planet
0:56:23 is through positive punishment.
0:56:24 And by the way, it does not mean good.
0:56:26 It just means the addition of.
0:56:29 So let’s just call it adding a punisher.
0:56:31 You could also do a negative punishment.
0:56:32 So what the hell is that?
0:56:36 That’s removing something from the equation that creates a punishment.
0:56:38 So the example there would be, you tell your dog to down.
0:56:40 It sits instead.
0:56:41 No payment.
0:56:42 And the dog’s like, “Oh, man.
0:56:43 I’ve got to try again.”
0:56:45 So negative punishment is very powerful also.
0:56:48 A negative punishment in the example of the sub sandwich on the counter would be it jumps
0:56:52 on the counter, but you remove the sub sandwich, and you wash your hands, repeat that.
0:56:54 So good luck, good timing.
0:56:56 By the way, that just sometimes ends up builds more drive.
0:56:59 Let me jump faster and try to get it before you get it.
0:57:01 So back to how do you fix it?
0:57:05 The only way you’re going to decrease that behavior from happening again is by adding
0:57:06 a punisher.
0:57:11 And the punisher in this instance is going to be, for instance, a leash pop correction.
0:57:14 So there’s a leash hooked up to the dog.
0:57:16 This is where it gets a little weird.
0:57:18 Everything is about timing.
0:57:23 For the short-term memory idea, you have to set the dog up to make the mistake that you
0:57:24 know it’s going to make.
0:57:25 It’s made it in the past.
0:57:28 We know it’s going to make the same mistake in the future.
0:57:35 What would be unfair is to put the sub sandwich down, walk out of the room, come back in.
0:57:36 The dog ate the sandwich.
0:57:39 And as it’s licking its chops, and it’s only been, you know, the dog’s going to eat a sub
0:57:44 sandwich in about 10 seconds, 30 seconds later, the sandwich is gone.
0:57:47 You cannot go over there and punish the dog.
0:57:49 It has no idea what happened.
0:57:50 It forgot it ate the sandwich.
0:57:52 It said, “What are you talking about?”
0:57:55 Of course, and then some people say, “But the dog had the look of guilt on its face.”
0:58:00 It had the look of guilt because it saw that dogs can read our emotion.
0:58:02 They can smell our frustration, right?
0:58:06 They actually, the pheromones that we’re putting off, they can see the look in our eye.
0:58:10 And then we turn and look at our dog like this and go, “Fight oh!”
0:58:13 And the dog goes, “Oh, I don’t know what I did, but mom’s pissed.”
0:58:16 And they go, “See that look of guilt?”
0:58:20 Dog does not remember, and the people can’t wrap their head around that.
0:58:21 So they go and punish the dog.
0:58:22 Where does this happen a lot?
0:58:24 Potty accidents.
0:58:27 You leave the house for eight hours, you come back, the dog’s peed or poop somewhere.
0:58:30 I don’t know if that happened five minutes ago or five hours ago.
0:58:35 You cannot punish your dog for something that they don’t even remember happened.
0:58:36 You missed the moment.
0:58:39 Remember, we said three to five seconds to capture behavior and let the dog know it’s
0:58:41 either good or bad.
0:58:42 But people say, “No, the look of guilt.”
0:58:44 I’ll say, “Let me switch it on.”
0:58:45 You forget the punishment.
0:58:51 You tell your dog to down in the kitchen before you leave for work and the dog does
0:58:52 it.
0:58:54 Then you get in your car, you go to work and come back eight hours later.
0:58:56 Of course, the dog’s not going to be in a down.
0:58:59 It might be, who knows what, running around the backyard.
0:59:04 How on earth can you give that dog a treat eight hours later for the down it did?
0:59:08 There’s no trainer on the planet that will be able to tell the dog eight hours later,
0:59:10 “Hey, you know that down you did eight hours ago?
0:59:11 Here’s a treat for that.”
0:59:12 Okay.
0:59:13 So the same concept, right?
0:59:15 If it makes sense that way, of course, it makes sense the other way.
0:59:19 How can you punish a dog for the PP action that did even 30 minutes ago?
0:59:20 Three to five seconds is the window.
0:59:24 So the point being, what I was getting at is, when you try to fix a behavior in a dog,
0:59:26 we do what’s called a setup for failure.
0:59:29 It seems evil, but it’s the most fair thing you can do.
0:59:32 We know the dog has the likelihood of jumping on people.
0:59:33 When does it happen?
0:59:34 When they come in the front door.
0:59:36 We know the dog likes to jump on the counter and eat food.
0:59:37 When?
0:59:38 When we put the food on the counter.
0:59:39 Perfect.
0:59:40 So you put everything in place.
0:59:41 It’s a setup.
0:59:42 The dog doesn’t know.
0:59:44 You do everything as natural as possible.
0:59:46 But now you have a proper tool.
0:59:48 In this case, we would use a leash attached to a collar.
0:59:51 For harder dogs might use a leash and a prong collar.
0:59:52 Why a prong collar?
0:59:55 Long story short, it emulates what we call mama’s teeth.
0:59:58 How do dogs correct each other in the wild in nature at a dog park?
0:59:59 With their teeth.
1:00:00 They don’t use their hands.
1:00:01 They don’t use fists.
1:00:03 They don’t write each other a letter.
1:00:05 They don’t have their attorney send out lawsuit papers.
1:00:06 They bite each other.
1:00:07 When do they bite each other?
1:00:09 Right when the bad behavior happens.
1:00:10 And then they’re over it two seconds later.
1:00:12 We use the prong collar as mama’s teeth.
1:00:13 We set it up.
1:00:14 What does that look like?
1:00:18 Hey, when I give you the winkity wink, I want you to come in the door.
1:00:21 And I’m going to say, hey, how are you?
1:00:22 And what’s the dog going to do?
1:00:24 Like it’s done every other time in the last six months.
1:00:25 It jumps on the guest.
1:00:30 The moment it jumps on your guest down to the millisecond, you use the leash to deliver
1:00:32 positive punishment, meaning we add a punisher.
1:00:37 The dog feels a correction on its neck and it goes, oh, that didn’t feel good.
1:00:38 That’s right.
1:00:41 When you jump on people, it doesn’t feel good.
1:00:43 So stop doing it.
1:00:48 Then ideally, if you’re really good at training, and this is the stuff we teach in our courses,
1:00:53 we will show how you use the leash to then communicate to the dog, I don’t want you jumping.
1:00:55 It doesn’t feel good when you jump.
1:00:59 However, if you go into a sit, you’re going to get all the love and pets and treats and
1:01:01 toys and everything you want.
1:01:03 So now what we call is called giving your dog a job to do.
1:01:05 All dogs were bred to do some type of work.
1:01:10 But what we’ve done in the last 50 or 80, maybe 100 years, and we’re not all farmers
1:01:14 anymore, these dogs aren’t pulling carts, these dogs aren’t hurting sheep.
1:01:17 They have no job, nothing to fulfill them.
1:01:21 They sit on the couch all day, and then they chase your cat, they jump on your guests.
1:01:25 They think that’s their job and they get really good at that.
1:01:26 Problem is, it’s not the right job.
1:01:28 So instead, we flip it on and that’s where obedience comes in.
1:01:31 Your job is to sit, to down, to heal, to recall.
1:01:33 If you do a good job, I’m going to pay you.
1:01:37 If you mess up, just like a owner of a restaurant, if you’re not doing a great job, we’re going
1:01:41 to counsel you, we’re going to train you, you’re going to do a better job.
1:01:45 Problem is, you can’t fire your dog, but you can correct the behavior.
1:01:46 And the dogs learn this quick.
1:01:50 That’s why he said, hey, those things where it’s like they transform the dog in one hour,
1:01:54 I can get pretty much any dog on the planet to stop pulling on a leash in about five minutes.
1:01:59 I can get just about any dog on the planet to stop jumping on people in about five minutes,
1:02:02 maybe 10 minutes if I take my time, because it’s pretty clear.
1:02:04 In fact, I’ll throw it to you, guy.
1:02:11 How long does it take to teach a human to stop touching a 400 degree oven or stove?
1:02:14 How many times do you have to put your hand on it to realize that thing’s hot and it’s
1:02:15 going to burn you?
1:02:19 By the way, what’s really interesting is, do you need anyone there screaming at you,
1:02:22 saying no, no?
1:02:23 We set it up.
1:02:24 Hey, turn the oven on.
1:02:26 Hey, guy likes coffee.
1:02:27 Perfect.
1:02:28 Put the coffee right there on the oven.
1:02:31 Guy reaches for the coffee, whoo, that burned.
1:02:35 What’s funny is, dogs and humans alike will always go for a second.
1:02:37 They will always try one more time just to confirm.
1:02:39 When you go for, ooh, yeah, that really did.
1:02:40 Yeah, that’s hot.
1:02:41 I don’t want to touch that.
1:02:42 That’s it.
1:02:43 Now, why do we do this?
1:02:44 Because some people say, what’s the harm in jumping?
1:02:45 You got your grandma coming over.
1:02:48 Some dogs are big enough to break grandma’s hip.
1:02:50 What about a dog eating rocks?
1:02:52 That’s a three, four, $5,000 surgery.
1:02:53 If you don’t catch it in time, you can kill your dog.
1:02:57 What about in some parts of the country, there’s rattlesnakes.
1:03:01 In South Florida and the Southeast of the United States, we dealt with bufo toads, extremely
1:03:03 toxic to dogs.
1:03:09 One lick of one of those toads will kill your dog in just a couple hours.
1:03:14 What’s better, letting the dog figure that out, and it’s too late, it’s dead, or we would
1:03:17 use, in this instance, an e-collar, an e-collar, same thing.
1:03:19 For trainers who use it, they love it.
1:03:24 It’s the best thing to happen to dog training since the invention of dogs.
1:03:29 The e-collar allows us to reach out at the speed of sound or the speed of electricity
1:03:33 and say, I probably wouldn’t touch that bufo toad because it’s going to kill you.
1:03:38 I’ll go on the record and say, I would rather shock a dog on the full level of an e-collar
1:03:39 just a couple of times.
1:03:40 Why twice?
1:03:43 Because it always, at least two or three times, I’ve been doing this a long time.
1:03:48 They will feel the burn on the first one and go, that hurt, but man, that toad looks
1:03:49 pretty good.
1:03:50 Look at it hot, man.
1:03:54 It just wants me to go chase it, and now you’re dealing with thousands of years of mother
1:03:58 nature saying, you must chase things that hop and move and run away from you.
1:04:01 They’re like, it burned, but let me go one more time.
1:04:04 When it goes for it the second time, it learns just like it did the first time, it will burn
1:04:05 you every time.
1:04:08 Don’t touch that toad.
1:04:12 That would be an example of how you might use, by the way, e-collars can be used much
1:04:13 more than that.
1:04:17 This is just an inversive example, but you can use the e-collar to basically teach the
1:04:20 dog certain things are electric.
1:04:21 You probably don’t want to touch them.
1:04:25 When you put your feet on the counter to eat that sub-sandwich, go for it.
1:04:26 Go for the sub-sandwich.
1:04:29 I just want to let you know that the countertop is now electric, so I don’t know how you’re
1:04:31 going to get that sub-sandwich.
1:04:33 Is it worth it to you to get the sub-sandwich?
1:04:37 Let the dog make that decision on their own, but it’s probably not going to be worth it.
1:04:42 They jump up, they feel the electric, they go, that doesn’t feel good, and they don’t
1:04:45 get the sub-sandwich, so the dog makes a pretty quick calculation.
1:04:49 It’s not worth my time, and then when they don’t jump for the sub-sandwich and they sit
1:04:54 down on the ground or lay down, you come over with a piece of the sub-sandwich and say,
1:04:55 “I’m proud of you.”
1:04:56 Here’s some sub-sandwich for you, bro.
1:04:58 Thank you for doing a good job.
1:04:59 Make sense?
1:05:00 Make sense.
1:05:01 All right.
1:05:02 All right.
1:05:07 Is there an e-collar that also you can use as a clicker to put out the positive sounds?
1:05:08 You’ve got one thing?
1:05:09 Yeah.
1:05:13 So there are e-collars that have a tone, and some people will use the tone of the e-collar
1:05:16 to mark good behaviors, so the tone is charged up just like a clicker.
1:05:22 You can also use the tone to be charged up as the recall command, and the world is your
1:05:23 oyster when it comes to dog training.
1:05:28 So for instance, my dog, Thanos, we use the vibrate to mean down.
1:05:32 So I have him laser trained, like you might have a special forces dog, some police dogs
1:05:33 are trained with this.
1:05:35 I can use a laser pointer.
1:05:39 If he can see the laser, he will run there, so I can send him out 300, 400 yards.
1:05:44 He will go exactly where I want him because he’s going to follow the laser, and then when
1:05:48 he gets where I want him to go, he can’t even hear me he’s so far away.
1:05:53 Or in a tactical application, not that I do that anymore, but I still like to play, you
1:05:58 know, play like a toy soldier, I will use the vibrate to drop him right where I want
1:05:59 him.
1:06:01 Now, how does that work in a tactical application?
1:06:06 You might want to put your dog, your police dog or your military dog downwind of an area
1:06:07 of concern.
1:06:09 Hey, it’s a pretty open backyard.
1:06:13 I don’t see where a bad guy could be hiding, but hey, there’s a shed over there.
1:06:18 A bad guy might be in or on top of that shed, and everything we do in police work, when
1:06:20 you’re using a dog, it’s all about the nose.
1:06:24 The only way a dog’s going to smell a bad guy is to be downwind of a period.
1:06:27 A dog’s not going to smell someone upwind, it just won’t happen.
1:06:33 You read the wind, and then you laser the dog, downwind of the object in question, and
1:06:38 then you might drop him there with a vibrate on the down, and then watch the dog’s behavior.
1:06:43 It’ll let you know pretty quick whether he’s wind-sensing something or not, and then you
1:06:44 might move a tactical team up.
1:06:48 So anyways, in this instance, the point being, I used the vibrate to teach down.
1:06:50 You could also use the vibrate to teach recall.
1:06:52 You could use the tone to teach down.
1:06:54 So it’s however you want to shape him.
1:06:57 Up next, unremarkable people.
1:07:00 My friend Mike came over and was like, “This is going on for minutes, Garrett.
1:07:02 Nobody can get this dog to let go.”
1:07:08 I came over, grabbed the little wiener dog with my hand and kind of turned off oxygen.
1:07:09 He said, “The dog let go in two seconds.”
1:07:12 I said, “Oh, that’s great, but what did the owner think of that?”
1:07:15 She was so thankful, because some people were like, “Ah, you hurt my dog,” but she
1:07:16 was desperate.
1:07:19 The other dog was all but killing the other dashhound.
1:07:20 I’m like, “It’s wild.
1:07:24 You wouldn’t think those little dogs would do that much damage to each other, but hey,
1:07:28 they don’t know how small they are, dogs are dogs.”
1:07:30 Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners.
1:07:34 It’s our pleasure and honor to make the show for you.
1:07:39 If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate, and review it.
1:07:46 Even better, forward it to a friend, a big mahalo to you for doing this.
1:07:51 You’re listening to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
1:07:57 I saw one of your videos in which, and I just want to confirm this, that God forbid if you
1:08:04 are attacked by a dog, or you’re witnessing an attack by a dog, the only way to stop the
1:08:06 dog is to choke them?
1:08:07 110%.
1:08:08 Yep.
1:08:09 Yep.
1:08:14 When we’re talking about, I’m not talking about a dog that just nips at your hand or just
1:08:15 nips at it.
1:08:18 I’m talking about a dog that’s locked on.
1:08:24 The only way you’re going to get that dog, well, the cleanest way, the fastest, the guaranteed
1:08:29 way, is to shut off oxygen and blood flow to the brain.
1:08:30 It’s exactly what we do.
1:08:31 Where does this come from?
1:08:33 This may shock people.
1:08:35 I don’t care how much training you put into a police dog.
1:08:40 If you have a high enough drive police dog, 9 out of 10, 99 out of 100, if not 100 out
1:08:47 of 100, police dogs will not let go of a bite on the street from a verbal command alone.
1:08:50 I get a lot of flak for that.
1:08:51 Really?
1:08:52 Yep.
1:08:54 It’s just the nature of the beast.
1:08:58 We put so much horsepower into these dogs that you tell them to let go.
1:08:59 I’m not saying it can’t be taught.
1:09:00 Of course it can.
1:09:04 Yes, there are police dogs that will let go on a verbal out.
1:09:09 However, more often than not, you can give the commands, “I just saw a video the other
1:09:10 day.
1:09:11 It happens all the time.”
1:09:14 I encourage you, next time you see a police dog deployment, you’re going to see one of
1:09:18 two things probably happen when they go to remove the dog.
1:09:21 The handler is either going to give multiple, multiple, multiple commands for the dog to
1:09:26 let go, or he’s going to come over and do a physical removal, or both because the commands
1:09:27 aren’t working.
1:09:28 Why are the commands not working?
1:09:30 You are fighting thousands of years of mother nature.
1:09:33 You’ve created the monster, good for you.
1:09:36 Now you’ve got to get that monster to let go, and they don’t want to let go.
1:09:37 I don’t mean monster in a bad way.
1:09:40 I just mean it’s just a tremendous drive.
1:09:43 You have to come over and how are they getting these dogs to let go?
1:09:44 We teach this in training.
1:09:48 There’s multiple ways, but you’re either using the collar, you’re lifting up on the collar.
1:09:53 That collar is now restricting airflow, and the dog is basically, they don’t even actually
1:09:58 make, oftentimes, this is crazy, they don’t make a conscious decision to let go.
1:09:59 It’s a physiological response.
1:10:01 It’s a gag reflex.
1:10:03 They’re holding on for dear life.
1:10:06 They’re saying, “I don’t care how long you choke me, I’m not letting go,” until they
1:10:11 start to gag and their body is saying, “You’ve got to let go if you want to breathe.”
1:10:14 That’s how we get dogs off, it’s called the physical removal.
1:10:16 Now, what about the verbal out?
1:10:20 You can tell the dog to let go, but every time you tell your dog to do something, whether
1:10:25 it’s your pet dog that’s sitting on your couch and you said, “Get off the couch,” or
1:10:31 a police dog that’s on a bite and you tell it to let go, they make a conscious decision
1:10:34 every time you tell them to do something, whether it’s in their best interest or not.
1:10:36 The recall is the great one.
1:10:40 Your dog’s chasing after something, and you say, “Fido, come here,” and the dogs will
1:10:43 look at you and go, “What’s in it for me?
1:10:44 I don’t see a treat.
1:10:45 I don’t see a ball.
1:10:46 I am chasing a bunny.
1:10:47 Now, the bunny’s a pretty good time.
1:10:50 You don’t look like that great of a time.
1:10:52 I’ll chase the bunny instead.”
1:10:56 We must now, that’s where we come in with the different tools or the different training.
1:10:58 We say, “You have to come back.
1:11:01 By the way, if you come back, I’ll reward you, but I promise you, if you don’t come
1:11:03 back, there’s a price to pay for that.”
1:11:04 Same with the police dogs.
1:11:06 Why would they want to let go?
1:11:08 What’s in it for them?
1:11:11 Every time they let go, there’s not really a prize.
1:11:15 It’s not like they get a cheeseburger shoved in their mouth as soon as they let go.
1:11:20 There are ways to train it where if you let go of this, I’ll give you a toy, but oftentimes
1:11:23 on a real deployment, you’re not walking around with a toy in your back pocket.
1:11:28 You’re dealing with a hard-ass criminal who might be armed, and we joke about this a lot.
1:11:32 Hot dogs, can and will, treats, hot dogs will solve a lot of problems with a pet dog, but
1:11:36 you’re often not seeing a police dog or a police handler deploying on a track for a murder
1:11:39 suspect with a pouch of hot dogs in his back pocket.
1:11:45 We are not controlling that horsepower by adding fuel to the fire, drive to the fire.
1:11:49 We are going into those backyards using a leash, using a prong collar, using an E-collar,
1:11:54 and what we call as a steering wheel and a brake on that 1,200 horsepower mallon wall
1:11:55 that we just brought back there.
1:12:00 So when we tell the dog to let go, sometimes they don’t even hear you because they have
1:12:02 auditory occlusion.
1:12:03 They’re literally not even there.
1:12:04 They’re almost possessed.
1:12:07 They’re just satisfying that bike drive.
1:12:09 When we say let go, they’re like, “Yeah, I’ll be with you in a minute.
1:12:10 Let me finish this.”
1:12:13 No, you got to let go right now because you’re about to cost me a lawsuit.
1:12:14 You better let go.
1:12:15 The guy’s giving up.
1:12:20 So you’ll often see, like I said, you’ll hear multiple, multiple commands.
1:12:23 Oftentimes if they’re letting go from a verbal command, it’s not really the verbal command
1:12:24 by itself.
1:12:26 It’s that the verbal command is paired with an E-collar.
1:12:30 So you’ll see the guy fidgeting on his equipment, on his gun belt or on his vest, stimming the
1:12:32 dog, and you might even hear the dog go, “Right?”
1:12:34 It’s because I told you to let go.
1:12:36 You didn’t let go, so there’s a price to pay.
1:12:37 That’s one way.
1:12:41 But again, more often than not, you’re seeing what’s called a tactical or physical removal
1:12:45 where they’re either cutting off oxygen and blood flow through the collar.
1:12:46 There’s other methods.
1:12:50 What we’ve been seeing a lot in the last decade or so is what’s called a breaker bar.
1:12:55 The breaker bar, when used incorrectly, they try to put it in between the teeth, and then
1:12:58 it’s like a bar, and then they twist it to try to open the jaws.
1:13:00 That’s not how it’s supposed to be used.
1:13:04 What a breaker bar actually is, is a gag reflex tool.
1:13:10 They come in different shapes, but it’s basically some type of item that’s long and cylindrical.
1:13:11 They have different types.
1:13:14 What you’re doing is, as the dog’s on the bite, there’s usually a little gap in the
1:13:19 back by the molars, and you put that tool back there, and you actually are aiming down
1:13:22 towards, I guess you’d call it the tonsils area of the dog, right?
1:13:26 The back of the throat, and it makes the dog go, “It induces a gag reflex,” and they
1:13:27 let go.
1:13:31 When done correctly, you can get a dog off a bite in three to five seconds, but most
1:13:35 of us aren’t walking around with a breaker bar or a gag tool in our pocket.
1:13:38 What we would suggest, going back to your question, I know it’s around about way of
1:13:39 getting here.
1:13:40 Wow.
1:13:45 If the dog has a collar on, or there’s a leash, you got to get that collar high and
1:13:46 tight on their neck.
1:13:50 You got to get that leash potentially wrapped around their neck, and you got to lift and
1:13:52 hold.
1:13:56 Some dogs will let go in one, two, three seconds, some will go for the ride, and it’s funny
1:13:59 because one of my good friends was telling me the other day, he said, “I watched your
1:14:00 video on that.”
1:14:02 He’s got no police canine experience.
1:14:08 He was at a dog park or some park, and two dashhounds, the little wiener dogs, brother
1:14:11 and sister or something from the same owner, got into it, and they were just eating each
1:14:13 other up.
1:14:17 The owner could not get this little dashhound to let go of the other one.
1:14:22 There’s blood everywhere, people are screaming, a crowd’s forming, and you’ve seen the videos.
1:14:24 People are pouring water on the dogs.
1:14:25 Can that work?
1:14:26 Yes, sometimes.
1:14:29 People are hitting, not the dashhound, but I’m going back to the videos you’ve seen.
1:14:34 People are hitting dogs with shovels, with bricks, with sticks, ain’t working, and with
1:14:39 a real hard dog, often times a pit bull or some other bully type of breed, that just
1:14:45 makes the dog fight harder and bite harder the more pressure you put on them.
1:14:48 My friend Mike came over, he’s like, “This is going on for minutes, Garrett.
1:14:49 Nobody can get this dog to let go.”
1:14:55 I came over, grabbed the little wiener dog with my hand, and kind of turned off oxygen.
1:14:57 He said, “The dog let go in two seconds.”
1:15:00 I said, “Oh, that’s great, but what did the owner think of that?”
1:15:03 She was so thankful, because some people were like, “Ah, you hurt my dog,” but she
1:15:04 was desperate.
1:15:07 The other dog was all but killing the other dashhound.
1:15:10 I’m like, “It’s wild, you wouldn’t think those little dogs would do that much damage
1:15:18 to each other, but hey, they don’t know how small they are, dogs are dogs.”
1:15:25 My last question is this, knowing all that you know, just give us the general gist of
1:15:28 how to select a dog.
1:15:31 You’ve brought into so many aspects to think about.
1:15:36 It’s not as simple as going to the shelter and finding the cute one.
1:15:44 How do you pick a dog, specifically for a family, not a guard dog, for family?
1:15:45 Sure.
1:15:48 That’s interesting too, because nowadays, for whatever the reason is, a lot of people
1:15:52 want, quote, “a protection dog,” so they are getting that family dog, but they’re
1:15:55 getting dogs that are more like the Connie Corso, one of our breed of choice.
1:15:57 You’re going to German Shepherd, Doberman, Rottweiler.
1:16:01 I get those questions more than anything, “Hey, Garrett, what’s the breast guard dog
1:16:02 from my house?”
1:16:06 But regardless, whether you’re getting a guard dog or you’re just getting the golden retriever
1:16:07 family pet.
1:16:08 Okay.
1:16:09 Stop for a second.
1:16:14 Then first, adjust the question is, do you really want a guard dog?
1:16:17 What’s the probability that someone’s going to come in your house and try to murder you
1:16:19 or rob you?
1:16:22 It’s much more likely a guard dog is going to attack your family, then you’re going
1:16:27 to get the guard usage from the guard dog, or am I making this up?
1:16:28 No.
1:16:31 I think it could go so many different ways.
1:16:34 Studies have been done, and I’m not going to quote it, because I don’t have it in front
1:16:38 of me, but it goes without saying, if there’s a bad guy that wants to break into your home
1:16:42 as a burglar, and they show up to your, you’re not homeless, let’s just say, or you are home.
1:16:46 Middle of the night, middle of the day, whatever it is, they come to break in through an open
1:16:51 window or your back door, and there’s a 130-pound Connie Corso Italian Massif on the other side
1:16:52 of that door.
1:16:54 You’re probably going to skip that house.
1:16:58 Of course, there’s some real bad dudes who have a gun, and what’s your dog going to do
1:17:00 against an armed intruder?
1:17:04 Not much, other than maybe slow them down just a little bit, maybe at least alert you that
1:17:05 someone’s there.
1:17:06 But any dog can do that alert.
1:17:08 You can have a Chihuahua that’s a great alert dog.
1:17:12 So for that, dogs are great, and that’s one of the best things about dogs.
1:17:16 But if I saw a Chihuahua on the other side of the door, I might be like, if I was really
1:17:20 on drugs, I need the money, I’m breaking into your house or somebody’s house, I might take
1:17:22 my chances with the Chihuahua.
1:17:25 Now to your other point, I don’t care almost what breed you get.
1:17:27 You can get the baddest breed on the planet, right?
1:17:28 You can get a Belgian Malinois.
1:17:30 Everybody thinks Belgian Malinois are the best dogs.
1:17:32 Yeah, they’re great for police work.
1:17:35 They don’t make great house pets, let me tell you.
1:17:40 But Belgian Malinois aren’t naturally really territorial, nor are they really vicious.
1:17:43 They’re actually super friendly, generally speaking.
1:17:47 They love their social creatures, but again, it depends what training you do or not.
1:17:51 So anyways, what I’m getting at is, do people need a protection dog?
1:17:52 I don’t know.
1:17:55 The more you tell them not to get one or that it’s too much for you to handle, I know this
1:17:58 from personal experience, because this is what we preach all day long on our channels.
1:18:02 Hey, the Cane Corso, amazing dog.
1:18:06 Not ideal for 99.9% of people, it’s too much dog for you.
1:18:08 I equate it to having a battle tank.
1:18:10 Do you need a battle tank in your suburban neighborhood?
1:18:11 I don’t know, probably not.
1:18:14 But then again, I’m a big second amendment proponent.
1:18:15 It is a free country.
1:18:19 If you want a Cane Corso, you want a whole pack of them, more power to you.
1:18:21 The training is really the essential part.
1:18:22 Now here’s the other thing.
1:18:25 Even if you get a, quote, “protection dog” or a guardian breed, that doesn’t mean they’re
1:18:26 going to do anything.
1:18:27 There’s Cane Corso’s out there.
1:18:31 You get it from the best breeder on the planet, and it might be just the biggest softie.
1:18:32 It might do nothing.
1:18:36 But then true protection training, that’s where people get all, they don’t realize.
1:18:40 You’re talking 60 to $120,000 to get a, quote, “protection dog.”
1:18:43 Now here’s this crazy part.
1:18:45 You can get $120,000 protection dog.
1:18:49 There’s no guarantee it’s going to bite human flesh.
1:18:51 And it’s not going to stop a guy with a gun.
1:18:52 I don’t care.
1:18:53 It’s just not.
1:18:55 Now it will help you raise and train and select a protection dog.
1:18:56 I’m here for you.
1:18:58 But I’m also, I’m just a realist.
1:19:01 I will tell them like, I don’t care how much training you put into this dog.
1:19:03 It’s not going to replace, say, a firearm.
1:19:04 It’s just not going to do it.
1:19:08 But anyways, when it comes to selecting a dog back to your previous question, what dog
1:19:09 should you get?
1:19:13 You got to do your research, and you really got to compare that dog to your lifestyle.
1:19:15 But not just your current lifestyle.
1:19:19 Remember these dogs are going to live 8, 10, 12 years, 14 years.
1:19:20 What does it look like?
1:19:23 Where are you going to be living 10 years from now?
1:19:27 You might get a connecorsa because this is a big bad guard dog, great.
1:19:31 But you live at home with your mom, or you’re planning to go to college, or you’re going
1:19:33 to be more of a renter in a condo.
1:19:38 Well, a lot of places in HOAs will not allow certain breeds like a German Shepherd or Rottweiler,
1:19:39 a Corso.
1:19:41 Pit bulls are banned in a lot of places.
1:19:43 So you got to think about that too.
1:19:49 So really what it comes down to is look at your lifestyle currently and into the future.
1:19:53 Are you the type of family that likes to sit around the house and do barbecues and watch
1:19:54 Netflix?
1:19:58 Do not get a Belgian Malinois that wants to run 20 miles a day.
1:20:02 If you’re the type of family that goes on hiking adventures and you’re always outdoors,
1:20:07 then don’t get the English Mastiff or the Bulldog who can’t barely make it to the mailbox
1:20:10 without needing oxygen therapy.
1:20:13 So look at that, like how much time do you spend outdoors, et cetera.
1:20:16 Also just generally the size, like Great Danes are cool.
1:20:17 They’re cool looking dogs.
1:20:21 Very expensive in the sense of how much do they eat, and you got to rearrange your whole
1:20:22 house to have a Great Dane in there.
1:20:27 They’re just monsters, like a horse in your house, and they only live so long.
1:20:30 All these variables, it’s size and it’s the temperament.
1:20:35 But again, it’s always a gamble when you buy these dogs.
1:20:39 Generally speaking, if you get a golden retriever or a Labrador, it’s probably not going to
1:20:41 make the best, quote, guard dog.
1:20:44 It probably won’t bite your mailman.
1:20:46 And actually there’s a video we’re going to put out.
1:20:48 I’ll give you a little glimpse now.
1:20:52 To contrast two videos to really drive home the point, some type of delivery driver comes
1:20:57 up to a house, knocks on the door to drop a package, and an Italian Mastiff, probably
1:21:04 130 pound Cane Corso, breaks through the glass window and chases this guy down the street.
1:21:07 I’m telling you now, no training required.
1:21:11 It’s the natural protective guardian defensive drive instincts of that dog.
1:21:15 They’re not all like that, but you’re hedging your bet, yeah, maybe 60, 70, 80% that come
1:21:18 out of the womb will do that with no training.
1:21:23 Then we’re going to contrast that video with a mailman comes up to the front porch and
1:21:26 there’s a golden retriever, but he didn’t know it was there.
1:21:30 So he’s going to deliver the package and the golden retriever comes out and rolls on its
1:21:32 back and says, rub my belly.
1:21:34 No training required there either.
1:21:36 But that’s the genetics of the dog, right?
1:21:41 This is all your golden retriever won’t bite the mailman, he’ll probably lick him to death.
1:21:45 And then again, like you had mentioned, be careful what you wish for.
1:21:48 There’s actually a crisis going on right now with the Cane Corso.
1:21:52 It’s one of the most popular breeds on the planet right now.
1:21:56 I actually feel guilty because I think we’re part of that because we show our dogs on the
1:21:59 channel and we show how well trained they are.
1:22:03 And the same thing has happened and is continuing to happen with the Belgian Malinois breed.
1:22:07 They see police dogs, they see police agencies in the military using them and they make this
1:22:10 assumption that these dogs come out of the womb like that.
1:22:14 They come out of the womb knowing how to sit down and heal and no, they’re wild animals.
1:22:17 And in fact, it’s just a lot of dog.
1:22:19 Same with the Corso, same with the Malinois.
1:22:24 Okay, just because you see us doing it doesn’t mean like get the dog, but you where people
1:22:27 mess up is in the training.
1:22:29 They just think the dog’s going to just train itself.
1:22:30 It won’t.
1:22:32 You have to train it one way or another.
1:22:33 You have to.
1:22:35 So you can enjoy the dog.
1:22:40 So the dog doesn’t eat your neighbor by accident, run away from you, get hit by a car and all
1:22:42 these things that can happen and just make your life miserable.
1:22:44 So training is the answer always.
1:22:47 So you mentioned the mailman.
1:22:53 He goes up to the porch and there’s a Doberman, German shipper, Connick Corso or whatever.
1:22:56 And this dog is now starting to chase him.
1:22:58 What do you do if you’re the mailman?
1:23:00 Do you drop to the ground?
1:23:02 Do you keep running?
1:23:06 If you’re in that situation, what’s the best thing to do?
1:23:07 Great question.
1:23:11 And we do a lot of these breakdown videos where we show incidents like these happening.
1:23:17 If you run away, you are showing you’re less dominant and you’re also activating prey drive,
1:23:19 which is only going to make the dog chase you even harder.
1:23:23 However, if you can run away and jump on a car or run away and climb a tree real quick,
1:23:24 go for it.
1:23:26 You’ll see me doing the same thing.
1:23:28 However, sometimes that option is not available to you.
1:23:35 And so the best thing you can do is look big, get big, let that dog know you mean business
1:23:38 and you’re not a prey item, you’re a predator.
1:23:43 And so we just did a video recently where a gentleman had a small dog on a leash and
1:23:50 a big mastiff, it’s got to be 140 plus pounds, comes barreling out of nowhere and goes to
1:23:54 attack his basically like a puppy, like a 20 pound dog.
1:23:57 He’s doing what we call the keep away game.
1:24:01 This dog’s coming and he has his dog at the end of his leash, and he’s just spinning it
1:24:04 around to keep the dog from getting his dog.
1:24:05 I don’t blame you for doing that.
1:24:08 I’d probably do a little bit of the same thing, reactionary, get your dog away from this dog
1:24:09 that’s chasing it.
1:24:15 All he’s doing is it’s exactly, we call it a flirt pole training, we do this to encourage
1:24:18 dogs to bite things that are the end of the leash, the end of the pole.
1:24:21 We make the item like a prey item, like a rabbit.
1:24:26 And so now he’s just incentivized this dog, yeah, you probably want to chase this thing
1:24:27 because it’s running from you.
1:24:30 Now you’re tapping into thousands of years of prey drive.
1:24:34 And so what ends up happening is he plays the keep away game, plays the keep away game.
1:24:35 This is happening in seconds.
1:24:39 After about 10 or 15 seconds, the big dog can’t quite get to the little dog.
1:24:44 He’s now got the little dog up on his chest and he’s still playing the keep away game.
1:24:47 Finally, the mastiff’s had enough says, I’m going to bite something and bites this guy
1:24:49 on the arm.
1:24:50 And that’s a lot of dog.
1:24:53 And this dog brings them straight to the ground and just go into town on his arm.
1:24:57 The only reason this guy got away less harm than he did was somebody was watching this
1:25:01 and came up with a car and actually bumped the dog with the car.
1:25:04 And the dog goes, whoa, but see what happened there?
1:25:07 He kept playing the runaway keep away game.
1:25:08 What did the car do?
1:25:11 It played the, no, I’m going to chase you game.
1:25:13 And so what am I getting at?
1:25:18 If a dog comes at me like that, I’m going to get big, get loud.
1:25:23 If I have a leash on me or a box on anything, you throw it at the dog.
1:25:26 It’s called an English kick, meaning get your foot out.
1:25:31 If you can get that foot out and make contact, that’s a dog that maybe’s never been struck
1:25:32 in the face before.
1:25:33 And it might think twice.
1:25:34 Oh, that didn’t feel good.
1:25:35 Yeah.
1:25:36 Stop chasing me.
1:25:37 I’m not a, I’m not a prey item.
1:25:39 I’m going to kick your butt.
1:25:41 And so you flip the game on them.
1:25:42 Don’t chase me.
1:25:43 I’ll chase you.
1:25:47 And the dog goes, wait a second, I didn’t sign up for this.
1:25:48 Yeah.
1:25:49 Get big, look big.
1:25:52 And then in this case, had I had that little 20 pound dog and this big mastiff’s coming
1:25:53 up to me.
1:25:56 It’s counterintuitive because you want to run away.
1:26:00 You’ve got to confront the threat and get in their face.
1:26:03 And then you are really increasing your odds of coming out of that because look, you’re
1:26:04 not going to outrun the dog.
1:26:05 It’s not going to happen.
1:26:09 Again, if you can climb a tree, great, but that’s the best thing you can do.
1:26:10 Okay.
1:26:11 I got it.
1:26:17 No, I learned more about dogs today than in my entire 69 years of life before.
1:26:19 So thank you very much.
1:26:22 And we’re only skimming the surface.
1:26:26 I hope you enjoyed this episode of remarkable people.
1:26:32 It’s a little bit different from our usual episode where we have professors and authors.
1:26:35 But Garrett Wing was a very interesting guest.
1:26:38 I hope you learned a lot about dogs.
1:26:42 Not just dogs in canine units, but dogs in general.
1:26:44 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
1:26:46 This is remarkable people.
1:26:50 Now let me tell you about the rest of the remarkable people team.
1:26:55 That would be Madison Nizmer, who’s the producer of this remarkable people podcast, as well
1:26:59 as the co-author of our book, Think Remarkable.
1:27:04 I’m honestly getting tired of plugging this book, but I really, really want you to read
1:27:05 it.
1:27:07 It will help you make a difference and be remarkable.
1:27:10 Again, it’s called Think Remarkable.
1:27:16 Now the rest of the team, Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez on sound design, Luis Magana and
1:27:19 Alexis Nishimura, as well as Tessa Nizmer.
1:27:24 We are the remarkable team and we’re going to help you be remarkable.
1:27:29 We’re going to do that by covering a range of topics from astrophysics to behavioral
1:27:35 economics to influence and persuasion to writing to training dogs.
1:27:40 That’s a remarkable range of topics, but this is a remarkable podcast.
1:27:47 Until next time, mahalo and aloha.
1:27:49 This is Remarkable People.