E 173. "Prevention is better than cure" with Pat Stuart

our dt systems baby dog tested and dog tough we've got those soft mouth dummies now listen everybody knows that we need more bumper I'm not talking about one or two or three I'm talking about adding bumpers to your repertoire I like using white or black and white bumpers when I'm training my dogs for marks and even blinds you can get the orange ones I dig it but add a bunch to your repertoire and I'm again I'm not talking about three to six if you're working on t pattern if you're working on blinds and pattern blinds you need a bunch a dozen 18 the soft mouth dummies by dt can't be beat check them out loanduckoutfitters.com dt difference let's go hashtag man's bath kennel it's gunner kennels baby it's a kit we had Addison on the the podcast a phenomenal dude always innovating our industry and one of the things that he brought up is it's a kit it's not just the kennel itself you've got the fan 2.0 for your summer right like it's hot out we got to keep that dog cool in winter time you got the all-weather kit keeps that or body temperature in there so the dog doesn't have to work as hard to stay warm they also have the magnetic door accessory that keeps that body temperature in there and then the straps everybody thinks like oh just go to home depot and get the cheapo straps well listen they develop these straps so that basically you can lift a VW bug with the two straps so if you were to get in a car accident on the way to the duck blind or the training grounds that dog is going to be beyond strapped and stay safe check it out gunner kennels baby sliding the dm's will hook you up all right Pat welcome to the show do me a favor take a second tell everybody a little bit about yourself hey Bob thanks for having me yeah my name is Pat Stewart I'm a dog trainer here in Australia I've been at this professionally only for about eight years that's when I left the army eight years ago pride of that I spent 12 years in a special forces unit here in Australia I left in 2015 and been training dogs ever since my stick in dogs is you know I do a lot of different stuff like most people these days I started when I left the army you know primarily just doing pets because that's sort of what I had access to and that's sort of evolved over time we're now mostly I do work with a lot of police military agencies sort of all around the world really now that COVID's over and I can travel again as well as the majority of the sort of training that I do I end up training more people than I do dogs these days and so I tend to train a lot of dog trainers I have a podcast called the can I'm paradigm that you know I've been very fortunate that that has given me the you know a bit of reach where people find out who I am and evidently have some interest in some of the things I have to say I've been really lucky and sort of you know been mentored by some of the best in the world in in my area for sure and so I've got you know some people think I've got knowledge worth hearing and they they're happy to pay to hear it which makes me very lucky and what I do for the most part now is I I teach so I teach other dog trainers I train dog handlers you know police military type dog handlers I always have a couple of dogs on the go myself I've got my own two dogs I've got a couple of other dogs that I am sort of heavily invested in the training of and I take on interesting cases when they come up as well as I don't have any at the moment I just sold them a couple weeks ago but I usually have a couple of dogs with sort of a business partner that I raise train cell and where she's overseas competing in the Jiu Jitsu World Championships at the moment so we sold those dogs just before she left and when she gets back we'll probably take on a couple more and and start all over again so that's kind of me and a nutshell that's pretty busy if you ask me that's a hell of a nutshell just to work like oh no big deal that's just all me what kind of dogs you have right now man I got two of my own so I've got my own Malinois a dog called Remi and he's six unfortunately he's been riddled with a lot of healthy shoes nothing like specific he just is injured sort of all the time and unfortunately it turns out that might be a bit of a hereditary thing and I have a spring in spaniel and so she's nine and she's kind of an interesting case like she's my gun dog that doesn't do any gun dog stuff I got her I wanted the my sort of first swirah into educating others at a sort of a a larger scale was while I was still in the army my business partner then this guy Sam we decided that the majority of the pet dog stuff that we were doing was fixing problems with pet dogs as you guys would be acutely aware and you know prevention is better than cure and so I had this idea of creating an online series that was you're raising a puppy start to finish and now that's you know that would be one of thousands of them but at you know 10 years ago that was failing you that there wasn't really anything like that and so we got her and filmed you know pretty much every training session over 12 months and made an online tutorial about how to do that so it was just one puppy all the way through got a spring in spaniel because I wanted a high-drive dog because that's what I like but I wanted it not to be a biting dog because that was what I was known for that was really what I did at the time and so I want it just to be more accessible and thought as spring in spaniel will make for some cute photos but we'll also you know have some drive and trainability and enthusiasm for some work so got her she's been incredible little dog and the plan was never to keep her the plan was to just sell her or give her a way actually as sort of a PTSD assistance type dog when we were finished the training that we're going to do but two things happened I kind of fell in love with her along the way and also realized that she'd give you a PTSD before she helped you with it so she got to stay with me love me to her that way she has some pretty obsessive compulsive light chasing and dust sort of stuff which doesn't worry me too much it turns out it's in the bloodline that the guys they imported her father from the UK and he had this you know chased anything that moves sort of obsessive light chasing and in order to import a doctor Australia has to undergo a pretty significant quarantine so like if I were to buy a dog from you guys that quarantine would be in your facility it doesn't have to be you know like a lockdown quarantine because of the paperwork right but if you had to ship me the dog today it's gonna do a hundred and eighty days in a kennel here and so that's what happened to this dog and so when he arrived he had this sort of obsessive compulsive chasing they thought oh he's going to be crazy in the kennel like he's been locked in a kennel for six months but evidently it wasn't that that's who he was because all the progeny turned out the same and so they're great workers it's just that it they can control it and she can control it she can do what she's told when she's told but if you don't tell it to do something that's what she does she kind of never stops she's always chasing something she's always vibrating basically she's always moving around she never stops she's but she is kind of solar powered so when the sun goes down she tends to relax a little bit so she's I love her she's a super trainable really livable dog for a person that can handle that it's it's it's actually shocking to see how obsessed she can get like if you shine a laser at a wall that's her staring at that wall for three hours or more but she'll happily call off from it she'll do any other task that you ask of us she'll do anything else but the moment you tell her that you're done she'll go straight back to staring at that wall and so it's it's a really she's a very intense dog and you know the majority of her siblings are working dogs of a of a sort they that do compete in the gun dog stuff or they go to detection roles so they're really very usable drive but just a headache to live with if you're the kind of person that wants a dog to sit still right little like I would say that like a little bit neurotic but high drive fun to play with fun to do the task and then if you if if you didn't know how to manipulate and manage that it could inspire a lot of control totally yeah it's in a pet home that didn't have any work for her she would be a disaster she would be quite happy she'd be just running around chasing stuff like it would be fine but she would drive the average person crazy yeah absolutely um so I want to take a step back how so you you joined the military how old were you when you joined the military I was 19 it was almost straight out of school I worked on building sites for a year I was an apprentice donation and a couple of my buddies were joining the Army and I was just you know why not I'll go along for the ride and then it turned out I just kind of had this very peculiar career of sort of just taking the path of least resistance so when I went in for my testing day they they were starting this new program I did my psychic an aptitude test and I was starting this new program in Australia that they called the DRS the direct recruiting to special forces at the time it was sort of right at the beginning of our involvement in sort of a rock at the time and later Afghanistan so there was this big push to increase the size of the unit and so they were instead of the old system of having to have been in the military for two years before you can attempt try out special forces they they had this idea that they wanted to get a platoon of guys put them through basic training the school of infantry give them what they call this advanced infantry training of ten weeks which was meant to simulate being in the army for two years because you know a lot of the time in the army is sitting in the breezeway doing nothing so it was none of that it was just this sort of intense period of this is everything that you would do if you're in the army for two years and then straight on to selection and of that I think there were 48 starters and three of us finished and were you bearate at the end and they consider that a big success so it it continued so I was on the pilot program of that and I did 12 years that was nearly bit over 20 years ago actually that I went in but I broke my back I broke my back and like bolt some discs and dislocated my hips and just a variety of you know just the standard SF guy injuries that's just sort of wore me out and I got too much and so I left in 2015 took a medical discharge then got you did you have any experiences in the military with the military working dogs yeah so that's that's how I got into dogs actually you know like I'd had dogs sort of my whole life like everybody else and you know I thought I knew stuff about dog training I really didn't know anything and then I was in I think it was 2008 I was embedded with the Afghan army and my sort of opposite number was an American guy sort of an odd story the more details I had retrospectively found out about this guy and how he came to be there the more bizarre the story gets but he had a working dog and it was my first experience with anything other than detection dogs we you know my unit didn't have the our own detection dogs we had an engineer regiment that gets attached to us so we always had bomb detection guys with us but they were mostly labs no they at that time they were kind of whatever they could get their hands on so there are actually a lot of sort of kelpy staffy crosses and border collies and you know they were just random pound dogs very often which that unit had some interesting sort of six early successes from getting pound dogs which kind of painted them into a bit of a corner you know it became them well why do you need a budget to get good dogs because you had these incredible dogs they had this one dog in particular I think his real name was Bailey but we called him Tiprat who was this like he just looked like this he was I don't know what he was his some kind of Jack Russell Cross thing it is tiny little dog but a work ethic like you've never seen before and an incredibly intelligent dog would work all day but small enough to almost fit into like a pouch and could be carried around and then deploy from that pouch and just incredible so they had these early successes with those dogs which meant later when they tried to get funding for you know to buy better dogs it just wasn't there because they were told no you guys have done so well with these pound dogs for so long but that's another story so yeah it wasn't in 2008 when I saw my I worked with the military working dog and saw my first life by it and that bite so it's still to this day the most horrific of ever seen and evidently that dog and handler probably the best handler team I've ever seen I didn't really know that at the time it was just sort of had this incredible experience and so for me I came back to Australia and started immediately researching dog training like obsessively because I wanted to get into this and and really wanted to bring it into the unit so I was a part of the push you know just a small part within my unit of pushing to bring in dogs so dogs did come into my unit in 2012 and at the time I was the sniper pursuant sergeant so it wasn't it wasn't you know despite my begging and my obsession with it transferring over and becoming a private soldier dog handler wasn't on the cards so I was on the periphery of the unit I ran it for quite a bit um you know I acted as their platoon sergeant but I was never a handler like I never deployed with a dog or anything like that it was fantastic for me because it meant that it was sort of unlimited access to a kennel full of dogs because we brought in a bunch of dogs and we brought in an expert to to teach us how to do all this stuff and not all those dogs worked out which meant they were sitting in the kennel for a long time so they were just practice for me um and so it was great that was really my my intro to it but I think like many things what I realized and and it's one of the reasons I'd sort of agreed to leave the army out of the conditions that I did was that I realized I went from being a soldier who was into dogs to being a dog guy who was also a soldier and at that point I sort of realized well it's probably I should probably really focus my efforts on the dog stuff because um that's where my heart is currently I'm more into that and since I'd been injured and I was no longer deployable it was just sort of the it was the it was the the right step to just kind of move out and that way rather than just sort of disappearing into the Aether. Absolutely can you talk about the mentor that you had there and some of the dogs that were there that taught you things that you still apply today um absolutely yeah you did back then that you're like I wish we didn't do that um I'll yeah so we brought in this guy so um with an SF unit we have like all these support stuff right so like my old unit is 800 people strong but only 300 of those are the actual shooters you know the rest are all the supporting assets so we poached from the military police a guy I called Sam and he became my early business partner and was this a huge mentor to me like I learned you know probably all the foundations on which everything I later learned from other people and allowed me to learn some really cool sort of advanced stuff was only possible because of the things that Sam taught me and not to say he didn't teach me advanced things either um but he got brought in to raise that capability and to we end up calling we call him a DLO dog liaison officer and so his job is to you know primarily the husbandry of the dogs but then also the training of the our initial guys to become dog handlers and there was you know a lot of challenges involved in that as well because you know the the thing with a lot of SF guys is they've never really been bad at anything in their life but nothing in their selection that we had prior to that it had anything to do with dogs and so there was some difficulties along the way you know guys who were learning that they weren't as good as they thought they were going to be at these sort of things it wasn't intuitive to them they had to you know it's a steep learning curve that kind of stuff um and we did a lot of stupid things you know like expected more of dogs than was uh then they were capable of there and and thought that they should learn faster and really relied on genetics more than I would have a dream of relying on now like so you know I you know I know genetics is super important and and and it's a infallible piece you can't put in what mother nature didn't there's all those things right but we just sort of oh if the dog doesn't do it it can't do it it wasn't a case of will well actually you know and I firmly believe these days there's probably three bandwidths of dogs there's the dogs that are gonna be able to do it and you can't stop them in spite of your bad training there's the dogs who are never gonna be able to do it and and you could put them in the hands of the best trainer in the world and then it's not gonna pan out but that's probably 20% at the top and 20% at the bottom the remainder in the middle there it's it's it's gonna go either way and it's gonna take training and it's gonna be a careful guided approach along the way and so that's really what I learned back then and you know certainly made plenty of mistakes and you know cause a lot of issues in plenty of dogs and also gave up on dogs earlier than I certainly would of now and just said well the dogs not capable of it rather than you know taking a step back and going the very slow progression along the way but for me it was I mean incredibly fortunate to have come into the dogs in the way that I did when I first started researching dogs myself after my first experience with a military working dog I kind of landed as somewhat of a force-free trainer because I didn't have I had my own dog and he was my wife's but he was like a 15-year-old border collier right so there was no there's a training of this dog he could barely walk he was blind so that all my my intro to training was purely theoretical there just wasn't any practical and I still sort of believe this a fair bit that if you've got one group of people telling you that you can train a dog to a really high standard without any need for compulsion or anything like that then you're another group of people saying no you do need those things but you have no evidence of either you're just reading books because this is you know this is 2008 this is pre the internet being what it is now and the access to information being what it is now I still feel pretty strongly that if you go no I'm going to use a bunch compulsion even though I've been told I don't need to it's like that's probably not the ideal path so I'm kind of happy how I landed and what that meant was that I got really good in the use of positive reinforcement and I embedded myself completely within that community I was I was one of the you know I was on the path man I was a true believer of that and we did a podcast ended up meeting in Dunbar many years ago and and I told him I was like mate you the earliest imprinting into my my dog knowledge and you know so much of the foundation of what I know came from from him but I kind of outgrew that I realized you know once I got a dog I realized there was limitations to that and and it what I had with my very first dog was an extremely dangerous dog who could do a bunch of cool tricks so long as the conditions were correct but if the conditions weren't correct then he couldn't do them and I didn't really have a way of stopping him you know like I I had to manage him it was all management and I remember one day we kind of became those people that you know in order to come over to my because his dog was super dangerous but like I would struggle even now to manage a dog like the it's let alone the skills that I had back then and we became those people were dangerous he he was an adult when I got him and I got hoodwink to be honest like you know I didn't know enough and I I knew just enough to say the right words to for people to know they could pull the wool over my eyes and sell me a very expensive crappy dog and so he was genetically he was genetically not great he was probably he was a fearful dog but he had a lot of forward intent that that becomes a really dangerous combination so he was he was a fear byter but a very powerful fear byter and a very forward aggressive fear byter and I think that his imprinting his early imprinting his raising definitely they taught him to solve problems with his teeth and but he saw too way too many things as a problem you know like an unreasonable things and so I'll never forget sitting we were those people that you couldn't come over you know the dog had to go into the crate it was his whole deal you have to call me 10 minutes earlier and I have to you know put the dog in the crate in the bedroom with the blanket over the top of it and we'll seal him in there and you have to whisper in my house all that shit and there before too long you know he figures it out people ring before they come so classical conditioning kicks in he understands when the phone rings and you know they're not angry at people for turning up at my house how do you knock on my door and all this kind of stuff and then one night my phone rang and the dog goes ballistic and I remember looking at my wife and saying you know I think this positive only thing might not be legit and shit I'm about to lose my shit yeah and so she she then goes oh thank god like I she's just been going along for the ride with me the whole time so then I expand my horizons that's when I met Sam and sort of you know really started changing what I what I did and became what I would later sort of understand to be a like a what what my mentor but would call like a pope on a trainer so I taught everything with positive reinforcement I was really good at it and I could teach some really cool stuff but then you know I wasn't afraid to give a dog a correction I could stop behaviors no I could punish things but it took me many more years to truly understand negative reinforcement as well and to integrate that correctly I had some sort of pretty ordinary introduction to it and and so I I certainly acknowledge like I see that works I get it I but that's just doesn't feel like something I want to do which part well I watch this when I decided if it's okay I this is the part I'd really like to yeah let's get into some nitty gritty on this stuff this is I feel like this is the stuff that people get wrong or misinterpret or don't understand the like the exact intention the timing yeah scaling it in fraction like all that stuff how how you're giving a correction what you mean by correction scalability of that correction so I am going to go backwards because I think in our industry very few people know and you said popo knee I know knee popo is it the same thing or are you that's the that's the opposite yeah so for me you know I started like I hope those planes aren't too loud for you guys I'm in this brand new facility you can't know it's good good that's good okay so yeah I started you know as positive as could be and and really was convinced that that's how I would be out of a train of dog and for sure I could train a dog to do a bunch of cool stuff that first dog I had to be honest probably had snappier obedience then my current dog that I compete in four different sports with but just because I cared more I was more into it and I was teaching I was really into it but what I found was I could teach him to do all the things I wanted him to do so long as this situation was correct and that meant nobody else around or nobody in a proximity that he or nobody that he felt any pressure from but the moment that was there he just wanted to he'd light up and I'd lose him at them and then the so once I was like okay well I can stop all that right like I and I I can use punishment or what I thought was punishment at the time I was able to stop it and so my that's where we call like a popo knee train up so I can I can use a lot of positive reinforcement and and I can make things happen really well and I can stop things from happening I can use punishment I can stop behaviors but what I didn't have then was that when the pressure was on him when he perceived a threat from anyone he not only he didn't attack them he wasn't trying to bite them anymore because I'd stop that I'd put a cap on it but I couldn't get him to do all the things that I had him doing motivationally and that he was in this kind of no man's land this kind of limbo of I I'm avoiding the punishment that would calm me if I display his behavior I know not to display it but he's drives a motivation to do what I was asking of him would not correct like he you know and I'm training with food and toys and all that kind of stuff but he's perceiving a threat and it you know and it's not a threat but it certainly was perceived by him and and thinking back on that you know is the long time ago now I would handle that differently there would be different training I do a lot of different things but at the time I know okay I can stop this dog from being dangerous and I in the under the right conditions he can do cool stuff but I don't have a way to compel him to do that cool stuff and so it really you know from a work standpoint he was useless because he I mean he would be great if you just needed a static card dog like so I want to make sure no one went into a house but other than that he couldn't really do the work and so I ended up realizing that the piece that was missing was negative reinforcement it was that I had positive reinforcement down and I had what I thought was punishment and I later learned that sometimes a lot of the the punishment that I was doing ended up being a form of negative reinforcement that it took me many years to fully understand that that sometimes I was just compelling and incompatible behavior rather than actually stopping the the problem behavior that I had and so it came to me you know I realized there's something missing here and and that's when I started expanding to to look into negative reinforcement and how to use it now my imprinting on that wasn't great and so that's why I sort of put it back on the shelf for a little while and it was when I thought about I thought well you know in my research that I was doing who uses most negative reinforcement and effectively and well and and in a way that I you know I want to see results so it was gun dogs stuff actually and so I bought a DVD um and I won't say the name of the guy but it it was uh how to teach force fetch and it was usually an e-collar not for a couple of different things and it was a toe hitch for the force fetch and it was a e-collar to go into this kennel and I watched it and I thought to myself you know I can see that this works like I see how I see the mechanism behind all of this but what I also saw was an off tap high drive Labrador with a recovery you know that I haven't seen in many other dogs since on a table put the force fetch on via the toe hitch and you know a you know a pretty huge amount of pressure on this dog and the behavior happens really quick and the dog recover really quick and while I didn't really have an issue with what I was seeing I certainly didn't have that kind of dog I thought if I do this to my dog he's gonna bite me for sure oh hell yeah yeah and as well I just thought I don't you know like at the end of the day I don't want to do that like it just didn't feel like the way to go for me in the at the time and then as well the way that the guy was using the e-collar there wasn't we in my opinion enough of a learning phase it was straight to really compulsive and sort of over the top of the e-collar so well I could totally acknowledge that it worked I just sort of thought it definitely worked on that type of dog and it just didn't feel like something I wanted to be involved in and so once again negative reinforcement for me just kind of got put on the shelf and then it wasn't until I saw this video of Bart Bellon and I don't know if you've seen I know if you've listened as I've seen it but it's a video of Barton he's dog thought and the video I later found out is it's just him training they was setting up to film a soccer game on the film that on the field that he was training on and they filmed it and he got the video so what's fascinating about is it's not like some big promo he's not doing that to show anything he's actually training his dog and there's parts in that you know if that video's got a million views on youtube I'm a hundred thousand of them right and there's parts in that where he tells thought to do things thought doesn't do it and he gets the correction he gets a steam with the e-collar and then the dog does it as happily and as powerfully as if he had chosen to do it the first time and that was when I was like oh there's more to this I've just looked in the wrong spot I've seen the wrong version of this I've not seen it in the right light and not been able to take the template of what I've seen someone else doing in their discipline and apply it to mine I haven't I've missed the step so that's when I got in touch with Bart he came out to Australia to do a seminar for us we became friends and you know became a huge mentor to me and I went through silver and goal schools and that's where I learned knee popo and so that popo nays he's terminology and I think most balanced trainers certainly in the pet dog world and and very often in the working dog space as well are what he refers to as he's popo net trainers which means that they teach really well with positive reinforcement because they're good at it and and why not if he if you can why not it's really effective and especially when you face say like in a sport like iGP where the obedience is uncontested it's just you on the field doing the things that you do the only you know external motivators are that maybe your dog really likes to jump and there's jumps on the field and you know like but in the obedience portion people can get away with and many people do teach that pretty close to force free without ever thinking of themselves as force free trainers they just if the motivation of the dog is correct they have no cause to use any compulsion of any type it's not until the bite work where they start doing that and in the bite work the dog starts to say like hey I'd rather do something else than what you're asking of me and it's at that point that they start applying pressure and that pressure because there'd been no learning phase of that pressure will certainly work to stop the dog the dog will use that as a stopping tool but it's seldom is that pressure going to start their behaviors which you've asked the dog to do and it hasn't complied with if there hasn't been a learning phase of that pressure so the the crux of the system that I you know traveled the world teaching for a long time and and and really put a lot of work into understanding really really well myself is that neopropos system which is it's it's everything old is new again it's just a reimagining of the use of negative reinforcement in a way that you do it and you have to use it even when the things are going well so that there's a learning phase and the dog understands okay I'm turning off that pressure which at the moment I'm not super concerned about I'm not even it's not even necessarily super motivating my real motivation is the positive reinforcement that will come of doing the work all the work itself but I understand that in doing that I'm turning off pressure that I'm aware of and they're aware of that so that later when it doesn't go right that pressure can start that behavior and the dog knows what to do with that pressure so I'm uh I'm so at first off thank you that was freaking badass um I'm gonna slow it down just a hair to put it into duck dog terms gun dog terms because as you're saying my wheels are going I know exactly what he's talking about I'm envisioning everything that I do every day I just don't use and I I hit around about it but it's like I'm not a scientist I don't use fancy words so I just say it like it is and I think if we can break it down in maybe some of the actual behaviors that we're asking of them and using it as a motivator it also could be a stopping tool it also could be a starting tool just like you described but like break it down in the come command or we say here you know or going to a dog bed for kennel you know which we do all the time for getting in ground blinds and dog stands and just like how can we break it down for for the the guy or gal over here this listening like they probably don't even know what nipopo stands for so maybe like yeah yeah yeah sure so nipopo stands for the negative positive positive and and the truth is Bart will even tell you that it's not he doesn't own the system he owns the word it's a trademark word that's just really means that you've been trained by him directly but the the system is using negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement that's it right because I think so much these days we sort of you put ourselves into one quadrant or we just say like no I'm using this and you did right like we're not scientists but we kind of have to at least be able to use those terms even though as dog trainers I think we we sometimes butcher it a bit but we have to have a language that is usable by us yeah and I think you know um truly operant conditioning is a retrospective look right because it affects what happens next not what's happening now and so when we put pressure on a dog or you know my logo is this it looks like an atom right and and because not that I know anything about quantum physics but I feel like I feel like operant conditioning in quantum physics are a little bit the same in that the motivators of a dog are in a superposition they're everywhere and nowhere at once and when you observe it that's where they are but they're constantly in play all the time and so you might watch me train a dog using a clicker and food and we could say yep that's a purely positive session but the reason my dog doesn't bite the ball that's on the ground the whole throw it throughout the session is because I punished him for doing that last session and so that punishment is in effect even though you're only watching me use positive reinforcement so I think sort of understanding that is our jumping off point but Nepo Pope being negative positive positive is that we use negative reinforcement the first positive is the release of the pressure and then the second positive is the actual application of positive reinforcement and that's that's sort of buts take on it and as I say he he doesn't claim to have invented doing that he just is exceptional at it and he's named it but he even you know the the Nepo Pope logo is the dancing bear and that's the the story behind that is that you know Russian gypsies have been using Nepo Pope for 300 years to teach bears to dance right to teach bears tricks so it's not like it's a new thing the idea for us and maybe like the best example to talk to you and your audience about is we have a foundation exercise within that system called the unforced force fetch so it's a reimagining of the force fetch the idea of the unforced force fetch is that you can start it with a eight week old puppy so we're pretty into free shaping and the idea being that we put the dog on the table or you know however we're going to teach it at the back tie at the minimum whatever and the whole point of that is just to close the aquarium down so that the the dog is sort of stuck within a space and it quickly narrows his focus on to something because there's nothing else around we hold a pipe in front of the dog and the dog will look at it and we'll click and give it food and eventually it'll sniff it and we'll click and give it food and eventually that sniffing will lead to licking and biting and by that within a few weeks in a few sessions we've got a very young dog who's totally motivationally grabbing that pipe and holding it and we've taught the what we call at that point the unforced fetch where it's just the dog taking it as a trick it's just a monkey drill the dog enjoys grabbing it the holding the thing has no value beyond the the food that will come of it and we're using pointy of your dogs most of the time although this applies to any kind of dog but I usually when I'm teaching that I use a pipe or and as quickly as I can I get to like a copper pipe because I want it to be that it has no value of its own I don't want it to be soft I don't want it to be a bumper I don't want it to be something that the dog actually wants in its mouth because I don't want that to be the motivator I want it to be that the dog is doing it to earn the positive reinforcement and knows that this is a job that it's doing in order to earn that but then before too long what happens when you got that dog on the back tie is that as you hold out that pipe the dog is going to start pulling into its collar because it wants it it wants to start take that work and in that moment the dog is telling you this is the timing whereas if I was going to put pressure if you were going to put pressure on me this would be the time to do it and so as the dog is pulling into its back tie I go a few sessions I go a few reps where the dog is pulling itself right into it and they give him the pipe I let him take it I give my command prior he takes it and of course what does the dog do since back a little bit and relieves that pressure himself the moment the behavior is happening I leave him in that behavior for at least a second let him sit there and then I click in the dog drops the pipe and I give him the food or whatever my reinforcer is at that moment so in that instance the dog is telling me this is the time this is negative reinforcement goes on here positive that the I turn it off when the behavior is happening and then positive reinforcement ends the behavior and tells me that I did a good job so in teaching that exercise now when the dog is pulling into its own flat collar I apply a bit of pressure now that might be slip lead via the collar that I'm now pulling forward on the dog even though he's kind of pulling himself backwards yeah drawing forward or it might be that I just pair the electrics to the the pressure that he's doing however I'm going to do it from there what I'm doing is I'm now layering pressure over the top of a behavior that the dog already knows and the idea is that that pressure is not actually what motivates the dog the dog already has the motivation to complete the behavior and his real motivation is the positive reinforcement that will come or the work itself if we're that way inclined if that's what the dog is doing but he notices that that pressure that started also turns off when he completes the behavior and he make that association so I don't want that pressure to be overly compulsive he knows I can turn that off by doing the behavior but I want to do that behavior anyway and so that programming within the dog classical conditioning kicks in the mindset gets attached to that level of pressure being really motivational and powerful and happy so that Luanda of course the day comes where the dog goes I don't want the positive reinforcement that is to me in this moment not a reinforcer or I know what I can be paid with and you know in this instance under these circumstances in the past that's been food and I don't want the food right now I'm either not hungry I'm motivated elsewhere whatever it is and in that instance then I can turn on that pressure that the dog knows and say to him but now you have to right like because you know how to turn this off you've learned the process by doing it and the idea being if the learning phase has been correct and the dog will in fact take the pipe or you know do the work that you prescribed knowing how to turn off that pressure and the idea being that it will do so motivationally it'll do so with the same mindset the same intent as though it had chosen to do it happily the first time so that's the system and and what we do is you know that that's what Bart refers to as new Nepopo old Nepopo is still just like using the negative reinforcement as the learning phase so it's not to say that we always will your teach with positive reinforcement reinforcement first we might but if you've got an adult dog and the dog's ready to go then why not use negative reinforcement exactly as you would normally and use it to compel the behavior but then also that click and reinforce afterwards when Kevin and I go into the duck blind together you know that we're packing the fizz and the baby man when I've got to pull up on a old drake malard I want to make sure that if my aim is true that that duck goes down and I am slinging the bismuth at him baby check him out Kent cartridge bismuth at it this duck season from the duck blind to the holding blind baby it's pureena our young dogs are eating the puppy blend large breed puppy formula should be fed to puppies from eight weeks when you get that little bundle of joy home that little cuddly wuddly buddy all the way to about a year old we want that dog to develop at a good consistent rate we don't want them grow too fast too soon and so that puppy formula is going to help accomplish that goal to give them all the nutrients to develop their bones their joints their ligaments everything right feed that puppy formula till 12 months old and then flippity floppy to the 30 20 pro plan yes can you describe what you mean by negative reinforcement in a wide spectrum because I think just the fricking n-word negative makes everybody go they're beating the crap out of this dog yeah sure yeah yes negative reinforcement yeah you do it you do it well negative reinforcement to me is any anything any form of pressure that the dog actually wants to stop and I think one thing that's certainly society these days we you're dead right we do think of negative reinforcement is this horrible thing and I perpetuated that because my early imprinting of it was like oh that's you know I don't like that it's that's that's that's that's no good but the truth is negative reinforcement it it only needs to be annoying and it need only be something that the dog wants to stop it doesn't have to be extremely aversive now now aversives a funny word we can get into the weeds on that and of course in order for negative reinforcement to be what it is it needs to be aversive of a kind the dog needs to think I want that to stop right sure but there could be reasons why the dog wants that to stop and it could be first of all that it's a it's annoying it could be all the way up to painful but what people don't acknowledge is also that pressure could be a signal of a guaranteed outcome of positive reinforcement so that's one of the things that we try and convey to our learners the dog is that this pressure when it's applied to you yes it could be annoying it could range from very low-level discomfort to very high level of discomfort and whichever one is appropriate is what it will be but in turning that off via doing the work that is asked and that is likely known at this point then that is a guarantee in our learning phase of a high-value rent positive reinforcement afterwards and that that has to be you know in order to create that set of conditions that has to be the truth for a very long time then later when we go to a variable schedule of reinforcement we're variable with the negative reinforcement and we're also variable with the positive reinforcement but what we try and do in our learning phase certainly is have the dog understand that when I am compelled to do something not only is it in my interest to do it because I'll stop the compulsion now again that compulsion could be very annoying all the way to painful but in doing so I'll bring something awesome for myself and that's what I want my real motivator to be I really want I really want to think that I want my dog in terms of you know in terms of motivation I want my dog to think that it is running towards something but it knows also that it has something chasing it and it's faster than what's chasing it so it's running towards what it wants and it can it can totally escape the thing that's chasing it and never experience it but if it does decide to stop that thing that's chasing it will catch it and that all that all that thing that's going to do that the catch is it is going to push it faster towards the thing that it was chasing in the first place so that's how I want my motivations to lie so that's my goal as well I think the way you just put it is one of the coolest ways I've heard described like it is compulsionary it is motivating it shouldn't be negative or have a stigma around it if it's done properly and you have a dog that gives a crap some dogs have poor work ethic and no matter how many treats how many hot dogs how many bumpers you throw them how many tennis balls they have poor work ethic and it's going to look dumpy no matter what yeah they're not into it they're not into it I get it those are the outliers but if you have a good dog that enjoys you and it enjoys the the tasks at hand and you add this type of training into it sometimes they may be confused as they're learning but when you see these light bulbs move on or come on all of a sudden it's like they go faster they were harder they're having more fun and they become more confident and so all the to me all the people who are positive only I get it it sounds good but if you could see the majority of dogs that go through a program like this or similar to what how we do it to the best of our ability there's mistakes that happen there's too much pressure at the wrong time and the wrong dog and just it takes a week or two to get them out of that funk like I get it there are outliers but if it's done right and it's a good dog they blossom and they become more confident and in compulsion also sort of has that negative stigma like oh you're making them do it no no they learned the game they learned how to work harder and try harder and be better and I think it makes them as they grow even bigger into like how what we play it makes things kind of easy to teach like nope that's not cool this is how you do it oh that's all you wanted boom do it do it yeah so you're you're gonna try and do it again nope do it do it do it and they're like you just see it grow yeah we um it actually took me longer than I care to admit to really understand how negative reinforcement could be a game and and you know I think in America you guys call it hot hands like we call it slaps maybe the same and that's the game that we're playing with the dog is where I I have a video I spoke at the ICP conference last year and I showed this video because I spoke on this very topic and I showed this video of me teaching my son who I think was about five at the time how to play slaps and I was hitting him as hard as I could right like hitting him as properly hard in the hand as I could probably not okay in America but you see he's not demotivated by it at all because it's in the context of this game and all it does is motivate him more to want to do it and the way that I was hitting him like of course I'm hitting him like I'm slapping him in the hands right like it's not like it's a horrendous thing but you put in a straighter just so much tougher than we are you guys are just so much cooler and that short distance but what you see is that every time you got hit all it did was motivate him to be faster and he started paying attention to the signals and you see that the in the video there's three there's only three reps and I cheat a little bit I say do him are you ready and then I slap him right and he goes he misses completely I get's he gets whacked right and I say you ready and then he nearly gets away from here and I say you ready and I slap it I miss him and he looks at me and he says I knew you were going to do that because you said are you ready and that's what predicts when you're about to slap me and I look straight at the camera like I can't believe I caught that on film right because that's exactly the idea of negative reinforcement is this when we're naming a behavior put a name in front of it you can name it from the first rep when using negative reinforcement because of the behavior is going to happen and then the the you put on the pressure and if you do it motivationally and in the right way and with the right ethos in a way where the dog understands okay this is a game like I'm not getting cranked through what I'm doing here but this is my goal is to avoid this then the dog learns to escape and avoid that pressure and in doing so you can start to play what I refer to as this spicy game of negative reinforcement where it becomes hugely fun for the dog and we see dogs that are trained with nothing but positive reinforcement can for sure have really flashy powerful behaviors but when you add a little bit of spice and some consequences to the game like some consequences of not being fast enough or to getting it wrong or any of those kind of things then that's where you really see the turbo get attached to that not just the compliance but the enthusiasm and the enjoyment from the dog and it took me a really long time to understand that and one of the things that you know I love doing is that there's an instance where I'm going to tell the dog like in my game you know I'm going to tell the dog to heal the dogs in the down in front of me and he's got his prong collar on and he's on leash now in order to effectively use that prong collar I'm going to have to telegraph a whole bunch of body language signals because I have to move my arm I have to do all these things and we know there's plenty of science that tells us how in tune dogs are and that they're you know they come pre-programmed to understand human body language so he's going to read those changes of behavior and if I go to hit him with the prong giving that tap as well I give him the the heal signal there's a very good chance he's going to read all of that he's going to hear the command and I'm not going to be able to do it and in that instance the dog is the winner and I have to celebrate with the dog in such a way where he's positive reinforcement that comes after having done the behavior he's acknowledging him as being the winner of that game of negative reinforcement but then on the instances where I do manage to get it I do manage just to be able to get a slight ding on the prong before he's able to react I ignore he still gets a positive reinforcement but in a way where he has to acknowledge that I won that round right now we celebrate together because we're still doing it together we're having a good time he still gets the ball the food the toy whatever it is he's going to get but there's a difference to him about whether he won or whether he lost and I I'm fully aware that that can be a tricky thing for some people to conceptualize if you've never done it or if you've never seen someone do it because it these days people tend not to play rough anymore you know like people don't play those games where there's like those spicy consequences and and consequences where I think what's also important to stipulate and this is very important to me when I'm training dogs is the dog always feels safe I never want the dog to think like geez I mean like this is dangerous for me and that like this could go wrong in a way where I'm unsafe I want the dog to know he's safe we're playing a game whereby I'm teaching him a bunch of cool drinks this is not this is not like some life or death shit for the dog right we're just going through the motions but it's a fun game and it's game with consequences because a game that you can only win or have no result is terrible no one likes that game you play that game for a very short period of time before you get bored of a game where you can only win or no result but with a game that you can lose then you're into that right now there's there now there's an element of risk but it's a safe risk right a level of like you know safe emergency where it's it's okay if you lose it's not the end of the world but you lost and you want to you've motivated to win again and try harder next time absolutely yeah I think one of the things that I struggle with I think anyone that has a kennel full of dogs that has to go you know there's I don't know I was up at five o'clock this morning training by quarter to six and I got done at eight o'clock this night tonight so I don't know how many hours that was but you're going down the dog trainer hours yeah yeah you're going bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang what are we doing next bang bang bang and you have to keep that level of mental acuity level headedness if some dog pisses you off A you can't lose your patience on that dog and you definitely can't let it carry on to the next dog yeah totally but you know and then I find the mundane obedience collar conditioning force fetch you know some of the drill work stuff that we do I have to go here we go put on some good music that you're like a little light heart like maybe a little Dave Matthews you know like a little something that just kind of like you just can't help but have a smile on your face and you and that dog go into it it's not always pretty it's not always perfect but if you have that attitude it helps get you through it and get them through it so that you can do exactly what you beautifully and eloquently discussed of it's a game force fetched to me it's just a game yes I will caveat that I think and I'm going to talk to my dog gun dog people because I think there's a big problem is people mistake the dog in joint or the dogs drive to have something in their mouth because they're a retriever for it understanding the compulsion behind it do you know what I mean yeah yeah so like some dogs are like yes but can you walk that back a little bit and yeah so people will send me videos and I'll critique their force fetch program via patreon type of thing so they'll send me this thing and I'm like I think that dog is just doing it because it just wants it which is good and fine but then until it doesn't want it until it doesn't want it and then when you need to up the ante it crumbles because it truly actually didn't put the two and two together yeah so you have to marry the two together at some point and let me help you through that basically so that's like we're getting in the weeds I didn't mean to but the the point I'm trying to make is when I'm in those moments as a dog trainer where if I'm a one dog person and I get home from work it's kind of easy to be like hell yeah this is our 20 minutes of fun together let's go on a hike let's go work together let's go build that relationship or you are go to home to home to home and then you're done for the night and you just deal with three dogs at night you know you can kind of stay spicy like you said you can kind of stay like in engaged but I do find that that would be something that I look internally as a dog trainer say keep that every dog that I pull out each time each rep throughout the day I need to keep that in my head yeah my attitude my attitude can't influence them yeah for sure that's one of the things I learned really early on when I was working with the first guy that taught me Sam had a shitty day at work I kind of remember what it was it was just something and we went to go train afterwards and I got as soon as I got to his house it was like no we're not training and and I was like what do you mean and he's like we're gonna sit down we're gonna have a beer we're gonna like talk we can hang out but we're not getting any dogs out because you're not you you shouldn't be around any dogs today and I was like what do you mean like I was really taken back and he's like you're angry and we don't train like that and and I don't expect you just to be able to stop being angry because like whatever it happened you're reasonable that you should be you know like I was at yeah I'm in the army I'm angry half the time that's life but he's like no we're not training because you this is not the appropriate time to train because things will go wrong and you will not deal with it appropriately and that was I think a really powerful lesson that I I'm very grateful to have learned really early on yeah anything else like that that's a great tidbit anything else like that like through the years or that you that you've picked up on that she's like nuances um I think one of the the important things that I try to pass on to as many people as possible as well as to I usually try and give the dog a benefit of the doubt and and I think uh when the motivation is correct like you know everything that I do relies a lot on building a lot of motivation uh I spend as much time as I need to like actually training a dog for me I find super easy like to train a dog to do the things that I need it to do the end of the day whether it's a pet or it's a working dog if it's genetically suitable for the task that we put it in like of course you get people who turn up with their you know they're off-tap dog that they want to live calmly in the house that there's the outlier problems but for the most part when we've done a good job of selection or even a reasonable job of selection training a dog to do the tasks that we need it to do is super easy in my world I trained dogs to do obedience those love that the you know pointing your dogs they're obsessed with doing that they love it yeah I trained dogs to bite people I don't train them to bite people they I train to let go that's that's really what I know how to bite people and I trained dogs to track dogs know how to track they just I teach them what to track right right so the actual training of the things that we need a dog to do I find exceptionally easy it's the preparing of the dog to to to be ready to do the training so it's building the motivation it's establishing some level of communication around that motivation and then it's the actual coaching of teaching the dog to do it that's super easy so for me if I have all the motivation in place and I shouldn't be training a dog to do something until I've established that motivation when it doesn't go right I usually am like you know there's got to be a reason for this because you love doing this you know that we're playing the game of of negative reinforcement along the way you you you're you know I'm gonna pay you well I have a six-year track record of doing that we do I'm gonna do it things just didn't suddenly change if the dogs not doing it I usually at that point look and go hey something's not right here right like something if I find myself on the buttons too much or using to a you're more pressure than I normally would usually that's when I'll dial things back and go I need to go back to the drawing board or maybe just stop all together because something is not coming together quite right here and and every time I've done that that there was exactly that a dog's got an injury that you know through drive is masking and so you can't even you can't tell but the moment you end the session and he's out of drive he starts limping you know things like that or or that I feel like you know sometimes I have off days and of course dogs have off days as well and and sometimes you got to work through those and it depends on the purpose of the dog I am blessed with you know I work across a huge spectrum I work still every now and again with pet dog owners but most of the people I work with a sport dog people and at the end of the day you just plan a game with your dog but I also work with special forces military working dog handlers and if their dogs don't do their job they get killed and so there's a spectrum of like okay well does it matter and I think being appropriate across that and and sort of understanding does it matter if the dog does these things like what are the what are what are the behaviors I need of my dog that are non-negotiable and for the average pet dog owner for me that's a recall and and a downed distance like that to me I think that you can get a dog through any tricky situation if it will stay next to when you want it to and stay where it is when you need it to like and and so long as my dog can do that everything else is fun and gravy after that and then in the working dog space you know like sometimes you got to say to these dogs like well this is it like you are you don't know it you're in the army man you think that like everyone just dresses the same around here but you're in the army and some of these things that we need of you are non-negotiable things when I tell you to search you have to search and so that the training plan for those dogs is different and the type of dog is different of course so you will expect that those dogs have less off days than the average pet you know because if they are type of dog that is you know more off days is just a non-dog trainer speaker I think for saying inconsistent in drives right and so he was not going to be in that role if he's inconsistent in drives we have to look at that and say like should you ever be here yeah should you even be here like how did you get here in the start in the first place but should you be here anymore if we can't rely on this and if I find myself having to compel a dog to do the things that it should be wanting to do all the time then first of all I don't think that that's fair on the dog but also it's probably dangerous to keep that dog in the service and so yeah I think that the the cornerstone of dog training to me is motivation when the motivation is there you just don't really come across that many problems see it it's almost all of the problems I see are issues of motivation now the motivation might there might be plenty of it but it might be pointed in the wrong direction um but yeah I think that's that's if like that's that's the the foundation of it all to me yeah I've got one last question for you and I ask every single person I've had on that has your background in terms of bite dogs if my dog screws up the worst that happens is it leaves my side and go gets a duck if your dog screws up the worst that happens is it tears into someone right so the what the words that get thrown around so frequently is drive capping and and managing the thing that they want the most the bite the retrieve the live duck that's flying through the sky with the sun beating on it and then it gets shot and and they have to contain everything inside of them that mother nature has given them to sit still and they have to be composed and wait and be careful because there are loaded guns and we're shooting and dot at a dot or you fail a hunt test which isn't the end of the world you guys someone can really get her and so what I've accumulated over the years of asking this question of people and then and I want to hear your answer so I don't want to dilute it but I just think the amount of obedience the amount of control in all the environments is really what plays a factor in it but I would love to hear your thought drive capping and how to like manage a super drivey dog no matter what yeah so I think a lot of the people in my space eat their dogs more highly strong than is helpful and so I think that yeah and I think drive capping you know of course when it's done right it's it that's the right thing to do but I see a lot of people winding dogs up in the name of drive capping and to sort of expand a little bit on you know our conversation on negative reinforcement and punishment is that I think one of the things that happens in in the biting dog space quite a bit and I dare you know I haven't got a lot to do with gun dogs but I dare say you probably hit the same issues is it really often when people are telling their dog not to do something they're actually really powerfully telling their dog to do something else and so one of the things that we see quite a bit is you know around the terms of say decoy neutrality for us right so like that the game I play as PSA it's probably the the the most hectic of the bite sports whereby during the obedience there's there's decoys harassing you so even when you know during your portion where there is zero chance of biting you you're going to have decoys around there's you so you're always dealing in that conflict and so this idea of like what we call decoy neutrality is really important now of course neutrality is a fallacy it doesn't really exist you get neutral to stimulus one time right tolerance yeah and so what I see quite a bit is dogs that have a really strong draw to want to buy and what's stopping them doing that is the negative reinforcement that keeps them in the behavior that they're in now the problem with doing that is that negative reinforcement can be escaped and then it can be avoided and so what we see quite a bit is that you imagine my dog is in the heel and I have some decoy rattling you stick walk past me what we see quite a bit is you know in the learning phase the dog will of course he'll take a cheeky bite right like he'll be dirty he'll he'll he'll grab that decoy he'll bite and the pressure that comes in that moment is out of that bite and back into the heel position and with these kind of dogs the you're almost and certainly I've seen this especially with a couple of you know I can name a few military working dogs that basically ran out of levels on the e-colour and ran out of there isn't there isn't a level of compulsion that can stop them anymore because they see everything as a going signal especially a lot of the you know it's a big can of worms don't like to talk about but a lot of the the the good melon wire big chunk people like a lot of the Dutch melon wires are very like my own he doesn't look too bad but his father it looks like an American staffie you can tell pretty quick like he and he's black so he just looks like a miscellaneous black dog but you can see it in him and there's that there's that game that's why that was bred in you know and it's that when I want something pain isn't going to stop me getting it and so what happens very often with some of the biting dogs is that they start to take risks because they start to play that spicy game of negative reinforcement in a way that is dangerous for them and dangerous for the handler and dangerous for the person around them whereby if the dog thinks I'll be able like I feel so drawn to biting the decoy that I'll just get a cheeky bite it'll feel good for half a second and then I'll be compelled I'll I'll feel that pressure and I'll let go and I'll jump back into that hill position and I'll be able to stop that pressure by doing that that I think is one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of people make and I think that that especially is the point where I really strongly want to distinguish between punishment and negative reinforcement and I want to show the dog like hey you can't do that and and the truth is the amount of pressure that I would use to punish a dog will actually be much less physically it will be way less than I would use negative reinforcement but what I'm not going to allow the dog to do is cut back into that hill position I'm not going to allow that dog to just out and everything is forgiven because you're into the hill position I'm going to have to create some sort of punishment event and likely that's going to take a hefty dose of negative punishment whereby the dogs just not allowed to do anything I'm not going to let you bite I'm not going to let you heal next to me because you know that all those things are pathways to things that you want the dog might love healing next to you second only to to the biting and so I'm going to isolate that dog I'm not going to let him back into the hill position I'm going to and and the punishment in a positive form when it comes like the correction by the prong collar or the electric sword ever is actually going to be minuscule but it's going to be at the end of a significant period of isolation whereby the dog learns like I've made a huge mistake and I've put myself into a situation I don't know how to solve the problem of and that's what's important in a punishment event for me is that the dog realizes I don't know how to stop this that this is outside of my control because if there is anything the dog can do to stop it then it's negative reinforcement because he's escaping it right negative reinforcement can be escaped and then avoided punishment can only be avoided so for me with those biting dogs bringing in the clarity of what they can and can't do I think requires a very thoughtful and calculated approach to the difference between negative reinforcement and punishment because when you describe like a form of punishment for a dog like that with an and yeah totally because and if we use parallels he takes a cheeky bite and not supposed to ours is they take the start line yes the start line takes 10 steps forward but themselves he'll hey do me a solid if you enjoy this show if you enjoy our instagram if we've helped you at all join patreon.com forward slash loan duck outfitters if you do it before September of 2023 you're going to enter to win a hunt with me and Kevin and a bunch of other patreon members down in Missouri we're going to smack some ducks have some fun do a seminar with our dogs and have a great time but jump into patreon.com forward slash loan duck outfitters links in the description and join the community that helps me help you help your dog all right our number one asked question is revolving around force fetch whether your dog drops the bumper or duck at the edge of the water or you failed a few hunt test because the dog monkeys with the birds or won't pick up a bird let me help you help your dog launch a different breeds launch a different personalities start to finish teaching you how to do it links in the description. So what I'm going to do in that instance is like my first step is you know I'm going to market of course right but then I am I'm going to have to stop the progression of the behavior so that might that might take the form of a pop with the prom collar or whatever like there there there's certainly going to be something that's observable to a person watching that they're going to they're going to say that was punishment or that was pressure of some kind right because I have to stop the dog doing what it's doing sure but then the next part after that is I want to leave the dog right where it is because in this instance when my dog he takes that cheeky by and if I apply pressure he's going to pop straight back into the hill position knowing that that's a safe space right there there's no pressure allowed in the hill position via me because I've taught that position I've taught that position with pressure so that he knows I can turn that off by coming into there and what I don't want to do is let him in so what does that look like it looks like me stepping away and holding him at Alicia's distance and and what we see in that moment is in string and no no no no no just no pressure on the dog like you know we're in the most extreme examples of this we might double line the dog but in every instance that double lines attached to the same buckle on the flat collar so that the dog is actually not under any pressure at any pressure that he's yeah any pressure that he's putting on is putting on himself and what we will see is you know in these instances the dog will fight to get back into that hill position because it knows that that's the gateway to getting what it wants right and it if I don't let it back in and this could take 20 30 seconds even a minute of the dog just desperately trying to solve that puzzle and I'm not the dog's not in trouble at this point I'm standing there watching him and but he can't do any of these things he's not under any pressure he's just like being held in place by his flat collar if there's two lines that are held even holding him in place they're attached to the same buckle so that there's all we're doing is keeping him right where he is and in that instance I'm going to wait for the dog to come down and drive and at the moment we'll come with a dog we'll look at you and go hey I don't know what to do here okay and it's at that point you go if you're open to advice I have this solution to you okay yeah and then I might still follow that up with a couple of pops on the prong right and at that point it's adding insult to injury and and the level of pressure that I'm going to use at that time will be next to nothing will be sometimes in just like even not discernible by an observer they might not even see that I've done it because that positive punishment component that would come at the end of this punishment event is not what is going to stop at happening next time it's that's insult to injury at this point it's the the the aversive nature of that isolation that is what's going to stop doing it and so by doing that with with those dogs in those circumstances I provide them true clarity where I show the dog like hey that is off the table and it is not you can only avoid the negative consequence that will come of doing that you can't turn it off when it starts and it's going to be horrific to you and I can't I can't I can't press enough when I say horrific it's not physically horrific to the dog but to a really high drive dog the type that we we're talking about just not being allowed to do the thing that they want to do is horrific negative punishment to us as balanced trainers it sometimes gets poo pooed you know and sort of talked about like oh what are you going to do give the dog a time out and and we say yeah that's exactly what I'm going to do because do a really high drive dog that's the most aversive thing that can happen and so when a dog wants to work not letting it work can be the most aversive thing and so I want to be really careful I want to stipulate as well that using punishment of that kind is not something I do flippantly it's not something I do willy nearly it's not it's not my primary way of dealing with any sort of issue because I'm aware that that's a really horrific thing to do to the dog and all it is is just not letting the dog do the thing that I thought it was going to be able to do. I don't think that's really good. Well it's psychologically tough on the dog but he said he's saying it's horrific from the dog's perspective. Yeah exactly that's the point. Yeah that's the point. Yeah exactly that's the point. To all the people who are being soft about this good yeah it has to learn and I'm not talking about the five-month-old puppy. I'm talking about the three-year-old who keeps nabbing the bad guy or keeps breaking at the hunt test and you can't go and have fun doing well you've been training any they don't do it in training off and like good yeah exactly aversive day tough crap like we see we see the effects of not doing this kind of stuff like I'll tell you a story about a military working dog one time that bitter guy very badly it was a sustained fight that the dog was in alone with the guy is in Afghanistan and they don't know exactly what happened in the fight because the dog has like very clean out and it outed from many live bites in the past no problem and when they told the dog they out it didn't it required some help to out so whatever happened in that fight the dog took very seriously but it's a dual purpose dog so now these guys getting patched up and the dog has to search the building with which it was in the handler told me said that the dog looked back at him and he could see the dog do the maths the dog looked it was like I have enough leash your hands are not close enough to any of the buttons that can stop me and mid search it flew over and bit the guy again and the moment that the pressure was applied to the dog it immediately let go and went back to searching and I think that's the perfect example of a dog that knew he could escape and avoid the pressure he was like I've done the maths I want to do something because I've taken a serious dislike to this guy's offended me in whatever way and I gonna be able to bite him one more time before you can stop me and when you do try and stop me I know how to stop that pressure that will come because I'll just start searching again and the rules by which we live means that while I'm searching you can't you can't touch me and that's the exact situation I want to avoid right I want a dog that looks and goes no no that's the wrong thing to do and if I do that I'll have an aversive experience from which there's no escape right it will stop when the handler determines that it will stop when I've you know and so I don't want that to happen and through teaching in that way of a proper punishment having the dog understand this is punishment not negative reinforcement into an alternate behavior that for me is how I keep my dogs very safe now there's a genetic component to all of the keeping those dogs safe like you know my own dog now is his nerves are exceptional in many cases almost too strong a nerve he wouldn't be suitable as a like as a guard dog that he doesn't guard anything he doesn't care he's like come on in I'm not threatened by you in any way shape or form like he's true he's an attack dog he's a very prey-oriented right he'll bite whoever he'll bite a person or a fridge or whatever I tell him to bite he doesn't care but the idea of defending something is just not high on his radar now there's a genetic component to that of course like that you know choosing the right dog to even be able to determine what is a threat what's appropriate all those sorts of things are super important but when you have that right dog I think that the clarity that comes of when you can bite and what do the circumstances look like under which you can bite that's how you keep society at large safe that's how you keep handlers safe that's how you keep the people that will have to interact with that dog who are not the bad guy or not the decoy that's how you'll keep everybody safe in a way where the dog has the clarity to understand this is the circumstance under which I bite and this is the circumstance that I don't and exactly as you said we're not doing this to five-month-old dogs because there's no way I could have not just because of the ethics around doing that to a five-month-old but because I can't have shown him all the pictures I need him to see by the time he's five months old I need to have given him all of the like this is when it's appropriate this is when it's not this is you attached to your flat collar and walking down the street this is you attached to your harness and in work mode and the dog has to have seen all these pictures and been given the opportunities to actually take them in and learn and then when he makes a bad decision one day that's not going to say hey that was a bad decision he's the consequence of that decision and that looks like punishment and then the dog goes right got it I put that in my role at X of things that I know and given the same set of circumstances I'll choose to avoid that outcome for myself rather than put myself in a position to feel that level of pressure knowing that I can stop it if you start it and for me that's what keeps people safe it's that real distinguishing between negative reinforcement and punishment yeah no that was that was awesome man thank you I'm gonna let you rock out tell everyone where they can find you you got a bit you are in the future in Australia it is currently a day ahead of us yeah we're about to shut it down you're about to start it up so that's right yeah I'm gonna let you get your day started tell everyone where they can find your podcast yeah cool yeah social media all that yeah so I have a podcast that's called the canine paradigm I do that with my really good friend Glenn Cook you can find that on everywhere you find podcasts best way to sort of get in contact with me if you want to follow me on social media is probably Instagram I'm Pat Stewart underscore on Instagram you'll find me there and my website is opera and canine.com.au and I've got an online course that I'm about to take down in a few days because it's a six months access thing and so if you don't buy it in the next before the middle of the year because I'm taking it down at the end of the year it's gone and the whole reason I've got this whole brand new facility that I'm in right now is that I'm filming a new course so that'll be that'll be ready at the end of the year but yeah best way to get in touch is by the website if you want to actually hook up over something or just follow me on Instagram and you do seminars and travel how would someone who'd want to do that jump in. Yes so at the moment I have a seminar coming up in Chicago right the last weekend in July in the States and I mean I have another one in in Texas I think right at the end of October I had to cancel a bunch of stuff and kind of put things on hold because I'm filming this course so that's the only couple that I've got going for the remainder of the year but all the details of those either on my social media or on my website it's all it's all available there awesome. Well Pat I thoroughly enjoyed this maybe when it's time to kick off your new course we can have you back on and yeah be amazing and consider that yeah thank you share that course with everyone and just you know keep talking dogs because there's still so much that I would like to talk to you about but I enjoyed it your intelligent dude and a go getter and I really really really appreciate you taking time out of your day to join us. Thanks Rob, it's been fun.