Training Without Conflict® 팟캐스트 에피소드 50: Jacqui Zakar

like a residential setting with them for people that had come out of hospital and were trying to um get to a point where they could kind of go out into the community again um and what i think um i got from that was part of my job was advocating for these residents like i would go to their psychiatrist appointments with them i'd drive them there because a lot of them weren't really at a place where they could do that and working in that and kind of seeing their experience really showed me how broken the system can be like a lot of the psychiatrist appointments i would go to the the doctor wouldn't even make eye contact with them it'd be pretty much like oh how you going yep okay here's your script off you go yeah you know what i mean and i was like which i found quite shocking because you assume that the system knows what they're doing and they're really trying to take care of people but i've realized that the system in mental health um in australia and i think it's probably quite similar in the uk and the us it's it's really a management system it's not so much a recovery system and the or the non-for-profit organization i worked for worked for a recovery model so sometimes that was quite challenging that we would be pointing things out to the people that kind of had a lot of control over our residents and we couldn't um get them kind of advocacy that they needed and a lot of the times it felt like they don't really even want them out in the community they want them to be managed they just want them to fill their script and it becomes a really revolving door of in and out of hospital because there's no recovery so that kind of made me a little jaded about the system and that's actually the main reason that i left that work because it was just so frustrating but it was very interesting i probably learned more working in that job than i did in four years of a psych degree like i learned so much about it it was fantastic and after that yeah there is nothing like canton right i mean oh yeah 100 100 and i even the residents hearing voices and some of the residents that i had literally um their voices would tell them to kill staff like and those and some of those guys they didn't even bother me that much like you really got used to that kind of thing because it was their experience and you really learn to accept that it's not about oh they're not real just ignore them you'll be okay it was like look that's your experience that's your reality like how do we know that that isn't a real experience so if i had a counseling session with one of them

and they were struggling that day i would say to them like your voice is bothering you how about you know you come back tomorrow morning like go and go and rest up and and take some time so that side of it was really eye-opening you know that you've really got to look at the different experiences and think outside of the box that it's not always how the system dictates and how you should approach these things but when i when i got out of that job um i went into pharmaceuticals and i worked in pharmaceuticals for eight nine nearly 10 years i think it was wow um yeah so i was a product specialist or a pharmaceutical rep um but i would educate doctors and surgeons because guess what we're gonna talk about at some point okay i don't know what that was but i um and what i kind of got from that was in the end look i know the pharmaceutical industry is controversial so like that's kind of another another topic but as a rep in australia we have to do a certification and medicines australia so you have to do a year's study learning the process how um the research works um our responsibilities all of that kind of stuff so here um if i'm in front of a doctor and i'm presenting them with a new study about the medicine that i'm educating them on we have such strict guidelines that you cannot say anything that deviates from what the data shows like if you do it could cost your company like hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars so we had to be very very careful what we said we couldn't um we couldn't manipulate anything you know what i mean if if one doctor used something off label we had to make sure that we were very open and honest about that and that it wasn't recommended um in the profile of the drug so i think from that coming into dog training and starting to see how research is interpreted and how it's spoken about and when people say evidence-based this and evidence-based that i found it quite shocking thinking if i ever misinterpreted research like i see it is done here like i'd be out of a job like you just would not be able to do that so that's why one of my biggest pet peeves is that i'm a science-based trainer i'm an evidence-based trainer because the the amount of data and the amount of um you know experimental research you need to have to make that claim is just not there so i think those two industries really gave me a slightly different angle on how i look at dog training and the lack of professionalism that we see and in dog training and everything so when i when i got into it um because i'm a little bit older i

got i got into training when i was in my early 40s and i'm in my early 50s now so not quite 10 years um i'd also had the experience of most of my life just being a dog lover and a dog owner like i wasn't a trainer out of the womb and and i'm not really one of those people that's just a natural dog um dog trainer or dog man or whatever you want to call it i really had to learn it probably because i second guess myself a lot and um i took uh i was so late when i got into the game and i was very aware that everybody was better than me and everybody had more knowledge than me so i really wanted to jump in and learn and i found a um there's a great accreditation in australia which is a balanced accreditation and it's the only government and nationally recognized um dog training accreditation in the country so i'm really glad um that i did that one um because that gave me more of an insight and i've also just had some incredible mentors from kind of different points of view and have really had the opportunity to watch some like incredible trainers just do incredible work and i think those combinations of things have just given me a little bit of an interesting insight that i really had to immerse myself and learn about it because i knew it didn't really come naturally i was the i was the i was the cliche kid that would sit outside with the dog when you went to family friends houses and i love dogs but i didn't really understand them you know what i mean so when i was an owner i made all of the mistakes all of the mistakes what happened what where was that big shift like was it a specific dog or was it really just understanding more about just what you can do with dogs as far as training like what into training yeah yeah like how how did you just i mean that's a big change of of from from what you were doing at the moment at the time you know like did you did you get a dog that you just because that's typically what happens or how how did you enter in in this it was it was something that i kind of always would see when i because i did i did a bit of obedience training with my border collie and we did a couple of trials and i remember always looking at the trainers thinking wow how cool that that's your job it never occurred to me that i could do it so i always just thought oh i could never do that like i'd never be able to do that and yeah i um my husband and i um not long after we got together we we got a german shepherd puppy and um we thought we were doing all the right things off to the dog park and we would literally drive around looking for clusters

of people standing around their dogs because we thought that's what socialization was and he was a beautifully balanced beautifully bred show line german shepherd that just had the loveliest nature and we created a dog aggressive dog like that was completely environmental it was a hundred percent us it was all the steps that you see so when he became dog aggressive i was the owner that was he was opening the front door and he was scanning and i was scared like every time we would approach a corner you know what i mean so i really understand what that feels like and i started what we started working with some trainers and again i was lucky that i worked with a two or three different trainers who came from quite different perspectives but i i learned a lot i started to see wow there's kind of different ways of looking at this and there's different approaches and and everything but um i was still working with him when i started my accreditation i was the annoying student that kept saying well my dog does this like so would you do that in this situation which i know annoys everybody but he was he was the first dog that i really successfully rehabilitated um and with a with a balanced approach quite a traditional about balanced approach but um he he was kind of the benchmark for me that he i think i really rehabbed him when he was about six or seven like when he he could be college and have dogs approach him and he was fine and it was all down to relationship like the last few years of his life we just had the most incredible relationship he was always my husband's dog like he was his person but i did all the training and everything and we still had this incredible relationship but no matter which dog i work with or which approach i learn or what article i read i often as everybody does i often think back to him and i think could i have done that differently and to this day the only thing i think i could have done a little differently would have been play i didn't know about play that well then like he would chase a stick or a ball but it wasn't the game you know what i mean he liked the ball yeah he liked the ball but apart from that we had a great relationship he was he was emotionally far better after that process so i always look back to him as the benchmark and then i think once i got into training you get those outlier dogs where you throw everything out the window and it just changes everything and you realize oh this isn't going to work with this dog like i've got to find something else so it's all of those dogs and the people that i've

gotten a lot of advice from and just going through the process but i think yeah i think i have a lot of empathy for owners because i i do understand what it feels like i understand what it feels like to be embarrassed um to not have control of your dog i know there was a rumor around my area that i was the person with the german shepherd that was attacking dogs right you know what i mean it was it was devastating so i know what that feels like first time i ever took um a dog when i was about 18 to its first obedience class and they said bring treats i bought chocolate that's how stupid that's how stupid i was literally and i couldn't figure out after 15 minutes why my dog didn't want to train anymore that's so funny i've done this myself and you know how i really yeah but i i um i thought i was i was living in belgium at the time and and my dog just got into a big box of chocolate candies and i don't know it ate like maybe 10 15 of them and i was hearing something that's happening in the other room so i run in and then with my way of thinking i'm like oh what if i use this as a reward so i actually did try it too but it wasn't it was a bad idea no it was a bad idea that's yeah i'm glad because i almost wasn't going to mention that because i thought people will scream at the screen you idiot like you don't know what you're doing tell me tell me a little more i'm probably not the only one that will be interested in in the like the the school that you went was that like a online in person how long like that this is always of interest to me yeah it's it the name is the national doctrine is federation of australia and it's um it's a year long accreditation and it's mainly online but you have two quite large block periods that you for me there was no practical in perth so i had to fly to melbourne for 10 days and you did two blocks so everything that you've learned you go over there and you practice and it's the classroom setting and you've got hands on dogs and and i i and i absolutely loved it like to be able to go away for 10 days and it was just dogs like it was fantastic um and i'd say it i mean obviously very grounded and positive reinforcement like we were learning grisha stewart's bat and everything to do with aggression was pretty much positive reinforcement because it's like an entry course um but you also get that balanced um approach i i believe um most of the course is actually based on steve lindsey's books um because it was created i think maybe 10 15 oh no it'll be longer now maybe 20 years ago um but yeah i really

i really enjoyed it i think it's the only balanced accreditation in the country most of the other ones are all force free and the funny thing is i did consider those before i got started and i look back and i think wow i wondered i wonder how my path would be different right you know what i mean if i'd done one of the other ones um because i can get quite passionate with my opinions and i wonder would i have been like one of the first extremists but then i think to my my german shepherd zolli and i probably wouldn't have been because i know it wouldn't have it wouldn't have worked for him but but yeah interesting interestingly enough like one of my favorite instructors when i did my accreditation i started in 2015 um i'm now on the board with for an organizational organization called professional dog trainers australia which um was started about three years ago now by a trainer named steve courtney just to um bring some representation into australia that kind of covers all trainers because we don't have that here so we we're involved in like um you know the tool bands and um sitting in government meetings like going over to the tool band processes we were involved in the igp um um situation i think it was in south australia where they wanted to change the criteria to igp dogs are considered attack dogs and luckily that got over yeah didn't didn't they even ban it for a little bit altogether in in one of the states yeah in victoria um i'm not sure if it's specifically banned but the regulations and restrictions are such that you just can't do it i'm not sure if that victoria is um probably the most extreme state in terms of those kinds of regulations but it would have been a similar thing in south australia because you wouldn't have been able to import dogs because they're they're um now deemed attack dogs trained attack dogs so it would have killed the sport in south australia but luckily that's been overturned and they've taken that out of the um legislation so that was fantastic to to see that but yeah we're still fighting tool bands here i think tasmania here has just announced that they're looking to redo their um legislation and they want to ban e-collars in tasmania so we're we're um involved in that um but as you know it's it's it's a tough battle but yeah we're chipping but what i was going to say was my favorite instructor from the ndtf is actually on the board of pdta with me now so it's kind of like a full circle that i'm like wow like i used to look up to her so much she was so clever and she remembered me being that annoying student that's very cool but that's very

important to i mean for for people that have the knowledge to be in this kind of committees and and boards and and you know like there is a need for for people that uh that understand what the fight is about and and hopefully i mean australia is in a pretty interesting place and you also have the different states and and just because something passes in one it doesn't mean that necessarily goes through the next one right that's kind of how it is in the states but we we have this fear that if the door gets cracked open anywhere it will just it's just gonna be it and actually i feel very comfortable now i don't know exactly why but i i i don't think uh this is happening in the states i really don't think so there's no bands in the states is there um they have been tried quite so i mean almost almost every year somewhere somebody will try to do something and there will be some either a big petition or some legislation kind of secretly trying to get passed but um um eventually all you know dog trainers and just just pet owners will go to the hearings and just uh it will be so overwhelming that uh it gets shut down every time and and yeah i i really think that um um it's almost i'm not saying we need to not be aware and pay attention and continue to to defend but if we do what we are doing right now i don't think this is ever happening in the states hopefully i feel bad for for places in europe how they um you know the early 2000s was just very different landscape and and even with internet and the europeans just didn't think that this is anything serious i don't know there there was many factors why why it happened and it's very difficult for them right now to reverse but they they're trying though they're trying to get a lot of people who are who knows um yeah i think it also comes down to i mean i get told all the time online oh just ignore them just show your training like we all hear that but but the problem is their voices are loud and if you don't say something they're the only verses voices being heard and i don't i don't think people realize how far this could go like people think oh you know it's not the end of the world if there's some tools banned i'm like that's not where it's going to go i think in i could be wrong but i think in portugal at the moment they're actually trying to ban all averses like aversive training i um i've seen a document but it's in portuguese so i can't read it but i think there's an emphasis on e-collars and choke chains and stuff but i think there's a general theme of they want to ban all aversive techniques and that's where it's going i mean

there's rumblings now about police and military dogs with all the emotive language about that and sports and um and everything and i think people don't realize that organizations like peter do have an influence um i was reading the other day about peter saying it's a myth that we want to take your dogs that we're going to come and take your dogs but the interesting thing is in that same page down the bottom they state they want to neuter all dogs and they want to get to the point where there are no more dogs being born because they don't want any animal in servitude like that's where this is going and i think we're like oh no that's sensational it's not that's where this is going we've got a political party here the animal justice party and they're very very much peter like they're kind of going that way as well and they've got influence you know so i think people need to understand that you can't just train your dog and show your work because nobody wants to go onto your page and look at your work if they disagree with you anyway so yeah and what is interesting is also that um it's just so hard to talk to each other you know when we have opposing views it's just impossible um like i've i've honestly given up on this um um for a moment or a year or two i i was really thinking um if we talk to each other more and if we end up exploring and learning about how things can be done we can collectively come to the you know grow together and get you know to just be better overall as a community and um yeah i i am you know i kind of lost hope on this i don't know what what is your take on this yeah i think there's a i mean and whenever i talk about force breed trainers i always want to be really really clear that i'm not talking about force breed training and i'm not talking about the thing there is just the levels of then there is absolutely exactly yeah that's very true go go on yeah and um i have some force breed trainers who i consider um almost friends like we chat online all the time we share ideas and it really comes down to the person i know with some of them there's certain points of conversations that we just don't really go into too much because we just have difference of differences of opinion but whenever i say well force free is doing this i'm really talking about that radical kind of extremist end and i i think i i don't know how large that part of the community is but i think it's pretty large like i i find it difficult to connect with many trainers online that are more moderate and even interesting and interested anything i have to say like and i think like like

you said you've lost a little bit of hope and i think the reason for that is that that you've got to have curiosity if you want to take a step like that and hear somebody and i just think at that end there's no curiosity because they believe you know a balanced trainer and whether you like that term or not it just makes it easier to um to say that way um is is like shutting down dogs and being violent and they just don't believe in engaging with anybody like that so i think that's the tricky point i think i think speaking with more moderate force free trainers may open the eyes of some of them but i think sometimes the force free trainers as you as you've seen the force free trainers that do speak to balance trainers are almost vilified more than the balance trainers you know yeah very true it's it's but i i agree i mean i i when i when i i have to say something not so positive about the force free trainers i always uh uh have those force free trainers that actually are forcing their ideology on us and and and and as you said i i they are not they are not handful of people unfortunately um that there is a i wouldn't say it's a big number but they they have a strong community and they they um yeah i feel like they're in a mission to to just try to shut down and do what they think it's the right thing for everybody which is kind of ridiculous to begin with and i i don't know it's it's frustrating but uh as i said i i have in a way given up like i've learned a lot over the last few years about who they are and and one of the things that it always amazes me lately is that start to realize that you know like they really believe that if if you're using any form of a verse that's there for any reason that means that you are not understanding what positive reinforcement can do you don't know anything about schedule reinforcement you don't know anything about reinforcement delivery primax principle extinction bars markers cues jackpots and all these things financial reinforcement it's like no you don't know anything because if you do then you wouldn't have to use a verse and and i have so much to talk about this but nobody wants to have that conversation and um in some way you know it's it it is what it is um um but um they they they really living in a bubble where everything is it's just made up it's it goes against any fundamental biological like any any laws of of how life on earth functions it goes against it's it's it's it's like a just a fake reality in a lot of ways you know and on top of that like i mean you

know and and you know like when we spend some time going over their studies it's at this point they're not even cherry picking data anymore that it's like outright designed to produce a desired outcome there it's not like uh uh uh and that's what makes me lose hope that any conversation can be productive and and there hasn't been like i i mean i i i i know that i'm so vocal and sometimes very stubborn but i do listen i do change my mind when you know you know you like you have to present something that will be legit to change my mind i i don't believe in fairy tales and fake realities i i trained dogs for 40 years and i go out there and if you do something really good i want to know how you did it but just to tell me that some experiment and study showed with 20 dogs that this is better than something else and that was done 20 years ago and that hasn't picked up any momentum to prove in real world that this is actually possible i'm not interested in it fair enough and i think because when i got into dog training i was so conscious of how little i knew and and i guess just as a person i really dislike black and white thinking like it just really annoys me it doesn't matter what the topic is i'm like like if you if you see the earth is flat like google a credible website like it's so easy you know to fact check um i mean you've got to know what you're researching but i i i kind of try to make a point of if i'm going to tell somebody look like for example there's there's a um training course here which i think is probably under way now which is um force free snake avoidance training and it's it's a 12 week course i don't know how much it costs and um and if and if i see something like that i i seriously considered doing it if i had if i'd had the time the only thing is i would have felt like a little bit of a um like a mole like like hiding and like observing but but i would genuinely like to do it like if if some like you say if somebody says well we're going to do this because it's it could be just as effective and it's whatever i'm like well i want to know how to do it like i i talk about one of one of the one of the hills that i will die on is um kind of e-collar training for predation because i just think it's so important and i think it saves you know dogs lives animals lives whenever i talk about that i always hear oh predation substitute training like you know that do it too and um a lot of people and i see a lot of people saying um oh that doesn't work and when people say you should check it out they say why would i bother but i'm like no no no no i i get on

amazon and i buy those books and i read them and i want to see what are they doing i actually think predation substitute training is really cool like so simone muller has a really good understanding of predation she presents it really really well i think if you have the the time and the resources and the dog and the environment that you can do that you could probably do quite well with it but when people say to me oh the dog's killed an animal you can do predation substitute training simone muller even says that it won't you shouldn't have a dog off leash if it's actually killed an animal like it's not appropriate for that so they're even misrepresenting what she says and i think it's still a great thing to do and i think for a lot of people it could probably be effective if they have that commitment to do it but the reality is it is never gonna be as effective for those dogs that are just more serious or the owners that just don't have those resources and environments to do it's just never gonna be as effective and people say well you know we don't know that ecolors are doing this we're doing that it's probably the most well researched training method but and that's saying something considering there isn't a huge amount of studies but it's it's if you want to talk about evidence-based practice i think there's very little you could point to more than e-collar training for predation it's evidence-based like i i argue you know what i mean all but the welfare issues you know well great then you then you do the studies and you add the welfare component into it because that's how research works um on that on that note i'm not sure if you're aware of the study but there's a there's a study that's like a literature review that was brought out a couple of years ago which reviewed all the um training approaches to predation and it broke it all down and it went through the christiansen and dale and all those studies it didn't include the ones that looked at coyote predation which i found was interesting because they showed a lot of efficacy but they were just looking at dogs and you know those studies show efficacy for what they're measuring um and not a lot of them have welfare measures but the the researcher says the problem with these studies is they're not looking at welfare so we should look at anecdotal evidence like the rattlesnake force-free aversion training and do research on that and i'm like hang on that's not the process like if you if you see an effect and you go and you see there's always limitations you can't measure everything then you

say okay we got efficacy like that works and we see it works in the field all the time like there's so much evidence out there so then you would do the next study and you would add welfare measures to that and you would measure that over time like there's this throwing the baby out with the bath water but the i mean the interesting thing about this review is it's a single author and in the um in this section where it says i have no you know um competing financial interests or anything the author is a force-free predation specialist who sells um prey drive training courses um and has a facebook group for her clients and one of the rules in that facebook group is no recommendations of aversive training or aversive training methods how that's not a um competing like she doesn't have any other authors like i know people would argue the same thing about um your study with with dr win but you you're not the researcher like she's a researcher like how is that not a competing interest you know um that was very different with us like i i was not the researcher and i had two of the most high-end force positive reinforcement only people that are designing the study you know um you know with simone muller it was very interesting yeah emery johnson's a force free trainer oh big time i mean like like like and then i mean genuinely in a good way not not um she's not just blowing up smoke like she she really believes in in doing the best possible approach for the dogs and she is convinced that is the the force free approach um so so you know that that there is no yeah i i don't know how much i want to even talk about that study because um um it was very good study like it was really really good study um we we approached a lot of people to to offer either advice on what they would do as force free trainers or be part of the study yeah and like like that study that clive and and anne-marie did anybody can replicate it tomorrow if they wanted to and if they have any questions they will answer their questions the same day to help them replicate it now if i try to replicate daniel mill study the famous lincoln university there is zero chance it's a it's like a swimming in muddy water looking for your iphone that you dropped in in the lake there's zero chance and if you well i have tried to talk to him several times that's the interesting thing with with most of the people that do that research they it's not that they hide but they hide when they feel that they will be challenged but they are very open to show up at any

conference any podcast any any speaking engagement where they're gonna they know for sure that they're gonna get praised for what they do and and you know like i mean being a dog trainer or being a scientist like you have idea you you you're trying to show something and if i was to say something i would be you know when somebody you know when somebody challenges that i would be interested to hear anyway i i was talking to him a few times over the years and to the point that we were almost gonna have a podcast um but then all all um communication stopped like just abruptly stopped and i tried a few more times and there was there was just no no point and and that's the that's you know that's on them and that's kind of what i mean by if you if you don't want to really have that conversation have that debate have your findings challenge proven that prove that you're right or accept that something you might be wrong about um it's a strange thing to to say that you're doing science at this point um it's you know it's like it's an ideology it's dogma it's just not not i don't know i mean the same happened with uh simon muller you know and and just like you i go everywhere like i i i pay for any um i'm not a very much for any online conference webinar being avsab being apdt being um aggression conference whatever it is i'm i'm genuinely curious to see what people do and if there are any takeaways always um so um i mean i'm i'm really familiar with simon muller's uh approach uh approach to to predation and and just as you said like i i was i even asked at one point i i can i mean i certainly have a lot of dogs and cases here that we can try to work online or she can refer any of her people that um finished her course that they can help with with some dogs and to me at least it was interesting because when we talk then she could say she would admit that okay no if the dog is already killed an animal or even if he didn't but it's this hardcore wired predation instinct then then it's a different story and then there is so and so but but ultimately it will be just management but i i don't think that's what she says when she's promoting her work you know from at least from what i've seen um and everybody believes that this is an alternative at least in the forestry community like if we're talking about it the the you know she her name will come up as a very uh strong alternative but that's really not the case and and she would admit that that's not the case

um the way she goes about it at least the way she has told me is well in germany the electric colors are forbidden they've been forbidden since many years so we're working with what we can fair enough fair enough very true um but if you have who if you have if you if you're working with a snake avoidance you're working with a snake avoidance and you're not using aversives it's very similar to if you're training a guide dog and you will not teach the dog that cars can be dangerous and you should avoid them but you just teach them to cross or not to cross when you tell them to so um that that's that's like the you know i mean in differential reinforcement programming this is a big issue depending what we're dealing with right if there is definitely times when it just feels right that i am i know that that's a bad idea instead of oh i really want to do that and i would rather do that without ever really knowing that if i don't and for some reason i end up doing that thing that i shouldn't i wouldn't have a clue that that's a bad idea not at all and and and when you do that only for the name of of you know force free ideology because it's not like when we're talking how what how much aversives and and and what is the what is the fallout and what is the whole the whole you know sidman coercion and it's fell out you know i'm going all over the place but but it really he he he's probably the the the biggest name to blame for all this and and and and and i highly doubt that even the hardcore advocates have ever read and studied his work because if you do you would have a lot of questions like you will really have a lot of questions it's you know i don't know um um um you you you totally can teach a dog to do something else when they see a snake but the dog will never know that snake can hurt and can really do a bad thing which is the most natural way that you would learn about a snake what you what you actually need to know about the snake and it's i think it's dishonest the way these courses are marketed because they're marketed as force-free snake avoidance training and i'm like but by definition you cannot teach avoidance with positive reinforcement you're actually teaching the snake to detect and to use that as a cue to return to the owner which is which is what process is and like dr elif said in your um podcast i really like dr elif he's so cool he's so interested in what dog trainers are doing which is so rare and i think

that's so fantastic but like he said sure it could work but it could also increase the likelihood of a dog approaching a snake in the right moment if the handler doesn't notice the indication or maybe the because i mean at the end when dr elif talked about the kiwi studies and how the um aversion to stimuli doesn't necessarily generalize to the real bird bullsbury trainers aren't using real snakes they're using scent and they're using dummy snakes they're not using real snakes right so that's one thing and and i think they present it like e-collars can do this and it's why would you want to hurt your pet and there's a kind of way but i'm like you've got to be honest and at least say like you know this takes more work you will need to dedicate a lot of time to this i know i know somebody i think they were a client it was quite a few years ago who did a force-free snake um avoidance course here because obviously we have a lot of it here and they they said there were about 10 people in the class it was a six-week course every single one of the students or owners failed in the last like the test at the end of the six-week course and the trainer said you should have done more homework so it's like that yeah this is this is like becoming this what you just said is becoming a very hot topic uh at least among trainers that i am around um that blame and shaming that when when the system is failing that you either didn't understand it or you don't do it correctly or didn't do it enough or but it's on you it it's it can never be the system that you put in question and with exactly and and going even further with with the the snake avoidance i mean if the dog sees the snake the owner doesn't see the snake the dog is expecting our reinforcement now the reinforcement is posed now the dog is kind of tapping into some extinction burst and it's like hey dude there is a snake here yeah i need my treat and now the dog actually is forced to mess with the snake to point it out to the owner so it can get paid for it it's it it's it it's it has it's flawed uh even just the idea to think of of it's just such a derailing then that the um i i don't know why we are doing this just just because we are so much against the use of a verse f and and again it like i mean i would love to talk with some some of the force free like the the extremist force free people that the ones that try to force on everybody about about sideman and and i mean the the whole the whole the whole thing like it's a flawed conflation of coercion and aversive control it's

just it's like they're not the same thing you know it like you he equates coercion exclusively with punishment negative reinforcement and and and we know that positive reinforcement can also have of course coercive properties like and he knows that it's he he knows that no i mean any kind of deprivation you know uh i don't know it is crazy plus i mean the the who was it uh perone michael perone he had a really good one the one uh where where he was talking about you know negative positive reinforcement right right and how how uh um you know positive reinforcement you know has has often embedded aversive elements frustration when rewarded is called i mean frustration goes long ways it and i mean that's just one of it and on top of that control is control positive or negative you you cannot it's it's such a it's just ideology driven it's not it's not a it's not scientific it's a it's a very wishful it's good thinking but you know that the so-called fell out of the punishment uh um at best it's it's never you know intrinsic it's it's contingent on poor application maybe absolutely um if if anything we need to get better at it but the the idea to abandon it altogether it just makes zero sense in this big step that we seem to have just stepped over which was now let's test it properly and do some proper applied research and they're like well no if owners are yelling at their dogs and scruffing them and that's causing stress then nobody should be able to use aversives and i'm like do we do we do owner surveys to see how well they do medical interventions and if you didn't see good results would that mean we can't do medical interventions anymore because owners are doing it wrong and they're not even qualified to do it it's just it's so illogical that that's how that's that's how that's what we're taking from research like there's there's the couple of i think it's the hibby and the rooney studies that show up in every position statement they're literally right one of three references on wikipedia when they talk about the history of dog training and that they say positive reinforcement training is more effective and i'm like it's it's just bizarre to me that people are using those studies and if you look at them we have no idea about the variables of the dog owners are doing random angry things and if you look at the limitations the authors say themselves it could also be that owners lack an understanding of training methods and learning theory and timing you know the authors say it themselves and i think if you're a trainer you're like

yeah that's actually what it is that's not the that's not if the issue isn't that positive reinforcement is more effective than aversives it's just you need to know what you're doing i mean a lot of the force free trainers say oh anybody can punish a dog like that's easy but no it's not like if the research shows us anything it shows us because i don't think there's any there's no such thing as really bad research in a way because research does tell you something even all the owner surveys and the lincoln study tells you something and that is if it's not done properly it can cause issues um you've got to know what you're doing you've got to have competence and i think that's what peop that's the key like certifications education regulation i'm i support regulation but yeah it's yeah and what like when you said it's not easy and at the same time what is easy about punishment is that when it's done properly besides being effective we like like any living being on our planet responds exactly the way it should respond exactly there is no fallout at that point right like the the like like sideman's ideas of uh you know the the exclusion of aversive control i mean ignores just reality like like it's the most critical way we learn through through natural consequences of aversive experiences that like how can you how can you exclude it like like and and you know what i because i've put at one time a lot of time in in his work and um eduardo fernandez work kind of mirrors his work in a lot of ways they they really like like in a lot of ways he just copies it and and presents it as a as as a work i i'll explain and and see if i make sense to this but but going back to sideman's ideas it's like okay well let let's let's say coercion is it has like it has the the fallout and let's say that coercion and and uh um aversive control are one in the same which they are not like like this just ridiculously thing to to even talk this way but but let's say that like if you like if i think and i say well so what can we do what what is what are our options then and everything starts to lead towards errorless learning and then i've listened to at least four very long presentations that sideman did on errorless learning back way back like when when it was a hot topic when skinner was just thinking that that's just gonna take over the world which would have been great great but this is now what 50 60 70 years ago and it hasn't happened so the the alternative answer that they proposed it's not there like it's really not there we know errorless learning has extreme

limitations we know trial and error has uh uh i i i don't know i get so frustrated with this because um sorry go ahead no like like it really that that's when when you start to kind of peel that onion that's that's where it goes like okay so what do we do and eventually we're gonna say well we just it's it's it's errorless learning where in our planet errorless learning really flourishes like like we're talking slightly more complicated tasks and errorless learning is in deep trouble like we're not talking anything complicated just just just you throw a little curveball into the errorless learning and we have a problem a big problem exactly and i know in dr benander's um study which i've only gone over once so i haven't gone in over in extreme detail and i know you have to control variables so it's not that i'm criticizing this but they i think they excluded some dogs from that study because they their food drive wasn't high enough and you know you've got to have an equal playing field um just to show the results so it's i'm not saying oh my god they shouldn't have excluded them because i understand why but that's the reality like as trainers working with dogs day to day like that's what it all comes down to there's so much nuance there's no way you can look at these things in black and white and that's where like negative reinforcement even like cat like i think cat's one of the coolest training systems ever either the problem um as well the problem with it is it's difficult to control the environment to do it that's that's the problem and the owners have really got to know what they're doing but i think it's all negative reinforced well it's mostly negative reinforcement and the dog has choice and all these um things but it's it's poo-pooed by like our veterinary society here in australia because it's negative reinforcement and you shouldn't use negative reinforcement and training like that's such a black and white statement that doesn't take into account so many factors what are you going to do with a dog that just doesn't want to take food but some owners they don't have three months to build food drive and put in all that work like they have a dangerous situation and they need to do something now like that i sent you that study the other day which i because i'm preparing for the workshop on the weekend so i think i've done a a lot of research that doan 2023 which which is actually a very thorough review because it goes into the humane hierarchy and cat bat all of these things but it's a literature review on force free

training practices for aggression and fear and anxiety and it lit i'm literally reading from it it says there's a surprising lack of research into the effectiveness of behavior modification programs and canine aggression and fear and anxiety the scientific evidence for efficacy of behavior modification interventions for aggression and fear anxiety without medication and canines is almost non-existent like that's where we are and it goes through it all and one of the biggest factors i've seen in this and i've seen in a lot of other studies that do look at like classical conditioning procedures and stuff is one of the biggest barriers to success is compliance and that's another thing that i really got out of the pharmaceutical industry is when i would speak to doctors doctors aren't always choosing a medicine just based on the highest efficacy and the lowest side effect profile sometimes they're not choosing a medicine because the regime is too complicated and the patient won't do it and that's the truth and it says that in this literature review and it says it in a lot of other studies owner compliance was low once the trainer handed the dog back over to the owner they didn't continue with it you see it in cooperative care at vets like they'll do all the training and of course you should do all that r plus and teach handling and desensitize that and everything but as soon as they're in the vet room they don't do it like and so then all of a sudden the dog's in a situation that they've never dealt with before because they haven't learned to deal with pressure and and cope with stress you know what i mean um so it's lovely to have this ideology in the perfect world but our clients aren't professional dog trainers they're people that i've got single moms with small children and two jobs and even getting them to do two five minute training sessions the day can be difficult and it's not because they're lazy it's not because they're lazy it's because they have challenges in their lives and they only have certain resources that they can allocate and that doesn't mean all we should throw e-collars on all of them correct but it does mean we need to look at things which are going to help the dog's quality of life long term as much as possible and that comes down to competence of the trainer you know what i mean to be able to meet that goal without too much aversion but also you know give the owner hope that they can get somewhere with their dog like this this review it points it out black and white it's it's not effective and i think there needs to be inclusions of other things you

know that's what it is a lot of trainers doing some amazing work i've got one of my mentors and very good friends brett bailey um who's a good boy industry his business name is he works in new york city with some really really serious dogs and his approach is almost force free most most of the time he's a balanced trainer like um so he's using negative reinforcement and stuff he's very good at what he does and it can it can be done to a certain degree but he's still not um a completely force free trainer because it is not under the illusion that it's going to be effective for everybody and yes and that's really the the big like if we if we really just have to break it down to the most simplistic simplistic argument is that the positive reinforcement people want everybody to believe that one size fits all and then there is the other crowd that says that's absolutely not true and there is time and place when something will be more effective than something else like that that and and i don't see why would you even want to argue and how can you argue that like how could you argue that they they argue well effectiveness is in everything and that's what susan friedman said in the humane hierarchy and that's what dr fernandez says in his life model he says it can't just be about effectiveness and i agree it has to be about quality of life and understanding welfare but at the same time it does have to be effective like otherwise what are we doing right like it does have to be effective you can't go well um we're not so worried about it being effective so we will just settle for it not being effective at all in a lot of cases and i'm not saying it can't be effective like a lot of my reactivity programs are pretty much force-free um because the client can do it because the dog's capable all those factors but um it's it's not everybody you know that's that's the thing i think everybody thinks that we're just throwing a prong collar and e-collar on every single dog we we see um and some trainers need to do that because they're getting all the most difficult dogs that have been failed by everybody else um so it's not that i even judge that but it's just so i i get involved in the arguments in the comments it's it's one of my toxic traits that i just can't not sometimes i can't stop because i get so mad but doing that i've got such an insight into how the arguments go like i could create a flow chart like i know i'm gonna say this and then they're gonna say this and then they're gonna say this like it always goes one of a few ways right and whenever you really

get down to it and you're like okay cool tag me in a video that's not just not that different how politics in any government or is the same thing but i tell you something with uh and they'll say well i don't need to show you you can find your own evidence right and i'm like if i'm gonna argue something and i make a point i'm gonna give you the evidence to back it up but then they're like google as free like because they know they they're it's ideology and and i get into those arguments because i hope at some level i might plant a seed or somebody else might see it in the comments and go oh is there evidence and they actually go looking for it in these cases where we know there's no evidence apart from maybe the odd dog that does really well you know in extreme cases for sure but you can't provide a treatment that is only effective for like 10 of your target population like that's ridiculous and that's when dogs fall through the cracks and that's what we're that's what we're seeing you know there's a there's a vet behaviorist in my city and a client sent me the letter and the report there's a vet behaviorist in my city that when you go to see them before your first session you have to sign a contract that states i agree that in some cases when a dog has bitten a person the only way to keep people safe is behavioral euthanasia and they haven't even seen the vet behaviorist yet um and they said that was very off-putting luckily their dog wasn't human aggressive but because that's the expectation sometimes they put on the reports no aversives used or aversives used like that's a huge factor in the aggression case that's right um you know yeah yeah yeah and and i mean before we go to this i just want to go back i'll tell you and everybody uh kind of interesting situation that i i was with uh um eduardo fernandez you know like like after he came up with life um which i i have to even think now what exactly stands for least inhibited um man what was that least inhibited um oh i should know because i've been reading it so many times are functionally effective functionally effective yeah yeah i like the functional part of it so i think that no again it's very much that's why i say like i i can see how the ideas of uh uh um moray sidman you know it's the same the same thing it's like coercion and it's fell out it's like well we can do life instead of lima and so on the question remains the same what is the alternative and of course just like sidman he comes up with the errorless learning comparison to trial and error and and as you said like like any anybody that

spends a little time that knows what to read like like it's like first off out of i don't know how many dogs only third makes it through the actual training stage i mean just think about that imagine imagine you have 100 people in a study and only 33 managed to finish we we have a serious problem like this should like as far as i'm concerned this cannot even go into publication that is just there is nothing there something and i don't know what but something went very wrong i mean it's a insane the um so it's a big wrecked flag um then then there is the what what is really puzzling to me is the what what happens with the trial and narrow dogs for incorrect responses like what what are the feedbacks are we just kind of like what are there any consequences are we kind of vaguely say some word like what what actually is really what he considers trial and error in a study that is so important that we are comparing that it actually can change the direction of where the whole training industry goes i you know like what do you do in this uh uh for incorrect responses right when like how does the dog know that they they were wrong and are there any consequence like like he really just left in the open it it doesn't make sense then then the training session i mean it's a mess like there is a that i i don't know how was it it was just really kind of mismatching like there was a claim there was like two hour session but then they they were like one minute to 12 minutes and and you kind of like you cannot put it together how how long the sessions or is it one like in some increment like like how long that was it that that's you know but then there is even a bigger problem like like with the with the groups of you know from the way i was reading and it sounded like definitely the the errorless group had some extra training to to to go through the uh what do you call it um yeah i know what you mean but i haven't read it enough times to remember exactly yeah but i mean anyway like like it's just not it cannot it it cannot be it just cannot be enough of a something that the dog trainer should consider to change and say okay again you have the the in one study you have the huge dropout rate the questionable or zero feedback when the trial and error dogs make the wrong decision the confusing setup with with the how long the sessions are the maybe maybe the different training groups the then the are there any consequences in a trial and error because otherwise what kind of trial

and error that is right are we doing some shitty version of errorless learning and we're calling it trial and error and we're comparing it to the perfect trial and error version i don't know but he also don't want to talk like i i've tried to talk to him like i've tried for like two years i am busy i'm working on something i'm like okay i'll call check with me in a month or two months three months four months and i kind of mark it on my calendar and i check with him i check with him eventually there was a point where he's like okay we i i want to do it i mean i told him like you you clear it for whatever reason you don't want to and that's fine he's like no i want to but i need to do it with a moderator in a panel and there has to be a woman in it and we have to do it live i mean i'm not joking what does he think you're gonna do i'm like okay i'm totally fine with that but i don't think i can come up with all that so can you make it happen and i think he did it just because to to to create this impossible uh um you know it's like okay i reached out to him and he he um set an appointment within a week but right as long as as i say as long as they know that they will not be challenged they're extremely happy to talk and receive praise i mean i i definitely challenged him and again i i don't want to i don't want to personally attack dr benadis he's obviously a very well respected scientist and i like um some of the components in his life model a lot of it i don't but um it's you know researchers are people and i think unless you're a you're a dog trainer you know like um dr plonsky um and roger obrantes and and people like that i think that you have to accept that you might not understand the methods that you're judging when i when i spoke to dr fernandez i didn't i didn't tell him i was a balanced trainer i said i was a trainer like i don't really feel like i need to put a neon light above what kind of trainer i am i just said i'd like to talk about your life model and that was that was true um and we had a nice discussion um what was interesting though was we talked about the functional part of the life model which i like and it says that you need to really understand the function of the behavior so that if you train an alternative behavior you're meeting the same function if possible um so i i asked him i said when it comes to like predation or something like that the function of the behavior is to attack an animal because it feels good so if we just do differential reinforcement we're not really addressing the function of the behavior

and i said plus there's so much evidence that e-collar training can be so effective um in predation for example i said surely from a welfare scientist perspective wouldn't wouldn't the next step be to look at welfare more so that we can make sure that it's been done safely what was interesting was when i said that dr fernandez said which studies are you talking about he hadn't heard of about five of the studies that i was talking about and i did send them to him afterwards and he picked them apart and just said they weren't any good i'm like they're probably you know they're probably better than any study that you know that we've really done in any in anything else in a lot of ways and you know i respect that he has his opinion i i think it's what personally i think it's quite biased but it's just disappointing to see that lack of critical thought that oh well you know maybe look at this and yes that's good but we really need to make sure the trainers know what they're doing and what was almost a little uncomfortable was he started to talk about the balance trainers that come came for him in a way that i i thought oh even though i'm talking about e-collars and stuff he's obviously hasn't clicked that i'm a balance trainer so i didn't really bring it up and it was almost a little a little awkward but you know i appreciate it this time but it's that just goes to show like he's presenting the evidence of what's effective and what's not effective and he wasn't even aware of dale and toro and christiansen and um those studies like because i said why aren't we seeing those studies in position statements in the reference list that you recommend and he he said which studies are you talking about so it's almost like there's research that's now almost being whitewashed like it just doesn't exist because it doesn't fit the narrative and the researchers and the dog trainers aren't even aware of it um because it just suits the suits the agenda right yeah it's a again i mean it's it's a tough one um like i i have difficult times with with this um you know because when you when when somebody has influence and it's advocating for something that they know or they may not know that it's misleading i think this is a problem and it should be exposed or it should be at least yeah i mean exposed or talked or whatever like the whole wife thing like like just something as simple as that it really fails to acknowledge situations when punishment is absolutely the only available option they're like this is not

arguable and and no matter how you want to talk about it if you cannot agree to that um i mean there's just canon i mean there's just so much literature and there is so much empirical like i i've been training dogs for a long time and what a study can tell me if i cannot find use of that in when when i'm training dogs actually training dogs what value is that to me and and why do we need to uh um praise a study like that it's a it really like he over emphasizes the whole you know minimally uh inhibit inhibit approaches and techniques and whatever and at the same time really neglecting situations where more assertive interventions are just like really needed there is uh there is an emergency that you need to do something like this this like like i know from and and many trainers like if they get familiarized with this they'll be like this is going to lead to to disastrous outcomes in certain situations with certain dogs without a doubt like without a doubt and what do we do then we say well we tried everything and that's where it gets very shitty we tried everything and then they will go that's what i was showing then then we will go to the psychotropic stuff right i mean i have bottles and bottles and bottles of this shit from from i don't know from how many years i will tell you something really um at my like with my students at my well not my students but uh like i have like my graduates from my school like we have monthly calls and and recently i just thought of something and and i made like a as we had a zoom call like a survey and there were probably let's say 50 to 60 people on the call that are actively training dogs professionally pet dogs and i asked them how many of them have had clients in the last two years that the dog was on psychotropic meds every single one had a client every single one now that's disturbing next question that i had for them was what was the youngest age that the dog came with psychotropic meds six months old for being active for being a puppy that likes to play then my next question was any of the dogs that came through the training was their intention or a process to get wind of the medication eventually no no that's disturbing

and then when you think about it it's not even at this point it's so generic unfortunately that it's not an animal behaviorist you any any vet the dog's gonna come to the vet clinic and it's gonna say no i don't want the vet text to jump on me and the veterinarian's gonna prescribe in some cases prozac for for not even having the knowledge not having even a consultation but have the ability to write a prescription and that's kind of this is what happens when you know the the force free and errorless learning and all the differential reinforcement starts to fail the next step is psychotropic meds and it's so overdone and you're coming from you know from from a specific background that i didn't know so i want to hear what what you think of all this that's going on everywhere in the world i yeah i i'm seeing that as well i can i can easily think of three dogs in the last six months i think one was a border collie one was a rottweiler and one was a cattle dog you know know dogs that can be a bit energetic and stuff and all of them were young like five months or so at obedience training and they said oh you know she just couldn't concentrate and she was like oh it's just so excited and wouldn't listen and the trainer said oh well sometimes medication can help them focus more on obedience class and i'm like no your doctor shouldn't be in that obedience class they need to be fulfilled somewhere else and luckily all three of those owners it just didn't sit well with them and i'm like i'm not surprised and every single one of those dogs they didn't even have really behavior problems like they just pulled on the leash a little you know what i mean it wasn't a behavior problem it's like oh your dog can't focus medicated um and you know when i when i worked in pharmaceuticals we as reps we profile doctors so that you kind of know um what um area they or what kind of perspective they come from like some are very patient focused um some are very clinically focused some just want to show the reps that they know more than them like and so we would profile them so every time we go and visit them we know okay he's clinical focus he's really going to want to hear about this study whereas other dogs are like well i need to relate that to my patient um but the doctors vary like some write scripts quick others don't but now you you know their side effect profiles are real and how medication is considered least inhibiting or least intrusive is beyond me i mean you take i mean i haven't taken ssris but i know if you take ssris they say like you might feel nauseous you might

feel like this we can't explain that to a dog like how do we know how they're perceiving how they're feeling um and when there's not even any research really showing efficacy for what they're prescribing it for i mean that didn't woody that's a big big problem that's really a big problem there is not one study on that no they didn't what didn't woody study that came out a couple of years ago it was a survey showed that medication did not help in one instance of the types of aggression they were looking not one and i think that's part of the problem because they're getting too prescription happy because the training isn't working as well as it could so we've got to find another solution and it becomes a vicious circle and i've got this in my workshop it's with the welfare situation as well you look at all the welfare models one of the biggest criteria across most of the models the five freedoms the five domains all those models is freedom to express natural behavior in in the latest model which i just read which is actually quite interesting they keep emphasizing that that a dog needs to be able to interact with its environment in order to learn to adapt to stresses and seek positive alternatives like that's a key indicator of welfare but so many dogs cannot do that because they can't be trained to be in the environment and so if you say well they need this for welfare you know there are balanced training solutions that can be minimally added to a positive reinforcement training program that could allow a dog to spend more time with its owner be in the environment have a better long-term quality of life oh no we can't use those because they cause welfare issues it's like a vicious circle you know what i mean it's and and the problem is curiosity they've decided this is what it is and there's no curiosity and that's not science like take a look be curious come and have a look but that i want to i had i had a person troll in my page yesterday um who said e-collars damage relationships you should use love and kindness positive reinforcement allows dogs you know what i mean and and i was very polite and she got back and i said to her please feel free to have a look at the dogs on my page and tell me which ones have been trained with aversives and without or something like that and tell me they don't look happy and her response was i will absolutely not look at your page and i'm like well what are you doing commenting if you don't even know what i'm doing like have a look show me the dogs that are

shut down they refuse to even learn both sides of their argument and i said to her you lose this argument by default because you have no interest in understanding and even that don't help yeah you know i listened later i don't know it was recently something again as i say i i i really really am very curious and i listen all the time regardless if i like or don't like the people because sometimes their takeaways and and so anyway it was just recently and then it was the daniel mills and then it was just talking about punishment and and just said something like i i'm paraphrasing probably grossly here but something like if you are punishing your dog how do you expect them then to trust you and and so this is a uh uh person that has spent their life he has every possible credential he can have he's teaching i mean he's like like in the cream in the top one percent and when you when you give such a statement i can tell you you absolutely don't understand what you're talking about like you have no idea what you're talking about you don't know what punishment is just like uh whatever like i have him here because i know that was you know like you know yeah it's exactly the same thing he he's the same thing it you know and skinner and sideman and everybody for whatever reason they cannot make a difference between this universal suppression of any behavior and what functional punishment contingent punishment really means they're not the same thing and every single time they're talking about punishment we're talking about this universal suppression of course it's gonna have fell outs of course i'm i would never want to walk into that room when just that shit's happening that doesn't make no sense but why are we talking like this like just because the the ideology calls for it or because we don't understand it or i mean really imagine if that was the case if you punish you're losing the trust of your dog or your kid or your whatever like how how how can you say this it sounds like interesting thought but the moment you put a little more deeper thinking into it you have to realize that that's just something went wrong and that's not what we are talking about that's not what punishment really means nobody talks about that no i mean i i cannot say that dog trainers don't do that because they're shitty dog trainers that do that all the time of course and that's always the argument as well but too many people are doing it wrong and i'm like well right a lot of people drinking and driving but we don't ban cars you know we you know we don't just focus on them like they need education they need

licenses right i i and the other thing is there's this idea which i think is a little bit of anthropomorphism there's a there's this idea that a physical punisher must be so much worse than anything else when i was a when i was a kid um there was still i was you know i'm old enough that there was still corporal punishment at at my high school when when i was a kid and my brother who was a couple years older than me he was a bit of a troublemaker he didn't go to school a lot of the time and got into trouble and sometimes he would get i think they had the stick or the ruler on the back of the hand and he would get that sometimes he would get detention he hated detention but he didn't care if he got the ruler because it was quick he didn't really care and it was over and done with like and i'm not saying that that's how it works in dog training but it's like it's it's how the animal perceives it and there's a lot of situations where you know um like my my melon one who i didn't mention comes from um ben gertz of kaisen canine who had you had you out in 2019 what's where my mail comes from nice but for her if i if i give her two pieces of kibble because her sip was a bit slow she looks like she's gonna like bite me in the face like if i stop again which i don't do she would be so angry you know what i mean and i don't use many corrects because she's quite sensitive but i know when she's in drive and stuff a little correction is really just communication to her but if it's restriction she's she's mad when i when i did my bh in um april it was the only time i did the full routine and she didn't get the ball at some stage and she loves her ball and i was really looking forward to the end when you sit down when the judge is giving you communication and and you love on your dog because you know i see everybody do that i'm like oh it's going to be such a great photo that's going to be such a great memory um we got to the end of the routine she's such an affectionate dog so i was so surprised we got to the end of the routine and i was trying to give her affection and she looked at me like you because she hadn't had her ball and she's like did you forget something like you didn't see it and i was like she was mad she was literally mad at me she wouldn't even let me pat her you know i took her we had a we had a game after we we left the field that to her is the worst thing in the world like when people need to start or need to stop us making these assumptions and these comparisons to human children and and all those kinds of kinds of things um i think dr melanie is talking about that

quite a lot at the moment how the the perceives pain like it doesn't have to be physical and restriction which can happen a lot like a lot of my clients their dogs would have been so heavily restricted without some kind of aversive management or some kind of punishment or negative reinforcement that they would have a much lower quality of life and so would their owner from the guilt that they would feel you know that is the reality but unless people start being curious um i think it's i don't know i think it's getting a little better but at the same time i think it's getting a little worse it's definitely gone up a a notch in the last few years um like you universally or in australia uh universal universally i mean we we see it here the extremism here as well we're in an interesting situation with the states where prong collars or e-collars aren't banned you can't walk into shops and buy tools like that like you cannot get them over the counter you can only buy them online um and it's usually quite difficult to get them like you still get some of the cheap amazon collars so if i'm out and about and i see a dog on a prong collar or an e-collar that dog is almost certainly being trained by a professional trainer whereas i know in the states it's probably not so much like that you know because i think the access is so much easier so in a way australia is doing it right it's difficult to get these tools and you can generally only get them through trainers but they still want to ban them there's no abuse cases on file here with prong collars or e-collars it's just it's just propaganda yeah i don't i don't think this makes difference honestly uh um like i my experience over the years like especially with electric colors because that that's always a kind of ongoing conversation of well they shouldn't be like you cannot go just to the pet store and buy one um and i've i've gone back and forth with this a lot but lately i i'm you know like when i think throughout all the time when a client comes to me and and people don't know but i do have a pet training business like i i do it because i like it and i take cases i can afford to take cases that are interesting to me but i've i've done pet dog training for like really since the 90s early 90s you know like like a legit pet training business and very rarely like most of the times somebody's gonna come and they have a problem whatever the problem is and they have went to the pet store and they have bought a electric collar but they are shitless scared to try it on their own and even when they're with a

professional trainer they're still extremely careful and reluctant i'm talking the the majority of the people that come of course there is some dumb ass that that will do dumb shit nothing we cannot do nothing about them like we just have to accept that we cannot do nothing about them unfortunately you know with social media they they can be seen and and something can happen right right but but as a rule of thumb the pet owner that goes and buys a electric collar from a pet store they're not just putting it on and starting to play like with a remote control car they're they love their dogs and they they really are doing it because but what you know so anyway that that's kind of my experience with and as i said i go back and forth with that and then and i mean i i i cringe more when i see a client hasn't worked with a trainer on my assessment form and i say what tool do you work your dog on walk your dog on and they say slip lead i create more about that than if i see prong collar because i know that's way more dangerous but but slip leads come in pretty colors so that's okay you know yeah like they're the most dangerous tool there is they're probably my favorite tool because i think they can be used so subtly um i rarely use prong collars and e-collars not because i don't want to i just don't have the the kind of cases that often need um that and generally we're just using a slip leash sometimes we're using a harness you know right um it's just and i always say to people with clients like if they're like oh gosh you know they look so wolf warm like if you if you had seen if you saw a prong collar for the first time and didn't cringe what's wrong with you but that's the problem nobody takes a step further than that and investigates um them you know i'm i advocate for tools and e-collars and prong collars and people say to me well you're lazy if that's all you use i haven't done a single e-collar program this year i keep my skills up but i will die on the hill of like there are some dogs and people think oh you've been so um sensationalist sensationalist i'll die on the hill that they do save lives and they can improve welfare and i think just that just cannot compute to some people but i'm like come and see come and see and you will see that you know dogs aren't shut down and having to wear collars for their entire life why because of clear contingencies and clarity and training that's why just like just like everything else this is the next study i'm kind of planning to do with with some different people

that it's really strictly focused on ethics welfare and it's not a comparison that like like the whole idea of comparison force free to uh any form of aversive it's just no point of that that it's not the point um if if force free works great if it doesn't work is there another option probably yes um are you willing to try well that's up to you but as i was saying earlier i mean control is control positive or negative you know it's control behavior and what is really just mind-boggling is that we present aversive dog training equipment as humane and not aversive like we're just flat out lying to each other and i don't think we're lying to each other i think everybody understands that they are aversive tools but we have to have that facade that they are not and that doesn't help either no it doesn't that that's just as shitty as as the the electrical or trainers that tell you that oh we're just tickling the dog and he doesn't feel nothing and it's it's pretty much the same kind of like like why cannot be honest conversation i mean what is a gentle about the gentle leader it's an aversive control yeah oh no no it's it's management right which is also another problem because which one is better to actually train the dog not to pull or manage it for the rest of its life like and if you need like what is the pros and cons what is the cost and benefit exactly exactly and i use head collars sometimes i use most tools like here and there head collars in if i've got a sensitive dog or i'm worried about the dog being stressed head collars are usually the last tool i would i would reach for but they i think every tool i i have so many people say you shouldn't use those tools you should just use a head collar and i'm like how do they function like what is the function of how they work and they're like oh they just manage the dog better and i'm like what is the function it's negative reinforcement and some dogs really struggle to accept them and that's a highly aversive situation and they're like oh well i can't believe you're not using head collars but you'll use prom collars and i'm like oh i use them i'm just honest about how they work like i don't need to say something as management you know what i mean i can say yeah i'm going to use this because i want to incorporate positive punishment into this training program to stop that behavior and they and that they you know say well you know that and for people that say oh e-collars don't hurt they tickle you know physical punishment is meant to be aversive that's kind of the point right it's how it affects an animal long term that's the

question i mean that's one thing in the life i don't know if it's in the life model or if it's in a welfare paper that i read talking about good welfare is measured from during and after the training process but i'm like but sometimes training is stressful even if it's positive reinforcement it's long-term quality of life you know that's what we need to measure we need more longer-term studies that aren't shielded 2004. Yeah unless you take cost and benefit under consideration you you're unfair in your judgment you're very unfair yeah i i put that to dr eduardo because i said to him um it's it's a little bit like you know cars are contributing to the climate crisis um well we should ban cars but i'm like well maybe we should find other alternatives of research and see if we really can find a better alternative before we ban that thing because we don't like something about it and i think that's exactly what's happening in dog training and i put put that to him at the moment we know ecolors can be effective and we can see that in the field every day um do all the research find the find the alternative methods and find that they're effective and have higher welfare if that's what you want to do but isn't there an argument that we shouldn't get rid of some one thing until we find an effective alternative and just wasn't interested in hearing it because of the welfare concerns you know right but their claim is that they they have found the alternative and it works and it's superior and and this is the problem that we are you know faced with and then you list the lincoln study is proof right come on you know like going back to even the lincoln study like he is proof right now and he again like because i've been trying for so long to talk to dr mills there was a and he has said this few times in different occasions that he he doesn't argue about electric fences he argues about electric colors and the argument is that well because of the human error right and you know it's a shitty argument and even if that's your argument the argument then at least be very open about it don't try to make a phony study that proves nothing i mean i'm sorry that i'm so direct about it but but it is a really just just nonsense that nobody knows what happened unless you really try to dig in and try to find some pictures and like snippets of videos to actually understand what was going on the whole force-free community swears by it and they truly believe that this is the answer they have the

answer but then when it comes to demonstrate it it's not there and it's the same with dog training with with competitions are there any great force-free trainers that do protection sports yes are they winning consistently no and i think the argument there will always be oh well you don't need to use aversives for sport it doesn't matter if you don't win so much but but if the if you're not progressing and successful and your dog's not doing well then you probably won't do it as much and then you've got a dog that isn't being involved in that sport that they love so much like just because you use a minimal aversive amount in sport doesn't mean that the dog's terrified to walk on the sport field that's what they want to argue with um i really like the analogy that you give with the hot hands like it's part of a it's part of a game it's if it's clear and you understand it it's not going to cause long-term issues and you can both get on with enjoying the game um with the rules like um most games are the most interesting games are there is an aversive element to it most interesting games and then there is the extreme there's this thrill seeking kind of there's people and dogs and animals that are genetically wired to seek it because there is a a very different satisfaction just like just like you know we watched a few days ago ufc fights i mean some people want to be punched in the face this is just what they enjoy and it's not for everybody and go go and treat that person without aversives he will find a way to get what they need and typically he will end up in a what in some street fights and go to jail and so on and you know instead of having a much healthier outlet that satisfies that generic predisposition and then that this is again the problem with the positive reinforcement ideology that one size fits all it's like no again some people like to be punched in the face some people like to do ice skating and some people just want to watch tv and eat potato chips all day long and there is nothing you can do to change neither one of those and yeah i'm pretty convinced and i have um i i'm working on a new presentation about this that um um it should be very interesting but the the competitions are one of the most cool things that we have as a dog training industry for for so many reasons even how do you how does anybody can say that trainer is better than that trainer what is it but well he's been paying taxes on his business for 30 years so he must be a good trainer because he didn't go out of business is that a criteria

or oh he was working much harder cases than that other trainer well how how can we compare which case is harder that's true or there's nothing of subs not nothing like competition gives you this format it's like no we we we have a certain thing that we all gonna do under the same conditions and we can see who's doing it better who is more effective in the training what is the emotional state of the dog and so on and so on and so on um i and and so that that's kind of what i'm saying with having a study and man i almost want to start talking about surveys because that's another can of worms that's just so horrible i mean that that whole avs beating the the their missions position training statement and and on there the bottom of the page they're just giving the you know the four studies and then four more studies that are citing these four studies and then few surveys and this is basically this is overriding the all the behavior and all animal learning and psychology theory that we have for 100 years i know i'm with you i i get so every day i get so frustrated i'm not at the point where i'm at burnout yet well i can't handle it anymore i'll still get into the comments and argue about it um because i know once you ask them certain questions they can't answer you like it always hits a wall um one of one of my mentors said years ago the force free extremists are so angry because they know they don't have as much control and they get angry and i'm like sometimes i think that's what it is they just and i also think that it comes down to people and personalities of some people just want an enemy to make themselves better about themselves social media is a perfect opportunity for for all this fighting too yeah um yeah but there is no like like for me really like i'm so in peace with like i i have no reason to try to convince somebody that has no idea how to train dogs even even i don't know like like they're like most people that are talking very loud on social media and most people that are involved in the studies and the research they're not dog trainers or they're very very poor dog trainers they have zero skills to do any anything of value um likes followers i don't i really don't care i'm old enough that i just don't give a shit about likes and followers i need to see something that you can really do with a dog not not take a clip out of 200 tries and give me 10 seconds of something insanely cool i mean very good but that's not what what dog training is about um and and as i said there is ways that we can compare

high level dog training we know what high level dog training means and there is no not one person that comes to mind from the force-free extremist people that it's even remotely close to being a good trainer that has proven to be a good trainer that's part of it they they find a way to be relevant in their community by fighting against the evil balance trainers i think there's a strong negative correlation with how extreme you are and how little dog training you show yeah like if your training is so good why are you talking about mine all the time right talk about yours what do you do like you know like the moment you show that you're better everybody looks up to you people people can tell yeah it's a but this is this is really again where i am and and i kind of learned this from i started to mimic some other trainers in in trainers that i know i'm like yeah there is no absolutely no reason for me to waste my time to try to argue or convince or just just do anything with somebody that is very happy on a keyboard that cannot train dogs and there are many of them oh yeah and and and when i realized that they cannot like the the one of the reasons that i was you know in the last few years trying to talk to them was because i really believe that we can come together we can have some unity and we can you know accept who we are and accept that we all have ultimately the same interests to have happy healthy dogs that are not abused um but then but that's not the case and they they the moment you know i know in the states they cannot do much as loud as they are there is a very big opposition to them uh and that they just cannot prevail they absolutely cannot prevail i'm certain of that so what's the point of of wasting time um and having said that just like you said i have plenty of people that train force free and i really love it because i like how they think i like how they try to problem solve i like even their frustration where they're like damn i wish i i i would so like correct him right now but but i'm not going to you know because that's my part and you know you appreciate that you appreciate it right i respect that of course if you've got a dog and the only way you can give it um freedom is you take you drive further and you have a long line and it's 15 meters or whatever and your dog's getting fulfilled and you just don't ethically want to use an e-collar i have nothing yeah i'm no problem with that if your dog's needs are being met and they're getting to live a good life with you it's

it's that's unfortunately i find that's quite rare i think i think a lot of force free training techniques are great i want to learn them all and i want to be as good at them as any force free trainer because i think they're so valuable and they're the foundation of everything that i do but that's not everything you know and i think that's what people really need to understand and when i when i argue with these people in the comments and stuff i know i'm not going to convince them but i want other people to see like if they say something and they go oh yeah they might be right they can see that i've said well no that's not actually the way it is no i encourage you to keep going i think it's it's it's my toxic trait it's a good thing to do no seriously i i encourage you to keep going with it um you know going back to i just thought for a second about the errorless learning and and as much as i speak against it the errorless learning is a principle in your head when you're creating a training plan then your trial and error learning becomes extremely effective just because the errors are minimized because of the way you're thinking about creating the plan and and setting the criterias of the training plan um so so you know i'm you know as much as i'm talking against that i'm not against sure in in this pure form of no i hate this this not good idea i just there their limitations but they are benefits and the benefits again is the you know if you if you start to think of any any dog training as far as how could i create errorless or close to errorless learning in your training plan and how you raise the criteria or come down then whenever there is an error it will be very effective the the whole learning process right so yeah i um sometimes people think it's all i'm so against that and it's just like if i if if i walk into a room and they blindfold me and i have a choice to play hot and cold or only hot i'm playing hot and cold and if you choose to play hot good for you but i'm not like there's no reason for it regardless of of how far the game goes i'm playing you know i need to know and that's trial and error in in very simple form it's interesting so what are you well let's change the subject a little bit what are you doing with your dog like what are you training with amali um we we did our bh in april so funny thing is i almost a few weeks before because she's had a couple of foot injuries and and i've been busy and i've been kind of in and out of training but um when ben gert said at the beginning of the year you had to put on the board what if you were going

to do your bh or whatever and i was like oh now i really have to commit that's good i really i really appreciated that having goals that's good exactly and that little push was helpful and i thought and this was in february and i thought there's no way there's no way i'm ever going to get there and within two two weeks out i almost pulled out of it because i thought i'm not going to be able to do it and we got best bh on the day and it just goes to show like you don't know you know how you're going to go but she's had she's had another couple of foot injuries so whip she's got this term off but we'll start in the new year and i put myself down for um igp obedience one she's not ready for protection and and nobody likes doing tracking but i do need to get in i do need to get into that but ben keeps saying you'll learn to you'll learn to love tracking you'll learn to love tracking so i'm waiting for that to kick in but it's it's i i don't want to even say it's discouraging like i i mean at least from what i remember tracking is it's pretty hard the conditions in in where you guys are you know yeah we get all the ants and right it's very similar to florida i didn't know if you knew that ben got um national champion at the nationals like this year with his dog stand oh wow no no i have i i kind of i'm not good at keeping track of everything like one thing lately that got my attention and it was on your facebook page i think or instagram and it was about the wild dogs and the dingos all right yeah what tell me a little bit more about this because i'm like one of my obsessions is stray dogs and wild dogs and like uh uh like like this stuff is very interesting to me and and i can't remember exactly the post i was like oh i need to go back to this because there was some link but then somehow of course social media takes your mind away i'll send it to you i'm not i'm not an expert on the topic but from from what i i mean that post was there i think there's a stat i'm not sure if it's western australia but you know how vast australia is there's such big areas there's a station somewhere and i think they actually do accommodation and they had a couple of dingoes that come and go that they know quite well by name but the area that they're in um um dingoes are legally allowed to be hunted because i think they're considered that um i don't know the legislation or the laws in australia and i could be wrong so if some if i'm wrong somebody correct me but um that they designate dingoes as feral dogs and that means

that they can be killed and these two dingoes that will come and go from the station were killed by hunters and the the state people i think they found them because they didn't see them for a few days and they were just devastated so there's this big push to to redefine dingoes which i think they used to be did some dna some testing right there's actually some new research going on in sydney i looked it up the other day and i think it's just a research grant that's just been approved and they're only just starting the research and they're really deep diving into um i'm not good with genetics the genomes or whatever it all is because they they are a unique species i think they're meant to be the only domesticated dog that when came into australia um became wild again and i think that's what makes them unique but the argument is they don't um they don't damage the environment or the ecosystem because what they do kill and and what they do interesting fundamentally like damaging livestock populations or anything like that like they they keep a balance and that's what they and that's what they're not recognized as at the moment so i think there's a lot of research going into that because um yeah i i don't know all the details about it i think they were defined as one thing and now they've been redefined and now they're trying to define them back with proper um research but they're they're really interesting really interesting how how often do you see them do you like if you go out and about do you do you get to see them or no no no i mean not unless i'm i'm near perth which is you know the biggest city in western australia so you're not going to see no you're not going to see wild dingoes around here i've had a couple of clients that have that have had dingoes which were really interesting to train they were actually more biddable than i expected them to be but they they had a decent prey drive on them though but um but yeah no you you'd have to go out and um i've never seen a dingo and i probably never would unless i went to the right areas i think you have to be pretty far tell you the funny story we i mean i because i think at the time you know when i was there and somehow i don't know if i i i really talked about it but it became apparent that i wanted to see them so we we we ended up at the zoo or some animal park but i was happy even with that you know yeah they're pretty cool like to me it was more important to see dingos than the any of the kangaroos or koalas or anything like that that looks like no i gotta see the dingos when one of my mentors was

out from um canada doing a seminar here all he wanted to see was working kelpies so we went out i didn't think of that but that's amazing animal what was really interesting to me when we did that was i knew we were going and they bred kelpies as well and i knew we were going to see like proper working line working kelpies and we were going to see them work oh you're gonna make me want to go back to australia come back but um what was really cool was i kind of got there expecting to see all these really energetic working dogs and everything and they had like um about five or six kelpies just on chains and the shade and stuff they were so chill and they were so social and so polite and and it really which i know anyway but it really just hit me like god these dogs are so fulfilled you know what i mean they can chill and they're not frustrated and but as soon as the like the hand or the farmer came to get them were just on yes running across the sheep and it was just so cool so cool to see a dog working like it's supposed to work yeah you're talking about this just reminds me of uh all of my experience with sled dogs they act exactly the same way they would be just look like the laziest dog just staying in the sun not even curled just like spread out and getting all the sun and whatever is happening they don't care they're just laying down 50 of them and the moment they start to bring any dog equipment to set up a sled it becomes a madness everywhere and and and there is this insane joy when they do what they are selected and bred to do it it's like so amazing and and what you're talking it just reminds me of exactly the same interest on different uh um dogs are the breath for different purposes but kelp is i mean they they they can do any livestock i mean they they are very hardy dogs right they are when when you train the when i when i train ones in the home it's it's a real shame but i think the genetics and stuff you see a lot of weak genetics like in the kind of more companion dog kelpies a lot of really fearful kelpies yeah out of the healers and the border collies and the kelpies i'd say i see more fearful kelpies than any of those other breeds healers are usually pretty robust because not a lot of people get healers and they're pretty tough dogs um border collies are kind of hit and miss nothing worse than a human aggressive healer because they will redirect on you so quick never see it coming you never see it coming i love them and i've worked with some incredible healers and there's something really special about them a lot of people call them redneck malinois and i think

that's so fitting yeah yeah yeah but um but yeah when when i see one that's human aggressive i'm like oh man i'm gonna i'm gonna get tagged if i'm not if i'm not careful yeah but it's a real and that's why it was so surprising to see those kelpies that day because i'd never seen kelpies that balanced before which is such a shame you know but i'm i'm kind of squeamish i don't like seeing animals supper or animals be cured or anything like that but but i must admit i really love watching like the english terrier videos when they when they lift their haystacks and all the terriers going and get the rats or they're overturning the dirt because they just love it and they're so quick and they're so efficient you know if i had a terrier i'd totally go ratting with it i think it'd be cool this is so funny i'm not going to pick up the rats somebody has to pick up the rats afterwards this is so funny we just did this like i have one of my trainers here she has two and and of course we have dog food we have kennel and so there was a bunch of rats kind of starting to hang around and and this morning we let the little guy out and he just caught four oh wow like like just you know when they know what they're doing i mean you know there was a moment where we had to he went under a deck that kind of like a real labyrinth under there like he he was gonna get lost so we had to try to dig him out and he doesn't want to come out but that's the drives and the the genetic makeup you know they they know exactly what they're doing and yeah they're little killers i've had i've had clients with some really cool little um australian terriers and beautifully bred dogs and the client wasn't really up to speed on what they had on their hands and he was just a little puppy but he was one of those dogs with the client was like oh my god this dog's so full on and i'm just like this dog is awesome like he's got everything you want all the drive all the confidence you know everything um and she was like oh i just you know want to be able to walk him and i'll do what he needs with all that kind of stuff she lived right across from a wildlife area with no fences and we're all these like little baby ducks and stuff and i'm like you need to be on top of this dog's training but he might be little he's a little killer like you're gonna have to be on top of this dog and i think she really got it by the end of the program but god he was a cool dog he's one of those dogs i would have just totally taken home but to anybody else he was just a terror

because he just wanted to go go go all the time the beautiful little dog i totally you know that reminds me of something like about another ongoing conversation when when when a pet owner has a dog and the dog has a problem and then somebody that has the same breed and it's like oh no my dog is good and it's good because it's my training approach and it's because i raised it right and and that that happens so often when it's like well you don't need this kind of training you don't need this kind of tool you my dog doesn't need it it's like it's great that your dog doesn't need it but but those are so different they can even even leader mates are you know one can be way more twitchy than another one one can be way more pronounced you know predation instincts and and the other one can just walk around squirrels all day long and not care and and you you have to take under consideration their individual makeup you know and when people say that it's like i don't know why you use those tools i've never had to to use them and i'm like do you like walking to cancer wards and say why are you here i've never had cancer like right right they are very much the same it's not about you i've done this i've had this i've had dogs for 30 years it's but it's not everything's about you like there are different people with different needs and different dogs it's just yeah ignorance i don't want to go back down that rabbit hole right do you have one of the bands because i've got to get ready for this workshop yeah i'm gonna kind of check that one out too um tell me about just just really quickly are there any bands as far as dog breeds in in australia uh yeah we've got the american pitbull terrier is banned and has been banned since the 80s i think and what does that mean you cannot breed or you cannot own or or like i mean i think when the band came in you just couldn't breed or bring any into the country i i think you'd be pretty hard pressed to find an american american pitbull terrier here but i've trained some dogs that i'm pretty sure there's some in them but you can't breed them and you can't import them so they're just trying to breed them out i think queensland has just banned or wants to ban um oh i'd have to look it up but the pressican area i think is banned here the dogo was it dogo argentino okay the the typical cases do you have the eggs bullies how the uk has the problem with that or not yeah not not yet but they're probably they're probably we don't send to see i mean the uk has got some issues like you know um to be fair we're not seeing it here i'm seeing a lot of um

clients that i do have i've had two or three in the last six months that have got excel bullies they said people are starting to be mean to them and crossing the road and not wanting them to come into the park and which is so sad you know but yeah no we don't have a we're having a bit of a spike in dog attacks loose dog attacks and stuff and it's always convenient that they only mention the breed if it's a bully breed otherwise they don't mention the breed at all which is really frustrating so queensland is is pushing to ban breeds what's really interesting about that is um pdta um was in a discussion like a zoom discussion with the queensland government and we were in the discussion with the ava which is the australian veterinary association and the rspca and do you know what we all agreed we all gave the opinion that it's not about it's not about the breeds it's about education it's about breeding practices it's about proper containment and training and we all agreed and that's awesome i don't think i was in that one i think um our president was in it and afterwards it was like wow like we just had a conversation with the bridge but you know what the government did they're going to ban the breeds because they don't want to hear that it's because that's too much work education and breeding legislation and stuff it's so much easier to be viewed as these dogs are dangerous let's ban them all and we know that doesn't work it doesn't work because that's not the main problem and a lot of times politicians do that just to just to look good of course for for for for you know what the people want they want to get voted in again right right yeah right jackie that was cool conversation um thank you what was the topic you're gonna cover on that conference it was very cool catchy title that you had it's um i can't even remember i keep saying misconceptions but that's not the actual title it's um myths and navigating truths in um the dog training industry yeah we're gonna we're gonna go through research and stuff i actually wanted to ask you if you'd mind if i use one of your e-collar games because i want to um kind of go through that and kind of absolutely absolutely yeah because i heard you talk about them i thought that might make it fun because otherwise it might be a bit dry but we're gonna we're gonna cover yeah it's called beyond meets navigating truths in dog training yeah very cool one flying out to melbourne tomorrow so we'll see how that goes now it's gonna be fun i mean it's so so is it gonna be streamed or or is it just in person it's an in-person one but i just don't know

how it's gonna go because i've never done anything like this before and i want to make sure it's fun but if it goes well we i might do something live or um i might break it down now i've never done anything but i've never done anything like this before and i want to make sure it's fun but if it goes well we i be streamed or or is it just in person it's an in-person one but i just don't know how it's going to go because i've never done anything like this before and i want to make sure it's fun but if it goes well we i might do something live or um i might break it down into like smaller sections um and maybe so if i give you a an advice at least for yourself you should make a video for yourself at least that it's of decent quality you know i've got my dslr i could take i just don't know how much memory stick i've got because it's an eight hour seminar it's worth making those recordings it's and it's not hard nowadays so i don't know send me a cinematographer that'd be great yeah well thank you for doing this one and and hopefully we we stay in touch and we keep uh because it's interesting like like on on a side when we talk about all this you know yeah um it's very um you know it kind of energizes me and it's always always interesting conversations that we have the opportunity to rant because i have to hold it in yeah jackie thank you and uh enjoy the rest of the day thank you i'll chat soon yes take care