에피소드 19 - 시스템 없는 시스템, NePoPo®

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uh everything about how our dog is motivated and different ways and then developing in that instance for that dog developing a system particularly for that dog specifically for that dog yeah so that you're going to get to the fastest result that the dog understands and that that you can be successful with right the thing yeah exactly and the thing i like about napopo is when you when you learn and again before um it got too big to control like for bart and michael like they were teaching gold schools like every week of the year um before we got to that point they were they really designed it so that um napopo is designed for the trainer to consider three parties right you need to consider the dog and its needs where does the dog's behavior need to go what are the goals for the dog's behavior what are the goals for the owner's behavior what are the goals for the owner what does the go the the owner expect from the dog and then what is the trainer training for like realistically because sometimes what the dog needs and what the owner needs are kind of at odds with each other and so it's the trainer's job to kind of bring those together but with napopo you are given the opportunity uh you're given the information that will allow you to find the the sweet spot where everyone's in harmony with each other right and like you said it's not cookie cutter because if if you were to approach it the same way for every dog obviously like outcomes are going to be different some dogs would turn out really really really strong really flashy other dogs would turn out like really kind of like crazy or have different outcomes if you just ran through the same program yeah and that's the thing that's what we always like multiple schools we've gone to you've gone to multiple i've gone to multiple it was always always knowing if both sides to what you're doing right so if i give a food reward i have to know what happens if i give it as a jackpot and what happens if i give it as a one piece of kibble say and those two things are two separate outcomes when it comes to the dog and you have to decide which one is going to benefit like you said the dog as well as the owner when you're training somebody else's dog yeah because if you know if you motivate the dog so it's always like high energy when it's doing things and then you have an owner that can't handle that then that's it's useless for the owner right if the owner can't handle a high energy dog now you have to train in a way where the dog won't be super motivated in that like get really excited which as one would say you know the communistic reward

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by one so whatever the dog does the reward is going to be the same it's one piece one piece one piece one piece so that they do the things we want them to do but they're not overly excited about doing them right right so that they're not as far as handling goes over the top you know yeah definitely so what is it about the gold school that i mean what does it add to someone's because i mean you know you have the in-person silver school you have the online silver school why would you go through any of the silver school programs and not continue on to gold like for me i feel like you've already said i'm committing myself to learning right why would you stop yourself short i feel like there's so much that's to be gained but it seems like what what do you think people benefit most from by going to gold school once they've accomplished or completed their silver program um well it's when the the hands-on and seeing how things are done gives you insights and gives you like it gives you different ways to think of the theory right and applying the theory that's that's the part i think you miss from just doing the silver is that different ways to apply the theory for different dogs is what the girl school is is all about for me that's you know yeah and another way to put that and because this was a comment from our student last week he said i i didn't know how far to go in this exercise i didn't know how far was far enough with reward with pressure with anything that's relative to the system and for me like looking back on my own experience being able to sit there and have bart and michael coach me like where myself maybe if i if i was in a situation where i'm correcting behavior or you know building certain outcomes maybe my natural tendency would have been to stop at a certain point thinking that would be enough but having the expert eyes of you know bart and michael they're like literally heads over my shoulder saying no keep going or no do more or pay more or pay less or you know whatever that is that's the value because yes while silver will instruct you on the outcome and the road to get there it's not going to tell you exactly the dosage that is necessary to like be efficient in getting the outcome you want right yeah and that's the thing is when we're trying like for me when i first went to silver and i started applying it those were the questions like is this if i keep going down this path is that going to be what i'm looking for right but then when you go to gold and you have somebody who

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has experience with you know napalp for a while then you you can ask those questions and they can tell you yeah you're on the right track or no you need to change this or i've done this before and it didn't work that way you need to do it differently right and that was the thing that um all my questions were always about that is am i on the right track because i knew what the theory said but until you put it into into you know motion on a with a dog and you start using the the the training that you've learned the theory you don't know what a dog's going to do and that's the thing when you have people that you're learning from that have been there before that's the the the whole thing with gold and the benefit of going to gold is that they can show you what to do and why you should do it right yeah and it and another way the another thing that comes to mind is they can tell you when a good idea has become a bad idea or a bad idea becomes a good idea right and the cases where that is valid is for example you start like you have a plan for a dog maybe you bring a dog out and he is you know showing you a certain behavior that you want to diminish right we want to work on extinguishing that behavior well a system would tell you to do certain things to extinguish behavior right but the qualitative component of dog training is that there's a real-time feedback loop from the dog to the trainer right and if the dog maybe comes in showing a certain type of body language that makes you feel like hey this particular route is going to be a good option for him and then once you get going down that route the dog's behavior changes and you don't have the eyes to see that that is happening because you're so busy pulling all these levers and trying to do what the the theory tells you to do you need that those those eyes to be able to help point out and be like oh whoa let's let's maybe take a detour or pause or like let's rethink our initial plan because i'm like we're seeing something different from the dog and i think that that was exactly the case so rocky which is the dog we kind of mentioned earlier rocky was this really unique dog and he threw several curveballs at us right he like the first time we brought him in he i thought i had him you know like figured out teed up and boom everything he was throwing us was curveballs right yeah and even to even to even into the middle of the week right he was still throwing curveballs even after a couple days of having him training out and multiple times like i was still

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getting curveballs from this dog i'm like whoa i completely misread that but at least have the eyes to see that we can make the course corrections yeah i mean i think the when especially when you're starting out in training you you're you need that guidance to know that what you're doing is is the right thing to do right or if you need to change it um but yeah that's right i mean if you know how i like to experiment with everything and we've spoken you know numerous times when i was trying different things uh and i think that's the value of having somebody saying hey i tried that and this was the outcome which is what i remember like you know michael bart they're always saying yeah i i've done that right and this is why and what was the value was this is why you shouldn't do it or this is why you should do it but in the you know depending on the context um i think the reason a system or a systematic approach to training a dog is so popular or in demand is because there's a lot of people that don't have that experience the number of dogs under their belt to give them that uh prescriptive oh do this do this do this they need to rely on like they need to rely on an order of operations right like okay you accomplish this check that off move on to the next thing check it off and then continue down that list i think that's what like what appeals to so many people about systems right and there's a lot of systems out there every every big name dog trainer has a system attached to their name but the better you become the the less you are glued to a system because it becomes more about the art of dog training and you're now like piecing things together and you know you're mixing and matching and and uh especially when you have to deal with the hard cases like the the cases of dogs that are on the fringe of either spectrum you know you find yourself needing to be more experimental yeah well see i always like that at the beginning like when i first started training i wanted to know like i wanted to have like one do this two do that three do that third do that right uh then the more i worked you know especially after i learned napole and the more i worked with it i was realizing it wasn't a straight path it's that you were always coming to to as the dog was learning and i was you're teaching different things and you were you know coming to different situations it was always a split path and the thing that helped me especially with navel pro was that exactly that with knowing okay if i add pressure

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right what is the outcome going to be for this dog is it a dog that likes pressure or is a dog that doesn't like pressure you know is it a dog that if i give a few taps on the leash they're never going to want to want to be away from you know my side or is it a dog that is going to fight that and is going to want to do his own thing away from me you know and i mean i think everybody goes through that um when i just feel like navel hope gives you all those tools so that every frostwood you're coming to you know which is the best path to take you know uh and then talking about gold like there's there's nothing more valuable than hands-on having somebody there to help you because there's so many videos online there's so many things but you can't get instant feedback that's the thing about an in-person school right we spend eight nine ten hours together and there's continuous instant feedback on what you're doing you know in guidance rather than you know when you see a lot of zoom calls whatever you have a zoom call for an hour and then you have to go work on your own right but then what happens when you're working on your own you you have a question you come to a spot and you're like what should i do here now you have to wait till the next zoom call or you have to try to figure it out on your own uh but with the gold school we spent five days together you know how many hours training uh we're doing at least eight hours training but look you know a lot of times it goes over and it's always instant feedback and not just instant feedback but saying hey this is why this is not going to work right in this situation and this is why you have to go here and that's where i think like you know looking at things online and everything and um thinking about napole it's that's where i i see a lot of people think that you should always do napole meaning like the napole learning pyramid you should always add pressure and always reward right the startup but that's not the case always because we learn purple pyramid which is positive only training we learn the benefits of it the advantage of the disadvantage we learn how to give a correction in that system if you're only working in that system right we also learn the napole learning pyramid which is you know pressure and how to give to motivate and to correct only in that system yeah and then of course the napole pole learning pyramid which is everything combined but everybody not everybody a lot of people that i see they always want to jump to the napole pole learning pyramid but

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some dogs they would benefit with just the napole pyramid you know or some dogs will benefit just with the poco pyramid yeah that's like i mean it makes me think of the dog i have right now i've got a dog in training for service work for a client um from germany and just like you said i am only training this dog with the napole learning pyramid not because the dog doesn't have good food drive and the dog does get there's a lot of opportunity like we play together she loves the ball um she's got great food drive and so i'm using that you know a lot but for the majority of her program here she needs to understand napole learning pyramid because that's going to be her life as a service dog as a service dog right she's like her her handler is not going to be capable of providing constant uh reinforcement for tasks performed right she has to learn to be satisfied through the behavior which is that's one of the outcomes of napo style training if you're familiar with the napo pyramid right is where behavior becomes the ultimate reward because you're tapping into the dog's comfort drive which is arrived at through behavior yeah and that's the thing that i it at the beginning i didn't understand but it's that like the the positive only the vocal training it brings a lot of motivation but the behavior is happening in order to get the reward right or the reinforcer whereas in the naper training the behavior itself becomes the reinforcer or the right the reward so the reward is turning off the pressure and what turns off the pressure is that behavior and that's where when you hear like the positive only training like the vocal training brings a lot of motivation nickel only training also brings motivation but also brings a lot of concentration which means the dog is going to be more more say not as excited as you know that when you get with that the rush of of looking for a reward right and that's the thing is that we started out about saying you know it's a system without a system it doesn't mean just because you know the name is napo pro where it's like pressure pressure release and reward but you always have to do that well inherent in the acronym itself nay po po you can napo you can napo or you can popo right yeah the only the only thing you never do is become dyslexic and read it backwards and popo nay that's the only that's the only thing you want to not do yeah um and that's where yeah that's where um i think i used to be stuck there also i thought everything in the beginning i thought everything had to be like you know in the napel pole learning uh pyramid

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right but it's not it's you it's like brad said like salt and pepper you have to put in the right mixture so that you get the dog that you want for and like you said for that particular client right yeah you're juggling three parties goals right the dog's goals the owner's goals and then the trainer's goals and the trainer is really kind of like that middleman who's trying to bring harmony between the dog and the owner right or at least that's how i think it should be and be perceived and when you have that right it doesn't matter so much how you got there if if the owner is happy with the dog's behavior the dog is going to live a better life because of that right because the owner will treat their dog better when the dog is better behaved so if that means a flatter dog where they're not bouncing off the walls of the house and you used napo style training to get there or negative reinforcement to to keep the dogs like oh i mean the word amongst dog trainers the word flat amongst dogs trainers is kind of like it produces like sour reactions amongst dog trainers but in some cases tempered behavior is the goal right an owner won't be able to live like with a dog that is out of control so you do have to bring that behavior under rain or rain it in and when that again when the owner is happy with the dog's behavior the dog gets a better life and i believe that strongly because i've seen it and when the dog has a better life the dog is happy right dogs are adaptable and you know but it's when the owner like maybe the dog maybe maybe the trainer's like oh i'm gonna give this dog the best life and he's gonna be super jazzed and he's gonna you know be super active have tons of ignition but like that's the owner can't handle that and then the owner gets tired of nagging on the dog tired of like managing the dog they don't want to manage it all the time like that's a conversation like maybe they didn't have the dog the right dog in the first place like that's a conversation for a different time but now that owner is like man do i rehome this dog do i do this or maybe if they're completely inexperienced with a really wrong dog for them maybe something happens and now they're questioning whether the dog needs to be put down or not you know and so you really do have to consider like the the end user is the owner they're like if they're happy with the dog the dog will have a much better life than if they're unhappy with the dog fair or unfair ethical or not like that's fact of the matter yeah yeah um that's where knowing how to you know bring about that state of mind or um like you

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said the the temperament of the dog to change it so that it fits into the lifestyle of the owner you know because like we work with a rescue you know we work with a rescue here and it's just every single day somebody else is turning in a dog or looking to rehome a dog um and a lot of times it's just little things that if the dog didn't do these two things then the person could live with it and it wouldn't be you know they wouldn't be frustrated with the dog all the time and they wouldn't instead of thinking about rehoming they would think about how can i keep this dog right yeah so yeah it is frustrating with that but um that's why we keep going yeah i mean that's why we have that's why our phones ring right yeah good thoughts what else is there what do you do if the dog doesn't eat or doesn't play okay so kind of going back to systems right that's the benefit of having like the system without a system right because what happens when you get a dog from a client that doesn't fit into your system that you subscribe to and they've paid you say you take a dog and a board and train for three weeks or four weeks or whatever let's just say three weeks and they pay you for the three weeks and you're two weeks in and the dog is not responding to your systematic approach right the the protocol that you are supposed to have gone that you typically go through with a dog and you're you're looking you're staring at the finish line and you're like man we are gonna cross that finish line because you're on i mean time puts you on a conveyor belt moving towards that destination whether you're making progress or not and you're like wow uh i need more time right but the client can't give you more time because they've paid you for the outcome now like the honest thing would be to do is to like say okay well i'm going to take more time with this dog at no cost because you know i committed certain outcomes to you um in the in that sales process um and i want to make sure that you get the deliverables or or the roi that you've invested into this dog and the training that's that's the fair and the the the right thing to do but at the same time like time is money and you know and we're not talking about like the the business side of this but like we're talking about you know what happens when you get a dog that doesn't fit your program or doesn't fit your system and now you're not getting the results because the dog is not responding what are your thoughts on that mike yeah well well that's the thing is when you have a preferred way of doing things or like from what you're saying you have a system

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you have to be able like i said to pivot pretty quickly uh and still continue down that path but continue down the path but having some success right moving forward in the training the and it's not just yeah you could always ask the owner hey can i have more time but also remember they're away from their dog if you're doing a boarding train exactly that's part of their family well that adds to it they don't maybe they don't want to be away from their dog long right um but that's where like if you're training say you want to start with food and the dog is not taking food well there's certain things that you can start doing right away and just using like the navel you know navel style training where while you create that ignition you know for the food you don't necessarily have to wait if you're using like like we said like all the triangles the learning triangles you don't have to wait necessarily until the dog is taking food you know with you know ignition to start training you can start training using napo until you get that dog up to the point where you like as far as food goes right right same thing you might want to use food but then the dog is crazy for a ball so you can still keep building that food drive but in the meantime you can train using that motivation from the toy right yeah so that's the thing is not to get stuck in that one mode right don't have a system that says do this every single time but know how to pivot when that dog doesn't fit into you know what you normally do right yeah because i mean at the end of the day like i think it's it's our responsibility as trainers to to know enough and to continue to seek educating ourselves enough that if we do get a dog like that we're not at a dead end right like we can okay maybe um maybe food or toy is not his preferred reinforcer for behavior okay well i know i prefer the the i i prefer the um the picture that the dog offers when they learn and enjoy playing with food or playing with toys or you know taking food but i do have an obligation to deliver outcomes right trainers need to commit themselves to the outcomes obviously we're not talking about like being unfair to dogs or abusive here this is that's not part of the conversation right we're not advocating you know if a dog's not taking food or a toy you know jump to like abusive punitive practices to get a dog to do it and even if he did i don't think those are going to be training tools uh or training um methods that are going to get you the outcomes you're looking for but we should commit ourselves more to the outcome

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like getting a dog to sit right rather than concerning ourselves with so much like oh i need my dog to take food or i need my dog to play tug with me first right like we we should be a little bit more adaptable in our approach to training dogs yeah that's i mean that's when i when i look at a dog that's the main thing that we you know we also talked about in gold school was i'm always asking myself is the desire coming out of the dog right and that's my goal is to work towards whatever path is going to help the dog wants to do the things i want it to do you know yeah be it from free shaping or luring or adding pressure you know um any any way that the dog will want to do the things you know that that it needs to learn right yeah and motivation comes from a lot of different you know sources yeah i mean some people get a thrill and a rush of endorphins and adrenaline from avoiding or evading police right like criminal criminal behavior is like sometimes it's fueled by the rush of avoiding the police or punishment right things like that or some some people really love going to work and earning a big paycheck or some people love you know like putting in minimal effort and buying like a lottery ticket and hoping that they get the jackpot right like you know motivation can come from a lot of different sources but it can make behavior look good right different sources but also you can i mean everybody talks about that but teaching with one in one system and then enhancing the motivation in a different system and when i say system i mean like the popo napo or napo you know uh especially for depending like some dogs are so crazy for food that will they'll do anything right other dogs are so crazy for the ball they'll do anything so using whatever it is that the dog is um say crazy about and not always keeping it to one thing not always using food only or not always using toy only yeah yeah a little bit about uh kind of more about gold school too is like in gold school we review and we introduce students to specific types of equipment like what's the value of equipment and training equipment or training apparatuses in being able to train a dog well like what what value does that add well it's all usually it's about isolating behaviors um to make it easier for the dog to learn right so there's not as many things the dog has to think about uh but also it's um you know i mean as as far as like we use the box for the feeding dogs right um um

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um very you can do so many things with that in with introducing duration in the behavior teaching duration in behavior teaching uh introducing pressure from different ways um from tactile to um like tools like slip pinch e-collar um in creating ignition right with the box and desire from the dog uh uh it's it i mean you know there's videos out there of how to do the box but i think talking about just all the way different ways to use it is is key yeah well and because you hear a lot of people say oh i already know how to use the the box or the treat and train or i already use marker boards or touch pads right i've been using those for 20 years or you know like the upside down horse bowls right that the dogs come and put their paws on like that were popularized with michael ellis or you know there's a lot more to the equipment because uh not only is it like again we cover how to use it and how it benefits training and accelerates your training outcomes we also teach you how to use it safely because there are nuances to certain types of equipment like you need to be safe around things that have spring-loaded action you need to understand like how to like talk i'm specifically referencing a flex pole right like you don't want to get scraped on the face as you're trying to fasten your dog to the flex pole line so there's there's other things that come in like that that are very nuanced or just unique applications like teaching how to resolve dog aggression through the pedestal or teaching how someone would set up a scenario where the dog is going to learn that behavior unlocks the reward things like that and and that's that's like again more more to the value of going into a gold school and continuing on and the last thing i'd say about kind of circling back to the benefits of attending a gold school if you're already a silver graduate is you've already committed yourself to this path you've paid and invested in learning and there's no better opportunity to learn than to teach and completing your gold school gives you the experience and if it was a good program like you have the ability to teach aspects of the system right and and that's another aspect and way to get a return on on your learning efforts right because teaching provides another way to internalize things that you may know okay but like it helps when you when you share it with someone else it helps it solidify deeper into your mind yeah definitely well teaching always makes you better at the thing you're teaching um because you have to know it well so that you can explain it to somebody else

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right but uh but talking about the tools it's you know it's it's about how you know it's not just how how do you use the tool it's how do you introduce the tool the first time you know and why there's different ways to introduce it and why would you introduce it one way rather than another way you know or just like what happened what came up like about uh clicking away from from food right it's like just a little adjustment that you know would you have tried it or thought about it eventually yes but if you have somebody there to tell you try this then you you know you can forego all the the experimentation right and jump right to something that's going to give you the outcome you want but that's the thing that's the thing i always thought was missing from things like that is like the bunks right for me it's like when you go to drop food in the box and the food hits the back of the dog's head and falls out of the box now what do you do yeah right are you you let the dog jump out and get the food off the floor no you shouldn't but you know tiny little things you can do and you can think about when you before you start your training and be ready for so that you have the all ultimate outcome with in that session and when you're in person being in person is so so different because it's a i feel like it's a better way to learn from other people's mistakes so like for example you and i like you know we were able to share like hey i tried this and this is why it didn't work and i'm glad like this is why i wouldn't do it in this situation so students are able to pick up on that right if you're just there teaching on remotely like hey do this do this do this do this you don't really get the anecdotal side stories that drive home the points of like why you would need to avoid that method on a certain type of dog right and that's that it's those it's those anecdotes the stories from years and years of experience that i'll never attain to right i mean like bart's been training and he's gonna you know like forget more about dogs and i'll learn in my life and um but hearing those stories or the horse examples you know that michael's uh shared like things like that you don't get that when it's like just direct online training like that in-person element makes it very personal yeah yeah that's um i mean you can't read that right with anything that's why this you know the online silver the in-person silver i think is a little bit better than the online silver uh because it's in person and it it includes you know michael and bart includes other students includes

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you know gold multiplicators that have been they're using the system for a while and then the gold of course which is always in person um and again because it it's five days of minimum eight hours a day you know it's you can't help but um get better at it i'll say this too the last thing i'll say that is a stark difference between the online or a remote training program or curriculum versus an in-person curriculum is you with it with a remote or a digital curriculum you do not get the relationship with the person that you're learning from you don't build one you don't create one necessarily i have a relationship with bart and michael that allows me to call them take their calls we have shared experiences because of the in-person experiences in the classroom in the training halls that we've been in and that is almost as valuable if not more valuable than the education i got during or the curriculum i got taught during the week of training or whatever program i was involved in right is that relationship because the relationship gives you access to you know support and information and friendship and a network gets opened up to you right i mean taking taking an online course can be valuable for for knowledge alone but like napopo is a lifestyle and part of life is relationships and those for me are so valuable and that's that's the thing that i really have enjoyed and as a teacher i've enjoyed building relationships with students that have come through our programs seeing them like training dogs for diabetic alert seeing them train their own pet dogs in their pet business and then being able to maintain contact and you know keep in touch that's been amazing it's been a lot of fun yeah yeah definitely that's the one thing you won't get in a online curriculum you do not get the relationship aspect they're true cool so mike what what do you have what's your what's the next month look like for you do you have do you have dogs you're working with i know you had uh you've got a rescue reggie the large doberman uh like what what's on your uh your calendar yeah reggie's still here very nice dog very sweet yeah big doberman very big little goofy gets along with everything dogs cats people high high high food drive he would make a good uh dog that for somebody who wants to train um because he'll he'll you know he's very high food drive could be a great demo dog even for someone's business right yeah um what else oh i mean yeah i have some things but then i'm looking forward to march with uh the canine conference that is always in vegas and bart's going to be here this year and

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then right after that we're going to have a gold school which should be really really good i'm looking forward to that too yeah that'll be fun yeah right now on my end of things i'm just uh kind of business as usual you know dogs coming in dogs coming out uh from the business i personally i've got that dog the labrador being trained in service or for service for a client um i'll have her for another two and a half months um so she'll be back with me in in march for our gold school again so that'll be fun she's been fun to work with uh she'll make a great little service dog and other than that um really excited about you know just the the coming year you know it's still early in the year but thank you again everybody for tuning in if you've been on the fence or you know if you've you've been sitting on a silver school uh graduation and completion haven't really felt the urge to to go to to go to school for your gold like hopefully maybe maybe when the time is right we've been able to answer a few questions for you and maybe it makes a little bit more sense for you we'd love to hear about it if it does otherwise just keep napopoing your way through life and uh you know if there's any questions that you have or any topics you want us to discuss or shine light on as far as it relates to napopo and modern dog training or the full quadrant uh do let us know yeah also if you we can always remember we can do and um besides the in-person silver that uh michael and bart put on in missouri we can also set up a if you have not done the silver we can do a combined silver and gold um in person which is done through we we go through the online silver because you still have to pass the tests but it's in person with guidance right and then being able to stop and explain things more in detail um that might might make it easier to you know to be understood and then go right into a gold school if that's what you know the person's looking for yeah we also it that setup is really good if you need to be held accountable and you want to get through this get through the silver program um on a timeline that's a great way to do it because i know some people even myself included like i get started reading a book and i'm like man this is an amazing book but life happens and like you know here i am like six to 12 months later and i've got a stack of books that i've started that i've never finished right and so being able to go through a program where you're held accountable and making sure that you're progressing through it and completing it in a

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really good time frame um you know we help you uh stick to that so that you do knock it out and do kind of just check that box exactly all right everybody thanks again for tuning in uh we appreciate you and uh we'll be in uh we'll be in touch soon with another episode thanks guys see you all all right