트로피가 아닌 기준을 향한 훈련 | 사냥개 및 복종 훈련의 진실

capability. Can you walk us through your philosophy of training to a standard and why that's a better fit for your goals and the kind of dogs you work with? Yeah. So, we keep a breed of dog called the uh Klein Monsterlander. So, this is a German uh based breed club for this versatile hunting dog breed. And in order for those dogs to be bred, uh they have to meet a number of standards, uh health, temperament, and performancebased standards. And so, uh a lot of the training that we're doing is focused around getting these dogs to meet those performance standards in those tests in order to certify them for breeding. So that's um most of it I think is the the training that we're doing for the hunt test that we do isn't for uh ribbons and accolades so much. It's to to meet a certain bar to say that these dogs are uh doing the things that they're bred to do. They're capable of performing the work um to that standard. And then that is really just helping us evaluate those dogs from a breeding perspective. So from that side of things, uh that's why we're training to a standard. And then for the other side, just the trainer side of me, not the breeder side. Um I spent a long time hanging out in social media forums that dog trainers hang out in. And if you spend any time in there, it's like a pretty uh costic environment to be in. >> And so I think a lot of us trainers have uh really bad imposttor syndrome anyway. And so I think that standardized testing uh is a good way for me to prove to myself that I know what I'm doing. Uh you know, if I can train a dog to a certain standard, then it means I I I did a good enough job uh to be able to do that. Um we get in all these places where we're trying to like assess um you know, who's the best or what's the you know, what's the best approach or this and that. And I think when you're starting to make these qualitative assessments of those things, then you have to have >> a way of measuring that or it doesn't really mean anything. And so some people really it appeals to them that they they have the best dog in the country or the world. And for me, what I what I'm really looking at is um for the for the stuff that we do, can we take any dog, uh pet dog or hunting dog, regardless of where they're starting, and can we get them all to the same ending point where the casual observer wouldn't know which one had trouble, which one was gunshy, which one was reactive, you know, which one was fearful, those sorts of things. And so for me, just the way I measure my training, uh that's what I'm looking for, right? is to be able to meet those standards and have um a bystander

looking on at those things, not really be able to tell which dog was the one that had all the stars aligned for them correctly from the beginning and which ones were like the problem children. >> And what are some of the standards specifically or some of the tests that they do? >> Yeah, sure. So, the our breed club is associated with the JGHV. So, this is a German hunting dog testing organization that consists of um a lot of breeds. the Kleiner Monsterlander, which is the the one that we breed, and then also the Deutsch Dratars, the Deutsch Kursars, and basically a number of the German uh FCI affiliated versions of a lot of the versatile hunting dog breeds that you would see here in America. Um, so that testing system has uh these objective measures at different points in time. And then we also participate in the North American Versile Hunting Dog Association, which is another hunt test organization specifically for the Continental Pointing Breeds. Um, so these are dogs that search and point for game. They do a lot of retrieving work and some tracking things like that. And so, uh, that's another organization that we're involved in. So, I have one dog, my monster lander. Uh we completed the VGP this fall which is the highest level test in that JGHV organization that I spoke to. Um so that's a two-day test with I think 30 some odd subjects um field water and forest work a lot of obedience and things like that. Uh and then in NAVA myar also this fall just passed the invitational. So the way that testing system works is they have a utility level test and dogs that score a prize one in that test which is the highest prize that they can get. They have to do pretty well in all subjects in order to get there. Uh they get invited to go to this annual test called the invitational. And so you basically get one shot uh you prep for a year. You get one shot to go take that test uh to see if you pass. Uh and so that test uh we were able to pass that consists of brace work in the field. So that's your dog and another dog hunting in the field together where your dog needs to point birds and then also back the other dog when they're pointing. So that's basically one dog's pointing and then the other dog comes in and is kind of acknowledging that dog's point and honoring. >> Um there's a bunch of retrieving uh in that fieldwork of shot birds. Uh there's a 100 plus yard blind retrieve across water. Um there's some obedience work. Uh there's an honor by um there's an honor by the blind where basically your dog is holding a sit stay or a down stay and then a bird sort of lands in the water, splashes right in front of them

and they send another dog to retrieve that in front of your dog and they kind of have to stay still um for that piece. Healing uh other sorts of obedience like that uh gets tested as well. the standards for these dogs. Um, a lot of the a lot of the work that they're looking for is a lot of independence and all of this work is off leash. So, I think most people coming from most other dog sports would look at our obedience requirements and say they're sort of minimal comparatively. Like our healing doesn't require a lot of heavy stylization or anything like that. Just needs to be functional. I mean, that's a way for us to move our dogs from one point to the next and conserve energy. It's less about uh the aesthetic there, you know? >> Right. Yeah, I often think about simplifying it for clients with just practical obedience because most people need practical obedience, what they can use daytoday. Now, some of the requirements that you were talking about, what are some of the most challenging ones, not just for the dogs, but also the students that you teach? The obedience work seems to be the hardest thing for most of our clients. It's not hard to get dogs excited about things, particularly dogs that are, you know, genetically inclined to like live game, right? Then getting them excited about going to find birds and rabbits and whatever other stuff we're hunting for is usually not difficult. It's getting them to do that work in a way where they're being cooperative with their handler and then being obedient at times when the obedience directly conflicts with what they really want to do inside. Right? So impulse control, the same thing that everybody else >> has trouble with. It's a common conversation I have with everybody regardless of if I'm working with pet dogs or with hunting dogs, is it's all dog training. It's all the same stuff, right? We're trying to um channel drive into constructive uh activities and we're trying to make sure that we have enough impulse control that our dogs are only expressing that drive in places where it's appropriate to do so and to do it in the ways that we want. Uh, and then a lot of times we're using our obedience skills to try to put the dog in the position that they can show us their sort of genetically imparted talents. Right. So, >> that's true regardless of what kind of dog we're working with. >> And the exercise that you're talking about where the dog is sitting behind or next to the blind and then they throw something, I believe you call the the bird, throw the bird in the water and the other dog has to go retrieve it and that dog has to maintain that position.

And of course, that's a significant amount of impulse control. And that's something that's very difficult to teach that level of impulse control when there's something that's so incredibly stimulating for that dog in that moment. How do you get a dog, how do you work them up to that level? Because I think this also falls in line with people that struggle with leash reactivity. Well, their dog wants to get to or avoid something and that high arousal state is what makes it difficult for them to control their dog. >> Yeah. particularly in the hunting dog world, what I see a lot of is uh a lot of drive development um and reward-based training when dogs are young. And then at a certain point when we start trying to install some controls on the dogs, then it's a lot of pressure used to sort of suppress that stuff and correct uh for misbehavior. And I think what gets missed a lot of times uh and this is Pat Nolan is one of my favorite dog trainers and the way that he says it I think is the just the most straightforward is that if you know we only train with force uh then dogs only work when they know they they have to or when we can make them, right? And so what you see very often is as soon as electronic collars come off or other corrective leash and collar comes off, then those dogs are back to doing whatever it is that they wanted to do, uh, when we're not impeding their ability to do so. And so what I found really helpful in those situations is to make sure that I'm paying attention to classical and operate conditioning when I'm working on these things. Right? So, uh, when I say classical conditioning, what I mean is for those behaviors where I expect my dog to sort of just turn off, I use down as a sort of a postural, um, cue, I guess, that tells the dog that right now, hey, you're not going to do anything. And so over time when they have other dog when I have other dogs jumping over my dog to make those retrieves or running past my dog while my dog's holding a downstay, my dog just comes to learn that uh or I guess associate, right, that the emotional state that they have there is there's nothing here for me, so I should just kind of relax and chill out. And I think that that's a piece that gets missed a lot is just repetition um with a certain expectation can create that neutrality or lack of neutrality. So a lot of these folks, they step into those environments, a field or next to water and their dog is always getting to do something that's full of drive-re expression and independence and a lot of activity. And so spending time with my dog just saying, "Hey, every time you're in a downstay, it's going to be really

boring for you for a period of time." Right? And then the second thing is our dogs are really motivated by possession of gain, right? So like the retrieve is a really big reward for them. And so if I can give my dog what they want while they're maintaining the behavior that I'm asking for, then I found that that's really helpful. So there's a lot of times where we'll put our dogs in downs, throw marks in front of the dog, those things are splashing, whatever the case may be, and then we're retrieving those objects and bringing them back to the dog. So we would call this like rewarding the dog in place, >> um, or a room service style reward, right? And so then the dog says, "Well, I got what I wanted by kind of being lazy and just hanging out here." And so that's been really effective. Uh, and then you know at some point in that teaching phase and we have clearly delineated for my dogs down means you're not doing anything. And then when I put you in a sit it means this retrieve is for you but you don't get it until I tell you to. >> Right? Then I can take my dog after I see that they've reached that point where they're showing neutrality. They're not they're not expressing any amount of FOMO because these other dogs are getting to go complete these retrieves in front of them. Right? Then I'll heal them forward a step into a sit and then the next marks that th the next mark that gets thrown then I'll send my dog for that one. And so there's a lot of clarity there uh for me that I'm explaining using position changes um to tell the dog when something is for them and when it's not. And in my experience, when my dog knows that it's only a matter of time that they're going to get what they want, then they're happy to be patient for it. Where they have trouble with that is when there's a lack of certainty that that's going to happen. Um, and so that's worked pretty well for me and it worked really I mean it worked out for us at the invitational for sure this year. >> Well, it makes a lot of sense and it sounds like a very strategic use of positional exercises. something that I can see the average pet person finding ways to utilize that as well. And you said you would go get whatever the dog wanted and you would bring it back to them. Do you also use additional rewards as well where you're rewarding them not with the item that they want but something maybe close or equally as valuable if you're next to them or is it always I'm going to grab that item and use that to reward them because that's clearly what they want and we want them to focus on the source. Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of times in

training hunting dogs, especially when you have live game involved and you need to have a lot of extra sets of hands where we just don't have as much control over the reinforcers as you would in other situations. I mean, ultimately, if you're in a training scenario where you're holding a tug toy or you're holding the food or even if you're working with a decoy, you have some amount of communication. You say like, "Hey, um, like we're not going to give the dog this bite or whatever the case may be because they didn't do the right thing." Well, once I release a live bird from a trap, I don't really have control over what it does after that. Or, you know, when those birds are flying, maybe my dog did everything 100% correctly, and it would be really good for them to be able to get rewarded with a retrieve, but my gunners missed, right? They they weren't able to to shoot the bird. Then we keep a lot of um like dead game in our vest so that I basically have an identical object to what the dog wanted that I can deliver to them in place. And that helps in those cases where we're working on like field steadiness and I need to bring rewards back to the dog quickly because we don't have that level of impulse control yet or in cases where you have just circumstances that don't work in your favor like often happens when we're working with live game. >> Right. And it's very clear that you're consistent with your training, which of course is one of the most important principles when it comes to training and working with dogs, which help get those reliable results across a wide range of dogs. What else is at the core of that? You've spoken about it a little bit, but do you follow a very specific structured system with every dog or do you adjust the process case by case? I know the end goal is pretty consistent, but what's that process look like when you're getting different reactions or different responses from dogs? How do you adjust? >> Yeah, I think we have an obedience-based repro approach to training. So, for pretty much every dog that comes in, we're going to work on some fundamental obedience skills. Uh, and usually that just means I have a way to send my dog away from me, to call my dog back to me, to get my dog to stop moving. Right? If you look at old uh training materials from like DOS, he would call this the three-action introduction. And so we're typically teaching those things with a leash and collar. And then we'll layer electronics over top of that. Um and then we're usually using obedience to explain to the dog some abstract concepts. So I like using recall and healing as ways to not only move my dog

from one place to another, but to also control the direction my dog is facing. Right? So in heel, my dog is oriented at my side facing the same direction as me. And for my recall, they're recalling to front most often, right? So they're facing me. And so if I if I know those things and I've taught them and I've been consistent about that standard, then I can also use them to mean turn your back to this, right? So if I'm facing you away from things, then that's a way I can start communicating to a dog that they need to ignore something. And that's an abstract that's like a really difficult concept for a dog to understand. Uh but if we can start using that positioning to sort of illustrate those concepts and that's really helpful. And so we do the same thing in the fieldwork with we do that a lot with uh like reactive dogs for instance, right? So, if you're going to blow up when another dog walks by, then one of the first things that I might do is I'm going to make you face away from that dog and just kind of show you that, you know, you're you're capable of allowing a dog to pass without staring at him so much, which then, you know, gets you in your feelings and then you want to start acting inappropriate, right? So, like we'll use it there, but then I also use it to aim dogs at things, right? So in my retrieving work, then I want to be able to use my dog's position and healing to point them in the cases of where maybe we have multiple falls that my dog needs to retrieve, but they need to do that in a specific order. Then I can heal them this direction and have them go retrieve something over there and then heal them that direction and have them retrieve something over there. Right? So, um, we use these fundamental obedience skills to then build these more complex behavior chains, uh, or to illustrate these abstract concepts to dogs. >> Are there certain things that you want to see within the obedience before you start doing fieldwork with the dog? Or do you start the fieldwork right away and then you add certain things within the fieldwork based on how the dog's obedience is? So, like an example with protection, I'll take a brand new puppy out to the protection field and I'll let the puppy drag me out on a harness and then the decoy works some with a flirt pole or something like that and I'm not worried about obedience at that moment. I'm still getting the puppy on the field. Is it similar? >> Yeah, it's exactly the same. And so, again, I think all dog training is pretty similar, right? So, yeah, >> we're working with young puppies. We do a lot of uh exposure to live game. There's pretty much no rules uh there

for how that goes. We're not asking them, we're not premacking anything, right? We're not asking them to do any sort of obedience behavior in order to get access to those things. We just want them to get excited about that and for, you know, those sort of instincts to turn on. And we try to, you know, funnel them into appropriate behavior as best we can or maybe control the environment so they can't get away with developing bad habits as much as possible. But there's not really a lot of rules there. And then separately, we're building our obedience. This is particularly true like our our I guess our niche is what we call companion gun dogs. So, what I'm really looking uh for for clients are folks that they have a dog that they really want to be a member of their family. It doesn't live in a kennel in their backyard, right? It lives in their house with them, but then they also hunt with it. So, they need these two skill sets that seem to be in conflict with one another sometimes, right? They need to be good hunters and they need to be good family dogs as well. And so the way that we work on this is we keep all of the hunting stuff in hunting environments while we're teaching obedience and manners in, you know, household types environments or on pavement and things like that. And then slowly over time, we sort of blend the two. And I assume it's the same for you. When people ask me when's the right time to start using an e-collar on your dog, it's when you have to, right? when they're starting to blow off recalls and you know you you you need to be able to do off leash work but you don't have control over them the way that you need to to do that safely then that's probably a good time to start incorporating remote uh trainers into your work. Um, and then same thing with folding obedience into a lot of these places where we're working on drive expression is, you know, I need to start that when I see that I've built enough drive, right? If I have enough desire for that work and now it's starting to cause problems, then starting to feather in a little bit of control usually helps tighten stuff up pretty quickly. >> Yeah. So, you want to build that addiction right from the beginning. And since you're talking about obedience, you got started in training with rescue dogs back in 2012, dealing with all kinds of tough cases. How did that early exposure to so many different personalities and challenges affect your development as a trainer? I think when you're working with pet dogs in general, uh, you're often working with dogs that don't have as much of an inherent motivation scheme as a lot of our

working dogs do, right? Like when you have >> a dog that is a prospect for protection sports, you kind of know they like biting stuff, right? And if I pick a dog to do the stuff I do, then I know that they like game. Um, and so it makes it easier to motivate the dog to do the things that I want them to do when I have a very obvious highv value reinforcer that almost never gets old to them. Uh, and so when you're working with pet dogs, I don't think that just naturally I don't think you have as much of that in most of them. Uh but also then when you're working with the owners of those dogs, often the lifestyle has um facilitated the progressive devaluing of whatever reinforcers you had, whatever reward you could offer, right? I free feed my dog. So then that's like money growing on trees. So now money doesn't really have real value to me. And then my toys lay out all over the floor all the time. And so why would I work in exchange for playing with those things when I can just do that whenever I want? And then I get uh relentless affection from everyone around me. And so then like then even you know praise and and petting and things like that are not a thing that I'm necessarily interested in working for. And so when you in my experience working with those pet dogs, a lot of this was helping people understand that dogs are really good economists and we have to kind of help them um see things that they feel like are irrelevant to them. Uh that they have relevance and usually we have to do that by controlling access to those things. Whether you want to call this nilif or existential feeding or like well whatever terminology you want to use is fine but just kind of starting there as part of it. And then you know a lot of my background early on was less inductive training. It was definitely more compulsive training. And so I think getting very comfortable um and tactful uh with using uh negative reinforcement with compelling behavior frankly just becomes an important part of that equation if we really want to get reliability from those dogs too. And then you see the same thing in uh the hunting dog world I think is you you don't see as much hesitation for folks to put pressure on their dogs just culturally in that space. what you do see is maybe some tact missing sometimes. Uh and so I think that my my just particular journey in dog training has made it so that I can be uh relatively helpful to both of those groups of people with the parts that they have trouble with. Like sometimes these folks need to they need to show a little tough love and then these guys over here maybe uh you know adding pressure to confusion never fixes

anything. So maybe you need to teach a little better first, you know. Right. Yeah. And what's interesting is we both started in dog training around the same time, 2012. The foundation when I first started learning was more so traditional style dog training. And so it seems like you've done some similar things that I've done through my journey. Now you've taken pieces from both, as you said, modern motivational sort of styles and systems with more traditional methods. How exactly have those shaped your overall style besides being able to help both sides of the the the table or whatever analogy you want to use? And what does that look like when you're reinforcing behavior versus applying corrections? >> Yeah. So, my background, I started uh with the Keeler method of dog training. Um, which you know, you go on Amazon and you look up the book and you'll see a bunch of five star reviews and a bunch of one-star reviews. And I just kind of always try to remind people that that book was written I think it predates e-collars. And so, you know, there's a lot of stuff in there that we have uh gentler and more strategic ways to address now than maybe we did at that time. But what I did get from that methodology is a couple things. First, that this idea of training to a standard, right? Like as professional trainers, we professional people in any profession are managing time, cost, and scope. And if you can't clearly define what your scope is, >> then you're either, you know, you're setting your clients up to be disappointed or you're not able to draw clear lines to say, "Hey, I did my I did my job correctly." And so even that book used like the AKC companion dog standard as its standard for obedience. Your dog will heal off leash, recall off leash, sitting down, stay off leash for certain periods of time. and even described like uh not just the task but the conditions under which the task was expected to be performed and the standard to which the task was supposed to be performed. And so I found that that was really helpful in me articulating things to clients. If I'm speaking to a prospective client and one dog trainer is saying, "Hey, five hours of my time costs this many dollars." And then I say this many dollars gets you this objective outcome, then for a lot of people that want value for their money, then they're going to say, "Well, that you're telling me that this is what you're going to do. This is the standard you're going to meet. You're going to keep working until you get there." I think that that's just doing right by those people and then it lets me clearly articulate what it is that I'm doing. Um, the second thing

that I got from Keeler method was it had a very clear prescribed uh sequence of skills that you worked on and it had very clear milestones or checkpoints that you needed your dog to be able to complete before you could move forward in that training process. And so what it gave the novice handler was I don't care if you understand exactly why you're doing what you're doing, but let me give you this objective test and if your dog can pass it, then you've done it well. You've done your work well enough that you're ready to move forward. And if your dog can't do that, then we need to spend some more time where we are currently or else moving forward would be unfair to your dog. And so for as much as that method gets a bad rap sometimes, I think it it's pretty fair and it's pretty elegant in the way that it's sort of set out, right? So that's that's most of my background uh early on. And then uh more recently, I attended um the silver and gold schools for with Bart and Michael Bell um and their NAPO PO system. And so what I liked about that was it sort of codified a lot of the stuff that I had learned in the time that I did Keeler method and um started spending more time trying to work on um getting better at using a lot of positive reinforcement and training, right? They have just a very good structure um to their material and a way to kind of I guess a good mental model for dog training. And so that gave me just a lot clearer um and like holistic understanding of what I was doing and then a better way to sort of describe it to clients. Like earlier on when we were talking about rewarding dogs in place and the value that that has, right? The value is that it adds stability to stationary behaviors. And the cost is that you don't have as much explosiveness or that intensity in those static behaviors that you get from kind of like that bottled up energy where that dog is really wound up tight and ready to like spring into action, right? So, so understanding those things where I can basically now say to clients, okay, let's think about what we need the dog to do, but also how we want them to feel emotionally while they're doing this thing. And then we can sort of go through a flowchart of we're going to reward it like this and we're going to use pressure like this and we can make those decisions to come up with a training plan for each exercise that's specific to the use case. Right? So that's that's what I got out of that system. Uh, and I think that I don't I can't speak for everybody else, but you know, a lot of people I think everybody would say that Bart's a very good dog trainer, but what I really got out of

that was a lot I got I'm a lot better teacher uh now was before, right? So, um, and you know, he's a guy like that. Pat Nolan's like that, too. I kind of the two of those guys I think if they didn't work together a lot, then they definitely developed along parallel tracks. Um, and Pat's one of his gifts I I try to go see him whenever I can, is um, he can take very complex things, stuff that would take me many paragraphs or many minutes to articulate, and he can say more than I ever would in one sentence. You know, he's just good with being succinct and um, making very complex concepts uh, simple and accessible for people. So, I really like that, too. And kind of that's how we blended all this stuff. But I really didn't start leaning into positive reinforcement stuff as hard as I do now until I started working with the hunting dogs because when you see how uh willing these dogs are to work um for how long and how hard and through really difficult circumstances sometimes in pursuit of rewards um then I just it didn't seem like it was as necessary to use as much compulsion and training. And so now we just use that as a little bit of steering um and maybe just a little bit of stylizing things when we need to. And if I'm being very honest, at certain points when it's appropriate to create a little bit of a suppressive effect on the dog's intensity when that would be helpful for them to succeed at whatever it is they're doing. Um but I just find that that's where I'm kind of landing now more often is just blending the two. and I try to get as far as I can with reward-based training and then we kind of round it out. Definitely don't shy away from pressure. Um, and I think that one of the nice things of coming from a compulsive background is uh when you already know you can get dogs to do things like pretty consistently and then you go, "Oh, hey, and I can make them really enjoy this a lot, too." I think that's an easier progression than if you start with my dog looks like they're having a ton of fun all the time, but I don't really have great reliability. And then they just I think I think coming from that perspective, maybe again, I can't speak for those folks either, but I I just imagine that they would be worried about messing up that sort of vibe that they currently have in training uh start having to, >> you know, um put a little bit more pressure on their dog at times. >> Yeah. Yeah, and I've had a very similar evolution. So, I understand exactly what you're saying. Now, at one point, you were talking about having an objective that you're meeting for the client and then them paying for the objective, not your time.

>> Does it matter based on the dog that you're getting? Because, of course, some dogs are going to be able to go through a system significantly faster than other dogs. An example I often give is like a pug. I love pugs. They're great. They're fun. They're cute, but from my experience, they take way more reps to get it than a lot of other dogs do. So, it's going to take me longer to work a pug than it would a highly motivated golden retriever puppy or lab or something like that. >> Yeah, I think a lot of that got resolved for me when I started really uh paying attention to making sure that the rewards I had to offer dogs were valuable to them. Um, and so I think that that takes care of a lot of that. I think the second thing is is when we're speaking with clients before we uh engage in a training program with them, there is some amount of screening that's going on with these things, right? Like certain severe behavioral cases. Uh maybe we have some pre-work that we need to do before we get there. Uh I'm not doing a ton of just like out andout human aggressive dogs anymore. I'm getting old now and uh I I you know I think I'll leave that for younger trainers. >> But for most dogs that I'm working with now, I think that the pet dog training standards that we're working on that most clients are very happy with are not so lofty that they're unachievable by the vast majority of dogs that we work with. So, when I say a standard for like a companion dog client or a pet dog client, we're talking about K9 good citizen or the UKC spot test or something like that, right? I can take a dog in a board and train for a month and and they can meet that standard. >> Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I've kind of looked at it as a balance as well because if I am charging someone for an objective, well, some dogs are going to go through it very quickly and some are going to take longer, but then you're looking at the average. So hopefully the average ends up being worth the time that's committed into getting the results that you're trying to achieve with those dogs. Now, when a new client does bring you a dog, what's the first thing that you focus on? And then from there, how do you build towards advanced reliability? Do you have a phase or benchmark kind of like you mentioned before going through the programs that you've learned you like to hit before moving forward? >> Sure. Yeah. So, I well, we have a pretty uh a pretty big questionnaire that we ask folks to fill out. And what I'm really asking there is a lot of leading questions that start discussion with the client. I think especially when we're talking about companion dogs, a lot of

the issues that they experience are lifestyle things like and management issues before we even worry about getting to the training. And so we're asking questions like, do you crate your dog at night or during the day at all? Uh do you free feed your dog or not? Right? The number of people that are having uh house breaking issues, but their dog has unrestricted access to water all day is it's kind of a lot, right? So like just covering the basics there. And then I ask questions like what do you and your dog like to do together? Uh and things like that so that when we have a discussion we can start seeing are those things that you like doing and you like bringing your dog with you or are those things that you and your dog actually enjoy doing together. Right? So we can start having conversations about is the dog are the is the dog's needs being fulfilled? Right? Those sorts of things. Um, and then a lot of times the way folks talk about their dogs or they interpret problems that they have, uh, I don't think are completely accurate, but I'm always I'm always interested in hearing their perspective because I think it informs me about how they think about their dog and their relationship with their dog and why their dog is doing what they're doing. Once we get through all of that kind of stuff and we have a general training plan formulated, then I'm always starting with establishing my reinforcers. So, do I have a reward that you like enough to work for? And then can I teach you how to turn off pressure uh so that I can I can make you do things if I need to. And so, if I have positive and negative reinforcement in place, then I can start shaping or molding those different behaviors that I'm teaching. Right? And then now we're into teaching obedience skills. And then we already talked about how we build that up into, you know, complex behavior chains or teaching abstract concepts. Uh, and then obviously there's a lot of generalization and proofing that's kind of happening there too. And that's all again part of those standards that I look at. So if I'm keeping a dog for a certain period of time and I say we're doing CGC level work, then that means your dog knows the things, but there's not really that much distraction around that. I'm expecting them to reliably perform in the face of. And then when we start talking about like CGCA or CGCU that clearly defines you're walking the dog in public places through crowds, indoor spaces, those sorts of things. Well, now we're talking about a level of public access training that requires more generalization and proofing. And so again, for me, it's almost

>> it almost makes it easier to describe to the client what I'm doing with different training packages. and in the amount of time that I'm saying it's going to take me to do those things. >> And are you still working with the average pet client or are you focused primarily on gun dogs? >> We're about 5050 now. Uh and that's that's pretty quickly changing. So, we were in Baltimore City and we moved to South Central Pennsylvania about two years ago and uh this switch from our former company, Baltimore Dog Works, to Iron Oak Dog Company, which we are now, and starting to work with Hunting Dogs kind of happened at the same time. And so, we're kind of sitting right around 5050 right now. And I I do enjoy I a good dog is a good dog. And before I had these hunting dogs that I had, I had a a pit sheeperd mix and a and a blue pit. And they were fantastic dogs. They were the standard by which all other dogs I'll have will be measured. But um you know, when you leave for these trips sometimes where we're gone for weeks at a time um to have to like leave them home uh would be kind of difficult, right? But so what I'm getting at is is um nowadays I just like I like cooperative dogs that like to work. And so the sporting group of dogs, that's just my I mean that's that's what I personally enjoy spending time with. So if I could train all of just those dogs, I would be more than happy with that. Uh now for sure. >> Yeah, I feel the same way. I love working with dogs that want to work as well. new puppies. You can get them motivated, dogs that have interest in toys and high food drive. Those are always the most fun. Now, as far as all kinds of different sports, what draws you to this one specifically, or not a sport, but you know what I'm talking about, compared to other working dogs, and which aspect of their development do you personally get the most satisfaction from training? >> Yeah, so I started hunting in my mid20s. Uh, and that was around the same time that I started training dogs. And then I didn't really have enough and that was both of those things were in addition to a regular non-dog training full-time job. And so I kind of figured I didn't have enough time to have two hobbies. And so I needed to try to combine them into one. It didn't work to save me any time, that's for sure. Uh, and it certainly didn't save me any money either. Um, but you know, that's kind of how we that's kind of how we got um started with uh with the stuff that we're doing now. And so I think the the appeal of hunting with dogs just initially started because I was already doing a lot of hunting without them. Uh and I was spending a lot of times with

time with dogs outside of that. Uh now looking in hindsight, I don't know that there is a uh a more cooperative endeavor that you can engage in with a dog than hunting. I mean, I think it's like kind of literally in the like our our history together, right? It's it's like probably the first thing that we did together. And in that environment, each of us has a job that the other one can't do. So, we're usually not successful unless everybody does their job mostly right. Um, and so that's the part that I really really enjoy um a lot about that work. Uh, I like the hunt tests. Uh, as a trainer, I like those things again because I'm training to a standard. I already said I have like really bad imposttor syndrome. So, me proving to myself that I kind of know what I'm talking about is always a good ego boost for me. Um but actually going out and hunting um particularly particularly for me like native wild birds in their native environments. Um that's like my favorite thing to do with those dogs for sure. >> And it's interesting that you say the imposttor syndrome because that's something that I hear over and over again on all these different interviews. And I think it keeps us on our toes. keeps us wanting to learn, wanting to get better, wanting to continue to progress. We were talking a little bit earlier about working with clients as well, and you brought up that they want to have a pet dog, but they also want to do some of that hunting type training. What are some of the issues that you've seen when doing that combination with clients? Are there certain things that's difficult for them to separate between the two? because of course I know you can do it but often getting others that aren't professional dog trainers can be a little challenging >> I think well so the first thing is the the dog training industry for the hunting dogs has not caught up to a lot of the other environments so what you see mostly is really uh high volume but like lowpriced training right so I don't need to charge a lot if I have 40 dogs in a kennel right and they're all getting worked a couple times a week for just a little bit of time uh each time they're out. And so that's kind of the structure. But then the downside to that for a lot of these folks that I'm working with um is they don't want their dog sitting in a kennel that long and their dog doesn't live in a kennel environment at home. And so uh to have that dog maybe they're they're developing into a very good hunter because a lot of these trainers are they're very talented uh at the work they do but they're not spending time working on the domestics, right? They're

not really spending a lot of time physically handling those dogs so that they're not a nuisance at the vet or at the groomer or if they do, you know, they get thorns in them or they run into barb wire or whatever other stuff you need to do some like tailgate surgery here and there. They're not prepared for that. Uh they're not prepared for going into the kind of environments that everybody likes to take their dogs out in public as much, right? So, I think that uh there's there's a piece lacking there um just in terms of the culture of hunting dog training, particularly when you're hiring those trainers. And so, a lot of the folks that I'm working with, um younger couples, uh you know, we have a lot of clients down in like the DC, uh Northern Virginia area. Um so, they're Baltimore, right? Those places. And so they're they're they're like in metropolitan environments, but they like hunting. Um, and so they really need a dog that can balance all that stuff, right? They live in an apartment, so that dog can't be running around, bouncing off the walls, barking all day, right? Those sorts of things. Um, and they're not going to be able to get them out every day to go run 10 miles. And so just installing these two parallel skill sets becomes really important for them. Um, I think the challenge that most people have is, uh, when they talk to other folks, uh, that are training hunting dogs, the line that they get a lot is too much obedience will negatively impact the dog's hunting ability. And what I've really found is as long as we keep those things separate uh initially, right? We talked about that earlier, the drive building and drive expression and then the obedience work and the control work uh kind of happening in very separate environments uh so that we don't have any of that classically conditioned emotional response to one bleeding over into the other before we want it to. Uh that seems to help a lot. I think the other thing again is culturally in the environment that we're operating in, obedience for a lot of the hunting dog community equates to heavy compulsion, right? It's a lot of pressure use. It's a lot of suppression of drive and suppression of behavior. And so when we can talk about teaching obedience in very inductive ways and still getting a lot of control, uh, even when we're using leashes and collars to kind of stop the dogs from being able to do things, it's more just controlling the environment than it is so much like having a having an aversive effect on the dog, at least in the early stages. That tends to go really far with mitigating those issues. I'm not saying it can't happen. And I'm just saying

like if again if we just approach those things with a little bit of tact and strategy then it really minimizes the concerns. >> Yeah. And they're really not talking about the same thing when somebody else says if you put too much obedience it's going to suppress some of the other stuff you're trying to build. Just like you said they're looking at obedience a different way. So from their perspective they're thinking the heavy compulsion and they're probably just assuming that's what the other party is doing when they're not. They're approaching in a different way. And I've heard the same thing with things like bomb detection work. If you put too much obedience on the dog, then they're not going to be independent and be able to do an independent search. But I never saw that in practice anytime I was training a scent dog because they end up really enjoying the work because either they enjoy the act of looking and finding something or the value of the reward has become so worthwhile for them that they've connected it to the behavior and they're very excited. Since we're talking about teaching others, after teaching so many owners through your seminars and online training, what are some of the other patterns that you've noticed? Are there certain misunderstandings or bad habits that pop up over and over again? And if so, how do you correct them? >> The biggest problem I had when I started with the dogs that we have now and the common thing that I see from everybody, this is true again, dog training is dog training. So, this is pet dog owners and hunting dog owners is they get that puppy and that puppy's 8, 12, 16 weeks old and they're expecting their expectations are what they should be for a three-year-old dog >> like right out the gate, right? So, when the dog doesn't immediately point birds or when the dog doesn't immediately retrieve to hand or whatever the case may be, when it's just not perfection right off the bat, then that's uh I think a common thing that I see with folks is that they get a little frustrated or they're um they're impatient. And what I just try to remind them is like they're working with these teenytiny babies that are still, you know, trying to figure stuff out, right? I mean, an 8week old puppy, that thing's only been on the ground for two months, right? So, we just kind of have to reel people's expectations in a little bit. And it's a common conversation I have again with everybody regardless of the kind of dog that they have is maybe my engagement with that dog is only a month-long board and train uh where I'm actually putting hands on that dog and training them, but those owners still

have to then use those skills that we install for a long period of time after that. Right? So, what I'm trying to do is give them a set of tools that they can use to navigate life with their dog afterwards. But we're not done. I mean, you're like nowhere near done right at that point. The best I can do at that time is just put some stuff in place, right? That makes life a little bit easier hopefully fixes some problems and then gives them tools to problem solve themselves in the future. And then obviously we're there to we offer lifetime support with our training program. So if they need to call me or we need to meet to work on something that's fine, but I don't really feel like I've done my job if I don't help them be able to problem solve for themselves, you know? So that's a really good too is just making sure that they they they understand how to use that training for the rest of that dog's life. Yes, clear expectations is so important, but also there are so many people that do want to get to the destination when it comes to dog training. But dog training, the majority of what we do is the journey. It's not the destination. And even if we're trying to do something like getting a dog to respond based on habit, that's going to take much longer than one or two months. Yeah. >> And it's going to take a lot of reps. And you were talking a little bit earlier about dogs getting smart on the tools. I want to talk a little bit about that. Do you have certain strategies that you have your clients do when it comes to using something like a remote collar to habituate and neutralize the dog to the collar to try to minimize the effect of the dog being smart to the tools and only responding when the tools are on them? >> Yeah. I think again it goes back a lot of times to folks only paying attention to operant conditioning or classical conditioning and not understanding those things are always happening at the same time. >> Yeah. >> Right. So when we condition e-collars we try to condition them just like you would a clicker. Right. I want to nick the dog with the e-collar and then give him some food, right? And we do that a bunch until I can tap on that e-collar and see that the dog comes to take food out of my hand. What that does is a couple things for me. The first is it lets me know that the dog feels it at a level before I ever see ear twitching or they start scratching at it or something. That means I'm probably working at a level that's too high at least to start, >> right? But then it also changes the emotional response that the dog has to that stimulus, right? So we we apply stimulus and then it means that a reward

is coming, right? So we kind of create that classically conditioned response and then now we can say we apply this stimulation, this electronic stimulation and then that's a signal to perform work that leads to a reward. And so when we when we approach electronic collar training that way, instead of using it as a essentially I'm saying we're using it as a gas pedal, we're trying to get the dog to do the right thing, right? And in a mostly still inductive framework, then I find that you don't have the negative emotional response when they feel that stimulation. And then if we can increase the level of intensity that we're using to prepare the dog for when we are going to give them a correction and then we can kind of bump up our reward hierarchy along the way there too. Then what we start getting them to understand is more pressure typically means more reward. So when stuff gets a little harder for me then usually the outcome is better. >> And we use this not just in electronic collar work but we use this concept in everything that we do. Right? So, one of the exercises that we have to work on with a lot of these dogs is duck search, which is them basically independently searching uh very densely vegetated body of water for a live duck, right? It simulates like a crippled duck that was shot during duck hunting that needs to be recovered. And so, a lot of dogs have trouble getting through lily pads and underwater vegetation and cattails and all that sort of stuff. And so, we progressively make access to the reward that they want harder and harder. And so if I'm only making it a little bit more difficult for you each time, you barely notice it. And then by the time we're done, >> people are like, I can't believe this dog is doing all this work for for that duck, right? And it's the same thing, I think, with electronics is if we build it that way, then they don't ever look at it as a thing that they're necessarily working to avoid. And when we do finally get to that point where we're using it as a correction that they do want to avoid, the conditioning has been such that that's still not the emotional response, right? Like when I hit that button, even at a level that's a little spicy for that dog, they don't I don't see them I don't see them get pouty, right? And I don't see them stop working. I see them put more enthusiasm and more effort into what they're doing, right? So I think that that's a really important part of that. Um, the other thing is is I like to always have multiple ways to reward and to correct or to punish my dog. So, I can I might have an e-collar on but still use a prong collar or something like that. So,

we sort of mix and match these things. That way, the dog never gets super hung up on one piece of equipment or the other. And then the last piece again is I'm talking a lot about compulsive training right now, but that's all done within a very uh reward-based framework. the dog needs to want to do these things in the first place and then it's easier to make them do something they already wanted to do anyway, >> right? And so I don't really when I talk to some of my friends about a lot of their their trial prep work that they do where they're they have a whole equipment shedding protocol like as they're getting ready to head on the trial field or something, right? I'm playing with my dog with a tug and then like I pop the prong collar and then I try to like flick the prong collar off and then the e-collar is still on and then I take that off and it's like sounds to me like they're trying to distract the dog from the understanding that all of the controls are coming off before they step on the field. >> Right. Yeah. >> I personally haven't had to do that with my with these dogs in these venues. I just think like the reward is inherent in the work and most of the time in the particular testing venues that I'm working on, the dog does get the thing that they want. Like we don't have a thing where the dog's running after a decoy and then I got to call them off that. I'm never calling my dog off of game after I've sent them to pursue it in any of the situations that I'm in. Maybe I'm saying you don't get to pursue this one, but that's kind of where the exercise starts. So I think maybe the reason I can get away with that is because we don't have some of those places where you need the dog to really switch drives like that. >> Um like mid exercise. I mean we have like in our field work there's a lot of prey driven behavior that then needs to switch to obedience once the dog establishes point right. So we have like hunting or seeking behavior and then sort of an elicited genetic response which is the pointing. And then once the dog becomes aware of handler and gunners and stuff, then it becomes more obedience, right, and control work. And so there is some of that there. Um, but I just I haven't really experienced the need uh to kind of like try to trick the dog into not knowing that those tools came off. And again, I think that's because most of the time I'm showing them if you just do it like this, you get exactly what you want. >> Right. And I want to ask about your wild bird hunt camps that you're developing. They seem like a really cool and amazing bridge between training and real hunting. How do those camps work? What

do the owners get out of them? And how can someone tell if their dog is ready for that level of experience? >> Yeah. So, so again, I started hunting when I was an adult and um you know, I started some stuff locally, but it it generally those stories are they start out pretty sketchy. Like the first time I went deer hunting, I met a guy in the middle of the woods at like two o'clock in the morning and then we went and climbed trees and then I bow hunted for the first time and that was like pretty unsafe. Probably not the smartest thing to do. First time I went duck hunting, I put in for a lottery for a a spot um in Maryland where I lived at the time that was like in high demand and I got that spot but you needed boat access. So I basically said like, "Hey, I got the golden ticket. Does anybody want to take me out duck hunting?" And so, you know, probably a hundred people cussed me out and then the 101st person said, "That was kind of messed up what you did, but I'll take you out so we can go duck hunting together." So, that's how that started. And then my first traveling trip to hunt upland game with my dog. I drove to Arizona to meet up with people that I had never met before. And then, you know, we're I find myself driving four or five miles off of paved roads to park my truck somewhere to then hike another four miles into this place where we're actually going to start hunting with people that I had just met the day before. And so my point is is um there's a pretty steep learning curve for a lot of this stuff. You're learning just just the travel in itself and then you're learning the different species. you're learning the environments they live in, what they eat, where they like to hide. Um there's, you know, local stateby-state regulations, uh different things like that. And so the learning curve is pretty steep. Uh but it's not insurmountable. And once you kind of get the idea, then every new place you go is pretty similar to the other stuff. You can distill >> things down to concepts, right? Just like dog training. I don't think I don't talk about doing a lot of like bespoke training or completely customized stuff from one dog to the other because everything for me is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind. Maybe I use a little more reward for you, a little more pressure for you. Maybe I shape this with you and I lured it with this other dog. But it you know if we understand the concepts or like the overarching principles then we don't get stuck like focusing on the detail stuff that doesn't matter as much. And so this is the same thing. So, what I'm trying to do is take our

clients, some of which are firsttime dog owners and first-time hunting dog owners, and I'm trying to give them an experience where I'm cutting the learning curve and removing some of the intimidation factor, but I still want it to be a DIY thing for them, right? So, like a big thing in our community is not >> uh hotspotting or basically like giving away the good places to hunt to people who didn't burn boot leather to find it themselves, right? Right. And so what I instead try to do is I try to I do webinars to teach people how to scout for game. And so we talk about the three things you basically need is food, shelter, right? And water are the three things that everyone needs to survive. And so what food does this thing eat? Where does it like to hang out when it's like sleeping at night or when it gets cold? And you know, what are the water sources and those sorts of things. And then teach them how to escout. We have a lot of satellite uh you know GIS systems and things like that that we can use. OnX is the biggest one uh that a lot of people in our space use. And so we're basically teaching them how to find good places to go hunting themselves. So all I'm really doing is teaching them how to fish instead of giving them fish, right? And then I just organize a place to stay in an area that I've been before that I know is generally good, but they still have to do all the work to find to find success. >> But immersing them into the world kind of accelerates that learning process almost like learning a second language. Michael Ellis talked about this and something I watched him online was he said, "You know, as dog trainers, like our job is to get people excited about all of the nerdy dog trainer jargon stuff and like having good conceptual understanding of these things." And I agree with that. And he didn't say it like that. He was obviously way more eloquent than what I just said. But um but my point is is I feel like it is our job. I hear a lot of trainers say like their clients don't care about these things. They just want to make everything simple. And I think we want to have some quick wins early and we want to simplify things enough early that it feels accessible. But I do think it's important that we we try to inspire them and turn them into dog nerds a little bit. And that's the same thing that I'm trying to do with these hunt camps is I don't want to give it away. I want I because I I don't want people to think that I'm doing something that our community frowns upon first and foremost. And then second, I want these people that are going on these trips to feel good about what they did and they

don't need to feel like there was an asterisk next to whatever success they had. Um, but I want them to feel like it's really achievable, too, because I spend uh I mean, when I got these dogs and I started taking these trips to hunt, I just got absolutely eaten up with this stuff. And it's I mean, it's what I think about all day, every day, even when it's not hunting season. And so I just am trying to help other people get bit by that bug and to not be scared of it because it's not it's hard but it's not that hard, you know. >> Yeah. And for dog owners who are listening who might be struggling and we want to get them to be just as passionate about this stuff as we are. What's one golden rule or mindset you think that they should hold on to when it comes to training their dog? Um, I think that I think being empathetic to the dog's perspective is probably the most important thing, but to be objective about that, right? I think people make up all sorts of reasons why their dog is motivated to do different things they do. And I think their motivations are generally pretty simplistic and I think most of ours are too if we're really being honest with ourselves, right? But if I can just really figure out what does the dog want right now and then if they're doing something that I don't like, then I can just usually if I show them an easier way to get what they want, then most of the time they're happy to do that instead. >> And you've built Iron Oak on the idea of strength, adaptability, and purpose. For listeners who want to connect with you or your programs, where can they go? >> Yeah, our website's iron oakdogs.com. We're Iron Oakd Dogs on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Um, and then, uh, my friend Nick has a similar show to, well, the podcast to yours, but specifically for our space, it's called Gun Dog It Yourself, and I've done a bunch of video work and podcast with him, too. So, um, talked a lot about a lot of stuff uh, with him also. >> Well, it's been a pleasure having you on. We're going to put all the links in the description. And everyone else, remember, like the oak, a well-trained dog stands steady no matter the storm. Thanks for watching. Thanks, Nate.