7 Counterintuitive Things You Can Do That Will Give Your Dog Training A Major Facelift

0:00Welcome to off-leash and unfiltered. Trigger warning, I'm Katie Peppie delivering the truth in dog training. Hey everybody this is your host Katie Peppie. Before we jump in I just wanted to take a quick second and remind you to hit the subscribe button because that helps us so so so much. We appreciate every subscribe and follow and we have so much valuable information we want to share with you so we don't want you to miss an episode without further ado. Let's jump in. Hey everybody thanks for being here with me today. Hopefully wherever you are you're having amazing spring weather like we are here in Maine it's supposed to be about 75 degrees today

1:03and I am so pumped of course it's supposed to be like 35 again tomorrow but that's okay. We're gonna take it while we can get it. It's so amazing and we're getting outside with the dogs and getting to do more stuff out there which is incredible. Love love love that and of course it's staying late later. It's staying light later right now that we have the time change so gives us just such an incredible advantage once we get that daylight back in the nice weather. Love love love it so get out there with your dogs and enjoy it. I think we have a pretty good episode for you today. It's gonna be a doozy. We have seven counterintuitive behaviors that you can do that will give your dog training a major facelift. So these are things that we see can make a huge difference and there it's things that are really unnatural right they don't come naturally to people they're very counterintuitive but if you can most of these things I think

2:07will apply to pretty much everybody and every dog with the exception of maybe the first one we're gonna talk about if you don't have a fearful dog but even if you have a pretty confident dog there will probably be some things some situations where they're uncomfortable or nervous so this would definitely apply in those situations but so let's dig right in. Seven counterintuitive behaviors you can do that if you know if you're not doing right now they're gonna give you a huge boost in your effectiveness with your dog training. So number let's we'll count down like we always do number seven then is stop soothing fear. So you know it's funny because when I first got into dog training this was a concept I was already very familiar with probably because I was a big fan of Caesar Milan. I don't know but I just assumed that this was super common knowledge and I still run into this where we will have people with nervy dogs

3:12and Joyce will tell them you know that this is the sort of thing you don't want to sue you don't want to touch the dog you really don't want to talk to them or try to comfort them like you would you know a human or a child and you know I'm thinking in my head that obviously it's a great point but I assume the person already knows that and then they a lot of times they're very surprised and they didn't have any idea that they shouldn't be doing that so I'm very grateful to have a sidekick who shares this stuff and doesn't just make the assumption that it is common knowledge because that's a mistake that I often make is I just think people know and they don't so number seven is stop soothing fear if you have a dog that's extremely fearful this applies to you more than anybody you guys the soothing the comforting it is your enemy and I get it I know

4:13it's hard but really when you do that even though you don't realize it you're it's for you it's not for the dog because it doesn't help the dog all that's happening when you do that is you're becoming a softer weaker entity to your dog so in your dog's mind now you're both afraid right that's sort of more or less again I'm oversimplifying it and kind of humanizing it to a degree but you know what better way to explain it to a human than to humanize things you don't want to do that right so really your best bet is to be as quiet and calm and assertive now the word assertive we could dissect but I don't want to be here forever on number seven when I say assertive it means more or less confident right you know what's happening you know what you're doing you know where you're going and you're passing that clear information

5:16onto your dog and you're not passing it on in an optional manner right it's like I'm gonna take the parental the leadership role here and I'm gonna give you clear instruction like this is where we are going this is what we are doing right so no soft leash handling no hesitating just because the dog hesitates no stopping just because the dog stops no negotiations right just very clear calm quiet confident guidance but no chatting at the dog no soothing no comforting no coddling no baby no baby voice none of that that will not help you number six talking a lot right so there's some overlap here so humans tend to be very chatty your dog doesn't understand most of what you're saying and it makes them harder it makes them harder I'm really struggling

6:16here today guys sorry I'm gonna edit all this out but back you know what I'm just gonna start over no that's not gonna happen number six talking a lot we tend to be very chatty okay but it makes it harder for your dog to extract the words or the sounds rather that really means something the sounds they need to pay attention to the words that are things they need to hear and execute so the chatty or you are and this is in every context right so we just talked about nervous dogs certainly applies there but even with confident dogs it doesn't matter this is across the board right if you're trying to teach your dog something new if you're trying to give your dog instruction and you're just an endless string of babbling that makes it really really difficult for your dog to know what to hear what to execute what's meaningful what's not meaningful because you're just the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah constantly and so you might notice if you follow our social

7:20media at all and you see some of my videos when I am talking to the camera right and kind of letting the audience know what I'm doing why I'm doing it I will usually pause between that and when I say something to the dog because I know I'm muddying the waters and so I'm trying to create a little bit of pause a little bit of contrast so the dog can pull out and extract the things that are important right and it's still hard right it would be better if I was just silent and I was only saying the things that actually mattered to the dog but because I'm making a video sometimes it's not possible and I need to talk so but that might be a thing that you've noticed if you tend to be chatty challenge yourself start small okay do a lesson with your dog where you're if you have a command if you have a behavior you're working on with your dog go work on that for you know even three minutes right or set a certain number of reps do 10 reps

8:25and challenge yourself not to say a single thing that's not important and that includes oh good girl good girl yeah good jump don't say any that stuff doesn't mean you can't reward the dog right but you should have a reward marker and it's funny because people make a big deal out of praising the dog and I don't have a problem with it and I think it is good and I think it does generate enthusiasm but it can also work against you but my point was going to be you don't need it right your dog needs consequences which are usually predicted by your markers and you need good timing with your markers if you didn't hear our marker episode go back and listen to it it's one of our most recent episodes right before this one and sorry I don't know the number off my head but very informative episode on the use of markers as long as you have that you will have effective training right if you have a click or a yes

9:30that's followed by food you don't need to have the oh good girl good boy you don't need it okay and if you're relying on oh good girl Sasha you know good boy Rufus if like if you're doing that if that's your only marker and you don't have an actual reward marker it will be very sloppy because that is a very that's a very long marker and so it's actually hard for your dog to decipher timing wise when they executed the right behavior right just saying one word or having a click is much faster it's much more precise and it's much easier for your dog to extract the moment that they did the right thing so talking a lot isn't great talking before you give a command after you give a command just berries that command in the mud so we really want to challenge you to be super quiet try doing a very short lesson with your dog where you give the

10:34command and you only give it once then you get the behavior silently and you market the second you get it and you feed and you release with the break word right whatever your release word is we usually say break and that's it rinse and repeat so do that a few times to try to get yourself a little bit more into the habit of not being so chatty right but especially in situations where your dog is getting excited if you're chatting you're just getting them more excited right if you're talking to them especially if you're doing a lot of the weight weight weight sit sit sit and you're saying your dog's name and you all these things your dog's getting more excited more excited more excited more excited so if you give yourself some practice being very calm very quiet very assertive very instructional and just zipping it you might be able to implement that a little bit easier

11:35in situations like that where it matters where your dog is getting all excited and it's all chaos you can then be the calm quiet assertive person you need to be and set that example and send that energy and get what you need from your dog without just kind of contributing to the chaos because that's what we do right the dogs are all excited and then we're us sit sit sit sit wait wait such such such a fluffy fluffy fluffy whatever your dog's name is right and now your dog's like oh this is fun like we're both excited we're both worked up yeah we both have high energy and it's not what you're going for so you can see how in all these various contexts fearful dog excited dog that you're trying to teach commands to doesn't matter more talking equals it's a deletrious effect on your results it's not great all right number five this is really encountered intuitive do not avoid

12:36stressful situations with your dog and I don't mean stressful for you although there might be some truth to that too I mean a lot of people feel like putting their dog in stressful situations is bad I actually just posted a video on Instagram of a dog at the groomers who was completely freaking out trying to tear the groomers to shreds and I look at the comments because it's very informational for me to see when this hits people's eyes like what do they see what do they think and it kind of gives me sort of a window into our culture and how everyday dog owners would go about things if this was their dog right if they were in this situation and it's funny to me because 90 percent of the comments revolved around how stressed the dog was and how ashamed the owner should be for putting their dog in the situation which is absolutely crazy

13:38to me because number one the dog with the dog at the groomers and dogs need to be groomed right it doesn't necessarily mean they have to go to the groomers but they do have to be groomed and chances are the dog was like this at home which is why they're not doing it at home but avoiding the situation because it's stressful guess what the dog doesn't get better that way so we're gonna talk about thresholds in a minute I did an episode on working your dog under or over threshold it was episode number one 21 and the thing is your dog doesn't get better if you don't right so this is the same if you just say oh that stress is my dog out so I'm not gonna put my dog in that situation then guess what your dog doesn't get better now I'm not saying go into these stressful situations and keep going into them the same way you always have like if that's not working um if things go sideways and it's really difficult then maybe you do need to

14:42change something about your process but just avoiding the stressful situation is not your answer I promise you it is not your answer so we've had dogs come in here that are super afraid to walk on tile floors and the way we fix it is we walk on tile floors are they stressed? fuck yes they are at first it fades pretty quickly most of the time so every dog in every situation of course is different and unique sometimes it takes a really long time sometimes it never resolves 100% but most of the time we see really big leaps really quickly and the key is we're gonna go into the stressful situation and we're just gonna do it and we're gonna do it differently than we've been doing because most of the time people don't have the skills they don't have the tools and the dog is allowed to just rehearse panic and if if they're able to do that then that's

15:48what they'll do so you have to have a way of preventing that right and it's like sometimes the only answer is force this big old dirty f word in the dog training industry right force like it's such a bad thing all it means is you're not giving the dog the option and that is the key to getting over stuff so the floors like I just mentioned I forced them to walk on floors they were scared of and guess what after a couple minutes it gets better and then when we go back again and do it later yeah they're scared again but it resolves faster and faster they relax faster and faster until it becomes just not a big deal anymore but I had to force them to do it guys nail trimming which is partly you know what we were seeing in that video it was a groomer I don't know if they were gonna do the nails if they were gonna trim the fur or both or whatever but your dog hates it your dog's terrified of it your dog thinks they can be an asshole whatever

16:52the situation is you're gonna have to force them to do it and guess what if you do it frequently that is a key to this they're gonna get over it so you have to take away a little bit of your dog's autonomy sometimes and say hey this is the thing we're doing I'm drawing a line in the scene and we're gonna do it I know it stresses you out I know to you you think this is life or death it's like I'm throwing you off a cliff but guess what we're gonna do it anyway and you're gonna see that's not what's happening that it's actually okay and you rinse and repeat frequently frequently frequently if you didn't hear me I'll say one more time repeat frequently because that is important your dog will regress regress regress that's the new one really having a hard time today you wouldn't realize you wouldn't think I had a large coffee before this you know but I did and it just isn't it's not getting the

17:57job done today your dog will regress in between instances if you go a long time right so frequency is important to healing but you have to put your dog in stressful situations there is no other way to get your dog less stressed okay and the thing is stress isn't bad episodic stress isn't bad it's a normal healthy response right but if it's an overactive irrational unnecessary response it can actually interfere with your daily life and if you allow that stress response to continue because you don't want to stress your dog out you don't want to put them in that situation what you do is you create prolonged stress you create um chronic stress right which

19:00that's the problem episodic stress isn't a problem chronic stress is a problem so if you fail to force your dog into those situations and to show them it's okay and to rinse and repeat frequently and to get them over it and to rehearse something besides panic if you don't do that then you contribute to creating a chronic stress which is the thing that's not great for your dog right because they never get over it and it remains stressful and every time they run into it it's stressful and every time they come near it it's stressful right so you're keeping that going by refusing to jump in the fire and just get it done and that's not me picking on dog owners they don't know how to do it so my point here is not to attack the dog owner my point is to attack the philosophy that is being promulgated out there as compassionate when it's really not

20:07this idea that you should not put your dog in stressful situations that is not a compassionate idea that's not a compassionate philosophy or way to go through the world with your dog because ironically that is what keeps them in a state of chronic stress love the show well I have great news we are offering an inexpensive subscription to our new premium content this is content that isn't available to the general public we make it just for our subscribers we're gonna cover a variety of new topics in these episodes and I think it's gonna be a ton of fun so you can jump right down into the show notes to get that website address and then skip over there and sign up for this premium content just wanted to take a second to let you guys know about that thank you so much for your support and now on with the show number four another counter intuitive thing

21:08here is recognizing that your dog does not need to have positive interactions this is a big one right this comes up a lot with socialization both with dogs and people your dog does not need to go around having constant positive interactions with people or other dogs so number one even if you think that's a good thing for your dog to have positive interactions with others number one you have to define what what does that mean what is a positive interaction you have to define that and the thing is you're defining it for yourself so just because you think it's a positive interaction doesn't mean your dog does okay so if your dog doesn't like people doesn't like other dogs just because they have an interaction and nothing terrible happens that doesn't make it a positive interaction your dog might have hated it the entire time

22:10so keep in mind positive is subjective and most of the time we're applying our own thoughts feelings and ideas about what that is we're not actually considering the dogs the dog decides what's positive and negative not you and just because nothing terrible happens doesn't mean that it gets placed solidly in the positive category it probably doesn't okay the other thing about positive interactions is what if it's not what if your philosophy is that my dog has to go have positive interactions with strangers and positive interactions with strange dogs we don't know what if it ends up not being that what if it ends up being a terrible experience right so that's a risk you're taking when you enter into those interactions and that could happen at any moment even

23:14if it's never happened before and it could be your dog that's that fault that triggers it it could be the other dog it could be the stranger people do weird things sometimes your dog is really uncomfortable like way more uncomfortable than you realize because you don't notice the signs and they do snap okay what if it's not so this idea you have about accumulating and building up all these positive experiences you have to understand that at any moment one of these experiences could go totally off the rails so number one like we just talked about you don't even know if it's actually a positive experience for your dog and on top of that what if it ends up being a terrible experience for your dog you're bound to have those here and there nothing crazy has to happen right it's normal natural dog behavior

24:27to react to snap to grow to attack like all these things are natural dog behavior and they could happen at any time so now you're shooting yourself in the foot and it's you're going backwards right so that's another downside to this philosophy but lastly it just doesn't help so you go around with this idea that if your dog can just have more positive interactions it's going to like fix your problems it's going to make them feel better and it probably won't even if you do manage to give your dog positive interactions it probably won't I'm gonna break this down a little bit because I think it's worth parsing out kind of what I mean here think about it most

25:39people when they get a puppy that puppy has already had eight million positive interactions with their litter mates with their parents with other puppies potentially puppy class friends puppies with their dogs strangers everyone wants to touch the puppy the owners that bred the puppy you when you adopted the puppy puppy has had many positive interactions and all of those interactions got you to where you are today right so when I meet somebody who has a dog that's highly reactive aggressive toward humans and or dogs and they think that if their dog can just get some positive interactions things will change and it's like your dog's already had a bazillion positive interactions and it caught you here the human brain just does not work that way naturally we are very too

26:45dimensional in the way we think about behavior and in our minds positive interactions couldn't possibly lead to negative results but they do a lot of the time and I'll be the first one to tell you everyone thinks an aggressive dog it's the result of something bad happening or being abused or being attacked and most of the time it is the result of just genetics plus reward positive reinforcement but chances are your dog had many positive interactions leading up to wherever you are now and so if your dog is reactive or aggressive it isn't probably not the result of not having enough positive interactions and as a side note those are the people I'm trying to avoid that's why I don't like the dog park right that's a big part of why there are people

27:48there with dogs that they know are uncomfortable with other dogs that they know have a history of being very selective with dogs that they know their dog can snap at other dogs and they're going to the dog park to try to get positive interactions well that's the person I'm trying to avoid right they're walking up to people on the street with their dog on a leash doing on leash greetings to get a positive interaction when they know that their dog might not like this other dog they have a history of reacting poorly to other dogs okay not me man that's literally why I don't go into those situations is because I know those people are out there and I don't want to be the one that it goes sideways with and it will it's bound to right but so for those three reasons trying to get more

28:50positive interactions is not your answer the answer is neutral learn to see or hear or whatever and not care learn to listen to your owner that's what matters guys that is the key to everything teach your dog to see and not care teach them to listen to you a hundred percent of the time and guess what everything's peachy but people don't want to focus on those things they want to focus on the feelings and trying to get my dog to like other dogs and see that other dogs are good and see that people are good and it's a huge fucking mistake don't do that because chances are it's not going to work anyway

29:51what I just described works teach your dog to mind their business and listen to you what else do you need that's all you need and yes if there are certain situations that you need your dog to be able to tolerate you can work on that if you have friends and family with dogs and your dog needs to tolerate having them around having them in tight spaces you can do that do it safely learn how to do it and do it safely and yes your dog will get to see oh these dogs are around they're in my space they're in my house you know what things are fine yes you can do that right but you don't need to do it with every Tom Dick and Harry on the street the idiots at the dog park no don't do that strangers people you don't know don't let them come up and touch your dog guys don't do it especially if your dog has already told you they don't like it because if you do you could end up with a lawsuit and not fix your problems to boot

30:59so I don't mean to be dramatic about it I realize not every case is that extreme but the point being here is your dog needs neutrality your dog needs to learn to see and not care your dog needs to learn to listen to you what they don't need is lots of positive interactions that's not usually what they need I'm not saying there's never a place for that kind of stuff and that kind of counter conditioning but especially if you're not real skilled in it and you don't know exactly what you're looking for you don't know exactly what you're trying to accomplish and how to accomplish it just randomly walking up to people and dogs for positive interactions is a huge mistake all right number three don't give your dog free passes extremely counterintuitive right everybody wants to give their dog a free pass the benefit of the doubt but you really muddle your training when you do that because your dog learns when you say something you don't

31:59really mean it the first time you mean it the second time or maybe even the third fourth or fifth time right there's never any consequences until you get to that third fourth fifth time and so then your dog learns oh hey it's number four that's the one I have to listen to that's literally what you're teaching your dog so everyone said when I correct a dog for not listening to me the first time everybody's alarmed by that and they're like well shouldn't we give him a second chance why do you want him to listen to you the second time or the first time we go for the first time around here right it's not where we start of course we teach the dog what we want first and how to do it and lots of food and all this stuff but eventually it's like do it the first time I ask and then that becomes the rule and we stick with that and if you don't okay but then you're literally teaching your dog I don't require you to do this behavior until high of asked for it three times or four times or whatever it is right so your dog just learns

33:05whatever you teach them but those free passes serve to create that or to create confusion right everyone's worried about their dog being confused yet they are the ones that will create more confusion by not enforcing the rules they supposedly created I'll give a command I don't make you do it I don't follow through I don't provide a consequence I'll set a boundary I'll let you violate it once or twice I'll give you warning sounds like right instead of telling you that was a mistake there's a consequence so these free passes serve to keep our dogs confused more confused for longer periods of time and they generally teach your dog not to respect the boundaries you've said not to listen to the commands you gave because they don't need to right and that's just what we're teaching them so because they're a bad dog that's what we're literally teaching them that's

34:06what we're laying out for them as a as a sequence so free passes absolutely work against you and the funny thing is let me demonstrate this a lot at our go home lessons people will give their dog a command the dog doesn't listen they'll turn on their eat collar and suddenly the dog does the command without any help without the person repeating the command or anything and what that proves is your dog urging right because everyone thinks well maybe they didn't hear me right they're distracted it's like okay but they have years and so most of the time and of course that could happen sometimes right but most of the time the dog did hear you right people just assume their dog didn't hear them because they're not looking at them it's not usually the case your dog does not have to be looking at you staring at you paying deep attention to you to hear that you were talking to them and gave them a command so no free passes guys number two is staying under threshold so we

35:10just talked about this a minute ago if you haven't listened to the working under an overt threshold episode go back and listen to it's a really good one episode number one 21 you guys just ties into the stressful thing that we talked about earlier you can't just work your dog under threshold if your dog has triggers and you don't take them out and work around those triggers then that threshold just never moves and things never improve and they never get better and you're never going to reach your goals that way so I'm not saying jump in the fire I'm not saying thread the needle if your dog's highly reactive or anything like that but I'm saying if there is something that triggers your dog in any way shape or form you have to start working around that thing and you have to push your dog outside of their comfort zone right there's lots of ways to do that but generally speaking the way we do it and this works in like every situation right even with their respectful dog it's like we teach them how to do things and then we start expecting it we

36:14use accountability and then we can take that and we can go out into the real world with it and we can work around distractions we can work around triggers we can work around things that make them uncomfortable and we can use what we taught them and those rules and that accountability to get them to prioritize that stuff over the triggers and that really is key to being able to work above threshold and if we're talking about excitement a lot of times people just haven't set boundaries with their dog and excitement right so if your dog if there's a family member that comes through the door and it just sends your dog right off a cliff with excitement it's like the way you work on that is not to avoid it like that how's that going to make it any better the way you work on that is you tell your dog hey this person's going to come through the door and be super you're going to get super excited and I'm going to tell you know and I'm going to cap that excitement

37:15I'm going to provide accountability I'm going to correct you for flying into an unacceptable level of excitement yeah sure we're glad our dog is happy to see people when they come home or whatever come to visit but there's a certain level that's acceptable right and your dog just flying into craziness and then ignoring you because they're going to your dog's not going to listen to you in that state of mind and that's why your dog choosing to go into that state of mind is not okay right but so the way we would work on that is not to avoid it it's not to work up to it it's to put him in that situation and have that tough conversation with the dog which of course is what nobody wants to do but the thing is once you do that then you can probably move on to rehearsing the correct behavior right your dog will behave better and you can actually say hey good don't go nuts don't have a party because you're going to work them up right and you're in the beginning stages of

38:19something new and it's like a little sapling and you need to care for it delicately you can challenge it more in a little bit right but at first stay calm right so use your energy to help your dog's energy but staying under threshold isn't the key it's going into those situations that push your dog over their threshold and knowing what to do and I think that's the problem people don't know what to do so follow our stuff we have lots of great podcast episodes social media videos we have a blog now on my website where we talk about what to do we show you what to do what do we do very very open about all of the stuff but staying under threshold it's not the answer it's not the answer guys you'll never get there number one people focus on the process

39:19more than the results huge mistake our society nowadays is very very process focused right everything's about the process everything is about not stressing out the dog like we talked about earlier staying under threshold being positive right guess what none of that stuff really matters I mean yes there's a effective more effective less effective right but the thing that matters the most is the results and if we would pay more attention to the results then we would be able to refine our process to something more effective so the reason why we go to all those other things we already talked about the reason why we soothe fear the reason why we avoid stress the reason why we stay under threshold

40:24the reason why we keep thinking we get to put our dogs in situations for positive interactions all the stuff we've already talked about the reason we do all that is because we're focusing on process and we're not focusing on results stop take a breath and look at the results okay and then think well how is this process working for me how are going into all these interactions with strangers and strange dogs how's that working for me regardless of whether or not any of its cons super poorly has it fixed your problem no well then we probably need to change our process how has soothing the fear petting the dog talking to the dog how has that worked for you

41:31to make your dog more confident how has trying to make nail trimming less stressful how is that worked for you trying to teach your dog new behaviors if you're a chatty person and you're trying to give your dog constant instruction using words they don't understand how is that working for you right so in trying to rely very heavily on reward and not use correction and be very positive how's that worked for you right so you have to look at the results and that is how we work with our dogs every day here at the training center the dog actually chooses the process the dog actually chooses what's motivating right so we don't know what we're going to do

42:31with the dog on an in-giving day we don't know what the session is going to look like we don't know what the consequences are going to be guess what it's up to the dog we let the dog tell us hey this is a reward that motivates me that reward is not a reward to me it doesn't matter that's a correction that motivates me that's not a correction I care about we are learning the dog every minute that we are working with them and they are shaping our behavior they are telling us this works this doesn't and that's what we use but people get so into this groove in their head they get it so cemented they get so just stuck in this routine in these ideas and philosophies that are this is good and this is bad and this is good and this is bad and this will help and this won't and they just stay stuck right there doing all that same stuff every day when the dog is telling us that isn't working

43:39this doesn't matter to me that's not helping that's not making me more comfortable it's not making me more confident it's not making me like dogs more but we keep doing it anyway because in our head it should work so if that's you if you feel like you have ideas and emotions attached to your processes and you're like this is the process that might be the only thing getting in your way right now so definitely stop and re-evaluate like am I paying attention to what my dog is is telling me it's like Dr. Phil would say how's that working for you right because if you've been working on something for a while and you're not there yet guess what your process needs to change and most people are going well I don't know how to change it I don't know where to go from here it's like well you got to think outside the box a little it might not be intuitive right might be counter-intuitive but the process guys isn't the thing that matters right as long as

44:49we don't do anything to harm the dog that's obviously important and we are doing things that are generating results that's all that matters the ideas we have in our head about what should be true what should be reward for the dog what should be punishment for the dog what should work and what shouldn't they don't matter right that's just ego that's just humanizing like not it's just it's up to the dog right and so your job is to evaluate what your dog is telling you both in real time in the moment and also over a period of time right you can look at your dog today and you can see that this is the result of genetics I don't want to exclude genetics but also combined with that everything you've done with them from day one forward

45:50has gotten you where you are and so if there are things that you want to be different clearly we need to change something about our process you can't change your dogs DNA so there's something about your process that needs to change and I would say direct your focus there and probably you can go back and look at the other six things we just talked about and there's probably at least one where you could change your process and do the less intuitive thing and it's going to change your result hopefully for the better but we do live in a very process oriented community um society where it's like you know the vet is supposed to be fear free I just told you about the grooming video where you know they shouldn't be putting their dog in that stressful situation um you're only supposed to use rewards right you can never use corrections or negative reinforcement or punishment because everything's supposed to be positive and unicorns

46:54and cupcakes all the time um and unfortunately when we have this mindset with all of these different things it absolutely ties our hands and we can't get anywhere um because we need to break out of that mindset where we think our process is actually the thing that matters and it's not the results matter at least if you want them hey guys thanks for joining us today I really hope you enjoyed the show if there's a specific topic you'd like to hear discussed you can send that to me directly via email or fan mail just jump down into the show notes that information will be there for you I really look forward to hearing from you thanks for supporting the show and I look forward to next time