March 12, 2025 • 18 mins
This week, Tony talks about the ways in which we can keep our dogs and ourselves, more honest throughout our training sessions to ensure that the process always moves in the right direction.
Connect with Tony, Cal, and MeatEater
MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips
MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube
Shop Cal's Merch
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Houndations podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about keeping your
dog honest and keeping yourself honest during training sessions. This episode,
I don't know, it might be a tough pill to
swallow for some folks, but that's okay. Dog training, or
(00:23):
I guess I probably should say like developing a dog.
So it's not a total embarrassment at home or in
the field, just a long game task that can include
some shortcuts. It can include some methods that will sort
of mass greater issues, but generally both those and shortcuts
will come back to haunt you at some point in
the dog's life. There's just a process to this stuff,
(00:43):
which is ripe with pitfalls. But we should be self
aware enough to not only keep our dogs honest, but
keep ourselves honest. So buckle up because that's what I'm
gonna talk about right now. I've had the good four
to interview dozens and dozens of professional dog trainers in
my career, and I'm truly good friends with some of them.
(01:07):
It's always interesting how different trainers approach the same problems
with dogs. Some trainers you know, often older trainers or
young ones with something to prove or a program to sell.
They kind of often have like very straightforward answers to questions.
If you ask them how to get a dog to heal,
(01:27):
they'll launch into a point A to B monologue on
the exact steps to take. There are usually a few
false starts and caveats, but mostly the road is a
straight one with clear sight lines for miles. This is
often great general advice, but general doesn't always apply to
individual dogs. Other trainers are more philosophical, and they're much
(01:51):
harder to interview. They don't like pigeonholing dogs or putting
up too many guardrails to their advice because they know
that no matter what, dogs are individuals dog owners two,
and the influence they have on dogs is huge and
in the realm of training often not great. The more
philosophical trainers either haven't learned to tune out the constant
(02:14):
contradictory thoughts in sort of a survival mode thing, or
they just don't want to. They want to consider the
dog as something more and the relationship with them as
something that can't be broken down into easy steps like
in a training manual. Now both styles, you know they're
right and I guess that most trainers engage in both
more than they let on. Now. I interviewed Ronnie Smith
(02:36):
one time, who owned Smith Kennel's down in Oklahoma. Ronnie
comes from dog Training Royalty, and there are very few
trainers who can walk the aisles of a show and
command the respect that he can. Now, at one point
in one of our conversations, Ronnie brought up the concept
of an honest dog. Now. I thought it was strange
at first, because it's not a natural impulse for me
(02:57):
to think of a dog as a liar. But that's
because in my head, I have a vision of dogs
that doesn't jive with the reality of a once wild
canine jockeying for position in a pack, you know, an
animal loaded with genetic instructions, coded for NonStop pursuit of resources.
But Smith's message wasn't that dogs are liars and his
job is, you know, as a trainer, has to call
(03:19):
them out. It was that if a dog shows you something,
it's generally telling you the truth with that action. What
he meant was that if you ask your dog to
do something and it doesn't understand what you're asking, it's
going to show you that and it might not be
through simply not completing the task correctly. It might look
you in the eyes while you're yelling and just stare
(03:41):
because it can't say, hey, dipshit, I'm lost here. I
don't speak English and we just started this drill. And
the louder you get, the more confused I get. Okay.
In relationships, communication is key, and if one side isn't
getting the messaging, the whole thing breaks down. This happens
in marriage, it happens with friends, it happens with coworkers,
(04:05):
it happens with our dogs. The communication that tethers us
together is predicated on honesty. I shouldn't have to say that,
but it demands honesty because there's no long term tethering
without it. The connective tissue is just too weak. What
does this have to do with dog training? Quite a bit.
(04:28):
You want to know when your dog is being honest
about something, and you want to know what to do
about it. When your dog is being honest about something,
you also want to know when your dog is trying
to get away with something, which isn't necessarily dishonest, but
it kind of is, and it's just sort of the
nature of life. We look for shortcuts everywhere, so do dogs.
(04:51):
I had a conversation recently with a fellow who works
for FHF Gear here about his puppy, and we got
on the topic of slippery slopes in dog training. He
mentioned his dog loves retrieving more than anything in the
world except food, so he has that reward lever to
pull with his dog anytime he wants. Now, he's one
of the people I love to work with on their
(05:12):
dogs because he's invested in a long game. He wants
an amazing dog, but is convinced he's going to make
too many mistakes and ruin it. Look overthinking is a bitch,
but it's about a billion times better than underthinking. I
am confident his dog will be a really, really good
hunter and general pet. We talked about a lot of things,
(05:34):
but got on a topic of retrieving and how to
keep a dog from taking shortcuts. The easiest one that
I can think of is a dog that doesn't delivered
a hand training that you like, actually teaching you how
to train that. That's fodder for another podcast, which I'll
probably get into this summer, but for now, a dog
that brings you a bumper or a bird or whatever
should deliver it to your hand. If it doesn't, there's
(05:57):
a break in the chain that will separate further over time.
What I mean by that is that the dog doesn't
naturally want to bring you a bumper, Sit down, hold
it for an unknown amount of time, and then let
you gently take it from its mouth when you're good
and ready. Dogs aren't super keen on working on someone
else's schedule, but to be fair, neither are humans. You
(06:19):
might have a dog that will follow through with a
perfect retrieve, you know, steadiness at the beginning, a straight
line to the bumper, sprint back, heel up, hold and wait.
A dog that can do that in rain or shine,
in the backyard or at the park with people everywhere
is a dog that knows his job, and he's willing
to do it for the reward of another retrieve. Simple stuff. Until,
(06:43):
for whatever reason, instead of bringing the usual bumper to
the park, someone grabs a chucket with a tennis ball
and wings it out there. Now the game's changed. Now
it has become more fun because there are fewer rules.
Or maybe the rules are the same, but just by
changing the object he's retrieving, it's not quite the same.
So the dog comes back and drops the ball at
(07:04):
your feet. This is a dog being honest about not
knowing what he can get away with right now. It's
probably not even a conscious decision, but that doesn't matter.
Now he's offered up different behavior. He's taken a little shortcut,
and if you scoop that ball up with the thrower
and you'll wing it across that soccer field again, you've
delivered a new message to him. The usual pain in
(07:28):
the ass steps don't apply for this thing. This is
the first step to unraveling a skill you work so
hard to develop. And you might think, well, who cares.
The dog is having fun and getting exercise and it
still delivers the bumper to hand. That's great, But that
bumper isn't going to keep ending up in your hand.
If you keep letting him drop that ball at your feet.
(07:49):
It's only a matter of time before he tries that
with other objects. And why wouldn't he. He wants the
quickest route to more retrieves while following the fewest rules.
And maybe if you just let that slide with the
tennis ball, you'll realize on the opening day of pheasant
season that when a rooster hits the ground, you're dealing
with another kind of object, another object for him to
(08:11):
take the same kind of shortcut with. And sometimes those
wily Chinese chickens have a lot of life left in them,
and they run away after being dropped at your feet.
And if you think your hunting buddies will let you
forget about that, you're wrong to trust me. You want
your dog to offer up that behavior with his retrieves
every single time, on the promise that if he gets
(08:32):
it right, there's a pretty good chance he'll get to
do it again. If you can put a dog in
control of whether they get a reward, they'll be more
honest with you. Communication is a two way street, though,
and it's up to us to be honest as well.
I think the easiest way for us to get into
trouble here is what I talked about a couple of
weeks ago, about consistency and training and the discipline to
(08:55):
ensure you and your dog get the reps in. But
this also applies to things like e collor usage. There
is no promise of a shortcut in dog training, quite
(09:15):
like an e caller. Now. They are amazing tools when
used correctly, but not so amazing when they aren't, the
most common problem with them is that folks incorporate them
way too quickly into a young dog's life. Now, to
be fair, this often happens when a puppy hits the
teenager tiny velociraptor stage, where they are a lot to handle.
(09:38):
You know, they're full of energy and short on brains,
and they do almost everything at warp speed, including everything
you don't want them to do. The impulse, and it's
a natural one is to get them under control, and
there is a tool that promises that control, you know,
the e caller. After all, the whole point of them,
at least when they were first invented, was to deliver
(09:58):
a punishment strong enough to deter whatever behavior was happening.
They've morphed into a long range communication device now, which
is great, but they are also built to be able
to deliver that correction. But when you take a dog
that doesn't really know anything and is functionally like a child,
and then deliver a long range punishment for behavior that
(10:20):
young dogs are going to do because they are energetic idiots,
you're saying, I don't have the patience to do this right,
or I don't understand how to get you to deliver
the right behaviors to me. But now the threat of
force is there, and you can take a dog that
would eventually want to give you the right behavior and
instead we'll do it just out of fear. And fear
is a breeding ground for shortcuts, which a lot of
(10:41):
people learn the moment they realize their dog is collar
wise and for whatever reason, the collar isn't handy. Now
is there a time and a place for you callers?
You bet there is, but it's rarely when the dog
is still super young and just learning how to be
a dog in your world with your rules. When a
dog knows what it is and what it's supposed to do,
(11:04):
then an e caller can serve as a backstop for
keeping those behaviors sharp and allowing you to ask so
much more of them from farther away than your voice
could carry. Now, we have to be honest with ourselves
about the process of taking a dog from a lovable,
idiot puppy to something that won't embarrass you no matter
where you take it. So let's look at this in
another way. Let's say you're one year old high drive
(11:27):
setter has been in a crate for nine hours while
you worked, You get home and you decide it's a
good day to work on steadiness drills. But you only
have twenty minutes before you have to go pick the
kids up at choir and take them to swim lessons
at the Why so you let Fido out, load him
in the truck and head to the baseball field down
the road. Now, when you let him out of your truck,
you yell at him for five minutes as he runs
(11:49):
full boar and circles and sniffs everything interesting and pisses
on the fences in three spots and generally ignores you.
Now your anger rises. The training session either doesn't happen
or it happens, and you think your dog will always
be that way. But what that dog is showing you
is that you bought a high drive, high horsepower animal
bread to work, and you locked him in a tiny
(12:11):
cage for a whole day and then instantly asked him
to perform once he had a little bit of freedom. Now,
a five year old dog in that situation, maybe, But
is that fair to a dog that's just learning the ropes?
Probably not. We can't avoid putting them in a crate
when they are a certain age, and sometimes any age,
(12:31):
But we also can be more honest about what we
ask of our dogs. Now, would you expect a first
grader to be as attentive the first minute of recess
as he or she would be during the first minute
of the second class of the day. What about on
a random Tuesday morning versus the Friday before Christmas? Break
Dog training used to be a matter of forcing your
(12:53):
will on them until they complied, but back then they
were viewed as just kind of a living tool. Now
decades later, we know better and should at least consider
that maybe we aren't being honest with their situation while
trying to make them adhere to rules we create that
don't take into consideration their nature or their day to
day circumstances. In the fact that we often ask more
(13:16):
than they can deliver at any given point, we take
their reactions as proof that they need more force, or
they need the guidance of a pro or we just
have a lost cause that is a lovable enough idiot
but will never be truly well behaved. But the truth
is that just about any dog out there, even the
(13:36):
low bandwidth adults who just weren't blessed with much in
the genetics category, can be pretty dang good. We just
need to be honest about what we're working with and
plug that into a system that will help them work.
All the same goes for high drive well bred dogs too.
By the way, these dogs might breeze through almost anything
you ask them, but after a short while start to
(13:57):
deviate from the plan, they might just be bored. And
while it's important to keep them on task and get
those reps in, you might have to change up your
training staturgy to count for this. This is also prime
time to talk about our expectations with our dogs and
how we often try to do the same thing with
a new dog that worked with the old one. I
(14:18):
did this with my pup, Sadie, but she's nothing like
my older dog Luna. Sure, they both have pretty good
blood and they love to retrieve and work, but Sadie
just needed so much softer of an approach, and she
needed so much more reassurance. Luna just never needed that.
She kind of just bowled her way through everything. She
(14:39):
wanted direct communication because all she cared about was picking
up the bumper or finding the grouse. Sadie wanted me
to explain everything and give her the chance to get
over whatever fears were rattling around in her smooth brain,
while Luna was just not scared of anything. So to
train my puppy the way that I trained Luna would
(14:59):
have been a disaster. And I know this because I tried.
But Sadie told me flat out that she needed something different.
The easiest thing for me to do, though, was to
default to the process that most recently worked for me
in a different dog. But it wasn't the same dog,
and honestly, I wasn't the same trainer, even though I
kind of tried to be. Now, I guess to tie
(15:21):
a bow on this one, I should end on this note.
Nothing I've said here is meant to be permission to
just phone it in or lower your standards so much
that the dog can't help but succeed. Our dogs need
to be challenged. They need to have jobs. They are
primed to learn. They want to learn with you from you.
(15:44):
I don't think they necessarily choose to teach us anything,
but that doesn't change the fact that they do, in fact,
teach us a lot. They show us how they need
to be taught, in what ways in which they'll test
our boundaries to see if they can lean a little
more into their nature and a little further away from
the rules we set for them. They'll tell us when
(16:04):
they just don't understand something, but it's on us to
listen to them and to decide if they're being honest
or they're just looking for a way to get that
next retrieve to happen a couple seconds faster. They'll tell
us when they need a couple of minutes to run
around and sniff before they can settle into training mode,
or when the time comes in their life where they
can tamp that urge down and show up for the job,
(16:25):
no matter how many hours they've been cooped up, or
how much they want to stretch their legs and go
full greyhound for a little while. I think that a
lot of us want that point a to be dog
training advice, because that's intuitive and it's easy to understand.
It answers a question. But there is none of that
without the other, more philosophical side, because dogs aren't machines,
(16:47):
and neither are we. There are millions of inputs and
a million distractions, and there's a whole bunch of intangibles
that can flavor any of the interactions we have with them.
The more we understand and acknowledge that and work to
be honest about the day to day stuff while sticking
to that bigger picture plan, the more they'll learn to
(17:08):
be honest with us for no other reason. Then that
results in them being able to do more of what
they love with the person they love more than anything.
I think that's pretty damn cool, honestly, So think about that.
Think about coming back in two weeks because I'm going
to talk about why we should all try to understand
pack animals and pack animal behavior so that we can
(17:30):
just better understand our dogs and how we can work
with them. That's it. I'm Tony Peterson and this has
been The Houndation's podcast. Thank you so much for listening
and for all of your support. We truly appreciate it.
Here at Meat Eater. All of us do without you, guys,
we don't have anything, So thank you for showing up
(17:51):
for us. If you need some more dog training content,
or you want to watch some hunting videos, some cool
adventure stuff, you want to listen to some other podcasts,
maybe get some wisdom from Brent Reeves over on This
Country Life whatever. We drop so much content every week
at the Meat eater dot com. You gotta check it out.
(18:12):
Head on over there, recipes, articles, podcasts, videos on down
the line. Go check it out, and again, thank you
so much
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Houndations podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about keeping your
dog honest and keeping yourself honest during training sessions. This episode,
I don't know, it might be a tough pill to
swallow for some folks, but that's okay. Dog training, or
(00:23):
I guess I probably should say like developing a dog.
So it's not a total embarrassment at home or in
the field, just a long game task that can include
some shortcuts. It can include some methods that will sort
of mass greater issues, but generally both those and shortcuts
will come back to haunt you at some point in
the dog's life. There's just a process to this stuff,
(00:43):
which is ripe with pitfalls. But we should be self
aware enough to not only keep our dogs honest, but
keep ourselves honest. So buckle up because that's what I'm
gonna talk about right now. I've had the good four
to interview dozens and dozens of professional dog trainers in
my career, and I'm truly good friends with some of them.
(01:07):
It's always interesting how different trainers approach the same problems
with dogs. Some trainers you know, often older trainers or
young ones with something to prove or a program to sell.
They kind of often have like very straightforward answers to questions.
If you ask them how to get a dog to heal,
(01:27):
they'll launch into a point A to B monologue on
the exact steps to take. There are usually a few
false starts and caveats, but mostly the road is a
straight one with clear sight lines for miles. This is
often great general advice, but general doesn't always apply to
individual dogs. Other trainers are more philosophical, and they're much
(01:51):
harder to interview. They don't like pigeonholing dogs or putting
up too many guardrails to their advice because they know
that no matter what, dogs are individuals dog owners two,
and the influence they have on dogs is huge and
in the realm of training often not great. The more
philosophical trainers either haven't learned to tune out the constant
(02:14):
contradictory thoughts in sort of a survival mode thing, or
they just don't want to. They want to consider the
dog as something more and the relationship with them as
something that can't be broken down into easy steps like
in a training manual. Now both styles, you know they're
right and I guess that most trainers engage in both
more than they let on. Now. I interviewed Ronnie Smith
(02:36):
one time, who owned Smith Kennel's down in Oklahoma. Ronnie
comes from dog Training Royalty, and there are very few
trainers who can walk the aisles of a show and
command the respect that he can. Now, at one point
in one of our conversations, Ronnie brought up the concept
of an honest dog. Now. I thought it was strange
at first, because it's not a natural impulse for me
(02:57):
to think of a dog as a liar. But that's
because in my head, I have a vision of dogs
that doesn't jive with the reality of a once wild
canine jockeying for position in a pack, you know, an
animal loaded with genetic instructions, coded for NonStop pursuit of resources.
But Smith's message wasn't that dogs are liars and his
job is, you know, as a trainer, has to call
(03:19):
them out. It was that if a dog shows you something,
it's generally telling you the truth with that action. What
he meant was that if you ask your dog to
do something and it doesn't understand what you're asking, it's
going to show you that and it might not be
through simply not completing the task correctly. It might look
you in the eyes while you're yelling and just stare
(03:41):
because it can't say, hey, dipshit, I'm lost here. I
don't speak English and we just started this drill. And
the louder you get, the more confused I get. Okay.
In relationships, communication is key, and if one side isn't
getting the messaging, the whole thing breaks down. This happens
in marriage, it happens with friends, it happens with coworkers,
(04:05):
it happens with our dogs. The communication that tethers us
together is predicated on honesty. I shouldn't have to say that,
but it demands honesty because there's no long term tethering
without it. The connective tissue is just too weak. What
does this have to do with dog training? Quite a bit.
(04:28):
You want to know when your dog is being honest
about something, and you want to know what to do
about it. When your dog is being honest about something,
you also want to know when your dog is trying
to get away with something, which isn't necessarily dishonest, but
it kind of is, and it's just sort of the
nature of life. We look for shortcuts everywhere, so do dogs.
(04:51):
I had a conversation recently with a fellow who works
for FHF Gear here about his puppy, and we got
on the topic of slippery slopes in dog training. He
mentioned his dog loves retrieving more than anything in the
world except food, so he has that reward lever to
pull with his dog anytime he wants. Now, he's one
of the people I love to work with on their
(05:12):
dogs because he's invested in a long game. He wants
an amazing dog, but is convinced he's going to make
too many mistakes and ruin it. Look overthinking is a bitch,
but it's about a billion times better than underthinking. I
am confident his dog will be a really, really good
hunter and general pet. We talked about a lot of things,
(05:34):
but got on a topic of retrieving and how to
keep a dog from taking shortcuts. The easiest one that
I can think of is a dog that doesn't delivered
a hand training that you like, actually teaching you how
to train that. That's fodder for another podcast, which I'll
probably get into this summer, but for now, a dog
that brings you a bumper or a bird or whatever
should deliver it to your hand. If it doesn't, there's
(05:57):
a break in the chain that will separate further over time.
What I mean by that is that the dog doesn't
naturally want to bring you a bumper, Sit down, hold
it for an unknown amount of time, and then let
you gently take it from its mouth when you're good
and ready. Dogs aren't super keen on working on someone
else's schedule, but to be fair, neither are humans. You
(06:19):
might have a dog that will follow through with a
perfect retrieve, you know, steadiness at the beginning, a straight
line to the bumper, sprint back, heel up, hold and wait.
A dog that can do that in rain or shine,
in the backyard or at the park with people everywhere
is a dog that knows his job, and he's willing
to do it for the reward of another retrieve. Simple stuff. Until,
(06:43):
for whatever reason, instead of bringing the usual bumper to
the park, someone grabs a chucket with a tennis ball
and wings it out there. Now the game's changed. Now
it has become more fun because there are fewer rules.
Or maybe the rules are the same, but just by
changing the object he's retrieving, it's not quite the same.
So the dog comes back and drops the ball at
(07:04):
your feet. This is a dog being honest about not
knowing what he can get away with right now. It's
probably not even a conscious decision, but that doesn't matter.
Now he's offered up different behavior. He's taken a little shortcut,
and if you scoop that ball up with the thrower
and you'll wing it across that soccer field again, you've
delivered a new message to him. The usual pain in
(07:28):
the ass steps don't apply for this thing. This is
the first step to unraveling a skill you work so
hard to develop. And you might think, well, who cares.
The dog is having fun and getting exercise and it
still delivers the bumper to hand. That's great, But that
bumper isn't going to keep ending up in your hand.
If you keep letting him drop that ball at your feet.
(07:49):
It's only a matter of time before he tries that
with other objects. And why wouldn't he. He wants the
quickest route to more retrieves while following the fewest rules.
And maybe if you just let that slide with the
tennis ball, you'll realize on the opening day of pheasant
season that when a rooster hits the ground, you're dealing
with another kind of object, another object for him to
(08:11):
take the same kind of shortcut with. And sometimes those
wily Chinese chickens have a lot of life left in them,
and they run away after being dropped at your feet.
And if you think your hunting buddies will let you
forget about that, you're wrong to trust me. You want
your dog to offer up that behavior with his retrieves
every single time, on the promise that if he gets
(08:32):
it right, there's a pretty good chance he'll get to
do it again. If you can put a dog in
control of whether they get a reward, they'll be more
honest with you. Communication is a two way street, though,
and it's up to us to be honest as well.
I think the easiest way for us to get into
trouble here is what I talked about a couple of
weeks ago, about consistency and training and the discipline to
(08:55):
ensure you and your dog get the reps in. But
this also applies to things like e collor usage. There
is no promise of a shortcut in dog training, quite
(09:15):
like an e caller. Now. They are amazing tools when
used correctly, but not so amazing when they aren't, the
most common problem with them is that folks incorporate them
way too quickly into a young dog's life. Now, to
be fair, this often happens when a puppy hits the
teenager tiny velociraptor stage, where they are a lot to handle.
(09:38):
You know, they're full of energy and short on brains,
and they do almost everything at warp speed, including everything
you don't want them to do. The impulse, and it's
a natural one is to get them under control, and
there is a tool that promises that control, you know,
the e caller. After all, the whole point of them,
at least when they were first invented, was to deliver
(09:58):
a punishment strong enough to deter whatever behavior was happening.
They've morphed into a long range communication device now, which
is great, but they are also built to be able
to deliver that correction. But when you take a dog
that doesn't really know anything and is functionally like a child,
and then deliver a long range punishment for behavior that
(10:20):
young dogs are going to do because they are energetic idiots,
you're saying, I don't have the patience to do this right,
or I don't understand how to get you to deliver
the right behaviors to me. But now the threat of
force is there, and you can take a dog that
would eventually want to give you the right behavior and
instead we'll do it just out of fear. And fear
is a breeding ground for shortcuts, which a lot of
(10:41):
people learn the moment they realize their dog is collar
wise and for whatever reason, the collar isn't handy. Now
is there a time and a place for you callers?
You bet there is, but it's rarely when the dog
is still super young and just learning how to be
a dog in your world with your rules. When a
dog knows what it is and what it's supposed to do,
(11:04):
then an e caller can serve as a backstop for
keeping those behaviors sharp and allowing you to ask so
much more of them from farther away than your voice
could carry. Now, we have to be honest with ourselves
about the process of taking a dog from a lovable,
idiot puppy to something that won't embarrass you no matter
where you take it. So let's look at this in
another way. Let's say you're one year old high drive
(11:27):
setter has been in a crate for nine hours while
you worked, You get home and you decide it's a
good day to work on steadiness drills. But you only
have twenty minutes before you have to go pick the
kids up at choir and take them to swim lessons
at the Why so you let Fido out, load him
in the truck and head to the baseball field down
the road. Now, when you let him out of your truck,
you yell at him for five minutes as he runs
(11:49):
full boar and circles and sniffs everything interesting and pisses
on the fences in three spots and generally ignores you.
Now your anger rises. The training session either doesn't happen
or it happens, and you think your dog will always
be that way. But what that dog is showing you
is that you bought a high drive, high horsepower animal
bread to work, and you locked him in a tiny
(12:11):
cage for a whole day and then instantly asked him
to perform once he had a little bit of freedom. Now,
a five year old dog in that situation, maybe, But
is that fair to a dog that's just learning the ropes?
Probably not. We can't avoid putting them in a crate
when they are a certain age, and sometimes any age,
(12:31):
But we also can be more honest about what we
ask of our dogs. Now, would you expect a first
grader to be as attentive the first minute of recess
as he or she would be during the first minute
of the second class of the day. What about on
a random Tuesday morning versus the Friday before Christmas? Break
Dog training used to be a matter of forcing your
(12:53):
will on them until they complied, but back then they
were viewed as just kind of a living tool. Now
decades later, we know better and should at least consider
that maybe we aren't being honest with their situation while
trying to make them adhere to rules we create that
don't take into consideration their nature or their day to
day circumstances. In the fact that we often ask more
(13:16):
than they can deliver at any given point, we take
their reactions as proof that they need more force, or
they need the guidance of a pro or we just
have a lost cause that is a lovable enough idiot
but will never be truly well behaved. But the truth
is that just about any dog out there, even the
(13:36):
low bandwidth adults who just weren't blessed with much in
the genetics category, can be pretty dang good. We just
need to be honest about what we're working with and
plug that into a system that will help them work.
All the same goes for high drive well bred dogs too.
By the way, these dogs might breeze through almost anything
you ask them, but after a short while start to
(13:57):
deviate from the plan, they might just be bored. And
while it's important to keep them on task and get
those reps in, you might have to change up your
training staturgy to count for this. This is also prime
time to talk about our expectations with our dogs and
how we often try to do the same thing with
a new dog that worked with the old one. I
(14:18):
did this with my pup, Sadie, but she's nothing like
my older dog Luna. Sure, they both have pretty good
blood and they love to retrieve and work, but Sadie
just needed so much softer of an approach, and she
needed so much more reassurance. Luna just never needed that.
She kind of just bowled her way through everything. She
(14:39):
wanted direct communication because all she cared about was picking
up the bumper or finding the grouse. Sadie wanted me
to explain everything and give her the chance to get
over whatever fears were rattling around in her smooth brain,
while Luna was just not scared of anything. So to
train my puppy the way that I trained Luna would
(14:59):
have been a disaster. And I know this because I tried.
But Sadie told me flat out that she needed something different.
The easiest thing for me to do, though, was to
default to the process that most recently worked for me
in a different dog. But it wasn't the same dog,
and honestly, I wasn't the same trainer, even though I
kind of tried to be. Now, I guess to tie
(15:21):
a bow on this one, I should end on this note.
Nothing I've said here is meant to be permission to
just phone it in or lower your standards so much
that the dog can't help but succeed. Our dogs need
to be challenged. They need to have jobs. They are
primed to learn. They want to learn with you from you.
(15:44):
I don't think they necessarily choose to teach us anything,
but that doesn't change the fact that they do, in fact,
teach us a lot. They show us how they need
to be taught, in what ways in which they'll test
our boundaries to see if they can lean a little
more into their nature and a little further away from
the rules we set for them. They'll tell us when
(16:04):
they just don't understand something, but it's on us to
listen to them and to decide if they're being honest
or they're just looking for a way to get that
next retrieve to happen a couple seconds faster. They'll tell
us when they need a couple of minutes to run
around and sniff before they can settle into training mode,
or when the time comes in their life where they
can tamp that urge down and show up for the job,
(16:25):
no matter how many hours they've been cooped up, or
how much they want to stretch their legs and go
full greyhound for a little while. I think that a
lot of us want that point a to be dog
training advice, because that's intuitive and it's easy to understand.
It answers a question. But there is none of that
without the other, more philosophical side, because dogs aren't machines,
(16:47):
and neither are we. There are millions of inputs and
a million distractions, and there's a whole bunch of intangibles
that can flavor any of the interactions we have with them.
The more we understand and acknowledge that and work to
be honest about the day to day stuff while sticking
to that bigger picture plan, the more they'll learn to
(17:08):
be honest with us for no other reason. Then that
results in them being able to do more of what
they love with the person they love more than anything.
I think that's pretty damn cool, honestly, So think about that.
Think about coming back in two weeks because I'm going
to talk about why we should all try to understand
pack animals and pack animal behavior so that we can
(17:30):
just better understand our dogs and how we can work
with them. That's it. I'm Tony Peterson and this has
been The Houndation's podcast. Thank you so much for listening
and for all of your support. We truly appreciate it.
Here at Meat Eater. All of us do without you, guys,
we don't have anything, So thank you for showing up
(17:51):
for us. If you need some more dog training content,
or you want to watch some hunting videos, some cool
adventure stuff, you want to listen to some other podcasts,
maybe get some wisdom from Brent Reeves over on This
Country Life whatever. We drop so much content every week
at the Meat eater dot com. You gotta check it out.
(18:12):
Head on over there, recipes, articles, podcasts, videos on down
the line. Go check it out, and again, thank you
so much
Host
Cal Callaghan
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com