Diving Into the Decades: An Enlightening Chat with Ken McCort

This is a fascinating discussion that dives into everything from dogs to coyotes; from selective breeding to feral dog populations; from social facilitation to intentional thinking --- a jam packed episode! Join us for a compelling chat with my longtime friend and esteemed colleague, Ken McCort, a luminary in animal training since 1979. Together, we share our journeys through the early days of animal training and reminisce about unforgettable moments from conferences. Ken's illustrious career, notably his exceptional work with wolves and contributions to veterinary education, provides invaluable insights into the complex world of animal behavior.

About Ken:
Ken is a professional animal trainer and behavior consult that has been working with multiple species since 1979. With an education in psychology, ethology and neurobiology, he strives to understand animal behavior based on the niche that the animals live in. He looks at modification of unwanted behaviors and modification for desired behaviors using all three sciences.

As the receiver of the 2020 Association of Professional Dog Trainers Lifetime Achievement Award as well as many other international recognitions, he thrives to teach people the animal’s perspective. Having taught people and trained animals in many countries around the world, Ken strives to get other trainers and pet people to embrace science as the modality for change.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
In this episode I chat with a special friend and
colleague who I've known since Ijust started out in training.
Ken McCord is here to chat withme and one thing you guys might
not know is that for me to stayorganized, I usually send out a
request for a biography whenscheduling the podcast
interviews so I can kind ofinclude them in the show notes.

(00:22):
Ken, being the super humble guyhe is, sends me a bio with one
sentence and it saysprofessional animal trainer
since 1987.
I don't think that does him anyjustice at all.
He's lectured at conferencesand seminars around the world,
trained multiple species,including wolves at Wolf Park,
and taught at veterinary schoolsand conferences on the topic of

(00:45):
animal behavior.
Ken and I have had manyfascinating conversations about
aggression and I'm sure thisepisode will not disappoint.
And if you are enjoying thebuddy under the dog, you can
support the podcast by going toaggressivedogcom, where there's
a variety of resources to learnmore about helping dogs with
aggression issues, including theupcoming Aggression and Dogs

(01:05):
Conference happening fromOctober 11th to 13th 2024 in
Scottsdale, arizona, with bothin-person and online options.
You can also learn more aboutthe Aggression and Dogs Master
Course, which is the mostcomprehensive course available
anywhere in the world forlearning how to work with and
help dogs with aggression issues.
I also have a wide variety ofwebinars, upcoming courses,

(01:28):
videos and articles, all fromthe foremost experts in training
and behavior.
We are your one-stop shop forall things related to aggression
in dogs.
Hey, everyone, welcome back tothe Bitey End of the Dog.
This week, I have none otherthan Ken McCourt with me.
Welcome to the show, ken.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Oh, glad to be here, mike.
I was thrilled to get yourinvitation.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
tell you the truth this is really kind of an honor
for me, because I want to goback and tell a story about some
of our experiences.
We've known each other for along time going way back through
the.
Iwabc days, the Yahoo Groupdays, and one of my most
cherished memories is one time Iforget which conference.
I think it was an APDTconference, but anyways, we were

(02:15):
there and it was you and I, andwe're like, let's go get dinner
.
And then Dr Simone Gadbois wasalso there.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
And okay let's go.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
And so we start walking and we ended up finding
this kind of sushi place, but itturns out it was drag night on
Halloween right, and it was alsokaraoke night.
So it created this reallyinteresting atmosphere.
And then Ian Dunbar walks in,Remember that and he starts
doing karaoke in the back.
Yeah, but it was just you know.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
And I was just.
You know, I think that wasMemphis Tennessee, if it doesn't
, that sounds right, I think itwas yeah, yeah, those were fun
times man.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
And I was just like this young kind of speak.
I think I don't even rememberif I was speaking at that
conference yet, but I was likethis newer kind of speak, kind
of new to this whole conferencething, and it was just such an
honor for me.
I'm like sitting there in thisatmosphere, listening to Dunbar
in the background singingkaraoke, but we're sitting at
the table talking aboutneuroscience.
I'm like what world am I inright now, seeing all these

(03:15):
people in costumes, and here weare having a serious
conversation about neuroscience.
So anyways, I thought that wasa really nice memory and it was,
of course, an honor to speak toyou guys, so it was a really
nice memory, and it was, ofcourse, an honor to speak to you
guys.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
So yeah, Good times.
Yeah, I got to see Simon thisyear in Kentucky at the APT.
He was a closer.
It was kind of cool because helives in Halifax, Nova Scotia,
which is it takes a couple daysby small plane to get out of
where he is, Dahl University andinto the United States.

(03:48):
And when he showed up I was on,I was getting ready to talk and
he came up and of course I cameoff the stage and we hugged
each other and I said to him areyou staying overnight Because
he's the closer?
And he said yeah, and I said Iam too, and I went back to my
room and renewed my room foranother day because I knew that

(04:11):
we would be hitting the bar andhaving food in good times, like
we did, and it was and didn'tmiss a beat.
But Simon is one of thosebrilliant scientists who
absolutely understands,especially the olfactory system
in dogs, and I learn moresitting around having brewskis

(04:37):
and conversations.
Sometimes I learn more fromthose than I do from the lecture
itself.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's all the more reason to goto those in-person conferences.
You just it's that thosespecial moments make all the
difference then.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
That networking to me is worth the price of admission
.
I mean, I often look at who thelineup of speakers are and what
have you.
But what it really comes downto is I like to grab people I
know, and even some people Idon't know, and get together for
those social events whetherit's lunch or dinner or whatever
and just have an exchange ofideas, and that's sometimes a

(05:18):
bigger thrill for me than thecourses that they're teaching.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
It gives you the time toreminisce.
And kind of speaking ofreminiscing about things, let's
reminisce about Ray Coppinger alittle bit.
Oh my, we were talking a littlebit about before we started
recording, ethology and theinfluences of Ray, especially in
the dog training community, andone of the things that I often

(05:45):
talk about is the predatorymotor sequence when it comes to
aggression and understandingthat, oh yeah.
So let's dive into that First,for maybe some new listeners or
people that aren't quitefamiliar with the ethology lens.
Can you just define what thepredatory motor sequence is and
kind of why it matters inaggression cases?

Speaker 2 (06:02):
and kind of why it matters in aggression cases.
Well, ethology is kind of adead science and I don't want to
say that we don't use itanymore.
What has happened to ethologyis it's now broken up into
behavioral ecology, neurobiology.
You know there's a whole bunchof smaller groups that used to

(06:22):
be under the umbrella ofethology, smaller groups that
used to be under the umbrella ofethology.
And ethology in general is abiological look at how the
animal behaves and it has to dowith motor patterns, intrinsic
behaviors, which means they'reborn with them, and especially
predation.
It's a motor pattern and whenyou work with animals like

(06:43):
wolves and coyotes and thingslike that, they have the whole
sequence in their system.
They have to practice it to getgood at it, but they don't have
to be taught how to do it.
Okay, and what we've done withdogs is taught them to
specialize.
We've selected differentbehaviors in that motor sequence

(07:07):
that were a benefit to humans,whether they were guarding our
farms or helping us hunt orwhatever.
We learned how to isolate those.
And somebody like Coppinger hewas more of an evolutionary
behaviorist because he wasreally interested in how it's

(07:30):
evolved over time what a lot oftrainers refer to as high drive
dogs.
That usually means that themotor pattern is so strong in

(07:53):
that animal that it's internallyrewarded dopamine usually okay
and it's resistant to extinction.
You know, and so you got toknow as a trainer, can I modify
that or can I substitute anotherbehavior into the sequence or
do I manage it?
And the answer can be all three, depending on what you're

(08:17):
dealing with.
But if you're just saying as atrainer, well, he doesn't like
animals that run, instead ofsaying he has chase and grab
bite, which are motor patterns,then you're looking at it as an
emotional event, and predationis not an emotional event.

(08:38):
In fact, the animal's havingfun at every sequence, so that's
why they'll hunt at everysequence.
So that's why they'll hunt eventhough they're not hungry, you
know.
That's why the animal.
You can trigger those motorsequences in the animal by doing
something like riding a bike ora skateboard down the sidewalk,

(08:59):
you know.
Or jog, you know.
Just change your pace from awalk to a jog and boom, you see
that intrinsic behavior come out.
And if you're going to workwith animals like that, you need
to know whether it's somethingthat you can modify through

(09:20):
training, and a lot of times youcan through training, and a lot
of times you can.
You can change the stimulusthat produces the behavior.
You can change the intensity ofthe behavior.
Can you remove the behavior?
Probably not.
You have to deal with it,basically.
So somebody like Hoppinger wasone of those guys that could

(09:45):
take that kind of informationfrom the academic world and dumb
it down for lack of a betterterm to make it understandable
for people that work withanimals one-on-one.
I had the pleasure of travelingand lecturing with Ray for

(10:06):
almost 20 years and I considerhim a dear friend, and I was
really upset when he passed away.
But we also knew he was reallysick.
I just didn't realize how sickhe was, but his brain was so

(10:27):
smart, he was so good at notonly understanding the science
but remembering the details ofit that I used to tell people
that I thought he was an alien,that he had come down to earth
to embarrass us or to teach usto understand concepts that are

(10:52):
way beyond the grasp of mostpeople.
And so for me, you know, Raywas not just a friend, he was a
mentor who really improved myskill sets as a trainer, because
he got me to understand what Ican and what I can't do with an

(11:15):
animal, especially if you'retalking about an intrinsic
behavior, something they're bornwith yeah so, and I'll second
that notion.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
I I mean, he was also such a brilliant presenter, but
witty and funny too.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
I always enjoyed his talks.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
He's just so witty with his comments and responding
.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
He would say things just to get a rise out of the
audience.
He said stuff that at lecturesthat I was at with him that I
absolutely knew he didn'tbelieve that but he wanted to
see how it affected the peoplein the room.
He invited challenges, hewanted people to challenge his

(11:58):
ideas and I really admire that.
You know he was a consummatescientist and true scientists
don't agree with each other onvery much.
I mean, they really don't.
You're always trying to refutethe no hypothesis and trying to

(12:21):
prove someone else is wrong.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
But you have to follow the scientific
methodologies to do that.
And when he started to look atsome of the early studies, we
did that compared wolves to dogs.
There were a couple of paperswritten that I considered total
nonsense and so did he, and sowe went out to disprove them.

(12:50):
One of them, one of thoseprocesses we blew away about
five years of data at Wolf Parkin three days.
You know.
We had 18 wolves.
We ran them through the testingprocedure 10 times each in one

(13:11):
afternoon and absolutelydestroyed the data that these
other academics have put out.
And they were so ticked offthat they sent their own team to
Wolf Park to test the wolvesthemselves because they thought
we'd made it up or we somehowdidn't follow the science.

(13:31):
And we did.
We filmed everything we did.
The repetitions were clean.
The way that we taught theanimals was actually better at
what we were measuring than whatthey were doing in the lab that
produced that data that weargued with.
It was fun, you know, but Ireally got to know Ray through

(13:55):
that work and it was kind ofcool because Clive Wynn was the
guy that was interested in thestudy and his two graduate
students are both professors whoI knew as grad students and
they're both brilliant and itwas really kind of cool to watch

(14:18):
the evolution of that sciencegoing on right in front of me.
You know it was amazing,amazing.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
It's the nice delineation between people that
are in the academia and scienceversus people on social media.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yes, oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
You can argue, but there's no disrespect
necessarily in the arguingExactly, it's just the nice part
of that Exactly.
I'd love to jump back into thatpredatory motor sequence we
were talking about, because Iwas actually just recently just
re-watching one of Ray's talksat the SPARKS conference and he
was talking about hypertrophy ofthe certain behaviors versus

(14:59):
truncating certain behaviors orparts of that motor sequence,
depending on the dog breed,right and why.
You know, can you talk moreabout that kind of briefly,
because I also want to pick yourbrain about what happens during
that process.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah, hypertrophy means that it's exaggerated.
Okay, it's hyper, okay.
And so if you selectively breedfor an exaggeration of a part
of that sequence, the otherparts of the sequence that

(15:32):
adjoin it tend to be muted, theytend to fall off.
We started to look at with itwas that with some of the
sequences, the next behavior inthe sequence might be muted, but
if we reinforce it it can bondto the previous behavior and

(15:57):
become hypertrophied as thebehavior itself.
So let's say, if you have aterrier who has chase but no
grab bite, that would be aherding dog okay, typically a
header rather than a healer.
And you start to reinforce thegrab bite end of it.

(16:21):
It can be exaggerated prettyquickly to where the animal will
show you chase and grab biteeven though you don't want the
grab bite to occur.
And I think that that's whatsome groups have done
genetically with dogs, and myexample for that would be a

(16:45):
Belgian Malinois.
Okay, malinois that I see havemuch more grab bite than any
Belgian sheepdog or Belgiantavern that I see out there.
And I think that the Belgianmilitary specifically
selectively bred those dogs forabout 60 years now to have an

(17:11):
exaggerated grab bite.
And a lot of times when youtrain those guys, the reinforcer
to get them to let go is tosubstitute something else to
bite and grab.
So a lot of times the handlerisn't carrying treats, the
animal doesn't want a treat,they wanted to do the grab.
So a lot of times the handlerisn't carrying treats, the
animal doesn't want a treat,they wanted to do the grab bite
so they may let go of the personlet's say in the Michelin man

(17:36):
suit that's taken the bite andredirect that energy onto
something the handler is holdingand they'll literally pick the
dog up off the ground and slingthem around in a circle and
whatever, and that's areinforcer for the dog.
And so I think that we see thatdone purposely in the working

(18:02):
dogs, like the Malinois, whereaswith the more pet dogs, like
the Belgian sheepdogs and theBelgian taverns, they didn't use
them for that.
So those guys tend to not havethat hypertrophied grab bite
behavior.
You can teach them to chase,but a lot of times they'll nose

(18:22):
prod the animal and notnecessarily grab it.
I had a Belgian sheepdog thathad no grab bite at all.
I mean, it had amazing chasesequence and really hard to call
off a chase on anything.
But if it actually caught up towhat it was chasing, it would
nose prod it, it wouldn't biteit.

(18:45):
Okay, and I didn't want tobring that behavior out.
If I brought it out especiallyas a young dog work with that
nervous system so I can sharpenthat neural pathway I probably
could have ended up with anindividual that had the
hypertrophy grab bite in it.

(19:06):
But why would I want to do thatwith a pet dog?
And if I'm looking for aworking dog, just go get a melon
.
Why reinvent the wheel?

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Right, right.
So let's talk a little bitabout when that becomes
problematic.
So we have people that selectfor those particular behaviors
in working context, but thenwhen it starts to enter the pet
dog population, it can bedifficult for maybe the average
pet guardian to understand whytheir dog is biting at this
level.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
What's going on?

Speaker 1 (19:37):
So let's break that down a little bit more, because
that motor sequence happensright.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, when I'm dealing with clients and I never
ran group training classes, Imean I did a couple times in my
career but I hated them and Ireally didn't like doing it and
I like working with problems andso the vast majority of
referrals that I got for 30-someyears of training were
aggression cases, and the firstthing I need to do is explain to

(20:06):
the client what's themotivation.
You know why is he doing that?
And a lot of times what youwould see is the dog developed a
behavior without the ownermaybe realizing that it was
going there.
You know, they go off to work,they leave the dog, who's
sleeping on the couch, and thedog spends the entire day going

(20:28):
from window to window chasingcars, birds, anything else that
moves outside, and they don'trealize it's a problem until the
furniture is turned over,there's slobber all over the
windows or somebody complains.
So that wasn't a purposefultraining of that behavior.

(20:50):
That's what I like to callaccidental reinforcement.
The environment, the animal wasleft in an environment where
that behavior out of probablyboredom for the dog, that
behavior became hypertrophied.
Okay, and now we got to do what?
Well, we need to take away thestimulus, you know, to try to

(21:10):
cool that neural pathway down.
And then we need to change themanagement of the animal when
the owner's away, so it can'tpractice the behavior because
you can come in there.
I don't care what your trainingskills are, how good you are,
if you leave and the owner letsthe dog go back to that
situation, they're just wastingmoney.

(21:32):
I would tell people that didn'twant to change the environment
on that animal.
I'd say, well, let's not wastemy time and your money because
there is no magic cure, there isno something I'm going to be
able to do with your dog.
That's going to permanentlychange how the animal gets

(21:56):
stimulated from the environment.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah, off that topic, let's slide into our
neuroscience lens and talk aboutwhat's happening that makes
that behavior so reinforcing,and the dopamine that happens.
And it's really not the, forinstance, like in predation,
it's not so much the actualconsumption or the catching of
the, let's say, the sheep, it isthe act of it or the

(22:19):
anticipation of it.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Right, it's the whole .
Chase them down and get them,yeah.
And so again, if the animal'sdoing that for survival, okay,
now it's true predation.
But if the dog eats kibble dogfood out of the dish from the
owner, it's just more likemental masturbation for the dog.

(22:40):
It's bored, it doesn't haveanything else to do.
It knows how to get a dopaminesurge going and it does.
Now, once you get that neuralpathway heated up, it's going to
really start generalizing.
When it generalizes, the animalstarts looking for stimulus in
the environment to produce thatchase behavior.

(23:03):
So that's where the dog startsbecoming hypervigilant.
It's watching the windows, it'sconstantly moving around
looking for the opportunity torelease the behavior, because
that's how it derives pleasure.
So you know, and taking the dogfor walks and some of the silly

(23:24):
stuff that I see people doingwith a dog like that.
Now you're doing what?
Now you're taking them out to anew environment where they can
find different stimulus toproduce the same behavior.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
In that regard of the satisfaction right for the dog
or meeting that need.
Let's talk about a couple ofdifferent potential scenarios.
You have, let's say, a dog.
That's very much into the eyeof the sequence.
So just eyeing but, they don'tgo through the full sequence.
They kind of stop there.
Maybe they're just like apointer and just eyeing the
actual thing.
And then so let's say, we have adog that does have the issue of

(23:59):
taking off on the owner andthey don't come back because
they've gone to the next step ofthat sequence, versus we have,
like, a dog that goes all theway to the bite, hold, shake
part of the sequence and that'show you bridge your feet right.
And so some of the newertechniques in working with dogs,
with predation issues or issueswith just chasing squirrels or
whatever, is to allow for thatsatisfaction.

(24:21):
Right, so you get the eye.
Let's just say it's the dogthat is just eyeing.
We allow the dog to do that,but we stop it there, so they
still get the dopamine hit, soto speak, versus the other dog
where we can't actually, ofcourse, allow them to go off
leash and then chase and graband bite and hold.
So talk us through that youknow if you kind of understand
what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, exactly, in the case of they go to I and we
allow that to occur, then youhave to be able to teach the dog
to ramp down to settle.
You know what Karen overallused to teach relaxation

(25:01):
exercises.
A lot of times it was involved.
You know breathing exercisesfor the dog and all you're
trying to do is raise the oxygenlevel, get the animal to
downregulate the dopamine,hopefully get some serotonin in
the system and going in thatdirection in order to learn how

(25:22):
to modulate the arousal.
Because by the time mosttrainers see that dog, what the
dog does is they can't modulateanymore.
It's zero to 100.
There's nothing in between.
Okay, and if the animal can'tmodulate the arousal, you know
you're going to have a heck of atime the owner, the trainer,

(25:42):
everybody in getting the animalto modify the behavior.
So a lot of those programs thatare allowing the animal to get
to a certain threshold, it's notabout letting them just get to
the threshold, it's aboutteaching them that once they get
there they need to learn how tocool themselves down.

(26:07):
You know, one of the drugsthat's overproduced in a lot of
places in the United States areSSRIs okay, selective serotonin
reuptake inhibitors, and there'sseveral kinds on the market and
what they do is they turn offwhen serotonin is in the synapse

(26:29):
, when it's changed to dopamineor it's changed to adrenaline,
which is norepinephrine whenit's in the synapse.
Anywhere else it's calledadrenaline.
Okay, the animal doesn't getrid of the serotonin.
There's a little pump on thenext neuron that draws the

(26:49):
serotonin out so that anotherchemical can take over.
And what those drugs do isthey're designed to turn that
little pump off so the animalcan't take the serotonin out.
Well, unless the animal canrelax serotonin out.

(27:11):
Well, unless the animal canrelax, you're just feeding them
a pill that's doing nothingbecause there isn't any
serotonin in the synapse.
The animal's jacked up.
They're either adrenalized orthey're off the charts in
dopamine, something along thoselines.
So if you're giving an SSRI andthe animal doesn't know how to
relax, you're kind of wastingyour money on a pharmaceutical

(27:32):
end that will not necessarilychange the animal's behavior.
So you really have to if you'regoing to look at the
neurobiology and especially ifyour veterinarian's going to go
at a medication to try to helpthe animal out.
There has to be a trainingprogram in there that gets the

(27:55):
animal to downregulate how muchadrenaline or how much
norepinephrine they're producing.
You have to look at the systemreproducing.
You have to look at the system.
I like to tell my clients whohave dogs that are way off the
charts in arousal, who arealready on SSRIs and they don't

(28:17):
do anything.
It's because the animal can'tmodulate, it can't relax, it's
constantly looking for astimulus to make it get aroused
again.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
And you know we have a bunch of listeners right now
saying, ken, that sounds great,but how do we do that, like,
what's the way to help theseanimals?

Speaker 2 (28:37):
Well, there is a lot of relaxation exercises that you
can train the dog to do.
A lot of them have to do withlaying down and chin resting and
teaching the animal how to, youknow, focus on.
I typically start by teachingthe dog to focus on a target you

(28:58):
know and then to hold theirnose or their paw or something
to the target and then I startworking on getting the dog to
get into either a sit or a downposition, because they have to
start to relax or they're goingto spring back up.
And it's a process of trying toget the animal to learn how to

(29:20):
modulate its arousal.
And some dogs they like thearousal.
They don't want to.
You know you got some feistylittle schnauzer or something
he's like.
I don't want to.
This feels good.
I don't want to stop doing that.
You know you have to go withthe matching law.
You have to have a reinforcerthat the animal finds is worth

(29:41):
it to go through the energy tolearn how to downregulate their
arousal.
You know I've seen a lot ofcreative ways that people do
that, you know, with theiranimals and again it goes back
to the skill of the trainer.
You know, do you have a libraryof things you can do with the

(30:04):
animal, or are you a one trickpony?
I'm just going to teach themhow to shallow breathe and I'm
like, well, that might work, butprobably not with some dogs
that you're going to run into.
Sometimes you get into dogsthat are genetically wired to be
that way.
Lifestyle guarding dogs arelike that.

(30:27):
They're really, really mellowuntil they're aroused and then
they don't bark and jump up anddown and act stupid, they just
go get you.
They don't waste any energygetting to the grab bite, they
go right to it.
And so if you have somebodythat has a dog like that and
they bought it because it'swhite and it's fluffy and they

(30:49):
didn't look at the fact thatthey're buying a working dog,
there's a mile of differencebetween a pet Great Pyrenees and
a working Great Pyrenees.
I had a working Great Pyrenees.
She was a wonderful, freakingdog.
She bit the previous owner fivetimes, five different

(31:10):
incidences that required medicalattention and he kept trying to
dominate the animal.
Stand over it, flip her on herback.
Whatever.
She's 105 pounds.
Are you freaking crazy?
So I brought her to my house.
You know.
I took her off a death row at aveterinary hospital.
Okay, not where my wife worked.

(31:31):
Okay, I took her off a deathrow, I brought her home and I
taught her to back up off thefood dish because she was
guarding food.
Okay, to back off the food dishin order to get food.
And I found that when she wasfour feet away critical distance
.
When she was four feet away,her arousal level went down.
So that took all of 15 minutesto change that behavior.

(31:55):
Then I gave her a job.
I taught her that I wanted herto watch the farm.
I live on a farm.
Okay, to watch the farm foranimals that are a problem.
I don't care about cars, Idon't care about motorcycles, I
don't care about birds, I don'twant skunks, I don't want

(32:16):
groundhogs, I don't want.
And she was a happy dog.
I had her for nine years.
She never bit me or anybodywhile she was on the farm.
She died an old fart and wasabsolutely thrilled that someone
understood what she was doing.
When I gave her a job, it wasalmost like she was saying thank

(32:40):
God, finally somebodyunderstands that I'm a working
dog, I'm not a pet.
And the guy wanted a greatPyrenees and when he wanted a
pet, quality one, he's going tohave to get on a waiting list
and he's going to pay a couplethousand dollars if he can find
one.
You can go down to Amishcountry, which is literally 30

(33:01):
miles from my house, and theyhave working livestock guarding
dogs, pyrenees, in their fieldswith their animals right now.
And you want to buy one ofthose puppies?
They'll sell them to you.
They're $250.
Okay, oh, you want to buy oneof those puppies?
They'll sell them to you.
They're 250 dollars.
Okay, oh, you want a pet dog?
They don't even know what thatis and as long as you got 250
dollars, they'll sell a dog toyou.

(33:21):
They don't care.
You know he's your problem now,you know, and unfortunately,
they're really, really cute, butyou don't see those behaviors
until their brain matures, whichis around two and a half three
years of age, right, right.
Then it shows up.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
And at that point the dog's no longer small and white
and fluffy, it's now a big dogand they don't have any
low-level threat behavior.
You know, and Sasha was a greatdog.
I loved that dog.
I really did.
She was a great dog.
I love that dog.
I really did.
She was a wonderful dog.
But I really felt like once sherealized that I gave her a job

(34:01):
and I expect her to do it.
She was a happy dog.
Every day she would get up andwhen I'd let her out she'd
patrol the perimeter and I toldher she's allowed to watch
anything that's out there thatyou don't think should be here,
but you're only allowed to barkat animals.
I don't care about people.
And she got it.
It was pretty easy.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
Okay.
Well, that's an excellent wayto summarize everything we've
been talking about, you know,and what we've selected for and
behaviors as humans.
So I'm going to take a quickbreak to hear a word from our
sponsors and we'll be right backbecause I want to talk about a
different topic calledintentional thinking, which
maybe some listeners haven'theard of.
But we're going to dive rightin right after this break Sounds

(34:42):
good.
Hey, friends, it's me again andI hope you are enjoying this
episode.
Don't forget to join me for thefifth annual Aggression and
Dogs Conference, either inperson or online from Scottsdale
, arizona, from October 11th tothe 13th 2024.
This year's lineup includesmany incredible speakers,

(35:03):
including Dr Clive Wynn, drJessica Heckman, emma Parsons,
sarah Kallnice, laurie Lawless,carmeletta Ofterheide, jess
Feliciano, dr Amy Cook and manymore.
Head on over toaggressivedogcom and click on
the conference tab to learn moreabout the exciting agenda on
everything from advancedconcepts in dog body language to
working with aggression inshelter environments, to genetic

(35:25):
influences on behavior.
Dr Amy Cook will be bringingher entertaining and energetic
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which, by the way, will be livestreamed as well as in person,
and, as usual, you'll find awonderful, kind, caring and
supportive community at theconference, both in person and
online.
I also want to take a moment tothank one of our wonderful

(35:47):
sponsors this year Pets for Vets.
Did you know that approximately1 million shelter animals are
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At the same time, many of ourcountry's veterans are
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(36:09):
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(36:30):
behavior and human personality,to ensure a successful,
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In addition to helping veteransand rescue animals, clarissa
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(36:51):
Trainers are able toparticipate anywhere in the US
while receiving stipends,professional development
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Pets for Vets is also seekingnew partnerships with animal
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For more information, pleasevisit petsforvetscom.

(37:15):
All right, we're back here withKen McCourt.
We've been having somefascinating discussions around
the predatory motor sequence andethology and neuroscience, but
now I'm going to shift gears,because years ago this is going
back again.
I think we're dating ourselvesa little bit here in terms of
how long we've been doing thiswork for, but I can't recall at
least 10 years ago you weregiving a talk on intentional

(37:35):
thinking.
I think it was an IABCconference and I just found it
really fascinating, because wetalk about communication and
body language and observing thebehavior of dogs, but we have
all kinds of different opinionsabout how much they're thinking,
how much they're intending toget you to do things.
So this is maybe a foreignconcept to some of the listeners

(37:58):
.
So can you just break down whatintentional thinking means
first, before we dive in?

Speaker 2 (38:03):
Well, intentional thinking actually came out of
the philosophical fields.
Philosophers and scientiststhat had a philosophical
construct going on in their headwere the ones that actually
first started this.
And now that we have imagingand we can actually see the
electrical transmission going onin the animal's brain, we can

(38:26):
now put numbers you know, realdata to the concept.
But intentional thinking has todo with wants and needs and
there's levels.
First level intentionalthinking would be like I have
wants and needs okay.
I need food, I need to be warm,I would like to watch this

(38:49):
television program, whateverOkay.
The second level is that youknow that I have those wants and
needs and if you're the trainer, you can use those wants and
needs as reinforcers Okay.
The third level would be that Iknow that you know that I have

(39:15):
these wants and needs Okay.
And it keeps going up untilfive, six, seven layers Okay,
there's an infinite number thatyou can get to, but most humans
and most people that look atintentional thinking usually
stop around five, because thatwould be probably a pretty high

(39:39):
level of intentional thinkingfor a human.
So it would be that I know that, you know that.
I know that you know that Ihave once, and it goes back and
forth like this.
The way I used to explain it isthat children human children
develop intentional thinking ata third level somewhere between

(40:00):
three and five years of age, andthat's due to brain development
.
Okay, and so if I have twochildren and I'm going to test
them for intentional thinking,I'm going to start with a
three-year-old.
I got a three-year-old and afive-year-'m going to start with
a three-year-old.
I got a three-year-old and afive-year-old.
Okay, so a three-year-old.
I'm going to take out a box andit says crayons on it and I'm
going to shake the box and I'mgoing to look at the little girl

(40:23):
and I'm going to say to herwhat do you think's in the box?
Now she's going to say if she'sever played with crayons before
, crayons okay, that'sfirst-level intentional thinking
.
All right, if I dumped them outinto my hand and they're
birthday candles, they're notcrayons.
Okay, I put them back in thebox and I shake them and I say

(40:47):
to the three-year-old what doyou think is in the box?
And I say to the three-year-oldwhat do you think is in the box
?
She's going to say birthdaycandles, because she knows that.
I know that.
She knows I changed them.
Okay, so we're now at two.
All right, if I said to her, ifI showed the box to your mom,

(41:11):
what does your mom think isgoing to be in the box?
The three-year-old's going tosay birthday candles, because
she doesn't know that momdoesn't know that I changed them
, okay.
That's going to say, oh, mom'sgoing to think there's crayons,

(41:34):
because she knows that I knowthat I didn't change them, okay.
And that's the shift where achild can number one, get a joke
.
They would understand I'mkidding, I don't think like that
, okay.
It also is a point where theycan become.

(41:54):
They can lie to me, they candeceive.
If I ask a three-year-old doyou think I'm fat?
If she thinks you're fat, she'sgoing to say yeah, okay, because
you are okay, she's not goingto be worried about it, it's
going to hurt your feelings.
The five-year-old might saywell, no, I think you could lose
a pound or two, but you lookgood, you know if she likes me

(42:17):
and she wants.
So there's a level of deceptionthere.
Not that she's lying to me, butshe understands a little bit
more about the world out thereand how animals in the world
perceive what's actuallyhappening and what's about to
happen.
What those needs and wants areOkay.
So when we take this to a dog,the example that I would use is

(42:41):
that if you have two dogs andone dog can control resources
from another dog, okay, and it'son the couch, and the lower
ranking dog and I'm just goingto use rank as a way to refer to
the animal Dogs don't have rankorder, but anyhow it has to do

(43:02):
with resource control, all right.
So if the other dog is on thefloor and would like to get the
couch, is on the floor and wouldlike to get the couch, and it
runs to the door and barks andthe dog that controls resources
gets off the couch to go to thedoor and the lower ranking dog
now takes the couch, peoplewould say to me well, that's,

(43:27):
you fooled him.
That's third level intentionalthinking.
And I would say, well, ifthere's never been anybody at
the door and the dog's neverseen the other dog go to the
door and bark, I would go alongwith that.
But more than likely the dogknows that when I go to the door

(43:49):
and bark, the dog will get offthe couch and do that.
So there's a learning step inthere where the dog has learned
to trick the other dog intogetting off the couch.
But there's a learning sequencein there in order for the
animal to get that done.
So it's still second levelintentional thinking.
The animals just learn to bedeceptive thinking.

(44:15):
The animals just learn to bedeceptive.
Okay.
But if there was no, the dog'snever done this before, he's
never barked at the door and hecame up with that idea of how to
trick the other dog into givingup the resource, then that
would be third level intentionalthinking, but I've never seen
it Okay.
So that always started a littlebit of a discussion between
people and usually when I gavethat talk, my mailbox and my

(44:39):
Facebook page would fill up withpeople that would absolutely
insist that their dog can dothird level intentional thinking
and they would give me examplesof how the dog would do it and
for a while I used to sit downand explain to them the stages
the dog probably went through tolearn how to deceive or how to

(45:02):
manipulate something in theenvironment to make that happen.
But if it happens in a vacuummeaning the animal there's no
prior learning, the animal justcame up with that Then I would
agree with it.
Now that we can do, imaging andlook at how the dog's brain
works.
Their brain locks up when weget to third.
Humans can do five, six.

(45:23):
If you work at it.
You can go up higher than that.
It's not necessary, by the way,to function in society to have
five, six, seven, but you needto get to at least three or four
.
You need to know that if you goto work and earn some money,
you might be able to amassenough to buy a car and that

(45:47):
they're not just going to payyou for sitting at home and
doing nothing.
So there's things in theenvironment that we have to have
at least third levelintentional thinking to motivate
us to go out there and do it.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Yeah, and I would love that's a great explanation,
because it's a very difficultkind of concept to wrap your
head around.
Especially when you start firstlearning about it.
Like what did Kent say?
He knows that I don't know what.
So there's a lot of you got toactually really think about what
you're saying there.
And you know it has me thinkingabout other concepts.
Common concepts or things wethink about are constantly state

(46:23):
in the dog training world, youknow, like, for instance, a dog
using signals to try to, like,get the other dog to calm down,
or something like that.
So can you talk more about that?
You know, is that, do you thinkthat's what's happening, or
would that be implying a thirdlevel, intentional?

Speaker 2 (46:37):
Well, calming signals definitely are out there, but
they're.
They're actually.
Most of them that I see aredisplacement behaviors.
The animal is doing thatbecause the animal's frustrated.
They're not trying tonecessarily tell the other
animal to calm down, okay, butif these signals that they give

(46:58):
out are somewhat universal tocanids in general, so if the
dog's lived with another dog inits household or in its life, in
its household or in its life,it learns to read those signals.
Now, for me, the vast majorityof the clients that I see have

(47:19):
really, really smart dogs, okay,and what the client doesn't
like is that the dog ismanipulating them rather than
them manipulating the dog, andit's not just with aggression,
with a lot of things.
And when I was asked I had aconversation once with Susan

(47:42):
Friedman about this I told herthat for me, a really
intelligent dog is a dog thatpays attention to details and
remembers them.
So a dog that's not so bright,you can take them to a training
program somewhere and they teachthem to sit and lay down and

(48:03):
whatever.
And they teach them togeneralize it do it in the house
, do it in the car, do it at thepark, do it with other dogs
around, whatever.
And and the dog says at somepoint I got it, whereas really
smart dogs say what's yourreinforcement history?
Have you ever paid me for doingthis.
Is this a morning behavior orafternoon behavior?

(48:25):
Does this only happen in thefront seat but not the back seat
of the car?
Does it only happen with youand not with anybody else?
And they pay attention to theselittle nuances within the
environment.
And not only do they recognizethe little subtleties of what's
going on, they remember it.

(48:46):
Okay, and the treat for me atWolf Park was getting to train
with Twister and Willow, who arecoyotes.
Ok, I work with those twolittle buggers for 12 years.
Ok, I always worked with themas a brace.
They were always together.
I didn't separate them.
Ok, they were never on leash,never restrained.

(49:07):
They could come and go as theywanted.
I had to have permission tocome into their enclosure if
they didn't let strangers in.
Okay, twister and Willow paidattention to every kind of
little detail.
I can remember specificallywhen I first started working
with Twister with a target stick.

(49:28):
He wanted to know can I touchthe air in front of the target
stick?
Can I lick the target stick?
Can I bite the target stick?
Can I touch the shaft of thetarget stick rather than the end
?
And he went through this myriadof testing me to see exactly

(49:50):
what I was reinforcing and I hadto teach the person that was
training with them besides methat you can't be wishy-washy
about what that behavior is,because if you start reinforcing
any variance of the behavior,he'll start throwing you more

(50:13):
and more variations and it getsto the point where now the
coyote's training you.
You are no longer training thecoyote, okay, and I can tell you
in all the years that I workwith those two, there were many
times that I had to stop in themiddle of the training session
and go wait a minute.

(50:34):
Who's training who?
And I would realize prettyquickly that no, they're now
training me, I am no longertraining them.
And that's not a bad thing andI don't even consider it an
insult.
It just means that in thetraining process I've lost
control.
Training process, I've lostcontrol.

(50:56):
You know they're now trainingme and they were very good at
doing that, and I used to tellthe trainers that came in down
there.
I said once you get good withthe wolves, you that pays

(51:16):
attention to the details and canremember them as well as wolves
can, and I've seen some prettybright dogs.
Okay, now that's a differentkind of cognitive ability.
When we started to look atcognition in animals, we have

(51:36):
what we like to refer to as amental toolbox, and there are
all these different things inthe toolbox and so you want to
know does the animal have thattool?
And if they have it, how goodis it tool?

(51:57):
And if they have it, how goodis it Okay?
So, like, image permanence isone of them.
Can they realize that if I holdmy hand up and I put my fingers
up against it, they're notgoing to come out?
The other side?
Okay, because this is a solidand this is a solid.
Okay.
And if I somehow did that andmade it look like it came out,
the wolf would look around like,hey, you know, you moved your
hand, you're not putting itthrough there.

(52:18):
So that's an aspect of imagepermanence.
This is a solid, it's not goingto change.
Okay, magicians and people likethat work at fooling humans with
image permanence all the time.
Okay, that's what theprofession's about is fooling
the human into thinking thatsomehow they can do something

(52:39):
that you can't or physicallyshouldn't happen.
You know, I'm going to.
Saw this person in half.
No, you're not Okay.
So when we look at like dogs,do they have image permanence?
Yeah, how good, pretty good.
As good as the humans, I wouldsay yes, okay.
So when we look at this mentaltoolbox, intentional thinking is

(53:02):
one of the tools in the box.
Okay, and so do dogs haveintentional thinking?
Yes, how good.
Second level Okay.
Any better than that I haven'tseen it.
And now that we can image thebrain while the animals awake,
they lock up.
They lock up just like humansdo when we get to seven or eight

(53:24):
, and this has me intentionallythinking about something is that
what about the dogs?

Speaker 1 (53:30):
we use social facilitation sometimes, so I'll
give you an example that might,and you can kind of talk me to
where they're at in thecognition level.
But there let's say you have adog that's sort of fearful of
people and you have anothersocial dog, very social dog, in
the home with people and thefearful dog tends to warm up
faster, be more social withthose people.

(53:50):
Strangers come, let's say it'sUncle Bob coming over.
So the social dog comes up toUncle Bob and suddenly the dog
that's more fearful is like oh,okay, my housemate says Uncle
Bob's okay and then comes up toUncle Bob because of seeing the
behavior of the dog.
Versus if that dog's just alone,the fearful dog, and Uncle Bob
comes in, it just either dartsaway or behaves aggressively.

(54:11):
So where does socialfacilitation fit into the
picture of intentional thinking,or does it?

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Well, I don't think it has a lot to do with
intentional thinking.
I think it has to do withtrusting the emotional state of
the other animal.
I do this with clients all thetime that call me in to what
they call a puppy and it's, youknow, nine months, 10 months old
, you know, and it's not social,and I'll tell them.
Well, I got good news and badnews.

(54:42):
I said the bad news is yourdog's not social and the window
of opportunity to do that isclosed.
It's not going to open again, Igo.
The good news is we can teachthem coping skills.
So that dog that's a socialfacilitator for the fearful dog,

(55:03):
is helping the animal to copeemotionally with the environment
.
And it's very important thatthat dog never lies to the
fearful dog.
He's got to rely on him andthat's what I teach clients that
have fearful dogs.
We can teach the dog to deferto you.
Don't ever lie to him.
Don't ever tell him it's okayand somebody does something

(55:27):
nasty to you, you know, becausethe dog's going to say I can't
trust you anymore and as asocial facilitator, you're done,
you know, you lied to him, allright.
So I think it's reallyimportant, especially with
fearful animals that if we'regoing to use that approach and
it's a good one is that whoeveror whatever the animal's relying

(55:51):
on to read the environment,that that is a reliable read
every time, every time.
Okay, and so you know if peoplecan do that.
I've seen some pretty amazingstuff done with dogs that were
really fearful, who actuallylook like when they're out in

(56:13):
public, that they haveconfidence.
But the only reason they haveconfidence is because they have
a handler and maybe another dogand between the two of them the
dog realizes that they'll let meknow whether this is dangerous
or not and they've never lied tome and that if I get you into a
situation where the dog becomesconcerned, I can use some

(56:38):
training to tell you how to getout of the situation so that you
can lose that fearful state.
And when we do that, then thedog has the ability to start to
modulate how much norepinephrineis being dumped into the system

(56:58):
, because there is a way for thedog to learn to relax in an
environment that they can'tpredict exactly what's going to
happen.
Okay, so that's whereneuroscience and training would
come together, because you can'tgo back and socialize that

(57:19):
animal.
Now, interesting thing, I was inTaiwan in November and the
Taiwanese government are nowlooking at reducing their feral
dog population and just to giveyou an idea, in the Taipei area
alone there are 80,000 feraldogs.

(57:42):
Wow, yes, okay, wow.
And these guys actually think.
When I got there, they actuallythought that if they captured
these dogs and put them in ashelter that somehow they would
become social, and I spent thefirst couple of days I was there

(58:03):
letting them know that that'snot going to happen.
Their ancient dog was called aFormosa dog.
They don't exist anymore, butthat was the original.
The Aborigines that lived inTaiwan had Formosa dogs and they
looked just like the primitivedogs of that area, something
like a New Guinea singing dog,shiba Inu.

(58:25):
You know the little prickierdogs with bushy tails that hang
up over their ears.
They were predominantly red,but not always.
Well, now they got feral dogsthat are 60, 70 pounds.
You know that are on thestreets and they don't go up to
people.
You can't pet them, okay,they're not dangerous, they're

(58:47):
not going to go after you.
But you can adopt them,castrate them, neuter them,
whatever, okay, and let themlive with humans in a shelter
for a few weeks and adopt themout.
It's not going to happen.
Okay, so I spent some time withshelter trainers teaching them

(59:08):
how to work with those dogs.
Well, man, when I startedwatching how some of those dogs
behaved, they were like Twisterand Willow, man, I mean they are
really freaking smart andextremely territorial,
especially with each other, andfor a mountainous jungle

(59:30):
population, which Taiwan is,okay.
I mean, taipei is a modern cityand it's quite big and there's
several cities like it aroundthere, but when you're on the
bullet train you're goingthrough mountains of dense.
It's almost rainforest, okay,not quite, but close, okay.
You can't see the animals onthe ground and those feral dogs

(59:53):
live on the edge of thosecommunities and only wander into
where humans are at dawn anddusk.
They're crepuscular, okay, togather food, and so I ended up
working with a couple sheltersand then I went to China and
look at the same thing, okay,and then when I came back to

(01:00:17):
Taiwan, I actually hooked upwith people that were working
for the government to try towork with these dogs and they
had an ultra modern kennel thatwas up in the mountains.
It was really cool.
It was all off the grid.
You know solar panels, easy toclean.
Way too many dogs in itcompared to you know what it

(01:00:40):
should be.
But they took me into what theycalled the puppy building, okay
, and I went through and lookedat all the dogs and when I got
out I looked at the guy and Isaid there ain't no puppies in
that room.
And he said what do you mean?
They were small and young.
I said they all have adultteeth.

(01:01:01):
They're at least five monthsold.
Okay, at least I don't have totouch them.
All I got to do is look attheir dentistry.
You know those needles sharp.
I said the window ofopportunity.
I said you can't socializethose guys.
I said what you're going toneed are some really good

(01:01:22):
trainers to teach these dogs howto cope with humans.
And then you got to find humansthat are willing to take on
that kind of a science project.
And I even told him.
I said look, feral dogs.
Going back to Coppinger, youknow evolutionary biologist.

(01:01:42):
He used to tell people in histalks he knew more about feral
dogs by far than he did domesticdogs.
You know dogs that were owned,all right.
And he used to start hisconversations by saying there's
somewhere in the neighborhood ofa billion, with a B dogs on the

(01:02:03):
planet.
Right now there are algorithmsand things on how to figure out
population densities based onthe temperature, the terrain,
how many humans are there.
There's some things thatactually are pretty accurate.
And he said there's somewherein the neighborhood of a billion
dogs on the planet right now.

(01:02:24):
Of that billion dogs, about 10%of them, 100 million live in
people's homes, eat, kibble dogfood and have a name.
The other 900 million dogs onthe planet are either village
dogs or feral populations thatpeople don't see, and Coppinger

(01:02:47):
always felt like we need to keepthat population there because,
as humans, as geneticists, wesuck.
We've created more problems inpurebred dogs than there are,
you know, with the wildpopulations.
You know hybrid vigor comes inand a couple things biological
that makes them more conduciveto humans.

(01:03:09):
Okay, so I told them.
I said my answer for thembecause they're an island, okay
is to capture them, spay orneuter them and return them to
where they were.
Just to bring the numbers down,I says when you get down to a
reasonable number and that'sgoing to take 30, 50 years

(01:03:31):
easily then you can think aboutsorting them out as to which
ones can be kept as pets.
But for the last 400 years atleast that we know of, they were
no pets.
You know the Dutch took overTaiwan in the 1600s and they

(01:03:53):
brought hounds with them thatkilled the deer on the island.
They're called Sika deer.
They're almost extinct.
Till the deer on the island,they're called Sika deer,
they're almost extinct.
They're a small deer but theyhave a really soft pelt and they
slaughtered these deers, usingthe dogs to find them, to send
fur coats back to Europe.
And somewhere in the late 1800sthe Japanese took over and they

(01:04:21):
introduced Inu means dog inJapanese, by the way Okay, akita
Inus and Shiba Inus, and theycrossbred them with these
village dogs, okay.
And then when World War II hit,the Japanese changed them out
for German shepherd dogs and theJapanese changed them out for
German shepherd dogs, and theAborigines used these Formosa

(01:04:42):
dogs to go after the Germanshepherds.
And the Japanese invaders atthat time tried to remove all of
those dogs on the planet.
They actually had a bounty onthem that if you were a soldier,
the more of those dogs youcould shoot, the better.
The more of those dogs youcould shoot, the better.
They didn't put a dent in thepopulation because these dogs

(01:05:02):
live off leash in the mountainswith humans, okay.
Then the Chinese took over andbrought industry in and now
there's more pet communities andthings like that.
So it's a relatively newconcept to their culture.
They like their dogs, theyreally do.

(01:05:25):
It's a really nice culture.
I really like the Taiwanesepeople a lot, but they're in
their infancies aboutunderstanding behavior and I had
to get them to stop walkingthese dogs.
They would leash up five or sixof them in a group and take
them for a walk and the dogswere terrified to be walking on

(01:05:48):
leash.
In the city the streets arenarrow and crowded and there's
no place for the dogs to go andI actually brought up video and
showed them how terrified thedogs are.
I said stop doing that.
They don't need to be walkedwhen we study feral dog

(01:06:11):
populations.
They don't exercise.
They usually don't travel morethan 600 feet from their food
source.
I said leave them, beno-transcript, and what you're

(01:06:44):
going to end up with is the dogsthat could hide from human
hunters are going to reproduce,and now you're going to have a
super race of dogs that are goodat hiding from humans.
So, there's no answers to these,but as far as the motor pattern
for chase, grab, bite, dissectand stuff it's intact, it's

(01:07:06):
there, not a problem.
Most of them are carrion eaters.
They eat garbage, but they willhunt smaller animals, and I
went out with one of thetrainers that I worked with down
there for about 20 years.
Our name is Senna and she and Iwent to a fishing village at

(01:07:27):
dusk.
We got up there and sat in theparking lot and just waited for
the sun to go down and we didn'tsee a dog anywhere until the
sun went down and then therewere no humans in the parking
lot and I counted 45 dogs humansin the parking lot, and I
counted 45 dogs just in thatparking lot.
Okay, where were they?
They were hiding.

(01:07:47):
What were they doing?
They're picking up scraps,anything people left behind.
Were they ferocious with eachother?
Yep, did I get out of the car?
Nope, and it wasn't that I wasafraid of them, it's they would
run, they would run.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:04):
You know.
So those populations, we astrainers, I even told Sena I
said you got trainers that wantto really advance their skills
there it is, there you go, yes,yeah.
Those guys are you better havesome good chops?
You go, yes, yeah, those guys,are you better have some good

(01:08:25):
chops?
And I did see some really,really outstandingly good
trainers working down there.
I said if you guys they'retrying to form like an
association down there ofprofessional trainers which I
admire them for doing thatbecause they're all looking at
the science of it I said youshould make it a requirement to
be in that organization with anycredentials at all is that
you've trained at least one ofthose dogs.

(01:08:47):
Yeah, to accept you not theworld, accept you and allow you
to handle them yeah so I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
I love it is.
So.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
That's where the ethology, neuroscience, training
, all comes together into a mass.
And that's where I had to kindof sit back and tell them look,
humans have never removed dogsfrom any environment, ever.
Okay, they've always managed tocome back somehow, you know.

(01:09:22):
And how did they do it?
We don't know, they're justreally good at reproduction and
they stay very close to humanpopulations because we're their
food source.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
Yeah, adaptable, for sure.
Very much yeah, Ken this is, Ithink, a fabulous way to wrap up
the episode and encompasseverything we're talking about,
but I do want I'm sure peopleare going to want to reach out
and know more about where you'regoing to be at, so tell us more
about what you're working onfor this year.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
Well, what am I working on this year?
I'm actually doing a lot ofwork on the farm.
Now I'm not retired.
I like to tell people I'm doinga lot of work on the farm.
Now I'm not retired.
I like to tell people I'msemi-retired.
So if I'm invited to go out andspeak and things like that, I'm
all well, do it.
I'm not taking on new clientsunless there is something that

(01:10:15):
really sparks an interest in me,or it's a referral from
somebody that I've known for awhile.
Interest in me, or it's areferral from somebody that I've
known for a while.
I'm more interested in trainingthe next generation of trainers
to grab the science and toreally utilize it in what's
going on.
As an aside with you, I gave atalk at a veterinary conference

(01:10:36):
probably 20 years ago and wewere talking about counter
conditioning and I talked aboutgiving the reinforcer right
after the behavior that you like, that normally the animal was
fearful and I got taken to taskby a couple of veterinary
behaviorists because that's nothow the science works, and I

(01:11:00):
thought to myself when they saidthat to me.
I understand what's in thebooks, but I also understand
what I've seen with animals.
Okay, and David Premack wasworking on that, his whole thing
about reinforcement and hedidn't understand dopamine.

(01:11:21):
They didn't even know what itwas.
But when you look at classicalconditioning, the dopamine surge
comes after the behavior andbefore the reinforcer shows up.
And that's what David Premackwas really looking at.
He just didn't understand thatit was dopamine, and so I'm one
of those guys that I still thinkwe humans, especially the

(01:11:47):
people that are involved intraining with fearful animals,
they need to really dial in thatkind of information because
it's measurable.
Now it's just that we have toaddress it and learn how to do
it, and that's not to dismissthe earlier studies.
It's just that they didn't havethe tools to measure the things

(01:12:11):
that we do now, and so my jobnow is to turn my farm into a
wildlife sanctuary, which I'mdoing.
I've just sealed the land.
When we bought this farm, therewere 13 farms on this street
plus ours, and now I'm the lastone and they're all little gated

(01:12:35):
communities with half a milliondollar homes, which in my area
is a big house with manicuredlawns and what have you and
we're on a flyway for Canadageese, for blue heron, for
egrets and for bald eagles.
In fact, I have an owl thatlives in my barn and I have all

(01:12:58):
of my lights on motion detectorsand turn them off at night so
the bird can hunt, and I'mfighting as hard as I can not to
bring in streetlights andsidewalks and that kind of stuff
.
And I just got the landrecognized by the state as a
wildlife sanctuary, oh wow.

(01:13:18):
And for the next hundred yearsnobody can cut it up and build
houses on it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:24):
Wow, congratulations on that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
So, yeah, well, that was what my wife wanted to do
and that's what I'm doing.
So I'm gonna hopefully go toJapan, taiwan, south Korea and
China in the fall.
So anybody that's in thoseareas, look for me.
I'm going to probably go toAPDT as a guest in the fall.

(01:13:54):
Other than that, there's goodconferences and good talks,
including your work out there.
You'll probably find mesomewhere around those, because
I'm not doing as much hands-ontraining as I used to, but I'm
doing a lot more watching andteaching, which I'm thoroughly

(01:14:18):
enjoying.
I really like doing it.
So I don't really have anythingto plug because I don't have
anything on my calendar rightnow.
That's important, but if I do,most people can find it.
I usually broadcast all thatstuff through Facebook, which is
about the only social media Ido.
I'm not too big on social media.

(01:14:40):
The Chinese talks that I didare going to be on YouTube, so I
will be putting the links outfor those as they come up.
They're in English, withJapanese dialogue or, excuse me,
chinese dialogue on the bottom,so people that speak English
will be able to understandwhat's going on.

(01:15:01):
So that's kind of it.
I am absolutely enjoying takingcare of the farm.
I mean I really love my animalsand what we've done here.
I've got donkeys.
I love donkeys.
I may be getting a few moredonkeys and it depends, but
that's it.
If people are interested, getme through Facebook If they're

(01:15:26):
looking to ask me to comesomeplace and talk.
That's the way to do it, morethan any other way.
But I'm at the point now whereI just kind of want to enjoy
life and the fruits of my laborsand my wife's labors through
the years and just hopefullyhelp the next generation to take

(01:15:49):
the science to a higher level.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
Well, Ken, I certainly can say I appreciate
you and all the contributionsyou've made to my career and I'm
sure you're going to influenceand continue to influence the
next generation.
So thanks so much for coming onthe show and I hope to see you
again in the future.

Speaker 2 (01:16:07):
Well, thank you, mike , it's been a blast.
I'd love to talk to you anytime, so if you want to do this
again in the future, if there'sa calling or whatever you know
how to reach me, be happy to doit.

Speaker 1 (01:16:23):
Thanks for joining in this fascinating conversation
with Ken.
I always learn something fromhim and I'm looking forward to
seeing him again in the future.
And don't forget to head onover to aggressivedogcom for
more information about helpingdogs with aggression From the
Aggression in Dogs Master Courseto webinars from world-renowned
experts and even an annualconference.
We have options for both petpros and pet owners to learn
more about aggression in dogs.

(01:16:44):
We also have the Help for Dogswith Aggression bonus episodes
that you can subscribe to.
These are solo shows where Iwalk you through how to work
with a variety of types ofaggression, such as resource
guarding, dog-to-dog aggression,territorial aggression,
fear-based aggression and much,much, much more.
You can find a link tosubscribe in the show notes or
by hitting the subscribe buttonif you're listening in on apple

(01:17:07):
podcasts.
Thanks for listening and staywell, my friends.

Speaker 2 (01:17:26):
Bye.