Who Dutchess is
Breed
On film
and so like with that with the bullying and stuff because that's just like a roddy thing in general right but she was a ton too which was problematic because she's like just lots of force like i know she's got some weight on her but she's got a lot of muscle too
heel. And so she she she forges ahead, which is a rotty thing.
she's pretty sensitive which is is interesting because she's pretty strong usually the rottweilers aren't super sensitive to it like i find that a lot of rottweilers i've worked with hang on like a 30 35 but she's pretty sensitive
she's a roddy too they they get hot easier so i want to make sure that like we're we're all safe
Age
Stated
Once, precisely, by an owner.
On film
just yeah and they're all they're all pretty much 15 years old she's just 21
months okay should be two in October yeah so she's been around these like
Arrival
Stated
Once, indirectly, in the first ten seconds of the first lesson.
On film
all right this is duchess she just got here a couple days ago and um
this is my first lesson
As the trainers describe her
Curious, and not fighting you. Everything else the trainers say about her is consistent with it: her failures are described as confusion, impulse or inability, almost never as refusal.
On film
really really good she's curious but he's not fighting me
um the big thing with it down is i think sometimes she just gets a little confused
Extremely physically affectionate, to the point that it is the training problem. Being asked to work three feet away from the handler is genuinely hard for her, and the trainer says plainly that this is affection rather than defiance. Distance from the handler is treated as a criterion in its own right because of it.
On film
she's trying she really is she's got to learn you cannot be that close to me
lovey very very physical dog like she's very she's very physically affectionate dog so I genuinely just think that she just had a little bit of a tricky time where like hey we can't be like super close and everything
If I don't, like, give her enough love, she starts to be, like, I don't do anything.
Impulsive, and attributed to her line. The trainer worked a relative of hers, Phoebe, and says the trait runs in the family - then sharpens it in the next session from a shared temperament to the same specific difficulties.
On film
you just got to chill out. But she's a very impulsive dog. She's related to Phoebe. And Phoebe had that, too.
it's funny because her drive and like the thing she has troubles with are the exact same things the other dog had problems with so you can definitely tell you know there's some behavioral stuff in here you know they're both they both like similar problems because they're related
She had at the start, let's go. She had a lower level of impulse control
Her answer to pressure is to leave it. Not to comply, and not to endure it - to physically remove herself. The trainer is careful to say this is a strategy rather than pain, and that she is further along that line of thinking than most dogs he works.
On film
of has a tendency where she'll just kind of try to blow me off or run away from the e-collar pressure, right? Um It does not mean that the e-collar pressure is hurting her, but her reaction to it is that I can get out of it if I run away. So, we're teaching her that it's not really a viable option.
Um and I will say she's a little more on that train of thought than like a lot of dogs are.
sometimes dogs even if you have the level set really low what will happen is your e-collar the dog feels the pressure but does not know what to do with that info right and so she kind of was a little bit weird with it and she would feel it but she'd just like try to run away or something
Hard to catch, from day one. The first lesson loses five minutes to it, the second day ends with her making the trainer chase her, and eight weeks later the go-home lesson is still choosing equipment around it. She is not frightened of people; she declines to be taken hold of.
On film
collar yeah she she thought i was trying to put the collar on her earlier when she left
Finally, now we can resume. Five minutes wasted. Thank you, Dutchess.
i just used the pink i didn't use the pink one because like it's not too loose in like regular life but like for training there's a slight chance it's loose enough to where she could have popped out of it and if she did and i didn't have a good recall trained with her yeah yeah she gone
Sensitive to the e-collar for a Rottweiler, and the fact is used to argue that breed does not set the level. Her ceiling is 20 where the trainer says he works other Rottweilers at 30 or 35 - and in a calm room he drops her below 15 live.
On film
what setting i have her i never go past the 20 20 is like if she's really distracted active 15 though is where she usually rests we're just walking in the park
So like right now that's even a little high for her. So she's, but it's really chill in here. That was a 15, so I'm going to put it down a little different.
Very social, and would go and meet everybody. The public-neutrality work exists because of this, and the stated goal is a dog that notices people and declines rather than a dog that is afraid of them.
On film
she does need that let's go to keep her on track. That way she's not running up to everybody she sees because she's very social.
That's what I want to see, which is like I don't cuz I don't want any of the dogs to be scared of people. So I make sure they're not.
She's not terrified of people, but she like looks at them and like, all right, I can't do it though.
Fast, and a fixator. The fixation is what survives after the lunging stops, and the trainer treats the stare rather than the chase as the unfinished part of the case.
On film
the duck. She didn't like go crazy, but she fixated. She just stared, right?
Like right laser vision, just laser focused stare. Ideally, what we want is
when I put her in a command, sometimes to like break her like impulsiveness, she'll fixate on something and but then I have to be like, "Hey, come on."
Smart, wilful, and - at the very end - strategic.
On film
most dogs cuz she's doing really really fantastic. She's really smart.
fight me it's okay that's just are you gonna be really averse she has a lot of willpower
placing i'm placing i'm gonna go get that because she's smart the thing about the smart dogs is that like
She behaves worse for the trainer than for her family, and he says so unprompted - twice, from two directions. It is the single largest qualifier on every observation in the two home sessions.
On film
like she's one of the few dogs that i can confidently say she's on her worst behavior with me and that's usually like not she's not bad but she's more like amped up and stuff and i think around you guys she's just used to like i see mom and dad i chill we're relaxed
I'm here too right like my presence does affect dogs when I train them because they know what I expect
She associates very fast. Said once, as the reason the release has to land on the exact behaviour, and it is the best available explanation for why a three-and-a-half-week program worked on her at all.
On film
See, she's matched my pace, and I let her go immediately.
Because that goes to show you, like, she's going to associate that really fast.
By the end: she knows everything and gets up. The last solo assessment before the home visit is not about comprehension at all.
On film
that's the big thing with her is she gets up a lot she knows her commands though so
gotta get good cuz uh she's pretty much like as far as the commander like she's pretty much good to go it's really just the impulse that you know I'm trying to trying to fix trying to tighten that up
As her family describe her
Undemanding at home, and on a schedule of her own. She sleeps until nine, does not pester them to get up, and takes herself to her crate beside her food bowl and waits. This is the picture that makes the trainer revise the case: a dog referred for hyperactivity who is quiet for most of a day.
On film
low-key dogs I'm like so in the morning it's very unusual for a dog craze like
she'll hang out and like sleep and not bug us to get up and do stuff with her
and then she goes in the living room and she gets in her little cage and lays
'Rowdy' means one specific thing, and the owners define it themselves: she tries to get three elderly dogs to play when they do not want to. It is not general wildness.
On film
she has puzzles there for food. Now when you say rowdy do you mean like? When she's starting to try to get the other dogs to play and they don't want to play and she's like
The mechanism of the incidents, from the people who live with them: she opens play by biting another dog on the backside, and she learned it from Bo - the one dog in the house who plays at her level and bites back.
On film
She'll come up to them and her behavior to get them to play, which she learned from Bo, is bite them on the butt.
They play rough. And like I said, she'll grab him in the back leg and grab him across the floor. But when he's done, he, yeah, and she stops. and she
The owners' own diagnostic, and the most important thing said in the whole case by anybody: what decides whether she stops is the other dog's answer. A clean signal stops her instantly. A dog that screams and acts like a victim does not. It comes out in three- and four-word fragments over twenty seconds, and the trainer accepts it on the spot.
On film
but when he gives her the signal
she stops
snarls at her face
because they act like victims
and they're like save me mom
Speaker turns here are uncertain.
On film
I'm just gonna put her you all have never seen her this lazy before
she's not lazy with us she's pretty lazy around the house yeah with me she's been like
very like driven work kind of dog oh no
Fast enough to lose, and strong enough to be a handling problem for the person who walks her. The prong collar was bought after she slipped the leash and had to be chased across the neighbourhood. One of the two owners had stopped walking her because of it.
On film
her yeah yeah she gone well that's the reason i had that um a prone collar is because she slipped
out of that leash yeah um a couple of times and i had to chase her all over the neighborhood
and she's fast like she's she's she randomly gets really fast so yeah yeah so like i said
Good in public already, before the program. Coffee, a bar, other dogs, people. This is why the case is a household case rather than a public one, and hearing it is what makes the trainer revise his estimate downward on the spot.
On film
like to go have coffee and or go have a beer and sit around yeah yeah she probably probably what
Yeah, so I have overestimated how bad it was.
What they actually want, said twice by two people and never written down anywhere: manners. Not obedience, not a finished dog.
On film
didn't really hurt me like she would before she would like lean against me
kind of stuff and we just need her to have better manners yeah right Dutchie
i just think if we can have her to where she'll go sit some like you're like go sit in your spot
the backyard and do whatever but when she's in the house for us to be able to
say sit or lay down and get her to be calm and be away from me that actually was very doable
By the second owner lesson they report she down-regulates herself, and they put a proportion on it. Three-quarters of the time she is chill until she gets bored.
On film
know that she does now and it's not a bad thing if if we're not actually working and she does
start to get high energy she just kind of goes and goes down and is down and just kind of starts to
like relax well it's like 75 of the time around here she's like chill until she gets bored and
And the word used for the result: manageable.
On film
Yeah, but you can tell she's like noticeably like calm down now too. Yeah. Yeah, she's like manageable
Yeah, yeah. She's like manageable now.
And manageable is a word I would use for her.
Answered by the intake
The program, stage by stage
Before training: a goal, and an intake nobody filmed
Undated. Playlist position 1 (watch).
Seven minutes of footage with thirty-four words on it, none of them spoken by or to the dog. Two voices catch the tail of a conversation about what she is meant to come out able to do: whatever is at the top of the list, plus down and place, and both of them settle on the same summary - ready for polite society. That phrase is the only statement of purpose anywhere in the twenty-six uploads. There is no filmed evaluation, no intake interview, no history-taking and no written goal; the trainer at the first owner lesson refers to having read the owners' concerns on 'the forums or something' and that document is never shown. Everything this case knows about what the family wanted, it learns three weeks later, in the middle of a lesson, by accident.
On film
top things on the list and i'm assuming her down in place do too so well trained and ready for
polite society let's put it that way yeah yeah ready for polite society yeah
remember everything that people uh either like mention or i see on them you
know the forums or something but i believe that was like the big stuff for
Day one: the texture before the word, and five minutes lost to a collar
2026-07-15 (watch)
Her first lesson, two or three days after arrival, indoors with staff drifting in and out. The plan is stated in ten seconds - place and indoor manners - and then a quarter of the lesson goes to equipment: the collar is loose, she reads a reach for it as being caught, and she leaves the room. Nobody can get hold of her. The trainer names the cost out loud and moves on. What follows is place at its earliest possible stage and it is taught deliberately without a name: guide her on, all four paws, mark with 'okay', release, so that what she learns first is the feel of the object under her feet. By mid-session she is stepping up on her own, a second voice in the room confirms she has started to figure it out and that the cue has still not been named, and the trainer attaches the limit to the progress in the same breath - not with much distraction yet. A thrown toy is used as an informal distraction test and she ignores it. Two things start here that run the whole length of the case: place, and the collar that is not fitted right.
On film
all right so right now i'm just gonna guide her to this uh guide her to the biscuits
gonna bat her and then i'm gonna be like all four paws touch i'm gonna say okay and i'm gonna release her and so then like at some point she will learn the texture of
You haven't even named it yet.
Yeah, she can't do it with a lot of distraction yet. I'm sure but
Finally, now we can resume. Five minutes wasted. Thank you, Dutchess.
Day two: down and come from zero, and the position before the word
2026-07-16 (watch)
The trainer says four times over that she does not know down, and the method matches: he puts her into the position by hand, repeatedly, with no expectation of compliance, because the posture has to exist before a word can point at it. Come is worked alongside and named as the easier of the two for a reason an owner can follow - you can say the word and physically produce the behaviour, where a posture has to be built. In the middle of it he stops working her on purpose and lets her do what she likes for a couple of minutes, and says why: he does not want to be always forcing her to do things. It ends early on mosquitoes, and on the way out she makes him chase her - the second day running that being caught is the sticking point.
On film
so right now, I'm just, I'm just guiding her to the position,
because she doesn't know it, she doesn't know down, she doesn't know, she doesn't know down,
So I have to get her used to the position of down which she is kind of finding me for.
I'm also teaching her come, but come is a little bit easier because you literally say come and you like
Let her do what she wants for a couple minutes just chill
So I'm not like always forcing her do stuff, you know, that would be
A day with footage and no session
2026-07-21 (watch)
Twenty minutes titled as a training session that contains no training. Two staff sit in the kennel room with Dutchess loose while a third party's critique video plays, and rewind it twice to replay a passage for whoever has just come in. Dutchess is spoken to once, for about two seconds. What the file is worth to this case is two things and no more. First, negative evidence: she was loose in a room with crated dogs and talking people for twenty minutes and needed one correction, which is a fact about the room rather than about her training. Second, the staff argue themselves into the standard that the rest of her program is measured against - that a method demonstrated only inside a controlled room has not been demonstrated - and they reach for Dutchess herself as the example. The rest of the file concerns a trainer, a client and a dog who have nothing to do with this business and are not named.
A borrowed handler, ten minutes, and the house rules said out loud
Undated, between 2026-07-16 and the first owner lesson (watch). Playlist position 6.
A trainer who has never handled her takes her out for ten minutes between appointments, and because nothing about her is routine to him he explains all of it. He swaps her collar for one that sits lower and snugger, because the fit is what makes it work. He states the leash rule as a house rule - pressure means back off - and immediately removes the thing owners expect to come with it: there is no correct leash length, because people walk their dogs at whatever length suits them. He moves physically onto grass to teach the down, because he does not teach it on concrete. He says flatly that public neutrality does not exist for this dog right now and that holding the leash is management rather than training, with the plan named for later. And he gives the mechanism behind the rest intervals that appear in every session in this dog's file: too many repetitions shuts a dog down, and how many is too many differs by dog. It is the most reasoning-dense eleven minutes in the case, and it exists because the handler was new to her.
On film
That's a big thing. We teach is just a leash pressure means back off, right?
There's not a particular length because everybody walks their dogs at different lengths
Right now, Dutchess public neutrality does not exist currently.
So we're managing it by just, you know, until I can actually get around to, like, really fixing it for now.
because i don't usually teach down on the concrete it's just not as reliable
But you do too many reps and you'll shut a dog down.
there's usually a primary trainer though hey it's kind of an unwritten primary
The hot walk: the down moved into distraction on purpose
2026-07-25 (watch)
Twenty-four minutes, 658 words, and the dominant sound in the file is a no-marker. The design is stated in the first thirty seconds: the teaching is being moved into a more interesting environment because it is more interesting. Come, sit and 'let's go' come easily through the first six minutes. Down does not. From 06:42 to about 16:20 the session is down repetitions broken by sniffing, one of them costing the better part of a minute of cue, 'eh eh', encouragement and 'all the way' before she takes it. The trainer's own verdict is three words and it is more honest than any summary: 'You're getting there.' The one diagnosis in the session is about the toy - she ignores a toy she is keen on at the house, and he reads that as good news rather than as a failure of the reward, because it means the environment has her rather than him or the object. Nine days after down was introduced from zero, it exists and is not finished.
On film
gonna go for a little walkies here good girl i'm gonna start teaching some stuff under a little bit
more of a interesting stimulus it's a little bit more interesting environment to start teaching
I'm going to see how she's doing on her down.
she's much more engaged with the environment than anything else.
You're getting there.
In-Program Lesson #1: a theory course, and a case re-diagnosed downward in front of the clientsTurning point
On or shortly before 2026-07-30 (watch Part 1 + watch Part 2 - one lesson, two files, about forty-nine minutes)
Both owners, a shaded spot chosen for its distraction load, and a hot afternoon. The first half is the program's curriculum delivered whole: what has been worked, the pulling demonstrated by shortening a retractable so the owners can see her hit the end, the e-collar explained as a thing paired with that pressure until the two mean one thing to her, the level disclosed as a number, and then a compressed course in learning theory the trainer says he gives every client - prediction error and classical conditioning, the four operants, markers, and the observation that what counts as a reward is decided by the individual dog. Out of it come the rules the owners will have to keep: the word first and the collar after, never before, or the command is poisoned and takes three weeks to repair; back the word up every time in the first week home; and a question to ask when she disobeys - is the reward for not listening bigger than the reward for listening. The second half is where the case changes. The owners describe the household: three dogs of about fifteen, a 21-month-old who sleeps till nine and waits beside her bowl, a 'rowdy' that means trying to get elderly dogs to play, a play invitation learned from Bo that consists of biting another dog on the backside - and then the diagnostic that reframes everything, in fragments, over twenty seconds: she stops instantly for a dog that gives her a clean signal and does not stop for the dogs that scream. The trainer says out loud that he had overestimated how bad the case was, that these are household incidents rather than public ones, and that he will take the dog-aggression question to Kelton rather than answer it himself. He refuses to promise the indoor-calm result, and answers the owners' actual goal with a caveat and an exception: standards can differ by place, and the recall cannot.
On film
the end of her collar here and what she learned is that the end of the collar like the pressure that comes from it if the e collar is hit at the same time she makes the two like synonyms right so they mean one of the same
more so i'm just going over the psychology not because i'm like you have this dangerous dog i go over with every single person because part of training is that i have to know how to communicate with every dog that i work with
Yeah, but it's always afterwards, because if you do the e-collar before, there's no context, and what can happen is, like, let's say you put her to a down, right, you say down, and then she doesn't want to say you just did the e-collar. What happens is she could learn that down means the e-collar, and then every time you say down, she's like, and she does that, and then you poison the command, and it can take three weeks to unpoison the command.
And the two dogs that she's injured are the, like, most meek and submissive.
but when he gives her the signal
because they act like victims
Yeah, so I have overestimated how bad it was.
yeah so like i i don't want to promise it because i don't want to make a promise they can't be like
What you'll do is you'll generalize stricter obedience inside and a little bit looser outside.
because if you don't have a good recall, I think that's a danger.
Yeah, I'll talk to Kelton about, like, the behavior that you were describing,
that was like her like trying to kind of like hold it she was like fighting demons you know
The house, with the wrong audio
Undated (watch and watch). Playlist positions 9 and 10, with Part 2 ahead of Part 1.
Forty minutes of footage published as home-context training, of which the audio is worth one sentence. In Part 1 a camera runs in the family's house with Dutchess loose in it and picks up the room rather than the handler: household conversation, films, a domestic complaint. At nine seconds in, a family member says they expected her to pop up when the leash came off - which reads as surprise that she did not. That is the only observation of the dog in either file, and it is worth keeping precisely because a family member made it rather than a trainer. Part 2's audio is a television programme; nothing in it is evidence, and any phrase mined out of it is a false positive.
On film
I kind of thought she was going to pop up when he went and took the leash off.
The busy park: the dog starts correcting herselfTurning point
Undated, after the first owner lesson and before 2026-08-04 (watch). Playlist position 11.
Twenty-three minutes, worked alone, narrated throughout, and it opens with the sharpest diagnosis in the case: she knows every command, so the work is reinforcement, and her one real coping strategy is to run away from the collar rather than answer it. That gets named as the thing being closed, with two constraints held at once - gentler, so the tool does not frighten her, and clearer, so the answer is findable. The first ten minutes are downs she fights, with leash pressure substituted for collar pressure and a great deal of affection used as the reward. Then the session turns. A long walk through an unusually crowded park on 'let's go' produces three passes near people handled with a marker, a little leash, and finally nothing at all, and the trainer narrates the change: she thought about it, he did not press the button, she is correcting herself. He spends two minutes on public neutrality as a thing that is easy to install and easy to ruin, and attaches the caveat that matters most: neutrality is not one skill. Neutral to people is not neutral to dogs, to geese, or to a thrown ball. The back half is unusually candid in two directions - he names his own caseload as the failure mode, six dogs a day making a trainer robotic and inclined to drill, and he isolates her one concrete deficit by elimination: distance with a sit is fine, duration up close is fine, distance with a down is the hole. Off leash is raised and refused twice.
On film
She's killing it. Big thing we're working on here is she pretty much knows all all her commands now. So, the one with her is just reinforcing them.
with it. So, nothing wrong with that. We just have to make sure that number one, I don't make her scared of the e-collar, so I got to be a little more gentle. And number two, make it really clear.
All right, so I didn't even need to call her that time. I just hit the button and she or excuse me, I did not e-collar her. I said, "Eh." And then she just backed off, which is of course exactly what we want.
she thought about it. Again, I didn't have to hit anything there though. The biggest thing is that she's correcting herself.
If not, you'll just punish the dog and the dog will be confused and anxious or just blow you off, right?
doesn't mean there's going to be neutrality associated to other dogs or other geese or random just crap in in the in the air, right?
Cuz she was having a real problem with when the distance meets the down. All right, so I can do distance and a sit, she's fine.
I you know I I don't know why I tell her thank you all the time. I think it's cuz I had to fight her in the beginning and now I'm like thankful that she listens.
The park outing: the settle criterion, and a stare without a lungeTurning point
Undated, after the first owner lesson (watch Part 1 + watch Part 2 - one outing, two files, about ten recorded minutes). Playlist positions 12 and 13.
A ten-minute outing that produces two things the rest of the case leans on. The first is the settle criterion, applied to Dutchess by name: she cannot let the handler walk away from her and gives him anxious stares instead of settling, so he waits her out, releases the instant she calms, and then states it as a rule for anybody - a dog doing the stare is not ready to be released. The second is an accident. He goes to a bench to take a photograph and a stranger walks past with a small blue heeler mix and a child who is frightened of her. Dutchess fixates and stares and does not lunge, and puts no tension on the leash at all. That is the first measurable result on the problem the whole back half of the program is about, and its exact conditions are reported with it. Around those two moments the outing does three smaller useful things: it states the reward rule as intermittent - sometimes she gets the rubs and sometimes not, and what matters is that it stays possible; it states a permissive position rule - in front of him is fine as long as the leash is loose, where she stands is her choice; and it gets the collar level wrong, far too high, apologises to her out loud, and works out why a 30 had produced nothing earlier: she was too distracted to feel it.
On film
She's giving me anxious stares.
so I have to wait for her to settle.
is that if your dog's doing the stare,
they're not ready to be released.
sometimes she gets the rubbies sometimes she doesn't um the important thing it's just that it's
only they're not pulling the leash their choice where they are in my book let's
Probably she was so distracted she didn't feel it.
and dutchess was like fixated but she didn't like lunge he was a smaller dog too um she didn't lunge
she did stare but we sat there and she i did no pulling on my leash at all it was really good
I'm not going to drive her heel too hard yet
Tuning, not fixing: proximity as a criterion, and a rep graded out loud
Shot before the home visit, published 2026-08-04 (watch)
Fourteen minutes, alone, and the most self-auditing file in the case. The agenda is downs and heels, which he says is the agenda in every video he is recording at the moment because he is working through Rottweilers and they commonly struggle with those two. The subject is impulse control, named in the first minute and returned to four times: her commands are finished, what is left is the impulse underneath them. Three things are worked - food, where she may not simply get up and eat; proximity, where she has to learn she cannot be pressed against him to do a command, which is the previous session's distance problem seen from the other side; and the down, which she fights outright twice. The response to the fight is to decline it rather than win it. And then two passages that are worth more than the training. He predicts what the owners will actually use out of everything he has taught - not the heel, which he doubts they will use much, but the implied stay, place, and the work on jumping. And he grades his own repetition out loud, taking marks off it because he needed the collar, while crediting the hold once he stepped away. He says twice that he is not worried about sending her home, and ends the session on a sit on purpose.
On film
I feel like every video I'm recording right now. I'm just downs and heels cuz We're going through rottweilers and Sometimes they have a little bit of trouble with those two commands.
gotta get good cuz uh she's pretty much like as far as the commander like she's pretty much good to go it's really just the impulse that you know I'm trying to trying to fix trying to tighten that up
they'll be using it a ton I really think what they're gonna be using a lot is her her implied stay, her place command. And then of course, just the behavior modification for not jumping on people.
I'm not being as strict on her as I could be.
throughout this it's not like a it's not working it's just like how can I make everything as smooth as possible before she goes home which is relatively soon
a lot of fight man don't do that I don't want I don't want to fight you good job
Not perfect because I did have to eat collar. But once you got in the command I stepped away
you know for the most part she's doing good let's end on a high note duchess sit
In-Program Lesson #2 at the house: the whole household let outTurning point
The visit the program exists for, and the one that answers the question the program cannot otherwise answer. The plan is to get an owner handling her, fit their own collar, take her off leash indoors and find out how much survives in the building where the problems live. Almost nothing needs generalising - she does not jump, does not try the couch, does not go for the counter, does not mob the small dogs - and the trainer says so with visible surprise, having come expecting to spend the hour correcting jumping. So the visit becomes instruction, and it is the most concrete in the case: a ceiling of 20 with 15 as her resting level and less indoors; the criterion for a level being any response at all, usually just the ears, with the explicit statement that a dog rolling around is being tormented; her reward being affection rather than tug, and being cheap, which he counts as part of the choice; 'nope' then the collar for jumping; only 'down' inside the house so the down cannot eat the sit; and 'okay' after the command because the release comes before the reward and the order is fixed. The philosophical centre is stated flatly - he does not repress dogs; if the over-excitement is fixed there is nothing left to repress - and it is immediately cashed out on her actual history, with an owner confirming from her own side that the bites happened when Dutchess was over-excited. He refuses to bring in the two dogs she has bitten, because an hour is not enough room to make that introduction foolproof and the failure mode is an emergency. In Part 3 the owners let the whole household out anyway, and it holds: four other dogs loose with her, dogs she has injured lying down next to her. When two of the others flare up at each other he corrects it live, names the sequence for the owners as it happens - the nope first, then the collar, and it has to be quick - and points out that she came over, looked, and backed off, where before he would have had to grab her collar and haul her away. He is careful not to take the credit: his presence changes dogs, another dog starting it is outside what training covers, and the other dogs carry their own memory of what happened and will need time regardless.
On film
and my goal isn't to be like well if i see her like look like she's having a seizure then that means it's working like my thing is like i said i think i told you guys last time any kind of response that's all i want so like most of the time i just want to see the ears so if i hit it there you go then like that's enough if you hit it your dog's like rolling around and everything it's what you like you don't like you don't need to torture your dog and torment them
little bit I thought when I got here that I was gonna like correct jumping so she's kind of surprised me a little bit here too
And if you fix just excitement, over-excitement issues, you shouldn't have to repress at all. You just teach the obedient. So with Dutchess, I've just taught her like, when you feel a high impulse of energy, you can have fun. Just like, don't like let go of your impulse.
Well see, the times that Dutchess has bit the other two dogs, that was pretty much the situation. She was so excited, she just...
i don't want to bring the two in that she has a problem with quite yet i want to handle that on like the drop off day
if you don't say anything you panic and you just crank it up and hit the button that actually works so what she'll say is oh that shot came from this dog which means i gotta get even bigger versus if she hears a verbal cue from you
I really thought I was gonna have to generalize more. A lot of it's actually carried over, which I'm really happy with.
so my main concern is weird i i can't fix it because my main concern is what's she gonna do when i'm gone right i can't fix i can't be like oh yeah i'm gone let me fix it
hey, hey, hey, hey. Touch it. Perfect example of how things happen. There we go. These two don't get along.
But you saw right there, there was a nope and then the e-collar happened right there.
like i would have to before i would have to grab her collar and like pull her
he's probably too, like, he's got that, the association of what happened before. With him, you're just going to have to, like, he's just got to be around
This is one of the smoothest second sessions I've ever had.
The dress rehearsal at Jack Marley Park, and the sentence that sets the barTurning point
Undated, in the last days of the program (watch). Playlist position 18.
A solo session run as the handover itself: he will walk around and talk to her as if she were already a trained dog being handed over, and he says he can bring that test forward a couple of days because she is doing so well. Most of it passes. What does not is the implied stay - she takes the position and breaks it, and he has to reinforce more than he thinks acceptable for a finished dog. The session's real content is how he reasons about that, and it is the richest passage in the case. He refuses to call it disobedience: in the previous session her energy and her degree of self-control 'would not permit her' to hold it, and he stops the session to define the word - permit means it was not within her ability - and to say what he did about it, which was to shorten the duration rather than insist. Now he is lengthening it and stepping further back. He watches himself as much as her: he explains his own silences as time spent reading her body language, and he counts his own corrections aloud and names the point at which they would stop being useful. Then, while the session is going well, he rejects a compliment. She is very manageable, and he does not like the word, because manageable means the problem was not fixed, only lived with. The worked instance is fixation: she does not chase the geese and does not approach a duck, and she locks on and stares, and the standard is no fixation. The session also opens with her collar too loose - the same failure that cost five minutes of her first lesson three weeks earlier.
On film
guess e-collar and I'm going to treat it like this is you know like she is a dog
No, your collar's not on tight enough. All right. Well, oh yeah, that was way too loose. We'll try this again.
but her energy level really just wouldn't permit her to do that or her her her level of control at the time would not permit her, right? So, I use the word permit because you have to understand too and this is this is where I go into like a little bit of educational stuff here, right?
Permit means like basically like you can't, right? I'm I'm not permitted to do this. I it's not within my ability at this time. So, genuinely, it was not within her ability. So, I instead was doing shorter times.
Really zoned in on Duchess. Looking at her body language. Maybe like we're just walking, but it's like, you know, I'm still trying to look at her and be like, is she fighting impulses? Is she just chilling? That kind of thing.
minute here. We're not getting into bad territory yet. If I get if I keep hitting that e-collar. Hey, Duchess.
I noticed it's very manageable, right? And I don't like the word manageable cuz that means that the problems aren't really fixed. She just learned how to live with them.
Like right laser vision, just laser focused stare. Ideally, what we want is
So, we got to increase the length because I can't trust her to go off leash like that. Like, you know, knowingly hands her off leash to somebody if I know that that impulse control is not as good as it should be.
The exit exam: off leash, once, filmed before the drive homeTurning point
Go-home day, 2026-08-05 by the lesson's own calendar (watch)
He opens by pointing at a squirrel she is thinking about and does not go for, and the evidence he offers for it is his own inaction. Then the leash comes off, the collar stays on, and he works her loose on let's go, come, sit, down and heel. The criterion he names for off-leash readiness is not obedience but an uncued behaviour: she checks in with him without being called - and he tests it passively, deliberately staying quiet to see whether it happens on its own. It does. Two things do not go cleanly and he treats them differently. A down fails twice before she takes it, and he classifies it before responding: there is a difference between a one-off and a dog that genuinely does not know, and he says on camera which one he believes it was. And she keeps skipping the sit that should follow a recall, which he names as the outstanding item and blames on the heat and on his own hurry rather than on her. His closing claim is deliberately narrow and checkable: she does not take off, she does not blow off a recall, and she answers her markers. Smoothness, he says, is bought with weeks of a dog repeating what it already knows.
On film
yeah I I didn't have to do anything. She automatically just kind of backed
She's checking in with me, even off-leash, which is exactly what she's going to be looking for in an off-leash, ready dog.
me in a minute, I'm not gonna get too loud. I wanna see if she just naturally, yep, perfect.
then there's a different way of having a one-off where it was like she just made a mistake versus i genuinely don't know what to do
and you know i'm sure like she can tell i'm a little bit of a rush right now
only thing is sometimes she doesn't want to sit on the recall we got fix it well
I you know a lot of people don't care about it but I myself want to make sure everything's just really tight when when they go home
to get it really smooth and just instantaneous takes weeks and weeks of just the dog doing what it knows how to do
The handover: heel, a regression, and a warranty
Published 2026-08-06 (watch, a sixteen-second stub, and watch, twenty-four minutes)
The handover opens mid-thought on what counts as a sit - the half sit is accepted, the position has to be held, and a ten-minute sit is refused as a rule because a dog's legs get tired. The one command the owners have never been shown is heel, so it is demonstrated in the yard, with the rule that it is released out of like anything else and a blunt warning attached - heel grinding, months of a nervous dog never let out of position, and a bite to a child at the end of it. Inside, he finds a regression: she jumps the counter, which she had not done on his last visit, and he does not hide it. That becomes the argument for the first week home - keep the collar on her and the transmitter in your hand. The paperwork stalls on a dead phone for nine minutes and he fills the gap with place, which turns out to be the best teaching in the file: all four paws, a paw over the edge is fine, one paw on the floor breaks it, and a careful distinction between the tap that means stop and the identical-feeling tap that means get on the cot - the same chain of events to a person, opposite meanings to the dog. When she gives him the anxious stare on the cot he refuses to release her until she settles, and then scopes the rule so the owners do not carry it forever. He closes on maintenance and on a limit: place will have to be rebuilt on this cot because it is not his cot, and no honest trainer promises a finished dog. The last thing he says about her is that she just tried to pull a fast one.
On film
or let's say you're out of one and you're like sit and dutch is like that's funny because like i don't see a treat in your hand so that means like our relationship is transactional
Actually, if you put a dog in a heel for long periods of time and never let them out of it, you do something called heel grinding, which is really dangerous. It's where you frustrate the dog. And sometimes if they're nervous or snippy enough, they'll just, after six months of heel grinding, just randomly bite a kid.
because she wouldn't jump on the counter at all last time i was here which i thought i was like okay we must have like gotten it fixed but no we just she might have been really like she was really excited when she came in this time i don't know why she was way more excited than last time
that's why i went into all that like that sciencey stuff it looks exactly the same the only difference is the word swapped it looks like the same like chain of events to me or you but to her brain it's either a oh i did bad or i did like oh i should be doing this
because this is what you wanna look for. Look at the eyes. If you see her staring at you, there's like an anxious stare, which is she's like, are you really gonna make me do this?
until she's forced to settle i'm not gonna let her go i mean and obviously like after that first week of like getting everything adjusted you can just place her for like a minute it's not like you gotta look every single time for the rest of her life if she's staring right
people have like different cots it's in a different spot it's just you know what i mean it's very like it seems random to dogs
it's like promising that a five-year-old isn't going to be excited it's like i mean if they're having a good day maybe but like if not versus the more training that the kid gets right eventually it's solid
Like, right now, she tried to pull a fast one on us.
Because it's cool if you're like hey, I have like a a blue healer that can like jump through three rings in the air
And then the record becomes marketing
Undated. Playlist positions 22 to 26.
After the handover the playlist contains five more uploads and no more footage. Two of them are the same four-minute testimonial published twice under different titles; two more are that same edit cut in half and published as Part 1 and Part 2; the fifth is a shorter cut of the same material. What the edit does well is real: it assembles the owner's own before-and-after into one place - she used to jump up on people, drag a household dog into rough play, get into it with two others until the room ended upset and somebody had to haul her off by the collar, steal something off a table to start a chase - and in the footage she does none of it. The trainer's contribution is to frame the target as the household's actual complaints rather than an obedience ideal, and to deflate the result to its real size: an improvement, not a cure. But the case that the program is selling is not quite the case that happened, and the gap is visible in one word. In the marketing the good outcome is 'manageable'; in the program's own solo session it is the word the trainer rejects.
On film
You're not looking for like a military dog inside anyways.
Yeah, yeah. She's like manageable now.
Okay, so that was an improvement.
little more confident in her like knowing that she will back off
I noticed it's very manageable, right? And I don't like the word manageable cuz that means that the problems aren't really fixed. She just learned how to live with them.
And manageable is a word I would use for her.
Skills
Place
How it was taught
The object first and the word afterwards. Guide her on, require all four paws, mark with 'okay', release - so that what she learns first is the texture underfoot. The word is deliberately withheld at that stage and attached later, on the explicit reasoning that any word means anything and what gives it meaning is saying it and then replacing her every single time she comes off. The rules as handed to the owners: a real object rather than a spot on the floor, big enough for all four paws, distinguishable by height or, more slowly, by texture, more than one allowed, and present in the house on drop-off day so it can be taught rather than described. Pointing at it is the one visual aid the program keeps rather than fades.
On film
gonna bat her and then i'm gonna be like all four paws touch i'm gonna say okay and i'm gonna release her and so then like at some point she will learn the texture of
You haven't even named it yet.
just, the big thing is you have to have an actual place cot. You know what I mean? It can't just be like a, a point
i mean any word can be can be anything right because they she didn't like duchess didn't like major in english back in college or anything or like any word means anything so if you said place right and then after you said place every time she tries to come out you go and eat and you put her back in eventually she would learn that place means i have to stay in here
and so the way the rules of like place are all four paws have to be on right so place right so the second they can hang over the car but the second one paw touches the floor that's when like the rules are broke and she gets the collar and then i really say okay good job
so like when i tell people like place one of those things that you do have to like reinforce a couple times i have occasionally been lucky where the dog just did it automatically and i didn't have to carry it over but it's not too common because people have like different cots it's in a different spot
Down
How it was taught
In four moves across three weeks. First the posture is manufactured by hand with no expectation of compliance, because the shape has to exist before a word can point at it. Then the word is tested against a no-marker under environmental distraction, one repetition costing most of a minute. Then a different handler moves physically onto grass to work it, because concrete makes it less reliable. Then the criteria are separated and raised one at a time - distance diagnosed by elimination against duration, twenty seconds of hold, stepping away once she is in it, and a repetition graded out loud and marked down for having needed the collar.
On film
because she doesn't know it, she doesn't know down, she doesn't know, she doesn't know down,
You're getting there.
because i don't usually teach down on the concrete it's just not as reliable
Cuz she was having a real problem with when the distance meets the down. All right, so I can do distance and a sit, she's fine.
because she's fine with duration if I'm close to her, right? For all everything. So, it really is the distance part.
Not perfect because I did have to eat collar. But once you got in the command I stepped away
that's the big thing with her is she gets up a lot she knows her commands though so
Sit, and where the program stops asking
How it was taught
Mostly by holding the standard rather than by teaching. The distinctive material is the two limits the program puts on itself. First, sit and down are kept as separate words even though the trainer says he personally does not care, because it is the owners' dog and the choice is theirs - and the fix handed over is structural rather than corrective: give only 'down' indoors, so she is never in a position to discover that either answer is accepted. Second, the sit is not an endurance test: the half sit is accepted, the position has to be held, and a dog that drops into a down after a minute is forgiven, because a dog made to sit for ten minutes starts wobbling.
On film
right now what i'm doing is i'm helping her differentiate
I don't care but some people do and at the end of the day they're not my dog it's not my dog it's their dog
so like in the house maybe like instead of maybe you just do it down a lot right because right there if you say sit and she goes into it down you will teach her that she can do both whereas if you just say we only we we only give her a down command in the house and then outside we give her the sit and the down. Then that way she doesn't have a chance to start to slip and confuse, or confuse the two.
they need to hold the position if after like we'll say maybe 30 seconds right they go into a down after they've been holding the sit position for a minute i'm cool because they're probably like hey my legs are tired right yeah
um like if you're making your dog stay in a sit for like 10 minutes at some point they'll start doing this thing they're like they start like wobbling back and forth because they're like yeah their legs are tired so i don't make that a rule of like you
Recall - and the sit on the end of it
How it was taught
Say the word and guide her in. Then keep it strict about when rather than about how: make it as random as possible, because a recall the dog can predict only proves she can answer a predictable recall, and test it at genuinely high-energy moments. The standard handed to the owners is a recall that ends in a sit in front of you, offered with the choice of a looser version and the warning that whatever they stop reinforcing she will drop. A slow response is not corrected when the handler judges she did not understand.
On film
I'm also teaching her come, but come is a little bit easier because you literally say come and you like
Try to make it as random as possible.
That's what we want. What we want is the recall accompanied by the sit in front of you thing, which
Yeah. Okay. So, why don't I eat car there? Well, she gave me a face. She was looking around. I don't think she knew, honestly.
that's a pretty like i will say that's strict so like that's how i do the recall is they come up to me and then they sit right here okay if you don't want that when she comes home it would be good like because so the way that the dogs work when they come home is depending how strict you are is how tight they behave right
only thing is sometimes she doesn't want to sit on the recall we got fix it well
'Let's go' - the cue that carries the neutrality
How it was taught
One brings her in and holds her there; the other only asks her to move along, and where she is relative to the handler does not matter as long as the leash is loose. The stated plan is to fire it every time she sees a person or an animal she wants to chase, until seeing the trigger is what produces the cue.
On film
and then let's go. His thumb is like, wherever you are, I need you to come to me, and sit in front of me. Let's go is like we're walking this direction. You don't have to come up to me or anything, just move in my general direction.
every time they see what they're seeing, let's go, so that's what I, uh, what we're teaching,
a possibility for her let's go i didn't have to have to e-call or anything she listened everything
only they're not pulling the leash their choice where they are in my book let's
she does need that let's go to keep her on track. That way she's not running up to everybody she sees because she's very social.
Heel
How it was taught
Last, on purpose, because teaching a dog to hold position beside a walking handler before leash manners exist is described as miserable. Then in short doses: cue it, work through refusals without escalating, release the instant she matches pace, and stop while it is good. The criterion is pace-matching and a position near the handler's feet rather than a fixed point, and position tolerance is scaled to the dog - a big dog is held tighter than a small one, because a small dog trained to follow your foot exactly gets stepped on.
On film
teaching a dog to stay here while you walk for like a minute is the most infuriating and miserable experience that i have ever had
heel. And so she she she forges ahead, which is a rotty thing.
See, she's matched my pace, and I let her go immediately.
so the way that i was correcting the heel because you saw she was kind of all over the place in the beginning and then we did that like final walk back and she was like really tight with me um the rule for that is just i kind of want her ahead to be kind of like near my feet and like pretty close she doesn't have to be like touching me but like in this general vicinity
Actually, if you put a dog in a heel for long periods of time and never let them out of it, you do something called heel grinding, which is really dangerous. It's where you frustrate the dog. And sometimes if they're nervous or snippy enough, they'll just, after six months of heel grinding, just randomly bite a kid.
they'll be using it a ton I really think what they're gonna be using a lot is her her implied stay, her place command. And then of course, just the behavior modification for not jumping on people.
Public neutrality
How it was taught
In three stages that are each named on camera. First, management that is called management: hold the leash and prevent it, and say out loud that this is not training. Second, the cue: 'let's go' every time she starts towards someone, with the leash deliberately loose so that hitting the end is her own choice, and the marker first with the collar only if the marker fails. Third, proofing in a park chosen for being crowded. The success marker is not obedience but self-correction: she looks, thinks about it, and declines before the handler does anything.
On film
Right now, Dutchess public neutrality does not exist currently.
So, I'm going to let go of the leash here. And if she pulls on it, then she gets the collar.
she did stare but we sat there and she i did no pulling on my leash at all it was really good
she thought about it. Again, I didn't have to hit anything there though. The biggest thing is that she's correcting herself.
Her public neutrality gets in the way. Every like I got her like she won't run up to dogs or people, but her commands are still a little stiff around like really high distractions.
Like right laser vision, just laser focused stare. Ideally, what we want is
Impulse control - the actual subject of the program
How it was taught
By treating arousal as a skill rather than as misbehaviour. The dog is allowed to feel the impulse and taught not to act on it; she is held in commands close to distraction; freedom and social pressure are combined; food is used as the setup because it is the easiest place to work it. The stated reason it matters is not obedience at all - it is that the bites came out of over-excitement, so removing the over-excitement is expected to take the bites with it.
On film
So, we're going to work on her impulse control here because I be honest, we haven't done enough of that yet. So, we need to make sure we knock that out. And you can't knock it out one day.
with her is if she wants to eat she can't just eat she can't just get up do
And if you fix just excitement, over-excitement issues, you shouldn't have to repress at all. You just teach the obedient. So with Dutchess, I've just taught her like, when you feel a high impulse of energy, you can have fun. Just like, don't like let go of your impulse.
we've been working on it's just like her impulse control so like right here she's thinking about squirrel she's a little interested but
yeah I I didn't have to do anything. She automatically just kind of backed
started petting her and her breathing like her heavy breathing stopped I think
The implied stay
How it was taught
By lowering the criterion to what she could do and then raising it. The account is the clearest piece of teaching in the case: she was not refusing, her energy and her degree of self-control did not permit her to hold it, so the durations were shortened rather than the pressure raised, and then lengthened as the ability arrived - fifteen seconds, more distance, the handler stepping further back. The release is withheld while the anxious stare is running and given the moment she settles.
On film
only thing is her implied state, which I think I'm just going to have to use negative reinforcement to bring that out.
it was not within her ability. So, I instead was doing shorter times. That's how I'm still treating her is like now we're increasing times on certain things, right?
And so I'm increasing times, right? And I'm stepping back more. I'm making her sit here for like 15 seconds.
Let's go. Um, and that implied stay is really starting to work on her now, but she genuinely just didn't have the skill to maintain a implied state like I really wanted her to.
they're not ready to be released.
until she's forced to settle i'm not gonna let her go i mean and obviously like after that first week of like getting everything adjusted you can just place her for like a minute it's not like you gotta look every single time for the rest of her life if she's staring right
Leash pressure, and the e-collar that comes to mean the same thing
How it was taught
Pressure on, dog yields, pressure off - with no fixed leash length and no prescribed position attached to it, on the stated grounds that owners walk their dogs at whatever length suits them. The collar is then paired with the end of the line until the two mean one thing to her. The failure mode is named precisely: she felt the pressure and did not know what to do with the information, so she left. What was taught is that the sensation means go back into the command.
On film
That's a big thing. We teach is just a leash pressure means back off, right?
equal amounts of time and loves yeah she backed off immediately so
the end of her collar here and what she learned is that the end of the collar like the pressure that comes from it if the e collar is hit at the same time she makes the two like synonyms right so they mean one of the same
sometimes dogs even if you have the level set really low what will happen is your e-collar the dog feels the pressure but does not know what to do with that info right and so she kind of was a little bit weird with it and she would feel it but she'd just like try to run away or something
Probably she was so distracted she didn't feel it.
Yeah. So, that was one of the more intense parts of a session that I've had in a while with her. I made sure to mark everything properly, but the thing is like I said the word and I had to follow it with the e-collar. And again, I just kind of got that that shake thing, right? I don't want anything else more than that really.
Not jumping on people
How it was taught
A verbal 'nope' and then the collar at about 15, every single time. The reasoning handed to the owners is a model rather than a rule: a behaviour that succeeded once gets labelled in the dog's mind as available, and only unbroken consistency removes the label.
On film
our session I know she jumped on both of you quite a bit when you sent her yeah
happened is like it happened once in a while and then it kind of got labeled in her mind it's like
Any kind of jumping that I see her do, I'm just going to give her the nope and then hit like B collar, like on like just normal, like 15, right?
i guess she makes everybody a liar
because she wouldn't jump on the counter at all last time i was here which i thought i was like okay we must have like gotten it fixed but no we just she might have been really like she was really excited when she came in this time i don't know why she was way more excited than last time
How the method adapted
Her failures were classified as inability rather than refusal, and the classification changed what was done. This is the single largest adaptation in the case and it is stated as a definition, mid-session, on camera: her energy and her level of self-control would not permit her to hold the position - permit meaning it was not within her ability - so the criterion came down to what she could do and went back up as the ability arrived.
Because the alternative, insisting, produces a dog that is fought rather than taught. The same handler counts his own corrections aloud in the same session and names the point at which they would stop being useful.
On film
but her energy level really just wouldn't permit her to do that or her her her level of control at the time would not permit her, right? So, I use the word permit because you have to understand too and this is this is where I go into like a little bit of educational stuff here, right?
Permit means like basically like you can't, right? I'm I'm not permitted to do this. I it's not within my ability at this time. So, genuinely, it was not within her ability. So, I instead was doing shorter times.
um the big thing with it down is i think sometimes she just gets a little confused
lovey very very physical dog like she's very she's very physically affectionate dog so I genuinely just think that she just had a little bit of a tricky time where like hey we can't be like super close and everything
The reward was found by testing rather than assumed, and the answer was affection. Tug was tried and honestly reported as not motivating her much; the toy she likes at the house was ignored on a walk; what works is being rubbed on immediately after a command and lazy time on a bench. The family's own written answer was food and praise, and the program kept the praise and dropped the food.
Two reasons are given and the second is unusual: it works on her, and it costs nothing. The trainer counts the owner's ongoing cost as part of choosing the reward, because the owner has to keep paying it after he leaves.
On film
last time we had our last session we had i was trying to do like tug with her to motivate it motivate her with the tug she'll she's not like it's not like i can't get her to play tug but i find that her biggest motivator is like right after i do a command i'm like okay and i come and i like rub on her and like rub on her face she's like she's like really happy
Okay. And now you get the rubbies. And this is a good reward system because you can always rub them. You can always give them the rubbies.
She's not super motivated by the e-collar alone.
I start to just want to drill. But the thing with her is if you don't love on her she her performance will go down.
Because she's way more interested in it at the house.
The affection was then made intermittent rather than guaranteed - sometimes she gets it and sometimes she does not, and the point is that it remains possible - and in one late session a repetition is conceded to her on purpose because the trainer wants her happy.
Not argued from theory. The nearest thing to a reason is that she is not motivated by the collar alone, so the thing she does work for has to keep its value.
On film
sometimes she gets the rubbies sometimes she doesn't um the important thing it's just that it's
a reward that is sometimes she does get that reward right it's important that that is a
that one on the command because i do want her to be happy and i want to make it like i want her i
Physical closeness was treated as a trainable variable in its own right, separate from distance-as-proofing. Being asked to work three feet away is genuinely hard for her because she wants to be touching the handler, so it is trained rather than assumed.
Because it is affection rather than defiance, and correcting it as defiance would be correcting the wrong thing.
On film
she's trying she really is she's got to learn you cannot be that close to me
you can't be that close to me though so we're getting like more distance on her now
because she's fine with duration if I'm close to her, right? For all everything. So, it really is the distance part.
The e-collar was held below a ceiling rather than raised toward an effect, and the ceiling was set by her rather than by her breed. Twenty is the maximum, fifteen is her working level, and it is dropped below fifteen live when a room turns out to be calm. The one time a level goes badly wrong it is the handler who apologises.
The criterion is the smallest level that produces any response at all - usually just the ears - and the trainer says out loud that a dog reacting more than that is being tormented. He uses her own sensitivity as the argument that breed does not set the number.
On film
any kind of response that's all i want so like most of the time i just want to see the ears so if i hit it there you go then like that's enough if you hit it your dog's like rolling around and everything it's what you like you don't like you don't need to torture your dog and torment them
is interesting because she's pretty strong usually the rottweilers aren't super sensitive to it like i find that a lot of rottweilers i've worked with hang on like a 30 35 but she's pretty sensitive
Oh, well, that's way too high.
I'm sorry, babe.
like I said the word and I had to follow it with the e-collar. And again, I just kind of got that that shake thing, right? I don't want anything else more than that really. I don't want to jump.
Repetition was rationed rather than maximised, and the reason was given a mechanism. Drilling produces mental fatigue in anything but the very high-drive breeds; the dog goes blank and taps out; how fast that happens differs by dog. So a command that is not coming is dropped and the dog is walked around for a minute rather than asked again.
Stated twice by two different handlers, once as a rule about her and once as a rule about dogs. One of them also names his own caseload as the thing that makes a trainer drill.
On film
command i'm not gonna like push it over and over we're kind of gonna like walk around for a minute
They'll kind of give you this look of, like, just, like, very, like, nothing's going on up there currently.
But you do too many reps and you'll shut a dog down.
Because I've noticed like if I stop giving her like if I get like really locked in on a session, it's really easy as like trainers right when we have like
A fight was declined rather than won.
Not argued. It is said to the dog rather than to the camera, which is part of why it is worth keeping.
On film
a lot of fight man don't do that I don't want I don't want to fight you good job
a moment like that where she's just really doesn't want it down wants to fight me duchess
do it. So, again, not driving her to the point where she's like, "I can't do it, right?" But, we're just applying some pressure. Cuz that is a healthy amount of pressure.
Heat was treated as a hard constraint on the work rather than as weather. A twenty-to-thirty-minute ceiling on walks for bully breeds with the breathing reason attached; shade as what makes a longer stationary session acceptable; a venue chosen almost exclusively for its shade; a session that day ended at ten minutes because a dog stopped paying attention; and, at the other end, the heat named as a cause of looser obedience rather than the dog blamed for it.
Two reasons, and the second is the interesting one. And measurement - a dog that has stopped attending is not training, so the stopping rule is attention rather than the clock.
On film
doing like a walk i try not to keep them out for more than 20 to 30 minutes because the flat like the flat base They take in air.
it's a good thing we did this under here, though, because it is cooler
so I've been going into the shaded areas a lot like pretty much exclusively at uh jack marley park out in angier because she's a roddy too
i actually today i had a dog we only worked for 10 minutes because she got hot and i was like all right we're done yeah i'm not once they're not paying attention
so that's the thing in the heat I've noticed that's a that just sit a little more of a tendency with her
And it's hot. So, if she wants to go into it in a minute, I'll let her.
The venue was changed for her specifically, and the handler says so: he has been coming to the park far more than usual because what he would do with other dogs will not work with her.
Her deficit was arousal in the presence of the world, which cannot be worked in a quiet room. The same logic drives the whole list of generalisation venues the owners are given - the store, the park, the facility's yard, indoors.
On film
But that's the point is that I've been coming out here to the park a bunch more so than usual because I can't just do what I would do to some other dogs, right?
delivered but i will say the way like when i was talking about how we take the dog to the store in
more of a interesting stimulus it's a little bit more interesting environment to start teaching
The hardest thing in the case was moved off the calendar rather than attempted. The two household dogs she has injured are deliberately not brought into the one session held in her own house, because an hour is not enough room to make that introduction foolproof and the failure mode is an emergency.
It is also the reason the presenting problem is never worked on film: the session it was moved to is not in the record.
On film
i don't want to bring the two in that she has a problem with quite yet i want to handle that on like the drop off day
sometimes when there's bigger stuff like that i like to make sure everything is really nice and tight that way like it's very foolproof because the last thing i want is to have some kind of emergency where it was like not quite ready and something bad happened right
Equipment was treated as a training variable, repeatedly, and it cost her real time. Her first lesson loses five minutes to a collar that is too loose. A borrowed handler swaps her own collar for one that sits lower because the fit is what makes it work. The dress rehearsal three weeks later opens with the same failure, found live. And the owners are taught the fit rule with the field failure attached - clients report that the training has stopped working and the cause is a strap.
Because a collar that is not making contact looks exactly like a dog ignoring a correction, and the owner blames the training.
On film
Finally, now we can resume. Five minutes wasted. Thank you, Dutchess.
She has her pink one on but the red is lower. It's better for training. The pink ones way like to just a little loose
No, your collar's not on tight enough. All right. Well, oh yeah, that was way too loose. We'll try this again.
i've actually came out to people's houses like the training's not working i'm like can i see it and i put on the e-collar and it works and i drove like an hour out to just tighten it
The program was run by several hands on purpose, and the structure is stated once, in passing, by a handler who had never worked her before: everybody handles every dog at some point, and there is an unwritten primary trainer.
Different voices on the same dog are the system working rather than inconsistency - and it is also why the down looks easy in one session and hard in another, and why nobody in twenty-three files ever introduces themselves.
On film
this first time i've ever had been able to take her out
we all get we all get our hands on the dogs at some point though
there's usually a primary trainer though hey it's kind of an unwritten primary
Yeah, I'll talk to Kelton about, like, the behavior that you were describing,
The household
Marked
SEPARATE TREATMENT. Dutchess's case cannot be read without the other four dogs, and they are not her. She lives with four terrier mixes, two male and two female, three of them described on film as around fifteen years old. Two of them are the dogs she has injured. Two of them - Bo and Patty - are the ones she is fine with, and they are the ones brought in first. The household is not background: it is the variable the case turns on, and it supplies the diagnostic the trainer accepts.
Points
Bo is where the behaviour came from. He is about thirty pounds, corgi-shaped, some terrier, fifteen years old, deaf and losing his sight, and he is the only dog in the house who will play at her level. He snarls and bites back, and she stops when he signals he is done. The owners say she learned her play invitation - biting another dog on the backside - from him.
On film
She'll come up to them and her behavior to get them to play, which she learned from Bo, is bite them on the butt.
He's about 30 pounds, but he's like all muscle.
Bo is deaf and somewhat seen off.
They play rough. And like I said, she'll grab him in the back leg and grab him across the floor. But when he's done, he, yeah, and she stops. and she
The two she has hurt are the two most submissive, and the trainer notices it at the first owner lesson before the owners explain why. The smallest dog in the house bites her back and has never been a target.
On film
And the two dogs that she's injured are the, like, most meek and submissive.
if she messes with Patty, Patty will bite her on the face, and she's never bitten her.
So the variable is the other dog's answer, not Dutchess's intent. A clean, confident signal stops her; screaming does not. The owners supply this and the trainer takes it, and it is what turns a dog-aggression case into an arousal-plus-feedback case.
On film
but when he gives her the signal
snarls at her face
because they act like victims
And the other dogs have their own memory of it, which is the half of the case the board-and-train cannot touch. One of them growls during the home visit, carrying the association; the trainer says plainly that the family will simply have to be around that, that another dog starting it is outside what training covers, and that a growl or a nip from one of them will read to her as an invitation rather than a warning.
On film
he's probably too, like, he's got that, the association of what happened before. With him, you're just going to have to, like, he's just got to be around
I can do all the training in the world, but if a dog comes up and bites her. If she starts attacking her.
but it's just it's gonna take time and of course if they start to engage with her in a more like aggressive way you know i'm more like hey i'm trying to like protect myself i'm gonna growl at somebody to like take a little nip or something she's gonna take that as like oh like let's go
The best moment in the whole case is about them rather than about her: two of the other dogs flare up at each other in the room, and Dutchess comes over, looks, and backs off. The trainer measures it against what it used to take.
On film
Would she usually have gone more or would she... yeah okay so that was that was an
like i would have to before i would have to grab her collar and like pull her
that's actually good though because that means that like i'm more i'm a little more confident in her like knowing that she will back off
What the family was told
The rule that everything else hangs off: the word first, the collar after, never before
Yeah, but it's always afterwards, because if you do the e-collar before, there's no context, and what can happen is, like, let's say you put her to a down, right, you say down, and then she doesn't want to say you just did the e-collar. What happens is she could learn that down means the e-collar, and then every time you say down, she's like, and she does that, and then you poison the command, and it can take three weeks to unpoison the command.
i actually don't not not okay not in that case
the big thing you want to do is i've talked about the word for the account is really really important that you do it there and there's a reason why
if you don't say anything you panic and you just crank it up and hit the button that actually works so what she'll say is oh that shot came from this dog which means i gotta get even bigger versus if she hears a verbal cue from you
it's just like that's one of those things always important but if you can only pick one opportunity where you actually say it that's the one
But you saw right there, there was a nope and then the e-collar happened right there.
The numbers, the ceiling, and how to tell whether a level is right
it's probably wrong so the level that i have dutchestan is a 15 out of 100 right i do not have it high it's enough to be uncomfortable but it's not like i'm not cranking it up just for the fun of it
what setting i have her i never go past the 20 20 is like if she's really distracted active 15 though is where she usually rests we're just walking in the park
and my goal isn't to be like well if i see her like look like she's having a seizure then that means it's working like my thing is like i said i think i told you guys last time any kind of response that's all i want so like most of the time i just want to see the ears so if i hit it there you go then like that's enough if you hit it your dog's like rolling around and everything it's what you like you don't like you don't need to torture your dog and torment them
actually what's what's interesting thing with this thing is i would actually turn this down a little more than the level i have it at because the educator is just a little bit stronger
okay okay you don't need to use this for Dutch's like ever
The equipment rules, including the one button never to press
and it's just like a loop for two loops um the general rule i use is like if i can
But if I can twist it like that, then it's too loose.
do you have your e-collar yes cool okay so i'm gonna show you how to set it up properly because i think we talked about i was going to show you how to put it on correctly too yeah there's a lot of weird things that like you don't know how to put it on right you'll hit the bottom of the dog would just be like i don't care and it doesn't work and you're like you broke my dog
this one is just the vibration. I don't ever use that because if you use the vibration, you take away the power from the word. If the dog learns every single time you say eh or nope, it's just to vibrate, the dog is like, word doesn't mean anything, I don't care. and within a couple weeks you're gonna be like well know what happened but it happened
want to have the e-collar on you for like you know like i said the first couple days here just
What will happen in the first week home, said without softening
when, like as a kid, I think everybody like really says to mom, if you don't ever let her get to one, because every single other time she's ever hit one, it was not an enjoyable experience.
so in that first week when she's in an environment she's in her house
where i did a drop off for them i told them like if they're going to act up in the first week make sure you use the e-collar
so if i show duchess like hey we gotta do it exactly this way and that's how it is with me but then she's looser with you guys because she's gonna test you for that like first week she's home whatever you don't reinforce
well i say that because some people really think that when i drop the dog off the dog should be like military level obedient
You know, for, like, now, like, just make sure you got it, the e-collar, like, ready to go.
House rules, and the cost of not having one
So, for this, like, usually people either want their dogs on the couch or they don't.
Sometimes we don't. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we do. Okay, so that can be a little confusing.
so like in the house maybe like instead of maybe you just do it down a lot right because right there if you say sit and she goes into it down you will teach her that she can do both whereas if you just say we only we we only give her a down command in the house and then outside we give her the sit and the down. Then that way she doesn't have a chance to start to slip and confuse, or confuse the two.
And you should know that the way that the sit works for dogs, it's like kind of weird if you try to get a dog to sit while you're sitting.
The order of a repetition
so the only thing I would say right there is my, like, the one thing is, after she does a sip, say okay, because what she learned is like, okay is the release, okay is my reward, the reward comes after, okay, it's, a lot of the things we do are time sensitive, or, not time sensitive, they're like a, there's an order,
if you get out of order you can either like confuse the dog or in this case you could set the training back
Place, as a furnishing decision as much as a training one
yeah it's got to be something that's like big enough for her to fit all four paws on and something that she can differentiate in terms of either like height or texture texture team does tend to be a little trickier but you can do it right like you could technically like if you wanted to teach her this rug right here to place you could it would take a little bit longer to generalize than if it was
yeah now if you're going to have it it would be good if you had it like ideally on the drop off or something that way i could show you how to do it because if i don't let you just point there she's just going to look at you and be like
so you don't have to have the leash you can really just say like place and just grab the collar and just slide her on and after a couple times she learns like hey that's where you got to go
usually those are like visual aids that that we don't use um most of the time when you start training if i'm like teaching a dog to go into a down i'll do this thing where i'm like down i like point down and everything it's part of the training process you don't want to keep it because you want it to be 100 verbal but for the place command you do point for that because it does like
Reading her, so the owners can see what the trainer sees
actually when she was in that down position I looked at her and I like
that was like her like trying to kind of like hold it she was like fighting demons you know
because this is what you wanna look for. Look at the eyes. If you see her staring at you, there's like an anxious stare, which is she's like, are you really gonna make me do this?
she's getting a little excited but you can see like she's more she manages it better
What the program is, and what it is not
i give the lesson but that week that they're home you do really have to reinforce it it's it's not that you're having to train your dog
it's like promising that a five-year-old isn't going to be excited it's like i mean if they're having a good day maybe but like if not versus the more training that the kid gets right eventually it's solid
to get it really smooth and just instantaneous takes weeks and weeks of just the dog doing what it knows how to do
The case against treats, made unprompted at the handover
we used to use treats a lot more we don't use them anymore because they're the most reliable if you have the treat or if the dog doesn't want something more than the treat right but they're like it becomes insanely unreliable if the dog even slightly cares about something more than the treat
or let's say you're out of one and you're like sit and dutch is like that's funny because like i don't see a treat in your hand so that means like our relationship is transactional
Heel, and the thing never to do with it
it's the command that you have to take her out uh yeah so every i mean every command right you release them out so sit you release them like same thing with that
Actually, if you put a dog in a heel for long periods of time and never let them out of it, you do something called heel grinding, which is really dangerous. It's where you frustrate the dog. And sometimes if they're nervous or snippy enough, they'll just, after six months of heel grinding, just randomly bite a kid.
So people do that all the time with a nervous dog, right? If they're like, oh, she bites, I'm just going to put her in a heel every time we go anywhere because that's safe. Wink, wink.
What the program will and will not promise
yeah so like i i don't want to promise it because i don't want to make a promise they can't be like
like it's not a behavior that happens every day or even every week so you may
so my main concern is weird i i can't fix it because my main concern is what's she gonna do when i'm gone right i can't fix i can't be like oh yeah i'm gone let me fix it
I can do all the training in the world, but if a dog comes up and bites her. If she starts attacking her.
that's why i i really don't know how if you're a trainer that's like oh
The warranty, and the one thing that voids it
we have the the lifetime warranty on every single dog that we train right so if you have any
and then they'll go and buy like another trainer's course try to implement their ideas and fuse their that training with ours and it's like you've like confused it and the dog doesn't know and now for me to get back on track i'd probably have to come out here like three or four times in a row
yeah, sure. Cause we have a lifetime policy on every dog. So we're like
Disclosure: the scrape, and why it is mentioned at all
the the high drive dogs are also more problematic for injuries when they come and stay with us
upfront about all that stuff because the last thing i need is to go home and then like somebody thinks i tried to hide an injury from them or something it's like it's not a great look
Stated about the owners rather than to them
they'll be using it a ton I really think what they're gonna be using a lot is her her implied stay, her place command. And then of course, just the behavior modification for not jumping on people.
I start to just want to drill. But the thing with her is if you don't love on her she her performance will go down.
I'm obviously going to go over this with like people's dog, right? I'm not like putting this on the internet and just being like, "Here you go. Just take the
And again, I'm recording everything just you know send it to you guys and yeah that way all the info We can you can go back and we watch it because honestly, I think once he comes home You're probably gonna want to go over watch them just so you can kind of like with everything I'm saying you can be
In the family's own words
The only goal statement made on camera by anybody, and it is about a place rather than about obedience: somewhere she goes and settles when the house is busy.
On film
I guess I would like to know if it's reasonable I'd like for her to if she
the backyard and do whatever but when she's in the house for us to be able to
say sit or lay down and get her to be calm and be away from me that actually was very doable
i just think if we can have her to where she'll go sit some like you're like go sit in your spot
And the summary they give it themselves, twice, in five words: better manners.
On film
kind of stuff and we just need her to have better manners yeah right Dutchie
The one thing an owner asks for that is not on the intake form in that shape: a recall if she ever gets loose, said in the same breath as a statement that she does not plan to take her off leash at all.
On film
yeah and i want to be able to come when i
plan on taking her off leash anywhere but if she gets off leash i
Their insistence that this is not who she is, and the thing they say she knows.
On film
it's not in her nature
Well see, the times that Dutchess has bit the other two dogs, that was pretty much the situation. She was so excited, she just...
The owners answering the trainer's own worry before he can finish worrying it - they are not assuming she comes home fixed. He tells them they are becoming a favourite client.
On film
are not gonna assume that just because she's dealing with y'all that she's gonna come home and okay not try to bite one of them or not
i was a math teacher so i know how important it is to do your homework
Outcomes
What the trainers reported
That she knows every command, and that what remains is the impulse underneath them. Said in three separate solo sessions across the last two weeks, in almost the same words each time.
The trainer, to camera
On film
She's killing it. Big thing we're working on here is she pretty much knows all all her commands now. So, the one with her is just reinforcing them.
gotta get good cuz uh she's pretty much like as far as the commander like she's pretty much good to go it's really just the impulse that you know I'm trying to trying to fix trying to tighten that up
that's the big thing with her is she gets up a lot she knows her commands though so
That most of the training carried into the owners' house without needing to be generalised - which he says he did not expect.
The trainer, to the owners, at the house
On film
I really thought I was gonna have to generalize more. A lot of it's actually carried over, which I'm really happy with.
little bit I thought when I got here that I was gonna like correct jumping so she's kind of surprised me a little bit here too
That the jumping has very nearly stopped, with one surviving scenario named.
The trainer, to the owners
On film
I've, she's really not doing any of that though anymore.
when i went in there she was like really energetic and she was like jumping on me but i got her to stop in like maybe 30 seconds so she's not like quick to climb people
That she is safe to send home, said twice in the same session, with the caveat that the reinforcement will have to be redone in the house.
The trainer, to camera, before the home visit
On film
you know i'll just um be taking them over the next couple days but i'm really not terrified
neutrality so when she's a little distracted she won't run up to somebody um she knows we're
That she is off-leash ready, in a claim sized deliberately narrow: she does not take off and does not refuse a recall.
The trainer, to camera, on go-home day
On film
that's duchess off lease again he's not taking off it doesn't try to blow me off with any recall
and um she responds to all her markers really
That the second owner lesson was one of the smoothest he has run - a claim about the session rather than about the dog, and offered with the baseline attached.
The trainer, at the house
On film
This is one of the smoothest second sessions I've ever had.
like, she had a standard, like, her OV was going to be okay when I came in here. Because a lot of the dogs come into the house, right, and they just go crazy. Like, they're jumping, jumping, jumping. All their problems come back, and I have to re-sensitize them all.
That the dog-directed problem is improved rather than fixed. The distinction is drawn inside the marketing edit itself.
The trainer, to an owner, during the flare-up
On film
Okay, so that was an improvement.
that's actually good though because that means that like i'm more i'm a little more confident in her like knowing that she will back off
What the footage shows
A strange small dog walked past her at close range, with a frightened child nearby, while she was stationary at a bench and the handler was taking a photograph and not managing her. She stared and did not lunge and put no tension on the leash. It is the first measurable result on the presenting problem, and it happened by accident.
On film
and getting that photo somebody walked by with like a blue healer mix of some kind
and dutchess was like fixated but she didn't like lunge he was a smaller dog too um she didn't lunge
she did stare but we sat there and she i did no pulling on my leash at all it was really good
Three separate passes near people in a crowded park handled with a marker, a little leash, and then nothing at all, with the trainer narrating twice that he did not press the button. This is the clearest filmed evidence in the case and it is evidence of an absence.
On film
All right, so I didn't even need to call her that time. I just hit the button and she or excuse me, I did not e-collar her. I said, "Eh." And then she just backed off, which is of course exactly what we want.
she thought about it. Again, I didn't have to hit anything there though. The biggest thing is that she's correcting herself.
So, right there she really didn't care about the people.
Loose in her own house with all four of the household's other dogs out at once, including the two she has injured, doing nothing: no jumping, no mobbing, no counter, no table-stealing.
On film
She's not jumping.
and just you know she does naughty stuff like if she wants to create products she'll like grab something random off of the table and like try to get you to chase her but she's not doing any of that
All right. And see, I mean, he they they will go up to her and go lay down next to her even though she's bitten.
A real flare-up between two of the other dogs, in the room, in front of the owners, corrected live - and Dutchess came over, looked, and backed off. Measured on camera against what it used to take.
On film
hey, hey, hey, hey. Touch it. Perfect example of how things happen. There we go. These two don't get along.
like i would have to before i would have to grab her collar and like pull her
A staged test of the exact behaviour the owners describe - a small dog picked up in front of her - which she declines, and which the trainer had predicted she would fail.
On film
This is another thing that we have a problem with, and I'm gonna go get Patty and show you, is that if I'm holding one of the little dogs, that's when she'll try to jump on me. I'm betting that she'll do it.
i guess she makes everybody a liar
A squirrel left alone, off leash, with no input from the handler - and the handler's own inaction offered as the evidence.
On film
yeah I I didn't have to do anything. She automatically just kind of backed
An unprompted off-leash check-in, tested passively: the handler deliberately stays quiet to see whether she comes back on her own, and she does.
On film
me in a minute, I'm not gonna get too loud. I wanna see if she just naturally, yep, perfect.
And the counter-evidence, on the last day, in the same house: she jumps the kitchen counter, which she had not done on the previous visit. The trainer finds it, says so, and does not edit around it.
On film
because she wouldn't jump on the counter at all last time i was here which i thought i was like okay we must have like gotten it fixed but no we just she might have been really like she was really excited when she came in this time i don't know why she was way more excited than last time
Like, right now, she tried to pull a fast one on us.
The ideas Dutchess's case runs on
- 'Let's go' is not 'Come' - and the recall has an ending
- Aggression read as insecurity
- Another dog as helper, tester or draw
- Assess before you ask
- Breed is a checklist, not a verdict
- Build the handler's timing while it is easy
- Close the other door: the escape hatch
- Command, marker, collar - in that order
- Control is not obedience
- Don't accept the almost
- Don't heel grind
- Don't poison the command
- Drilling is what represses a dog
- False reps: the dog reads the chain, not the word
- Fit before level: check the tool before you judge the dog
- Food facilitates calm, it cannot create it
- Freedom is given in measured steps
- Generalisation is the whole job
- He has to be allowed to get it wrong
- Heat is a stop sign
- Help it or press it - read which
- Hidden help
- Honest limits, and reliability is not permission
- Integration is a gated procedure
- Internal emotional change, not repression
- Keep the marker charged
- Maintenance is use, not practice
- Meaningful release
- Neutrality is the goal, friendship is optional
- Nobody is at fault; it isn't personal
- Prediction error
- Quit on the good rep
- Say it bluntly or it will not land
- Start with freedom
- Stop before you shut him down
- Swapped commands: keep sit and down distinct
- Teach the move, then the word
- The board, the scenes and the grades - and every trainer works every dog
- The dog tells you the reward
- The handler is a variable: nerves, tension, voice and energy
- The handler is the first suspect
- The handler wears the collar
- The leash is a prop
- The level is not a number
- The marker vocabulary: eh, good, okay - and two corrections
- The program is reinforcement, not teaching
- The radius
- The settle criterion
- The standard is set by the job
- The three Ds, and the variables nobody counts
- There is no stay, only the release
- Two events, not one - and what the handler does in between