Who Luna is
As the trainers describe her
A nervous case, typed on the first day as environmental rather than genetic - and therefore, in his framework, fixable.
On film
she's a nervous case, um, which is, of course, why I'm with her, because she's, she's more of a environmental kind of nervous, so I do think that we can fix her right on up
there's two kinds of nervousness you have environmental nervousness and genetic nervousness genetic is like i mean it's self-explanatory i mean it's genetic um and environmental is like maybe they grew up something made them nervous you can fix environmental nervousness sometimes 100% all the way to where they just look like they're not nervous anymore genetic nervousness takes a long time
Skittish rather than terrified, and the grading is deliberate: skittish is the workable end of the scale. By the handover the distinction has hardened into a threshold an owner can use - ordinary caution is acceptable, and what she had was more than that.
On film
the tail's not like too bad she's just a little skittish which is way better than the altar which which is actually like terrified is not what you want
so there's a difference between like skittish is in like nervousness and then skittish is in like if you come up to luna she's just a little cautious right cautious is fine but like her level was a little bit much
Skittish and pressure-tolerant at the same time, which is the observation the whole training plan turns on. A dog this nervous would normally be handled softly; he handles her hard because she takes it.
On film
type of brake she is, she handles pressure really well. Even though she's a little skittish, she does handle the pressure extremely well.
come on. All right, so in this case, I actually would use a treat, but I then I wean it off. So that's my test is some dogs, they'll respond to this thing or like a pull down. I figured she wasn't. I was like, she's pretty tough.
The one thing she will not do is lie down, and it is the hardest down he has ever taught. This is the spine of her skill record and he says so twice, three days apart, with his own experience explicitly bounded.
On film
yeah, this is the trickiest down I've ever had to teach.
Actually, like it is by far the most time consuming down I've ever done in any dog I've worked with,
I mean she's a little bit out of the ordinary when it comes to the down in terms of like all the dogs I've worked with which is a decent number these days
Okay, good job. Now, she freaking hates down. She will get out of down the second I release her. No questions.
Smart enough to have learned how to not do things - a third category beside knowing and not knowing. He flags that it sounds like an excuse and argues it anyway, with a joke against himself.
On film
That's the thing. There's not a dog that if I took her home, I'd be like, "Oh, yeah, she won't know." Problem is, she does know. She just doesn't She knows
would be something you would say like, "Oh yeah, I know how to play piano, but I I really know how to not play." Like you don't really brag about that because it just sounds like you're making an excuse as to why you're a virtuoso but actually can't play like a virtuoso.
Um, the main thing is that she does uh, you'll hear this term a lot where it's like the dog blows you off. And what that is is like she knows that I want her to come to me, but what she'll do is she'll start and then she's like, I don't really want to do it. And so she'll like verge off. And so that's what we're working on.
Unpredictable in a specific way: she makes the easy commands difficult and takes the ones he expects to be miserable without complaint.
On film
the things that i think are going to be easy she makes it really tricky and
for me so it's weird she's a very unpredictable dog in terms of training
Her defining risk is not fear and not defiance but flight: the urge to leave when something startles her. That is the thing that earned the extra week.
On film
that's part of the proofing process that works there we go good job that's what i'm talking about this is a pretty smart dog her big thing is just like she wants to take off and like bolt
the reason that we're keeping her longer is because when she's skittish like that, right? Not only does if because her nerves have raised a little bit, uh it's harder for her to hold impulse control, but on top of that, if you naturally have a skittish reaction to any kind of like if your dog has like naturally wants to to run, right? The nerves take over, skittish reaction enz.
wonder why I'm not going across there. Honestly, I'm just trying to keep Luna in the shade because it's good for her. I can see it in her eyes. She's thinking about it. She's thinking
Avoidant rather than frightened of people at the start - a third category he names on day one and expects to resolve on its own.
On film
but it already looks better than the first time out here she's fairly avoidant to people as a whole and not in terms of being like terrified she just really has no interest in them might open up when she opens up
A dog that tests - and at the handover that, not the nerves, is the trait he hands over as the thing to manage.
On film
So that's going to be the big thing with her is that she does a lot of testing.
um like she didn't test me at all last session really but this session's like she started out with a test so we'll see like maybe there's no more tests after this right okay all right she might not test me anymore just it just depends
A husky in the working sense: she mirrors whatever energy the handler brings, which he treats as a lever rather than as a complaint.
On film
her she feeds off because she i mean she's a husky and a shepherd huskies especially feed off of people's energies
in some ways it's cool because if I'm at a 10, I can make her be at a 10. Let's go.
Physically limited by her coat in the heat. Every session in her last fortnight is shaped by it - routes chosen for shade, sessions halved, the working budget named.
On film
Again, cause I didn't give her a huge break. She's, her coat's too fluffy for this weather.
Luna Taps out about 25 minutes. I think we got like five more minutes before she's like, I'm done.
Cause usually I would go for 15 or 20 minutes. She pooped out at like nine minutes. So this is when I try to give her the time she needs.
Liked, and said so plainly. The affection is on the record in three separate sessions and it is not incidental - he uses being liked as a diagnostic about himself.
On film
but that's it okay but she's gonna be a really cool dog once our program is done because she's really smart she's really obedient and she's she's going to excel once uh especially once i get a good reliable recall so goodbye luna
Of course, it's I say she's one of my favorites. every dog that starts to listen becomes one of my favorite favorites of the of the of the group,
Yeah Luna didn't want anything to do with me
As her family describe her
The household decides what counts as a quirk.
On film
usually ask before I do anything with like any of the quirky behaviors that dogs have because some people really don't like them and some people are like no, that's like what makes my dog my dog and I'm fine with either one
And there was much debate last time I was over about whether it does this paw thing and we were deciding if it's a quirk or if it's a uh in need of behavioral modification and Luna's owner said that we treat it just like a quirk.
They would rather have had the extra week than have her back on time - said in reply to the trainer's apology, unprompted.
On film
because she was supposed to come back last week which my my apologies for that
No worries. I'd rather her to have an extra week so she can understand.
The owner's own worry, raised without being asked: that giving her too much freedom will undo the training. He is the one who asks for the off-leash demonstrations.
On film
don't like you didn't explain it. And I'm like, there's all these videos you
And then she she understands that. I'm just scared that too much freedom will
make her forget that, you know, why you're doing what you're doing.
They read the manual. The trainer singles it out, and says what usually happens instead.
On film
manual said it has to be at least two fingers work yep yeah okay cool I'm so glad that you read that most people don't
worth so most people like i said don't read the manual and then they'll go and like put on the e-collar and it's too loose and they're like you didn't dream my dog and then i come out here and i just put it on tighter and And then they do all the commands, and it jaw drops. Right.
The owner watched the videos and applied the method to his own second dog - the one thing about this client the trainer praises to camera when the client is not there.
On film
Luna's owner. Um pretty cool. He like takes all of our advice and train
another dog he has. So, I think that's like super cool that somebody's actually
Yeah. No, I'm glad that you're watching all the videos cuz some people don't
The program, stage by stage
Intake, off camera
Form submitted 7/30/2026; drop-off approximately 2026-07-31. Nothing filmed.
A family who had taken her on from a friend four weeks earlier filled in the intake form and asked for a pickup a few days later (source: intake). What they wanted, in their own words on the form, was a recall, a dog who was not frightened and startled by everything, and less distraction - and the picture they gave of success was walking her without leashes and having her trust them. They recorded that she is frightened of loud noises, of plastic and refuse bags, and of ordinary household objects; that with the leash off she runs when she is frightened; and that they had tried off leash twice and stopped. She had never worn an e-collar. She was eleven and a half months old (source: intake). None of this is on camera. There is no evaluation session, no day one, no arrival footage and no history-taking anywhere in the twenty-one files. Everything in this stage comes from the form.
The cot, and a question rather than a lesson
Early, undated. watch, then watch.
Indoors at the facility, a second handler introduces her to a place cot and says openly that she does not know how this dog will take it - some are fine, some behave as though they would rather die. She puts Luna up, names the behaviour as it happens, and then deliberately does nothing, watching whether she settles. The honest range is given unprompted: the record holder took nine or ten weeks to lie down on one. Luna gets off uninvited once and is put back with the rule stated plainly. The handler's whole assessment of her is one word - nervous - and her answer to it is a promise rather than a technique. In the second of these sessions the criterion moves from position to state: instead of being placed into a down she is left on the cot until she lies down herself, and stepping off means starting over.
On film
Okay, let's see what you can do. Let's see how you feel about the play spot because some dogs are like super chill with it and other dogs act like they would rather die.
I think the record holder is like 9 or 10 weeks it took for a dog to like settle and like lay down on the pod.
I didn't tell you to get off though. We're going to start right away. Make sure you know you want to do that when you're told. You wait for the command.
You know what? If you've seen some of the nervous dogs that came through here and they left here, just ready for the world. I'm sure we can do that for you, too.
What are you going to do? You're going to stay there. You're going to stay there until you lay down
She just has like Sit. Stress yourself right out.
All right. Now, what are you going to do? You're going to stay there. You're going to stay there until you lay down at your own volition.
The case is typed in the first minute — a nervous dog of the fixable kindTurning point
Published 2026-08-12. watch.
The trainer's own first working session with her, outdoors, narrated end to end. Before he asks for anything he tells the camera what she is: a nervous case, and specifically an environmental one, which in his framework is the kind that can be fixed outright. Everything that follows for five weeks runs on that judgement. He then does almost nothing: exposure, free sniffing as both the reward and the work, and a recall he judges she does not know at all. The level is hunted for rather than set - five, then fifteen, then about thirteen, "the magic level for her". The session's real content is diagnostic honesty. He reads a yawn and stops. He asks for affection, is refused, and drops it in two seconds. He meets a signal he cannot interpret and says three times that he does not know what it meant. When a repetition fails he concludes she did not understand, apologises to the dog, and calls it his own fault. And he closes with a prediction rather than a claim: the recall will be slow because she fixates, and everything depends on it.
On film
she's a nervous case, um, which is, of course, why I'm with her, because she's, she's more of a environmental kind of nervous, so I do think that we can fix her right on up
She's just gotta be out here and hear things.
right now Luna come all right so somebody doesn't know that word at all come good job
Can I get a couple of lickies? No? Alright. If you're too nervous for that, we don't do it.
didn't like that I don't know if she was like keep doing that to be honest I don't know weird I usually know what those signs mean but that's you know
Thank You Luna you did good I know I'm sorry I I figured you would know let's go that's my bad we're gonna condition it more
so the big thing with her, I can already kind of tell, um, I'm gonna give you about like 13, that seems to be like the magic level for her
but that's it okay but she's gonna be a really cool dog once our program is done because she's really smart she's really obedient and she's she's going to excel once uh especially once i get a good reliable recall so goodbye luna
The equipment session — a collar that feels tight and touches nothingTurning point
Published 2026-08-16, described as the day after the previous session. watch.
He comes back to the recall and within thirty seconds finds the real problem, which is not the dog. The e-collar is sitting on the flat collar and is far too loose, and on a coat like hers the contact points may be in fur rather than on skin. Most of the first eight minutes is tightening, repositioning, testing and re-tightening while he works out aloud that a collar can feel tight and deliver nothing - which is the reading an unwary handler would have taken as a dog getting tougher. Alongside it is the program's first real progress report, and it is good: she has opened up around the staff tenfold, jumping at people and tearing round the indoor room, though still situationally skittish. Then he tries the down, places her into it, reaches for a food lure and drops both when her tail goes down. She takes a small snap at him in the car while he is handling the collar again, and he attributes it to the handling rather than to her.
On film
Out here with Luna. We're out here yesterday with her. We're working on a recall. So that's what we're gonna do today because
some nervous stuff when we started she's opened up a lot like she was like hopping around trying to like going crazy like jumping at people today and stuff and having to blast in the indoor room so she's already opened up around us like tenfold but she's still skittish around certain things
So I wonder if actually I need to tighten it on more. I've already tightened it on once, but it didn't hit me. So just now I'm like, oh, it probably feels tight, but it's probably not even touching her skin at all.
I know, it's just you have that husky thickness to you.
we'll come back to the down a little bit later maybe she needs to open up a little more
their tail's a little low right now so we need to wind down because she thinks out here means sucky experience every time it's not good
you see the tail is a lot more like she her tail kind of flops down but for a second it was like lower than usual so i wanted to make sure we open her back up
okay i readjusted that e-collar but during times she was probably like dog stop doing that don't do that again
The first in-program owner lesson — the theory, and a down that has not begunTurning point
About two weeks in, 2026-08-13 to 2026-08-17. One visit, published as Parts 1 and 2.
A walk in a hot park with the owner and his new puppy along, and the trainer says in the first breath what the session is not: it is not a demonstration of what Luna can do, it is the maintenance briefing. Around the fixed teaching sit three things specific to Luna. The radius is introduced by name, with the goal stated as something inside the dog rather than something the leash is doing. "Release to freedom" is introduced as the lever chosen for her in particular: she is tough, she loves exploring, so the answer is to lock the leash and take exploring away rather than to raise the number. And he explains why the down has not begun - he will not use pressure on a dog until he knows how much she can take, because the tactics for a dog that shuts down are the opposite of those for one that fights. The honest note is loud: the recall is unfinished, she blows him off, the down is attempted at the end and fails for him and then for the owner, and he says the second session is where the dog should start to look trained.
On film
right so this session is not so much about what luna can do but i'm going to go over more about
But that's the two. and then you say the word and then the e-collar always comes after because if you say sit and you hit the e-collar after she doesn't listen what Luna's brain is going to go is oh man every time he says sit I get shocked which means sit is a punisher
all good. But her feel, she kind of has like a a mental field of like this is how far I should be from my handler. So that's why you let her free room first, get around just so when you're closing the circle, it's more efficient.
that I'm taking away people's freedom. But what's happening is that I do the e-collar. If she's still trying to fight me, I will lock the leash in place to where she can't go out and explore. And then she's like, I guess I have to do it because she really loves to explore.
to use some pressure to get it's not like I'm not hurting the dog, but it's just like if it's a dog that shuts down easily, my tactics are going to be very different versus a dog that's like kind of wants to fight me a little bit for it.
Um, the main thing is that she does uh, you'll hear this term a lot where it's like the dog blows you off. And what that is is like she knows that I want her to come to me, but what she'll do is she'll start and then she's like, I don't really want to do it. And so she'll like verge off. And so that's what we're working on.
trainers turn their dogs into robots. They They repress them for two weeks and then the dog loses it soul. And I'm not about that life.
The second owner lesson, at the house — and the question he cannot answerTurning point
Approximately 2026-08-26. watch.
Fifty-six minutes at the family's home, days from the scheduled end of the program, and the session where the curriculum is actually handed over. The first half is the handover syllabus - be as strict in the first week as you want her to be for life, back up every marker you say, two fingers under the strap because a loose collar is what makes people think their dog was never trained, the collar on the far side so the stim pushes her into the heel, never say "stay", keep your hand on the remote always because anything visual beats anything she hears. The second half is the cot, with the rule given as a single checkable criterion - four paws off the ground - and then deliberately broken: the owner runs the marker and the collar while the trainer walks out of the door and then runs across the room. Threaded through it is the state of the down, which is still on pure leash pressure because a stim on a word she does not own would poison it and cost him the whole program. And then the sentence the case turns on. He rates her off-leash trust command by command out loud - place yes, sit yes, down about seventy per cent, heel not at all - and says that he cannot send her home if he thinks she will get skittish off leash and run, that he does not know which way it will go, and that he will find out tomorrow. The family volunteer, in the same conversation, that they have had to chase her before and it was not fun.
On film
so I tell people be as strict on the dog as you want them to be regularly so sometimes people will go easy on the dog for the first week then the training looks kind of like loose and it's because like it wasn't reinforced that much
worth so most people like i said don't read the manual and then they'll go and like put on the e-collar and it's too loose and they're like you didn't dream my dog and then i come out here and i just put it on tighter and And then they do all the commands, and it jaw drops. Right.
if you put the e-collar on this side of the neck right the right side of the neck what happens is that when you hit the e-collar to try to encourage them when you feel pressure this coming from this direction you pull back right you go the opposite it so if you have the collar on this side and you say heel it actually encourages the dog to push into your side which is what you want with the heel
but I just need to really make sure that we've drilled that enough because if she doesn't know what the word means and i do hit the e-collar she's gonna start to associate the word down with the punishment and then you poison the word and then all of my weeks go go away
so the rule with the place is that the paws can't touch the ground so like she can hold whatever position she wants in there okay as long as four paws are not on the ground so she can hang two paws off but the second they touch the ground she breaks the rules
I trust, like, her place off-leash. I trust her sit
i can't send a dog home to you if i'm worried that like she's gonna get skittish off leash and run so the question is will she get skittish and just be like okay we're fine or is she gonna get skittish and like bolt and i don't have the answer that question i'm gonna find out the answer tomorrow
i'm very hopefully she she uh stays because it wasn't fun last
Downtown Angier at eleven at night — the hardest she has ever fought, called a good day
Approximately 2026-08-27. watch.
Twelve minutes on an empty street at the end of a day that started with appointments, and the whole session is the down. She fights it harder here than anywhere - on ground she has never worked and on concrete, which he says he has never asked her to lie on. He moves her to grass as a deliberate test of whether the surface is the variable, gets it slightly easier, and then says plainly that he does not know why she is worse than she was two days ago. What he does with that is the session's contribution: rather than lower the ask he names the resistance as the resource, because a test is the only moment reinforcement can carry information. The e-collar goes on the down for the first time, turned right down, and he explains the number as a property of the street rather than of the dog - an empty road at eleven at night calls for far less. He ends on her limits rather than on the command: she taps out at about twenty-five minutes, and there are five left.
On film
What I'm going to work on here is that Luna's down, just needs a little more Like tightening up. The main two things she needs is her down and her heel.
I've never done it on concrete before. So She likes to fight down.
All right, so she's going to fight me a little bit more than I'm like, let's Try to do it on the grass.
Yeah, for some reason, she's fighting me a little more than she was the Other day. Actually, she did a couple downs in her session and went into it Really quick. So that's very weird.
This is actually the most she's ever tested me, which is kind of a good Thing, because that means I can like reinforce it while she's really giving Me some bite.
I'm not going to let up on the pressure, baby. Come on.
There's almost no distraction right now, so the e-collar's turned down a ton For Luna.
Luna Taps out about 25 minutes. I think we got like five more minutes before she's like, I'm done.
Friday 2026-08-28, Jack Marley Park — the nerves come back and the program is extendedTurning point
2026-08-28, starting about 21:03. watch, published a second time as watch.
He leads with the bad news in the first minute: her nerves have gone back up and she has become more skittish. A level of 25 that normally works is not registering and by the middle of the session he is at 30. The extension was requested and granted, and he says so, gratefully, and says it is not always given. The rest of the session is the argument for why a rise in skittishness is a schedule problem rather than an obedience one - a dog whose reflex is to leave will one day leave off leash, no e-collar level overrides a flight impulse once it is strong enough because that is true of people too, and off-leash reliability does not come in degrees. Against that he separates the two axes that owners and trainers conflate: she is highly skittish and takes pressure extremely well. And then, immediately after saying the impulse cannot be overridden, he says the nerves are not an exemption either - she may not lock up and she may not avoid. The session ends on the passage the second upload's title is built from: he declines to correct her for sniffing because no command was in play, and names clarity as the biggest thing a handler gives a dog. He will work both weekend days to catch her up.
On film
Yeah. So, her nerves have uh increased a little bit, unfortunately. So, as you
she's not reacting to the e-collar as much today, I'm noticing." So, I do wonder if I don't know. I'm going to turn up the e-collar to like cuz I've been having that like 25 and she's not responding which is very off for her.
because of her nervous her nervous things are kind of popped back up. Um, unfortunately we did have to request an extension on her program which uh Luna people were really really nice and gave us gave us an extra week which is not always uh if something like like that happens unexpected um it's not always a given that you'll get that extra week.
type of brake she is, she handles pressure really well. Even though she's a little skittish, she does handle the pressure extremely well.
that's just the truth of the matter. So, I'm not saying it to scare any, you know, Luna Luna, anybody that's watching this video, Luna's people, but that's why we're keeping it longer is because if we didn't, there would be a real chance that that off leash would not be as reliable as we would want it to be,
which off leash is one of those things where it's in my opinion, there's no like kind of reliable off leash. It's either like super reliable or absolutely just doesn't work and there's not really like a in between there. I think it's reliable or it's not.
most people, dogs, life forms, right? Well, when they get nervous, what happens? It doesn't matter if you have somebody yelling at you. If you feel like, I need to run, I'm going, you know, you're going to run, right? If that impulse in the body is strong enough, you can talk about how, oh, I'm going to, you know, I control myself and all that jazz, but at the end of the day,
But you got to learn even in that window like hey you can't lock up. You can't this goes for any nervous thought, right? You can't get skddish and just kind of be like I'm just going to like avoid you. Doesn't allow it. It's uh it's against the rules.
Let's go. Yeah. So right there like I would not punish that. The reason that I would not punish that is that while she was sniffing there was no like clear command afterwards.
like the biggest things you can do is give a dog the clarity that it needs. If you don't give the dog clarity, well, what happens? Well, what happens is that you expect this behavior, but you have not even really shown what the behavior is that you want.
The weekend that earned the extension
watch, plus the domestic evening.
He works her on both weekend days, as promised. On the Sunday Luna is also out with Connor on open grass as the distraction for another trainer's long-line recall test of Rocko (watch, published 2026-08-30). The Sunday is a decompression walk that turns into the clearest statement of what is wrong: he is not sure whether she has been leaning on leash pressure all along, so the long line is coming out tomorrow to find out and to build the radius properly. The e-collar reads about twice its usual number and he blames the strap rather than the dog. He deliberately takes a different turning, and explains why - the park he likes because it lets him concentrate on commands is the reason the commands may be stuck in it. And he says, flatly, that this is the hardest and most time-consuming down he has ever had to teach, that the plan is volume, and that she will probably stay funny about it. Somewhere on the same date, three recordings were made of a living room with a television on and a piece of furniture being assembled. Luna is not named in any of them and they are not sessions.
On film
So, I'm working with a dog right now who I'm going to be out with a little bit later today.
And, but it is a Sunday, so the park actually over there was a little busier, funny enough.
too high good job Luna yeah I must have it like one like not prongs or just one like part two loose because you call it sitting like twice as high as it usually does for her and she's not heavily distracted
luna down yeah so she she's funny about that i'll get her like she'll do it randomly and then we go out the next day and fight me all over again okay good job um i think it's one of those things where she's just gonna have to just gonna have to do a lot of reps of it she's gonna be just kind of funny about it i think
doing like a like a pull down like that yeah here's the problem though is that everything has to be off verbal or else off leash does not work because if you're off leash you can't use the leash pull down right
yeah, this is the trickiest down I've ever had to teach.
We do this lab in Jack Marley a lot I like it because I can focus on the commands but the downside is that like if you don't actively have somebody the dog only does like one area and keeps the command in that one area the dog just does the same thing it's more of like an isolated place like you have to listen but everywhere else you don't
leash the big thing really is just like gotta make sure that right now is she relying on the leash pressure maybe the chance you might be so we got to make sure that she's not by using the long line and just kind of instilling a radius that way
Got Luna over there with Connor.
Monday 2026-08-31 — the nerves break, and the heel finally startsTurning point
2026-08-31 at 16:28. watch.
The first sentence of the session is the turn: the nerves are a lot better. The evidence he gives for it is not an obedience measure at all - she now walks into the crate as she is supposed to instead of falling apart beforehand. Four weeks after being typed as an environmental nervous case, the environmental case is closing. He starts the heel in this session, four weeks in, and reads her slowness as heat rather than stubbornness, correcting himself mid-sentence. The teaching point is the sharpest small thing in her file: he deliberately generates excitement while she is in a command, so that the release is the word and not the mood. He accepts a beat's delay before compliance without punishing it, and ends the session on purpose on a good repetition.
On film
alrighty so we're out here with luna he's doing a lot better with like the nerves and stuff now um he's starting to go like into the crams like he's supposed to and not like kind of freaking out beforehand which is really good
shaping up quite nicely now luna let's go good job good job i'm gonna start working on the heel
now all right luna you're good heel a little stubborn not stubborn it's too hot over here
luna let's go um and so like i'm gonna have to kind of set a zone for her on the long line um for my future dogs actually i'm changing it up a little bit i'm gonna experiment and see what happens when i do that first um i think i might have better results with that
so basically what I'm doing here is I'm making sure that she knows that like it it is that word it's not emotions you can't get hype and you're like time to go because that's sometimes what happens right is the dog will come in and then they see you like run they're like oh cool this is like my cue i'm gonna go run with my person
that was good all right we're gonna end that off here on a high note um she's looking everything needs to get tightened up now really but luna hey heel yeah so we just need to tighten up that heel
Tuesday 2026-09-01 — the long line, and the answer to the bolt questionTurning point
2026-09-01 at 17:20. watch.
The proofing session, and the one where the question raised at the home lesson gets answered. He opens by saying the job is no longer teaching but proving, and makes the risk judgement out loud with a number on it: he does not think she would bolt, and he puts it at ninety per cent safe. Eight minutes in he walks to his car and fetches the long line - the first time it is actually used - and the radius he built on the flexi survives the slack. He declares the leash out of the work entirely: the e-collar is now the only reinforcement, and he immediately audits his own claim by wondering whether a minuscule amount of leash pressure is still creeping in. He becomes the distraction himself, on the ground that real life is people behaving unpredictably. He watches a bolt form in her eyes and not happen, and gives the policy - punish it every time and it extinguishes in a couple of attempts. He gives her the benefit of the doubt twice. And he closes with a score: eight or nine out of ten, where ten means ready to go home. The two failures he records are a heel she is not matching his speed on, and a trash can she has "something about", marked to be worked before she goes home.
On film
Hey, what's what we're doing here because she's going home in a couple days is Just proving
um i really don't think she would bolt and run away so we'll do i'm gonna gauge it we may i'm thinking like i said last session that i wanted to use the long line this session i'm gonna gauge it i think that it's safe like 90 percent
So like maybe I'll have a conversation I'll get like really animate and do all this kind of stuff really trying to distract the dog
that now i'm like only using e-collar for reinforcement like nothing else
i made no pressure there whatsoever is there a minuscule amount maybe we're gonna find that out aren't we
you ain't okay interesting so she got something about that trash can that's interesting we're
she's now kind of doing that they were like do I still have to listen like even off flexi because she knows that there's like a level of control
about doing a bolt in which case you know I'll punish that you know dogs only bolt a couple times and if you punish them each time they don't do it anymore because they're like well that doesn't like work
the radius you start low and default and you keep like if they don't respond you keep hitting turn it up until they're like fine
You do really good, I'm very proud of you, that's like, easily like, 8-9 out of 10, and 10 being ready to go home
Wednesday 2026-09-02 — two sessions in one afternoon, and a dog making her own corrections
2026-09-02 at 16:48 and 17:32. watch, then watch.
The heel tightens visibly and he says he would already be comfortable sending it home and is pushing further only because it will make the family's life easier. The radius is tighter than on her first long-line outing and she is checking in, which she did not do before. The best moment is one he does not cause: he waits instead of re-cueing, she overshoots the recall, notices the distance herself and comes back - and the argument that follows, about giving a dog real chances to choose or having a spring that goes off the moment the structure is removed, is the clearest statement of choice-points anywhere in her file. He also explains why he enforces something he has just said he does not care about: not because the position matters but because a dog who learns she got away with something will take freedom elsewhere. Then the heat takes her and they stop. An hour later he runs a nine-minute catch-up session, because she gave out at nine minutes and fifteen to twenty is his normal unit - and it ends on a child riding past on a bike and a stranger walking through, both of which she sees and neither of which she acts on. He picks that as the note to end on.
On film
so we've tightened that up a little bit because you can't really uh rely on leash pressure if you're trying to be off leash it's kind of in the name
yeah and she checks in which is which
Yeah, I mean, like, I would already be cool with sending a heel home like that, but if I can just tighten it up even more, then like
to our viewers at home she failed that like 50 times before she started doing
to. Especially there. she got excited
it's like those it's like kids who like they get like helicopter parented their
she'll take more freedom yeah so it's more about just the thing
I mean I don't want to be glued to me that's not what you want anyways
Cause usually I would go for 15 or 20 minutes. She pooped out at like nine minutes. So this is when I try to give her the time she needs.
There's a kid on a bike, I wanna see what she does. Dogs have a unique thing about kids on a bike. See what she do.
It's actually really good to end the session out with. I know you see people with them, but she can't act on it, right?
Thursday 2026-09-03 — the last working session, and why the go-home lesson exists
2026-09-03 at 17:20. watch.
Twelve minutes, the whole command set reported as working, and a plan for the next day that does not happen - a store, for the final go-home video. She opens the session with a test, after a previous session in which she did not test him at all, and he treats testing as a stage a dog passes through rather than as defiance, counting it session by session. The session's real content is two arguments he will repeat to the family the next day. The first is that the dog who goes home has graduated rather than finished, and that a year of the owner's practice should leave her twice as good - delivered here with a musical-prodigy analogy. The second is the reason he is still reinforcing the radius the day before she leaves: it degrades if it is not continuously reinforced, and he refuses to be building off-leash skills on handover day. He also catches his own equipment error mid-session: the collar is on the wrong side, which is what has been making the heel tricky.
On film
All righty, so we're out here with Luna. She's going home tomorrow. I have her on the Flexi. I'm thinking I'm going to take her in a store tomorrow to record our final go-home video.
um the longer you do it but what part of the training is just like you eventually get in the habit of like all right i'm not gonna test anymore
um like she didn't test me at all last session really but this session's like she started out with a test so we'll see like maybe there's no more tests after this right okay all right she might not test me anymore just it just depends
right let me slow down so which again the training that we provide for the dogs looks good when they go home but truthfully it should look twice as better or twice as better twice as good I think twice as good maybe a year after they've been home right they've had a whole year of practice training after they've been home
fine i really don't want her like hitting the end of my radius because radius is one of those things that like the radius goes and it makes awfully significantly harder to to do um and i would prefer like not to have to tune up and create all these skills for a off-leash dog the day they're going home
of course that also means that you have to show people how to reinforce what you're talking about if you don't then it goes downhill really fast
If you don't, you're gonna have a lot of problems.
Oh, all right, so I actually have mentioned this before. When you have the e-collar, I have it on the wrong side, which makes reinforcing this really tricky, how dogs respond to the e-collar.
Friday 2026-09-04 — the handover, which does not go smoothly and is not edited to look as though it didTurning point
2026-09-04 at 18:17. watch.
Forty-two minutes at the family's home and a dog park nearby, and the only session where the owners handle her. The stated subject is the heel, because it decays fastest. The real subject is authority. Off leash she keeps gravitating back to the trainer rather than to her owner, drifts to the wrong side as a test, and has to be put back by the collar; when the pull between two handlers becomes confusing he releases her out of it rather than pushing through, on the ground that confusion is one of the worst states for a dog. He states the arithmetic instead of blaming anyone - five weeks with him against two at home. The technical core is the e-collar-only heel with the leash left floating, because a heel held together by leash pressure cannot survive the leash coming off. The rules an owner will actually need come fast: say it once then only the marker, the window closes on the release cue alone, never punish a behaviour you did not command, reach for physical pressure before the button, and do not hit the collar every time she sees a dog or a nervous dog learns that dogs mean pain. He warns them against heel-grinding her, with a prediction - a nip, at even odds. He apologises for the extra week and is told they would rather have had it. And he tells them not to drill her, because she was a dog who wanted nothing to do with him at the start and was climbing the kennel to reach him by the end.
On film
because that's kind of, like, one of those things that if you don't know how to maintain it, it can go really fast.
than she was before um she's not like hanging out then at least that's part of the problem with the nerves is that her it was affecting her radius
so there's a difference between like skittish is in like nervousness and then skittish is in like if you come up to luna she's just a little cautious right cautious is fine but like her level was a little bit much
you don't which will teach the dog is that the leash pressure is required and when the dog learns to listen based off of leash pressure only then off leash is impossible because how can they feel that pressure right
Because, like, sure, it might, like, you know, I have a video of her healing with me. That's great. But if you can't get her to do it, it doesn't really matter.
in here it might actually yeah give her a release just because i think right now she's also one of the worst things for a dog is confusion and right now she's confused so i want to like i'm just gonna release her
You only say heel once. After that, it's only the reinforcement marker. Once the window is open, it's only closed if we give her the release cue.
And if you heel grind a dog enough, in more extreme cases, they'll get so frustrated, they'll bite somebody. In lighter cases, and I think more with her, she might nip at some point, that's like a 50-50.
confusing thing for her I was telling especially because she was here for a little under two weeks and she was with me for five so she's had more time and training with me than she's lived here
especially if they have nervous like slight nervous tendencies like her they can build an aversion and they in their mind they go all dogs are bad they're dangerous every time i see a dog i feel e-collar it's bad i don't like dogs
And then they get up and somebody punishes it. And in their mind, they're like, what did I do? I didn't do anything. You didn't tell me to do anything.
want to make sure that anything you're trying to communicate to the dog is clear clarity is like the most important thing the second a dog gets confused everything falls apart
the dogs come home people will want to like drill everything and be like do it again do it again because it's like exciting right when you have something new you're kind of like a do it again because it's exciting but for them if you keep drilling things over and over they'll shut down
Yeah Luna didn't want anything to do with me
Skills
Down
How it was taught
Five methods in sequence, and the sequence is the case. First physical placement, tried once and abandoned when her tail dropped. Then a food lure, reached for in the same minute and dropped with it. Then a deliberate wait - the command is not started at all until he knows how much pressure she can take, because the tactics for a dog that shuts down are the opposite of those for one that fights. Then leash pressure held without letting up, the word said into the pull, with the e-collar explicitly withheld because a stim on a word she does not own would poison it and cost the program. Only when she goes into it on a light pull is the collar added, turned right down, and even then it is capped, because a down that runs on a leash cannot exist off leash. Surface is treated as a variable throughout - grass first, concrete later - and the shape of the resistance is used as the progress measure rather than compliance.
On film
position let's show you how to do it first come on come on don't bite me
use the treat as a lure into it if i can't do it that way i dropped one luna do you like food
to use some pressure to get it's not like I'm not hurting the dog, but it's just like if it's a dog that shuts down easily, my tactics are going to be very different versus a dog that's like kind of wants to fight me a little bit for it.
no respect for me, she won't do it. Also, I start on the grass because dogs sometimes won't down unless they're on the grass at first until they really know the command and then I start doing it on the concrete.
I usually got to fight her for like 15 seconds. She just kind of, once I pulled just a little harder, she went into it. But that's what you want, right? Is like less resistance until the point where once I can get it where I just pull down and she kind of goes into it, I can start to then use the e-collar. Cause I'm like, you know what it means now.
All right, so we're going to turn the e-collar really low here, and I'm Going to slightly hit it.
There we go. We got Got it off verbal that time.
doing like a like a pull down like that yeah here's the problem though is that everything has to be off verbal or else off leash does not work because if you're off leash you can't use the leash pull down right
Actually, like it is by far the most time consuming down I've ever done in any dog I've worked with,
to our viewers at home she failed that like 50 times before she started doing
Recall ('come')
How it was taught
Directional leash pressure paired with the word on every repetition, to saturation, with the e-collar behind it once the collar was actually making contact - the mechanism spelled out as pull plus word a billion times until the word alone does it. Free sniffing as the reward between repetitions. Later, the cue is deliberately not repeated: he waits and lets her work it out, which he says he learned over time. The arcing approach is noticed early and never fixed.
On film
right now Luna come all right so somebody doesn't know that word at all come good job
it let's go good job yeah so like what I trust the recall in a scenario where like there's maybe a ton of dogs barking or like she's really spooked or something
and the way conditioning works is of course if she feels me pulling a certain direction and say the same word every time if i do that a billion times and the one time that i don't pull but i still say the word she's gonna automatically do it because she's used to getting pulled every single time
kind of roundabout thing I really don't like I try not with me a little bit so
Um, the main thing is that she does uh, you'll hear this term a lot where it's like the dog blows you off. And what that is is like she knows that I want her to come to me, but what she'll do is she'll start and then she's like, I don't really want to do it. And so she'll like verge off. And so that's what we're working on.
I've, I've learned over time. Sometimes give the dog a second to.
she ran up but she stopped when she realized she got too far
Heel
How it was taught
No e-collar at all while it is new, because a word and a stim introduced together fuse into an association he does not want. Short repetitions only, with an explicit refusal to drive duration. The defining rule is where the pressure goes: only when she leaves the zone, never as a constant hold, because a dog held in position by pressure learns that being in position means feeling pressure - and that dog can never work off leash. Maintained at the end by the e-collar alone with the leash left floating. Tested by speeding up, slowing down and changing direction. The collar sits on the far side of the neck so the stim pushes her into the handler rather than away.
On film
shaping up quite nicely now luna let's go good job good job i'm gonna start working on the heel
you don't use the e-collar when you first teach a command because again if you introduce the e-collar and the word at the same time sometimes you can get an association with both that you don't want
the main thing is when you're doing heel make sure that there's only pressure on the collar if she goes out of the zone
what we want is to say the word and then the pressure is only applied if she goes outside of the window and the reason for that is that if a dog is reliant on pressure you can't have an off-leash dog right because you can't apply pressure to a dog that's
gonna rep that that's like before she goes home okay good job so her heel is i'm gonna have to tighten up a little more on the flexi um she's not like adjusting to my speed at all which is a little problem at present everything else is looking nice
Yeah, I mean, like, I would already be cool with sending a heel home like that, but if I can just tighten it up even more, then like
you don't which will teach the dog is that the leash pressure is required and when the dog learns to listen based off of leash pressure only then off leash is impossible because how can they feel that pressure right
so the way that i do heel is that's one of those skills that i find as trainers we're always trying to do better because it's a very unnatural command for a dog right
The radius
How it was taught
Set the leash to a fixed length; for a session or two the e-collar marks the end of it; then loosen, because a dog that never has freedom is worse off for it. Free room first and the circle closed afterwards, on efficiency grounds. Later, the long line is brought in specifically to find out whether she has been leaning on leash pressure she can feel, and to build the zone on real slack. The stated end state is internal - a mental field of how far from her handler she should be, which holds at any leash length because she is answering the collar rather than the leash. The upper bound is named too: not a dog glued to the handler.
On film
is we have what's called a radius. So, right now, Luna won't pull me on the leash, but she's really loose, right?
And the other thing too is the way I have it um when it's done, you know, I'm not going to pretend like it's all good. Now, what I the way I have it is no matter what length you have the leash at, she responds to the pressure from the collar.
he's walking too far out though so with the long line I'm gonna create a better radius with her it'll get the off leash kind of primed
she is really cute though okay so her radius is just more of the main thing here um which it's locked in fairly decently
also of course the radius is looking more tight
She's holding her radius better this time.
so like I've already seen her on the long line and I know what that looks like and if you know if I weren't to continuously reinforce the radius before she goes home it could not be great
than she was before um she's not like hanging out then at least that's part of the problem with the nerves is that her it was affecting her radius
radius is one of those things that like i tune it up and i have it where i like it which is like
Also of course the radius is looking more tight cuz
Place
How it was taught
In-house first, as an assessment rather than a drill - put the dog up, name the behaviour as it happens, and wait to see whether she settles. Then duration, raised in small increments. Then it is regeneralised into the family's house near the end, because it goes untouched while the dog is being worked outdoors. The rule is stated as one checkable thing - four paws off the ground, any position - and then deliberately broken, with the owner running the marker and the collar.
On film
up. Good job. Oh, good. That's called place. Good job. Yeah. Yeah. Let's just have you sit there for a minute. See how you feel about it. Get comfy with it and see if you settle in a little bit.
What are you going to do? You're going to stay there. You're going to stay there until you lay down
And every time she steps off of the cot, angry. You've got to get back on and start over.
I usually end up fine-tuning the place because we do it for like the first week or two and then I take them outside So sometimes they'll go like a week without doing place. So it's I get to kind of like see how it's looking and then Regeneralize it here.
so the rule with the place is that the paws can't touch the ground so like she can hold whatever position she wants in there okay as long as four paws are not on the ground so she can hang two paws off but the second they touch the ground she breaks the rules
that's how actually we proofed the place to go home to make sure it's good we'll have somebody come in there and like run around the room before just to make sure it's all like tightened up
we try to keep it about like try to get the dog about 15 to 20 minutes on place before they go home
All right. Now, what are you going to do? You're going to stay there. You're going to stay there until you lay down at your own volition.
Sit, and the implied stay
How it was taught
Asked once, held until the release word, never re-cued. Where she fights it the e-collar is used; where she is still fighting, the leash is locked so she loses access to exploring, which is the lever chosen for this dog specifically. The release word is treated as defined by use rather than intent - "good girl" has become one by accident and the owner is told to watch what he says. Proofed at the end by the handler deliberately generating excitement, so that the word and not the mood is what ends it.
On film
okay. There you go. Good. Let's see. You sit. Oh, you do. Smart girl,
have is the implied stay. So, Luna knows that she's not supposed to get up until I release her.
Sit. So, what I do with her, because she's pretty tough, is um it's a second technique you can do with the e-collar. It's called release to freedom.
so the stay is implied with every command so you don't so you don't say stay right you say the command and the dog like every dog i train holds the position until we give the release actually if you start saying stay like if they get up and you're like stay they start to kind of think like ooh it's a stationary command
see like when I say down and then when I say good girl she just releases
we need to work on like because she's all ramped up. Uh we're going to have to work on the sit, right? like just get get that implied stay back into where it goes.
so basically what I'm doing here is I'm making sure that she knows that like it it is that word it's not emotions you can't get hype and you're like time to go because that's sometimes what happens right is the dog will come in and then they see you like run they're like oh cool this is like my cue i'm gonna go run with my person
'Let's go'
How it was taught
Defined against the recall - a recall brings her in and she stops, this is directional - because owners interchange them and the dog gets confused. Then conditioned to the trigger: say it every time she sees a dog and correct the failure to move, until she predicts the consequence herself and prices it. What that looks like from outside is a dog that does not care about other dogs.
On film
All right. So, right here, I'll show off a command we've been working on. So, it's a let's go. So, a recall is like when she runs up to me and then stops, whereas a let's go is directional.
a directional thing. Um, and I say that because it's important to know the difference because people can accidentally uh interchange them and then not use them, right? And the dog gets confused, right?
one more thing I want to go over is so I say, "Let's go." Each time she sees a dog and we condition eventually to the point where she sees a dog, she goes, "Oh, he's going to say, "Let's go." And if I don't listen, I get the e-collar. So, it looks like she just doesn't care about the dog. But in reality, she's actually predicting what's going to happen and just says it's not worth it.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give her the, let's go. She was interested, but I got another person coming through.
you don't want to hit the e-collar every time they see a dog because what does the dog learn
Off leash
How it was taught
By removing everything that would not be there. Leash pressure taken out of the down, out of the heel and out of the obedience generally, leaving the e-collar as the only reinforcement. The flexi traded for a long line so the radius can be tested on real slack. Body language excluded from the start, because a dog that only responds to a gesture cannot be worked at distance. And the gate is stated as a leash test: if you are fighting her on a leash she is not ready to be off one.
On film
which off leash is one of those things where it's in my opinion, there's no like kind of reliable off leash. It's either like super reliable or absolutely just doesn't work and there's not really like a in between there. I think it's reliable or it's not.
if you can't walk the dog on the leash like if you're fighting her it means you need to reinforce more if you can't walk her on the leash she's not ready to go off leash with you
the thing with off leash is that that's why we do everything where like we don't use body language and it's all verbal because if she doesn't know what the word means i can't really train her to do anything off leash
um i really don't think she would bolt and run away so we'll do i'm gonna gauge it we may i'm thinking like i said last session that i wanted to use the long line this session i'm gonna gauge it i think that it's safe like 90 percent
So we're out here with the long line because we're making sure that she's ready to to be off-leash ready by the time she goes home.
and then you go off leash after that first week or so so if you can't walk the dog successfully on a leash yet don't go off leash
she's got some funky thing with it for you and not me then like i mean it doesn't mean that i did anything wrong but at the same time i need to make sure it works for you because it's not my dog it's yours
Nerves — the behaviour-modification work
How it was taught
Exposure, and he refuses to dress it up. Free investigation is named as the big secret - let a nervous dog go and poke around, because that is what opens the nerves. Quiet venues chosen deliberately for confidence work. Sniffing and walking used as the repair when an exercise costs her, with the tail as the gauge and the outing itself as the thing being protected from a bad association. Distraction reintroduced on purpose at the end of sessions - strangers, a child on a bike - so that seeing and not acting becomes the last thing that happens. And the standard held inside the nervous moment: she may not lock up and may not avoid.
On film
she's a nervous case, um, which is, of course, why I'm with her, because she's, she's more of a environmental kind of nervous, so I do think that we can fix her right on up
some nervous stuff when we started she's opened up a lot like she was like hopping around trying to like going crazy like jumping at people today and stuff and having to blast in the indoor room so she's already opened up around us like tenfold but she's still skittish around certain things
This is a big secret. If you let the nervous dog go and just like step around and do its thing, it's open up nerves, which for her is going to be big.
fantastic opportunity if you are trying to work on nerves with confidence. A nice quiet park. It's probably your best bet.
alrighty so we're out here with luna he's doing a lot better with like the nerves and stuff now um he's starting to go like into the crams like he's supposed to and not like kind of freaking out beforehand which is really good
she's not really nervous around other, like other people anymore.
level was a little bit much so that like went under like i did like a slight just behavioral modification which is a fancy term it's just exposing her to more things more people getting getting her to not be freaked out so much
than she was before um she's not like hanging out then at least that's part of the problem with the nerves is that her it was affecting her radius
The paw — a behaviour triaged rather than trained
How it was taught
Not taught. Split by function, which is the interesting part: the same behaviour is left alone when she offers it because she wants to, and worked when she offers it to get out of something - in which case the paw is not punished at all and the command it is escaping is reinforced, so the paw goes with its root cause. Its origin is diagnosed on the cot: she whines because she is at the top of her impulse-control threshold, and the paw starts from the whine.
On film
didn't like that I don't know if she was like keep doing that to be honest I don't know weird I usually know what those signs mean but that's you know
And there was much debate last time I was over about whether it does this paw thing and we were deciding if it's a quirk or if it's a uh in need of behavioral modification and Luna's owner said that we treat it just like a quirk.
if she's doing the hand, if she's doing it because she's like, I don't want to do this. So I'm going gonna give you the hand instead I'm just going to reinforce the behavior and hit the e-collar and then she learns oh I can't do this to get out of the command and so then I'm not punishing that but I'm fixing the root problem which then fixes other things
but the last thing I want to do is like bring a dog back and you're like i love this thing about my dog and i'm like yep i e-collared it out of her and you're like oh i don't want that to happen
notice the hand thing she started doing because she's whining and she's whining because she's like i don't want to do this she doesn't want to do it because she doesn't like that right now her level of impulse control she's been on here long enough now to where like i'm tested like we're testing her threshold the threshold gets higher but every single time you hit that like max threshold she's gonna whine
How the method adapted
She came in as a frightened dog and the program treated the fear with exposure, which worked; what it then had to deal with was a clever adolescent who had learned that refusing has a cost she is willing to pay.
The case was typed before anything was asked of her, and the type set the prognosis. Environmental nervousness can be fixed outright; genetic nervousness is managed. Everything after runs on a judgement made in the first minute of the first outdoor session.
Because the two prognoses call for different promises to a client. He states the framework explicitly five weeks later, at the family's house, with a stage-fright analogy - and never once revisits which of the two Luna actually is.
On film
she's a nervous case, um, which is, of course, why I'm with her, because she's, she's more of a environmental kind of nervous, so I do think that we can fix her right on up
there's two kinds of nervousness you have environmental nervousness and genetic nervousness genetic is like i mean it's self-explanatory i mean it's genetic um and environmental is like maybe they grew up something made them nervous you can fix environmental nervousness sometimes 100% all the way to where they just look like they're not nervous anymore genetic nervousness takes a long time
The nerves were treated with less control rather than more, and he calls it the big secret. Free investigation was given real time inside working sessions, not offered as a break.
Because for an environmentally nervous dog curiosity is the treatment. Sniffing is simultaneously the exposure work, the reward and the repair, which is why it appears in every outdoor session in her file.
On film
This is a big secret. If you let the nervous dog go and just like step around and do its thing, it's open up nerves, which for her is going to be big.
she's supposed to be getting off to so I'm gonna let her fill out and just kind of like look around be curious that's really important for a dog like her
Little antsy someone. I'm gonna let her like decompress while we're doing our walk out here.
The unit being protected was the outing, not the command. When a bad repetition cost her, the exercise stopped, the walk resumed, and the tail had to come back up before anything else happened.
Because the stated risk was not that the down would go bad but that being outside would - that she would conclude the whole context means a bad experience.
On film
their tail's a little low right now so we need to wind down because she thinks out here means sucky experience every time it's not good
you see the tail is a lot more like she her tail kind of flops down but for a second it was like lower than usual so i wanted to make sure we open her back up
The hardest command was not started until he knew how much pressure she could take - and the answer, when it came, was the opposite of what her file would predict. She is skittish and handles pressure extremely well, and those are separate axes.
Because the tactics for a dog that shuts down are the reverse of those for a dog that fights, and getting it wrong on a nervous dog is expensive.
On film
we have the heel. And the two that that I'm gonna start probably I would say actually this Monday is the down. And usually I start the down and the heel at the same time. I don't start the down too early because I really need to know what the threshold of pressure is for a dog
to use some pressure to get it's not like I'm not hurting the dog, but it's just like if it's a dog that shuts down easily, my tactics are going to be very different versus a dog that's like kind of wants to fight me a little bit for it.
type of brake she is, she handles pressure really well. Even though she's a little skittish, she does handle the pressure extremely well.
The lever chosen for her was not the collar but the leash lock, because her currency is exploring. "Release to freedom" is named as a technique picked for this dog in particular.
Because she is tough and loves to explore, so removing the exploring costs her more than raising the number would - and he says he dislikes how the name sounds while using it.
On film
Sit. So, what I do with her, because she's pretty tough, is um it's a second technique you can do with the e-collar. It's called release to freedom.
that I'm taking away people's freedom. But what's happening is that I do the e-collar. If she's still trying to fight me, I will lock the leash in place to where she can't go out and explore. And then she's like, I guess I have to do it because she really loves to explore.
The e-collar was deliberately withheld from the down until the word was drilled, and the reason given is self-interested rather than ethical: poisoning the word would cost him the whole program.
A stim attached to a word the dog does not yet own converts the word into a punishment.
On film
but I just need to really make sure that we've drilled that enough because if she doesn't know what the word means and i do hit the e-collar she's gonna start to associate the word down with the punishment and then you poison the word and then all of my weeks go go away
The progress measure on the down was not compliance but the amount of resistance - fifteen seconds of fight becoming a light pull - and when she fought hardest of all he named it the best day rather than the worst.
Because a test is the only moment at which reinforcement carries information. He says it mid-fight, on an empty street, while losing.
On film
I usually got to fight her for like 15 seconds. She just kind of, once I pulled just a little harder, she went into it. But that's what you want, right? Is like less resistance until the point where once I can get it where I just pull down and she kind of goes into it, I can start to then use the e-collar. Cause I'm like, you know what it means now.
This is actually the most she's ever tested me, which is kind of a good Thing, because that means I can like reinforce it while she's really giving Me some bite.
But dogs do their thing. They'll test you. You just gotta make sure that you reinforce it. Same thing as when the dogs go home, right?
The equipment was checked before the dog was judged - four separate times across five weeks, by the same person, with four different faults found.
Because on a husky coat the collar can feel tight and touch nothing, so a dog that looks tougher may simply not be feeling anything.
On film
So I wonder if actually I need to tighten it on more. I've already tightened it on once, but it didn't hit me. So just now I'm like, oh, it probably feels tight, but it's probably not even touching her skin at all.
too high good job Luna yeah I must have it like one like not prongs or just one like part two loose because you call it sitting like twice as high as it usually does for her and she's not heavily distracted
and your husky shepherd coat your lord that should be tight enough gosh she was not responding though and my e-collar is not dead because i charged it last night so we're great
Oh, all right, so I actually have mentioned this before. When you have the e-collar, I have it on the wrong side, which makes reinforcing this really tricky, how dogs respond to the e-collar.
The level was searched for rather than set, in both directions, and the number was treated as a property of the situation rather than of the dog.
An empty street at eleven at night calls for far less than a busy park. The rule he gives for finding it is to start low and work up until she responds - which he notes he has had to do with three dogs in this set and usually does not.
On film
so the big thing with her, I can already kind of tell, um, I'm gonna give you about like 13, that seems to be like the magic level for her
There's almost no distraction right now, so the e-collar's turned down a ton For Luna.
the radius you start low and default and you keep like if they don't respond you keep hitting turn it up until they're like fine
um funny enough all three of the dogs in this that i've had to do it with i usually don't
The session length was set by the dog and stated as a number. Fifteen to twenty minutes is his unit, Luna taps out at about twenty-five, and on a hot day she gave out at nine - so the day was split into a long session and a short catch-up one rather than the long one being finished.
Her coat. Every session in her last fortnight is routed for shade and cut when she tires, and the best repetitions of the heel are noted as having come immediately before the tiredness arrived.
On film
Luna Taps out about 25 minutes. I think we got like five more minutes before she's like, I'm done.
Cause usually I would go for 15 or 20 minutes. She pooped out at like nine minutes. So this is when I try to give her the time she needs.
sometimes I get here and then I loop
tired actually the heel was a little on point so
The venue was rotated on purpose, and the favourite venue was named as the risk. The park that made the training easiest to run was the reason the commands might be stuck in it.
Because a dog worked in one place learns that the command belongs to that place. The remedy was a different turning mid-walk and a different park the next day, planned session by session.
On film
We do this lab in Jack Marley a lot I like it because I can focus on the commands but the downside is that like if you don't actively have somebody the dog only does like one area and keeps the command in that one area the dog just does the same thing it's more of like an isolated place like you have to listen but everywhere else you don't
She's learned. Um, what happens is that the dog's like, "This is when I have to be good." And then, but if I'm home or I'm at like the store, I don't have to listen because the only time that he ever has reinforced it was in the backyard.
We've also never been in this area either, so I'm sure it's probably like Generalizing it to her. I don't know. I don't know really what it is
The surface was treated as a variable in its own right, and tested live. Concrete is named as ground she has never been asked to lie on, and the move to grass is run as the experiment.
Because the down was failing in a new place and he wanted to know whether the ground or the venue was the cause. He never settles which, and says so.
On film
I've never done it on concrete before. So She likes to fight down.
All right, so she's going to fight me a little bit more than I'm like, let's Try to do it on the grass.
go it's just in the concrete Luna down okay she prefers the grass which is I mean it makes sense it's hot
Every prop the dog could not have off leash was deliberately removed before the freedom was given - the pull-down capped, the leash pressure taken out of the obedience entirely, the flexi traded for a long line, and body language excluded from the start.
The argument is near-tautological in his mouth: you cannot rely on leash pressure if you are trying to be off leash, it is in the name. The one he audits hardest is himself - having declared the leash out of the work, he immediately wonders aloud whether a trace of it is still creeping in.
On film
doing like a like a pull down like that yeah here's the problem though is that everything has to be off verbal or else off leash does not work because if you're off leash you can't use the leash pull down right
that now i'm like only using e-collar for reinforcement like nothing else
i made no pressure there whatsoever is there a minuscule amount maybe we're gonna find that out aren't we
so we've tightened that up a little bit because you can't really uh rely on leash pressure if you're trying to be off leash it's kind of in the name
A behaviour the facility could not classify was referred to the household rather than trained out, with a condition attached that made it workable.
He does not want to hand back a dog with the thing the family loved e-collared out of her. The condition is functional rather than sentimental: kept when she offers it for its own sake, worked when she offers it to escape a command - and even then the paw is not punished, the command is reinforced.
On film
usually ask before I do anything with like any of the quirky behaviors that dogs have because some people really don't like them and some people are like no, that's like what makes my dog my dog and I'm fine with either one
if she's doing the hand, if she's doing it because she's like, I don't want to do this. So I'm going gonna give you the hand instead I'm just going to reinforce the behavior and hit the e-collar and then she learns oh I can't do this to get out of the command and so then I'm not punishing that but I'm fixing the root problem which then fixes other things
And there was much debate last time I was over about whether it does this paw thing and we were deciding if it's a quirk or if it's a uh in need of behavioral modification and Luna's owner said that we treat it just like a quirk.
The nerves were denied the status of an excuse, in the same breath as being acknowledged as real. The flight impulse cannot be overridden by any level - and locking up and avoiding are still against the rules.
Both halves are needed and a page that carries one without the other is dangerous.
On film
and that of course being the e-collar. There's no amount of that with the e-collar that is going to override that. So if I'm not saying that lunar bolting, right? But the reason I have to turn it up is because her nerves are higher.
But you got to learn even in that window like hey you can't lock up. You can't this goes for any nervous thought, right? You can't get skddish and just kind of be like I'm just going to like avoid you. Doesn't allow it. It's uh it's against the rules.
The bolt was treated as an economics problem with a timescale, not as a temperament problem - punish it every time and it extinguishes in a couple of attempts, because it stops working.
On film
about doing a bolt in which case you know I'll punish that you know dogs only bolt a couple times and if you punish them each time they don't do it anymore because they're like well that doesn't like work
wonder why I'm not going across there. Honestly, I'm just trying to keep Luna in the shade because it's good for her. I can see it in her eyes. She's thinking about it. She's thinking
She was given the benefit of the doubt repeatedly, in a method that otherwise insists every word gets backed up. A missed cue was seriously entertained as not hearing; a delayed sit was explicitly not worth punishing; a distracted repetition was excused in advance.
Not argued from principle - it is a disposition, and it appears in three different sessions. It also sits against the same trainer three days later calling a slow down dangerous in a real-life scenario and marking it to be sped up, which is a tension worth keeping rather than averaging.
On film
sit can i get a lick took you a second i said the word she did it as long as the dog just take a second to do their thing which i'm not gonna kill somebody for or a dog that sounds terrible
Okay, turning to the parent, I was like, no, maybe you didn't hear me, so I'll say it again.
good doggy please you know she's got a long long so yeah you're good and of course I don't demand like you know perfection like that
She was very like so Chris we time though. So we're gonna speed that up a lot because that Could be dangerous and practical like real-life scenarios
She was given the chance to get it wrong, and did, and fixed it herself - and the handler's contribution was to wait instead of repeating the cue.
Because a dog who is never allowed to choose becomes a spring that goes off the moment the structure is removed. The argument is made in the room by one of two people and demonstrated in the same minute.
On film
I've, I've learned over time. Sometimes give the dog a second to.
she ran up but she stopped when she realized she got too far
it's like those it's like kids who like they get like helicopter parented their
The trainer changed his own curriculum because of her, and said so on camera - the long line and the zone will come first for future dogs, as an experiment.
Rare direct evidence of how the method develops. It is also an admission that on this dog the order was wrong: the radius was built on a flexi she may have been leaning on, and the long line arrived in the last week.
On film
luna let's go um and so like i'm gonna have to kind of set a zone for her on the long line um for my future dogs actually i'm changing it up a little bit i'm gonna experiment and see what happens when i do that first um i think i might have better results with that
leash the big thing really is just like gotta make sure that right now is she relying on the leash pressure maybe the chance you might be so we got to make sure that she's not by using the long line and just kind of instilling a radius that way
At the handover the trainer removed himself physically from the enclosure, because the dog was working for him rather than for her owner - and then charged the owner's marker by backing it with his own collar.
Because a video of the dog heeling with him is worthless if the owner cannot get it, and with a dog that tests this much the drop-off is where the training is actually proved. The arithmetic is offered instead of blame: five weeks with him against two at home.
On film
Because, like, sure, it might, like, you know, I have a video of her healing with me. That's great. But if you can't get her to do it, it doesn't really matter.
like it's a little more charged up right because like she's used to me using the e-collar so once when you're using the e-collar with her and you're tighten it up it will get even tighter
confusing thing for her I was telling especially because she was here for a little under two weeks and she was with me for five so she's had more time and training with me than she's lived here
Confusion was treated as a reason to stop rather than to repeat. When the handover repetition went muddy he released her out of it instead of pushing through.
He names confusion as one of the worst states for a dog and clarity as the most important thing, and then acts on both in the same minute - which is the pairing that makes the rule credible rather than decorative.
On film
in here it might actually yeah give her a release just because i think right now she's also one of the worst things for a dog is confusion and right now she's confused so i want to like i'm just gonna release her
want to make sure that anything you're trying to communicate to the dog is clear clarity is like the most important thing the second a dog gets confused everything falls apart
The family were warned against overusing the one command the visit was called to teach, with a prediction specific to this dog rather than a generic caution.
Because heel-grinding produces frustration and, in extreme cases, a bite. For Luna he puts a nip at even odds and frustration at certain - and offers the alternative in the same breath, which is a generic redirect that leaves her a choice.
On film
And if you heel grind a dog enough, in more extreme cases, they'll get so frustrated, they'll bite somebody. In lighter cases, and I think more with her, she might nip at some point, that's like a 50-50.
is that let's go is one of those things where if there's i was telling him if there's dogs around
you don't want to hit the e-collar every time they see a dog because what does the dog learn
The correction was aimed at the redirect and never at the trigger - and the reason given is specific to a nervous dog.
It is the sharpest single argument in Luna's file and it is delivered to the family in their own front room.
On film
especially if they have nervous like slight nervous tendencies like her they can build an aversion and they in their mind they go all dogs are bad they're dangerous every time i see a dog i feel e-collar it's bad i don't like dogs
i feel e-collar it's bad i don't like dogs right versus if you use a let's go and then you reinforce
The handler's own errors were put on the record as they happened: a failed repetition called his own fault, an ambitious duration attempt admitted as ambition, a signal he could not read left unread, a marker graded as lacking power, a collar found on the wrong side, and a claim about leash pressure audited aloud within seconds of making it.
Not stated as a policy anywhere.
On film
Thank You Luna you did good I know I'm sorry I I figured you would know let's go that's my bad we're gonna condition it more
Tried to increase a little bit of duration there. Might have been a little early, sometimes I do get a little more ambitious than I should with the dogs.
didn't like that I don't know if she was like keep doing that to be honest I don't know weird I usually know what those signs mean but that's you know
Oh, all right, so I actually have mentioned this before. When you have the e-collar, I have it on the wrong side, which makes reinforcing this really tricky, how dogs respond to the e-collar.
i made no pressure there whatsoever is there a minuscule amount maybe we're gonna find that out aren't we
What the family was told
What an in-program lesson is for
yeah so this session we because you know we have like two and then we have the go-home sessions
right so this session is not so much about what luna can do but i'm going to go over more about
it. Um, so like on the second session, I'm actually going to have you handle her and I'm going to get you to like go run through the commands. And we just do that because a lot of times people's timings can be off. It's not that they're like not paying attention or anything.
The two channels - commands and markers - and the order that must never be broken
negative reinforcement. Positive means to add. Negative means to take away. Reinforcing is if you're trying to encourage a behavior. Punishment is if you're actively trying to remove a behavior altogether.
But that's the two. and then you say the word and then the e-collar always comes after because if you say sit and you hit the e-collar after she doesn't listen what Luna's brain is going to go is oh man every time he says sit I get shocked which means sit is a punisher
so the way it is is like the marker always comes right before the e-collar but it's like a consequence of the word happening so like once he gets up i'm gonna go and then and then i hit the e-collar after it's just important that you say the word before so you don't accidentally like associate with anything
Which marker, and how hard - the vocabulary handed over
the only one is just like, like if she does something bad, which actually I don't think you'll need to use the punishment marker often. Like that's the reinforcement marker. The punishment of course is like the note. I don't think you'll need to use it barely ever. Cause she doesn't do behavior. That's going to warrant like a note
reinforcement just give it a little more power just not like you don't have to be in the middle
like yeah like screaming your head off it just needs to be a little sharper okay good girl okay
It's just, when you're gonna say any commands, you only say it once and then force the eh.
But like, very immediately. Like, hey, don't touch that. Or eh, don't touch that.
The first week home - the enforcement window
can mess up the training really bad. Um, when Luna comes home for the first week, she's gonna try to test you. I know that's shocking that a husky shepherd mix is going to test you when she comes home. But regardless of breed, that's just how dogs are in general. So, it's important to stay strict and know what you're doing.
so I tell people be as strict on the dog as you want them to be regularly so sometimes people will go easy on the dog for the first week then the training looks kind of like loose and it's because like it wasn't reinforced that much
second is if you use any of those markers that we talked about the ant and the nope later on if every now and then like the dog would do something you say the word and they kind of back off before you hit the collar you can just decide not to hit it later on but for that first week if you say it you got to back it up
almost like a parent or like if they say that like you got to do this and they they don't care that much but they told their kid you have to do it and now they have to back it up because it's a principle right so it's the same thing with the dogs when they come home
yeah every dog that goes home has kind of like I was I was telling like a week period though where they have to realize all the rules that apply with me apply here
Generalisation, and the condition attached to the whole program
settles in and it's good. But if you don't know how to generalize it when she's with you, all that training she learned doesn't mean anything.
about generalizing. I have a joke that you can call me Connor generalizes Pierce because I talk about generalizing all the time because that's why we go out to a bunch of stores in different parks because
She's learned. Um, what happens is that the dog's like, "This is when I have to be good." And then, but if I'm home or I'm at like the store, I don't have to listen because the only time that he ever has reinforced it was in the backyard.
of course that also means that you have to show people how to reinforce what you're talking about if you don't then it goes downhill really fast
What to expect - a graduate, not a finished dog
Some people assume that when you train the dog, they should just come home and be absolutely perfect and have no issues whatsoever. It's not how dogs work, right? They're not robots.
trainers turn their dogs into robots. They They repress them for two weeks and then the dog loses it soul. And I'm not about that life.
the training funny enough it should look good when they come home but in the grand scheme of things it should look way more messy than two years down the road right because you've been reinforcing it for two years it should look like really tight
up it will get even tighter like and I say like the training should look good when they come home however if I come back here a year from now it should look look better than the four weeks she was with me.
The e-collar - fit, side, level, and what a number means
manual said it has to be at least two fingers work yep yeah okay cool I'm so glad that you read that most people don't
as far as the level is concerned, like she said, it's like I said, from like 16 to 20.
if you put the e-collar on this side of the neck right the right side of the neck what happens is that when you hit the e-collar to try to encourage them when you feel pressure this coming from this direction you pull back right you go the opposite it so if you have the collar on this side and you say heel it actually encourages the dog to push into your side which is what you want with the heel
i'll tell you right now that if you do vibration only with luna she's not gonna care
immediately they'll panic sometimes but the thing about it is like it's relative to the dog so like
level changed when she opened up with me this past week it's about a 25 now um so like it
The heel - the command the handover exists for
because that's kind of, like, one of those things that if you don't know how to maintain it, it can go really fast.
the main thing is when you're doing heel make sure that there's only pressure on the collar if she goes out of the zone
they'll lock the leash here and they'll pull on the collar and make the position be held here even if the dog is in the right position they hold it and thinking like oh i'll lock you into this position it'll make you learn to not leave but what you end up doing is you teach the dog that for you to stay here you have to feel the pressure
i do say like again you got to make sure you're strict with everything so
You only say heel once. After that, it's only the reinforcement marker. Once the window is open, it's only closed if we give her the release cue.
And if you heel grind a dog enough, in more extreme cases, they'll get so frustrated, they'll bite somebody. In lighter cases, and I think more with her, she might nip at some point, that's like a 50-50.
The stay that is never said, and the release word you give away by accident
have is the implied stay. So, Luna knows that she's not supposed to get up until I release her.
so the stay is implied with every command so you don't so you don't say stay right you say the command and the dog like every dog i train holds the position until we give the release actually if you start saying stay like if they get up and you're like stay they start to kind of think like ooh it's a stationary command
see like when I say down and then when I say good girl she just releases
Place - the one rule an owner can check without judgement
so the rule with the place is that the paws can't touch the ground so like she can hold whatever position she wants in there okay as long as four paws are not on the ground so she can hang two paws off but the second they touch the ground she breaks the rules
notice the hand thing she started doing because she's whining and she's whining because she's like i don't want to do this she doesn't want to do it because she doesn't like that right now her level of impulse control she's been on here long enough now to where like i'm tested like we're testing her threshold the threshold gets higher but every single time you hit that like max threshold she's gonna whine
we try to keep it about like try to get the dog about 15 to 20 minutes on place before they go home
So if I teach her like that, every time I say this word from the get go, you have to stay here for two minutes. She's going to be like really opposed opposed to doing it whereas if I add the time little by little she starts off with just three seconds she's going to be a lot less averse to it in the beginning
When not to correct
Let's go. Yeah. So right there like I would not punish that. The reason that I would not punish that is that while she was sniffing there was no like clear command afterwards.
If I had said like let's go she didn't pick up. She didn't listen then that's a different story because that's a direct like disobedience to a command which is not okay.
some people um they'll walk their dogs around and they just kind of expect the dog to engage in like perfect behavior 24/7.
And then they get up and somebody punishes it. And in their mind, they're like, what did I do? I didn't do anything. You didn't tell me to do anything.
The reactivity instruction - redirect, never correct the trigger
one more thing I want to go over is so I say, "Let's go." Each time she sees a dog and we condition eventually to the point where she sees a dog, she goes, "Oh, he's going to say, "Let's go." And if I don't listen, I get the e-collar. So, it looks like she just doesn't care about the dog. But in reality, she's actually predicting what's going to happen and just says it's not worth it.
you don't want to hit the e-collar every time they see a dog because what does the dog learn
especially if they have nervous like slight nervous tendencies like her they can build an aversion and they in their mind they go all dogs are bad they're dangerous every time i see a dog i feel e-collar it's bad i don't like dogs
The escalation order - the collar last
like crank it up like that until she kind of like gives in um and i stop like the second i see something because i don't want to create like an aversion or anything like that
want to make sure that anything you're trying to communicate to the dog is clear clarity is like the most important thing the second a dog gets confused everything falls apart
So one of the big things is letting her just chill out. Like, if she's skittish, you don't even go crazy, right?
Off leash - the gate, and the deferral
if you can't walk the dog on the leash like if you're fighting her it means you need to reinforce more if you can't walk her on the leash she's not ready to go off leash with you
I trust, like, her place off-leash. I trust her sit
and then you go off leash after that first week or so so if you can't walk the dog successfully on a leash yet don't go off leash
she's got some funky thing with it for you and not me then like i mean it doesn't mean that i did anything wrong but at the same time i need to make sure it works for you because it's not my dog it's yours
Rewards, without food
Sniffing around is her reward and she loves it. The thing is, I don't really rely on treats just because you can get in this groove where if you don't have a treat, then your dog's not trained anymore.
tell people when they go home, make sure that maybe the the treat is like every other time or something, but like randomize it cuz she's smart. She'll figure out if it's every other time.
so we don't use like treats for every single command. Cause what happens is dog becomes dependent on treats. treats and then one day something excites the dog more than the treat and you're like sit and the dog looks at you and is like that's funny because I don't do anything for only you know if you don't have a treat I don't do it
The handler's body - the part owners do not know they are doing
yeah so I tell everybody like make sure I don't have your hand on the e-collar only when you tap the e-collar right you want your hand to be on it like the whole time you're walking
anything visual will always override what a dog hears right
or like pointed a finger you were like i'm gonna lift my arm now or i'm gonna point this finger right here and then you do it that sounds exhausting to do and i would not want to live
Do not drill her
the dogs come home people will want to like drill everything and be like do it again do it again because it's like exciting right when you have something new you're kind of like a do it again because it's exciting but for them if you keep drilling things over and over they'll shut down
i'll do it in short durations and then like i'm not going to get her to do a long duration here because i'd be like really driving her to where it would be unrealistic
In the family's own words
The owner's one stated worry, raised without being asked, and it is the opposite of the usual one: not that the dog will be repressed, but that freedom will undo the training.
On film
And then she she understands that. I'm just scared that too much freedom will
make her forget that, you know, why you're doing what you're doing.
The owner's questions at the first lesson are about what else she could become - sport, protection, retrieve - and he is told no, politely, with a reason.
On film
She just needs that time. I'm I'm the first person to admit when I don't know how to do something. I don't So I I just don't specialize in that stuff. So I don't know how to do a forced retrieval. Christian does.
But you you know I don't think Luna's going to go and bite somebody's kneecap off. She's she's never bitten or anything. So I don't think she would even be good for the German Shepherd course cuz she doesn't have that fight instinct.
At the house the owner asks the one question that tests the claim rather than the method: has she ever been left on place with nobody watching but a camera. He is told no, on principle, because the trainer will not assert something he has not seen.
On film
i would assume but i can't like i'm not going to say yes just because i think it
The owner names his own goal for the room, and it is domestic and small: Luna on place while the puppy is crated.
On film
because i want to train her to like be there and the puppy in the crate
They took the extra week without complaint, and said why.
On film
No worries. I'd rather her to have an extra week so she can understand.
Outcomes
What the trainers reported
Place and sit trusted off leash; the down at about seventy per cent; the heel not trusted at all. Command-by-command, out loud, to the owner.
The trainer, approximately 2026-08-26
On film
I trust, like, her place off-leash. I trust her sit
Eight or nine out of ten, against a stated ten meaning ready to go home.
The trainer, 2026-09-01
On film
You do really good, I'm very proud of you, that's like, easily like, 8-9 out of 10, and 10 being ready to go home
The radius locked in fairly decently on the long line, and tighter again the following day with checking-in as the new behaviour.
The trainer, 2026-09-01 and 2026-09-02
On film
she is really cute though okay so her radius is just more of the main thing here um which it's locked in fairly decently
also of course the radius is looking more tight
Also of course the radius is looking more tight cuz
The heel good enough to send home, with further tightening done only for the owners' benefit.
The trainer, 2026-09-02
On film
Yeah, I mean, like, I would already be cool with sending a heel home like that, but if I can just tighten it up even more, then like
The whole command set working on the last day before handover.
The trainer, 2026-09-03
On film
All righty, so we're out here with Luna. She's going home tomorrow. I have her on the Flexi. I'm thinking I'm going to take her in a store tomorrow to record our final go-home video.
Testing declining as a stage rather than a trait - none at all in one session, one at the start of the next.
The trainer, 2026-09-03
On film
um like she didn't test me at all last session really but this session's like she started out with a test so we'll see like maybe there's no more tests after this right okay all right she might not test me anymore just it just depends
What the footage shows
The e-collar diagnosis on a husky coat - a collar that feels tight and is not touching skin - worked out live, on camera, across eight minutes, and immediately changing the reading of the dog's responsiveness. It is the most transferable thing in her file.
On film
So I wonder if actually I need to tighten it on more. I've already tightened it on once, but it didn't hit me. So just now I'm like, oh, it probably feels tight, but it's probably not even touching her skin at all.
A tail read as too low, an exercise abandoned on it, and the tail confirmed back to normal about a minute later - the complete repair loop, start to finish, in one file.
On film
their tail's a little low right now so we need to wind down because she thinks out here means sucky experience every time it's not good
you see the tail is a lot more like she her tail kind of flops down but for a second it was like lower than usual so i wanted to make sure we open her back up
A dog correcting herself. She overshoots a recall out of excitement, notices the distance, and comes back without a second cue - after the handler deliberately waited instead of re-cueing.
On film
she ran up but she stopped when she realized she got too far
no that was good she got excited and she
Seeing and not acting - a child riding past on a bike and a stranger walking through at the end of a nine-minute session she had nothing left in, both noticed, neither acted on. He picks it as the note to end on and names it as the outcome the program is for.
On film
It's actually really good to end the session out with. I know you see people with them, but she can't act on it, right?
Place held in her own house, off leash, through the door opening and closing, the owner leaving, and the trainer running across the room - with two or three breaks, read as first-week maintenance rather than as a gap.
On film
that's how actually we proofed the place to go home to make sure it's good we'll have somebody come in there and like run around the room before just to make sure it's all like tightened up
because that's the idea, right? You want to be able to do random things in here without her, like, being like, oh, I gotta get up.
A handover that does not work, left in. The owner cannot get the off-leash heel, the dog keeps coming back to the trainer, and instead of editing round it the trainer leaves the enclosure and charges the owner's marker with his own collar.
On film
Because, like, sure, it might, like, you know, I have a video of her healing with me. That's great. But if you can't get her to do it, it doesn't really matter.
been like reinforcing everything to see how it goes again if she's still really weird about the
off leash deal with you like give us a text i'll come out and work on it with you okay because if
The program's own bad news delivered to the client through a camera, unprompted, with the reason attached and no softening - that without the extra week the off-leash work would probably not be as reliable as intended.
On film
that's just the truth of the matter. So, I'm not saying it to scare any, you know, Luna Luna, anybody that's watching this video, Luna's people, but that's why we're keeping it longer is because if we didn't, there would be a real chance that that off leash would not be as reliable as we would want it to be,
The ideas Luna's case runs on
- 'Let's go' is not 'Come' - and the recall has an ending
- A raised texture, and never a punishment
- Assess before you ask
- Breed is a checklist, not a verdict
- Build the handler's timing while it is easy
- Clarity is the kindness
- Command, marker, collar - in that order
- Contingent, avoidable, and the right size
- Control is not obedience
- Dates for obedience, no dates for drive
- Don't heel grind
- Don't poison the command
- Eating the correction, and avoidance as a tactic
- 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
- Freeze, flee or fight
- Generalisation is the whole job
- Genetic versus environmental nerves
- Give him time to answer
- He has to be allowed to get it wrong
- Honest limits, and reliability is not permission
- Internal emotional change, not repression
- Look like a dog, not a deer
- Meaningful release
- Neutrality is the goal, friendship is optional
- Pick the place for what it contains - life is the training ground
- Pressure, release, reward
- Proof it against his own currency
- Quit on the good rep
- Reading the dog
- Release to freedom
- Say it bluntly or it will not land
- Show what not to do, allow everything else
- Start with freedom
- Sticking close is not attachment
- Stop before you shut him down
- The dog is a different dog for his owner - and authority transfers
- The dog tells you the reward
- The dose of a session
- The flight-risk protocol, and the one command that matters
- The four windows, and calm liberty
- The handler is the first suspect
- 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 settling week
- The three Ds, and the variables nobody counts
- The three stress reducers
- There is no stay, only the release
- Two events, not one - and what the handler does in between