Who Stormie is
As the trainers describe her
Soft, sweet and physically easy from the first handling. The earliest staff footage is a temperament read rather than a training one, and it is unanimous.
On film
so precious and soft you're such a cute little soft baby oh you look like a snow bug
She's so sweet.
So physical that contact becomes an obstacle to the work. She stands on feet, leans, crosses in front and trips handlers, lies against legs, and by two separate accounts cannot perform a command without touching someone. Three different handlers name it independently.
On film
she's just so like she's such a physical she's got to like be near you and any command she's got to like be touching your foot
physically affectionate dog that's for sure yeah stormy
why do you you're obsessed with standing on my foot bro hi i know you're just very very physical
very physically affectionate too so like she's just very yeah
It is still the sentence that best explains her; which way it runs is worth one audio check before a page quotes it.
On film
she's just very affectionate and she wants to be close so we're just having to kind of like drill it like not take the affection out
You're not allowed to lie with with my legs, I'm sorry.
High energy, named as the reason for strictness rather than as a complaint - and, at the mid-point, named as something that had already come down measurably.
On film
She's got a lot of energy so we gotta be pretty strict with her.
but you can see even her energy level is way calmer like she's actually like she's not like going all over the place i mean she's still got some some oomph to her but we're gonna keep working on that
she doesn't sit still she does not sit still ever
Poor impulse control, named at the owner lesson as the defining deficit and as the reason place is worked so hard. It is the first trainer's whole frame for her, and it is one a later handler contradicts.
On film
um place for a dog like her who impulse control is she's not very gifted with impulse control so making her sit there for five or ten minutes on place is like a whole workout for her because she's having to really try to push to not break the rules
the good news is stormy what i work with them mostly is their impulse control because of course the door opens and like oh who's there yeah you know
i don't even think it's an impulse control issue she's just testing to see if i'm gonna like do anything
Visibly fighting herself rather than breaking the rule - the behaviour the owner lesson calls the normal shape of the halfway point.
On film
she does this thing where when she's like trying to be good she's like like she starts like running in place and like fighting demons to not you know break the rules um she's a puppy and like honestly that's very normal behavior for half the half into the program
Clever, and clever in the specific way that makes a dog harder rather than easier - she works out how not to comply.
On film
that also means that a fair number of them, I would say three out of four of them really, are all smart enough to know what I want and also smart enough to figure out how to not do it.
good job for me good job you're so smart
dog does what you needed to do she's smart enough this she's smart she knows what I want because occasionally she'll just do it really fast and I'm like so you do know
Capable and unwilling, on one command only. The trainer voices it for her, and the same phrasing is reached independently eleven days later by the same handler working the problem himself.
On film
yeah i'm like you can do it and she's like i can but i won't just because i can't do something doesn't doesn't mean i will
I've already started a down with the stormy. However, she's very averse to the down as a whole. really so that's what we're going to work on out here
The hardest down the go-home trainer says he has ever taught, and he distinguishes her from the ordinary reluctant dog explicitly.
On film
stormy the down is one of the trickiest downs i have ever had to teach a dog because she hates it so much like usually they learn they're like i don't like it but i'll do it
you just you're strong and you don't like to be down because you're a bully breed and it does not matter any of the bully mixes like I would say yeah not only breeds but bully mixes so again like the the American bully specifically mix with anything bully breeds in general can have some versions to that
She does not refuse head-on. She avoids - and the avoidance has a named, listed repertoire that the go-home lesson hands to the family as a checklist.
On film
so because she's a bully breed type dog um they all have like tendencies to avoid so they might know what you're asking them to do and they'll still kind of like pretend like they don't know how to do it or they'll like yelp or they'll lay on their belly and try to like submit to not do it so what i want both of you guys to focus on for like the first week she's here is just focus on not letting her avoid
or she'll try to submit like she'll she'll do this thing where you put her in a down and sometimes she's hoping you'll let her get out of it if she submits so she'll like roll on her belly like this and she'll lay there and you have to like pull her her back into place
so this right here is actually an example he's avoiding he's like i'm gonna hide behind the blinds so i'm gonna just kind of yank her out of it right that's the big thing is just like just don't let him
She's like really yanking on me there with her neck which tells me like she kind of knows what's going on and she's just avoiding because she's like I just really don't want to do this.
The vocalising is read as performance aimed at an audience, by two handlers, in two different rooms, a month apart - and in one case the read is made live, to the audience, while it is happening.
On film
because she's trying to like put on like a drama show for you guys she's like
said so basically said why are you you don't make that noise when it's just me
is when there's more people around she'll actually yelp and be dramatic and like try to make people feel bad for her because then people would go away and she'd go back to like not yelping
There's the drama queen coming back.
I know I know you're trying to be dramatic. I don't want you to be though
Not fearful, and the claim is made from her body rather than from her noise. The go-home lesson reads the ears during a yelp and calls it refusal.
On film
yeah so that that was on like a it was like halfway too she's just being that she just doesn't want to do it and she's like if i whine in front of my people maybe he'll get scared and won't make me do what i what he wants me to do but you see that like if you look her ears are not like shot up or anything they're like relaxed she's just looking at me like man freak you like that's all it is
she handles the e-collar really well like she doesn't like like how she's gonna do it this one time to like be dramatic in front of you but like she she doesn't howl or anything she takes it it's just like oh i gotta like back up whatever i'm doing she she takes it really well because some dogs when they start you have to teach them what the e-collar means uh but she she naturally handles it really well
Physically stronger than she looks, which is why the refusals hold as long as they do, and which a second handler turns into a policy about the collar level.
On film
She just can't break it. She's stronger than she gives off.
So, what I did there, it's a thing that I do with the like the bully breeds. You just crank it up cuz they're just really strong cuz she was trying to fight me on heel.
Sensitive to the collar but not resilient to it - two different axes, named in one breath, and the distinction that stops a handler raising the level when the answer is another tap.
On film
like you saw i have to tap it a couple times because she's a little bit of a voltage wise she's not super tough but
Resilience of like you can take one and not really care. I Give her a couple inches like all right fine
A puppy, and treated as one where it counts: she is read as able to shut down under pressure, and a prospective ceiling is set for her on that ground.
On film
making sure that because she's younger we gotta make sure that there's less pressure on her because right now like if you go in too much with the pressure it still shut down fairly quickly so that's something i'm going to go over actually on the drop off today
because she's a puppy the way she takes pressure is that it can shut her down quicker and on top of that she'll when bully Bully breeds are in their, like, younger puppy years, if you will. They'll try to really fight the pressure. So with her, you start out with lower pressure, and then you can build into it.
Goofy, and deliberately left that way. The trainer says so unprompted, to the family, on handover day.
On film
look i trained her but she's still gonna be a goofy like i don't honestly i i wouldn't want to like make her not goofy you know what i mean i still want them to be them
A prey drive, named once, at the handover, as the reason the off-leash aspiration is not safe yet. It is the only mention of prey drive in her whole record and it is attributed to her breed type rather than to anything observed.
On film
go like fully off leash like that make sure that you can go on a walk in your neighborhood because if you can't control the dog in the neighborhood you can't control them in the middle of the woods when there's a bunch of squirrels and especially a dog like her who's like a bully breed she has that prey drive naturally
Leaner and more muscled at the end than at the start - the one physical change anybody records, and it is attributed to the exercise load rather than to her.
On film
yeah she's a little bit leaner but more muscly just that's what happens to all the dogs because we still feed them but like the increased amount of exercise their body just puts on more muscle
More attached to the young person in the household than to the adults, by the trainer's read on handover day.
On film
She's excited though. She's a very she's actually I know she's more attached to him
As her family describe her
Before the program she was testing the household's authority, and the family give one concrete instance of it: getting her into her crate was a ten-minute chase.
On film
trying to show us who's in charge yeah no matter what even with um at that time trying to put her
trying to catch her i'm on the side trying to catch her she's fast too yes and it was like a
She plants herself and will not move, to the point of having to be carried - and the family volunteer it at the owner lesson, unprompted, as an anecdote rather than as a complaint.
On film
When I used to take her out,
i just have to carry it to the car oh she didn't want to move from this you know but if she was
Their stated concerns at the home session are over-excitement and nibbling - not aggression, not reactivity, not fear. The turn boundaries on this track are invisible, so the attribution of the first clause to an owner rather than the trainer is inference from content.
On film
easier it was really just the the over excitement and just again trying to get her yeah yeah and
then the the nibbling and stuff you can correct that and then like over time it just goes away
They believed from the beginning that she was a bull mastiff, against paperwork that said pit bull.
On film
when i look at her i know that like it was marked as pitbull right but i look at her face and my
brain just goes like there's some kind of mastiff in there or something we thought from the beginning
They do not mind being jumped on themselves, and say so when asked directly - which is why jumping is never banned outright and is banned only on one person.
On film
do you want her to hop on you okay see I don't want to punish it if you don't cuz a lot of people don't but I don't like to assume something
Their one remaining goal on handover day is not a command. It is a line around the kitchen - and they immediately raise the objection to it themselves, that she has sat in that spot during cooking since she was a puppy.
On film
Oh, like, you know, boundaries for the kitchen.
Which I feel like is a little ridiculous.
My only issue with that is, since she was a puppy, like, when I cook her chicken and stuff,
The owner's first question at the owner lesson is not about training at all. It is about the dogs she can hear crying in the kennel - which is the only recorded moment of a family member checking on the welfare of the operation they have handed their dog to.
On film
because i do hear a lot of dogs whining or crying in the back oh yeah so okay the dogs are there so
so no I appreciate any question like that I mean I'd rather you just ask a question up front then you'd be like uneasy you know because I don't want that like I want you to know like your dog's safe I'm not like I don't get a high off of like making dogs sad you know like I'm not
They confirm the elapsed time at the mid-point lesson, which is the fact that dates the whole program.
On film
just to talk about is she's been here for about two weeks yes um the way we do it is like you
The program, stage by stage
Intake, off camera
Approximately 2026-08-05. Nothing filmed.
A family with no other animals, who had acquired her from a neighbourhood rehoming post a few months earlier, filled in the intake form on 8/4/2026 and asked for a pickup the next day (source: intake). What they wanted, in their own words on the form, was obedience: behaviour, commands, obedience as the three priorities, jumping up on people as the one named problem, and a front-door off-leash recall as the thing they pictured. None of this is on camera. There is no evaluation, no Day 1, no arrival footage, and no history-taking anywhere in twenty-three recordings. Everything in this stage comes from the form.
Met before she is worked
Week 1, undated. watch, and probably watch.
Twenty-one minutes of staff holding and petting a puppy, with a television running, and not one command asked for. The record it leaves is a temperament read: soft, sweet, precious, a snuggle bug, and she smells good. It is worth keeping precisely because of what comes next: this is the dog who will fight the whole program, described by the people who are about to train her, before any of it starts.
On film
so precious and soft you're such a cute little soft baby oh you look like a snow bug
We love her already.
You're working on distractions here.
The in-house foundation: place, sit, and the door
2026-08-12 and the days around it. watch, watch, watch.
Ambient footage of a dog being worked in a room while the room is used for other things. Place is drilled in counted reps, sit is on it, and the distraction is whatever is happening - the floor being cleaned, a door being used, a person walking in. Within a week of arriving at zero she is anticipating the cot, going to it and sitting before she is sent, which a second voice finds worth remarking on. She is deliberately tested while over-excited and the rep fails, and the failure is framed rather than fixed. The place work also does exactly what the program sells it for: watch shows a cot being used to park a dog while the floor is swept, which is the finished product rather than the training.
On film
Six reps.
What I find interesting is that she's going there and sitting in the ground before you go.
I want to see how she does with this because she's like super excited right now.
You failed, but through failure, you learn to succeed.
staying on place with the door
I know you know this, this, but damn, there we go, good.
The first in-program owner lesson - the theory, and the problem nobody has solvedTurning point
2026-08-18. One visit, published as Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6; Part 5 is missing.
Halfway. The owner is present and the lesson is deliberately front-loaded with theory, because the trainer's stated view is that the first session is the long one and the theory is what makes maintenance possible. The progress report is concrete: good place, good sit, no leash pulling at all any more, jumping being corrected, energy visibly calmer, and a dog who took the e-collar without needing to be taught what it meant. Then a full curriculum - markers against commands, the four quadrants named and immediately stripped down, two markers with two different meanings, the rule that a marker is always followed by the collar, 'let's go' against 'come', conditioning, prediction error, the three Ds, the settling week, and the argument that a fast board-and-train buys compliance by repression and the compliance expires. The owner's first question is not about training but about the dogs she can hear crying in the kennel, and the trainer treats it as the most important thing in the room. And in the middle of a report that is otherwise good news, the honest item: she will not lie down, he does not know why, he is handing it to someone else. It is the first appearance of the thing that will occupy the remaining half of the program.
On film
and we're gonna be taking her out right now she's got a good place and a good sit and I'll have
with me she doesn't pull on the leash at all anymore um with the jumping too like I'm correcting
she handles the e-collar really well like she doesn't like like how she's gonna do it this one time to like be dramatic in front of you but like she she doesn't howl or anything she takes it it's just like oh i gotta like back up whatever i'm doing she she takes it really well because some dogs when they start you have to teach them what the e-collar means uh but she she naturally handles it really well
the four quadrants of operant conditioning that sounds fancy I'm not gonna make you repeat that to me I would make it sound really simple it's four right you have two you have two positives and two negatives so you have negative and positive punishment and the negative and positive reinforcement reinforcement means we're gonna encourage a behavior punishment as means we're gonna discourage it right
and again if you say ant verse e-collar and then nope verse e-collar it looks exactly the same except minus like one word to the outside but to her brain she's taking the info as two very different things
go and then she immediately unfixates and follows along and it's the same thing with the dogs if i say let's go every single time we walk by a dog her brain starts to go well every time we walk by a dog he says let's go i'm going to predict it this time and so it just looks like a seamless i don't care about the dog okay right
a week or two after she comes home and the repression goes away what happens the training goes away
she's she's not behind she's on schedule i don't want to give you too much and i'll be honest with you if she was behind i've looked at some people like your dog's a little behind but it's okay because we're gonna get her up to speed
The play exception
Twice in a week, Stormie and a second puppy are let out together while a member of staff cleans around them. The person doing it says on camera that she is not one of the trainers, that this is not really a session, and - the part that matters - that dogs at the facility are not normally allowed to play together, because they are here for training. The exception is made on one ground only: they are puppies. She supervises it, breaks it up on 'enough' whenever it escalates, reverses her own read when she decides Stormie is only playing rather than being rough, and puts the dogs outside at the end. A week later the same two dogs are out again and the same justification is used almost verbatim. If the intake is right that Stormie had not been around other dogs (source: intake), these two recordings are the entire dog-to-dog social record of her life, they happen by exception, and no trainer ever refers to them.
On film
We typically actually don't let dogs play together
because they're here for training.
But they're babies.
I've never seen this interaction with Fiona and another dog, so we'll see what happens.
enough all right if y'all gonna play go play but don't be out here trying to scare each other
that's enough let's go i don't want her hurting you okay no okay she's not gonna hurt you she
They're babies, get to play together!
She's using her mouth, she's using her mouth, she's having fun.
i did put stormy away because she is still new at this uh training stuff and i don't want them on the floor only on the place caught
I took her out with Stormy today. She did great, but all they want to do is play.
The down breakthrough: close the other doorTurning point
Undated. Her second Inferno lesson', probably King's second in-program lesson, which was published 2026-08-16) would put it on or before 2026-08-16 - that is, before the owner lesson. watch.
One handler says she did the down for them 'the first couple times' and has not since - 'Stormy will not down' - and has had three days with her last week. The diagnosis is clear and agrees across both tracks: she is being allowed to reach a sit, and from a sit she can brace, so the instruction is not to push harder but to delete the position she escapes into - 'don't let the sit happen' - and it works: 'Good girl! Yes, yes, yes!' (04:31), and again at 06:37-06:46. The rule stated afterwards is to make a big happy once you get her there. The admissions are not softened: this handler had got nothing on the down, and doubts she has settled in place.
On film
times. She hasn't done it since the first couple times. Stormy will not
i mean with her i was just able like i tapped their nose and then i tapped the floor and that's how i get them down usually
she's not doing it at all
sometimes it's hard if they do it from the sit, because she was going into the down, but, like, I was seeing, like, if you don't let her get into the sit where she can brace.
And then just don't let the sit happen?
Good girl! Yes, yes, yes!
I mean, that's okay because I haven't been able to get anything from her at all, like down
Yeah, she did it for me today. Okay, that's good. Alright, I'll put that on the thing to add up.
King's Inferno session today. Her second Inferno lesson.
You did it. You did it. Hooray.
The down gets clearer, and the trainer says it is not finished
2026-08-29. watch.
Eleven days after the owner lesson, the remaining work is named in the first minute: place is really good, sit is there, the pulling is gone, and what is left is the down and the heel. The e-collar is started at 15, found too low for an aroused dog, taken to 20, then stepped back to 18 because twenty felt like a jump - a live adjustment talked through out loud in both directions. The down is worked by force: he says he is going to push her into the shape, that it will take several drills, and that the drills have to be kept fun. A rep is rejected because she rolled onto her side, on the stated ground that the down must not become the word that produces a belly rub. Around nine minutes there is a clear one; shortly after, she offers it with no collar at all, and he names that as the thing he actually wants. He also sets the quality bar deliberately below perfect. The verdict is the title's: no off-leash down today, one or two more sessions he hopes, and she is adapting fast now. The session ends by using her tiredness as a test condition rather than as a reason to stop, and by attributing her dropping tempo to the heat and the breed.
On film
Her place is really good. She's got to sit all that stuff. So really all that she has left to do Is her down?
I have the E color turned up a little more than I would usually have. It's on about a 20 right now. Mm, let's take it down to 18. 20 feels like a little bit of a jump. Yeah, we'll do 18.
so I'm gonna have to push her into that shape because she is just not gonna be in love with them and we're gonna have to use several of those drills while keeping things pretty fun
But I'm not trying to teach this. I'm The down is the key word to get a belly rub to come in
and I didn't eat all that time she just did it actually which is what we want I don't want to eat all it
so I'm not gonna enforce it like that it's more of just like I just need that kind of that position position
yeah so she'll give in um you know am i gonna have any off leads down by the end of today no but i'm hoping within one to two more sessions yeah because the thing is she is adapting quite fast now to the down.
what she does with these people here. The dog's tired, the impulse control is worse, so if you can get a dog to, sometimes it's really good, and sometimes you can't control the impulse anymore, so I want to see what she does when she's tired,
any of the bully breed dogs like this like I talked about all the time especially this summer just because like you can see her moving at a slower
2026-08-30: the recording nobody can attribute
2026-08-30. watch and watch - one recording, two publications, two dogs' names.
Forty-odd words in a house. A person is sent to sit on the couch, over to somebody, upstairs to fetch a family member, and down the stairs, while a dog holds a position; the one reported result is that she stayed on the couch. Read at face value it is exactly what the titles claim - a place hold proofed against a person leaving the room - and it would be the only such footage in Stormie's record. One person watching thirty seconds of it would settle the question permanently.
On film
Yeah, because I want to see what he does when you go up there.
Yep, she stayed on the couch.
Now go sit on the couch, but you've got to stay on the couch.
2026-08-31, morning: check the tool before you judge the dogTurning point
2026-08-31 11:46 by title. watch.
A field session in a park chosen deliberately because it winds her up more than the usual one, and the most instructive failure in her record. She downs on grass and will not down on concrete. The trainer works the problem out loud and gets it wrong twice before getting it right. First reading: the concrete is hot, so move to grass and come back to it at a higher level. Second reading, and a reversal: the higher level is locking her up rather than motivating her, so take it down - to about a six. Then the actual fault, found by hand: the e-collar has worked loose on her neck and is far looser than when he put it on. Several of the reps she had been failing may never have reached her, and he never goes back to work out which. He re-seats it, and separately catches himself over-drilling her - named as a mistake he makes periodically, with the principle attached that dogs differ in how much drilling they can take - and lets her run before resuming. Late in the session she downs and whines on the way in, and he reads the whine as the last of the fight rather than as distress, with the caveat that it depends on the dog. Heat stops the session for a twenty-minute cool-down in the car.
On film
she's a little more like wired i think but it's good because that means i can like keep testing
because the concrete's hot um i needed to do a couple reps on there
So it might be locking her up, actually.
like maybe a six.
that is way looser than when i put it on earlier what what happened
so actually I did a mistake that every now and then I make is where
stormy what what is your problem i had you doing down the other day come on there we go you know
so she whined right there which you think that'd be a bad sign back it's a good sign it's like kind of like the last little bit of like fine i'm not gonna fight this anymore sometimes i mean it depends on that
of hot. So we'll go, we're going to do a little cool down. Go chill in the car and hang out
2026-08-31, early afternoon: twelve minutes of a command that will not come
2026-08-31 13:45 by title. watch.
Roughly fifteen attempts at one command and no progress. She refuses, goes part way and pops out, hides, and makes noise. The handler stays flat and encouraging the whole way through - 'you got this i believe in you', 'It's okay, but I need you to do the command for me' - names the noise as drama once and declines to respond to it, and twice stops the sequence on purpose to restore her mood, saying out loud that he is doing it to get the tail wagging again. He refuses to bank a down that lands badly. Then, at twelve minutes, he calls a break rather than winning the rep. That last decision is the session's content: this is what the middle of a hard command looks like from the inside, and it is the only recording in Stormie's set that is entirely unsuccessful. It is also the one published last, eight days after the dog went home.
On film
I'm going to decompress out here for a little bit.
down there we go stormy try that down that's not it either come on stormy you got this i believe in you come on oh no oh you messed it up you almost had it come on can we try one more time
I know I know you're trying to be dramatic. I don't want you to be though
Didn't look too pretty I don't like that.
all right so I'm gonna let her like kind of reset stormy let's go good job yeah they get that tail wagging again she'll be in a good mood
Stormy, come on. Hey, come here. It's okay, but I need you to do the command for me. You're not, Stormy, you can't hide, I'm telling you.
we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be back.
2026-08-31, evening: the house holds the old rulesTurning point
Published 2026-08-31. watch, fifty-eight minutes at the family's home.
The second of the two in-between owner sessions, and the one where the curriculum is actually handed over. Its stated purpose is the house rather than the dog: behaviour has to be generalised, and the house is where the dog's older rules still live. Forty of the fifty-eight minutes are teaching. The four quadrants are named and then subordinated to a better rule - the dog decides which one is which. The two markers are separated by job. The fixed order is stated with its one exception. Then the e-collar is taught as hardware: charging, pairing, fit at two fingers with no twist, which side of the neck and why, which of the three buttons they may ever use, why the vibrate must never be used as a warning, and the number - around 18, never above about 20. Both owners take turns handling her while their timing is corrected live, and the faults found are all theirs: a stim never fired, a stim fired late, a release word said in a voice that sounds like a punishment, and the habit of reaching for the remote where the dog can see it. The one new fact about the dog is the audience effect: she vocalises and gives a pitiful look during the down in front of her family, and at the park she fights for five seconds and makes no noise. The trainer also gets a household rule wrong on camera - he assumes she is not allowed on the furniture - and says so; the intake had that answer four weeks earlier (source: intake).
On film
you do have to generalize the behavior so like in like the training room we have um she looks great right or if i'm out of the park it looks great but in her brain like the house right that's where all the old rules are
if you play a game with them and you hit the e-collar some of them will take the e-collar as like encouragement like yeah like i like this let's go more whereas a nervous dog that hates physical touch is going to take petting them as a punishment so dog decides what's what
the e-collar always comes after never before there is only one time that you can use the e-collar without a word and that is if she pulls on the leash and the only way that you don't use the word is if you can time it to where you hit the button right as she hits the end of the leash
so sometimes it's loose sometimes it's tighter but not quite there um what happens is like you got to turn it up a ton for them to feel anything and then you put on a little tighter the next day and it's at the same level and the dog's like oh my god this is so high
she she sits pretty low um i would say i really never take her like over a 20. so i'd say like you could leave it on i leave it on about 18 for swarming
it's like mom counts down to three two one and you don't get to one because you're in trouble yeah and if all of a sudden mom hit one a couple times then she was like yeah never mind you'd be like i can get away with more stuff now
because she's trying to like put on like a drama show for you guys she's like
there was a lab I was working with like when I was first learning how to train dogs and he did really good and then I kept drilling commands all of a sudden he was like running away from me and like not listening and his whole body language changed and I found out that yeah it was like wasn't necessarily the command that was bad it was the frequency of it that was encouraging him to like repress himself
other people they have to learn to do it for their dog so I say that we train the people almost as much as we train the dogs
2026-09-01: a number, and a technique being invented
2026-09-01 18:52 by title. watch.
A solo field session days before handover, and the one that states what she is and how she was trained. The stated job is narrow - tune up the down, then the long line, then off leash. Almost everything else is commentary, and it is the most exposed commentary in her set. He describes her difficulty as testing rather than as impulse control. He shows the correction for breaking the down before the release. He explains the technique he says he is developing for the dogs currently coming through - say the word, then climb the level fast rather than starting high, on the reasoning that the dog reads the trend, complies early, and is not actually hurt. Then he loses his temper for a second, says so on camera, credits the dog with reading it, and repairs it out loud. He closes with an honest fraction - seven times in ten on the verbal - a thirty-second hold he immediately discounts to maybe twenty, and a decision to stop because the dog's heat tolerance and not his own endurance is the limit. Two lines carry the whole program, and both are addressed to her.
On film
she's going home in a few days, and we just needed to tune her up a little bit more,
she's, the, the bully breeds right, they really hate middle, I've been talking about that a lot, because they've all been testing me for fun,
so here's what we're gonna reinforce and this is not fun but that's how you gotta do it
she's just very affectionate and she wants to be close so we're just having to kind of like drill it like not take the affection out
full program man you fought me like crazy
the way you do it is when it cranks up really fast the dog's like oh it's getting like stronger really fast and i'm like fine i'll do it and that way you don't end up like you don't actually hurt dog
oh you could tell i'm not gonna lie i got like actually annoyed there for a second i felt bad that i got like really annoyed but i think she could tell and just walked over and did it
and like she does it off verbal i'd say say we're gonna see seven out of ten times
i think that was 30 i've always counted fast so i might only be like 20 but
2026-09-02: the down lands, and the fight moves to the heelTurning point
2026-09-02 14:30 by title. watch.
The down is graded nine out of ten, and one rep lands with no stim at all after visible deliberation. So the work has moved to the heel, and the heel is where everything that used to happen on the down now happens - she fights it, avoids him behind a trash can, and goes blank on a command she demonstrably knows. This is the session with the best single piece of method in her whole record: rather than assume avoidance, he runs a clarity test. He stops saying the word altogether and shapes the position with the leash, on the stated principle that if the problem is clarity this will fix it on the spot - and he names the cause of that kind of confusion, which is teaching other commands in between. When she keeps doing it and pulls against the collar with her neck, he switches verdicts on the evidence of the neck and stops giving her the option. Twice he breaks off to repair her state, telling her out loud that he is not angry and that being wrong while learning is not something to be angry about. He says, unprompted and alone, that he hates hitting the button. When she screams on one stim he first says the collar is not even high, then checks, corrects himself on camera, and holds the read anyway. The heel at the end is graded good, not amazing, with nobody there to hear it.
On film
So, we're getting like nine out of 10 with the down on her.
She thought about it. I didn't hit the button that time though.
So, this is something that I do sometimes is sometimes when the dog uh does a command and I teach a couple other commands. We come back to it like to heal in this case. Um I try not to assume that the dog is just like actively avoiding doing what I want him to do. So, what I'll do is I stop saying the word and I just start doing the position with the leash. And what that does for me is that if there was some kind of confusion, some kind of problem with the clarity, then that'll fix it right then and there.
second time she's done it. She did this for me on a down the other time too where it's like all of a sudden she's just acting like she didn't know how to do it. She's like really yanking on me there with her neck which tells me like she kind of knows what's going on and she's just avoiding because she's like I just really don't want to do this.
just showing her like, "Hey, all is good. I'm not mad at you." Yeah. Come on, Stormy. Like, we're not mad. She just didn't want to do something and now she's kind of in like a bad headsp space. So, I'm just showing her like we're all good. A yeah, we're all good. I'm not mad at you. You're here to learn. Why would I be mad at you for learning?
sorry, I don't want to hit the button. I don't. I hate it every time I hit the button. I really do.
Yeah, it was a little higher than I thought it was. But no, she's she's she's whining cuz she doesn't want to do it cuz she hates it.
Okay, good job. That was a good heel. It's not amazing, but
The heat's definitely sucking her out though for sure. I can hear her breathing. She's not exhausted yet, but she's a little like that kind of thing. Tells me she's getting tired.
2026-09-03, afternoon: trade the collar for handsTurning point
2026-09-03 14:20 by title. watch.
Eleven minutes on the last day, and the session where the method changes. The handler states it himself in the first forty seconds: this is a tune-up before she goes home, the down is what is being tuned, and because she is young there has to be less pressure on her, because too much and she shuts down fairly quickly. The specific trade is named - less e-collar, more physical pressure, explicitly capped at 'not overwhelming' - and so is the fact that this is exactly what he intends to say at the handover in four hours' time. Then the method works: downs that land, one where he narrates her visibly weighing whether to break and then not breaking, and a shake-off he calls out as the thing he is looking for. The fighting, the vocal drama and the avoidance that dominate the previous three days are simply absent. Whether that is the dog consolidating or the input changing is not something the session can tell you, and the more economical reading is the second: the collar came down, the hands came up, and the clock was capped at ten to fifteen minutes by the weather.
On film
we're just kind of tuning things up before she goes home um anything i'm tuning up it's just a down that she's got
making sure that because she's younger we gotta make sure that there's less pressure on her because right now like if you go in too much with the pressure it still shut down fairly quickly so that's something i'm going to go over actually on the drop off today
using less e-collar with her and just more physical pressure
yeah just using more physical pressure with her um not overwhelming yeah that shake was really good that's what we're looking for
so you can see she's kind of like thinking about it all right you're good yeah she's thinking about it she's like should i get up
hey nope see i was about to release her
we really can only be out here for maybe 10-15 minutes because he kept that around 10-15 minutes anyways because because of the weather right now
We can wait about 30 seconds.
2026-09-03, evening: the handover, and a number the trainer did not have to giveTurning point
2026-09-03 18:54 by title. watch, fifty-four minutes, ending in the signature.
The frame of the whole session is that nothing here is new teaching - she knows the commands - and the only real variable is whether this family will make her do them. He opens on charging the word up, names her tactic precisely, and hands the family a checklist of the forms it takes: pretending not to know, going slow, yelping, rolling onto the belly, hiding behind the blinds. Their single job for the first week is not to let any of it work. Against that he sets the counterweight, twice: the risk with this dog runs toward too much pressure, not too little, so the ladder is marker, then point, then the collar around 20, and turning it up is the last resort. Then the rules that police the method's own side effects - the nope cannot be too high but the reinforcement marker can; never hit the collar at the sight of another animal, because her fear period is opening and that is how a nervous dog gets made. He refuses to sand her down: light repression of a behaviour is acceptable, repression of the personality is not, and he would not want to make her less goofy. The family set the remaining rules themselves. Both owners work her, and she takes the down from the second one on the marker alone after two repetitions. Asked how confident he is, he gives seven and a half out of ten, names the reason - he thinks they will be too soft - and says he gives nobody a ten. Then the signature, and she is theirs.
On film
she just the thing about it is you have to charge the word up um you know like if you didn't know what a word meant in another language you'd be like whatever but like if you knew that the word meant we're gonna execute you'd be like oh okay right
so because she's a bully breed type dog um they all have like tendencies to avoid so they might know what you're asking them to do and they'll still kind of like pretend like they don't know how to do it or they'll like yelp or they'll lay on their belly and try to like submit to not do it so what i want both of you guys to focus on for like the first week she's here is just focus on not letting her avoid
So the biggest thing is not applying too much pressure.
I would, I would say like when you're doing the reinforcement marker, you have to be more careful. Whereas you don't have to be as careful with how high it is. it can be too low but the thing about the nope is that you're trying to build an aversion so it's more just like you're trying to make her be like that was a bad idea so whereas if you're doing a reinforcement it can be too high and they can build like weird aversions to command because they're like last time he told me to do this i didn't listen and then i got hit on like 65 and i don't want to do that again
You don't want to build, like, unnecessary nervousness and fear because I don't want Stormy to come back a year from now and be a nervous case.
what i think about the dog training if not you're getting the like repression and i'm really like super against that like very morally against repressing a dog in very light doses it's okay
look i trained her but she's still gonna be a goofy like i don't honestly i i wouldn't want to like make her not goofy you know what i mean i still want them to be them
she's so like she had to do the marker but you did about two times right
I give it like a seven and a half out of ten the reason but I'll tell you why I don't I'm not confident that you guys don't understand what I'm saying I specifically if I'm being real with you I'm worried that you're gonna be a little too soft
10 out of 10 for anybody though because like if they were like 10 out of 10 i believe in them then like why are they hiring me as a trainer why am i coming out here and doing these sessions and showing you how to do it properly
Now she's yours.
Skills
Down
How it was taught
Several methods in sequence, and the sequence is the case. Then the move that works: block the sit, because from a sit she can brace, and apply pressure with the escape route removed. The moment the position happens, a big happy. From there it is drilled outdoors by pushing her into the shape, with the drills deliberately kept fun, reps rejected if she rolls onto her side, and the collar withheld the instant she offers it unprompted.
On film
times. She hasn't done it since the first couple times. Stormy will not
And then just don't let the sit happen?
and I didn't eat all that time she just did it actually which is what we want I don't want to eat all it
you can train it the way I've been doing it with her is pressure and then release the freedom which is basically where you don't back off of the pressure until the dog does what you needed to do
that was so good she's got to get it verbal only
and like she does it off verbal i'd say say we're gonna see seven out of ten times
So, we're getting like nine out of 10 with the down on her.
stormy the down is one of the trickiest downs i have ever had to teach a dog because she hates it so much like usually they learn they're like i don't like it but i'll do it
We can wait about 30 seconds.
We're going to do an old school down. We're just pulling into it.
Place
How it was taught
In-house, as its own concentrated session rather than as something tacked onto other work, in counted reps, in a room being used for other things. Duration first, then the other two of the three Ds one at a time. People deliberately come in and out as the distraction, and the door is used as the canonical test. The stated end state is domestic: place while the front door opens, place while the owner cooks, without being re-cued every two seconds. On a different cot in a different house, expect to place her two or three times before it reads as the same exercise, and the rule is all four paws on and none on the ground.
On film
What I find interesting is that she's going there and sitting in the ground before you go.
So typically that's like a concentrated session of like, we're just going to work on place.
um place for a dog like her who impulse control is she's not very gifted with impulse control so making her sit there for five or ten minutes on place is like a whole workout for her because she's having to really try to push to not break the rules
well I don't love was it's the three D's I feel like there's got to be a better name for that but it's what they call it and you add distance duration and distraction you don't and you don't add to you always like until one's good then you add another one so what we start with is duration
i think the longest i've had her stay on place successfully was about 10 minutes or so which is really great that's like a goal time usually that i go for
you know like say let's say you're gonna walk out the front door you know you can tell her place place and she'll go she'll sit there and she'll wait and say you go cook something in the kitchen real quick because you don't want her in the kitchen while you're cooking you know the idea is that that is something that can happen without it being like every two seconds
so the thing about place is that if you use like a different place cot it still works but i usually have to put them on there like two or three times and they kind of get like okay this is the same thing as what we did earlier
we have the place cuts that are the one like those are big enough where all four paws can fit so that's how we train it is that all four paws can't touch the ground
Sit, and the implied stay
How it was taught
One cue opens a window; the release word closes it; the cue is never repeated. If she breaks, the reinforcement marker, then the collar, then she is physically returned to where she was. The formality is what makes the test meaningful - a dog not officially in a command cannot break one. Built incrementally rather than declared finished, and slower for her than for the adult dogs because she is a puppy.
On film
which is talking about like conditioning right so that's how we do that is if every single time i go and and then she feels the collar and then i move her back into the sit she learns what the word means
eventually down um and what we call an implied stay so you know it's where we have them sit and then we just walk away
no the goal is that she doesn't pop up and follow but you know it's just building up that stamina with her it's a little bit slower just because she's young she's a puppy
i want to put her in the command officially that way she doesn't get up you got it
job yeah so that was really great
she'll do the implied stay because we train all of our dogs so when you say okay that's when they get up so you don't have to keep going stay say you say sit and the dog just stays there until you release them because nobody wants to stay stay like 15 times
the way it is you say sit the window is active and the window is closed once you give the release if you keep saying sit over and over you can train the dog that it's like they learn that oh i need to hear the word over and over and then that defeats everything that i taught them and makes your life harder
just put her in a set is mainly i'm showing you guys how to use the e-collar mechanics so we're just using the set command because it's the easiest one to teach
Loose leash, and the collar-marked radius
How it was taught
Two stages, explained at the handover as a history rather than taught as a lesson. First the collar is paired with hitting the end of the leash, so that the sensation of the flat collar and the sensation of the e-collar become one event. Then the leash is taken out of it: at a certain distance while walking, the collar marks the distance, so what she is reading is her range from the handler rather than the line. The long yellow cord is the tool for that transition. The stated reason is that the leash cannot survive its own removal.
On film
with me she doesn't pull on the leash at all anymore um with the jumping too like I'm correcting
but she doesn't pull on me anymore, none of that stuff, so she's doing good
the e-collar always comes after never before there is only one time that you can use the e-collar without a word and that is if she pulls on the leash and the only way that you don't use the word is if you can time it to where you hit the button right as she hits the end of the leash
She'll just learn this. When she gets to the end, that's when she gets punished.
so kind of the way i have it is that at first um i do like a thing where when they hit the leash i think i talked about that the collar gets gets it and like they equate the sensation of e collar to the flat collar so then they stop pulling um and then eventually what we moved on to is when i'm walking with her when she hits a certain length i hit the e-collar and what that does is it makes her be aware of of the how far she is from you
if you teach her that it's all all about like leash pressure. What happens when you take her off leash is you can't have leash pressure only and have off leash. You kind of like, they just can't coexist together.
Let's go - and why it is not 'come'
How it was taught
By never skipping it. It is said every single time they pass a dog, so that the sight of a dog comes to predict the cue - which is what produces the finished behaviour. The definition is kept strictly separate from the recall: come means stop and plant in front of me, let's go means unfixate and move along in my general direction. It also does duty inside sessions as transport, ending bad runs and moving her to shade.
On film
whereas the let's go is a directional thing where it's like stormy let's go and we're just going to kind of move in this like general direction it's more of just like a hey you're fixated on something
go and then she immediately unfixates and follows along and it's the same thing with the dogs if i say let's go every single time we walk by a dog her brain starts to go well every time we walk by a dog he says let's go i'm going to predict it this time and so it just looks like a seamless i don't care about the dog okay right
so when i come out here stormy thinks oh i can run up to dogs it's no problem but i say let's go she doesn't listen gets the e-collar and she's like oh i gotta go along
it's just the conditioning she's not really fighting me on it she's just not the conditioning isn't quite there let's go for every single time she gets fixated on something to automatically do it so we're just i'm still
on the walk I tell her let's go and now she kind of equates people and other dogs to like the command and so it just looks like she doesn't care
i tell people the dogs probably will test you when they see like other animals right so what you do to reinforce that is you give them the let's go and you don't want to hit the e-collar just when they start running the reason for that is if they if you hit the e-collar while they're running towards another animal what you can accidentally do is build a version so they learn that that thing's bad it's dangerous
Recall
How it was taught
Barely, on camera. It is defined against 'let's go', demonstrated, and then deferred: to the back yard on drop-off day with a forty-foot line, and then to the family's own neighbourhood after handover. The long line is measured out in the living room at the end of the home session and its purpose explained - teaching a recall at distance before anything is tested off leash - and it is never seen in use.
On film
and i don't like her recall it's kind of hard to it's hard to train a recall in the room so that's again what i'm doing but a recall kind of looks like this if i go stormy come right and again she doesn't know it but she has to stop right here and stand in front of me
Stormy, let's go. Dude. Come. Stormy, come. Good job. Good job.
wouldn't look great yes we'll go in the backyard on our last session when she
it because you can teach a recall with this because the dogs can run out for a while and
and as far as the recall goes her recall like she doesn't really fight or anything and she loves you
Heel
How it was taught
By shaping with the leash rather than by repeating the word, once the word produced confusion. When the clarity test does not fix it and she pulls against the collar with her neck, the verdict flips to avoidance and the exit is removed. The level is raised for her build. Failed runs are broken off and returned to, and the plan is repetition until she gets the idea. The trainer is explicitly relaxed about her downing or sitting inside the heel.
On film
heel, but she doesn't pull on me anymore,
only command that I'm not gonna show here that I'm gonna show on the drop off
So, she thinks that I'm trying to like get her to down into it. She's not. I had her doing it the other day.
Okay. Good. Heal. We're just going to get more of that till you kind of get the idea.
So, I'm cool like if she downs in the heel or sits in the heel, but I just
Okay, good job. That was a good heel. It's not amazing, but
Jumping up - the family's one named problem
How it was taught
Not by banning it. The trainer asks whether they want it, refuses to punish a behaviour they like, and then makes it illegal on one person only - corrected every single time on the young person in the household, and left alone on the adults. The size argument is given as the reason not to wait. The procedure handed over is the marker plus the collar, plus physically pulling her off.
On film
whereas if she's jumping or maybe stealing food off of a table or she
nope you can't jump on me though that's not a lot you know that
do you want her to hop on you okay see I don't want to punish it if you don't cuz a lot of people don't but I don't like to assume something
If you have it where she jumps on you, she jumps on you, but he doesn't like it, and she gets the e-collar every time she jumps on him, she'll learn really quick, like, oh, he's off limits.
the other thing too is like she's gonna get a lot bigger before he does so if it's already a problem with her jumping on him now when she gets like full size
while she's in here she's like kind of testing like who can I jump on who can I you know is it allowed is it not so because you guys are cool with her jumping on you the rule kind of needs to be set
if you if it's a certain area you don't want them across you just hit the e-collar every time they pass a certain area
Performing a command without touching the handler
How it was taught
By refusing the contact, every day, as a drill in its own right. It is the strangest item in her curriculum and it is named as a property of the dog rather than as a fault: she is very affectionate and wants to be close, so the distance has to be trained.
On film
she's just very affectionate and she wants to be close so we're just having to kind of like drill it like not take the affection out
she's just so like she's such a physical she's got to like be near you and any command she's got to like be touching your foot
down you can't lay on me when you do it
Stormy down. She just sometimes loves to do it in the middle of my legs.
one of the because she is so physical one of the big things you can do is just reward her with like just petting on her and stuff
You're not allowed to lie with with my legs, I'm sorry.
Off leash - announced, never begun
How it was taught
It was not. The long line is measured out in a living room and explained, and never used. The collar-marked radius is the groundwork and it is treated as done. The one thing anybody does about the goal is to make it conditional: do not take her off leash until you can control her on one, because off-leash reliability is on-leash control with the leash removed, not a state you graduate into.
On film
and then really like I'm gonna start taking that the long line and getting there prepped and getting there ready to go off leash
don't go and be like, yay, she's been back for 20 minutes. Guess what we're going to do? Off leash, downtown Raleigh, right? That's a terrible idea.
that's a recipe for disaster to just take a dog off leash without like any
Don't take your dog off-leash until you can control them on a leash.
if you're going to make them do what I taught them that first week, if they're being stubborn with you and you can only get them to do half the commands when they know you're handling them, them when they know there's nothing on them that does not magically turn into like you know what i'm saying it's it's not just gonna like magically fall to place
go like fully off leash like that make sure that you can go on a walk in your neighborhood because if you can't control the dog in the neighborhood you can't control them in the middle of the woods when there's a bunch of squirrels and especially a dog like her who's like a bully breed she has that prey drive naturally
How the method adapted
Stormie is not a fear case and she is not a bite case, so almost none of the method's famous machinery applies to her. The adaptations below are the specific moves that were made for her, in roughly the order they were made.
When the pressure did not work, the escape route was removed rather than the pressure raised. The whole of the down turns on seven words.
Because the refusal was diagnosed as anatomy rather than attitude: a dog who can reach a sit has somewhere to brace from. Closing the sit leaves the pressure only one exit, and it worked inside two minutes after three days of nothing.
On film
sometimes it's hard if they do it from the sit, because she was going into the down, but, like, I was seeing, like, if you don't let her get into the sit where she can brace.
Well, what I was trying to do here, I was trying to pressure her into it, so I was going to press it and pull it down.
And then just don't let the sit happen?
The celebration was prescribed as part of the technique, not left to the handler's temperament.
Because the position is only half the job. The instruction is to get her there and then make a big happy, and her first down in that session is marked hard.
On film
Good girl! Yes, yes, yes!
And once you get her there, then just make like a big happy.
But like Stormy, I mean, I'll just like get her, get her, just get her there.
You did it. You did it. Hooray.
I feel like both of them are good at this. Like Rocco, I get it. He's strong and dominant. But like Stormy, I mean, it's like get it get it just get it in there.
Food is not her currency: treats are argued against at the home lesson, with a mechanism.
On film
we don't use treats because treats can be one of those things where the dog is like oh you told me to sit but i don't see a treat
because you really can't train without some kind of reward right so we do use like negative reinforcement which is a lot of pressure but the dogs really aren't going to enjoy themselves if it's all pressure and nothing positive um then you kind of get into like old school dog training which we're we're balanced
The reward was found empirically, from her body rather than from the form, and it is touch.
Because she is a physical dog, so physical contact is what she will work for. The intake had named play as her motivator (source: intake) and no toy appears anywhere in her twenty-two recordings.
On film
hey you want to give me a lick oh thank you good job good job so i'm just trying to motivate her
one of the because she is so physical one of the big things you can do is just reward her with like just petting on her and stuff
it's like one of my favorite dog training phrases and it's make sure that the reward for listening is greater than the reward for being disobedient.
The e-collar level was searched for in both directions rather than set and defended - and the reasoning was spoken aloud while it happened.
Because the level that registers changes with the dog's arousal. Fifteen does not reach an over-excited dog; twenty overshoots; eighteen is the number. Later the same logic runs downward: a dog that locks up under a level is not being motivated by it, so the level comes down - to about a six.
On film
I'm going to have the collar start at about a 15,
I have the E color turned up a little more than I would usually have. It's on about a 20 right now. Mm, let's take it down to 18. 20 feels like a little bit of a jump. Yeah, we'll do 18.
So it might be locking her up, actually.
We're gonna turn it way lower.
if a dog's on like a 10 for distraction I have to turn the voltage up versus if it's like a three I don't need it to be nearly as high when she comes home the number stays a constant but during the training process it is pretty dynamic
Before the dog was judged, the equipment was checked - and it turned out to be the fault.
Because a collar that has worked loose delivers nothing, and every rep taken on it is uninterpretable. The trainer finds it by hand mid-session, says so on camera, re-seats it, and never goes back to work out which of the failed reps were real. The same variable is then taught to the family as a level in its own right: an inconsistent fit is what makes people crank the number and burn the dog the next day.
On film
that is way looser than when i put it on earlier what what happened
that's the e-collar stronger right now or it's actually on her properly so i'm gonna see what she does stormy down
it's too tight you choke out the dog which is not like a preferred way to keep it on them um but if it's too loose it won't do anything
so sometimes it's loose sometimes it's tighter but not quite there um what happens is like you got to turn it up a ton for them to feel anything and then you put on a little tighter the next day and it's at the same level and the dog's like oh my god this is so high
you take your two fingers like this right and basically move your face there we go you can fit the two like that it's good however if you can twist it like this then it's too loose
The collar was reset for her before the first rep, because the previous dog had been a much larger, harder adult.
Because the level that was necessary for a bodybuilder bully is unnecessary and unfair on a puppy. It is a thirty-second habit that prevents exactly the accident the go-home trainer describes having made early in his career with a remote left unlocked on high.
On film
maybe making my job tricky put this on high maybe we should turn that down
for her size yeah well I was working with a bodybuilder
two wiener dogs I was working with and we were using the old type of e-collar back then and I put it in my pocket and I forgot to hit the lock button and so it cranked it all the way up to high and I hit the button and the wiener dog was like and I was like why are you whining and I looked at I was like oh I had it on high right so that I felt really bad about that and like ever since since then I've been like really careful.
Over-drilling was named as the handler's own recurring fault, stopped in the middle of the session it was happening in, and answered by letting her run.
Because dogs differ in how long they can be drilled before they close up, and the response to a dog who has closed up is movement, not more repetitions. The same principle is taught to the family from the other end, with a first-hand case and an observable: the tail dropping and the dog going spacey.
On film
so actually I did a mistake that every now and then I make is where
all right he's a little frozen so we're gonna let's chill out let me run around for a little bit and see how this goes
we want to give them a second to chill out between each command especially if it's like a new thing uh because you can drill a dog too fast and that creates like repression the longer the dog is with me of course the more commands we can do because the load gets higher
there was a lab I was working with like when I was first learning how to train dogs and he did really good and then I kept drilling commands all of a sudden he was like running away from me and like not listening and his whole body language changed and I found out that yeah it was like wasn't necessarily the command that was bad it was the frequency of it that was encouraging him to like repress himself
Reps were rejected on shape, and the reason given was about meaning rather than about tidiness.
A down taken by rolling onto the side would teach her that the word produces a belly rub. A down that looks ugly is not banked. But the quality bar is deliberately set below perfect - the position, not the limbs - because enforcing limb positions would be the wrong kind of precision on this dog.
On film
But I'm not trying to teach this. I'm The down is the key word to get a belly rub to come in
so I'm not gonna enforce it like that it's more of just like I just need that kind of that position position
Didn't look too pretty I don't like that.
that isn't no it's not allowed I'll allow that you just can't roll over.
Compulsion was paired with an explicit guardrail: the shape is forced and the drills are kept fun on purpose.
Because she is not going to volunteer the position, so it has to be produced - and because producing it repeatedly without protecting the association would poison the command. It is the most concrete statement in her file of how compulsion is meant to be bounded.
On film
we're going to go over this field over here i'm kind of going to try to force her into the down position
so I'm gonna have to push her into that shape because she is just not gonna be in love with them and we're gonna have to use several of those drills while keeping things pretty fun
stormy down maybe hey okay so we're gonna have to down I'm not gonna hurt
The ground she had to put her elbows on was treated as a training variable in its own right, and then as policy.
Because she downed on grass within seconds and would not down on concrete, and the fix was reps on the concrete rather than around it. Two days later the same handler states it as a rule: the commands are learned on concrete first and then everywhere else, and the venue is chosen because it looks like somewhere an owner would really walk a dog.
On film
because the concrete's hot um i needed to do a couple reps on there
It's important to get the dogs to go on with the commands on concrete and then like other places too,
And actually this area is like a lot like an area that somebody would walk their dog around.
The more arousing venue was chosen on purpose, because a wired dog is a better test than a calm one.
Impulse control cannot be tested where there is nothing to resist. The park that winds her up more is the point of going there, and the venue ladder is stated as a progression with downtown Raleigh at the top of it.
On film
she's a little more like wired i think but it's good because that means i can like keep testing
this park actually um maybe a couple like store videos sometimes i'll take the dogs like to downtown raleigh that's like kind of like a final test the final boss
So like these days I have like Home Depot, downtown Angier, and then the
Before a failed command was called refusal, a clarity test was run - and the cause of the confusion was named as the training schedule rather than the dog.
Because the same behaviour has two very different causes and correcting the wrong one is a mistake. Dropping the word and supplying the position with the leash fixes a clarity problem on the spot and changes nothing if the problem is willingness. The tell that flips the verdict is physical: she pulls against the collar with her neck, which is a thing a confused dog does not do.
On film
So, this is something that I do sometimes is sometimes when the dog uh does a command and I teach a couple other commands. We come back to it like to heal in this case. Um I try not to assume that the dog is just like actively avoiding doing what I want him to do. So, what I'll do is I stop saying the word and I just start doing the position with the leash. And what that does for me is that if there was some kind of confusion, some kind of problem with the clarity, then that'll fix it right then and there.
second time she's done it. She did this for me on a down the other time too where it's like all of a sudden she's just acting like she didn't know how to do it. She's like really yanking on me there with her neck which tells me like she kind of knows what's going on and she's just avoiding because she's like I just really don't want to do this.
Once it was avoidance, the answer was to take away the exit - physically - rather than to raise the level.
Because the avoidance is the behaviour being reinforced, not the refusal. At the handover the trainer twice chooses to walk her out of the avoidance rather than start with the collar, and says out loud that he does not enjoy that part, and that sometimes showing her there is no option is the whole of it.
On film
And I'm not going to let her like a lot of it cuz that's what she's trying to do right now.
so this right here is actually an example he's avoiding he's like i'm gonna hide behind the blinds so i'm gonna just kind of yank her out of it right that's the big thing is just like just don't let him
i don't love doing this part it's not my jam but it's what it is so in this case i'm not gonna start with the collar i'm just gonna grab her out of the avoidance part because sometimes that's really all you have to do is just show like you don't have an option
You're not gonna avoid me. This is not how we do this.
The crying was declared in advance not to be a stop signal - and then the test for telling refusal from distress was made physical rather than acoustic.
Because she cries, and because backing off a crying dog is how the behaviour got installed. The rule is stated before the work starts in one session, read as the end of the fight in another, checked against the actual dial in a third, and finally taught to the family with an observable they can use: relaxed ears mean she is declining, not hurting.
On film
so here's the secret you just go she's gonna cry and it's open and the thing is it's okay it's just it's part of the rules
so she whined right there which you think that'd be a bad sign back it's a good sign it's like kind of like the last little bit of like fine i'm not gonna fight this anymore sometimes i mean it depends on that
Yeah, it was a little higher than I thought it was. But no, she's she's she's whining cuz she doesn't want to do it cuz she hates it.
yeah so that that was on like a it was like halfway too she's just being that she just doesn't want to do it and she's like if i whine in front of my people maybe he'll get scared and won't make me do what i what he wants me to do but you see that like if you look her ears are not like shot up or anything they're like relaxed she's just looking at me like man freak you like that's all it is
The audience effect was named to the audience, in the room, while it was happening.
Because the family are the audience it is aimed at, and because a handover that does not inoculate them against the yelp hands the dog back her best tool.
On film
because she's trying to like put on like a drama show for you guys she's like
said so basically said why are you you don't make that noise when it's just me
is when there's more people around she'll actually yelp and be dramatic and like try to make people feel bad for her because then people would go away and she'd go back to like not yelping
i will all right but yeah i can see like during those moments if she does like the the yelp i
Repair was built into the sessions as a step rather than offered as consolation - and the criterion for when to resume was the tail.
Because a dog who has refused ends up in a state she cannot be asked from, and because the thing that needs saying to her is that being wrong while learning is not something to be angry about. Two handlers do this independently, one alone with a camera, one with a camera operator present, and neither has an audience to perform it for.
On film
all right so I'm gonna let her like kind of reset stormy let's go good job yeah they get that tail wagging again she'll be in a good mood
Stormy, come on. Hey, come here. It's okay, but I need you to do the command for me. You're not, Stormy, you can't hide, I'm telling you.
Okay. We're going to walk around for a minute. We're going to try to re get into that.
just showing her like, "Hey, all is good. I'm not mad at you." Yeah. Come on, Stormy. Like, we're not mad. She just didn't want to do something and now she's kind of in like a bad headsp space. So, I'm just showing her like we're all good. A yeah, we're all good. I'm not mad at you. You're here to learn. Why would I be mad at you for learning?
They get mad at a kid cuz he didn't know what he didn't know how to do the equation in school even though he's trying to learn.
The handler's own state was put on the record as a variable in the dog's behaviour - including a flash of temper, and a dislike of the tool.
Because he thinks she read it, and because saying so is the only way the read is checkable. In a separate session a different narration says, alone and unprompted, that he hates hitting the button every time he does it. Neither remark is addressed to a client.
On film
oh you could tell i'm not gonna lie i got like actually annoyed there for a second i felt bad that i got like really annoyed but i think she could tell and just walked over and did it
you just annoyed me for a second but that's part of the training every dog annoys me at least
sorry, I don't want to hit the button. I don't. I hate it every time I hit the button. I really do.
i'm sorry That was my bad. Okay, come here. I can't allow it. It's a rule.
oh no that smells no sorry my bad she was like what the
Heat was treated as a hard ceiling on the whole program, not as weather.
Because she is a bully breed in a North Carolina August. It cuts the owner lesson short, it explains her dropping tempo at fifteen minutes, it buys a planned twenty-minute cool-down in an air-conditioned car, it is read off her breathing, and on the last day it caps the session at ten to fifteen minutes before it starts. The rule the handler states is that the dog's tolerance and not the handler's endurance is the limit.
On film
I should wrap it up, she's looking pretty.
any of the bully breed dogs like this like I talked about all the time especially this summer just because like you can see her moving at a slower
of hot. So we'll go, we're going to do a little cool down. Go chill in the car and hang out
i'm tired but you know i can put up with a lot more than the dog can in terms of once they're actually hot they're done
The heat's definitely sucking her out though for sure. I can hear her breathing. She's not exhausted yet, but she's a little like that kind of thing. Tells me she's getting tired.
we really can only be out here for maybe 10-15 minutes because he kept that around 10-15 minutes anyways because because of the weather right now
The rules she would live under were handed to the family to choose, not issued to them.
Because a rule the owner declines to set is the complaint that arrives by text a week later. Jumping is not banned, it is banned on one person. The kitchen line is theirs. Whether she may climb on a seated person is asked out loud. And the limit on the customisation is stated too: if they wanted a military-trained shepherd he would send them elsewhere.
On film
So do you want her on you or do you want her to not get on you while you're sitting down?
And then I go home and I get like some nasty text. It's like my dog doesn't listen
Like, some people, they get, like, really, they're like, my dog doesn't hug me anymore. Whereas other people are like, I hate the jumping, right?
Occasionally, that's not, like, possible. Like, sometimes people will have a certain idea in their head. Like, if you wanted her to act like a military-trained German shepherd, I'd be like, you're going to have to find someone else.
The correction was aimed at the refusal and never at the trigger, and the reason given was a fear the dog does not yet have.
Because her fear period was judged to be opening, and a collar delivered at the sight of another animal teaches her the animal is the danger. The failure mode is named with a timescale attached, and it is the method policing its own side effects rather than defending itself.
On film
um especially she's a puppy so when she goes through her figure cycle i she's i think she's
So if she's in her fear cycle and she sees, like, some geese or something, like a dog you're walking by, and you just hit that e-collar and you don't, like, say let's go or anything, she'll just learn that those animals are bad news.
You don't want to build, like, unnecessary nervousness and fear because I don't want Stormy to come back a year from now and be a nervous case.
And then when she doesn't listen, in her mind, she's being punished for not listening to a command.
The line between training the behaviour and repressing the dog was drawn out loud, and she was left goofy on purpose.
At the handover the same argument arrives as a moral line rather than a commercial one: light repression of a behaviour is acceptable, repression of the personality is not.
On film
so sometimes it does take a little bit longer in the program than we'd like it to but i would rather her just learn the impulse control be very comfortable with it as opposed to like traumatizing or repressing her into the to the impulse control
a week or two after she comes home and the repression goes away what happens the training goes away
smidgen of repression is not bad because it's more just like you're repressing that behavior but then it gets to the point where you're actively like repressing the personality and everything and That's not cool
look i trained her but she's still gonna be a goofy like i don't honestly i i wouldn't want to like make her not goofy you know what i mean i still want them to be them
Problems were provoked deliberately, so that nothing would appear for the first time in the family's hands.
Stated as a habit rather than as a plan for this dog, and demonstrated on her: thirty minutes of downs in downtown Angier for no purpose except to test whether she would avoid, and a place rep set up in the knowledge it would probably fail.
On film
like looking for problems and that sounds terrible but there's a lot of problems the dogs will do randomly so i got to make sure that they're all fixed when they go home
dear lord we were like out for like 30 minutes just doing downs just testing avoidance and
I was like, I wasn't certain that she was going to succeed, so.
You failed, but through failure, you learn to succeed.
What the family was told
The two channels: commands and markers
so you have you you have ways that we communicate with the dogs right and so there's two ways we do that we do that through markers and commands
so the way markers are is basically it's a word that you use to condition the dog to know if they've done something like good or bad right
we communicate is we have like markers and we have commands and the way that a marker works is a word that whenever you condition a dog you associate it to a word and that's a marker
Two markers, two jobs - and the reason it matters more than the correction does
and again if you say ant verse e-collar and then nope verse e-collar it looks exactly the same except minus like one word to the outside but to her brain she's taking the info as two very different things
It's either a, Oh, I need to go back into this. Like I messed up. Let me go back into this behavior or it means, Oh, that's a bad behavior. I can't do it ever again.
so reinforcement is anytime you put her in a command and she does not do it you want to reinforce like the hey i said this word you need to go into it
if i put her into a sit and she gets up well i need to reinforce that sit so i'm going to go in and then hit the e-collar and then she'll go back into position versus let's say she's jumping on somebody right and you don't want her to jump on somebody that's a nope because that's a behavior that we don't want
so in that case i use the note marker because if she bit a dog and then i went ash to be like wait look again right i can do it a little bit worse than that yeah whereas if it's a nope it's like you can't do this like this is a it's not allowed i don't want to see it again
The order: command, marker, collar - with exactly one exception
so we have like a kind of like when like little kids right like touching the stuff you're like don't do that and for her that's her reinforcement and the punishment is like allowed like nope and you'll always use one of those words and then the e-collar
the e-collar always comes after never before there is only one time that you can use the e-collar without a word and that is if she pulls on the leash and the only way that you don't use the word is if you can time it to where you hit the button right as she hits the end of the leash
so you always want to do the command first then the word or you'd like command then the marker that's like hey you didn't listen then the e-collar so the e-collar always comes last and if she doesn't listen after you use the e-collar she might be a little confused so you just want to give her like a gentle pull towards your direction
make sure that both of you have a good timing with the collar because sometimes people are really delayed and once the dog doesn't understand what you want you create confusion and then once there's confusion it's like really bad
The four operants - named, then deliberately thrown away
the four quadrants of operant conditioning that sounds fancy I'm not gonna make you repeat that to me I would make it sound really simple it's four right you have two you have two positives and two negatives so you have negative and positive punishment and the negative and positive reinforcement reinforcement means we're gonna encourage a behavior punishment as means we're gonna discourage it right
and it looks the same actually because it's more about how the dog receives the info right
so that's that's how we communicate with the dogs so you know i don't want you to think i was about to go down a whole psychological uh lecture it's very simple simple to understand it's just it sounds fancy
punishment reinforcement is is really reinforcement is you're encouraging a behavior punishment is you're actively discouraging a behavior so that's all it is so the funny thing is a dog decides which one is which
if you play a game with them and you hit the e-collar some of them will take the e-collar as like encouragement like yeah like i like this let's go more whereas a nervous dog that hates physical touch is going to take petting them as a punishment so dog decides what's what
The two ways a dog learns: conditioning, and prediction error
which is talking about like conditioning right so that's how we do that is if every single time i go and and then she feels the collar and then i move her back into the sit she learns what the word means
so that's the other way is when a dog predicts that something's gonna happen and that goes oh i was wrong then they adjust their behavior accordingly
um when they first come to us they're like oh when i pull my owner's like stop and just keeps pulling but does i don't have a consequence so i can pull as much as i want there's no problem they come with me and they pull and they feel the e-collar and they go that's weird that's not what was supposed to happen prediction error
yeah you get the two in tandem with each other where she's now realized that her prediction was wrong she adjusts accordingly and then on top of that she's been conditioned every time we go by by the dog she's already ready for me to say it but it looks really like it when you watch it you're just like oh she doesn't care about the dog but like psychologically there's like a whole entire thought process going on there
she just the thing about it is you have to charge the word up um you know like if you didn't know what a word meant in another language you'd be like whatever but like if you knew that the word meant we're gonna execute you'd be like oh okay right
'Let's go' is not 'come' - and it is what you use instead of a correction near another animal
whereas the let's go is a directional thing where it's like stormy let's go and we're just going to kind of move in this like general direction it's more of just like a hey you're fixated on something
so I didn't like a recall when you say come right she actually has to come up and plop in front of you whereas the let's go is like a directional thing
on the walk I tell her let's go and now she kind of equates people and other dogs to like the command and so it just looks like she doesn't care
i tell people the dogs probably will test you when they see like other animals right so what you do to reinforce that is you give them the let's go and you don't want to hit the e-collar just when they start running the reason for that is if they if you hit the e-collar while they're running towards another animal what you can accidentally do is build a version so they learn that that thing's bad it's dangerous
And then when she doesn't listen, in her mind, she's being punished for not listening to a command.
The implied stay, the release word, and the single most common owner failure
she'll do the implied stay because we train all of our dogs so when you say okay that's when they get up so you don't have to keep going stay say you say sit and the dog just stays there until you release them because nobody wants to stay stay like 15 times
the way it is you say sit the window is active and the window is closed once you give the release if you keep saying sit over and over you can train the dog that it's like they learn that oh i need to hear the word over and over and then that defeats everything that i taught them and makes your life harder
And if she gets up, make sure to move her back to where she was because that's another one is like, that's kind of how we communicate. Like, hey, I didn't tell you to get up, go back to where you were.
see maybe just a little more excitement okay there we go yeah you're okay sounds a little scary sound a little bit like a punishment
The thing is, I should be able to walk around, do my thing, talk back and forth. Right. Because that's like a very normal scenario for the house.
Place: the three Ds, the target behaviour, and what happens on a different cot
well I don't love was it's the three D's I feel like there's got to be a better name for that but it's what they call it and you add distance duration and distraction you don't and you don't add to you always like until one's good then you add another one so what we start with is duration
you know like say let's say you're gonna walk out the front door you know you can tell her place place and she'll go she'll sit there and she'll wait and say you go cook something in the kitchen real quick because you don't want her in the kitchen while you're cooking you know the idea is that that is something that can happen without it being like every two seconds
so the thing about place is that if you use like a different place cot it still works but i usually have to put them on there like two or three times and they kind of get like okay this is the same thing as what we did earlier
we have the place cuts that are the one like those are big enough where all four paws can fit so that's how we train it is that all four paws can't touch the ground
The e-collar as hardware: fit, side, buttons, and the number
she she sits pretty low um i would say i really never take her like over a 20. so i'd say like you could leave it on i leave it on about 18 for swarming
important thing about putting on the e-collar is whatever side you're gonna that you walk the dog on it needs to be on the opposite side
you take your two fingers like this right and basically move your face there we go you can fit the two like that it's good however if you can twist it like this then it's too loose
So the only one you're going to use is this black one right here that says S, this one right here. This is the only button you're ever going to need.
the black button i stormy would not love it if you hit the red button because that sends it about 10 to 15 higher yeah like i said it's for dogs that like you might hit that button if they're really tough or like they go to like try to bite a kid's face off
Never use a warning you will not honour
it's like mom counts down to three two one and you don't get to one because you're in trouble yeah and if all of a sudden mom hit one a couple times then she was like yeah never mind you'd be like i can get away with more stuff now
i know the analogy is like if you say something like you're like hey you can't do that and then maybe you don't care that much but you already said it so now it has to go because like it principle if you go back on your word then the kid learns like and it doesn't really matter right
The asymmetry that keeps the tool safe: the nope cannot be too high, the reinforcement marker can
I would, I would say like when you're doing the reinforcement marker, you have to be more careful. Whereas you don't have to be as careful with how high it is. it can be too low but the thing about the nope is that you're trying to build an aversion so it's more just like you're trying to make her be like that was a bad idea so whereas if you're doing a reinforcement it can be too high and they can build like weird aversions to command because they're like last time he told me to do this i didn't listen and then i got hit on like 65 and i don't want to do that again
but i'll tell you right now like you're you're not hurting her i wouldn't recommend cranking it up to high and just hanging out there
The first week home: what it will look like, and the one job
because the dogs do take a week to settle and if you don't know how to like snap everything into place after that week it's great but that first week they're settling
it's like the grandkids right they come home back to the parents and then they like they're like what can i get away with and if the parents aren't strict on everything all of a sudden the rules go downhill
you guys staying strict with her so the over excitement doesn't become unmanageable and she
thing is like the first couple times probably for the first week or two the only thing you need to
so that's like what when I tell people like when the dogs come home for that week that's that's the
week by the end of that week she's gonna be back to how it looks with me in the videos where it's
Her avoidance repertoire, handed over as a checklist
that's kind of like she'll do this thing where you'll tell her a command she's like like she like starts shaking her head back and she won't do it and so you have to be called because she's trying to see like how are you really gonna push me for this or not and that's gonna be I think the biggest challenge for her coming home with you
so because she's a bully breed type dog um they all have like tendencies to avoid so they might know what you're asking them to do and they'll still kind of like pretend like they don't know how to do it or they'll like yelp or they'll lay on their belly and try to like submit to not do it so what i want both of you guys to focus on for like the first week she's here is just focus on not letting her avoid
but if you didn't know better and you sit down and she just stood there you'd be like this dog doesn't know how to do it she does but she's like maybe if i don't look at them you're right they won't know i'm here
i will all right but yeah i can see like during those moments if she does like the the yelp i
Pressure, in the direction the family will not expect
So the biggest thing is not applying too much pressure.
and if she doesn't do it you can like start on a 20 and if she starts to fight you like maybe like try to like point into it like turning it up is like the last resort
the big one is just e-collar is good but for certain commands like the down when she tests you it just doesn't need to be like the the first reaction to it it's a react like you can use it but you try the low pressure version first and if that doesn't work then you can go into high pressure
because she's a puppy the way she takes pressure is that it can shut her down quicker and on top of that she'll when bully Bully breeds are in their, like, younger puppy years, if you will. They'll try to really fight the pressure. So with her, you start out with lower pressure, and then you can build into it.
Rewards: not treats, and the test that decides any reward
we don't use treats because treats can be one of those things where the dog is like oh you told me to sit but i don't see a treat
it's like one of my favorite dog training phrases and it's make sure that the reward for listening is greater than the reward for being disobedient.
one of the because she is so physical one of the big things you can do is just reward her with like just petting on her and stuff
Pacing, and the tell that says stop
we want to give them a second to chill out between each command especially if it's like a new thing uh because you can drill a dog too fast and that creates like repression the longer the dog is with me of course the more commands we can do because the load gets higher
there was a lab I was working with like when I was first learning how to train dogs and he did really good and then I kept drilling commands all of a sudden he was like running away from me and like not listening and his whole body language changed and I found out that yeah it was like wasn't necessarily the command that was bad it was the frequency of it that was encouraging him to like repress himself
Handler mechanics, corrected live
so if you're gonna use the e-collar make sure that the hand is always on the e-collar right I mean you got to use the e-collar right so either have it in your pocket or like have your hand on it the whole time because what happens is if you have it like this and then periodically you put your hand on it and it's only when you do a stimulation with it the dog kind of learns like becomes dependent on for me to sit i need to see your hand touch the collar and you don't want that
leash but what can happen is like in the house especially um a lot of dogs first instinct is to avoid so what you'll kind of like see is you'll say sit and then like she won't do it and then you'll e-collar and she'll like run yeah like run away whereas if i have the leash she can't
but the main thing is just however you use the e-collar make sure that your hand is kind of like resting on the button you're gonna hit that way you don't go from like the dog can't see you go for the e-collar and then they're like oh i have to listen
it's more of just like you have to the tone right if you're like down and you're like eh you start like talking like Michael Jackson you're like eh sit down no it's got to have some like strength to it
you just gotta throw some energy into it that like i gave a very flat version storm me down
if somebody came and stole your purse or whatever right I'm using that as as an example but it could really be anything you would be like no please don't take it i'm gonna chase you
Off leash: not yet, and the test they can run themselves
don't go and be like, yay, she's been back for 20 minutes. Guess what we're going to do? Off leash, downtown Raleigh, right? That's a terrible idea.
Don't take your dog off-leash until you can control them on a leash.
go like fully off leash like that make sure that you can go on a walk in your neighborhood because if you can't control the dog in the neighborhood you can't control them in the middle of the woods when there's a bunch of squirrels and especially a dog like her who's like a bully breed she has that prey drive naturally
but the reason we do it is occasionally you do there is application for it so that's good but it adds like another level of obedience so like if you can get your dog to do a down a sit a recall off leash when they know that the leash is on them it's like foolproof
The house is where the old rules live - which is why one session happens in it
you do have to generalize the behavior so like in like the training room we have um she looks great right or if i'm out of the park it looks great but in her brain like the house right that's where all the old rules are
grandparents she's gonna like come back and be like what can i test after i've been to grandma's house right and kids got like i know it because i used to come back and my mom will be like i don't know what you think that you can get away with but it's not here
you sniffing something all right and this will be interesting for me because i actually haven't
Why the program runs longer than it has to
a week or two after she comes home and the repression goes away what happens the training goes away
what i think about the dog training if not you're getting the like repression and i'm really like super against that like very morally against repressing a dog in very light doses it's okay
so like when you're younger if you're like yeah i got a job and then i realized funds for losers you'd be like oh man that person like lost themselves whereas they're like i got a job i learned how to focus during my time that i have to work and then i go home and i have fun right the person's still the same they just learned how to discipline themselves
The rules are yours to pick
do you want her to hop on you okay see I don't want to punish it if you don't cuz a lot of people don't but I don't like to assume something
So do you want her on you or do you want her to not get on you while you're sitting down?
Well, so you can do that. You just kind of, like, every single time, you kind of get, like, an imaginary line. And so, like, every time she crosses that line, you hit the button.
I actively do not recommend taking bones out of a dog.
The warranty, the one thing that voids it, and the honest number
we have the lifetime warranty on all the dogs so uh i'll come out here for free if something's not
that you're not reinforcing anything or you're like yeah i bought this other course and i like
I give it like a seven and a half out of ten the reason but I'll tell you why I don't I'm not confident that you guys don't understand what I'm saying I specifically if I'm being real with you I'm worried that you're gonna be a little too soft
10 out of 10 for anybody though because like if they were like 10 out of 10 i believe in them then like why are they hiring me as a trainer why am i coming out here and doing these sessions and showing you how to do it properly
she's she's not behind she's on schedule i don't want to give you too much and i'll be honest with you if she was behind i've looked at some people like your dog's a little behind but it's okay because we're gonna get her up to speed
Why the owner sessions exist at all
Number one, it's so people can see their dog and be like, cool, Connor didn't eat him for dinner. The second one is that you can learn throughout the program and that way I don't come home and barf three hours of info at you and then be like, all right, now you do it.
other people they have to learn to do it for their dog so I say that we train the people almost as much as we train the dogs
The first session is always like a little longer than the second one, just cause I do go, the theory, I don't try to share unnecessary like theory behind what's happening, but I do think there's a baseline that everybody needs to know, that way they can maintain the training.
do that is just we used to just start from scratch in the park and we found that if we have somebody like claudia who teaches basically shielding basic impulse control when we
Why the kennel sounds like that - answered because it was asked
we have like we have a lot of specifically like sport dogs and sport dogs like attention and so
so no I appreciate any question like that I mean I'd rather you just ask a question up front then you'd be like uneasy you know because I don't want that like I want you to know like your dog's safe I'm not like I don't get a high off of like making dogs sad you know like I'm not
hesitation so maybe you feel a little bit bad for using the e-collar yeah i could see it in your face so i'm going to tell you this these e-collars are really nice they're similar they're not electrocuting the dog the way they work is they work like a tens unit i can say that because actually to to use these my boss makes sure that every single person that trains here wears them at least once
In the family's own words
They ask three questions across the whole owner lesson, and the first is about the welfare of the other dogs rather than about their own.
On film
because i do hear a lot of dogs whining or crying in the back oh yeah so okay the dogs are there so
So you said when she's in the area where she's placed, that's after she's already been doing things, or is that...
or yeah just a rough days that we had set for the sessions sessions is that in home or do i come back
They confirm the elapsed time, and they supply the one anecdote about her from before the program - that she would plant herself and have to be carried to the car.
On film
just to talk about is she's been here for about two weeks yes um the way we do it is like you
i just have to carry it to the car oh she didn't want to move from this you know but if she was
At the handover they give their account of the pre-program household - that she was testing them - and one concrete example of it.
On film
trying to show us who's in charge yeah no matter what even with um at that time trying to put her
trying to catch her i'm on the side trying to catch her she's fast too yes and it was like a
And the last substantive thing they say is a request, hedged as they make it: a line around the kitchen - followed immediately by their own objection to it.
On film
Oh, like, you know, boundaries for the kitchen.
Which I feel like is a little ridiculous.
My only issue with that is, since she was a puppy, like, when I cook her chicken and stuff,
Outcomes
What the trainers reported
The down, on the verbal alone, about seven times out of ten. Stated to camera with nobody asking, two days before handover.
On film
and like she does it off verbal i'd say say we're gonna see seven out of ten times
Nine out of ten on the down, the following day.
The handler, 2026-09-02
On film
So, we're getting like nine out of 10 with the down on her.
Leash yielding complete - the only skill in her file anybody calls finished.
On film
but she doesn't pull on me anymore, none of that stuff, so she's doing good
with me she doesn't pull on the leash at all anymore um with the jumping too like I'm correcting
About ten minutes of place, named as the trainer's usual goal time.
On film
i think the longest i've had her stay on place successfully was about 10 minutes or so which is really great that's like a goal time usually that i go for
On schedule at the halfway mark - with the credibility test attached: he says what the other answer would sound like.
On film
she's she's not behind she's on schedule i don't want to give you too much and i'll be honest with you if she was behind i've looked at some people like your dog's a little behind but it's okay because we're gonna get her up to speed
Her baseline energy is measurably calmer than it was.
On film
but you can see even her energy level is way calmer like she's actually like she's not like going all over the place i mean she's still got some some oomph to her but we're gonna keep working on that
She knows the commands; the only remaining variable is whether the family will make her do them. This is the claim the whole handover rests on.
On film
So it's the funny thing if she has the knowledge. So when you go and hit the e-collar
so that's like what when I tell people like when the dogs come home for that week that's that's the
Seven and a half out of ten - but the number is about the handlers, not the dog, and the reason is given.
On film
I give it like a seven and a half out of ten the reason but I'll tell you why I don't I'm not confident that you guys don't understand what I'm saying I specifically if I'm being real with you I'm worried that you're gonna be a little too soft
the first session i came here or yeah the second session here i remember i was like she's a little she's she really she's really nice
The one prediction with a deadline on it, made twice at the handover: the avoidance should stop within a week or two of consistent enforcement, and she will look like the videos again by the end of week one.
On film
her back into place okay um she won't do that with me now do i think she'll do it with you yes
week by the end of that week she's gonna be back to how it looks with me in the videos where it's
What the footage shows
The first down on camera for the handler who had got nothing, obtained under physical pressure with the sit blocked - and marked hard.
On film
Good girl! Yes, yes, yes!
And then just don't let the sit happen?
A down given with no e-collar at all, unprompted, on 2026-08-29 - which the trainer names as the actual target rather than as a bonus.
On film
and I didn't eat all that time she just did it actually which is what we want I don't want to eat all it
A down landing after visible deliberation with no stim, on 2026-09-02 - the handler narrates the pause as it happens and counts it as the good outcome.
On film
She thought about it. I didn't hit the button that time though.
so you can see she's kind of like thinking about it all right you're good yeah she's thinking about it she's like should i get up
A clean recall on camera at the owner lesson, in front of the family, immediately after the trainer had said he did not like her recall.
On film
and i don't like her recall it's kind of hard to it's hard to train a recall in the room so that's again what i'm doing but a recall kind of looks like this if i go stormy come right and again she doesn't know it but she has to stop right here and stand in front of me
and stand in front of me okay um oh look at that you made me look really good thank you
An implied stay held through a live distraction on 2026-08-29, in a session where she had been too aroused to register the collar an hour earlier.
On film
i want to put her in the command officially that way she doesn't get up you got it
job yeah so that was really great
The down taken from a new handler on the marker alone, after about two repetitions - at the handover, from an owner who had not worked her since she left.
On film
she's so like she had to do the marker but you did about two times right
you can see now that you're reinforcing it you notice how she's like not going crazy on you she's not like pulling stuff yeah it kind of like just has to click into place
A clean down with no avoidance at all, late in the handover session - after nearly twenty-five minutes in which she had produced every item on her own avoidance checklist.
On film
didn't try to avoid that time because we she already like did it a little bit so stormy's
A place hold against a door being used, in her first fortnight, in a room she was not being protected from.
On film
staying on place with the door
Alright, come on. Place.
And the counterweight: twelve minutes, roughly fifteen attempts, and no progress at all, four days before the handover - broken off rather than won.
On film
down there we go stormy try that down that's not it either come on stormy you got this i believe in you come on oh no oh you messed it up you almost had it come on can we try one more time
we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be back.
The ideas Stormie's case runs on
- 'Let's go' is not 'Come' - and the recall has an ending
- A raised texture, and never a punishment
- Breed is a checklist, not a verdict
- Build the handler's timing while it is easy
- Close the other door: the escape hatch
- Command, marker, collar - in that order
- Don't accept the almost
- Don't poison the command
- Drilling is what represses a dog
- 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
- Generalisation is the whole job
- Heat is a stop sign
- Help it or press it - read which
- Hidden help
- Honest limits, and reliability is not permission
- Internal emotional change, not repression
- Keep the marker charged
- Management, not training
- Meaningful release
- Might beats will
- Neutrality is the goal, friendship is optional
- Pick the place for what it contains - life is the training ground
- Prediction error
- Reading the dog
- 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
- Teach the move, then the word
- The dog is a different dog for his owner - and authority transfers
- 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 settle criterion
- The settling week
- The standard is set by the job
- The three Ds, and the variables nobody counts
- Two events, not one - and what the handler does in between