Dr. Ian Dunbar - With Dogs, Increasing the Good, Decreases the Bad - S1 E9

Hi, I'm Barbara O'Brien. I'm an animal trainer and photographer and I'd like to welcome you to the empathetic trainer. Welcome, dr Ian Dunbar. Welcome to the empathetic trainer. We are so grateful that you're going to take the time with us today. I think from reading your book the new book that's coming out, barking up the right tree, which everybody who loves dogs and pretty much any animal should go out and get, because dogs are going to be better for it. I mean, if people take the time they read your book, understand the concepts, if they're not already doing some of these things, it's only going to improve your dog's life, which, of course, will improve your life. So dogs are going to be better for it and we want to thank you for doing this for the dogs in the world. I learned about you maybe 20, maybe 10 or 15 years ago through Denise Nord, who has beagles.

Yeah, lovely, totally beagles.

Yeah, and she actually trains beagles, which we bow down because beagles have an. Of course I'm being biased, but beagles are beagles and they do what beagles do and paying attention to humans and listening to commands not necessarily what beagles want to do. So she was amazing. And I started out with dogs 50 years ago now. Yeah, and that was way different, as you recall choke chains, adversion, you know, be the boss and I never felt right. And when I watched somebody hang a dog up to choke off his air, I was like this, because two dogs are fighting and they hung the dog up, how is he going to learn from that? I started trying to study and learn different approaches and that's when I learned about you, and you are the grandfather of the methods of training, where we do lure training, but not all completely dependent, where it becomes a bribe and there's a fine line. So did all that off?

my chest because I just was so excited to have you here. I'd like to read a quick little introduction. Dr Ian Dunbar is a veterinarian, animal behaviorist, dog trainer and writer. He uses a unique off leash training technique that involves lure reward training. He started the serious puppy training which was the first off leash puppy training class. Ian has written several books about dog training and his newest book is called barking up the right tree. So everyone's got a. I've got an advanced copy of the book and read it and marked it all up.

And she gets advanced copy.

Jamie sent it to me. It's just a document you know, I mean, I had to like print 400 pages, something like that.

Jamie got the very first copy ever two days ago and I thought how come you've got a copy?

Oh no, I printed it out so I could read it, because I wanted to.

Well, you know. I guess you know when you read the book you'll realize that this goes back, you know, well before I was born. I mean to give your listeners, viewers, I guess, history my great grandfather. I grew up on a farm and my great grandfather was a farm lad and he worked hard and ended up owning four farms. Anyway, one year he won a straight line plowing contest with his horse and no brains, so he was directing the horse just by verbal cues and praising it.

So that's what I grew up with and throughout the book I keep echoing what I learned from my grandpa and my dad, not just the way they train their gun dogs and working dogs, but also the cows, pigs, sheep, chickens. So when I was five I had to live at the farm because my dad fell off the roof and broke his skull. I shouldn't laugh at that, but he lived through it. He landed on two upturned buckets metal buckets and crushed them with his head. Oh, saved his life. So I'm at the farm and they're trying to entertain me. So I became, I developed a recall on 80 cows and 200 chickens when I was five. So I grew up with this way and I was introduced to the on lease sort of military police model and later to become the obedience competition on leash. Let's do repetitive obedience drills much later. And I actually had the same reaction as you did, which is what on earth are they going to learn from this? Because always I ask people what are you trying to teach? And has the dog learned it yet? Yes, well done. No, then why are you still doing this If you already proved it doesn't work well? So I always evaluate different training techniques, whether reward based or aversive punishment based on do they work and how well do they work? Being a behaviorist, I measure it precisely and I come up with a percentage of response, reliability, percentage of, say the words sit in any scenario in the kitchen, before dinner, in your bedroom, in the living room, in your garden, on the sidewalk or in the dog park, and I'll say well, your dog's running at 3% reliability in the dog park. Don't you want to train it? And I do that with the reward training techniques too, because they're nowhere near using rewards to full advantage.

You know, if you are mentioning beagles and that actually for a long time was my favorite breed and in my first book they're all beagle pictures and social behavior, sexual behavior, even training, which I knew very little about. But if you want to train a beagle you have to. Just, it's just one exercise. You train him to come, which means come, sit, stay watch, to get him to look at you, which means his nose is lifted from the ground and as a reward you say go sniff. But what the beagle doesn't know is you've hidden a couple of really attractive odors, like a bit of cat poop. So the beagle sniffing over here, and he's sniffing worms, you know casts and all that.

I say no, over here, go sniff, go sniff. And then he goes wow, the owner knows better than me. I next time they say come, I'm going to come, sit watch and say tell me, tell me, where are the sniffs. So the only reward you can use in training obviously is go sniff. Nothing else is going to work because you're working with the biggest reward. So we start from there and then we make it even more powerful. So these are the secrets of the book how to come up with more powerful rewards, how to use them more effectively and how, when administered by people, aversive punishment simply doesn't work.

No, it's not a quick fix.

It's neither quick, it's very involved and it's not a fix as evidence by continued use. So we flash back those on lease classes and they jerk the dog hour after hour, week after week, walk after walk. When are you going to learn? The dog is not learning from this lease correction. It ain't a correction. So anyway, that's just to set the stage for people. Everyone thinks I'm an academic, which I am. I'm a behaviorist. So I observe behavior and there's no question about it. I don't ask the questions like why did the dog do that? My wife used to do that. She's a cognitive psychologist and you'll see in the book she had tremendous input by asking very simple questions like have you taught Omaha to do that?

Omaha being the dog you refer to, or you must.

The question is let's say a dog is upset, he's fearful. What do you do? And I say, well, we classically condition. We try and get rid of the fear. But also we are currently condition. We tell the doctor sit and stay.

Why telling a dog what to do will really help it deal with fears. And Mimi would always dictate you must always see it from the dog's point of view and you must always consider how the dog is feeling, although you'll never know any more than we do with people. I mean a person you know, you meet behind a counter, who's serving you, is it's not very happy today and maybe rude to you. We don't know what they're thinking. Maybe their dad died that morning. So we never know what people are thinking. So we never actually know what dogs are thinking, but we know what they do and then we can make an assumption that if they don't come when called, if they back off, if they hunker down, if they're shaking, if their paws are sweating, they're probably stressed. So as well as training it, what we wanted to do, we must heavily classically condition to deal with the underlying sort of fear and anxiety problems. So I was lucky with the people around me all the time you know farmers. And then Mimi, cognitive psychologist.

No, this is. This is really true and luckily for the horse world and not sure how familiar you are with I'm sure you are familiar with horses, but that's changing to all the adverse of punishment methods and a lot of force without understanding is more and more people are starting to learn that, understanding and having empathy for what the horse is thinking and feeling and why is he anxious? Because he can't learn when he's anxious and afraid. And getting him to learn to regulate himself by learning his calming, singles, learning how to how our intention and our emotion affects the horse and that's it's slowly growing for the better for horses because everything going slow is going fast, just like you said, you know you're able to to work with the horse so he can regulate himself, and I'm sure it's. Then it's going to be similar with the dogs with anxiety if you can help them regulate, but it's, it's similar and it's different according to whether the animal is altricle or precocious.

So, basically, how long does it take to socialize the animal? So with dogs we have a long time, up to three months. But the biggest problem in dogs at the moment is no one is socializing young animals. They're not handling neonates, they're not introducing them to 100 unfamiliar people in the breeding camel or 100 unfamiliar people the first month at home. We then go back to horses, which are precocious. You've got 48 hours to socialize a horse. Well, there's good news, bad news. The good news is it takes you no time at all to prevent a good, any horse fear or anxiety. The bad news is you've got 48 hours to do it and no, if you're talking about a bit of horse now, that's, you know, worth six figures. No one's going in the stable when the mayors fold. You know the owner and the stable that you know. You expose it to everything and you in 20, in 48 hours, and then that animal. And of course, oh, not Bill Miller. I went to college with Bill Miller, bob Miller.

Robert.

Miller, he's actually on my veterinary ski team.

And now that's a connection, because he's like, yeah, the very cartoonist.

And you know he sort of pioneered this in horses, but way before that, of course we have I don't know how to pronounce this word, it's a big difference. Anyway, it's geese, you know, animals that bond within seconds of being born or hatched. So we all know this from Conrad Lorenz You've got 30 minutes to socialize and bond with this little gozzling. It's done for life. The thing will follow you everywhere, to the car, to the bathroom, you know, around your property. So that's a highly precocious, you know, group of animals. But I find it very sad in horses and in dogs and horses are highly precocious, no one does it. I mean flacking white sheets, banging on cans, dropping stuff, making noise, playing the radio, handling it all over, tapping on its hoof, you know, and passing a hood over its head and passing a stomach tube. Robert Miller used to do to do these baby foals. And then, as a stallion, you say hello again. He comes up and says hi and lowers his head saying I'm your buddy. Yeah, he's not up here, like you know, doing all that.

This is when it's like someone came up to me once and said I got a problem with my dog, dr Dunburn. I said, oh, what's that? They says it barks and I said, oh, no, that's, that's terrible. And all the dogs you could have got you pick one that barks. You know, tell the story in my book.

But, again.

how many horses does it take for horsey people to realize this is born and designed to be a flighty animal?

Exactly they should. Let me say no, understand why you can't.

You got to take that flightiness out of it as you've got to take fearfulness out of a dog Right, and it will be a flighty animal, all things being equal. If you just let it grow up as a horse in vacuo, around no people with horses or what have you, then it will get. Not, it'll get more flighty as it grows older. This is developmentally very sound in the wild and that animals, whether, yeah, they are programmed to socialize with who's around them when they're very young, less than 48 hours and horses less than three months in dogs. But when they now get away from the herd horses or come out of the den dogs they are programmed to avoid any animal.

That's unfamiliar. So all we have to do is teach them we are the familiar ones, we're all around you with that funny and sometimes scary human ways when you're very young and we hit it with them then when they're only minor stress. So you do get little blips of cholesterol. But what you do if you get, if you don't do this in adulthood you get adrenal emptying, surges of cholesterol, cortisol, adrenaline to innocuous stimuli like you blew your nose or you fell down or there's a loud noise.

So that's basically the process of early socialization.

It's reprogramming the brain of the animal to develop in a way to now embrace people and thoroughly enjoy their company and contact.

I have a question then is it ever too late in a sense, with dogs? Because we saw during COVID, people got dogs. Great, they were lonely, they got dogs, but the poor dogs, because of COVID, didn't get socialized in the near as much or in a way that they should. There's this whole generation that we run across when people try to use the dogs as animal actors and we're going to meet them and evaluate, see if they want to be a good animal actor or enjoy it. The dog cannot handle new people, new environment. Is it too late for those people? Because they couldn't? Or, however, COVID made it hard for people to get together, so it would be hard to socialize 100 people over time.

It's not too late. It's just that prevention is diabolically falling off a log easy. Being an adult dog that now has developed fears and anxieties is going to take longer. However, two things taught me that no, we can change even quicker than I thought. And COVID in dogs.

I work with a number of dogs during COVID. And then, as we opened up that I would have said you won't be able to take this dog anywhere. He's afraid of his own shadow, let alone other people I mean dogs and other dogs and unfamiliar people or loud noises. And it started with one dog called Cash and Gina and I were taking a COVID weekend in Laguna Beach and Cash was hopefully going to be an assistance dog, but no way. He came from the breeders up way up north, where you are, but farther away from any place to buy milk, and he was just scared of. He came down to the Bay Area and then to San Diego and it was too much for him Anyway.

So Laguna, gina was sick and so I said you stay in bed, I'll take Cash out. So I walked him where it was quiet. I sat on the beach head there was a path there and I sat there for four hours with his dinner in a bag and every time a person walked by I gave him three bits of kibble. Every time a person had a dog, I gave him five bits. I gave him a running commentary, all the time praising him, reassuring him. But because I'm reassuring him when he's acting scared, I would praise him more as training went on. When he's no longer acting scared, I'm still reassured. You see, people are scared to reassure a scared animal because they think they'll unintentionally reinforce wimpy behavior, whereas again, mimi would say of course you have to reassure an animal if it's scared, right?

right If you had a child that was frightened. Would you like not reassure a child?

Then what you would do as soon as the crying stops, you then go into jolly routine and say, wow, you are so brave.

And so we can classically condition and operate the condition at the same time, which means we're meant to be getting the dog to associate scary stimuli with food, if you like, or praise, or petting, but if they're acting scared, to prevent them from incurring, because a lot of dogs will act scared because they know the owner will pick them up, hug them and pet them. So now we wait until the scared behavior stops. See, they're no longer feeling scared because of the classical conditioning, and once they stop the lunging, the barking or the trembling or the moving away, then we heavily praise them. And that's the bit that people miss. It's like getting a puppy to sleep on his own for his first night. His new home he's petrified, you've taken him from mum and his litter mates and so I stay up with them until they fall asleep, and I've then woken them up half a dozen times. So once they fall asleep I don't leave.

I then praise them more, I sing to them, I recite nonsense poetry, I hum, but then I wake them up. I say hey, hey, you're not falling asleep on me, I'm still up here. It's 2 AM, I've been up here for three hours. And then I say, ok, settle down, go to sleep. You're falling and I find by the sixth time I wake them up they're like what do you want? I say, oh, you're tired, ok, settle down. And I make them stand up too. So it's wake up and stand up. Then I say settle down, go to sleep, ok. And so six trials Because I stayed on when the fear had gone and the praise and the tiredness is taking over the next day. Oh, I seldom stay up with them 20 minutes and then they lie down, going to sleep the third day. I can't even remember the last doll I did that with. It seldom happens, so I'm lucky. You see, I do night work.

So they've had a pretty stress-free Because.

Gina would get up and do early morning work and so even when I leave them at, say, 1, 2, 3 AM, I just leave the room they're in and sleep on a couch outside the door so that if they go, I say it's OK, I'm still here. Silly Billy, now settle down, go to sleep. And if they do, I praise. See so many people. They're like a baby putting it to sleep or a puppy, and it's, they're shh, tiptoe, tiptoe. I never tiptoe around. Once they eventually fall asleep, I say you're good boy, you sleeping now. Well done, jamie, you know, well done Omaha. Good, that's right, and they can hear that. It's one of my earliest memories of hearing my parents sleep, as I was being in the back of the car being driven, and I could hear the words and they were so comforting, you know, but I was still asleep.

Yeah, and then we've all experienced that. So yeah, we must.

I think this to me is it's all about eliminating the development of natural fears. These are naturally programmed in for a horse to be flighty Of anything, of a lion, a loner person, of dogs, to be scared of unfamiliar people, unfamiliar dogs. You must prevent that, because it is so easy, it's so much fun. You have a party, you know, for horse this is a 24 hour party through the night and it's never going to develop this flightiness if you've got 40 or 50 people in the stable and they're all coming up and petting it, you know, and maybe give me a little bottle to suck along. And when they excuse me, or for puppies, hand feeding, loads and loads and loads of pieces of kibble not treats, obviously, because they're so commercial treats that it would end up with a liver like a goose. So you feed its normal kibble but as classical conditioning rewards. And I do it. I love dogs, yeah, I love animals, but I actually do it for the people. But excuse me a second, I'm going to cough.

Yeah.

Coffee is not the thing for a cough. I should have had water here, but I get so upset when, I see, I was just rounding them up.

This morning I got two people with reactive dogs. I'm on a walking street because it's so pretty and we're going to film them this week being reactive and then I'll get together as a group and they will become a core social group of dogs that love each other. That's the process, but still warped on leash safety. But one by one, you know they would join the group once we've taken the reactivity out of them, because it's the owners, they. I mean, how can you enjoy a dog that's going to go off if it sees a big dog in the distance or a little to the happy dog in the distance? And you know, with horses it's you're going to acknowledge you have a flighty animal, there's no socialization and you're going to get on its back. You are crazy. No, you are crazy. It's why I loved it when you said you got Morgan. That's good, yeah, my kind of horse, or, you know, walking horses.

Well, they're not. You don't fall very far. Yeah, they're only 14 hands, so I don't have to fall very far. But no, you're right, and you're. I mean obviously this just amazing to hear, hear what you think about horses, because there's different points of view, and so this is really interesting, because some people are like you can't. Well, how can I put it in words? The imprinting some like that's controversial. The imprinting that Dr Miller talks about, it's controversial, with some people like which makes no sense.

I'm what you're saying, if I heard someone say something like that, which, from all I know about animal complaints behavior, I consider it as a very stupid, dangerous and cruel comment. If I were in a bar now, I wouldn't talk to this person until I've convinced them. Here's the deal In two days you can prevent most of horses problems. What is your objection? Or would you rather this horse be flighty, anxious and stressed for the rest of its life because every day has to meet its biggest nightmare, which is you and other humans? No, I'm being serious.

I'm not to socialize is downright cruel and it's the cruelest thing to do to any animal and then insist it lives around humans. So if we go to like the whole years back I used to know the Porellis and I would often give a little doggy lecture at their international workshops and courses and things and I remember the whole natural horsemanship thing and the horse whispers would always talk about there's a big distance between the horses and dogs because the horse is prey and the dog is predator. I say not when it comes to training them at all. Yeah, exactly.

I'm in agreement with you there because the natural horsemanship thing saying we're the alpha and they think we're a predator, you know he does not think you're a cougar.

I'm sorry.

The horse knows you're human, he knows you're not a cougar. That's ridiculous. So it's moving away from that. So that constant moving their feet, moving their feet, which means they can't even engage their brain because they can't calm down, that's more like.

There's a lot of that. It's hands off and we're going to train this horse to come and lie down, go to his stable or go to his horse box, hands off. But when people how should I put it? When professionals get involved in their species and their breed or an animal's working ability, they forget the basic principles of training. That behavior is changed by its consequences and they would primarily be rewards or punishments.

And, as you've understood, my book now, the best type of punishment, which is not defined by its nature. You see, people think a punishment is unpleasant or nasty. It doesn't have to be, and in about 60% of the scientific definitions of punishment it just says a punishment is a stimulus, that so punishment is defined by its effect on behavior, that the punishment reduces the frequency of the previous behavior, the targeted behavior you want to get rid of, such that it is less likely to occur in the future. And that's how we know that a versus punishment isn't working. Because they're still doing it. They're still wearing a specialized metal collar, or the horse, the metal bit, or what have you. Or the elephant trainer has a bill hook. You know to hook it with.

Right yeah.

But what we use is a non-aversive punishment and people think what? How can that work? Well, 9% of the time with dogs, I just say Rover, sit, end of problem. What was he doing? Well, he was lunging on leash. It's not anymore chasing his tail, chasing the cat. He was running out the front door, he was jumping up, sit. So if you have taught your dog to sit, just one command you can now stop, inhibit, eliminate all of those because they're mutually exclusive. And so are we going to focus on misbehaviors and give the dog grief or the horse grief? Everyone does that, that's human nature. Are we going to focus on the good behaviors and say thank you?

I was watching videos last night and it was a rotty who was a little out of control in the off leash puppy too because he hadn't had much off leash experience aside from going through puppy one. But he's gone through puppy one so I know his teeth are safe. If he gets into an argument or he's scared, it will be, but there's going to be no puncture. So I'm doing a lot of work with him and at one point I start because he keeps stealing every other dog's stuffed animals and at one point he stole the dog's bed while the dog was lying on it and ripped it in the air and ran off. You know, I've now found a more manageable stuffed toy and I'm playing tug with him. And then you know off, take it. Tug, tug, tug, good dog, and thank you. What to start with? I say thank you, and he just grits his teeth and it took about three to five seconds to get it out of his mouth. But after a few repetitions I say off, take it. Tug, good boy, who's a good boy. And thank you. And he sits and I hold the tug up here and he looks at me and he lies down and he sits up and he looks at me again. He's training me. Now he wants me to say take it again.

But he's throwing all these behaviors at me and everyone he does. I say a good boy, that's good. But no, no, no. What I actually want now is to sit and stay. Good dog, there's a good boy, you know. And we don't pay attention to all the good behaviors, and the number one good behavior in my book is one that's not bad. I remember telling a guy in class said praise your dog, praise your dog. He said why he's not doing anything. I said precisely we're here because he lunges on leash and growls. He is not lunging, he's not growling, he's not barking, he's not even eyeballing the other dog. He's sitting there looking at you and you are ignoring him.

But, and you say right in your book, you say increasing the good Absolutely.

He greases the bad. It's so obvious.

And it works with any animal or your children as well.

It actually was my son who came up with that sentence, which crystallized everything I was trying to say in the book. If you have one command that the animal will always do, sit whoa, you know, lie down. You have so much control over that animal now because all you're left to do is praise the rest. So you know, I usually have the dogs taken a short group time out from play it's amping up too much.

So I say, well, docks down. And with our dogs we do it with eight dogs, I mean just the two of us we say, docks down. Yeah, let's get a grip, shall we? Especially you Rover. Yeah, chill, okay, all right, dogs ready, dogs go play. Where's a good dog? Good dog? Well done, well done, fight, oh good. And we praise and praise, and praise and praise. So fast, and sometimes I've given six to ten praise words within the first three seconds and it just. It's an absolutely wonderful philosophy, but it took my son to crystallize it, you know.

I mean I could take three hours to say any sentence because I'm considering all the innuendos and facets of it and and trying to answer people's questions no, jamie, jamie distilled it for sure, as an animal actor trainer, I run into this because we'll use I don't own the dogs I hire, I only have three of my own, so I have to hire a lot of dogs to come be animal actors and so they have basic obedience because to be comfortable and on set, you know they should know sit, stay, things like that. But what I find is I do my best not to let the owners work with their dogs. They can watch, but I want to work their dogs because my energy and my intention and my praise, the dogs think this is the best day ever because I keep your tone of voice when you say well done. That is releasing energy and intention and the dog, as you know, of course, feels that. And then, of course, I have treats that you know that he likes and I'm it's. So then they would, they do it.

They won't reward their dog for sitting there looking cute. I mean that's all he has to do, right, but they're like well, he's not exactly what you said. He's not doing anything and I'm like he is killing it. He's, he's look at him, he's happy, he's way, he's looking at camera, which is where I'm holding my eye line for, you know, because he's learned to watch my eyes in my hand and I just like, well done, good boy, you know, and it's uh, and they go. You, sometimes they get like, oh, people are watching me. I feel silly, I'm like the dog doesn't care. He needs to hear that enthusiasm, that excitement, that like, because then we get a happy dog. I don't want to have a dog on set that's not happy, because it's not fair. The dog, I wouldn't put him through it. You know, he's got to be acclimated and be happy. And we get great performances because the dogs are having a blast.

And you try training a cat and if you try to have negative emotions around a cat, you are. There is no, you know, because I train cats or work with cats. It's their idea and they're having a good time and they feel the same thing. Good, you know. Good cat, oh, well done you. And you can see the cat. I mean, you know, sit up and put. You know, yes, I am, and the same thing with the horse and I keep going back to it. But the same thing with a child, you know, reward what you want yeah, I think the animal acting is.

It's one of my favorite professions because and these are things that a lot of animal actor want to be owners don't realize. Number one your dog has to have a bomb-proof temperament.

He can't be fearful, afraid of anything, because he's in a very spooky place. He's in a film set and all sorts of things happen. There's unexpected noises and a lot of people there. Number two the precision in terms of timing and place. So the director will tell you well, I want the dog to walk in here. Stop, look around, come up to this place, hold his paw up and then lie down and look exhausted on cue and, and so it's real precision training, with you out of sight, and then you're working on all sorts of facial.

What I like to do, what I like to do, is Suzanne Clothier taught me this. We, we had a. I do a lot in in lectures where I get people to pretend they're dogs and other people in class train them. And she was picked to get me to pay attention and I and she knew it I was going to misbehave big time. I was going to jump up on her, I was going to hump someone else in class, you know, and I couldn't.

The way she trained me and what she did was she said are you watching me, ian, are you watching me? Started moving like this and I was all mesmerized and I immediately stole that technique for teaching very lengthy stays when you want the dog to follow your head around. You know you keep like you're a snake charmer and so it's a huge thing and it's I mean, it's the same as it like assistance dogs. It amazes me the dogs that people bring and say, oh, I wanted to be assistance dog or a facility dog for children or what have you and you think dogs scared to be just here. You can't do this because it takes a lot for your train commands then to even get through to the dog. But then to the knowledge that you spoke.

Yeah, because he has to be comfortable, so it's wonderful no, and we can't if you want to be a good trainer teach a cat to come and heal. Yeah, well, it's that's really true, because cats have their own agenda. Well, that's where you know people should realize that this was um, this was I.

I was slightly at odds when I did my dog workshop with horses, because I trained horses the same way as I train dogs. Little reward training when you train cats the same way. Instead of your cat listeners out there, you read my book and you cross out the word dog or puppy and put in cat or kitten. We have always had cats with better recalls than the dogs in our home and the reason is as soon as you get outside, the cats can come in a straight line. They just climb over or jump down up a tree, take a shortcut. You know dogs have to go around yeah and we used to do this with demos.

You know, I had a film crew from Japan once and they said well, where are your dogs? I said oh, they're around. I said dogs, cats come. And two cats were sitting in front of us before the dogs ever got there and they didn't think that was they wouldn't film the cats. It was like no, we've come here to film your dogs and I thought that would be so cool to see the cats come first and then the cats are there as the dogs doing their routines, the cats are like going under them to get a back rub or rubbing up against them.

You know, exactly.

Yeah, but they are.

There's a number of speeches, which I love because you can't do this stupid alpha stuff with them. You do it once and you've lost the animal and pupil for life. And when you move up, once you get to the bear stage, like grizzly bears, I mean how do you think they train grizzly bears? We're going to grab him by his grizzly bear cheeks and give him an alpha row and say bad bear no, no, I don't train his products, but I don't you know, I'll tell you the rewards are primarily verbal.

Good bear good, but slapping him on the back a marshmallow for a better behavior and when they knock it, when they absolutely get it right a unopened can of coke and they catch it and go and get the biggest sugar rush they've ever had.

I mean serious yeah, no, the bear trainer that I did know, because I don't do his products, I don't hire them anymore but back when I did, it was jelly donuts, it was like squeeze jar of jelly, you know, it was marshmallows, you're right, and it was a big, a big bear. But uh, no, it's different, a little bit different. But yeah, there's no one's going to argue with the bear, you know. So, no, I get it, I get it. No, that's cool. Um, let's talk about other species. Because, uh, I'm purposely um using my cow mug today because, uh, we have a, we, um, I'm a designer, so this is my cow mug is broken.

I'm so upset, you see here and uh oh, here is a big crack. This I'm going to put. I may put the staple in. Actually I don't want the mud to fall in too. Actually I had um no crockery up there. That's 250 years old and it has lead staples in it where there's cracks. That's how they used to mend it back then because it's so soft and you, yeah, anyway, I'm going to. Yeah, my little calf mug is so beautiful. Yeah, oh, there's your cow.

I can see you now. There she is. Yeah, um, I uh. I adore cows. I um as a photographer. Um, I've had the pleasure of shooting cows for advertising campaigns and um I live in dairy country.

I mean Wisconsin. So you know I, I um get the. I get to go and hang out at the? Um dairy farms if I want to, and my neighbors raise calves and of course they suck on your fingers and that's like the best, coolest sensation. But cows uh along like sheep and other herd animals. People do not give them credit for how incredibly smart they are. And I want to hear about I mean you talk about in your book riding cows. When I ran away as a little girl when I was up at the lake I went to I ran away because everyone was ignoring me. I found this dairy farm and the kids had cows there and their parents were gone and so we rode cows, we jumped on their backs and rode them around. So I I share that, but they were not trained, they just we fell off. But it was really fun and one of the highlights. So I want to hear about well as you.

Well, they're my favorite animal because, um, we had a big L shape field, about oh, 20 acres, and that's what I saw outside my bedroom window and you could tell the time by where. The cows here or at corner, or they down there, that's what they did twice a day and so they were very good to tell the time. I love them. A story I'll tell. I'll tell one story in the book and then one that's not so.

Um, my grandfather classically conditioned all the animals on the farm and cows, and why, you may ask. Cows are very inquisitive. If they're not scared of people, they will approach them. Well, in England we have a lot of public um walkways, pathways that go through private property, so they're allowed to walk on the footpath and it goes right across their fields, and so if someone's doing that, the cows are going to see them and slowly walk over. Well, if you don't know cows, it looks pretty damn scary when most of them are black. You know a few don't look so scary because they're brown and white. You know that angers herford crosses, and so when we would get in our one day old heifers, my grandfather would invite all the kids from the village to teach them to drink from a bucket, because you see, they've had what one day?

Drinking from a teat, and that's lovely and easy. Now they have to stay alive. They've got to drink from a bucket, so you've got to teach them. So we got all the kids to do this. It was mayhem, you know we would end up, you know, cow butts the because he's not getting good suction, because you haven't got your fingers right, you know, so you can suck it. And then the milk formula goes all over you and they lick you with their raspy tongue, which is, like you know, gets paint off hardwood or something.

And, um, I asked him years later, when I was at vet college you know, why did you do that grap? Why didn't you, you and the farmhands just do it? We've been so much quicker. And he said you know, we have open foot pass here, open to anyone. There'll be families, there'll be children, there'll be children misbehaving. I wanted the calves first impressions of children to be a very pleasant one, with the kids covered in milk power. They're squeaking, screaming all the time. So I thought that was amazingly prescient for someone who left school at 12. But he did it with all the animals, with pigs and I tell you, with pigs, man, probably the most dangerous people think it bulls. No, I think it's a sow. Right after she's farrowed you look so bad lying there like she couldn't move and peaceful, and you hop over, say they give her a shot of oxytocin or something, and you jump back so fast you can't believe it.

They come in very low with their dirty teeth.

They don't have their tusks you know like the males, but oh man, they can deliver a very nasty bite. So he just made all the animals hand-lable. The other story this is a training story and I was lecturing in Puerto Vallarta to the Texas Academy of Atenarians on cow behavior and the audience was just a bunch of disbelievers. Imagine it these are Texas cow vets. They're all wearing, you know, cowboy boots. They got hats on jeans. They all have their feet up on the chair in front of them with their legs crossed and arms folded, leaning back. And what are they going to learn from this 28 year old, you know, californian hippie?

you know my hair was down here and I was lecturing and I was talking about how round up was one of the silliest things I'd ever heard about. I mean, who would take an animal like a herd of cows and let them all loose without any prior training, you know, without even teaching them to come when called. And I said I would do this. You know I would drive around the range. How often you do it? You know every day, twice a day, once a week, whatever, and you pick up and I would drive and when I see them I'd go honk, honk and then I toss off a little bit of silage and I'd drive on honk, honk, then a little bit of silage and honk, honk, then I'd drive away back to the ranch and that's how I'd always do my inspections. And then when it comes down to, you know, round up, you just go out and you pick up it's centrally heated, for goodness sake, you know, or you've got air conditioning whenever you're rounding them up and you just drive your pick up going honk, honk, honk, honk and there's a load of silage in the back, but you don't stop till you get to the ranch. So anyway, I was telling them that and they obviously would. Just there was no facial expression change. I'm talking about cows like. They don't like walking into dark spaces, neither do horses, neither do pigs and sheep at slaughter. They love yellow, so have increasing, you know, intensity of yellow lights wherever you want to go, like in the back of a horse box. Duh, I mean, it's a no-brainer.

I got a beautiful letter from this, this vet, and he was a rancher too, you know. He said dr Dunbar, I must admit, when I attended your lecture I just did it as a joke to see what you could possibly tell me. He said well, what you said about round up made sense. So I did it. Unbelievable. I ride back at the ranch going honk, honk, honk, honk with the whole herd, but because you know how they do it, if one cow will follow you then the rest will follow, generally the one cow. So it's um, yeah, it's, I love them, it's wonderful.

They are, they are. I have a quick cow story. I was photographing a Holstein beautiful Holstein at her farm, dairy farm, and while they're setting up lights there was a herd of about 75 to 100 heifers and cows and I wanted to go out and photograph the group and I said you guys set up lights. So I didn't bring my assistant, I was out there just my camera and of course I feel really safe around cows. I'm used to body language, you know. There wasn't a bull and so I was, you know.

But 75 cows suddenly were very curious and they kept coming closer and circling me and pressing in because the back cows wanted to see what was, who. That was Because I was a unique person and they're pressing and they were getting closer and closer and I was like, okay, I think I need to get out of this group without panicking them or scaring them, because they will step on you. A horse doesn't want to because you're squishy. A cow will step on you if you're in the way. So that was one of, like, the most exciting times with cows, but also one of the scariest, because I have photos of those cows, you know, 40 heads and bodies coming in closer, closer, closer, and I'm just excuse me, pardon me, excuse me and just gently to get to the fence line, crawled under the fence line. Now there's 75 cows lined up on the fence line, looking at me in perfect formation, because they're like you're so interesting.

And she was like you didn't go out there alone, did you, cause they usually have a gator or vehicle. You know four wheel, you know ATV or whatever. And I was like, oh no, I just walked out there and like, oh, you know, but I, I I was grateful that I didn't get excited, they didn't get excited, but it was also really cool because you're right.

And that pressure is. I mean, it happened to me once when I was very young but looking after a dairy farm around animals. You know I was. I was pretty smart as a kid not as I am normally, I'm pretty stupid about things and laugh at everything. But this couple had never been on holiday. They only had about 40 dairy cows. I said, why don't you go on holiday? Go back to Scotland and I'll stay at the farm, do the milking and feed them, and you know I'm responsible and if I have any trouble I'll call my grandpa. He'll come around.

And it was the second day on my own that Jenny came in and the chain you know to chain her up for milking had dropped down. I walked between her and a wall to pick this chain up and she just moved her back foot, put it on my foot and stood and didn't remove it. And I tried everything and of course if you push you get thigmo taxes. The harder you push, the more they lean into you. And I said, help, help. I thought I'm on my own here and I realized that's why you never, when you get in the chain, you always go under the neck and reach for it. And you never. You know, and you always keep your rear legs straight, so if they move into you you fall away from the animal, but you don't go between a cow and a wall. And then, after about 10 minutes, you know and I'm saying, jenny, move for God's sake. You're hurting me and I tried twisting a tail.

She's a thousand pounds, you know.

She looked round at me like this, Just chewing her cut and then about I don't know, seemed like an hour, probably five minutes, 10 minutes. She just took the weight off. They don't know their own weight and you're right when they're inquisitive.

Did your foot like recover? Oh yeah, is your foot okay?

Because it was so squishy underneath. You know, there's a lot of straw there.

Oh, okay, because you know when a horse steps on you it's kind of I mean, they will move eventually. But you're right, if you horse steps on you, push on your shoulder, he leans into you Like it hurts more, you know.

So you're better off and it's how you solidify say, stays in dog training, if you want a shy shelter to sit boldly, you stroke her from nose over the top of her head, getting more and more pressure, more and more pressure than you've pushed down. If you want a solid stand, stay, you go stand. And then you got to get the head pointed down so that the luring comes out and then, if you leave it there, the dog will stand and sit. So you out the stand, then you drop your hand, stay to get its nose down a bit, and then I hold the food there and then I press on the withers and I said I go push, push, push, push, push, push, push until the four legs are absolutely solid. Then we go down the back bit by bit, cause, yeah, we get to the hips and the butt and then when you can do this there, push, push, push, you've got it.

Now, as I used to tell them, you know, in obedience, now the judge is your double handler in the ring. You see, as they run the hand along the dog's back, what they're actually saying to the dog is stand, stay, stand, stay, stand, stay, stand, stay. So your dog gets really rigid. So thigmo taxes, and it's one of the major reasons I, you know, have against jerking If the jerking works with a loose leash to be unpleasant, but once the leash is tight, jerking only works to train the dog to do exactly what you don't want to pull against you, to move away.

Exactly. Yeah, it's like with a bridle and a bit.

If you just have constant pressure, you're going to make a A mouth that gets desensitized to to the bit and hard they're going to pull. The horse will always pull. That's when you're training them to tie. If you tie them solid and fast so they they pull back and they get pressure, they're going to pull back harder and you break something to hurt themselves or flip over where, if you use a tie block or some other form where it moves a little bit, a little bit of pressure that they can pull back without that slam, they learn to stand tight because then they give I.

I I bought a horse because um, well, she was going to get a little bit of pressure, going to be the glue the next day. And I loved her. She had a beautiful truck. It's like she wasn't moving at all, it's like a pacifino, you know. It was like you're going skiing and you know. And so I bought her and she had a great truck, but she had a frisky canter, which is too much for me.

I'm not an expert horseman. I only learned to ride because I was a vet and by law back then you had to treat every animal. That means I could be around horses and horsey people and you know. So I learned to ride. So one day, with puddings, she was called black what was it? Black forest or something. Her name. I changed it to pudding, black pudding, because she looked like a pudding, right. So one day, um and she, when I bought her, she was uncatchable in the stall. Well, that, as a dog trainer, that took me what? 20 minutes? It really simple. I just went in there and they had some little briccats of um, oh God, can't remember what you call them now, but it's also pellets or something, or treats Also, or to them yeah.

She saw them so they didn't splinter into like quarters and a little bit of dash of peppermint and a little bit of molasses, and so I just stood there with them and waited.

She came up to me and I gave her one. Then I walked to a different corner and then I had a dog leash actually, and from underneath I flipped it around her neck said gotcha, briquette, briquette, briquette. And she said cool, I like that. So then we had a recall on a very quickly. But I thought I'm going to do the same with her gates because my legs are hopeless, you know, for communicating to a horse. So I, you know, knees come in, then toes go out, you know, I mean, I'm sorry, I can't multitask with toes and heels and knees and hip.

So I trained her on the ground like a dog, off leash, and I had picked some of the greenest grass you've ever seen over the other side of the fence and I had it in my hand and I was feeding her. And off, take it, thank you, like a dog. And then whoa, okay, and then walk. And we walked and then trot, I was really fit. Then the horse is trotting along, changing gate, and then walk and whoa. So we had three gears and then I went on a fourth recant to which I could only do for about 10 yards because it was too fast me to run. And then I went round and I put a pleasure spot on the right side of her neck, because most people approach horses on the left and the right side is a good side, it's not poisoned. So as a vet I always went up to the right side of horses and I remember horsey people used to think it's weird. I said, look, bad stuff hasn't happened from here, but good stuff is going to. So I would touch up on the neck and hand feeder, touch feet, touch feet. Well, this spot I can now tap from the saddle. Good, putting, what I'm putting. Tap, tap, tap.

And I got on the horse the next day and my train is looking at me and I got my position right and like I'm in an armchair, sitting up straight, like I did ballet, I got my hands nicely, like in ballet, for you know, like ballet, one and a half, you know halfway between this and this range in my hand, wrap round, pinky and stuff. I said putting, walk, then putting, trot, good putting, good putting. And she just shook her head. She said that it worked. And the other thing I found out was and you probably know this, because when you're getting dogs to form associations, you give a verbal command and then you lure. So I say putting walk and then the lure moves away from it because I'm walking with it. To make that association right putting walk and the lure is going to move away. Therefore I walk takes most dogs about 12 repetitions. I have known dogs that have taken 20 and I had a couple of dogs that took about 50 to 100 repetitions. And protocol is often take three horses. Three horses, yes, so quickly.

They learn bad in three. I mean they look good.

The learning behavior bit is to do with people using a versus stimuli in training and the first thing they learn is when you can't hurt me If I raise myself up in the air and paddle my front legs if I run away from you if.

I buck and then run away from you. They learn all these things. Now I'm pain free. I called it pain free. Horse training people. They learn how to stop training and some of them and we get this in dogs to learn helplessness Like the master stands still. Yes, golden retriever just flops down. I said I've had it.

They would call it shutdown.

The horses were shut down, and then you can have aggressive shutdowns to where the horse says you try that once more, you're off. But you have to realize this is not a bad horse that needs to be broken. You taught the horse that it's doing it.

No, there's a saying horses. There's a saying that horses are only do what they've been taught to do or allowed to do, you know. So that's kind of an old axiom and allowed to do.

They've allowed. You see, people don't understand what the word domesticated means. A domestic animal is not fully domesticated until it's socialized with people, because it's that's I mean, that's like the definition of it. Just because it's a horse doesn't mean to say it's domestic animal. If you let it grow on its own, it will become flighty and scared of people, especially unfamiliar people making loud noises and sudden movements.

If you socialize it during the first 48 hours, it is now a domesticated animal and you won't have to do with all these bad things that you think is in the heart of the horse. Oh no, you know, we have to break him of these habits. If you handled him, he wouldn't have these habits. If, as a foal, you walked him around with a you know half a sack of wheat on his back, it'd be ready for someone to lumber up and sit there. You know, and people just don't think ahead. What will this animal have to do when it's grown up? How do we want it to misbehave? And they're very deceptive, because a foal is, it's harmless. Puppies are harmless and puppies appear to be overly friendly and overly socialized. But no, that's because you're only seeing them socializing with the same person. You, you want to make sure it's going to be competent with unfamiliar people.

Oh, absolutely we do that. We do that with when I get. I don't my cats, don't have kittens, so when I need something I will go adopt some, some more kittens, because I don't otherwise you know, so we can. There's always kittens that need homes. We take those kittens everywhere.

Because how on earth can I expect him to be a studio cat and learn how to be comfortable in studio If I don't take him everywhere?

I go and have him play with other people, get treats from other people, get pet from other people and learn to not be afraid? Because people say my cat could be a model and I'm like well, maybe he does these things at home, but the minute you get him in a studio where he can see everything around him is a stimulus and he gets frightened because he can't, he doesn't know any, it's not familiar. And the same thing when we get into dog, and we had a. We got a dog during COVID, but that dog went everywhere with us and we just made sure to get him out, you know as around as many people as possible outside, you know, as safely as we could, blah, blah, blah. But anyway, he's one of my best acting dogs. He has the most fun, loves everything, every other animal, every other dog. You know he's a colleague, border colleague, mix, which is to be heaven, but I know what you're saying I understand what you're saying.

Sorry.

I wanted to ask you.

No, I'm going to say this is what veterinarians should be telling everyone that you know when they get their eight week old. So it's two thirds through critical period of socialization for dogs and cats. But we got a month. Socialize it nonstop, invite people to your home or take it for, carry it in public, create it in public, cart it in public or car ride. People don't realize that you can socialize cats and dogs to almost anything by having them in a car crate, and for the really big dogs it can be in the back of the car so you can go to a car park and a shopping center, open your boot flap it never sniffs the ground where the danger of infectious diseases are. And you could sell puppy kisses a dollar each or kitty kisses.

Everybody always wants to come to cats because I think they never leave the house and then one day they're feeling poorly and the owner catches them, frightens them, puts them in a crate, frightens them, puts them in the car and then takes them to the vet clinic where a stranger's going to pull them out and examine them. This must be so stressful and that's what you shouldn't be doing to a sick animal, usually to have trained your animals like when they pull up in the vet clinic parking park they think yep, mom and pops treat dispensary.

Oh yeah, no, my, my cats like chicken or turkey and that's the reward for you know all these behaviors I learned. I've learned that if, when you have a cat in your house Sorry, I know it's about dogs with the principles of the same, and say the cats annoying you, the cats doing stuff, cats being a cat, but it's annoying, the behavior seems to be annoying because he's being a cat, you don't want them around, you grab him. People do this. Grab the cat and throw them in another room or throw them downstairs or throw them outside, right, literally, pick them up and throw him, you know or not, throw them, but like, open the door, put them out. What is he learned? When you grab me, you take me away from you who I want to be with, because if the cat socialize, he wants to be around. So then, like every time you pick them up, something negative happens and then they go. Well, my cat's not cuddling, he won't let me pick him up. Well, because every time you've picked him up, something bad happens.

I use turkey, like here we're going to go in your crate for a while. Here's that. Follow the jump up, jump up, get the treat. Yummy content. We're going to go here we're going to go, we're going to go downstairs because I can't have all of you here right now, so I'm going to open the door. They all run down the steps. Look at me. Yum yum, yum, yum, yum, you know it's like so. Then when I go to pick them up, it's always pleasant. We're going to have a nice perv, we're going to be have attention. So the dog if I grabbed his collar and dragged him around, what, what, why would he learn anything good from that? Whereas if I go here's you know, here's something that you enjoy, your kibble. Whatever we can go in your crate, like even now my train dogs, I'll still throw a little bit of kibble in the trade because it's like, you know, great time, we're going to have great time now. There you go, here's your little bit, and they're like, happy and content, no whining, no fussing.

And they'll do that everywhere, because yeah, I think cats, cats especially, always say to people you know, you are. Well, we are very lucky that domestic cats don't come in the same sizes as domestic dogs, because the life of most cat owners would be over that fast. So now, thinking about the cats feelings, we must handle them. We've got to get them to be floppy, like a stuffed toy, so that when you take it to the vet we just use verbal commands. We say do and hop, he jumps. Used to jump on the exam table. Stand, he won't move. And then we can examine most of the animal. And then we jump in on the floor and say, bang, he's on his back, like this. So you can then examine the other side. So you do it with cats too, and then they really learn to love the chest scratch. It's mesmerizing for them, and when they've had enough they'll tell you they'll just take your hand in there to pull that and then you stop.

And you only need stop for four seconds and then they pour you again. I need more now, you know, otherwise they get overstimulated, but you've got to desensitize. I call them subliminal bite triggers. So these are the 13 most common reasons why a dog or cat would bite you. And so, number one we have to tone down the force of the bite by teaching bite inhibition, by playing with the cat and letting it man off our fingers and the dog right, so we can give feedback. What is caught? Weak jaws, but pointing teeth, and to make sure it understands that it bites hurt us before they develop big, old, blunt teeth and very powerful jaws.

Especially in a cat, because a cat, a cat bite can be pretty infectious. So you know that when you get bit by a cat you better watch that because it can be pretty infectious. So I can learn my kittens learn when we're playing with them the bite inhibition. I know exactly what you're talking about, where they nibble and then you teach them that that's. You're telling me something. Okay, but this, this is too much, this is enough. Whatever I did, so none of my cats bite.

I mean the lovely to have. When I came over here in 71. I have no money because you could only take 300 pounds out of England I had nothing, you know, and luckily someone took pity on me a primatologist and she said Ian, do you, would you like a house set? I said, what house sitting? They said, well, these people are going to Africa to look at the boons and they need someone to look after their Malamute and their cat and they kind of like the idea you were a veterinarian and I said, yeah, and you can drive their car, that's cool and they'll pay you. So I became a professional house, only for people in the hills who were going away for more than six months. And this is the first time I've been housed with a cat.

Gina was an indoor cat. I'd never had that. All our cats were indoor, outdoor cats, including the farm cats, and and of course they had a longer life expectancy because of the farm dogs, the all the nasty things that were coming around to mess with the cats. The dogs would take them out and I can't go ballistic at 10am and it would climb up a vertical beam and then run along the beams on the ceiling hanging like this, and then it would. It just it was crazy. So I didn't know what to do. Normally I would have said, oh, go outside and do that, you know, catch a rat or something. And so what I did was I had a little flashlight they didn't have laser lights back then and it had a really pinpoint beam and you know, cat, cat toy, and I would lead it away into the kitchen and I would pull a string in the kitchen door and then I felt bad about it. So I eventually learn if you can't beat them, join them. So at five to 10, what I would do is I had a little ball, like a racket ball, actually squash ball, and smaller, with feathers on it, on the end of a fishing line, and then at five to 10, I would sit in the armchair in front of the fire and flick this up the carpeted stairs, you know, and the cat would go what and then kept them and I would do this for about five minutes and then at 10 o'clock the cat would be. So we let it have an activity period on a cushioned stairs, you know. But the cat got what it wanted, I got what I wanted.

There's always a solution when I think, you see it from the animals point of view, that what we define as a behavior problem, the dog would define as my favorite activities like running away, being chased, chasing, cat eating, cat poop, going crazy in the middle of the morning, in the middle of the evening. You know, for cats not internally, they are not eternal animals. I mean that's what they love doing. And to deny them that well barking?

We always barkathon up on the balcony five o'clock every evening, glasses of wine for Kelly and I, and we'd go whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, and then the dogs would start and we had a hound dog too, you imagine that and it went right across the. I'm like in a great big foresty ball, so I can't see any houses from my house, but they're there in the trees and people in the flatlands of Berkeley must have heard this plaintiff howling with three dogs, not knowing it was started by Kelly and I. They probably thought do you think those dogs can tell time? Why do they always howl at 5pm? Because we'd dive for a glass of wine. That's why.

There you go, there you go. Everybody's trained. That's pretty great. That's pretty great. Well, this has been really amazing. We're so grateful that you took the time to speak with us today, Diomed. No, your book comes by the time this comes out. Your book will be out, because your book comes out early December of 2023.

It comes out 5th of December. Yeah.

You can buy the book Right and the title of the book I wanted to Barking the right tree Barking up the right tree, barking up the right tree? Yep, and I imagine that's. You can find that book. It's already online, anywhere they sell books.

It's the big online retailers. I would like to mention another thing. We have just well, just, it actually happens. On the second December we are resuscitating a program that we've had for 20 years now, and that's where serious puppy training my company funded this program.

It's going to ask about it Because that's always been a steady, good income.

You know, we have 25 puppy training schools all in the Bay Area and we would give away two free books before you get your puppy, after you get your puppy to every humane society shelter in the Bay Area. So this is the Bay Area and it's probably the highest earning state Just the Bay Area in the whole of the US. It's its own country. To every participating vet clinic, we had about 100. To pet stores, we had very fewer those and anyway they got boxes of these books and I published them. So they weren't they only 99 cents a piece, but I would deliver these boxes of books. And then it got too much because we had too many people who wanted the free books to give to. So they went to vets and pet stores because that's where people went.

When they got the first day they got their puppy. And then when we went digital, oh and then we started shipping them. But it costs so much money. It cost five times the shipping than the price of the book. So I capped it at about you know 200 places we were delivering to. Then we went digital and thinking great, now it's ebooks. But it dropped off, it fell out of favor, because pet stores and veterinary clinics were total luddites when it came to websites. They were the last people to you know shelters were on board still because they knew you know, whatever.

Anyway, so we're starting it again with a vengeance, and my goal is within a year that's great each critical mass, so that every prospective puppy owner knows about these two books before they get the puppy. So here's the deal. Anyone can download these books for free now from Dunbar Academy dot com, and the link you need is Dunbar dot info. Backslash free pup books. One word.

Fantastic. We'll put that in the show.

It'll come up with the URL and take you there. And not only can you download these two books for free, and it's very quick. You go, click one book, click another book. Then I just say a little sentence and say and also, we have another gift. So this is for your listeners. If they go down to the third click, they can access all of the top dog Academy. I'm talking hundreds and hundreds of hours for free for a month.

That's fantastic. So you get a one month free subscription to the top dog Academy.

So spread the word. So when you get these books, share them with every doggy owner, you know, because someday they might get another puppy. If you hear someone's getting a puppy, please spread the book around. I want to get critical mass within the year. I think perfectly doable.

Oh, I agree, and what I said in the very beginning dogs are going to be better for this. This is going to make and own lives as well. I mean, that's exactly because it's hand in hand. But I just does my heart well to hear that you're sharing this with so many, and we will do our best to spread the word to.

Yeah, you keep mentioning children a lot and yeah, we are in the doggy world and the cow world, but I personally do a lot of the dog stuff for people, and by that I mean I find it very sad sometimes that I don't think people get the joy of dog ownership or living with a dog as much as I do. But what this really is about is all this stuff works with all animals, people included. We are mammals.

See humans are animals. My favorite animal is my son, jamie, and he runs the company now and you can ask him a question If you don't believe what I say. Next, we have never had an argument. It goes without saying. I've never laid my hand on anything, never grabbed him. I've laid my hand on him gently because he was going to step into the street when we're walking off leash when he was younger, or to hug him, but we have never had an argument. I don't see why we should. We have disagreements, especially now. We work together and my response is always Jamie, these are not mutually exclusive. You do it all the way, I do it mine. We see which one works the best, and that's what we're doing right now. I've changed our free book download. It used to be a rigmarole to get them. You had to do this and that and give your email, and now it's just click the books yours, click the books yours.

And we will share the links for sure.

You get to see what we're really about. Hundreds of you can binge watch. It would take you five months to go through. This is a big site Anyway oh, that's, that's so Barbara has been wonderful and a joy to speak about horses and cats and, of course, cows as well as dog. I love them all. I love cows for sure.

I think people have a training gets a bad rap. They say, oh, it's cruel to train an animal. I say no, training an animal. In my book is teaching an animal ESL, so it clearly understands what we're asking it to do. In normally spoken sentences they're like I mentioned.

Jamie, so one of my favorite sentences in the book is with Jamie. It's Phoenix. Come here and sit. Come means come and sit, phoenix, come. Take this. Go to Jamie, please, malamute. She would run notes. Go and find him and deliver a note in the garden. That's what training is about to open communication channels so animals aren't accused of misbehaving.

No, that's this is. This has been so informative. I just wish I could follow you around and just Take a cow.

Well, I can. I can show you all of the cows. We've got them all here and they're all wonderful. Like I said, they're my favorite thing to photograph as well. Again, thank you so much. We're going to be wrapping this up. All of the Dr Barnards or Dr Dunbar's information will be in the in the links to all of this. This will be on YouTube. This will also be on all of Apple, spotify, any place you get a podcast. Again, we're grateful.

And we'll obviously let Jamie know when it is released and we'll give the old podcast a boost to On our social media.

Oh, thank you.

There's no point in me doing this. If we don't, then both promote it, yeah.

Right around doing this, so maybe start to my day.

I'm now, I'm taking the day off. I'm going in the garden, well, to garden.

There you go. Yeah, yeah, you, you, you you.