Alright everybody, welcome to another episode of Dog Pro Radio. Uh, today’s guest is somebody a little different. Uh, today we have on Eric Stanbro from Ohio. Uh, Eric was a police dog handler and trainer for Kenton PD up in Ohio for quite some time. Um, police, dog trainer, owner of Van Ness canine. Um. He, I, I, I like to take credit for, for a little bit of this at least.

Uh, I think over the years I was able to shame him into eventually getting into the pet dog business. 

Mm-hmm. 

Um, where he previously owned, uh, Ridge side canine Ohio. Uh, and now he’s happily an employee of that business. So, Eric, welcome. 

Thanks, man. Thanks for having me on. 

Hopefully I Am 

I the first guest you’ve had with this real nice microphone?

I think so, yeah. 

Am my, if it’s not the nicest. It’s certainly the biggest and there’s lots of Yeah. To that. 

It’s, and it’s weird. It’s so tall. I, I can’t do it like this. I have to, it’s weird. I don’t know. 

I, 

I need a higher chair is what I need. Hmm. 

Well welcome to the show. Excited to have you here. 

Yeah. And Eric is also, uh, Eric has published a book, uh, which is what we wanna try to spend some time on today.

Um, what’s the name of the book again, Eric? I’ve got a copy of it. 

Yeah. It’s Eco Without Conflict for Pets and Working Dogs. 

Yeah. And it’s available on Amazon. And, um. I can reach out to you and you send ’em a signed copy for free or something like that. I think it’s, 

yeah. You know, if you write a book on, on, uh, Amazon, you publish on Amazon, if you’re the author, it costs you like $2 and 50 cents to buy them.

But the funny thing is, if you go on there and order a book, you’ll get it. Uh, you know, you’ll get it in a two days. It takes three weeks for the author to get their copies. Bless you. Wow. Like, I ain’t, we ain’t making no money off you. You’ll get it when you get 

it.

It’s a New York Times bestseller, I think. Right. 

Uh, well it’s an Amazon bestseller for sure. 

Nice, nice, nice. And you’re also going around teaching seminars with, uh, this approach to eco work as well, right? 

Yep. Uh, mostly police dog seminars, but there’s some pet ones too. 

Okay, awesome. Um, well if you, if you don’t mind, we’ll just dive right in.

If you want to kind of explain, uh, what it is you’re teaching, what you’re doing, how it’s different, some of the core concepts of your book. 

Okay. You know, the funny thing is it’s the book’s called Working, uh, you know, uh, eco Without Conflict. It’s probably 60% eco. And the rest of it is the, the problems, the conflict, the relationship problems between, you know, handlers and dogs and, and pet owners and dogs.

Um, I want to, you know, I did police dogs. I’ve been handling training for 21 years and, uh, I started this concept, uh, of the eco stuff the way I’m doing it now, uh, on pet side and then added it to the police side. And then I’ve just done some things. So when I travel the country on the police stuff, it’s just really fixing the things.

And the main problem is the verbal out. That’s the reason why everybody has me there. Um, but then we find out, as you know, there’s deeper, deeper issues than just the dog not letting go. Um, so I like to try to help guys, fix guys. I’ve had, uh, probably close to 1700 and some dogs through the seminar courses.

Um. Of police dogs and have fixed a lot guys, getting bit by their dogs, failing, certifications, never letting go, all that type of stuff. So it’s one of my favorite things to do, um, in that seminar. But yeah, so the big difference is, um, u the use of the tone function, the way we use it with the eco, uh, we call it tone avoidance.

I did not coin that term. I did not invent it or make it up. Um, Aaron Taylor, who owns Ridge Side Canine and he’s owns the main corporate location, it, it Riverside Canine does have, um, like franchises, so to speak all around. And we are actually doing a big expansion here pretty soon. Um, I own the Ohio location.

I sold it to one of my guys and now we switch places and I work for him trying to head towards maybe retiring, you know, at some point. Um, I do think if you have a real small business, you should build it up and sell it. That sounds good to me anyways, but, uh, Matt pay attention to that. Um, so anyways, um, so basically what it is, what it.

There’s a, a few things, and there’s something that I’m gonna talk about today that’s not even in my book, that I’ve started doing since I published the book, and now I’ve added it into the pet dog training and the police dog training. Um, so basically what tone avoidances is using the tone function as a negative marker.

To the dog instead of using No. So, um, letting the dog know that his behavior or the environment’s about to get him corrected. Uh, we do it all without talking so that the behavior always causes the correction and not, um, me, like, so it’s not paired with my voice. Um, it’s always what the dog is doing. So if a dog’s a counter surfer, grabs laundry, eats trash, picks things up off the ground, the tone replaces no, ah, ah, leave it, drop it down off, all that stuff.

Um, jumping, uh, a lot of things, uh, it’s worked amazing for some dogs on, uh, crate anxiety. And uh, just a lot of times that you would be telling the dog, no, we just go beep on the collar and they’ll walk away from whatever that thing is on the ground. And then ultimately what it does is it creates a well-mannered dog.

So like if you condition your house with tone avoidance, the dog just stops messing with your stuff and you can tone ’em out of a room they’re not supposed to be into. And you can, you know, make a trustworthy dog so that like if you get up to go to the restroom, you don’t come back and watch your underpants going down his throat ’cause he got up, you know?

Um, ’cause as we all know, dogs are just like jail prisoners. As soon as the warden is not looking, they’re making cigarettes and alcohol and doing all kinds of dumb stuff. Um, so that’s kind of the concept with tone avoidance is fixing that relationship too, of people that are constantly having to bitch at their dogs.

And then what happens is you become a punisher. Instead of the leader. And if you’re the punisher, when you walk in the room, a lot of dogs will have anxiety just in your presence or they’ll double down on you and be like, ha, nah dude, come get it. Come take this sock outta my mouth. Let’s see what happens.

Um, again, my whole thing is always to try to make that, that, uh, pet owner or that, um, that handler’s a leader to live for and not a punisher to fear. So that’s you the basis for that. 

Okay. If you don’t mind, can do, would you mind talking about how you kind of, how you introduce this. You got a brand new dog.

Maybe it’s a, maybe it’s somebody’s pet that’s already, you know, gotten away with a bunch of stuff. Mm-hmm. They’re problematic. They’ve been living in the house with ’em for a year and a half. The, the owner’s probably a pretty poor leader. Uh, and this dog is on the prison yard, so to speak, uh, with nobody watching.

Right. So how do, how do you, how do you start this whole process? 

So it’s, it’s, it’s pretty cool, man. We, um, if we’re doing a board and train, for example, we started on day two, but for pet dogs, I’ve told them, I’m like, listen, just go put out everything in the house that the dog likes to mess with. Just put it out there.

Take the baby gates down, open the bathroom door, open the laundry room, and then you just send the dog in. And the dog does not have to have ever felt stem from an eco before. It can be the first time he ever feels it. So I just let the dog off leash go loose. Especially, you know, and guy, people know they got a wild lab, you know, that just picks everything up.

Retrievers pick everything up, all the doodles, everything. So just let the dog in there and just kind of walk around and follow them. When they go to the, the prohibitive item, we hit tone, then stem on a working level. Sometimes maybe a little bit above the working level. The dog will turn and walk away from whatever the item is.

It might be a jar peanut butter. It could be trash. I don’t even. Make it like super easy. I’ll put out one or two things too that are a big draw for the dog. I might not throw hot dogs and cheese out on the first session, but I’m giving them something to draw them to it. Tone stem, they walk away. They’ll go to the next item.

Tone stem. They walk away. Tone stem after about two or three minutes, and sometimes you may have to go a little higher on certain items. After about two or three minutes, the dog will either come stand next to you. We’ll go lay on their place if they’ve no place. If they don’t, they’ll just come sit at your feet or they’ll stand in the middle of the room like, uh, not touching nothing.

Like, this is what’s going on here. I’m getting myself in trouble. We’re just playing off that narcissism that dogs have where you know everything’s about them and they don’t want to get themselves in trouble. So then we’ll pick things up, two, three minutes. We put it away, let ’em do whatever, have their, whatever you’re gonna do with them.

Then we put it out again and we make it harder. I’m putting out hot dogs on the floor, food, like taking a box of dog treats and spilling it on the floor, and then I’m doing it again. Tone stem, tone stem, and only about two sessions. The dog. Now you’re on tone. They walk away from it. If they don’t, you use stem.

If that doesn’t stop, use a little bit higher stem until they do all without talking. And so like, if it’s a pet dog in your house, your living room, kitchen, dining room, you’ll, you’ll hit all those rooms in those first two sessions. Basically, if you think about it, you’re putting an underground fence on all your stuff without the bolt of lightning that comes from an underground fence.

You know, usually say, say I’m using a. Easy educator. Yeah, easy. 900, it goes to a hundred. We might be on like 12 or 13, you know, maybe a little bit higher on some items, a little bit lower on some others. But the goal is to eventually not have to use the stem at all. So basically we’re classically conditioning the tone as a warning to the dog.

And it doesn’t take long. It takes total of like 10 minutes. Now if I’m doing this with a board and train at a facility, after I do that room two times, that room is dead. That dog will never touch another thing in that room again. So now we have to go to another room and I’m lucky the place I’m recording at the Fun house, I have about 350 rooms in it.

So I can, I never have to repeat a room if I don’t want, but that’s why it works so well at your house. And I tell police guys. We, we do it for different reasons, but if you have a mal wall that lives in your house, I guarantee your wife hates him and you know what I mean? And he can’t be trusted with anything.

You can do the same thing and have a, a dog that, um, it doesn’t make him afraid of the laundry room. It just makes him like, I’m not going into that thing is like cayenne pepper. I’m not going over there. You know, that type of thing. So I’m just gonna lay down over here. Um, what I like to do is put a bed or something in the room, tone them off of everything and kind of funnel them towards that cot and, and get ’em to lay down on it.

So you said where you are now has 350 rooms. Mm-hmm. Where are you? That’s a lot of rooms. 

Yeah. So this is, uh, this, this place is called the Fun house. It’s on the van s side, on the police side, it’s a hundred thousand square feet, hallways, rooms. I have an indoor shoot house. There’s no windows, so you can make it like pitch black.

So SWAT teams are here with nods at nine in the morning, and it’s the old dbol. If anybody’s ever heard of Dbol corporate office from the. 18, early 19 hundreds. Um, and it’s, it’s one of those deals that no one will ever rent this place. No one will ever, because I’m probably getting asbestos. I’ll probably have cancer from it when I’m done.

But, um, but it’s just offices and office and office and office. And so we have sections where I throw furniture in there and we build all kinds of, and I, I have a fake attic and a tunnel and all kinds of stuff in here. So we do a lot of cool stuff. I do have, I can let the dog off leash in here to test it because they can’t get away.

Um, but like one hallway here’s 97 yards long. So there’s just a lot of fun. I do have an advantage that way on some things, but you could teach your dog tone avoidance and fix about 90%, 95% of the issues you have with your dog in, in one day.

So I’ve got a question on, on working level. So you mentioned that you could do this without the dog already being conditioned to the eco. Now you’re obviously a pro, and I’ve done this a lot of times, if you’re working with a client, finding the level, I’m assuming with this method needs to happen quickly.

Uh, you know, you can’t spend 30 minutes, I think, dinking around with it while the dog’s grabbing stuff. It shouldn’t, but you obviously can’t go up too high and scare the dog. How are you figuring out that level? What, what’s your process? 

So I figure out the level maybe in a different room outside, away from, excuse me, I had to throat laws be clicking on your microphone.

Um, I’ve, I just, we just sit there and we’re talking and the dog is sitting there standing, looking around, whatever he is doing. And I just start at one. Two, three go up until I see, you know, the dog look, close their mouth, some indication to me that the dog felt it. Um, keeping in mind that some dogs, especially some fearful ones, will kind of mentally block it out.

And before you know it, you, you’re a number. That’s way, way, way higher than it should be. Once, once you get the dog past that, I’m always way back down on the numbers. But, um, I’m just looking for something, some recognition. Usually the dog turns, they’ll turn and look at it. Um, then I know. Then we, then off we go.

Okay. So that’s happening before you go in the room, you’re spending the two minutes or five minutes, whatever it takes to get some sort of basis. 

Yeah, correct. And I usually have a pretty good idea where to start. I don’t always necessarily have to start at one on the collar. Um, you have a, you have a pretty good understanding, you know, like, um, like I just finished training a, a St.

Bernard who was 156 pounds, just rolls and folds and hair and all that. And I’m like, he ain’t gonna feel this. And I was right. He was usually about 20 the whole time when every el everybody else is like eight to 12. Me personally, if I’m, if I’m holding in my hand, I’m a 13, pretty much like on any kind of, uh, eco technologies, collars and a three on a Garmin.

So I, you, you kind of get a basic idea of what’s gonna happen. Um, yeah. And then we just go right at it.

That’s pretty awesome. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Jason. 

Now your goofy question. I’m just kind of thinking about it. Um, and like I said, I read your book. I don’t remember. Um, so go, you go into a house and you got multiple dogs. How, how do you deal with, I’m just curious how you deal with that, how you, how you work with one dog.

Obviously you’re working with one dog, but how are you not creating some maybe learned helplessness with some, I mean, not learned helpless, but um, just kind of, uh, learn the relevance with some of the other ones? Or do you separate ’em all? 

Yeah. So if I’m gonna go and we don’t really do, um, in-home lessons for people, but I do mentor a couple trainers that do.

So I tell ’em, put the dogs up, um, one at a time, bring ’em out. You can do it one at a time. The funny thing is though, man, when I’m doing it, so say I’m doing a board and train and, um, they have two or three dogs and, you know, training’s expensive, and they’re like, I can only do one. I’m like, I’m telling you right now, when that dog comes home from the go home and the other two dogs and they’re just, you know, going at it, having a good time too much, you hit tone and you’re the train dog walks away.

After two or three times of those, you’ll hit tone and the untrained dog will walk away. They’ll split. It’s wild and crazy to see it. Every client has told me, go, it’s almost like you trained my other dog. And I’m like, well, you’re welcome. That’ll be $3,500. But, but I tell ’em, I’m like, listen, once you learn this, you don’t need me.

Once you learn this, train your other dog that’ll fix most of your po. It’s not gonna get you a good heel or anything like that. That’s other stuff. But it’ll get the dog to stop most of the crap you are sick of. 

Yeah. So to be clear, you’re, you’re primarily using this system to, um, eliminate a lot of these unwanted behaviors that people are just like fed up to here with.

Mm-hmm. You’re building other behaviors to heal, for example, sit down, place, all those things. You’re, you’re building those sort of separately, um. 

Correct. Yeah, that’s, I do all the normal stuff for that, you know. Um, and I, and I, it’s in my book too. The way I do, uh, eco, um, is more of a negative reinforcement for a day and then, uh, stem after command on a, on a day just to start, uh, speeding up so the dog understands there is something after my words that could be a consequence.

So the way I do eco, I train leash stuff one day, two day, day three starts, regular eco stuff. Day four is stem after command. Day five is consequence. I do the same thing with police dogs. So by five or six days I usually have a dog pretty close to off leash, if not already off leash. Um, but if I’m doing lessons with people, we are doing, um.

Prong collar to stop for the polling on lesson one and, and tone avoidance. Most of their problems are solved right there. And then day lesson two, I’m like, well, we gotta get fancy. If as long as they’re doing the homework, I gotta come up with some tricky stuff. Because they went home and came back a week later and said, yeah, dog left everything alone.

And he is not pulling me down the street. I’m like, okay, yeah. Well, let’s, let’s start other things. But I also start, um. Tone, recall, tone recall, we do on day one of all dogs. And Tone recall is a long tone on the dog to teach the dog to come find me. So if I’m in the house, I’m like, where the heck is the dog?

I can just be, and the dog will come find me. If the dog’s outside in the backyard, I’m, it’s Ohio here, it’s cold. We, I’m not going outside with this dog all the time. Freezing when they’re done gonna the bathroom, I’m holding tone until they come flying into me. The dog does learn the difference between tone, the long tone and the short tone.

Um, and then I can start, it’s crazy. I’ve been messing with it. Dogs we’re out trail hiking, dog’s getting away from me a little bit. I just need him to slow down. I can beep and he’ll stop and turn and look and just look at me. And maybe I recall, and maybe I don’t, maybe I switch trail heads or something like that, but I’m finding is it’s opening up people’s lives with their dogs and they’re getting to do things they didn’t, couldn’t do before.

Um, so Tone recall first day. Tone avoidance day two. Um, some people do it reverse, you know, if they’re in home, you know, doing stuff in their house. 

Do you use the vibration at all for anything 

or 

just tone? 

So that’s a fantastic question. I never use the vibration. I’m like, the vibrate is just an excuse for these people to not use stem ’cause they feel bad, blah, blah, blah.

Well then, um, we had on my podcast, working Dog Radio, we had Tom Davis on, uh, the, Tom Davis is a pretty well known pet dog trainer up in New York. Um, I’ve met Tom before he comes on the show. He has an eco with dog truck that has, um, a vibrate on it. And dog uh, vibrate is very, very, very strong. It’s called a high powered pager for a reason.

Um, I never really used it right. I just used, and you gotta remember, I came up, I learned ecal originally in the police world, which is turn it up and smoke ’em, you know? And, uh. I, I did all the wrong things for all those years doing, I, listen, I started in oh five. I started doing tone avoidance in 21, like not years and years and years ago, five years ago.

So to Tom Davis goes, listen man, we use that pager as a mental disruptor on aggressive dogs, on reactive dogs. He said, when I have a dog come in for an eval, and they, you know, as you know, everybody’s got an aggressive dog. And then we see them and they’re not really aggressive, they’re just fearful or whatever.

Um, he goes, I’ll put an eco on the dog, and when they’re sitting there barking at me, I hit vibrate and that usually shuts them up and they hide behind the owner and now we can have a talk. So I was like, oh crap, let me try that. And man did it work? It worked brilliantly. So we switched, we were using the, the, um, the mini educators, the round remotes.

Because of that, we switched to the EASI 900, which is programmable as tone and vibrate. It comes from the factory on a, a medium pulsing vibrate. We plug it in the computer, we switch it to a high vibrate steady, and then we switch it to a high tone. So now our, our buttons are set up, tone, stem, vibrate stem, and man does it work.

Amazing. Where we find it works is crate stuff. The dogs that, that have all the crate anxiety or whining and everything that vibrate, rattles their cage buddy. Um, it’s not a hundred percent right. It doesn’t work on everything. A lot of roddys and stuff like that, it doesn’t seem to work on that much of, like, that ain’t, that ain’t nothing.

But we just use it to shut ’em up and it seems to work pretty well. You just have to be careful on the high vibrates. Some dogs we’re noticing makes them, can make ’em weird, like really weird. I have an airdale. 

I, I certainly see vibration. 

I have an airdale that I’m training right now that vibrate shuts her down.

Like she’s, she’ll run to Canada. If I use vibrate, 

the vibration’s often more aversive than the stem up. I mean up to a certain level. Level, of course. 

Yeah. That easy. Nine hundred’s. Nice. Because you can turn it down, you can make it low. Same thing with the tone, like we put it on high tone. But if we had to put in our questionnaire, our eval form is, do you use an underground fence?

Because the first time we’re, the first day we get a dog and we’re doing tone recall. They hear that tone there, they’re trying everything they can to run away. ’cause you know, underground fence is three beeps and then an absolute electrocution 

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So are you’re using this, the examples you’ve given so far are dogs that are stealing stuff in the house. Maybe I’m going in a room they shouldn’t be. Are you using this for more challenging behavior mod, like let’s say any resource guarding or leash reactivity? 

Yeah. So. Resource guarding. It works amazing.

We’re doing one right now. Uh, we have, um, one of our trainers is working with this giant Roddy, that resource guards babies. And so we have a doll that whines and cries and walks and everything like that. And we’re doing tone avoidance with the dog on it. We’ve done it several times on those dogs that switch into prey drive when the baby cries.

And because the dog is getting themself in trouble, um, they’re like, they don’t blame the baby. They blame their own behavior. ’cause I’ve always thought, and I think I still believe that you can correct or warn or even praise what a dog’s thinking, right? People that touch their dogs when they’re anxious are just telling them it’s okay to be anxious.

You can’t reason with a dog. But when the dog looks at the item and you hit tone, they can’t lie to you. They were absolutely gonna mess with that thing. So we definitely do it with resource guarding. Um. Leash reactivity, sometimes tone avoidance works really well with that, but I’m doing something completely different with that, that we’ll get into here in a minute, uh, for you.

And it’s something we’re doing with that Rottweiler and I’ll, I’ll explain it to you here once we get into it, but yeah, anytime. Basically I’m gonna say no, leave it or any or i or for jumping or whatever. Uh, we’re using the tone avoidance.

So jumping. I’m just curious, um, the timing for the tone and the stem. Big goofy golden retriever. Golden doodle, right? They’re notorious for jumping on people. Mm-hmm. It’s coming at me. The paws are coming off the ground. Are you, are you giving that tone when it’s. Feet touch my chest? Or when they come off the ground or somewhere in between?

Or is it something different? 

I’m giving it to them when it looks like they’re about to jump. Okay. Um, so when we do our go home lessons, the dogs that we’ve trained, you know, onboarding trains, when the owners come, we do the whole PowerPoint, we talk all this other stuff, we go get the dog and I say, listen, I’m gonna bring your dog in here off leash and let him go wild.

And when he comes over to you, when he goes to jump on, you listen for the tone, you’ll hear it tone. And then with the owner, sometimes I have to hit stem the first time the dog hears tone with the owner. ’cause by this point, they’re not jumping on any of us or anybody at the facility or anybody that we take ’em to.

They’re not jumping on anybody. If they think about they’re going to do it, we hit tone stem. If they don’t stop. So the first time it happens with the owners, the dog’s like, oh, you, I didn’t know, you know? Oh shit, I didn’t know that. Okay. I guess that’s life. And you know. Then off we go. And then, um, I try to get the dog to jump on them so that we can do it.

Because I tell ’em, when you go home after this lesson, I want you to let that dog go nuts in your house and tone him off of all the things he’s not allowed to do. Stem. If it doesn’t stop, it’ll, you’ll take one or two tries. It’s really good because, you know, we did all the years of, uh, we do a lot of prong call ’cause we’re big prong collar people, pro collar corrections on the jumping.

Um, we still do that with puppies a little bit, but the, you know, the owners can’t do it. They just can’t do it. They can’t correct correctly. They’re pulling and a lot of ’em feel bad and they won’t do it. And I find that it’s not as permanent as the tone avoidance. The tone avoidance seems to stick a little bit more.

Um, for me it changed literally everything we did. And then what happens is. Just like a positive marker. You know, we talk about yes, marker or clicker or whatever. That’s where the value of a dog is, is in that marker. Same thing where the, where the negative marker has more value than the stem. So if some behaviors, if you go right to stem, especially on like an aggression case, they’ll get worse.

Like they’ll feel stem aggressive dogs will turn on you or whatever. You stop hit tone, they’ll stop that. What I was just warning of what I was just doing to you has more value than the stem. Um, and it took me a long time to kind of understand that till we started seeing it on dogs. Like dogs that were trying to bite us, we stop, stop going stem, they’re getting worse, worse, worse.

We stop, hit tone, they stop. It’s like, you, dick, I was just, you could have been doing this all along, but they, you know, they still do it. So it’s the same thing with food. If we put food out, I tell people, don’t wait till the food’s in their mouth. Wait till you can see they’re like a change of behavior.

They do that change of behavior. They’re looking at it. That’s what I’m toning them, I’m getting in their head. 

And do you have any worries specifically with your clients? So I’m a big believer if you’re a hundred percent sure the dog’s about to do something, that correcting is, is appropriate. Right. The dog’s already decided it’s gonna do it.

Mm-hmm. 

I’m a lot less comfortable with the average client making that decision. So I’m curious how you, how do you navigate that? 

Yeah. Um, so when we’re talking to them, the clients tend to accept the tone side better than the correction side, you know, and then, you know, we role play, I’ll do it where I’m the dog and you’re gonna tone and I walk ’em through it and we’re doing everything like that and they seem to kind of take it a little bit easier.

And then when they see it happen, um, some of ’em are slow and they take, you know, they want to try to wear the thing on their neck and do it upside down and all that other stuff, but. I have found that if you just go straight to the correction, you end up, um, it works then. And then if you are involved in the correction, you’re saying no stem, then the dog is only obedient when you are present, when you leave the room, it’s on.

But when the, when their behavior got them corrected through tone and you didn’t say anything, that’s, uh, the money where the dog then is like, Nope, not touching that, because that got me in trouble last time. I don’t wanna get myself in trouble. And the way I explain it to the clients, they’re like, okay.

But I do have to tell them that we are not trying to, to call in a Russian submarine with beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. You know, we have to explain that to ’em. Listen, it’s not tone, tone, tone, tone, tone. We’re not playing jingle bells. It’s tone stem if it doesn’t stop higher stem. And breaking it down that way seems to, to make sense to people.

So you, you’re using the environment and the dog’s own behavior. You’re, you, you, you’ve said it a couple times, where’s mm-hmm. Like, I want the dog to know it’s not me, it’s them. Um, are there times in the training where you kind of try to make yourself invisible? You, you give a lot, a lot more to leeway and kind of keep an eye on the dog outta your peripheral a bit to, to separate yourself from their behavior and that tone.

Yeah. I’ve, um, you know, I try to stand at the door of a room, but I’ve done the whole video camera, you know, or the phone, FaceTime and let ’em, ’cause what happens is once the dog starts to get tone stemmed off of things and you send them into a room full of. Delectable things, they start to be like, Nope.

And it’s almost like they walk by the thing with their middle finger out. Like, Nope, not this, not today, not gonna get me today. But I tell people, don’t walk them to it, you know? Um, I’m like, I would, we’ll just sit down, let the dog be a goof, let ’em run around, beep, you know, like at my house, I can do it where I’m sitting and I can tone them from going upstairs.

I can tone them from going in the bathroom and the laundry room. And so I just kind of frame where they’re at and I’m just sitting there at the, you know, not saying a word. And the dogs usually come and lay at my feet or go onto the place cot. Um, so I just try to, but in the beginning you kind of have to walk around the room.

’cause after they get stemmed a couple times, they just kind of go into a heel. They just come over and hang out with you. I’m like, well, it’s not a bad choice. Like, the choosing to do nothing is a correct choice. But we’re, we’re, you know, we’re trying to get some reps in here, so you.

So this isn’t really training related. I’m just curious with your ecos, what kind of strap are you using on them? 

I personally feel that there’s no better strap for an eco than the one the manufacturer makes. 

So 

with all the, all the hidden collars and all the extra bungee collars and all that, I don’t think they work as good as the straps that the manufacturer sends.

So to that point are, do you have issues? So presumably the clients are having the collars on the dog, especially when they first come home all day, right? Are you Yeah, 

I tell ’em, uh, from the morning till night, every four hours, switch it around. 

And that’s, uh, that’s what I was getting at. I was curious how, what you’re coaching ’em on.

So every four hours switch it. 

Yeah, that’s what I tell ’em. It’s on, you know, they’re probably not gonna do it. Like if they go to work, they’re gonna take it off while they’re in the crate. Um, if they’re using, you know, like a, a sport pro and the dog’s a barker, I tell ’em leave it on and turn that thing onto the bark limiter, you know, option.

Um, we, what we do now at our business is we just, we, when we order the collar, say from Eco Tech, we get the ones with a buckle. Uh, the quick snap I should say. Uh, because that seems to be better for a lot of owners. Um, uh. Because the collars made from the same thing. Their manufacturer collars are made from.

Um, I’m just not getting into all the fancy, uh, aftermarket ones. Um, like I have a dog right now that has a really nice fancy aftermarket ones. It just doesn’t, it doesn’t fit the same. You know what I mean? Um, everybody’s trying to get something that hides the box and everything. I think it’s stupid. Stand on your business.

Screw people if they don’t like the fact you got an e collar on there. Right. But yeah, so we tell ’em to move it around, you know, for all the reasons. I’m a big believer in putting the wings on the collars. I really like the wings seems to be a little bit more hypoallergenic than that nickel contact points.

Um, but not, we don’t do it on every dog, most of them. 

I think the wings are amazing. We moved to those probably four or five years ago, and I’ve become a huge believer. 

Yeah, on, on the Garmin, if we’re doing a Garmin, we put Eco Technologies wings on there. I think Garmin’s wings kind of suck. Uh, dog’s wings for their collars are pretty good, but, um, Gar, the Eco Tech Wings work better on the Garmin box than their own wings do.

We’ve used the Eco Tech wings on dog truck collars for years and years until recently. Dog trust’s, new collars have switched their contact points, so they’re no longer, you, you know, you can’t use the color technology ones anymore. Yeah. And you 

can, that’s a little change, I think the blocks, the charging point or something.

Yeah. But yeah, we use, you know, uh, my podcast have been sponsored by Dog Tri Forever. And, um, we’re using ’em all, always using ’em. And, and then I was switched over because of the tone, right? And we started doing tone. Now if you, if you’re sitting here listening to this and you’re like, well, I already have a, a two 80 C, you know, w with just vibrate on it, vibrate avoidance conditions even faster than tone avoidance.

You just have to be careful. Does it wig your dog out? You know, uh, when I do police dog stuff, I’m at a, at a seminar, say there’s 15 dogs, there’ll be, there’ll be five or six dog trusts, you know, six or seven, uh, uh, garment, uh, the sport, uh, the five 50 Garmin, five 50, maybe even a little bit more. That’s tends to be the one the most.

And then even now, a couple of the eco tech ones, their, their working one. Um, and I tell the doctor guys, I go, listen, I’m telling you right now, we will do one session with your dog on a vibrate avoidance and that’ll be conditioned in there one session

that, that vibration for sure be aversive. I’m assuming you’ve seen the new dog tris have added a tone. Yes. 

I’m gonna take credit for that. Uh, whether it’s true or not, I’m gonna take credit for it. ’cause I’ve been bitching at, I have meetings with Dog Tri a couple times a year. I’ve been bitching at them for years.

To put a tone on their collar, right. They did kind of go with the beep, beep, beep. I would’ve preferred more of a steady tone, but they also, you know, they talked to a lot of hunting guys and hunting guys like that too. Um, but I definitely rag them for years, the last five years to put tone in a collar. So my next project is to get all eco companies to get rid of the nick button.

I’m like, I don’t need two buttons. I can nick myself on the continuous button. I don’t need two, you know, trying to figure out which buttons which, I just need one. That’s it. I said, get me a nice collar with tone, vibrate, and stem on the front and nothing else. We’ll be good. Like, we’ll be, I’ll sell millions of those things.

I’m with you on that. And it’s just one more thing for a client to learn. 

Yeah. And it, it would cut, it would put their cost low and, but whatever. Hm. Nobody listens. 

Well, when we were, when we were talking earlier, you said, I had asked about reactivity and you said that we’ll get there. So if now seems like a good time, let’s dive in.

’cause that’s something pet dog trainers see all the time. Of 

course. Yeah. Yeah. And reactivity is tough. You know, it’s tough for owners to live with sometimes it’s can be really tough for, um, trainers to deal with. Um, you know, we, I still see trainers really trying to just hammer in obedience on the, on those types of reactive dogs.

It just doesn’t work. Um, I still, I, I just was working with a client whose previous trainer told them, when your dog see, when you see the person with the other dog coming, make ’em sit in a, in a sit and make ’em stay there, hold the leash real tight, like two feet. Just sit there. And I’m like, wow. I go, no, that’s really the exact opposite of what you should be doing.

But, um, good luck. Uh. So I started doing this thing. Um, I, I was calling it a tone precursor in the beginning, but I don’t really call that anymore. I call it a tone follow or a tone move. Basically what I’m doing is I get a dog in Now, I was waiting a couple days in, but I am starting it when the first hour of every single dog that comes in.

So we, again, we’re a prong collar company. We use prongs on every dog, puppies, everybody. And we call prongs the easy button. We’re working every single dog with two fingers on the leash ’cause we’re teaching pressure on pressure off with the prong collar. Um, I don’t like slip leads. I, I call them strangle ropes.

I think, uh, I don’t think slip leads teach pressure. I think they just teach windage uh, uh, survival, really honestly. Um. I think I’m more of a prong collar guy, but you get those dogs that are banging at the end of the prong right on the first day. They don’t know what’s happening. And some of the, sometimes, especially with police dogs, that can be a bad day for you.

Um, so what I started doing was I do this move now where I, I’m just walking the dog around and I hold tone and turn and walk the other direction. And I’m teaching the dog to follow me, holding the tone all the way till they get to me. And then I turn the tone off. Right. So they, um, and to, to back up. When we’re teaching Tone Recall, I find tone Recall takes the most amount of reps to get installed in the dog.

Um, so if I’m doing, we, we have a thing we do. We started on like day three called the fives, where every time I get the dog out, we’re doing five reps of every command. Put ’em up, it takes like a minute or a couple minutes. Next dog. Next dog, next dog. 5, 5, 5, 5. And they never get sick of it and they’re only out doing the work for a couple minutes.

But I got all the reps in, you know, come heal place, sit down, boom, five times 10. Tone recalls though, takes twice as many reps to get everything in on, on the tone. Recall. Once it’s in there, it’s amazing. But, um. So I started going tone, move, tone, move, tone, move. And all I’m telling the dog is I’m basically tapping him on the shoulder going, come on, we’re going this way.

So what I started doing was, uh, a dog come into the facility and one of the kennel techs had his personal dog and a kennel. And the dog was, and the client dog was super reactive, super reacted towards the dog within, before they had, they lived 30 minutes away before they got home. I had sent them a video of me walking by and moving and the dog not reacting to that dog.

’cause I was holding tone. And the dog’s like shit, where are you going? Gotta follow him. And kind of using their. PAC mentality and their FOMO against them to follow me, follow me, follow me. And if they feel a little pop on the leash. Okay. Some dogs, the real hyper, hyper, real hyper ones. On day one, I’m actually using STEM to get ’em off the X.

So I’m going tone, I start moving, I feel tension. Tap, stem, they’ve never felt STEM before. They’re like, what? What is that? It moves them and then I get back on tone. So I’m going Tone, move, tone, move, tone, move. On the police side, what I’ve been doing with it is the dog does it out and he downs. We have dogs that do that.

I don’t, I, I eventually want them out and coming back out, down and that’s the dog that you even cough. And they’re gonna re bite, like they’re gonna take a cheap shot and I’m holding tone and turning and the dog never even looks back at the decoy turns, walks out and actually comes down like flattens out.

As far as the. Excitement level, or you know, ’cause some of those dogs they turn, hit that prong, they’re gonna turn on the handler, right? The other important thing is, you can’t do this with a three foot leash. You need to be at least six foot, if not more, because you can’t drag, you don’t wanna drag the dog around.

So it’s tone, move, tone, move, tone, move. And I can send you videos of it. We did it with a dog that came in the other day, a, a, a lab that was so outta control when he came in and he hit the trainer in the face with his muzzle and gave her a pretty good shiner. Within an hour and a half, I’m teaching her this move and the dog is just hanging out with me loose, like he’s a wild ass dog.

But, um, so I started doing with regular dogs, tone, move tone, move tone, move the, the byproduct of it that I didn’t expect. Is within the first day, the dog is pretty much in a loose leash. Walk with me. Not a heel. I’m not saying heel, but we’re walking around the the training room and he’s just staying there with me, right?

And he felt pressure on the prong collar, but there’s no real banging on it. You know, the screamer dogs that the first time they feel prong. I’ve eliminated that from those dogs just by going tone, move, tone, move. The first couple times they’re running from the tone, you see ’em looking back like, what the hell is chasing me?

But we start getting that. Then I’m like, well, let’s try it with reactive dogs instead of. Trying to do whatever corrections it is to get the dog to stop focusing and move. ’cause I do believe with reactive dog’s movement is life. Keep him going, keep moving. Don’t sit there, don’t let him boil over. Oh my God.

He is getting closer. He’s getting closer. He’s getting closer. And then they explode. Right? Keep moving. But what I’m finding is if I go, if I work with a dog and I hold tone and move and they come to me and I give ’em a piece of food. Tone, food, tone, food. I call it the power of twos where I correct the first thing, pay The second thing, the second thing becomes where the money is.

So tone and they just start when they see the dog, they’re gonna react to, they just turn and look at the handler and then walk away. Um, the real bad, like real aggressive dogs like killers. I haven’t really gotten into one of those yet. Uh, with the tone, well, I shouldn’t say that. We’ve done a couple ’cause we, with those bity dogs that have human bites, we do lessons Now, uh, we don’t touch the dog, we don’t do board and trains with them anymore.

We just do lessons and we have the owners ’cause it’s a management situation with a really, truly aggressive dog. Um, so it’s crazy how well it’s working. The tone move, tone, move, tone, move. And people that are getting banged, you know, their shoulder hurts, their elbow hurts the dog, they can’t stop it. Um.

Tone move is starting to get those, those reactive dogs to just turn and follow the owner. Right now you gotta let them get away on the leash a little bit further away. Um, but like we just had two, uh, dog reactive dogs go home at the same time. And we did ’em out in the parking lot, back and forth and back and forth, and they never were focused on the other dog.

They just kept, when they saw the dog, they would turn and look at the, at the owner. And if they don’t, you hold tone it, move the other way. 

So Eric, just, just for clarity’s sake, um, initially when you’re doing the tone, move it’s tone, move with an eco, using the tone and a prong collar, do you then switch it over at some point later where it’s just the eco and it’s, uh, tone stem?

So, um, like you would be putting the leash on the flat collar instead of the prong collar. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

I, I do that personally because for me it’s, um, like, it keeps me honest. ’cause the, the, the prong collar, I’m so good at a prong collar that it’s like a crutch. Like, it’s like, it’s so easy for me that I’m like, I’m gonna let me test it out, see if I’ve been getting away with stuff, you know what I mean?

So I’ll flat collar it and, and when I have a client that seems to be pretty, like on top of things, we’re walking and I say, listen, my goal for you, this is your homework. Like this is the end of the board and train. But in a couple weeks, you’re walking your dog using the eco, take that dog out on the flat collar and your eco and, and see if you get a good heel.

See if you’re working right. Then, if then, you know, and if you don’t, then you need work and you need to work on it a little bit more. So yeah, I try to, um, because what I’m doing too is because I teach prong collar pressure the first day. ’cause I don’t wanna be dragged around all over the place. I’m finding that with the tone move stuff, the prong collar pressure is a lot, um, easier.

Like I’m, I’m always, so when I do it, I have my leash and I just put my index finger in the loop of the leash at, at the end, let’s say a six foot or even maybe a 10 foot. And I never grab the rest of the leash. ’cause then I’m working that way. And when I do it with the owners, I have ’em do the same thing.

I’m like, take your left index finger, put it in the leash, and don’t touch the rest of the leash tone go to, and before you know it, they’re kind of walking with a nice loose, I said, now this isn’t heel, but you could be doing this out in front of your house. Or this could, you know, you could be doing this on your way to your car and that type of thing.

Um, so it’s, it’s the staying loose leash was, that was something I didn’t expect actually. Um, I was just, uh, doing it to get the dogs to stop paying attention to the thing that they were gonna react to and follow. I move, you move. If you go look at Ridge side, canine Ohio’s, Instagram and Facebook, they put up a video yesterday of me teaching this out of client refresher.

And I say, I move, you move. And then they put, um, ludicrous his song, I Move, you Move After. Every time I say it, um, it’s pretty funny. But the point of the, what happens is the dog keeps it like, like a mind’s eye on you a little bit. And the goal is I move and he beats me like he moves when I move. So what I do is I get distractions.

I have the dog sit, look at the, a person in front of them or some dog distraction. I try to get to where I move. The dog follows me. And if they don’t, I’m just holding the tone. After a few of those, the dog keeps, you know, if you, I think Jason, you mess with horses or anything that they list, they watch you with their ears.

Well, dogs don’t really do that, but they, they kind of. Kinda watching me, you know, like keeping the sense that I’m moving and I find it just for the owners. It makes it so much nicer. So then I go to Lowe’s and we have a cashier at our Lowe’s here that is awesome. Name’s Kathy. Kathy, if you hear this, I, I really like you.

She is very respectful, knows when to touch a dog, knows when not to, doesn’t, you know, she has treats, doesn’t always use them or whatever, but I let her pet, the dogs get ’em all worked up. And then I gotta go tone and go. It works every single time. They don’t double back on me going, no, this person’s more interesting.

They’re like, shit, I gotta go. I gotta follow him. And it works. It’s really cool. But here’s the thing, I think when I’m holding tone and the dog gets all the way to me and I let the tone off that I mark that position just by the removal of tone, I do say yes, uh, you know, but I don’t think I have to, I think be, and the tone goes off, that marks their position because after a few reps, the dog just kinda comes over to that position and stays there.

So it’s a theory I have about removal of tone being a marker if it’s timed right. Um, but I don’t know where you fall in on all that with markers. 

Well, I think, yeah, I think the removal of pressure in general and, and you know, the tone. I think you could still view it as pressure. 

Mm-hmm. 

I’m not saying it’s aversive by any stretch of the imagination, but, um, yeah, I think you could, I think you could reasonably argue that it is somehow pressure in the way that you’re using it.

Mm-hmm. And yeah, the, the termination of that pressure, regardless of what that pressure is, uh, is, is in fact a signal to the dog, in my opinion, that this, that you’re engaging in a behavior that I now want, right? Mm-hmm. It’s just like old school, old school bird dog folks teach in, um, platform training, right.

Directional control and platform training. Once the dog’s engaged in the behavior we want, they’re on the platform. What happens? Termination pressure. 

Yep. 

So, yeah, I think, I think a lot of dogs would pick it up as a signal, but to your point, I think it really depends on your timing and how, how well you’re doing with it.

Yeah. 

To, to create the clarity that you want. 

And so now I have three things I’m doing with tone. Tone, recall tone, follow tone. Avoidance. When you’re teaching the owners, you do have to kind of really drill it a lot because they’ll short stroke that tone a lot and they’ll just do a short one and, and rather than hold it to you.

But what I’m noticing with this tone follow is it’s, it like doubles how fast tone recalls condition in the dog. That’s another thing I didn’t expect to happen. Um, you know, I’m Tone will walk away ’cause I teach tone, recall tone till they get to me, give ’em food tone till they get to me, tone till they get to me.

And then I start doing what I’m doing off leash in the beginning with that tone. I hold tone. I just turn and go the other direction. Especially if I have someone with me, like two people, the dog’s like, oh, where are you going? And they just come running right by you. So that kind of PAC mentality that I call, I say Dogs have fomo, right?

And they’re going, I don’t wanna miss out. Where are we going? And it helps with the off leash stuff, but I’m finding the tone followed, speeds up the process of the tone recall. 

So if we could dig in there a little bit. I’m curious on the tone recall. Mm-hmm. What purpose is the tone serving? So are you seeing the tone as a cue for the dog and it’s basically their recall command?

Or is it, uh, is it negative reinforcement? Kind of like people do, uh, you know, low level eco trainers that are applying STEM and releasing it when the dog comes? Like, what’s the purpose of it? 

So there’s, we teach three, three recalls. I teach a verbal recall that’s backed up by stem. I teach an emergency STEM only recall, and I teach the tone recall to me.

Um, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll give you two an two answers. One for pets and one for police. For the pet dogs, I try to make tone recall as fun as possible. Like I’m running backwards. I’m, you know, I, I want them to want to get to me. And then when I start using it, I start using it. Um, I. Outdoors. Like if I’m gonna go trail hiking and I, I go left and you go right as the dog, I’ll hold tone until they get and come running past me.

Um, I just, I just find that the tone just seems to have more value because there’s really, I’m not Now, if they don’t immediately turn, like I had a dog off leash today at German Shepherd, who I realized today I need to do more tone. Recall reps, he, his, I’m, I’m saying his name come and he’s on a dime, but on the tone he’s kind of slow rolling me a little bit on the recall.

So I’m tapping stem back on tone and he’s, he’s, he’s coming. I gotta do a little bit more with that, but I find the tone. Recall parts really fun. I have a video and I, I don’t know if you put, are you guys on YouTube? Do you do YouTube with your I have a couple videos I’ll send you, I’ll send you one of my dog in my backyard and she’s pretty far away and I hold tone and she comes 200 miles an hour.

Now I could yell to her, but I don’t wanna. I just wanna hold tone to have her come flying back to me. On the police side, I’m able to manipulate dogs around buildings, on building searches without giving away my position. I don’t have to yell when the dog blows the rooms and turns the corner and I’m like, where the hell is he?

I just hold tone and he’ll come flying around. I can turn tone off and direct him into different things. Because if I say here, and I didn’t really mean here, I meant just come where I can see you, you start to diminish what come or here means, in my opinion, um, when I say, come, it’s right here to me. Sit in front of me and we’re done and we’re done.

Tone, I can move them around. Just means kind of come, come to my area, if that makes sense. 

Even for the recall. It does. 

Yeah. It’s like the, the, the video of my dog, Jesse. Uh, I’m standing inside my basement, so there’s nowhere for her to go except for, but if we’re out hiking or if I’m out off leash. ’cause what I started doing was a lot of off leash stuff to really try to open people’s lives up with their dogs a little bit.

Um, people that didn’t even know the things that they’re gonna be able to do with their dogs. Um, and that came from me training a dog who the owner was like, he’s a bird dog. He’ll chase the bird when he sees it flying for miles. And he’s like, I need, I need a recall. I need a recall. And so I’m like, okay, we’ll work on that.

And I hadn’t really been doing that. And at his go home he cried of how good that was. I said, I’m on it, man. I’m doing that on every dog now. As long as they’re not aggressive, we’re getting off leash. We’re getting now, the people may never use it ever. They might never expand their life, but I’m trying to give, you know, people options.

But the tone recall is I find it to be a lot of fun. And it works in the house. I listen, if you’re a pet owner and you’re like, where’s the dog? That might be a mistake. You might have made a mistake. Your dog might be in his crate or he might be, um, you know, digging in the garbage. But you hold that long tone, you’ll know ’cause he’ll come running from another part of the house.

Yeah. 

Full transparency. I’ve not used this system, um, for, for pet dog stuff, but I have used it when we’ve gotten. Police dogs coming to us that, that have, I don’t even wanna call it a sticky out, they have a, a, not even a no, no out. It’s not even that. Yeah, it’s, it’s worse than that. It’s somebody’s tried to teach an out and failed miserably time and time again to the point that this dog knows it can control everything when we go to bite work.

And, and I’ve, like I said, I got your book. I’ve heard you talk about this on your podcast and others, and I’m like, nah, let’s try it. And, and it works. I will say, yes, it 

does. I tell you, for you what would work used. 

What 

would work really well for you too is um, uh, once you teach tone avoidances use it on tracking and the dogs start to critter rather than line check.

I just go, beep. They don’t even look back. They just go back and start tracking and, uh, ’cause you know, I’m sure North Carolina’s a lot of tracking. Um, 

yeah. 

So it, it’s cool because the reflexive action from the guy is to pop the leash. I’m like, you’ll get two of those on the second one, the dog’s just gonna come back and stop working.

Mm-hmm. But beep and he goes away. Deer poop, fox pee coyote stuff, they go back to work. 

Yeah. Those, um, those dogs, like I’m talking about, who’ve just had this terrible mm-hmm. Terrible. The third out 

command. 

Yeah. Controlling that out. You know, those, those things are, they’re tough nuts to crack. Mm-hmm. And you.

Using tone avoidance and stem, and it’s not even incredibly high stem, but using that tone avoidance and creating that clarity. And it’s the, the benefit I saw to the tone avoidance, and the reason why I used it the first time is because the, the cue for the out had just been corrupted so horribly that it allowed us to layer in that tone of that tone stem that created this incredibly reliable and consistent cue to the dog that says, okay, this comes, that comes, this comes next.

And, and it, like I said, we’re like a champ on, on a number of dogs that we used it for that were just super sticky, for lack better way to 

put it. Right. Yeah. And there’s a lot of, listen, there’s a lot of people that have good success using no as a negative marker. So they tell the dog to out, he doesn’t, they say no, and then the correction comes.

Right. My problem with that is the dog has someone to fight at that point. No, fuck you. No, you know. Right. They have someone to blame, right? With the tone. They only have themselves to blame. That’s it. You got yourself in trouble, not me. I’m just standing here. Right. And it clears up the relationship, the problem, the, you know, the dog that’s spinning away from the handler when they walk up on the bite and things like that because their relationship is kinda screwed up, you know?

Um, and again, that’s kind of a big part of my training is. I tell ’em I have a whole slide about what you’re doing off duty. That is a problem. Giving the dog too much freedom of movement. Giant kennels, not using the crate, talking to the dog all the time. And then when you’re driving around with your center divider open, touching and petting your dog the entire time and taking selfies with your stupid pup cups and everything like that.

And then you wonder why you close the divider and the dog paces and wines, paces and wines. Police dogs and pet dogs are the same. They’re dogs. They get anxiety the same, the same causes, the same problems. You know, you let a police dog on the couch and you sit and touch ’em all the time. You probably have a pretty anxious dog.

Good point. 

Mm. 

I’m assuming you see big differences in your client though, right? As far as between, uh, the average pet dog person and the average working dog handler, how they plan on living with the dog, their expectations. I, I can’t, Ima I, I have to assume there’s some major differences on, you know, being comfortable leaving an eco on all day long, being comfortable being in charge of the dog.

Do you see more challenges with your pet dog clients trying to talk him into this stuff? 

Jason, we, we both can say, don’t be surprised. Uh, 

yeah, don’t, I don’t, I, I, it’s very. Person dependent. I’ve had, I hate to use this term soft, but man, I’ve had some handlers of softer and pet dog clients. Mm-hmm. Uh, really, you know, they, they, you know, they want the dog to work when they want the dog to work, but when they’re not working, uh, you know, as Eric alluded to earlier, yeah, they’re gonna, they’re gonna pop off on TikTok and Instagram and pup cup it, and sleep on the couch and, you know, um, disregard the police dog trying to murder the cats, neighbor’s cats at home and all those things because, you know, they, they’re like, oh, it’s a working dog, but it’s, you know, uh, it’s, it’s my best friend too.

Um, it, they, they, they oftentimes don’t provide, in my opinion, that leadership role that they should. Um, now, again, others, um, not so much, but yeah. Mm-hmm. Don’t, don’t think it’s because they’re working dog handler, that they’re gonna be, uh, a little more fixed, rigid and, and consistent with their dog off duty.

The only difference, well, the one main difference is some places the handler has no choice. Uh, the, the department says you must kennel the dog. They can’t be in your house. They kennels in your garage basement, wherever it is. You must do this. You must do that. Uh, you have no choice. There are still some agencies where the dogs stay at, uh, the facility and you have to go pick ’em up at the beginning of your shift every time, which I find is, can be a problem.

But the police canine handlers and, and listen, I’m telling you right now, they talk way more to their dog than than pet dog owners sometimes. And I did that. I worked four dogs. I, I’m telling you, every one of my dogs knew which captain I hated. They knew which guy was a goof, which dispatcher drove me nuts, what calls I liked, what calls I hated because I dumped my entire life on that dog.

1. All shift long and every single dog I had paste in the kennel in the back of the car and whined every single one of them. Now, some of it was some genetic probably, and the one dog was an apex predator, and all he wanted to do was bite. But if I knew what I knew, uh, now they would’ve been in crates off duty or small, five by five or four by four kennels.

Um, I wouldn’t have been talking to ’em so much. I wouldn’t have let ’em in my nch in yard for long periods of time. Uh, the first dog, Gina, I ruined her. She lived in my, turned into a house pet. Um, so yeah. Uh, but the police guys have a tendency to romanticize the relationship with the dog. That we are partners, we are best friends, we are buddies that he knows to protect me.

That is not true. Like I still have guys that say that, that their dog can tell the difference between a gun and a cell phone. You can’t tell the difference between a gun and a cell phone and that the dog jumps in front would jump in front of them if a guy was shooting at them. Get outta here. What fantasy world do you live in?

So then they just touch the dog and talk to the dog their whole shift. Some dogs are bulletproof, doesn’t bother them. But I see the center divider open and I’m like, I bet I know what that dog’s like. 

Sounds like Eric’s police dog needed a its own therapy dog. 

Oh yeah, yeah. They’re like, oh my gosh. Again.

Or then, then, then the dog probably hates that captain. Good. Let’s go. Me and you. Me and you. Against the world for sure. But again, well, I’ve learned, just learned so much, you know? Um, I have guys that come to my seminars and. Teach ’em tone avoidance on the first day we start and they’re in a hotel room and they’re like, man, last night was the best night I’ve ever had there.

He stopped trying to steal the pillows and, and all this other stuff and just left it alone. Pet dogs and police dogs. Tone avoidance helps with cat chasing, like you just mentioned. Um, sometimes it’s tone and a, a higher stem, but it does fix it pretty quickly. Uh, counter surfing, all that stuff. Poop eating.

Eric, you mentioned this earlier, that you see less aggression, uh, handler, you know, redirection or a frustration type aggression because of the, you know, because of using the tone rather than going to a physical correction, telling ’em no and then correcting, and I wonder how much of that is that? What I see with a lot of pet dog clients, especially before they call us, is that people ignore, ignore, ignore, and then they get frustrated and they’re physically going after the dog and they’re unpredictable.

Right. And being unpredictable obviously creates chaos and creates stress. And I’m wondering how much of this is just simply you’re creating clarity where the person is now able to tell the dog every single time, I don’t like this, I don’t like this. As opposed to they let the first nine go and then number 10 they’re like, you know, power walking over to the dog to grab him by the scruff.

Yeah. You know, uh. So for, for aggressive cases, the dogs that are going after the handlers or the owners, it’s a whole package deal. Like, I gotta change the way the dog looks at you. And, and then tone avoidance. The point of the tone avoidance for them is so that the handler stops being a punisher, right?

With pet dogs, if you’re always viewed as a punisher, usually the dogs will all be anxious and shut down. Um, some of them will bite you, but in the police dog world, if you walk in the room and the dog’s like, well, it’s on. ’cause every single time this guy talks, I get a correction. That dog’s ready to double down.

We select the dog for that drive, that that fight, right? And when it’s redirected on the handlers. Now, to be fair, some dogs are just crazy. There are some dogs that have a screw loose and you do everything you try to avoid and you try this, you’re, you’re living the right way with the dog, and their dog is still biting you every once in a while.

You, that dog should probably go, but if you’re just, you just gotta change the way the dog views you. Right. And I find on the pet dog side, I don’t know where you guys fall on this. To me, one of the number one things that cause most behavioral problems is the couch letting the dog on the couch. Now my dog at home, she’s on the couch ’cause she has no behavioral problems.

If she did, she would lay, she would sleep on the floor or on a place bed or not sleep, but lay while we were hanging out on the floor or on a place bed. When you allow your dog on the couch, you’re doing equal things. We must, we must be even because we’re doing the same thing if we’re even. Then who the hell are you to tell me no?

Who the heck are you to touch me like that? To grab my scruff? And also, who is gonna save me from the Amazon driver? Who, why is he here on a Sunday? Nobody works Sundays. But now all of a sudden, this Amazon driver, he must be here to kill us all right? Because you are not a leader. You’re a litter mate at that point.

And it’s a big thing. I talk to people, be a leader, not a litter mate, right? Touching your dog all the time, talking to your dog, babying your dog, and letting ’em on the furniture and petting them and touching all the time makes you guys equal. Because the mother in the litter never does that. She cuddle.

She never cuddles or coddles. She leads, cleans, corrects, and plays. She’s, when they’re in a big pile, she’s over a, a couple feet away, right? She never babies them. Other puppies do that. Other dogs do that, not the leader. And so people can turn themselves their dogs. And that creates the reactive dogs. That creates the anxious dogs.

That creates the police dogs that are biting the handlers. ’cause who do you think you are? I was on the, we’re we’re doing human things, right? We’re all doing the exact same thing on this couch. Um, once they get away from that stuff and then they shrink their world down, use crates, use place, use place, beds, use downs, stays, long periods that you’ll see this dog completely change.

And they’re like, okay, I’ll listen to you because I, the line that I use is you have to be the way, the truth and the life for your dog. You are the pathway to that dog’s salvation. Whatever that salvation is, it has to come through you. And if they don’t look at you that way, you’re just food guy. That’s it.

Just food guy. 

Mm-hmm. 

One, one more question, Eric, before we mm-hmm. Land a plane here. Um, with talk, with this tone of avoidance system as you’re teaching it, what do you think is probably the biggest mistake people make with it, and how can they avoid making that mistake? They don’t use the stem. 

Um, what, when you’re teaching tone avoidance, everybody’s, everybody when I teach him, seems to do it like tone stem, tone stem, tone, stem.

Then when the dog is doing it well and he’s just leaving stuff alone, or if you hit tone and he walks away, they go back and double tone him, triple tone him. Instead of, instead of using the stem, the tone has value because it’s backed up. Right. Um, and that’s why it has more value. It’s just like, it’s just Pavlovian stuff.

Eighth grade, boring ass stuff. But that’s the biggest mistake to make. Don’t be afraid. You know on that easy 900 there, there’s two buttons in the front. A black and a red. It’s a half inch commute to the stem tone. Drop it down, back to tone if you have to. It’s not that far. You’re not hurting them. I feel bad.

Get rid of that. You’re not hurting the dog. Sometimes you might startle them, but also I tell ’em, if your dog’s picking up food on the ground and, and whatever, just imagine that that’s a mouse poison or rat poison or something that’s going to a sock that’s gonna have to get cut open you. So my goal when I’m trying to tell the owners about being a leader, not a litter mate, being a leader to live for, not a punisher to fear, I try to make ’em cry.

If I can get ’em to cry or tear up, we’re good. And then I throw that, uh, Jesus reference in there about the way, the truth in life. And that usually gets most of them. 

Package dead. 

Yep. 

Um, people wanna learn more. We’ll, we’ll put your socials in the show notes. Okay. But how do people get your book? How do people learn about your seminars?

Yep. Go to, uh, Amazon, look up Eric Stanborough. You won’t even get to the end and my name, and it’ll pop up. Um, which is, that happened dude, I sold like five or 600 copies the first month, maybe a thousand. Then I sell about 10 a day. So it does pretty well. Um, so it’ll pop up on there. It’s $15 and it’s what, 64 pages?

It’s pretty, I’m an Neanderthal man. I wrote it for guys like me, so it’s real easy to follow along. Um, all my socials are Van s canine. If you want to contact me, you hit me up on any of the socials. I will. I have OCD really bad. And those stupid numbers, like I, I can’t have a bunch of unread things. It drives me nuts.

I will respond to everybody. I’ll most likely give you my phone number and you call me and I’ll talk to you on the phone. Um, I’m just trying to help people, you know, do things that I wish I would’ve known years ago, you know, ’cause a lot of everyone’s struggling, like lots of people are struggling and they don’t have.

A few thousand dollars. Right. So for the pet side, on the police side, your agency does have a few thousand dollars. Don’t let ’em tell you they don’t. Um, just reach out to me if you wanna host. Um, I’m real bad about, like, my website looks like I made it with crayons. It’s pretty terrible. Um, we, me and my wife made it years ago and I never updated, so I don’t put my seminars on there.

Just watch on Instagram. I’ll post some things, some places I’m gonna be, and if you don’t find one, hit me up. I’ll maybe I’ll come see you. I’ll be at, hold the Line. I’m teaching this class. I’ll hold the line. So 

that’s coming up right April? 

Yeah. A couple, few weeks, 

yeah. Awesome. It’s been a pleasure to have you on.

Appreciate it. Um, uh, I do gotta say Jason is correct. He is one of the main influences that got me to uh, start doing pets. He’d been beating me up about it for a long time and we just, you know, it’s true. Actually it was you and Mike Ritland. ’cause I went to Mike’s house to be on his podcast and he goes, yeah, I’m getting out of the police dog world.

I go, why? He goes, ’cause there’s like infinitely more pets than police dogs. I’m like, oh yeah. He said, God makes dog uh, dogs every single day and 99% of them are pet dogs. I was like, good point. 

Very true. True. 

Yep. Do you, hey, real quick, do you ever talk about your detection stuff on here, 

on here? No. 

Yeah.

The biggest thing I took away from Jason too is I stopped putting sit in dogs on unless they’re stupid and can’t close the loop. I, that’s one of my favorite things I learned from Jason. So I learned from people all the time and Jason’s been one of my guys for years. 

Dude, we even switched Ted over and Ted was a hard nut to crack on that one.

We got Ted doing pet dogs now. 

Yeah, yeah. Well, it, you know, uh, outta necessity, but now it’s, his business is, is booming, like he’s doing really well. 

Awesome. 

Well, Jason, you should do the editing on this version and you can put all these nice things he is saying about you like at the start. Like, that’d be 

amazing.

That is the title. 

Yeah, 

that is the title. Now, Ted, just to mention before we wrap up here, Ted and Eric also have a podcast. God, you’ve been doing it what, 10 years? Uh, 

eight, eight years. February of 18. We started, I was still at the police department when we started that. That went over well. 

Yeah, I bet.

Long, long time. Working Dog radio. Um, apple, Google. You can find it anywhere You mm-hmm. Find podcasts. Go over it. It’s, it’s, it is more working dog stuff. Uh, little, little more high speed. Little, little less low drag. And, and it’s a, it’s cool podcast to list to, so check it out if you’re, 

thank you, 

um, listening.

Uh, go check them out. Don’t forget to leave us a review, but, uh, go over and check it, it out. 

Great. Thank you. I appreciate it guys. Thanks for having me on it. I was really honored to for you to reach out. 

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