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Visit Blue nine.com to apply today and start building a better training business. Alright folks, buckle up because Larry Cron is in the house. If you’ve spent any time on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, I’m assuming really anywhere online, you’ve gonna, you’ve come across his stuff, his videos, his content.

Larry is pretty awesome and he is all over the place. He is a former federal agent turned dog trainer and has years of experience. He has a company called PAC Masters and has written a book titled Everything You Need to Know About Eco Training. I’m pumped to pick his brain today. We’re gonna talk dogs training philosophies, maybe stir the pot a little bit.

Larry’s known to speak his mind and I see that face there. Larry says, whatever Larry’s thinking, which is awesome. All of that being said, Larry, welcome to the show and thank you for coming on. We appreciate it. Oh, thanks for having me, buddy. Appreciate it, Matt. I’m looking forward to it. I could, I enjoy this stuff very much.

Yeah, I, when people say like, isn’t it a lot of time to do a podcast and like, maybe, but it’s a lot of fun talking to cool people about dogs. It’s, it’s hard to be, yeah. Find something more fun than that and we’re basically neighbors. I had no idea. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. Have to get together someday and meet you for lunch down there or something.

Absolutely. Would love to. I mean, downtown Nashville’s right? Halfway between the two of us, so Yeah. Yeah, definitely. There’s lot worse places to meet than that. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. It is crazy when you’re downtown one block, everyone’s in a suit. The next block, everyone’s in skirts and cowboy boots. It’s such debauchery.

It’s so, I, you know, I don’t know any place in the country where you can go at one in the afternoon and there’s just people that can’t even walk by that time of day. It’s because you think about it, I tell people this all the time. I used to go to Las Vegas a lot and I love Las Vegas. Right. So, but Nashville’s getting more, so much more popular and people that haven’t been here yet a ask me about it, I say, look, I love it.

I love going down there. Right. But in Las Vegas, there’s a lot of things to do throughout the day and at night. Nashville is all based off of drinking. Like, that’s it. You like music, great, you like drinking great. If you Yep. Don’t like either, don’t bother going to Nashville. You know, it’s crazy. And it’s, it’s so interesting that the downtown’s not that big.

So my wife has a lot more culture than I do. So she loves the symphony and every, she drags me along. They play movies there sometimes. I dunno if you’ve seen that. Yeah. Where they’ll play a movie and play the score along with it. So no, you can see Home Alone, they showed on a big screen, but then the symphony or orchestra is playing the Home alone soundtrack.

It’s really cool. You’re a really good husband, Matt. Well, I’ll go see a movie. I’ll, I’ll watch that in a heartbeat. But we went to see Harry Potter and my youngest, who’s, he was probably seven or eight at the time, he was dressed up like Harry. So we’re walking through downtown Nashville. ’cause the symphony buildings just block off Broadway and there’s girls calling him from the top of these bars, like third Story, they’re Harry cheering.

And he was literal shy and like waving at them. I was like, dude, you don’t even know in 15 years you’re gonna look back on this and be like, that was amazing. That’s it. Yeah, for sure. So I guess I, I’m assuming everyone listening knows about you, but could you give us just a brief intro who you are, how you got to be, where you are today, a little bit of your backstory?

Oh yeah. It’s, uh, nothing exciting. Pretty boring. You know, why is the former federal agent, yeah. You know, it, it’s funny too because I, I became a federal agent in 1996, and it was a year later after that that me and my wife got married and we got her first dog and like. Many, many people out there today. We destroyed our first dog.

We, we just made it a mental weakling because it was our baby. We didn’t have kids, we didn’t know what we were doing, you know, and that dog really suffered. It was a very weak minded dog. And I went and found a trainer, which was, is funny because I didn’t find out till years later at the time, he was actually the president of the IAPC at IACP at the time.

And I only knew that, like I heard Chad Mackin mention his name a few years ago. I was like, whoa, that’s the guy I started training with. I had no, I, no idea, you know. But, um. I just became addicted to the behavior side of things. He had the best behaved dogs I had ever seen, and that’s what I was interested in, you know?

And that’s what I started focusing on with my dog, my own dogs. I got my second dog and then I just started training dogs for free to get better and learned more. And I became obsessed with research and things and learning. But back then we didn’t have the internet, you know, so it wasn’t as readily available, which I think was probably a good thing for me because I didn’t have the opportunity to start following the wrong people, you know?

So, yeah, a lot of the mistakes I were making were, and I was forced to learn a little quicker. Like a lot of people that have been doing it a while, you know what I mean? Then, uh, I was training a lot of dogs and helping a lot of people, and I, I just loved it. I would do it for free forever. I thought, because this is, I just liked this, you know what I mean?

And I had a good career and I was able to balance both. But when we got to Kentucky in 99, that’s where it took off. Like my goal was to keep it very small, the business, something on the side. So I’d have something to do when I retire. I knew I’d retire at a young age at 49 years old, and that’s what I’ll do.

But it started building up very, very fast. And then once I started. Getting online and doing internet stuff around 2007, 2006, I think it was maybe sometime around there. My wife had bought me a little, I forget what they were called, like, uh, I forget. I don’t even remember. A little tiny square thin cameras.

Right? It was very high tech for the time. And she bought one and I was going to work with a very difficult dog that day. And she goes, here, take this, see if they’ll film you. And I was like, what? Why you All right, whatever. And I did, it was a, it was a, it was a human aggressive pit bull. And I gave it to the husband.

I said, you mind just filming this? And I filmed all three sessions that I did with them. That’s all I used to do back then. And I wound up getting it on YouTube and things just exploded. That was it. Like I, I couldn’t keep up with the business, which was good. But the downside was, it was only dogs like that really nasty, ugly, aggressive dogs, you know?

But I was excited about it. You know, I, it is, when you’re young, it’s all ego and you wanna show people what you can do. And, uh, but me and you were talking before a little bit back then, like every dog I was training, I was going to them and spent countless hours driving. Every direction, two hours to this house, another hour to this house, then two hours to this house.

And it was hard, you know? But I wanted to build the business and it gets very lonely and very depressing when you’re in your car driving from place to place and your wife’s at home with your baby and they’re getting ready to go to the pool and enjoy the weekend, and you’re spending your weekends trying to grow something, you know, I’d get home.

The benefit of being a federal agent in the office I wound up in in Kentucky was we had. Very much more normal hours than I had when I was on the southwest border, right? So it allowed me to get home at a normal time every day for the most part, unless we had an operation going or something. And then I’d jump in my car and head to Nashville.

And if I wasn’t training other people’s dogs, I was doing gorilla marketing, working my dogs on the street corners, and going to the malls and the stores. You know, I was doing trade shows, which I hated with a passion. You know, I’ve talked about this before. So I did everything I could. It was a constant hustle to start building my, I used to do the free in-home demos, like some of the franchises still do.

My first free in-home demo. My wife went with me. It was, I believe, two and a half hours, if not three hours, one direction to the middle of nowhere in Kentucky. And we pull up to this trailer surrounded with garbage and a barbed wire fence and a doberman behind the fence. And it literally like brought tears to my eyes.

I said, we’re not going in there. And my wife said, no, we’re here. You’re gonna go in there. I said, no, I’m not going. This is a waste of time. She said, it’s never a waste of time. And she made me go. And we talked to the people and I was just down and out and I said, all right, let’s go get your dog. And we went outside and I was going in the fence to get the dog dog’s name was Chopper.

I’ll never wait. I’ll never forget it. And the the owner, the husband goes, whoa, what are you doing? I said, I’m going to get your dog. He said, you can’t touch that dog. You can’t go in there, he’ll kill you. I’m like, he’s fine. He’s like, no, seriously, don’t go in there. I knew the dog was fine. And I went in, I grabbed his dog and we did some work and the people were blown away and my wife was blown away.

And then he goes, Hey, you see that German Shepherd or that trailer over there? He goes like, they hate each other. Can you go bring him over there and see what you can do? I was like, sure I did it. You know? And then we left without selling a training program ’cause they had no money. And I was so disgusted and my wife was like, that was amazing.

I’ve never seen you do that. And I’m like, why are you so happy? We just. Spent a ton of gas and time, it was a waste of time. She said, no, it’s not a waste of time. You have to do this stuff. She’s like, that was amazing. And I’m looking at her like, she’s nuts. Like, did you go on the same trip as I went? But she’s, she’s like a massive reason why I’ve done really well.

Because honestly, if it wasn’t for her, I don’t even think I’d be doing this. She forced me to do it because I was obsessed with it, just doing it on my own and learning and always into something on video or book. And she really kicked me in the ass and made, go do it. Just jump in and do it. You know? And she’s been like that ever since.

So I, I owe a lot of it to her. I hope she doesn’t see this though. That’s awesome. You know, and what you’re talking about, that experience with the trailer, you learn something from everything, right? Even if you change and you’re like, you know what, we’re gonna put a one hour cap on how far we go, or who knows what.

You learn something. Yeah. And you, you grow and you move on from there. And you story out of it, the day I stopped. Doing in free in-home demos was one of the best days of my life when it came to dog training. And that happened accidentally also. But that, that was a good moment for me. You know, I can imagine.

We’ve never done those as a company and luckily just have never really needed to. And I’ve seen the people that want training are more than comfortable paying for that first lesson because Yeah. You know, it’s, it looked out. You’re not going in there as a dog trainer. You’re going in there as a salesman.

And I hated it. Like I was truly miserable doing that. Yeah. And then one lady, one, one day, a lady called me, wanted to set up a free in-home demo, and I could tell she was an elderly lady and I said, ma’am, I said, I’m booked for four months, I can’t get to you. She said, if I bypass the in-home demo, could I just sign up now over the phone?

I said, absolutely. And she did. And I never did another free in-home demo. After that, I realized I don’t have to do this. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that was a good day. Good for you. And yeah, I think you have to hit a point, of course, with your reputation where people want to work with you, right? Sure.

And they realize you’re an authority versus one of the countless dog trainers that they have no idea if you’re good or bad, for sure. Mm-hmm. So on, on that note, what is some advice you would give to a new dog trainer, someone new to the field, and it could be really anything that’s running through your mind.

What’s some advice you would give to help them structure their career? One of the things that I’d love to see Young trainers style, and there’s a lot of talent out there today. There really is. There’s, there’s just so many naturally talented young people out there. But the one thing, sometimes I’m on social media a lot.

I love watching dog stuff. I watch everything, right? I wish young trainers would stop making videos, talking and giving so much advice instead of just showing their talent and their work. In my opinion, they’re doing it backwards and it’s, people get turned off very quick. I know. I’ve done it, believe me.

Even though, even though I would show a lot of work and show my dogs, you know, I’m, I’m very outspoken. I’m very loud and opinionated and you know, I get unfriended at least twice a day on Facebook, and I’m not joking even when I don’t say anything, but I get it. I, I totally understand. If I only knew me like through social media, I’d hate my guts too.

But I just wish more young trainers, um, would just show their talent, show their work. Let that be your advertisement, you know, because too many young people, in my opinion, get on there and they’re always talking and giving advice, and then you go look at their stuff and they have one or two videos that’s not showing much.

You know, and I know you’re not marketing to dog trainers, but people are going to look at that. You know, and people are smart these days ’cause they have so many options. And if you’re talented, just let your work show for you. You don’t have to be look at me like my videos are really bad and unprofessional, but I don’t edit things sometimes.

You can’t even hear what I’m saying. ’cause the wind is so bad I don’t use microphones. ’cause every time I’ve used a mic I’ve screwed something up. You know what I mean? And, and, and the truth is, these young people today, they’re very fortunate to where you could build your business very successfully if you’re good online, right?

Mm-hmm. I just, I would beg young people focus on getting better, not bigger. If you get better, you’ll get bigger without even trying, you know? ’cause we all know there’s people out there with massive followings and some of them I like as people, I know a lot of them, but they’re not the most talented trainers.

But people flock to them because of their social media presence and then they’re very disappointed with the results, right? Mm-hmm. That’s because you chose someone on their popularity and their editing skills and their marketing skills and not the, uh, talent that they actually have to offer you. So, you know, we talked earlier again, Matt, like I did trade shows, I worked street corners.

I, I did all the stuff I hated doing. ’cause you had to, at that time I don’t regret it because it made me be very grateful when I didn’t have to do that anymore. You know what I mean? And young trainers today don’t have to do that. But I see, I don’t know, I think at times close to a thousand people a year just through my seminars, and I’m telling you, there’s some amazingly talented young people out there that have more natural talent than I’ll ever have with, with an animal when it comes to doing really cool things, you know?

Yeah. It’s interesting what you said that whole time, I was just kind of dwelling on what you said about the videos and your videos in particular. And I think a lot of people want to emulate certain trainers online that are really highly polished. Yeah. And you know, the first time I saw one of your videos was years ago and my first thought when I watched it was like, who’s this guy?

It was really windy. Like, I, I almost laughed. And he said that about the, it was really windy. I was like, this guy needs a microphone. And I watched a little more and I was like, oh, this guy’s good. Okay. He actually knows about training and I watched the whole video and I, I really enjoyed it. And very quickly, if you pay attention to something you can see past.

The, you know, the initial right. Like it wasn’t super slick and highly edited, but it kept me watching ’cause there was good content there and it, it was authentic. And people do like authenticity, even if they don’t know They do. They do when they see it. Yeah. Yeah. Back in the beginning, Matt, like oh 7, 0 8, around that time and a little after when I started putting out videos.

A big part of that was eco stuff because I was so disturbed on what I was seeing in the industry with dogs just being destroyed with the tool. And I said it back then, like, we’re gonna lose these tools, like we can’t keep going. And people literally laughed at me like I was an idiot and I was thinking, how could you not see this?

Like, no one’s gonna stand around and watch dogs look like this because of this tool and not try to take ’em from us. So those were a lot of my videos. And then when I started, um, I, I couldn’t believe people were watching them. And I made a video one day thanking people. I’m like, Hey, thanks guys. I didn’t expect anyone to watch this, but since there’s people watching, maybe I’ll get some nice video equipment and some editing equipment and make the, and people hit the roof.

They’re like, no, don’t do that. Like, keep it as it is because we want to see the real stuff, I mean, across the board. And so to this day I’m still just using my iPhone with nothing else. Yeah, I’ve tried to use a mic a few times ’cause it is beneficial. Um, there’s very rarely a video that I’m proud of or like, or don’t.

Notice a lot of things I could have done better. I did a video about a year ago. It was someone I took on pro bono. He had a serious, serious medical issue. He had a brain tumor and had to have some brain tumors removed and it completely changed his ability to function and he had no balance. So I decided to help him with his dog and I got a good mic and I tested it six times before we started recording.

And then I recorded this video with him about two hours long. And it’s, it was what I thought was gonna be probably the best video I ever done because of the content and, uh, conversation between me and him. And then I go to play it. No sound. I was like F this, I’m done. I threw it in the garbage and I haven’t used one since.

’cause I’m really, I’m really bad with the technology stuff. I really am. Man. The more technology you have, the more chances you have for that. Right. God. We run another, I run a podcast through my business as well and then I’m on, on this one and I have people ask like, why don’t you have multiple, you know, three camera angles so you can switch Yeah.

And all this stuff. And like, ’cause if I have all of that, I’m gonna mess it up at some point and we’re gonna record with someone. Awesome. We’re gonna do the best podcast episode we feel like we’ve ever done. And then I’m gonna realize I messed it up. Right. And I have the picture or whatever. I, I said that to Robert Kral.

I’ve been at Robert’s place a few times. His home. He is, he’s a good friend of mine. He’s awesome dude. And we’ve done his podcasts a few times and his setup’s really nice. Yeah. Multiple cameras, multiple microphones. And you know, he is got this big board, like he’s a professional dj, cutting and scratching and everything.

And I’m like, I get nervous just watching him with, I stand no chance. Like I stand zero chance of succeeding with that type of technology. Yeah. Very impressive to me. You know, man, we filmed with Robert, uh, last week or the week before, pretty recently. And Cool. He’s in a hotel right now, unfortunately. Yeah.

So he is like, I don’t have a good setup. I’m just in a hotel. Hopefully I can make it work. And we record his camera looks amazing. It makes all of ours look like absolute crap. Yeah. Like from a hotel. Like what? I don’t know what he set up. I need to ask him. ’cause I assumed he was filming just from his laptop or something.

He was not. It was like, yeah, he’s good with that. His picture was like. Perfectly clear. And the background was blurred out, you know, it looks like. Yeah. Yeah. It is amazing. I know it’s from a hotel room. Impressive. Yeah. It breaks my heart for him, what they went through out there. And Robert a That’s tough.

He’s, he’s truly, listen, this is what I like about Robert. Now, Robert’s one of these people that has a massive following. Right? He’s not one of those people that has a massive following and no talent. And, and I look at things a little differently. So me and Robert were friends online for a long time talking before we ever got together.

And the first time I entered his home, I literally just smiled because his four dogs, two labs, a shepherd and Malinois all came to the door, like normal dogs. There was no one plastered to a play board and walking around with the, they were just dogs. Yep. And right there, I knew he was legit. And those are little things that I look at.

I was like, man, I like this guy. Like we’re, we’re definitely gonna be good friends. You know? Yeah. That’s, it was little things like that that I, that I looked for that tell me, okay, he’s not a bullshitter. Like this is what he does, you know? So let’s talk about that for a second. That’s interesting to me that you brought that up.

What’s the deal in your mind with all the dog trainers? I feel like some are very permissive with their own dogs that don’t even train them, which I find interesting. Yeah. Some are in the middle, right. That have happy go-lucky dogs and others. Their dogs rotate from crate to place and then a little bit outside time.

What’s up with that group? Why do you think people are doing that? I think we’ve gotten to a point in, in the dog world, in society today where dogs are no longer just part of the family like they used to be. There’s so much restrictions and bad training and bad advice, and we isolate these animals and we just put them in a box and they never just get to be who they are.

You know, we have more dog trainers than ever before and more bad dogs than ever before growing up, I didn’t have dogs growing up. My family had dogs, my grandparents had dogs. My grandparents had German Shepherds, and I just remember me and my grandmother can go for a walk. The dog was never on a leash and we lived in New Jersey, New York City area, you know what I mean?

There were no bad behaviors. They didn’t teach a place command, there were no place beds, you know, they didn’t teach anything. There was no obedience. The dogs just lived and were fulfilled as part of the family. And today, like I think there’s so much reliability on tools and the more advancement we make with tools, the further we take the dog outta their natural state.

You know, I’m a big proponent of using tools properly and, and there’s certain times where. Tools are necessary to equal the playing field when you have someone, you know, there’s just like a massive physical discrepancy. Like I have a dog here now that I’ve trained a year ago, but I have to do things all over differently because our owner had a really bad accident.

Physically, it’s gonna be hard for her to keep the dog unless we make the dog so self-sufficient off leash completely. Right? But the problem is, you put anything new on her, she shuts down and won’t eat, won’t move, won’t drink, won’t pee, no poop, nothing. Right? But again, she’s a very genetically and mentally weak dog.

She was like that from eight weeks old when she went to pick her up back then. People wouldn’t give into a dog like that. They’re gonna be a dog, they’re gonna be treated like a dog Today. We put so much human emotions on a rescue dog or an adopted dog, right? A shelter dog. A dog that struggles emotionally.

And we never allow them to come out of that, that shell, that they hide in, because we don’t even think of just letting them be a dog. Right? So I’ve just put out a couple videos yesterday and today I’m not doing anything with her. I’m having her with my dogs, learning to be a dog from other dogs. ’cause I, I have no choice at this point.

Like, we have to change something massively here. You know? And I think to answer your question a little more exact, there’s so much information on the internet. A lot of times what I’ve noticed over the years, that first trainer that a new trainer or a new person getting the dog training latches onto that person, becomes a dog training God in their eyes, everything they say is true.

You’ll hear them say, he’s the best trainer in the world. She’s the best trainer in the world. ’cause they have no reference. And if you get lucky enough to work with the right person, right in the beginning, you have a massive advantage. If you get unlucky enough to find the wrong person in the beginning, you’re gonna start off believing things and doing things that are very, very detrimental to, to the life and the behavior of the dog.

That’s just my educated opinion, you know? Mm-hmm. I, I wonder how much of finding the wrong trainer is because all these short videos, so I’m, you know, I’m 42, but sometimes I feel like, I sound like I’m 60 or 70 when I’m like these young kids these days where I’m not into short videos. It’s, and I do make some for our companie because I feel like you kind of have to, but I don’t enjoy them.

There’s just not enough time to talk about things with any nuance whatsoever. But people love that. They, they, at least they seem to. And I wonder how much over the last few years is that’s where people are consuming their content. They’re not watching Yeah. A 30 minute video on YouTube, which is still short.

Right. If you’re talking about how to introduce stem and vibration on an eco and you do it in 30 minutes, that’s pretty quick. Yeah. And people think that’s a long time. And so I wonder how much is people are just not learning about dogs, right? They’re learning about, I think what you just, I think what you just said, Matt, is like a brilliant observation.

Like, um, I love TikTok, right? I’m addicted to it. I’ll tell you, I could spend all day on it. I’m entertained. I love it, but I can’t post on it. I can’t. It’s, I’ve tried. I have a little bit of content on there. I have like 6,000 followers. ’cause I don’t do anything on there. I can’t make content for TikTok or even Instagram.

I can’t do much on, because I’m not good enough to do 32nd educational videos. Like I’m long-winded. I’m gonna try to go as deep as I can. I’m gonna talk, I want to actually show a lot of the work. And so. I have become like most people addicted to quick information. Right. I fought TikTok for a long time. I thought it was stupid.

Why are people so into it? Then I was doing a seminar and I was staying in a hotel. I said, let me put this on my, my iPad and see what it’s all about. And next thing you know, two 30 in the morning, I’m still doing this. One more. One more. I was, I was done. I was hooked. Yeah. And I do that now. I’m trying to watch a movie, but I’m on TikTok with no sound, just scrolling.

And if something’s longer than like 10, 15 seconds, I’m going to the next one. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I think TikTok and leaving Instagram in many ways, I think they’re both very, very dangerous for the dog training world. ’cause I don’t think it’s a legitimate place to get your dog training content.

Mm-hmm. I think that could be a, I think it’s brilliant what you said. I agree with that completely. Yeah. And it’s, it’s scary to think what’s gonna happen over the next few years. Yeah. Because you get the views on those, in those mediums. Right. When people post those short 32nd videos. Yes. And it’s like seven, 8 million views.

Like you’re not getting that with a long, long form video on YouTube. Right. Right. So if you want the the high volume, that’s really the only way you’re gonna get it. So people seem to chase that. Yeah, you’re exactly right. Listen, if you could. Put, uh, educational dog training video on YouTube and get a million votes, A million views, you’re doing something good.

Mm-hmm. That’s massive. Right. But you don’t see that, that much of that anymore. It’s tough because I love YouTube also. It’s good for when you need to figure how to do something in any field. Right. But even for myself, I find it’s harder to commit to watching longer videos on there now, because I have gotten so used to the TikTok thing where I’m just scrolling constantly.

Mm-hmm. Like non, it never ends. And, and I love it. I laugh my ass off all day with some of the stuff I see. It’s very entertaining. But I feel sorry for the people that go on there to try to learn about dog training. It’s not the place you want to be, you know? Yeah. And man does it quickly figure out what you like.

Right. Oh God. I, I’ve only been on there over the last maybe month because we started one for our company finally, which I’d resisted forever. But I swear you watch one video of like a malis doing, you know, something stupid like a back flip or whatever. And then all of a sudden, now here’s a malis scaling a wall.

Now here’s it’s crazy light work. It’s like it’s scary within one day. Yeah. It’s nuts. Yeah. It’s, it’s very scary. I’m gonna tell you, I had a. I probably even should say this. I’m scrolling through Instagram one day and like this half naked chick pops up and my wife’s sitting next to me. She’s like, oh, nice, you follow her?

I’m like, no, I don’t follow her. I don’t know why this is popping up. And then she checks and yeah, I follow her and I was like, I swear to God I do not follow this person. Like I would never be that disrespectful and follow half naked chicks. Right? Yeah. And then I go into my account to look at who I follow.

And there was probably like 50 or 60 accounts like that that I never followed. I never clicked follow or like, or watched those videos. And so I started researching it. I went to Google and I said, Hey, I’ve never followed these people. How is this possible? And then I got all these answers. No, that’s a thing.

They’ll have you follow videos without your consent. You don’t have to click on anything. So it’s like, I even showed her like, look, I’m not a, I’m not a dirty pig. Right? But you’re never gonna convince someone, you know, you’re not gonna convince anyone of anything different. But it is scary how the internet operates.

It really is. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Oh, and it’s so scary with kids. We’ve been able to keep our off the internet so far, but I know that’s not forever. And it’s like, how old are your kids? They are 14, 12, and nine. And, and the 14 and 12 aren’t on social media yet? No social media. No. Nice job. Do it as long as you can.

We, we are trying for real. It hasn’t been that hard yet. It’s gonna, I know it’s probably gonna get hard sometime, but we’re, you know, taking it one day at a time. You’re right there with the 14-year-old. It’s gonna be tough. Yeah. Like my 15-year-old, I wish we could have pushed it longer because it gets obsessive real quick.

Yeah. And these kids with, uh, like with Snapchat and stuff, you know, I don’t have that, they don’t communicate face to face anymore. Like they have all these little weird things through Snapchat that they can communicate with each other. And there’s all these codes that they use that they know and we don’t.

That makes sense. But then when they run into each other in the public, they don’t even look at each other. Like, they literally don’t talk or have conversation. But then they’ll get on Snapchat and contact each other about just seeing each other. And I’m like, this is why kids have no social skills anymore.

Yeah. They don’t have to sit down and be face to face talking with people. Mm-hmm. It’s kind of crazy. It really is. It is so sad. You, I was actually at a. I didn’t wanna say an acquaintance. I was at someone’s house the other day. One of my kids was there for a party and I’d never met them. And their oldest daughter, who was like 20, was kind of like helping to host the party.

And she came up and she shook my hand and introduced herself. And after she walked off, I went and found her dad. And I was like, I don’t know what you’ve done, but that was amazing. A 20-year-old girl to come up. Yeah, she makes eye contact with me. A strange man. Shakes hands, introduces herself. It was amazing.

Yeah, I was really, really blown away and impressed by that. And No, that is, that is cool. It was really cool to see. Yeah, my daughter’s 19 and that’s how I, I always tell her like, I’m so proud how you conduct yourself, because she’s very personable and will look at people and introduce herself. But she’s always, that’s awesome.

She’s always been, she was like, I think she was like two years old or three years old and my wife was working for this company and they were having like a, a 10 K race on the weekends or something and her boss was talking to my wife and my daughter was literally like two years old and she stuck out her hand.

She said, hi, nice to meet you. And the guy just looked at, my wife’s like, did she just introduce herself to me two years old? You know, she’s like, that’s the most polite baby I’ve ever met in my life. You know? That’s awesome. Yeah, it is pretty cool. Well, good for you to be 19 and doing that. That’s amazing.

Yeah, it had not, didn’t have much to do with me. Believe me, it’s her mom. That’s her mama. Well, and that means you, you picked an amazing wife who, yeah. Yeah. I was smart. I was smart that way for sure. Yep. Well, why don’t we switch gears a little bit. You wanna talk ecos? Yeah, whatever you want. I’m up for anything.

There is so much we could talk about with Ecos. I’m curious, did you have, what was your journey into Ecos like? Because I know some people started with Ecos myself. I started training in oh six. I hated Ecos and I came around through time and now I really like them once I learned how to use them. Do you have a story like that or were you eco from the beginning?

What? What is your journey look like? No, I despised ecos. Okay. Um, I’m a big time hunter. I’ve been hunting since I’m four years old, and I was a pheasant. I hunted birds, I hunted pheasants and ducks and rabbits and everything when I was real young. And that was my first introduction to Ecos, watching a lot of dogs chasing birds with ecos on.

And it was horrible. I’d hear people recalling their dogs and then you hear the dogs screaming as they’re frying them and the dogs are running further away. And I couldn’t figure out, it made no sense to me. So I had a very bad taste. And then in the early two thousands, um, I don’t know what year YouTube came about, but the earliest I can remember, somewhere in the early two thousands, there were only.

A couple of dog trainers on YouTube that I was seeing and it was very heavily eco based. And I started getting obsessed with watching and I was like, this isn’t the dogs that I used to see. Like something’s different here. And then I sought out one of those people and spent a lot of time with and learned from, and spent a year of my career training dogs around the way they were doing things.

But I knew right from the start, I don’t like this either, that it was just a lot of pressure based stuff. Uh, ton of simultaneous usage and conditioning, which I don’t like. And I knew I had to get away from that very quickly and look for a better way. And then I found one of the best of the best and dug deeper into his stuff and started pulling that out.

I was like, this makes way more sense to me. And then I think it was around 2010, so probably about 15 years ago, I went out to San Francisco to take an eco course from Michael Ellis. I had already been using ECOS for a while, but to be honest with you, it was just a course he was running at the time. I didn’t go out there to learn more eco stuff.

I didn’t think there was much to learn with. It’s pretty simple. I considered Michael to be the best teacher at the time. Still is, right? And I just wanted to see how he was teaching. I wanted to become a better teacher of people. I wanted to see what his place looked like, what you needed to be at that level, all those little things.

So I, I made the trip and again, my wife pushed me to do that. And it just happened to be an eco, um, course over the weekend. And I took some really great stuff from him also that I still do to this day, you know? And over the years, my whole goal with that tool was just to get people to stop relying on it so much, first of all, and destroying their dogs, right?

So, I know I get mentioned with the tool a lot, but I didn’t create anything. I’m not doing anything different than some other very well-known people and, and extremely, extremely talented people are doing. I just took what they were doing, what I learned, and I, I packaged it in a way that the everyday dog owner can use, it can consume, but I also package it in a way, I’m very conservative with it for a reason.

I also did it the way I did that even though they’re going to mess up the training, everyone does, but if they mess up the training, I want them to be able to mess up the training and not mess up the dog, right? Mm-hmm. And once I really started focusing on that. You know, like things changed massively.

When I put the book out eight years ago, I wrote that book, so a sixth grader can understand it. There’s errors in it. The editing wasn’t very well with it, but I’ve literally received tens of thousands of messages and videos. Like I’ve spent thousands on dog training, and this $10 book completely gave me what I needed for my dog.

My dog’s off leash we’re good, we’re happy. And that was the goal of everything I’ve done with the eco stuff. It, it really has. So I think I get, well, I get a lot of hate too, uh, for, for, for it. Um, usually more from the balance side because they don’t like the things I say sometimes. I’m very open and honest.

I’ll hear people say he doesn’t believe in correcting a dog with the eco. That’s not true at all. People make a lot of assumptions, you know what I mean? But I do think sometimes I get a little too much credit on that side of things. I’m just translating stuff that people way better than me, that have allowed me to consume what they were teaching.

I just got it to a different crowd. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And I mean, I know what I like that video. I said the first video I watched of years, years ago. I liked that you were talking about, well, there was compassion and you talked about, you know, introducing the dog to it and getting them used to it.

And that’s missing from a lot of videos, which just blows my mind. That’s the hard part. And that’s the important part. And then when you do that, yeah, everything else is easy. And that’s why, you know, I watched your, that video because right away, early on, I don’t rem remember what you said, but it was something about, I’m gonna do this.

I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care if it’s messy and ugly. Something along those lines. Yeah. And I tell clients similar things all the time. Right? If you chase perfection on day one, I mean, that’s so unfair to the animal and it’s unfair to you. Everyone’s gonna be mad. And so that resonated with me right away.

And I know that resonates with clients, right? So I, to me, that’s, I’m sure one of the reasons you’re so successful because you’re explaining what people actually need to be doing. Right. Rather than, than just putting it on the dog, wishing a button. Yeah, my focus is on the human way more than the dog. It, it has to be what we do as dog trainers is temporary with these animals.

If we’re going to make it permanent, that has to come through the human, you know, we have such a sh a small period of time to be part of this dog’s life. I don’t care if you keep a dog for 5, 6, 8 weeks, that’s a really short time considering how long they’re going to be around and where they’re gonna spend the majority of their time.

So we don’t need owners to become dog trainers, but we do need to make them the best handlers possible that they’re capable of. And I think we’ve gotten so far away from just the basic fundamentals and there’s all these new systems and this and that, and it’s not necessary. Like dog training for the most part can be really simple and basic, you know?

Yeah. I’m glad now like, um, like the whole focus on play is really taking off and, and becoming much, much more popular. And, and, and, you know, massive, massive shout out to people like Ivan Bala Banov, who’s really pushed it for years. Just not everyone listened. My buddy, Jay Jack, who’s had a massive impact on people too, because that’s the majority of his training.

You know, Michael Ellis has had a, a lot to do with that over the years also, but there’s still people out there. That doubt it. ’cause they don’t understand it. Like they don’t understand how deep play goes. They just think it’s, you’re giving your dog something fun to do or you’re, you know, trying to build a better bond with the dog or wear their ass out, right?

Yeah. All that stuff’s true, but it’s very tiny, small byproducts of the actual play. But when we’re doing it right, it goes much deeper than that. And when you fulfill the dog on that, in, in, in, in that area of their life. You have the ability to create your whole communication system through that play that’s gonna really affect the dog in real life situations.

And you also get to set and reen and enforce rules and boundaries. You know, it’s a lot easier to tell the dog, no, I don’t like when you do that, when you’re sitting there having a, a, a fierce game of tug than it is when your dog’s at the end of a leash trying to kill a dog. Much, much easier to teach that in that game than trying to introduce what no means when the dog’s at his worst.

You understand? And these are just, we could talk about that for hours and never get to the end of it, but people are missing the point. I’m working with people online right now, which I fought for a long time. I said, you can’t train dogs online. And a few people really like threatened my life and said, no, you’re gonna do this because I’ve spent $30,000 and gotten no results.

I asked for two simple basic videos. If I’m gonna help you, give me a video of you doing basic obedience with your dog on leash. Where sometimes you’re rewarding with food, sometimes you’re not. You’re mixing it up. And if you could play with your dog, especially tug, send me four or five, six minutes your dog on leash, it could be dragging along, line playing tug.

Send me those two videos because that tells me everything I need to know. I don’t care what the dog knows or doesn’t know. I’m not even watching the dog. I’m watching the human right. How, what is your communication system like? How do you get the dog to do the things you want it to do? What do you do when it does what you want?

What do you do when it doesn’t do what you want? And what I’ve learned over the past few years by doing all the online and phone consultations I do every week when you focus on that stuff and fix that, because I don’t think anyone has yet sent videos where I’m like, there’s nothing we could change.

This is amazing, right? So most of the times I have to tell people, okay, you’re doing everything wrong. And then they go, oh man, they get all down. And I said, no, no, no. That’s a good thing. Because if you are doing everything right and we have these problems, it makes it a little harder to understand where to start, right?

But now I’m gonna have you clean this stuff up. I’m gonna show you where your errors are, and I’m gonna make sure you get better at this. Your dog’s gonna start changing automatically, I promise you that. I can guarantee you, you know? So it’s, it’s really, really important. Like massively, massively important, you know?

Yeah, I feel like there’s a tie in back to what we were talking about earlier with people, the trainers that are too rough on their dogs. Well, I don’t even wanna say rough, just too militant. How about, I think is a better word. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like a lot of people are, don’t have the understanding of dog behavior.

They should, and I don’t even mean like scientifically, right, right. Mm-hmm. But just what dogs are, right? Yeah. What they’re supposed to do, like being a dog, what that looks like. And I’ve seen some of the best trainers come out of rescues and doggy daycares because you get that experience. And I’ve seen some bad ones come out of there too.

But sure you get that experience scene play, but actually being able to read dog behavior and that is so key. And not just like dog fights and things of that nature, but you can see happiness. You can see when a dog is timid. All those little things. Yeah. Make a world of difference. Yeah, you said something really good there about being so militant and there’s a lot of people that I work with that especially have worked with o other trainers over the years, especially if they come from like maybe a sport dog background or police canine background, right?

Where the people have good intentions, they, they’re not like mean to their dogs or nothing, right? But they are extremely rigid and militant and everything is robotic and you don’t have that sincere connection, you know? And it’s very hard for them to break that relationship that they have ’cause they’re so used to just being like that, you know?

Like they’ll never just tell their dog, you know, Hey, go lay down or something. Everything is like very militant and firm and you will do this. And they don’t even realize they’re doing it half the time. You know? As to where once we get them to open up and loosen up and enjoy the dog a little more and let the dog enjoy themselves, then they’re like, I just can’t believe what just happened to my dog.

Like, I’ve never seen ’em like that. Yeah. Because they’re always walking on eggshells. The problem also though, Matt being militant is one thing, but when you take being militant and being unclear to the dog. Man that puts the dog in a really bad head space, you know? Then they’re always walking around on eggshells.

You don’t see the dog ever upbeat and just happy and running around because they’re not even sure what they’re doing wrong or what they’re supposed to be. You know, I, I used this example a lot lately. I was doing a seminar a while back, not too long ago actually, and I was speaking to this very nice lady who had a cool dog, cool malis, and during, as we were talking, the dog reached down to pick up a tug, and she got on the dog pretty hard, corrected it pretty hard and firmly, and, and yelled at the dog.

And I asked her, I said, let me ask him, why did you do that? She said, well, I don’t want picking up the tug. I said, okay, makes sense. I said, was he in command? And she kind of looked at me sideways. She’s like, what do you mean? I’m like, did you put the dog in command? Did he break a command or something? I, I said, because the last thing I heard you tell was he was free to do what he was wanted to do.

And she went, oh man. She realized she had told the dog one thing, and then. Kind of got on him for doing exactly what she told him he could do. Right. There were no rules except, you know, nothing crazy within reason. And he didn’t do anything wrong in his mind. I’m just gonna pick this up ’cause I’m free.

I’m not in a down, I’m not in a sit. I’m don’t have to be doing this. But it really made her think like, holy crap, I didn’t even think of it that way. And we do things like that constantly to these animals, not intentionally, right? But we’re not clear with our communication. I’m very, very big on markers and being consistent and making markers powerful.

When I say yes, I don’t care what my dog is doing, they’re gonna fly to me. When I say, you ready? I don’t care what my dogs are doing, they’re gonna fly to me. When I say all done, they’re gonna stop what they’re doing and we’re gonna hang out and relax. It makes their life so much better when they always know what state of being they’re supposed to be in, right?

It just opens up their world and makes life easy for them and it makes it easy for us too. Mm-hmm. Yeah. There’s a lot of wisdom there that I hope people kind of unpack and take. ’cause that could be a whole conversation right there. Right. Yeah. I think, I think more people should really look into J Jack and his window stuff.

Right. And Jay will tell you he didn’t invent anything either when it comes to that stuff, but he packaged it in a way that’s extremely beneficial for people and dogs to understand. And when you could master that stuff, it’s life changing for the relationship that the average person could have with their dog.

It really is. That’s interesting. Yeah. I, I think my biggest takeaway, I hope people listening, especially newer trainers that are listening that they take away, is to think about all these little things, right? Yeah. And not just think about your obedience. Think about what is the dog’s quality of life like, right.

Take obedience just completely outta the picture for a minute. Yeah. What is their life like? And we spent a lot of time talking about that with the trainers on our team. And I’m curious what you think about this. So we just did a podcast a couple weeks ago talking about obedience. Is obedience important, I think is what it’s titled.

And my take during the episode was that a good trainer should be able to fix many, many issues, including resource guarding without obedience, with no com, no sit, no doubt, no stay. And by, you know, communicating with the dog, living with them properly, body language, and that it’s a good thing for people to practice being able to do that because obedience at the end of the day, should just be a tool to do something right.

Whatever it is you want the dog to do to become calmer. But if you can’t get him calmer without a downst, stay. I’d say you’re doing something wrong. So what are your thoughts on that? How important is obedience and what are some people like, what are some takeaways the average trainer could, could take away from this?

Um, I think people focus way too much on obedience. I think a monkey could teach most of these dogs obedience. And for the first 10 years or so of my career, I didn’t do obedience with my dogs at all. Like my dogs were trained on a six foot leash and a flat collar. And back then I had a lot of time on my hands.

So I was able to walk every day. And that was how we learned and really trained, right? I didn’t start getting more into obedience when I realized, okay, I need to do this more. ’cause people want it and they need it, okay? So it’s never going to hurt. But technically can you have a super well-behaved dog without doing obedience?

100% Yes. ’cause I did it forever. So what first got me recognized where people wanted me to work with their dogs before I was training dogs was I had really well-behaved dogs and I had Rottweilers at the time, I had shepherds, right? I didn’t get my first mal till like 13 years ago. And when you could take a rottweiler to downtown Nashville and he’s got nothing but a flat leather collar on and leave him outside when you go in to order some food for lunch and he’s just waiting on you, he’s not tied to something.

And there’s people walking past looking like, who’s this dog? And they try to get his attention and he’s just looking at Dad waiting for me to come back. People couldn’t understand that. I couldn’t understand why that was such a novelty to people. I’m like, but he’s not doing it. Like he’s just waiting for me.

I thought everyone had that. I really did. Like, it didn’t make sense to me why that was such a big deal. That’s when people started saying, Hey, could you help me with my dog? Like that’s when it really, really took off. But I didn’t focus on obedience. I focused on on behavior. I started doing obedience later.

I didn’t get heavy into doing more obedience till around. 2010, I think it was when I went to my first Bart Ballone seminar, 2010, 2011, that was also my first introduction to the working dog, the sport dog world. And I drove 14 hours each way to spend a very short amount of time with Bart, working with the dog that one of my own dogs I was having an issue with.

I didn’t get her as a puppy, but she was just a very weak dog whenever I took her out of the house, superstar at home weakness when I pulled her away and it changed everything for me. First of all, the dogs that I saw that weekend, and it was a seminar with a ton of big name people today. A lot of people went on to be very successful after that seminar, and I think that seminar had a lot to do with it.

It really did. And I saw dogs that I didn’t know existed. And then I saw him dealing with dogs and helping dogs and I didn’t know it was possible. And that lit the fire for, for me. Like it, I had so much motivation after that you couldn’t stop me. And that’s when I started focusing more on obedience and that kind of work.

So from that day on, I really started training any dog that came through my program as if it were a sport dog. If I can get a dog to bite, we’re gonna do that. If I can get a dog to play and tug, we’re gonna do that. I’m gonna start basing my obedience off higher level stuff like that. And I’ve been preaching since then to the pet dog world.

You must learn from the best people in the sport dog world. You must like, it’s vital. You’ll never reach your potential if you don’t do that. And I don’t know if anyone was else was saying it back then, I never heard pet dog people claiming that that’s important to me. It was a no brainer. You must do that.

And I still push that very hard today, you know? So I don’t think you’re wrong when you know, people get pissed. All dogs should have, yeah, I understand what people are saying. It’s like, um. I love to work out. I’ve been working out my whole life. I’m still fairly strong at 53 years old, I still lift weights, you know, I try not to lift too many times a week ’cause I can’t recover anymore.

Went like I was young. I went and I lifted today right before this because no one’s home and I’m bored and I shouldn’t have been in the gym, but I can’t sit still. And so in the summer around this time of year, I might post one picture a year with no shirt on. And only when I’m like feeling on a high, when I come out of a song after a workout, then, then an hour later I’m going, what the hell was I thinking?

Right? Because I don’t do that kind of stuff. And then people will say, oh dude, what are you doing? You know, you should, you know, steroids are bad. And they’re not saying it to be facetious. They think like, well, you’re getting jacked. I’m like, no, I’m not getting jacked. I just lost 30 pounds. You know what I mean?

I’m smaller than I was before because my workouts don’t change. I love to train, so I’m always working out. But I, the way I look depends on how I’m eating. And I love to eat. And I love bad food. I drink bourbon. I drink wine. I eat a ton of ice cream. I enjoy life. But eating is a passion of mine, right? So I’m not going to look my best no matter how much I’m working out, if I’m eating like crap.

But the second I start cleaning up my diet and eating right and eating for like high nutritional foods, my body changes drastically. Not as fast as it used to, but still pretty fast. The eating part, like that’s the behavior side of things, right? You could look really good and be fit without ever working out if your nutrition is on point.

You can. Mm-hmm. But you could work out till you’re blue in the face. If you eat like shit, you’re not going to look great. So I kind of equ it’s, it’s very similar in the dog training world. You could have a phenomenal, well-behaved dog without ever doing obedience, but at the same time you could have a dog.

That’s an absolute disaster. Right? Behavioral wise, that has the highest level of obedience. We see it in the sport dog world all the time. Mm-hmm. Right? Dogs that live in a crate, they can’t function in society. They come out to train and compete and then they’re back in a crate because they can’t be trusted in the house around kids, around strangers.

It’s the same thing. Right. So you could do both. But for me, raising a self-sufficient dog, a dog that knows how to make the right choices a well-behaved dog, is much more important than obedience. Can obedience help you get to that point? Absolutely. There’s no doubt about it. But if God came down and said, Hey, here’s this dog.

You could only do one. I know where I’m putting my time into, and that’s just teaching that dog how to be a functional member of society. That’s it. Love it. Absolutely love it. One of my dogs now is a rot aita lab mix. The dad was a rot and a rot aita, and the mom was a lab and awesome dog. And I didn’t do any training with her for six months.

Didn’t work on a single command. Not even sit. And partly just because of my lifestyle, but also to be able to show some people, like you can have a dog that doesn’t run through doors that’s not in a stay, right? Yeah. Yeah. You can just teach them not to run through a door. And you can have a dog who doesn’t pool that doesn’t know what heel truly means, but you can just stop them from pooling and it can really, and my I idea was to make videos on it.

And I never did. I kept putting that off, but that’s been on my list. ’cause I think people need to learn more of just thinking about what is your dog’s lifestyle like? What are you doing at home all day, every single day that affects your dog way more than the time you snap that leash on. Yeah. Start working ’em.

Yeah. Yeah. I used to get questions, Matt, when I started putting out a lot of videos with Luca, who’s my oldest dog now. My oldest Malis. You know, I made my first video with him when he was nine weeks old. He was the first dog that I got after I went to that first sport dog seminar. He was the first perpe I got where I got to take all the behavioral stuff I was already pretty decent at and combine it with the sport dog stuff and all the obedience.

Yeah. And he’s a really intense dog. So when I was putting out a lot of videos with him, people were like, how do you live with a dog like that? I’m like, he doesn’t act like that in the house. And then people would say, well, what’s it look like when you’re in the house? So I’d literally sit here and there’s, some of them are on YouTube.

I’d sit on my recliner. Well, here’s what our house looks like at night when we’re just hanging out and there’s a dog laying here. There’s no play boards or nothing. They’re just laying around being lazy because in the house, this is where we relax. That’s it. And I set those rules and boundaries from day one.

So my eight week old Melan was not running around the house having free reign like the other dogs. He gets to earn that freedom as I could tell him, Hey, don’t do that buddy. Right. But until I could tell him, Hey, don’t do that, then I have to guide him in a way where I, he’s doing the things I want him to do instead of fixing behaviors down down the road, you know?

That’s great. And I, we’ve actually turned club trainers away from our company that when they tell us about their dogs, when we ask what their lifestyle is like, and everyone’s, you know, crate and rotate. Like, I just, I just don’t get it. That’s not a, that’s not a lifestyle. I can’t imagine that, you know?

Yeah. I, I could just, I, I just, I posted a couple videos this morning, like, this dog I have here now, she needs the help of my dogs, you know, so. Mm-hmm. I, I, I very grateful that I could just let my dogs go out there and be themselves and throw her out there with them, and I don’t have to think twice about anything, you know?

Yeah. I don’t have to tell them, like, don’t attack her, don’t do this or down, and no, just, Hey, here’s my dogs. Go, go learn how to play. Go learn how to be a dog. But I put a lot of work into that too. You know, first two years of their life, they’re in training, you know, and I’m fanatical about it. That doesn’t mean sit down, stay, go place there.

I’m always showing them and guiding them and trying not to give them opportunities to do really dumb things inside the home. That’s all. Mm-hmm. I mean, that’s the most important part in my opinion with a puppy. Me too, is let’s teach ’em how to live in this house safely and properly. Yeah. Because, and otherwise why have a dog if they’re not gonna be in your house hanging out with you, what’s the point?

No. Yeah. It’s just, you know, we, we could leave our dogs in the house and people say, you can’t leave a mal lose. Well, I have two Malinois and all my dogs are high drive. Right. But. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from that first trainer I worked with, by the way, his name was Rocky Boatman.

Right. You know, I asked him, Rocky, like You got the best behaved dogs? And he gave me one piece of advice and it’s just something, because he was the first trainer I worked with, maybe it was wasn’t as important as I took it, but I still live by it. My dogs sleep in their crate till they’re 1-year-old at night when we go to bed, no matter how well trained they are.

And they are not left uncreated when no one’s home to get into trouble till they’re at least two years old. Right. And that’s something I always stuck to. So when we could leave the house and like when my kids were little, like. You know, my son used to eat toaster strudels for breakfast. So delicious to bury one.

Right? Uhhuh. But I’m not joking when I say he could leave a half a one on a paper plate on the coffee table or the arm and the couch and we get home and still be there. Like the dogs didn’t think of doing that kind of stuff because we were fanatical about showing them what was allowed in the house.

We’ve never come home to a garbage knocked over or, or a garbage bag ripped open and stuff. Nothing’s ever been chewed up because we don’t put the dogs in those situations to make those mistakes when they’re not capable of handling that kind of responsibility. You know? And it makes a massive difference.

It really does. Yeah. Way easier to prevent than it is to fix. Oh right. You know what it is, Matt? People don’t wanna put in the work in the management early. And I tell ’em, you could bust your butt and put the management early. That’s temporary. It’s short-lived. Or you can manage that dog the rest of your life.

That’s much harder as far as I’m concerned, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And it’s the most of the intro training is fun, and I think people lose sight of that. Yeah. Where they think about like, well, I have to house break and I have to do this and teach ’em not to chew and all these different things. But all of that can be done while you’re hanging out with your dog.

Yes. And you got a dog ’cause you wanna hang out with him presumably, right? Yeah. So all of that early stuff, it’s not hard if you just put the time in. And why on earth do you have a dog if you don’t wanna put the time in, if you’re with your dog, you’re training, right? Mm-hmm. And, and, and that just is, are you training for good or are you training for bad?

There is no extra work. You are training. So at least train in a way where it’s going to be beneficial for both you and the dog. That’s it. Mm-hmm. So you said something earlier, and I can’t remember exactly what it was, but when you were talking about ECOS and that you trained for quite a while without them, and it just made me think, I’ve talked to so many trainers, myself included, who used to train only on long lines, didn’t use ecos at all.

And I feel like that builds a more solid base in a trainer, right? Where you don’t even contemplate using this, you know, this eco because you’re, you’re doing everything with a short tab or a long line drag leash, whatever tool you’re using. Yeah. And you have to get better on your own, right? Like Yeah. I mean you have to learn, you have to learn how to read dogs.

How much do you think that social media is hurting that, where people are going to eco right away? There’s, you already mentioned franchises, we don’t have to get started on that, but there’s a lot of franchises that move to eco. You know, right away with every single dog. Yeah. No matter what it’s part of a program.

How much of that do you think is ruining a generation of trainers where they’re not getting that, that true knowledge they need? Uh, massively. People are using ecos that can’t use a leash. People are using ecos that can’t lure a dog into proper positions with a piece of food. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm.

And to me, that’s very dangerous. And, you know, the franchise thing, I never blame franchises because I know very talented trainer and very talented trainers in both major franchises. But when something goes bad in a franchise, they blame the franchise. I never will blame the franchise because for one, it gives a pass to the piece of garbage that caused the harm to the dog.

And I think you gotta look at the individual. And if you take 300 trainers that belong to a franchise, you’re gonna come up with a lot of really poor trainers in that franchise, 300 trainers. But if you take 300 trainers that aren’t part of a franchise, you’re gonna come up with a lot of really poor trainers that aren’t part of a franchise, and that’s dog training.

So I always try, I try not to be so quick to judge. I’m very judgmental and it’s a bad habit. I try, I really try to think about things before I jump to conclusions. You, you know what I mean? Um. Am I perfect at it? Absolutely not. I’m very emotional, so if someone comes at me, it’s very hard for me to bite my lip and just ignore it, which would be the best thing to do.

And sometimes I can, depending on the mood I’m in, if I’m in the wrong mood, then things get very, very ugly. You know what I mean? When I see someone, I’ll call a young trainer every now and then, even though I try not to, if I see them put out a video, that’s awful, but they put it out ’cause they think it’s good.

Like I’ve called people before privately and say, look, if you want to tell me to shut the F up, I totally understand, but I think you should probably take that down and here’s why. And kind of look about what you’re doing. I don’t know if I’ve ever had anyone tell me to go F myself and mind your own business.

I really don’t. I think just about time I’ve done that, it’s turned out. I wind up having a good relationship with that trainer because they actually appreciate it. You know, it’s like, I, I appreciate you looking out for me. Like I had no idea. I thought what I was doing was good. And then I’ll break down the video and say, what do you see here?

What is the dog telling you? And they go, man, I would never even think like that before. It was just like, if the dog’s doing something, I have a video that’s, I don’t know, it’s really old, probably 15 years old, 16 years old, maybe longer. Um, I had a Dutch Shepherd that, this is the dog that I went to work with Bart with first seminar.

I didn’t raise her. I got her a seven months old. So anytime I took her away from the home, she looked like she had been beaten. It was awful. And I was really struggling to fix her. Once you put an eco on her, she was done like different dog. Right? But back then, I was so determined to fix her and bring her out of that to where today I’d be like, that an eco’s never going on that dog again.

There’s a video out out there with me where I’m, I’m down in Nashville in a busy area and I’m working her on the street corners in the middle of the street, like busy area. And I’m doing all this stuff that I would never do today. And people are like, oh my God, that’s amazing. You know, look at this, like, they were really impressed.

When I look at it now, I want to take the video down. I won’t because I won’t be dishonest. But that dog was in absolute horrible mental condition. Not because of what I was doing with the eco, just having the eco on and being away from the home. She wasn’t feeling good about herself. She was tortured, right?

Not physically and not by me, but I was so determined to get her out of it instead of taking the tool and throwing it out and never putting it on her again. Right? And trying to bring her out of her feelings outside of the home in a different way. Like, no, I have to fix this. I just didn’t know enough back then.

But the people watching it also thought it was great work and it wasn’t right. So the moment that changed my life with that dog, I watched Bard at that seminar Fix. Difficult dog after, difficult dog all day. Then it’s my turn to come out there with her. I tell him the problem. Look, she’s a superstar at home, really nice dog.

Anywhere I take her, she shuts down. Looks like she’s been beat. Okay, throw the ball for her. I throw it a few times and he says, I can’t help you. And everyone was like, oh my God, they felt so bad for me. He goes, look, you got her to 60%. He said, I’ll get her at 65%. She’ll never be right. And I was okay with that because at least I knew I did everything I was capable of doing.

But it’s what happened next. That changed everything for me. I didn’t put her in the car because she was a well-behaved dog, and most of the dogs there could not be out with their handler. When another dog was being worked. They’re in the dog, in the car barking like lunatics, right? So she’s sitting there with me, ears flattened as she always is.

And Bart was talking about something, something that had to do with like spontaneous reward or something. And for some strange reason, for a split second, she looked up at me and her ears came up and I marked that with a yes. And I started feeding like in an energetic way. And she was confused. She was like, why am I, are you doing this for me?

But she stayed up. I said, yes, and I started working her and as long as I was working her, the ears stayed up. I threw her in the car. I went down the street and I started working her at this school, this playground, and she looked great. When I got home, I told my wife and kids, I said, from now on when she looks sad, she doesn’t exist.

We don’t pay any attention to her, right? And six months later, he comes back to Virginia. I make another 14 hour drive. This time she’s with me, not to work, but just to travel with me. And at lunchtime, I was playing with her, which I couldn’t do before. And Bart came over and he said, that’s not the same dog.

I said, yeah. He goes, fuck no, it’s not. I go, no, it is. And he is like, what did you do? Right? He couldn’t believe it was the same dog. He said, it was something you said that just changed everything for me. And then I told him what he said and he goes, I didn’t say that. I said, yeah, you did. But it was so small to him that he didn’t even remember saying it.

But it was massive to me because I took advantage of that for that split second. And it made all the difference in the world. So sometimes a lot of people go to seminars for entertainment. They socialize, they talk, and if they have a dog, they only focus when they go out to work their dog. When in reality, you’re most likely gonna learn more from watching all the other dogs being worked, right?

If I would’ve been going to grab something to eat, or to the bathroom when he was waiting for the next dog, I missed that opportunity and I never get to fix her. So that stuff was really, really valuable to me. And it was just like a moment in time that I’ll never forget it. Want to turn your passion for dogs into professional career at the School for Dog trainers At Highland Canine Training, we offer expert led in-depth courses that fully prepare you for a successful career in the dog training industry.

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Visit international dog trainer school.com and unleash your future today. And that all of what you just said is what kind of worries me about the internet, because that is not something you could ever figure out through videos, right? No. I mean, you need so many videos. You would need a thousand videos up Yep.

On Nervous Dogs to try to find the one that applies to you. Mm-hmm. You know? And of course you know this, people go online and they watch a video, but that dog’s not their dog. Right. So you’re training a Malinois or whatever that’s confident and wants to work well, that’s nothing like whatever the retriever you just got from the shelter that’s been neglected for the last six months.

That’s right. Has no will to live, certainly no drive, doesn’t know any, you know how to exist in this world. Yeah. And then there’s everything in between. And that’s what really worries me. And I think that might be why I kind of suck at making YouTube videos. ’cause I always want to explain everything, like, here’s why this makes sense for this particular dog.

But it’s like a 10 minute disclaimer. Right. Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. I still do it dark and I know people get annoyed ’cause I’m very long-winded. But to me you have to be like, like there’s people out there that need that. They may appreciate it and they want you to keep talking because that’s what starts making sense to them.

So yeah, I, I totally see where you’re coming from, man. And I just hope we don’t see seminars and things like that to start going by the wayside where, you know, as everything becomes more digital and people think, well, why would I drive? You said 14 hours. Who’s driving 14 hours Yeah. Next to nobody. Right?

Well, luckily there’s still people. I do quite a bit of seminars and it blows my mind the effort that some people make. You’ll get people driving from Mexico City to come up to the states for a seminar. You get people driving cross country, those are the people that are going to do well. ’cause they’re hungry.

Mm-hmm. They’re hungry to learn. You know? And I was the same way. I was obsessed with it, but I’m still the same way. Like, I sit here studying something every night, trying to take something different, something better, you know? And it’s just like, I don’t know. I, I just, I started going through all of Michael Ellis’ stuff again recently through, through his school, online.

I went through all the eco stuff again. I’m like, okay, is he doing anything different? Am I missing anything? Is there something I could add or change? It’s like, no, it’s the same. Which makes me happy, right? Because it, it validates that I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy because there’s so much talk about doing things different ways and, and, and here, you know, so you have to find someone that you think is at the top of the game and.

Take what you can and make it your own. Don’t try to emulate someone. Don’t try to talk like them. Don’t use their freaking accents. You sound ridiculous ’cause you don’t have an accent. In real life, people will change the terms they use because of their mentor. I’m like, come on guys, be yourself man. Just take the information and make it your own, but stop trying to copy other people.

You look silly and people see right through that. You know what I mean? It makes, it shows how insecure you are. Like believe in yourself, believe in in your ability to learn and translate that information to the people who count on you that need you. Like that’s what they need. They don’t need a replica.

They need you. That’s why they’re coming to you. They like you. They trust you. Don’t let them down. Do you see, with your seminars, do you see any difference? Are there, are there many young people there versus Yeah, a lot. Are there good? A lot? Yeah. A lot of young people. A lot of old people, right? But we get so many like crazy talented young people, like young females right now are taking over the dog training industry.

Like there’s massively talented young ladies out there. For real. A hundred percent agreed. Yeah. Are these young people though, are they wanting to become a dog trainer? Or do you, do you see many young dog owners that are willing to make the commitment to travel to a seminar just to learn? They’re, they’re mostly either just starting off in their dog training careers or really getting the bug and thinking about leaving what they’re doing now to be dog trainers.

Okay. And sometimes you have to tell people you need to quit your job and train dogs because some of them are that good that, that I run into like just incredibly, incredibly talented, you know? And they need to be training dogs. Then on the flip side, you have people that are addicted to seminars. They go from seminar to seminar, but they never actually change the way they train or work because they’ve never given themselves an opportunity to perfect the information they got from seminar one and now they’re on seminar 30.

You, you know what I mean? So it becomes entertainment to people like them. That’s all, that’s my opinion anyway. What I see. Okay. And I agree with you completely that young female trainers are taking over the industry. It’s amazing how many there are. Yeah, it is because it’s, uh, my clients probably 85% female.

Um, I used to think it was just ’cause I’m extremely handsome, but I hear, I hear very ugly dog trainers saying the same thing. Now I’m like, well, shit, it must not be that then. And our seminars, it’s been a little better on the male side coming to seminars, but still majority female by far. By far. You. I, I love working.

I think female clients are much better clients than men, generally speaking. It’s, yeah, I agree. They follow, they follow directions better. Yeah. They’re way less likely to be combative with you. I feel like a, a female client 99% of the time is a great client and yeah, a male client, slightly less. I agree.

And, and I’ll tell you my, my favorite setup when it comes to clients. When I get the woman, usually not a dog trainer. Just someone that may be struggling a little bit or wants to learn more and really loves working with her dog and the husband that wants nothing to do with training the dog, but is super supportive of the wife.

That to me is the ultimate combination because those people knock it out of the park always. They really do. It’s absolutely amazing as to where when you get the, the, the two spouses arguing about everything and this, it’s like, come on guys. This isn’t, no, we’re not gonna do that. Right. Yeah. It’s fun. You can have a good time with it.

It gets comical at times, but when you get that, that woman that. Just really wants to, to kick butt and do a good job. And the husband’s like, that’s my girl. Like I don’t, I love the dog, but I have no interest in training. But like, she’s so good at this and I just love watching her. There’s nothing they can’t do.

A hundred percent. Absolutely. And that’s way better than the client. We’re the one says, Larry, one of us thinks the dog should be allowed to be on the couch and the other does not. Who’s right? I get it all the time, man. It’s great. But you know, I, I, I mess around with clients a lot. We have a good time. I make fun of people.

We laugh at each other. We joke around. I won’t work with someone I don’t like. I can’t do it because yes, I have to have a relationship with the dog, but I also want to have a relationship with the owners. ’cause I know I’m gonna spend a lot of time with them, you know? And if I can’t have a good time and joke around and make fun of their mistakes, when you could do all that stuff, they learn much better.

They relax. Mm-hmm. They’re not so stressed, they’re not so hung up on, you know, all their little flaws and stuff. So you have a good time with it. And, and I love those sessions. I really do. I think absolutely. I mean, you have to have fun with clients and I think so much of it, but also like the, I don’t wanna say unhappy clients, the ones that are unhappy with each other, you know about training, right?

Yeah. Where they’re bickering with each other. They think everything’s a yes or no answer, or black and white. Right? And when they find out, it’s not that stress melts away. Yeah. Where they’re like, is the dog allowed in the bed? Like, it’s your bed, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like it could be, but you could also say, no, I don’t care, but let’s talk through the options.

Or, but they, I think they always think a dog trainer’s gonna have this answer of like, mm-hmm this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong. And when they realize that’s not the case, a lot of that unhappiness and kind of bickering melts away. ’cause they’re like, oh, we’re both right. Okay. Yeah. I, and we can just, I agree.

Figure out our house rules. No, I agree. And it’s like, listen, you could take two of the best trainers on earth that have completely opposing ideas and opinions of how to do a certain thing. And both of them could be right. You know what I mean? They could totally be right and successful with either way.

Mm-hmm. Some people are going to naturally do better with the one way or one answer and some people are gonna do better. Coming from the other perspective, we all have very different personalities and physical attributes and quirks, you know, and little mannerisms that sometimes like, uh, a little bit from this trainer and a little bit from this trainer’s going to be your answer, but you’re not going to benefit from just completely agreeing with this person.

You know, you have to be able to make it your own. And if you can’t, you’re going to struggle. You know what I mean? That’s also kind of the fun of dog training, is if there’s only one way of doing things that worked and there was no learning and no changing, I don’t know how many of us would stay in the industry.

At least curious people for a, you know, for a long period of time if it was just the same and there was nothing that could be tweaked. Yeah, no, definitely. And listen, sometimes I just tell people, like you said, can my dog be on the couch? Could he be on the, you know, in my bed? And, and sometimes I just tell people, listen, if you have no behavioral problems, I don’t care what you do, keep doing what you’re doing.

Right. But there are times where like, if we’re having issues here, we gotta make a lot of changes. And sometimes those things that aren’t important to a lot of dog trainers, the bed, the furniture, all that, sometimes that’s the easiest place to start giving some direction to these dogs, you know, in a, in a lifestyle that they’ve never been given any direction.

They’ve never been told, no, you can’t do that. They’ve never been showed what they can’t do. What they can’t do. Right. So sometimes those very simple, basic things that a lot of very great dog trainers think are stupid can be very beneficial to the everyday dog owner. You know what I mean? And it’s important that we don’t see things from our perspective, from a professional dog trainer’s perspective.

We have to see things from the eyes of someone that has no dog training ability or knowledge. So where can we succeed? What’s the easiest way for them to succeed? Okay. Their dog walking next to them on a nice, loose leash. Is that important to most dog trainers? No. But if most people could just accomplish that.

They’re happy. Most people can accomplish that, right? But the point is, if they could accomplish that, now that’s one area where you were able to give this dog direction and you succeeded. Now let’s build on that a little bit, right? And then maybe we could start throwing the long line or the flexion. And that dog doesn’t have to be stuck on your side anymore.

It could explore and have fun, but now it’s not pulling at the end of the flexi. And when now you have a person and a dog come, you can call that dog back to you and now it will walk nicely with you. ’cause it knows how to. I think these are things that a lot of professional dog trainers just dismiss very quickly without looking at the bigger picture.

The picture out from the eyes of a dog owner that knows nothing and struggles with little things that dog trainers don’t. Yeah, and I mean, all of what you just said right there, I hate to keep circling back to the internet and videos, but that’s that nuance that’s missing, right? Because you could watch a trainer say, you know, if they’re with a client, oh, your dog can be on the couch.

Who cares? It makes no difference because it’s a golden that’s friendly and they have no issues with it, right? And the next dog is a cattle dog that guards resources and causes all these issues. And yeah, you’re probably gonna tell that dog, you’re not allowed on the couch unless I invite you to, or you need to, you know, respect my space.

But someone watches that one video and there’s their takeaway, right? Yes. And it could be the wrong takeaway for their dog. Yeah, well said. Totally. And listen, let’s be honest, how many times do we see Matt? There is no problem with the dog on the couch, the dog in the bed. But then one day dad goes to get in bed.

Now the dog’s growling. Oh, F you get outta my bed, right? Mm-hmm. That’s the dog’s telling him. So yeah, it’s not a problem till it’s a problem. Ah-huh. And that’s something that we see constantly. We see it all the time. And it’s not because being on the bed created that, or being on the couch created that.

It’s all the little things in the lifestyle of, of that family and that dog and the owner’s inside the home that the dog’s been getting away with, that just builds on top of each other. And then one day just being on the couch or bed, that’s where it all comes together, where the dog says, you know what?

Screw you. I don’t respect you. I don’t care about your wishes. You go, this is mine. Now again, you very rarely hear dog trainers talk about it or see it from that end, you know? And we like to make little short reels from these podcasts. And I feel like that what you just said should be one, because that is so key for people to hear.

Right. It’s clearly not that moment on the bed, and it’s not the bed that created the issue. Yeah. It’s the nine, nine other things over the last month that have led to this point. I must either be brilliant or maybe I took an edible before we did this. I don’t know. But no, that was, I mean, it’s so on point, and I think people, if they’re thinking about it, could extrapolate a hundred things from that.

Right? Yeah. And realize, wow, it’s not the pulling on leash that’s causing this issue. It’s many other things. But if I fix the pull in unleash, that could probably help. Yeah, sure. Well, think about this too, man. This is what I’ve been telling people recently that so many people struggle to get their dog to walk nicely with you, which is insane to me.

Mm-hmm. And then I’ll ask ’em one simple question. If your dog is standing there in front of you, you’re standing still and you tell your dog to heal, or whatever you use for that position on your left side or right side, I don’t care. Will they just come and get into that position? 99.9% people of know. So your dog doesn’t know that position without movement, but you expect them to know that position with forward movement.

It makes no sense. Mm-hmm. Right. When you’re training competition dogs for, for IGP or PSA or whatever, where we have to have formal, nice PR healing next to you, trainers don’t start that moving forward. First thing they get is the dog coming into that nice position, and that’s where all the rewarding happens before any movement is added to that.

But yet in the pet dog world, people wanna start moving and have the dog pulling them to the park, and the dog doesn’t even know where the right position is. It’s complete insanity. But when you tell people that, they’re like, I. I never thought of that. You know? Yeah. Maybe let’s just teach the dog where that position is without any movement.

Then we could focus on one or two steps before we’re showing the dog a nice job, right? Then you could start adding more to it. But sometimes that’s, we just look at the end, you know? That’s another gem. Larry. I feel like that’s our second reel of the episode because leash, and we’re done. Uh, leach polling is such an issue, right?

And I wonder sometimes how much of it is because pet dog trainers so much, many feel like they’re working just for the client, right? And so if you show up and you talk to the client and you said, Hey, we’re gonna spend all this time teaching this position before we go for a walk, I think trainers are afraid to say that to the client, right?

Versus the client’s like, I want ’em to stop pulling. You’re like, all right, let’s get after it. And you start that right away because you feel like you need to impress them, right? Yeah. You need to make them happy, or they’re not gonna continue training with you. So I wonder how much of it is just that it’s clients are expecting you to start walking right away.

And if you don’t, trainers are feeling a little self-conscious about it. Sure, sure. No, I to, I totally get it. And, and listen, I’m, I’m not an idiot. Well, someone’s gonna see that and go, yeah, you are. Right. But here’s the deal also, Matt, I’ve been doing this for a while. I have a, a halfway decent following.

Maybe some people have a little bit of trust in me. So I also know it’s easier for me to convince people, or I don’t have to convince people, they just, they trust me because I have some kind of established name, right? Whether you hate me or love me, at least there’s some kind of validation there that I, I know a little bit of stuff so I don’t have to convince people.

Young trainers, sometimes people put ’em through the ringer because they have no reason to believe them. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. And that’s, mm-hmm. And that’s unfair. So I always tell people, listen, I understand I’m coming from a different place. I also understand when I say I’m very selective with clients, I pick and choose who I wanna work with.

I know not everyone can do that. So it’s not fair for me to say that. Like, that’s normal. And you have a, a young trainer that has a brand new facility with $40,000 worth of bills to pay every month. No. You can’t pick and choose who you wanna work with that stress. You have overhead, you have bills to pay, you have payroll.

I understand there’s a massive difference, you know, so I don’t want people to think that, I don’t understand that, that I just think it’s this easy for everyone. And you know, phone calls come in and people are trying to sign up for your training programs over the phone. I get it. I’m very blessed to be in that position.

But I also think a big reason for that, Matt, for so long I did this and I didn’t have to do it. I made a good living, my wife made a good living. So I actually did this because I loved it. And I think not having that pressure to succeed financially as a business made it so much easier for me than what a lot of young people have to go through today.

So I definitely have empathy for those people that every month stress to make sure that they can meet their payroll and pay their bills and pay their rent because I never had to do that. And I’m very grateful and I hate that so many people wind up. Even in the past few years, especially, I’ve watched a lot of dog trainers have to bang up shop, have to shut their doors because they couldn’t meet their monthly bills.

Mm-hmm. You know, so don’t, don’t think, I haven’t been tempted in the past to open a facility and, and hire some trainers and make a lot of money. You know, like we all like money. But it was a friend of mine, Shannon Mayfield, hi Shannon, who she had four beautiful facilities up in St. Louis. She’s a friend of mine.

And one of the first seminars I did was at Sha, one of Shannon’s places. And she was showing me around where we were doing and it was incredible. Like she had it all. And I was like, man, I gotta do this. And she said, don’t, that’s all she said, don’t. I said, why? She said. You still train dogs the way I wish I was.

She said, I don’t train dogs anymore. I just put out fires. I run a business. And that’s all she had to say to me. And I never thought twice about it after that. So I still say very small. I’ll never become a millionaire doing this. I get paid good money to do it. I get paid to travel all over the world. And so I’m, I’m very blessed and I’m very grateful that I get to make a good living.

But I don’t have any overhead also, right? So if I do two board trains in a month and a few private lessons and phone calls and I have the sit stay, learn videos in the book, that’s a pretty good living for someone that is doing something they would do for free. You. You know what I mean? Yes. I really am.

So, I’m very grateful. I’m very blessed. My family has sacrificed so much for me to be able to do this and travel and learn. I couldn’t be luckier. Don’t get me wrong, I bitch and complain ’cause I’m a man and that’s what we do. And, and sometimes it takes a conversation like this to make you realize like after all these years I’ve done probably hundreds of podcasts.

Why does anyone ever still want to talk to me? And so I don’t take it for granted. You know what I mean? Yeah. I’ve done podcasts where they get 10 views on their video. I don’t care if a young trainer wants to talk to me, I’m going to do it. ’cause I still enjoy these conversations. We’re gonna get at least 20 on this one, so this will water.

So you just said something I thought was interesting. Uh, so you do board and trains? Yeah, I do. Okay. And do you enjoy ’em? Yes and no. Um, it’s very stressful because I don’t, I take it so serious. I’m always like worried about pro producing what I need to produce, but I also scares me to be with someone’s dog 24 7.

Anything could go wrong. Um, paranoid about losing a dog, a dog. Running through the fence, jumping the fence, getting sick, you know, all those things. So it is very stressful. It’s, the work never ends, you know what I mean? I’m up taking dogs out at six in the morning. I’m taking dogs out at 10, 11 o’clock at night.

You know what I mean? So dogs don’t spend a lot of time like in a pen or a crate without being cared for. And I, I, they, they live and get attention the same way my dogs do. They’re on the same schedule, and that gets to be a lot, you know? Mm-hmm. It really does, because then after that, I have to spend enough time with the people and, and again, that’s a lot.

Yeah. So I’m a little burnt out right now from board and trains, and when I get burnt out doing anything specific in dog training, I’ll shut it down for a little while and focus on something else. So now I’m just focusing more on private sessions, which I love. I love the coaching. I love the one-on-one time with people and board and trains are super valuable.

You get a lot of work done. Right? But, and this is just my opinion, then you spend the time working with the owners and teaching them all you can to make things permanent. But in my opinion. The owners do not learn nearly as much after a board and train because the dog’s not making the same mistakes.

Mm-hmm. They’re not learning from scratch with one-on-one lessons. You’re very hands-on with the human. The human is hands-on with the dog. I only touch the dog when I have to, and the owner gets to make all the mistakes and the dog gets to make all the mistakes, and then I get to help them navigate them through that, how to fix it.

Why is the dog doing that? Why didn’t the dog do this? Here’s what you’re doing wrong. Here’s your timing is often you’re telling the dog one thing and you’re doing another. So the, uh, in general, people are going to learn a lot more through the private lessons because the dog doesn’t know as much. Once the dog knows all this stuff after a board and train, and they’re not making the typical mistakes, the owner doesn’t have the opportunity to learn the same way because they’re just.

Kind of going through the motions and understanding the words, the commands, the markers, and they’re doing it without the dog making all the mistakes. So I just think the learning opportunity in private lessons is much, much greater for the owner in that case. Oh, I agree 100%. And I do board and trains as well, and I, I really enjoy doing them.

But of course, like you said, there’s burnout where you, you take a break, right? Yeah. And focus on more in-home. I won’t do board and trains anymore for leash reactivity for exactly the reason you mentioned where the owners never get the chance to, you know, to see the dog loading right. And fixating and targeting.

And when you’re doing house calls with him one-on-one, you can point to it and you’re like, right now, look at that. He’s staring. Yeah, yeah. He’s loading, he’s getting tense, he’s going to explode. And some of that you have to see with your own eyes. And if you have a trainer gets you 95% there. My worry always, and I’ve seen this, is sometimes they don’t know really what to look for.

So then a year later they start to backslide, right? Because they don’t, they don’t recognize, you know, what a big deal that loading is and that targeting with their eyes. Well, the other thing is too, like a lot of time I, a lot of the border trains I do, they’re people from out of state, from very far away.

Mm-hmm. So I don’t get to be with them constantly like I like to be afterwards. Right. But what I tell ’em, a lot of times those dogs are gonna go back trying to do the same things they were doing before when they’re in the owner’s care. Right. And unless you truly know how to deal with that situation, because what happens all the time happened recently.

Owner comes, we go out for a walk, we’re going to different places and the dog’s not giving them much to fix. Right. All of a sudden it doesn’t care when dogs are around. But I can’t tell you how many times, as soon as they get home back into their environment, they try to go back doing the same thing. So I’ll always warn people of that.

So that’s why I need them to know how to address it properly before they leave here. They have to. Yeah. But again, professional dog trainers can’t always like retain it that quickly. So they’re gonna go through a learning curve and make mistakes. But that’s why I love videos too. A send me a video, I want to see what you’re doing.

Okay. You’re forgetting a few things here. Let’s go over it again. So it’s not like, yeah, you know this stuff now you’re good. No, I’m gonna have to navigate you through this for a while. Like it’s not a problem and I don’t mind doing that. I prefer that you call me when you’re second guessing yourself or struggling instead of letting it go too long.

That’s what I’m here for, you know? Absolutely. Otherwise, yeah, you’re quickly back to square one. Sure. Yep. Awesome. Well, how about we shift gears a little bit to the future of dog training. Any thoughts on where we are heading as an industry?

Nobody knows. I’m just curious your thoughts. You know, I’m, I’m seeing a lot of things that I like. Uh, I, I, I’m seeing more people, more trainers really start focusing on bringing the best out of the dog. Like people are starting to understand how important it is to reach the dog on an emotional level. You know, not to just put the dog in a life of suppression and avoid problems.

You know, play is becoming a really big thing thanks to some of the people I mentioned earlier. Still not very well understood, you know, um, I. I think you’re gonna have a lot of people, there’s a lot of young trainers coming up that are making names for themselves and they’re doing things the right way.

I think that’s a really good thing. And I think there’s more and more people that are able to see through the bad training. ’cause they start to realize, well, that dog doesn’t look very good. You know? So maybe some of the people that, in my opinion, were doing a lot of harm in the industry a few years ago, are no longer relevant.

So I think that’s a good thing. I think people are getting smarter and understanding what to look for, and we can only hope and pray. I think the best thing that dog trainers can do is show more work across the board for each other, for yourselves. It’s important for the industry, it’s important for the people trying to ban our tools.

It’s important. Well, what’s the best way to fight against the e-collar bans Show More work. Show the dogs. There’s a reason why the e-collar Haters and force free have never come after me. They can’t. They can’t because I show everything. And dogs don’t lie, right? Mm-hmm. You’re never gonna see a dog shut down with me, and we need to show more work.

It’s really important, and it’s so simple, Matt, but I think it’s so overlooked. People want to come up with all these plans and ideas and bills. How do we fight this? Well, I think the first thing we have to do is just show the work. Don’t edit it. Don’t put music to it. Don’t put dramatics to it. Literally show the work.

And if the dog starts out looking awful, because that’s who he is and he’s been through bad things, show the whole process. And hopefully when you get to the end, the dog looks like a new dog. His attitude is great. He’s happy. He’s loving life. He has more freedom. He’s what a dog’s supposed to be. No one can argue that they still will try to, but in reality, they can’t argue that.

I love that. You know, one of the good things I’ll say about the internet is over the last few years I’ve noticed it’s made dog training cool. As far as the profession goes. And it didn’t used to be that way, at least to me. I mean, I’ve, I love training dogs. I’ve been doing it since 2006, but it didn’t ever used to be like a cool profession.

And I th I, I credit it to social media. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not, but there’s a lot of young people that are really interested in training dogs. And I feel like it used to be a career of just people stumbled into, you know, that’s how I got into it. So many others. All of a sudden, now you’re a dog trainer, just kind of happened and now you see a lot of young people that are searching out this job.

And I, I think that’s great. And to me, that makes me hopeful for the future of the industry when you have people with a passion that are searching out this career and they want this career. So I think that’s a pretty awesome development. Yeah, for sure. Listen, I’ve had people leave very lucrative professional positions, you know, white collar positions, lawyers, because they just caught the bug and they had a natural talent for it.

And I think there’s something else that should be said too, like, there’s a lot of hate that goes towards Caesar Milan, right? And the professional, you either love them or hate him, right? There’s like no one in the middle, no matter how you feel about Caesar as dog trainers owe him a ton because he’s the one that really put dog training on the map, where people started going, wait a minute.

We can make a living out of this. And so I think he inspired a lot of talented people that got into dog training because of him, because there wasn’t much on TV to watch and he was doing it right. Mm-hmm. So whether you agree with all the things he does or not, I think we all owe him a, a debt of gratitude because he brought dog training to the public’s eye.

He made more people out there willing to spend money to hire a dog trainer because they sat there and watched his show. And I think sometimes in this industry, we forget some of the people that made it possible for all of us going way back when. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. It’s really important. I’ve been very fortunate that over the years, especially ’cause of the eco stuff, I’ve gotten calls from people sometimes.

I didn’t know who they were. I had to look them up like real old timers. And I’ve had some of the most incredible conversations where these people have really said the nicest, most incredible things to me that I never shared with anyone. I just kept it for myself. It made me know that I was on the right path and that at least I was what I was trying to do.

I was making some kind of headway there because the right people were seeing it and like. Really were telling me, don’t stop, don’t change your mind. Keep doing. This is what we were trying to do 40 years ago. I’ve had those words come out of people’s mouths that I was like, okay, maybe it’s a prank call this individual calling me right now.

You know what I mean? I had one guy, you know, and I did have to look up who, it was one of the greatest conversations I ever had. He was a very, very famous elephant trainer, way back when, like the greatest elephant trainer on the planet from what I’ve researched. And this guy calls me out of the blue like few years back, this is going back.

And I literally thought it was a prank call at first, you know? And I had to really dig in and make sure I knew who I was talking about. But it was things like that that kept me motivated to believe in myself to keep getting better. But there’s also times where someone will send you a nasty email or make a nasty comment on one of your videos.

And for some reason you let it get to you really bad. You know, just upset you. It makes you mad or just changes your mood and you let this one message from someone ruin your day when there’s 10,000 positive messages sitting there that you ignore. Mm-hmm. And I had to really start thinking, why am I letting this one person take away with all these incredible people have been sending to me?

So. For anyone that sees this, that send me messages that are really pretty amazing, just know like that’s what keeps me going, means the world to me, and sometimes I need it because you do get down and out on yourself. There’s hard days. There’s days where you don’t know if you want to do this anymore, no matter how much you love it just because you had a bad day.

Or it could be something in your personal life that says, I just don’t feel I’m tired. I don’t wanna do this anymore. But then you get that one email or text message for someone that’s like just life changing to them, and they wanna let you know how you impacted them. It’s really important that we all do that every now and then for people.

Just, Hey, I appreciate you. Thanks so much for what you’ve done for us. You know, it’s important, it really is. In a claims situation, you wanna be sure you have the right coverage. Business ensures that the Carolinas is the preferred IACP insurance provider for your pet training, boarding, and daycare business.

Providing coverage in all 50 states. Business insurers of the Carolinas offers the most affordable general liability rates to ICP members. For more information, visit www.dogtrainerins.com or speak with one of our agents at 809 6 2 4 6 1 1. For sure. And you know, all, I think all trainers get a lot of that from their clients, of course.

But it seems to me like what you said earlier about show the work, right? That’s the, one of the challenges with putting yourself out there is you assume you’re gonna get all this hate. Right? And, you know, if you put a 20 minute video out showing the process all the mistakes, like you can’t be perfect, right?

You cannot do, unless you spend, you know, all day making it a 20 minute video, you’re going to, your timing’s gonna be off sometime, or you’re gonna do something, or someone’s gonna watch it and be like, oh, what a moron, he did this. It’s not gonna be perfect. And I think there’s a, I, I know for me there’s a lot of that worry, right?

That you put some of that stuff out there there of, and it’s just gonna open yourself up. And we just started doing YouTube about maybe a year, year and a half ago. And I thought I was just gonna get blasted and it’s gone better than I thought. Very little hate, but I thought we’d get, you know, hate constantly.

Right? And it’s been my, my encouragement to trainers would be just try it, put this stuff out there because the vast majority of people are kind and supportive. And I thought it was gonna be a lot harder than it was as far as before. Agreements. Read the Four Agreements. Everyone should read the Four Agreements.

It’s a book that every dog trainer should read. Super easy read, not a long book, but you have to start thinking the way of those four agreements. Just look up the four agreements. Even if you don’t read the book right, I’m gonna make a note. Really, really important. And I’m not someone that could sit there and focus on a book for so long.

My mind’s all over the place, but whenever things are getting, I try to go back to that and I’ll skim through it and I’ll re and it’s really, really valuable. And along those lines, people love spending money on dog training stuff. Maybe stop with so many tugs and balls ’cause you already have plenty. Drop 30 or $40 on a really good tripod and start filming yourself.

Film yourself training. You’re going to improve so much because I promise you, you don’t look as sexy as you think you do. You’re gonna see, you’re gonna be like, oh my God. I felt I like I used to watch stuff and go, I did not feel like that. Like I look awful here. I thought I was doing something completely different.

And so until you start watching and studying what you’re doing, you’re going to see a lot of mistakes that we all make. And it’s much easier to fix ’em when you can watch it back and then start being aware of them the next time. Very important for sure. And you realize all the annoying things you do and you’re like, do I really make that weird noise that often when I’m getting the dog?

Oh God, yeah. How many times I look at a video, I’m like, oh my God, I’m getting fat. All right. I gotta get the weight off. Like I’m huge right now. That’s not good. You know, you can’t do that. You know, it keeps you honest, which is important. That’s right. It sure does. Yep. Well, I am overly, I, I would say I am overly optimistic about the future of dog training.

Well, so maybe I’m just regular optimistic, but I feel really good about the future, and I’m just always curious to talk to dog trainers about it, because I’ve seen a big swing over the last few years where balanced training, there’s a lot more people being open about what they’re doing and explaining it clearly and articulating it, and showing that it’s not scary.

And that balanced training is not strapping a trit, you know, like on high onto your dog and shocking ’em like crazy. That’s not balanced at all. So I’m hopeful that more and more young people are just normal. People are seeing this and realizing what balanced training is, right? That, sure, there’s a lot of balance to it, right?

There’s lots of praise, there’s lots of engaging with the dog. So I’m, I’m hopeful we’ve gotten past some of the craziness with the purely positive. Well, I think there’s also, uh, a lot of hope on the force free side because I’ve watched it, I’ve seen it through my seminars. I’ve watched a lot of people switch sides because the imagination of people in the force free world runs wild.

And a lot of times people feel that way just ’cause they think on the so-called balance side. Different things are being done, people all train the same, everyone’s, you know, under the same umbrella. And when they see, wait a second, this isn’t what I expected. I’ve seen a massive number of people switch sides that were very anti tools, everything to go, wait a second, I didn’t know tools could be used like this.

I didn’t know you trained like this. And I’ve told the story many times. The first time I had someone approach me at one of my seminars, you know, it wasn’t even the end of the first day, she said, I just want you to know I came here to hate you. I was like, excuse me? She’s like, I came here to hate you. I’m like, what do you mean?

She was a force free trainer and it came to disrupt things to get on me, you know, to cause a scene. And she’s like, this isn’t what I expected. Like not even close. And that had happened for the next several seminars until I started telling that story more than people stop stopped admitting to me while they were there.

Because they do imagine things. You know, one of the things that drives me crazy, you’ll see a trainer doing really nice obedience work, flashy, and the dog’s got a knee collar on, right? And you see somebody make a comment. Yeah, real impressive. I could teach all that stuff without a knee collar. Like they truly think like that trainer taught all those behaviors with the eco, which I guess it does happen, but most people don’t.

It’s super rare, you know what I mean? And so that’s part of the reason why you, you rarely ever see an eco on my dog, unless it’s for an eco video or a tutorial. My dogs are always naked, right? Because. Back then when I started doing that, I had to show what the dog actually looked like because everybody assumed I was just some kind of guru and it was all due to ecos and it just, I wrote an article once called, I Am Not That Eco Guy.

I used to get offended by it. My wife would be like, why do people think that’s what you do? I’m like, well, I guess it’s my fault. ’cause I put out so much eco stuff, but I don’t put out eco stuff to promote ecos. I put out eco stuff to change the way people view them and use them. Right. So there’s always pros and cons to everything you, you know what I mean?

But they do, they think, oh, I, I could, I had someone make a comment. Oh, I know what it was. Someone asked a question like, who’s your Mount Rushmore of eco trainers? Right? And people were giving their answers. And my name came up now and then popped up a lot. And then some guy made a comment. He goes, I don’t like that guy meaning me.

I watched the video, him teaching a dog a place command with an eco, if you need an eco to teach a place command. I’ve never done that in my life. You know what I mean? I’m sure it was a tutorial, how to introduce play with how to, but what that guy didn’t understand. I’m using the place command that the dog knows to teach the eco pressure.

Not vice versa, but people just have these wild assumptions if they don’t know you. And sometimes that can get super frustrating. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I don’t know. It is what it is, man. There’s some, when they’re like, try that without an eco. Yeah, like I do every day. Okay. Yeah. Like you do know, I teach everything with food.

Purely positive trainer in teaching behaviors. That’s what I do. You know, I don’t know. I don’t know. There do seem to be though a lot more trainers now that are teaching everything with an eco, and to me that feels newer. I, I don’t know if it’s actually newer or if I’ve just become more aware of it, but I see a lot of trainers that teach literally everything with eco or some good, some bad.

Yeah. And you know, I’ve never done it that way. And it sounds like you don’t as well. Not a fan of it. And listen, I could do it. I could do it. And you, you would never know from the dog that he was taught all those positions with an eco, but I just don’t see the value in it. You know what I mean? Like I don’t, the youngest I ever put an eco on one of my own dogs was five months old.

And that was for a very specific reason. My golden doodle buddy, the one, he’s on his last legs now. The reason I started early with him and I filmed it all, when we moved into this house, we had this house built and, and it was finished in January, middle of winter, all around the property. It was mud, like, just mud.

So all my other dogs were off leash ’cause they were trained. I. If they’re going to the mud, I, Hey, don’t go in there. And they won’t. Buddy was five months old. I had to keep him on a long line. And I told my daughter one day, I said, you know what? I’m sick of restraining it. Not because he would run away, but he’d run into the mud.

Sure. And I said, I’m gonna train him this week. We’ll get him off leash so he could be free with the dogs. And it was, it was a two day process before he was off leash and I could trust him off leash. You know what I mean? That’s the only reason I did it so young with him. But normally I’m in no rush to get to the eco.

You know, they’re gonna be probably a year old, maybe older, maybe nine months old, if. If the time is right, but it’s not like, oh, the dog’s this old now I’m going to start. It’s just not something that I’m ever in a rush to do. I wanna spend as much time as I can with that dog, teaching them everything I can.

So by the time my dogs are four or five months old, they really know a lot already. You know what I mean? That eco comes in, comes not to start enforcing obedience. It’s so I could take them wherever I want and have that, that safety, that backup there of that just in case moment. That’s it. You know, I ve I own one eco.

How many dog trainers could say that I own one and it’s old, you know what I mean? And half the time I don’t know where it is because my dogs rarely see them, you know? But if I’m traveling with Dante, sometimes I might have it on him. When we stop at a, a truck stop or a rest area stuff, do I need it on him?

No. I. Not at all. I could take him out to the farm where there’s deer running all over. I don’t need tools on my dogs, you know? But I do think most people, if you’re gonna have your dog off leash in public, you should have that safety backup on there, right? Because they are dogs. That’s going to give you peace of mind and allow you to relax a little more.

Now, if it was used improperly and the dog’s not well trained, now you’re just hoping that everything goes well. So take your time, train your dog. When you train your dog properly and they know all this stuff already, then whatever tool you decide to jump to, whether it’s prong collars, ecos, then the tool’s gonna be able to do what it was meant to do without creating a bunch of conflict in the dog.

It’s that simple. Yeah. If you introduced it at the right time, in the right manner, there’s no stress. Right. And there’s no conflict. It’s pretty easy. No, it is. You know what, you said some, you said something about, you know, having the dog in public, you don’t know what’s gonna be happening and you know, time you need to get the dog’s attention.

That was part of my kind of eco conversion I call it, where I had a Mastiff mixed, we rescued Amazing dog. Didn’t, well he’d never been on an eco, fully off leash trained. He was great. But we were at a farm in rural Iowa and he was just doing dog stuff, you know, running around and the wind picked up. And if you’ve ever been to Iowa or Nebraska on a farm, when it’s windy, you can’t hear anything.

Right. And he saw a deer. So he’s off after the deer and I’m screaming his name and nothing, but you know, he can’t hear ’cause he is 50 yards away or whatever. And the wind is blowing towards me. Yeah. So I’m yelling. I’m yelling. So I’m like running across this field trying to get the dog’s attention. And finally for whatever reason, like he turned my way, not because he heard me.

And you know, I waved. Mm-hmm. And then gave him a hand signal and he is like, oh, okay. And he came. Yeah. And I’m thinking he could have been dead. Right? Yeah. You know. And so after that point I was like, you know what, ECOS certainly have a purpose. And I trained him on one. It was the easiest thing ever because he already recalled and then we had the vibration.

And then from then on, anytime we’re out of that farm, you push the pager and the dog’s like looking around, like, where are you? Yep. And when you explain that to a client, all of a sudden they’re like, yeah, you know what? Why wouldn’t I train my dog on an eco when they hear that that adds a lot of value to your dog’s life, man.

Mm-hmm. You know, because dogs are not meant to be on leashes or even long lines for life. They need to run, you know? And, and when it comes to, to dealing with problem behaviors, especially like aggression and serious behaviors, and I, I say this all the time, one of the most valuable things you can do, one of the first things I focus on is getting that dog off leash.

Once you get that dog off leash and running free in a big open space, everything opens up, you’re going to see a different dog and it’s gonna make dealing with your issues that much easier. Yeah. And I feel like that’s a whole nother episode, just what we’re expecting with dogs Sure. In modern life. Right.

For real. Um, not getting a chance to run and be a dog and do dog stuff and yeah, they’re on leash and you’re trying to fix behavioral issues without exercise and without a purpose in their life. And yeah. It’s, it’s something I, I feel so bad for so many dogs and the lifestyles people expect out of them.

Me too. You’re right, me too. Mm-hmm. I’ve got, one of my dogs is a cattle dog and I just picture he is an awesome dog. But you picture a dog like that living in town and I see him all the time and you’re like, now wonder, all cattle dogs bite people. Right. Redneck, malis baby. Redneck malis. That’s exactly what it is.

Tough dogs. They’re And they’re amazing dogs if they get that chance to run, right? Yeah. But people don’t give ’em that chance and then nothing but problems comes from it. Yeah. You got that right? Mm-hmm. For sure. And they’re just sad and stressed and I think that’s one of the things I would love to see change is for people to get the right dog breed for them.

Oh yeah, definitely. Mm-hmm. Who knows if that’ll ever happen. Everyone wants what’s cool. Yeah, for real. Alright, well as we start wrapping up, anything you would like everyone to know about you? Anything you’re working on? Any upcoming seminars, anything new with your business? Man, I’m, you know, I’m always doing seminars here and there.

Uh, getting ready to shoot another video for sit, stay, learn. I got the two on there now, the eco one and the communication one. So I’m just trying to put out videos that are going to help the everyday. It’s the same thing I’ve been focused on forever this time. They want me to make a video just on loose leash walking and stopping your dog from pulling.

And I can’t explain to you how stressed I am about it because it’s gonna be the most unsexy, unexciting video of all time. And I’m scared to death to make it because like. How do you fill that with good information? But I get it, it’s what people actually need. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? So this will be the third video on there.

Seminars. I’m, I’m always, you know, I do the ones with Jay and Joel, which are my favorite because we have a really good time. It’s a great format. We do ’em in nice hotels with big conference rooms and everyone’s staying in the same hotel. The dogs are in the hotel with you. So it, for me, it’s just the greatest setup ever.

And then I do my solo seminars. I have one next month, actually this month we’re in May now in, uh, Michigan with my, my buddy Paul at j and SK canine up there. And then we go to Boston in July and then Nashville in October. So I’m all over the place. I had to cancel Australia and New Zealand because I was having some health issues during flying.

I’m trying to work on that. Passing out on planes just isn’t fun anymore. So that’s all. Doesn’t not fun at all. That’s all. Other thing. But other than that, you know, I’m easy to find on Facebook and pissing someone off and YouTube and I got nothing to sell you people. Well, we’ll put, not very exciting.

We’ll put links in the description to all, all of your stuff. So, uh, I’ll have you send those over later sometime. We’ll get it put in there to sit, stay learned, uh, all of your other things and so people can find you quickly. Now you, you gonna be at the conference in July? Absolutely. Yep. See I’m gonna have, I’ve only made it to one conference and that’s ’cause I was speaking and I had the best time.

I really did. I want to go to this one ’cause first of all I love Savannah. I love mm-hmm socializing with dog people. I don’t get to do it, but we have a seminar in July, like the weekend, right before the conference. So Jay is speaking at the conference this year. Yeah. He’s gotta leave the seminar and go right to the conference and I’m like man that’s a lot.

But I know if I don’t go I’m gonna have serious fomo ’cause I love tag along tag along with Jay. It’ll be awesome. I love that environment. I love seeing people. We only get to talk online and I’m just a very social per, I don’t get to socialize with dog people so I’m gonna try to make it For sure. I definitely will.

Yeah, it would be, it’d be awesome. Love to have you. I mean the hotel is amazing. It’s right on the river front in Savannah. Ah, I love it there. One of my favorite cities too. It really is. Yeah, I like it there a lot. Absolutely amazing. And the vendor hall is 100% booked up, so a lot of cool companies coming to Nice show off their stuff.

So it’d be a lot of fun. And the vendor hall is like right on the river walk. Nice. So giant glass wall so you can just see out. That’s awesome. The river walk. It’s amazing. Well being, you have to get together for lunch in Nashville soon. I didn’t realize you were right there. Let’s make that happen.

Absolutely. It’d be a lot of fun. Yeah, for real. Well thank you for listening everybody. We, and we can keep talking offline, Larry, but I think people are probably, yeah, they’re ready. Stick to our lunch plans, but two hours. Yeah. Thank you for watching everybody and definitely look up Larry. We will have everything in the description.