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Hey guys, welcome back to Dog Pearl Radio, the official, uh, podcast of the International Association of Canine Professionals. Um, so my name is Fabian. I am your vice president and we are back in the podcast. So I’m back in the podcast after Matt and Jason monopolize it and kicked me off for five straight episodes.

Now, uh, or however you guys have been at it for a while, right, Matt? It’s been busy, Jason, he says we can have Sundays off. That’s, that’s the only day other than that we’re working. You guys missed one this week, um, because of, um, some stuff came up with you to blame, to blame you specifically. That was something I can walk you through that, that was crazy.

Yeah. So, um, no, I’m glad to be back. I’m glad that, um, we’ve narrowed it down to two hosts at a time, right? Just because it gets to be, you know, uh, not enough time, honestly, for everybody to be on there. So I’m happy to be back. Um, and, um, you know, I’m happy to introduce our guest today, who’s actually I followed for a long time.

I’ve had them out here in Chicago. I like to consider him a friend, but I don’t know if we’re like friend, friend, friends. We’re like dog trainer friends, which is cool. But, um, so I wanna introduce, uh, pat Stewart to the podcast. So we’re honored to have Pat today. I’ll, I’m gonna read a little bio on him, just so in case no one, I mean, everyone knows who he is, but I’m gonna do the due diligence here, um, and read this whole thing.

So, um, pat Stewart, a distinguished dog trainer, educator, and co-host of the Canine Paradigm podcast. Uh, Pat’s journey into dog training began with a challenging experience adopting adult, an adult dog, uh, igniting a deep passion for canon behavior. After serving 12 years in Australia’s armed Special Forces, he transitioned into professional dog training in 2015, founding his business, operating canine.

As an active competitor in Protection Sports or PSA, uh, he’s a certified decoy. Pat brings practical experience of his teachings through his podcast, the Canine Paradigm. He shares insights and engages with global dog training community. So Pat, welcome onto the show and, uh, my friend, we’re happy to have you.

You thank you for having me. There you go. I feel, I feel like everyone in the IAEP knows you. I haven’t seen you in a couple years now ’cause of, you know, everything’s been going on. Yeah. People have been super busy, but, um, yeah, welcome to the show. What have you been up to? Thanks for having me. Thanks guys.

Um, I’ve just been working. I’m busy. Uh, up to on the big scale is the reason I haven’t seen you in a couple years is I haven’t been to the US in a long while. Um, I, um, painted myself into a corner financially and have to be at work every day. Uh, so, uh, a large part of my income used to be sort of traveling around teaching seminars and bootcamps and stuff like that.

And, and, and truly I love doing that and. Mate, I, I honestly, you know, I love you the, the opportunities you’ve provided me there. In Chicago, we run those bootcamps outta your place, which are just incredible. And, um, I love doing those. But with a young family, traveling has gotten more and more difficult.

And so it was, it was one thing when I had like one child and no sort of, um, you know, no big business overheads, but now with two kids and, uh, you know, a very expensive rent that I have to pay every month to have this building right? It just makes traveling a little bit more difficult. So that’s sort of big picture, what I’ve been doing.

Small picture is made. I’m, uh, I’m working. I’m, I’m trying a lot of dogs. I’m making a bunch of content. I’ve been building. Really the reason I got this place was to, uh, build this big online course. I sort of have decided that, um, I’m not like a legacy guy or anything. It’s not like it’s something that I’m looking to sort of like, this is my stamp, but what I’ve made is sort of a, a, a.

A course. That’s essentially everything I know. I wanted to sort of, you know, spend a bunch of time recording. So I’ve spent the last couple of years, basically yeah, training dogs and recording myself explaining as I train those dogs and I’ve got 85 terabyte of footage that I’m cutting into courses. And yeah, it’s, it’s a lot, right?

So, um, I’m kind of set now, like I’ve got all, I’ve got tons of footage of me teaching all kinds of dogs to do all different things. And at the moment, like, you’d be familiar, one of the things I always teach is a triangle drill. I’ve got a dog in here with me right now who, that’s what we’re, we’re working through today, we’re now final stages of me teaching him that.

And then, you know, there’ll be a big course on that, or that’ll go, that will go into the course. So that’s what I’m doing sort of day to day these days. Still training plenty of dogs, still making plenty of footage, but I haven’t, or content, but I haven’t really been putting it out ’cause it’s all going into this, this big portal, this big course that I’m about to start selling on the first of next month.

So yeah, that’s me. Yeah, I, I kind of understand that, um, a little bit because being at the, being at the facility every day, it’s a matter, I don’t know, you just build a habit and you’re like, you get up and you go there. ’cause that’s where you got all your things to do and that’s where you can do all the dog stuff and, you know, build, uh, what you’re building.

Um, so I guess speaking on like the, the facilities standpoint, how have you liked having your place? So you’ve, you’ve done, do you do workshops there? Are you still hosting like the boot camps at your place? Yeah, so like the, I love it. Uh, I love, love, love, love, love it. I can’t speak to it highly enough. The, the place that I’m at.

It’s this weird little warehouse in the middle of the city. So I live in Lockhart, which is, you know, a, a suburb just outside of Sydney, CBD itself. Um, and my, my shop is the, the horse stables of the pub that was built here in the like 1880s. Okay. And so the, the infrastructure is, you know, massive. This is a huge metropolitan city.

It’s all grown around these crappy little horse stables, which is in the inside of the block. Um, but I live on this block as well, so it’s kind of like a, having a, it’s almost like it’s an extension of my home. It’s a four minute walk from my house to here. So I love it. I love it. And, and I’ve been doing like small workshops.

The problem is there’s no parking here, so I can’t do big stuff. Um, but, and I can only fit about 30 people in here at a time, but we train in here all the time. I have clients come in here and I can, you know, it’s basically, if I’m honest. It’s kind of like my man cave where Yeah. ’cause everything, I’m like, I’m very lucky.

Like most of us, you know, my hobby is my work. So all the things that I have set up to do the fun things that I want to do, I can then just do those with other people and get paid to do it. So, um, it’s been great. It, it’s a little bit scary, you know, like, uh, rent in Sydney is not cheap. Um, it’s kind of astronomical.

If I told you every time I speak to people in the US if Oh, you’d get it Fabian. ’cause I know you’re in Chicago in the city and your rent is probably, is similarly enormous. But a lot of times when I say to people how much I actually pay here, they, they, they flat out don’t believe me. There’s Fabian doesn’t pay rent.

I think Fabian owns a city block there. No, we pay, we no, we pay, we pay our rent. Um, yeah. Yeah. No man. I think, um, uh, well that’s good to hear. Everything’s been going great. I mean, we’ve been touch and go the last couple years. Uh, very short conversations. Uh, most of the time it’s me begging and saying like, Hey, when are you gonna come back?

Or, you know, and you’re like, oh, the kids, I can’t do it. Which is perfectly understandable. I was hoping one of these days you’re gonna say yes, let’s do it in Chicago. ’cause I get, dude, I get asked that all the time. And so similar to your case, we’ve been working on this school ever since you left. I think we had a conversation in terms of like academic programs and, you know, some of the investment that we’re making here in Chicago.

And man, that takes years and years of time. Um, you know, so that’s been, um, and the last time I saw you. It was at PSA Nationals. I don’t think it was at ICP conference. You weren’t at, uh, yeah, it was at, yeah, it was at PSA Nationals. Uh uh Was that your place beforehand? No, it was in Texas, but yeah, it was at nationals in Texas.

Is the last time I saw you? I think that was the last time I was in the us. I think that was the last time I was there. Yeah, it was at night that uh, when did the apprentices, we were having dinner and one of them went on and crashed my truck. Uh, sorry. They crashed. Yeah, it’s a whole story. And you know, it’s, uh, we’ll, we’ll leave it there.

Uh, but Matt, how’s, uh, um, how have you, what have you been up to? How have you been doing? I’ve been good, busy between work and IACP stuff and three kids. There is no shortage of things to do. Yeah. And I was gonna highlight a little bit of like, um, some of the ICP stuff that you’ve been doing. ’cause you’ve been working a lot on it.

I feel like I’ve kind of taken the backseat the last couple of weeks just being, uh, you know, just busy. But you’ve spent a significant amount of time, not only on this, but also sponsors for, and vendors for conference. How’s that coming along, you know. We are, it’s been pretty easy. And then I think it’s been easy because people are excited to support the IACP.

You know, we are fully booked for conference, so we have every single vendor spot is booked. And then we went back to the hotel and we’re like, give us more spots. And they did. And then we booked those and we went back a third time. We’re like, we need more spots figured out. And they found two more and we booked those as well.

So it’s been, it’s a fun project to be part of because I reach out to people and they say yes and not because I’m like an amazing salesperson. It’s, they’re excited to be part of the conference and you know, stuff snowballs, right? So when they see the vendor map and they see who all’s gonna be there, they sell themself on it.

And same with sponsors. We’ve got a lot of really good sponsors and it hasn’t been hard to get them. So that’s been a lot of fun. Yeah, I think, uh, I’m excited for this year’s conference because I think it’s the first conference that feels like a conference instead of like, you know, piecing together, rushing things.

Um, we’re actually ahead of the game this time, planning things and getting it bucked up. Um, pat you were at the confidence in Sawgrass that was 23, 23 and 23, right? 22. Uh, yeah. Maybe, was it 2023? Yeah, might’ve been. Yeah. Maybe that was 2022. I can’t remember. Yeah. And so I, you know, the reason we wanted to get, uh, get you on here is because obviously you’ve, you’ve spoken at our conferences, um, and, um, you know, I, I just wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, how you see the ICP kind of from your lens, um, on this side of things.

Obviously we had our plenty of conversations and, and honestly, it’s not news to anyone that how much, how different the ICP is now than it was, uh, two, three years ago. You know, and it’s definitely, um, in my opinion, it’s come a long way, obviously, but talking to people that have seen it over the years and has been involved in it and supporting it, getting their feedback, I think is super important.

Uh, but honestly, it, it, it paints the real picture for us, right? In terms of what we’re dealing with in our community of trainers around the world. Um, so yeah. Pat, tell what, so how did you get involved with the ICP? Um, and I know, I mean, you were a, uh, a, a big supporter of it as well. Yeah. Um, how did I get involved?

I think it was, uh, I. Was Tyler Muto when Tyler was the president. You know, Tyler, um, had a pretty big profile at the time. Like a lot of people around the world knew him. It was when he was doing stuff with Berg. Um, and he and Josh Moran, I think as well. Both of them had come to Australia and done seminars and had really, uh, you know, spooked the ICP.

They had really spoken about, you know, how important it was, what good work they were doing, and sort of, um, convinced myself and others to come on board. And then, I think it was 2018 maybe, uh, Glen, uh, went to, no, maybe in 2017, Glen, who I do my podcast with, he went to a conference in, I think it was in St.

Louis maybe, and had this incredible time and came back and was like, we’re all doing it. We’re joining the ISP. Um, we did. And uh, so I went to a few different conferences, had a really good time. Went to, um, you know, the. Where was the first one I went to in Florida? Uh, went to Colorado and then spoke again in Florida.

Um, and have really like, you know, my, my firsthand experiences with ISCP initially were all wonderful. Um, and it was this great community of people were coming into. And, and the conference really kind of blew my mind a little bit because in Australia we don’t have anything like that. And, and even having a function center that can facilitate that is very difficult.

Like there aren’t many places in Australia where you could even do that. Um, especially having dogs in the hotel and stuff like that. It’s just not how we roll here. So, uh, it was cool. It was really a bit of an eyeopener and to have, you know, I think the first conference I went to there was 600 people or something like that at it.

Uh, so that was, you know, like this, this just immersion into cool dog stuff with cool people. And so following that, I was asked to go onto the legislative committee and did, and volunteered there. And then I ended up moving over to the marketing committee, I think it was. Um, and look, I, I, I put in a decent amount of time where I felt like I could help the IACP the most was just through awareness and, um, spreading the information about it.

So it became, you know, having been talked into it or, or exposed to it by trainers that I respected and was there to learn from. I kind of figured, well, since I’m traveling around and I’m teaching people, it’s probably something I should do, right? So, uh, I, you know, started making it something that I would speak about at, uh, at all the seminars I would do, whenever I was anywhere speaking or teaching, I would be talking about to people.

I made a lot of my clients join the ISEP people who, you know, were not dog trainers, but I, you know, had, uh, I had a lot of people. And I still do, but when I was doing much more pet sort of behavior mod type stuff, I, I had a lot of people that had been, um, I don’t wanna say failed, it’s probably hoodwinked by other trainers who, you know, had just sort of sold them a very pretty lie about what was possible with their dog.

And it just hadn’t worked. And, and, you know, typically we we’re dealing with a lot of sort of force free people who, not that their issue was that they were force free. Their, their issue was they’re just ineffective, right? They just were, or ineffective. They were not good trainers. And so by the time people came to me, they’d already been quite brainwashed against the idea of using any for, of compulsion or tools or anything like that.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty good at, you know, talking people around. So after I’d done that, I then said to these people, you know, ’cause they’re always then like, oh wow, why was I told this about those tools? And so I would say, you know, there’s this whole subset of people who don’t want that to be the case.

And, and, and we are fighting a battle and it’s a losing battle. And, and I would then convince those people to join the ICP and support. So that would become a affiliate member or whatever it’s called. Right? So I, I just found myself talking a lot of people into doing it. And then, uh, you know, Glen, uh, ended up on the board and so, you know, through our podcast we were really sp spooking it, we were really trying to convince a lot of people to join because I’ve seen, like you guys in the states are, um, in, you know.

The way your laws work and your state’s rights and stuff like that, you are not as imminent a threat of legislation affecting dog training as some of us are in the rest of the world, and we have already experienced some of the things that you guys are going to go through, right? So like here in Australia where I am, uh, ecos and prong collars are not a given, right?

Depending on what state you’re in, will determine which ones you can use. And so, um, and, and you know, in some states, ecos are allowed and prong collars are not, and vice versa. And we’ve seen this, we’ve seen this happen. And, and that’s what I really wanted to get as many people into the IACP as possible.

Because what, you know, I think my vision of the IACP at the time was a body that carried some weight and, and could act as an expert body. And so when a politician is deciding, well, you know, like politicians in my experience, uh, there’s, there’s so much more bigger picture going on in all the decisions that they make.

And I can say that with a reasonable level of authority having been in the Army and worked closely with, you know, like been the bodyguard to prime Ministers, right? So like having been around those sorts of conversations, I’m acutely aware that their own intent is very seldom what gets followed through the, it’s part of these bigger deals.

It’s part of like the bigger picture of things. And often they can be leveraged easily by issue motivator groups. So one of the, like an example of that here in Australia would be like the animal justice party. The Animal Justice Party is essentially Peter in disguise, right? They’re, they’re a political arm of Peter, essentially.

Um, and they, they end up getting voted for because people hate politicians. And they, they go into their, the ballot and they’re like, oh, animal justice. Like, I don’t know anything about that, but I like my dog. And so these are the people I’ll vote for not knowing. They’re voting for the people who ultimately don’t want them to own a dog.

And so then one of them gets in position and now they have a point of leverage. They hold a seat now parliament, and they can then, you know, if, if, if the sitting government needs their vote for something, then the deal has to be made. And so my vision of the IACP and what I had hoped that they would be able to provide is, is a body that is truly international.

And truly has enough members to carry some weight and to be seen as the, the actual experts in the, you know, the, the, the, the training industry and, and dog training. So my vision was that, like, for example, we had pro collars band in one of our states here in Queensland, just one day. It was just suddenly it was a, an announcement via Instagram that it was happening.

Ooh, that’s crazy on Instagram. Like just, yeah, that’s how, and like the law obviously had to then be passed, but it, there was like, we are doing this and it was clearly a backroom deal done between the premier of that state and, you know, whichever issue motivated group had leverage over them for whatever was coming.

So, like my vision of the IACP is to then be able to write a letter saying like, Hey, cool, like you are this, you’re the Queensland government. You do you like, you are in charge. But as experts in the field, let us explain to you the carry on effect of what’s gonna happen from doing that. And, and then have that be weighed right?

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gonna sway the conversation or make any political changes because they still have to play within their space. But, uh, my vision of the IACP was to be able to provide the truth to then go like, Hey, this is what will happen. This is the effect of banning those tools.

Like this is, it, it, it might give you the warm and fuzzy and for sure it’s going to sway the politically the way that you need. Cool. Whatever that’s outside of our wheelhouse. But this is the reality of what’s gonna happen with dogs and dog training in your state when that happens. And so that’s what I have, you know, that, that’s the vision I’ve always kind of held to the ICP and I.

And I know that that’s not necessarily, in fact, I was quite wrong because that’s not the mandate of the icp, right? Like, and I get that and I was trying to turn the ISP into something that it wasn’t. Um, and also, you know, the, the membership, right? Like, like you really, I. The getting people to join a single body is hard, right?

Like, I’m a member and will remain a member forever, but I’m not much of a joiner of many things these days. You know, like when people sort of ask me to join various things they say, I’m like, hmm, I like, I’ll share my opinions with you, but I’m not putting my name to you because like, like I’ve been bitten a couple of times.

You’re like, been there, done that. Yeah, for sure. You know? Um, so that, that, that’s why I got involved with the ISCP and, and it, it became a little bit tricky for me being on those committees and not being able to get the throughput that I wanted. And, and the issue sort of became for us in the, i part of the IACP is the international like to, to run an international bodies is, I can’t even imagine how difficult that would be to be across all the different laws and legislation and dealing with the different people who have different points of view and all that kind of stuff.

And I think what happened for us in the international regions was during COVID, it was very difficult for the IACP to keep that eye right? Like it was very difficult to remain an international organization, especially when there were internal problems. So, um, the membership would know, like I put a post, uh, into the ICP group, right?

Like into the Facebook group and, and at the time sort of saying like, Hey, get it together. Because like, we need this where you guys who are infighting amongst each other, you’re damaging an organization that we need. And because to my knowledge, it’s the biggest and really only viable balance training organization that exists.

And so I, I kind of put a call to action saying, listen, I, I can see that there’s people who have issue with each other going on here, but you have to put that shit aside and we need to get this organization going in, in the right direction. Um, and I’m happy to see mate, and I’m sure Fabian, like I, I, you know, I haven’t been as deeply involved.

Um, I’ve been a peripheral person. Um, but I’m, I’m certain that you are a big part of that, right? Like I’ve, I’ve said it of you many times, I’ll blow some smoke up your ass that you are an excellent businessman. You’re, you’re, you’re, well, what I say of you, Fabian, is that you’re a businessman in the business of dogs.

See, like a lot of us are dog trainers that are like, Ugh, fuck, I have to run a business. But you know how to run a business and you are, you’re fantastic with dogs also. And so I think that, you know, the success that we are seeing, I think largely would come to you. So, congratulations mate. Alright everybody, let’s take a quick break to talk about our friends.

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The infighting was a, was a big problem with the organization. Um, I. And, you know, speaking frankly, I think it was just certain strategic decisions needed to be made, right? I mean, I, I think at the end of the day, everything fizzles out if you wait out long enough, right? And, you know, things change and things happen and life changes.

And ultimately, um, you know, there were some tough decisions that we needed to make and then we made them, right? I think we pissed off a lot of people. I mean, there was a time when it was like, we just made a lot of people angry at one time. I think specifically when we moved the staff here to Chicago, it was just necessary, you know, it was just necessary to make the changes.

And then, you know, as Jason joined the board, then we’re like, we have two people that are kind of thinking the same about things. And we’re like, Hey, what do you need? What do we need? And, you know, just moving the organization along. Um, you know, that’s a, and then the rest of the story is the conversation for the bar next time you’re conference.

Um, but, but, um, but yeah. So, so I guess, you know, you’re speaking from experience in Australia, right? And we’ve talked about this, uh, uh, several times, but what do you think we could be doing differently here, you know, as, um, you know, to prevent legislation? I mean, we’ve had our things come up in the last couple years, nothing so far this year.

’cause the world of politics in the US is just focused on other things right now. Uh, but I’m sure, but I’m sure it’s gonna simmer down. And, you know, you get these, um, lawmakers that essentially have to cut a deal that supports certain groups, and then you are gonna end up in the same situation. But what do you think we’re in for and what do you, how, what do you think we can do about it?

Um, Matt, I think that, uh, we are on a weird trajectory, um, where owning a dog is gonna become really difficult. So I think that’s kind of the long-term goal of a, a lot of the, um, you know, the, the, the people who we would say are our opposition. And, and, and I think unfortunately, uh, w we have been tricked into fighting amongst ourselves.

So what happens is that we end up having, uh, you know, like force free versus balanced training sort of debates, right? And, and I think that it’s totally fine that people, you know, especially if, if you think you have to follow your own ethics, right? So if you’re an effective trainer, first of all, that’s the first bench that we have to sort of, you have to be good at training animals.

Yeah. You’ve actually gotta be capable, right? At the minimum. Capable. You don’t necessarily, like, we’re not talking about world champion level or, but you have to be competent, right? Like, we need to only weigh the opinions of competent people or involve ourselves with competent people, or people trying to become competent.

Uh, when we have that, then the conversation can be about, okay, well how do, like we maintain the quality of life for dogs and for the people that own them. And, and that’s kind of has to be the corner post of, or, you know, like the, the, the cornerstone of all of our conversations going forward is that we are looking to increase the quality of life for the dogs and the people who own them, right?

And we want that to, we want to maintain dog ownership as being a pleasure. We want, we want people to be like, fuck yeah, this is my dog. This is amazing. I love this dog. So, uh, and I, and I, and I love the experience of owning this dog. Now the problem comes in when we start allowing people who are not competent to tell us what we can and can’t do.

Now. Now that’s the, that’s where we’re at and that’s where we see a lot of fighting. So you see a lot of people online trying to say, you know, like. Tools should be banned. And, and like right now, people saying the IACP should be investigated for even having an organization that allows that. And it’s like, I dunno if people is the right word.

Zip pad. It’s person. A person. Yeah. A person. Yeah. But so the, the, the question. Like the, the, the benchmark to cross before you should even be allowed to be involved or, or not be allowed. Who am I to say allowed before I am interested in having a conversation with you? You have to demonstrate some competence to me.

Right? So you have to demonstrate like that you, you, your opinion is worth me listening to because it’s valid and can lead dogs to success. And, and success is increasing the life, you know, the, the quality of life of people and the dogs that they own. And so that’s sort of our issue is that I think that as a bigger picture and the organization itself, we really need to harmonize the dog training as like, okay, balance training for us is everything that is necessary to achieve our goal of in increasing the quality of life of people and their dogs so we can hear all the voices because we’re balanced training, right?

So to me, like I am very often a force free trainer, right? Like very much, I just, just before we got on, I was doing a training session with an extremely high powered dog, right? Like I’m talking the kind of dog that would terrify most people to even be around and he’s wearing no collars. And I’m, I’ve got a clicker and a treat pouch and a, and a man’s minder on the floor.

And I’m teaching him the, the drill of go out to the marker board and look at that thing or look back at me. And there’s no force to be used, right? There’s nothing to be done. This is a, this is a dog who like, I can set the scenario, but. That same dog walking down the street needs to be controlled pretty damn tightly because he’s a monstrous killer.

Right. And so that, like, I am a balanced trainer because in one moment I can be completely force free and in another, I can rely on the tools and I can then safely walk that dog around and he can have a great existence. I can take him out onto the street, which is, you know, covered with, with people moving bus, buses, trucks, the whole lot.

And I can control that dog and be like, Hey man, you’re not allowed to kill any of these people, right? Like I, I’m in a separately working with him on, you know, the, the technical skills that he’ll use to later do cool stuff with. But I need to, at the same time be saying, you can’t do that. So that’s what balanced training is.

But as a result, it means I can hear all the voices, I can listen to all the people who are just put the tools on control, the dog. And I can hear from the people who are, you know, incredibly intelligent because they don’t want to put the tools on control the dog. They can then like be, well let’s get in the mind of the dog.

Let’s outsmart the dog, let’s control the situation, let’s do all those sorts of things. So when we’ve heard all those voices, we are a balanced organization. And I’m not really interested in the opinions of organizations that are not balanced because then they’re not here, they’re, they’re not dealing with the kind of dogs that I deal with.

They’re not dealing with reality, they’re dealing with a subset. So. Are absolutely interested in the people who want to just train without the tools. But we should all be under the one blanket umbrella of we are effective and competent dog trainers. And so once we have that, then we can start having a conversation about, okay, well, like what’s training look like under what circumstances?

What is where do, how do we work our ethics? How does that all work together? Rather than just being like, no, this is how we do it and this is all that we are gonna do. And I think my big concern is that. A lot of the people who cause us the biggest problems and, and are you demanding our tools be banned?

And that dogs be trained in a particular style. They only train a particular type of dog, right? They don’t, they don’t get involved in the full spectrum. Now, I’m not even involved in the full spectrum. I’m, I’m involved in a lot of dog training, right? Like I, I, I still do pet dog stuff. I, I work with a lot of sport dogs.

I do like protection sport type dogs, and I do police and military type dogs. But I don’t know anything about herding. I don’t know anything about it. So it, what I see happens in our space would be, it’s like the equivalent of me to turning up to a hurting trial and telling all these people, no, you’re doing this all wrong.

You don’t know what you’re doing. Or, worse yet, me going to like an actual farm and telling the farmer, you’re doing all this wrong. You dunno what you’re doing right? Because I’ve, I, I think that using any form of force or compulsion is, is wrong. I dunno how to do what you’re doing. I’ve never done it and I have no capability or desire to do it, but I’m telling you that you’re wrong.

And that’s the sort of thing that we’re facing here. So we have to harmonize. That’s sort of the answer to your question, Fabian. That’s like the long way to get there. Is that I think as dog trainers, we need to exclude the incompetent, right? So we need to, when, when the incompetent voices come up and say like, well this is how it, you should be doing your job.

Be like, Hey, don’t tell me how to do my job. Like I, I know how to do my job. But when somebody, if you fab in, if you, if you saw a video of me doing something and said to me, pat, that was bad training, I’ll be like, oh shit. Okay. Like, why? What, what can I change? Where does it change? Because I’ve seen you. I know you, I know that you’re competent, you’ve demonstrated it, so your opinion is valid.

But until then, why am I listening to you? Why, why, why do we, why do we weigh any, anything against what you have to say? Uh, go ahead Matt. I was just gonna say, so Pat, basically you said there we need to, uh, ignore the people that aren’t real dog trainers, right? A hundred percent agreed on that. And also harmonize or come together, and you mentioned this briefly, but so many balance trainers cut each other down and not for real.

You know, if it’s a real reason, cut ’em down. Right? If you find someone abusing dogs, that’s a problem, right? We, that, that should be outed and talked about. But so many are nitpicky and, you know, cut each other down for no real reason. What are your thoughts on that? And how do we get the balanced training community to be a real community?

Right? Many of us are, but how do we bring more into that fold? Well, there, there’s a few layers to that, right? I. I think the dog training community as a whole is a very unwell community. Yes. Uh, so I think that there’s a lot of, uh, mental health issues that need to be addressed within our space. And I think that, um, the, the idea, the very idea of being a dog trainer appeals to many people who don’t do well with people.

And the unfortunate reality is there are very few dog trainers who get to actually train dogs. There’s, there’s not many at all, right? Like, our job is train. Even if you get to just train dogs, you still have to do a hand back to the owner. Right. Um, the only you know, there, there’s very few people and, and they’re often some of the best trainers who just train dogs and don’t then just sell the dog and, or, or return the dog or whatever someone else does.

The handbag, they don’t actually engage with people. So unfortunately we have, uh, an industry that seems appealing, falsely to people. Yes. They think that you can become trainer and not have to deal with people. And so that’s an unfortunate truth of our, our, uh, our industry is that a lot of the people who, um, come into it do so thinking that they are escaping the reality of having to have civil conversations with people.

Right. So there’s that issue. Um, I think as well our, our, our space sort of, uh. It, it allows for a lot of conflict because of the way that we interact with each other online now. Like I am only 42. I’m not like some, some old man, although my body tells me I’m every day. But even, I remember a time when social media either didn’t exist as in the dog space or was completely different.

And I think what we see now is, uh, the, the, nobody’s really using forums very much now. Forums have become quite closed groups online. Right? So, so it’s like your group of people are in a particular forum. Rather than having larger forums, we’ve splinted them into small sections. So forums allowed for conversation, right?

And, and when they’re in a closed group of just dog trainers, they allow for conceding, which is one of the things that doesn’t really happen. So I, I, if, if we’re in a group, like the ICP has a Facebook group, right? Within that Facebook group, we can have real conversations where we are back and forth with each other.

And because it’s not theatrical, my audience, like my audience, people who look to me, to, you know, educate them, are typically not in those groups. Maybe for me it’s a bit different because I do train trainers, uh, for the average trainer, their audience, their target market of people, their clients are not visible in those groups.

So they can have conversations and concede defeat. Because that’s one of the really important things when you’re having conversations with people or, or, or you’re not, a conversation can never result in defeat, but, uh, uh, a an argument you can go, oh, right, I see your point. And your point is better than mine.

I hadn’t considered it. I’m changing. Right. And that’s something that we just don’t see really anymore because of the way that our forums have broken into such small groups that they’re now just very small echo chambers. Right. So no contrary opinion is allowed to be had. And also this idea of safe spaces has created that as well, right?

So like, no, this is the space where we just act as an echo chamber. We confirm each other’s, uh, biases, and we live in delusion together. And if you want to come here with your truths, you can get the fuck out. Am I allowed to swear? Sorry. Am I allowed? Okay. You can, you can, you can swear I’m the vp. I can, I can see.

So what we have instead now is these like rap battles going on in 62nd hits on people’s stories and their Instagram reels and their TikTok, whatever tiktoks are called, right? So the problem is that goes to your entire audience. So I can never concede defeat in fronting those things, right? People will never say that they were wrong because their entire audience sees that, and their entire brand is built on being the font of knowledge.

So that’s part of our issue, right? Is that we don’t actually communicate with each other very well. And then I think that the next sort of problem, and I, I don’t have an answer to any of this stuff, I’m just pointing out the problems by the way, right? Um, is that there is no standard, there’s no objective standard.

And that’s one of the reasons why I love dog sport. And it’s why I try to convince so many people to get into it and whether it doesn’t matter whether you’d want to do something high powered, like, you know, dogs that bite, or you just have a cool pet dog. And in, in those instances, you should be doing something like GRC.

That’s the whole point of why J Jack invented that game is that. It gives an objective standard. It says like, no, this dog is trained and this one has failed to pass the, the assessment of what a dog, a trained dog is. And so then we can go, oh, well your skills didn’t hold up. Like your techniques did not hold up.

This dog passed and this dog did not like why you, you have not demonstrated competence. So having some form of like, you know, we need to, uh, just cohesion and a place where we can communicate with each other with no audience, I think is important. I think having some sort of objective standard where like, it’s like, no, you, you are or are not competent deemed by this, right?

Like, ’cause we sometimes see in some of these groups like, oh, don’t let, like people measure you by success. It, it, it should be by how you make yourself feel. It’s like, well that’s cool, but not as a professional. You have to be measured by success and success alone. That’s all that can be measured as, as a professional.

Success has to include the experience of the dog, but you still can only be measured by your success. Uh, and then I think, um, so we, we coming together, uh, uh, uh, an objective standard and then I think that we need better education and, and an understanding of, uh, you know, what actually, uh. You know, like what the reality of the situation is, rather than the indoctrination of the people who are against it.

That’s one of the things now, like I have a lot of inroads to the force free community despite some of the, you know, the claims I make about them. I, I maintain a lot of relationships and friendships with people there because they observe my training and they, they know, they’re like, oh, okay. I don’t wanna do those things because, uh, you know, it doesn’t align with my ethics.

But the way that you do it is not actually a problem for me, right? Like, I don’t have an issue with that because I’m not doing anything crazy. I’m using like pressure and compulsion when necessary, and I’m doing it in a way that is absolutely fair to the dog. And, and I do it in a way that is communication to the dog.

So I think hitting it in those three ways is probably the, you know, the, the best thing that we could do to go forward and create some harmony. Because what, what I, I think a lot of dog trainers don’t necessarily understand is that the enemy is at the gates, right? Like we are, we are already surrounded, and I don’t care what, like, I I say, dog trainers with a full stop after it, right?

Like, people who do this doesn’t matter what techniques you use, what, whether you’re balanced or force fair or whatever. The enemy at the gates, we are surrounded and there are people who don’t want us to be doing this anymore. And we are under siege from them. And it is a su a siege. We will lose if half of us go out and fight on the, on the side of the people who are trying to stop it, not realizing they’re on the wrong team.

And I think that’s what’s really important. You’ve gotta be able to switch. And, and I think that’s a really, really tricky thing for any human being to do, is to take stock of their situation and go, oh, you know what? I’m on the wrong team here. Like, I, I have to, I have to change sides. I’m, I’m fighting, I’m fighting a, a, a, we might be winning the battle, but the outcome of the win is not something that I actually want.

And I think that’s what we are seeing. A lot of the, the, the fights, the problems, the, the online discussions are people who have been turned against each other by a third party and not realizing that that third party is actually the one that is fighting all of us and of like figured out, well, why don’t we just let them kill each other first and then we’ll only have to deal with the survivors.

No, I mean, uh, I mean, you’re absolutely right Pat. And, um, you know, and, and what I’m gonna say is, is total agreement with you, and, and this is also just my opinion, right? Because, you know, kind of what I’ve seen over the years and, and training, uh, I would say dog training is a pretty straightforward thing, right?

It’s complex and the mod behavior, behavior modification in the aggression cases, it, it’s a pretty straightforward thing I would call it after a certain repetition. Um, you know, it’s easy to understand what a dog needs to, to develop them properly from like food gains markers, all the positive reinforcement stuff.

And you know, Brittany called it, called it the other day, Brittany’s my wife, um, and she called it like, um, broad, uh, full, like full spectrum dog training, right? It’s like we are, we’re not just using the tools. Um, and, and the focus isn’t on using the tools on the dogs. It is focused on creating great experience with the dog and then using tools to then help you, uh, depending on where the dog lives, what you’re looking to achieve, et cetera, et cetera.

I mean, here in the city of Chicago, I mean, you’ve, you’ve been here, you’ve seen how just like just dogs everywhere, there’s a ton of people, um, you know, that use ecos just across the park. I mean, just because they gotta play fetch with their high energy border collie, right? They, they have to be able to have that off leash control.

Um, but at the organization level, um, you do have to develop and set a standard that is going to. Point fingers at the people that are not doing things properly, right? Mm-hmm. Like you have to set up like just a standard of training a dog. And I think that just like every other hard decision, this is a hard decision that not only our organization has to make, but other organizations have to make in terms of like, what is the proper way to train a dog?

Are we using positive reinforcement first? Like the whole thing, but honestly like being able to deliver the promised outcomes to the dogs, I mean to the, to the dogs and the owners, because this is one of those industries where you see trainers of all backgrounds take money from, you know, take money and, and revenue from clients and then not deliver on those promises, right?

On the dog sport side, I see people that, um, and I’m sure everybody’s seen them. Like my, my whole point of view is that there’s people that do dog sport and then they have another career, and then there are people that train pet dogs to fund their life sport habit, right? Or their dog sport habit. So there’s a lot of problems, uh, within pet care and dog training and organizations do have to point them out.

Now, within those organizations, you have to have people that are competent and are capable of training dogs to a certain standard, right? And, and I think that that’s where it gets tricky because I. If at the board level of any organization, I mean, just recently, um, you know, I’ll say his name, Zach, you know, Zach George who’s commented on there, and they could, they could bleep this part on the podcast if they, if they don’t like it.

But he went on there and said, independent investigation of the IACP and C-C-P-D-T on their use of, in, uh, a use and approval of training tools. And, you know, that, that kind of got me curious because I, I thought about like, well, how do other trainers and other organizations use training tools? And then it got me curious about him, and I went in and stalked him a little bit and, and saw the training.

And I saw that it was just bad training, right? Even on the positive only side of things. And, and my thought process was like, well, at least be good at that. Right? At least be good at the figure advocating. I mean, not to point figures, but that is, that is the truth. I mean, I’m just speaking from what I saw.

I’m like, this doesn’t make any sense. And there has to be an organization that, that, or a group of people that say, well, this is the proper way. You’re using positive reinforcement. Right? Full spectrum, positive reinforcement. This is how you can involve. Um, other quadrants and, and someone’s gotta take the first step.

And I think that the, from my individual perspective, it just has to happen. And I, and I always think about like the inevitable licensing, right? Because that’s something that kind of comes up a lot. Um, I mean, maybe it’s not so obvious in the more rural areas of the country, but here in the city of Chicago, like you literally have to have licenses for everything.

Animal care and control walks in here whenever they want and they’re like, show me the rabies tags. Show me the, everybody’s got water. Show me that every, you know, where are your dogs training and being kept, the Department of Agriculture for the state, they walk in here whenever they want and they do the same thing.

And so we already live by those standards. Um, the only standards that, that don’t exist for us in terms of pet care boarding housing is whether or not someone’s qualified to train a dog. Right. Um, kind speaking on that, what is your thought about that? Like, does that have any play in, in governing, uh, uh, and improving dog training and preserving tools?

Yeah, but the problem, this is where it gets tricky, right? So my fear is there, there, there should be an objective standard. I I use the same example all the time, right? So like when I was in the Army, I was in a special forces unit and part of the, um, yearly fitness assessment is this crazy swim, right?

It’s like, uh, I can’t remember what it’s, but it’s a lot, right? You gotta do this crazy swim. And I hate swimming. I’m not a great swimmer. Um, I hate doing it. And so if you were to see me train, I, I swam a lot, I did a lot of swimming because I know every year I gotta pass that swimming test, right? And, and so by having a standard, it forces you to, to work to that standard, right?

Like it it forces you to not ignore and to say, well no, like I’m an expert but I don’t do that bit. And you’re like, well then no, you’re not an expert ’cause you haven’t demonstrated competence. We’ve gotta do this whole thing. It has to be a whole standard. Um, and then, you know, one year I had a parachute malfunction and ended up long story, but I ended up over the horizon in the water and swam for six hours, right?

Jesus. So at that time, Jesus Christ, I was like, oh, I’m glad that, uh, that I had, was forced to do all that swimming i’s glad I swam. That’s, but that’s the way it works, right? Because we set these standards because we go, we, we. Holistically in that example, right? Holistically, they go, all right, well this is a commando, is an amphibious operator.

That’s what it was in the Army. Uh, you, you’re gonna spend a lot of time in the water. You have to demonstrate to us that you have the capacity to swim a lot, right? And so I would never have chose that. It’s not something we do a lot of. But then the day came, I was assessed against that for Realsy. And I think that’s what we need to sort of do with dog training is go, all right, well, like you want to call yourself in, do an in-home behavior mode.

Show us you’re dealing with a super aggressive dog, right? Show us just how you handle a dog that wants to come up the line to you, right? Be, because if you don’t have the capacity to do that, you have no business telling somebody else how to do that. And so my, my concern is the people who then go, well, I don’t wanna do that.

And you go, cool. You don’t have to. That’s absolutely like you can do fluffy pet dog stuff, that’s totally fine. Like you, but your opinion is invalid When we’re talking about those aggressive dogs or dogs that could come up the line. We, we absolutely have no interest in listening to anything you have to say about it, because you’ve chosen to exclude yourself from that part of the conversation, which is fine, but you are completely excluded.

My concern is who’s gonna make those decisions, right? So like that’s always my concern. When any form of legislation comes in, I seldom think it’s ever going to benefit us. And so while I agree, the standards are coming, right, like in worldwide, and it already exists in some countries, right? Like in Germany, you, you, you have to pass tests, you have to get a license to be a dog trainer.

Um, we don’t have that here. But it’s coming worldwide. Um, and, and I think Mike, while I do support it, I do, I do support the idea of it. Who would write that standard concerns me very, very much. Because what we see is that the people who are really good at this, and this sort of speaks to why we see the arguments and stuff going online, is like, how, how much do you see me arguing with people online?

I don’t, because I don’t have fucking time for that. I’m way too busy. I’m way too busy doing my job. I’ve got a bunch of dogs that I need to train. I’ve got a bunch of things that I need to record. I’ve got clients that I have to service, and so I don’t have time to be fighting online. So the people who are issue motivated and have the time and space to involve themselves in those kinds of arguments, and be the person who puts their hand up and says, yeah, oh, if, if there’s dog trainer licensing and legislation coming in, I’ll be the one that contributes heaps to that.

Right? They’re the people that you’re like, oh God, you don’t have any clients. So you, you don’t know what you’re doing and the reason you don’t have any clients is ’cause you’re incompetent. So, so now we are gonna have an incompetent person writing our legislation for us. So that’s my concern about it.

And again, I’m just whinging, I don’t have the answers to these things. Right. But sort of to your point, Fabian, I think that it’s tricky because we can’t be outright dismissive of people either. So, you know, like, again. Like I, I got, I got no really no time for Zach. I don’t, I don’t recognize him as a competent person.

I don’t see him as a person who’s capable of training a dog beyond the standard that any random dog owner in their home is capable of doing. So I don’t, I don’t think that he’s a person who’s opinion matters in any way, shape, or form to me. And what I do in my day-to-day training real dogs, right? I don’t recognize him as a person that is of any merit, but he has a big following and a big voice.

And so the problem is like, as much as I would love to say, like, oh, we just ignore him. Like, who cares? He’s, he’s in, he’s irrelevant. He’s not irrelevant. He, he, yeah. You can’t, he causes a lot of problems. And, and he, he’s, he’s intentionally causing dissent. Now, as I said, I think that there’s a lot of mental health issues in the dog training space, and I think that we could, you know, probably identify a few there.

But the problem is one of the things that we’re, we are facing is that people want to legislate their competition away. And I think that’s one of the things that we’re seeing there, right? Is I think that we often see people who do not have the competence and therefore do, um. You know, are no longer receiving the work that they need to pay the bills.

And so rather than upskilling themselves because they’re not capable, right? Like there’s a, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a bell curve of competence. No matter how much work you put in, some of us are never gonna be as good as others. You look at people like Ivan Balaban off as example, right? You watch Ivan handle a dog and you’re like, oh, he’s a magician.

There’s no way. Like even if you knew everything that he knows, it’s bar bell’s the same, right? You look at them and you go, like, even if I had, even if I downloaded all of your knowledge, I can’t move my body like that. I can’t, I can’t do those things. So there’s a bell curve of where we all land on that in just natural talent, no matter how good you get.

And so, you know, when we see people we’re like, oh, you’re never, you’re, you’re not good at this and you’re never gonna be, how do we exclude them fairly from the conversation and say like, oh, we, like, I don’t, I don’t recognize you as a person who’s opinion is relevant here, but when they’ve gotta be following and, and they are, are continuing to push that it can become a real issue.

And I think we could, uh, you know, as much as I don’t ever want to get in, uh, online arguments and fights and, ’cause I just don’t have time, I just don’t have the time for that. Yeah. Um, I think that by putting our head in the sand, we could find ourselves in big trouble. I think there’s just, you can’t ignore these people anymore because they’re, they’re able to cause a lot of problems.

And, and, you know, like, I, I could expand on that further if, if that’s where we want to take the conversation. But otherwise, you know, who knows? I think expanding there would be great, pat, but if we could, could we back up for a second? And I’d like to sum up something I, I heard you say, but correct me if I’m, if I’m wrong, I don’t wanna put words in your mouth.

It seems to me like your belief is there are forces that are working to turn dog trainers against each other. So you have the purely positive force free, whatever you want to call ’em, turn against balance trainers. But the reason for that, it’s a third group and in my opinion, that third group is the group that doesn’t want anyone to own pet dogs.

Is that Yeah, absolutely. A synopsis of what you were saying? Yeah, absolutely. I think that, um, listen, I, um, I’ll give you a quick sort of personal history on my conspiracy theories, right? So when I was in the Army, I held a top secret clearance. I, you know, did all kinds of cool stuff. And I have been quoted many times as saying never attribute to conspiracy what can be, what can be attributed to incompetence.

And when we look in government departments and all kinds of stuff, when I say like, oh, there’s weird stuff going on. It’s mostly because the left hand’s not talking to the right. And there’s a bunch of incompetent people who are in positions where they can’t be fired. So, uh, uh, I used to try and talk people down all the time.

I’d be like, listen, there’s no conspiracy here. It’s just people are stupid and doing the wrong thing. I think at this point, if you’re not a conspiracy theorist, having watched what’s going on in the world, everything that’s unfolded over the last five years, I think if you’re not a conspiracy theorist, you’re not paying attention.

So I’m completely changed. So take what I say with a grain of salt, but I’m convinced that there are forces at play who are trying to reduce dog ownership to zero, right? They don’t want people to own dogs. They want, they, they think that it, that the very idea of having any form of pet is, uh, unpalatable to them and they want nobody to have any kind of pet.

Now, if you don’t believe that, you can get onto Peter’s website and read it for yourself. That’s the goal. Alright? So what’s happening, I think, is that the people who have that agenda are pretty well organized and are pretty intelligent and are attempting to make it so difficult to own a pet that people won’t want to.

And so I think that that’s one of the big reasons why we see, uh, balance training really with its head on the chopping block is because we know there are a certain number of dogs that there’s no other option, right? Like for me, I, I. I don’t u keep, uh, compulsion and tools as a last resort. That’s not at all the case, right?

Like I abso like, because to me, I’m a balanced trainer. I use the, the communication that the dog needs in the moment to understand what’s going on. It’s not like I’m, and, and I think that, you know, Steven Lindsay’s version of Lima absolutely allows for that. It what I’m, you know, on your first day you shouldn’t be whacking on the eco and the prong collar and going to town.

But after you’ve been through, uh, training for a while, you identify like, oh, the best way to teach that is this. And I know this kind of dog. I don’t know this dog, but I know this kind of dog, so I know what’s gonna work and I can use my experience to start at the point which is gonna be effective. That all said, you still can eventually get to the point with some dogs where you’re like, Hey man, I have to create an aversion to that for you.

That could be so dangerous for people that could be dangerous for the dog. Right? One of the classics that we see around here in my area, I live in the inner city, where, uh, for some reason a lot of people who have like rural family bring home kelpies from the farm, right? So these are, yeah. And they think they’re gonna, because they’re great, like, uh.

I don’t know. You guys probably don’t see many of them there, but a proper Australian kelpie is an incredible dog, right? It, it’s an incredible thing. One time when, uh, we were running a gold school here, the army had, uh, a couple of kelpies there that they were training as detection, well, for detection work.

And, but Bellon, you know, the, one of the most, uh, accomplished trainers in the world, one of who must have seen more dogs than I’ve had hot breakfast, uh, was enamored by the Kelpies, right? Because they’re, they’re these incredible dogs, but they are a proper, you get one off of the farm, it is a proper working dog, right?

And good luck trying to train that thing to be an inner city dog. If you don’t, if you are not willing to use any form of compulsion, good luck, because they lose their minds at wheels. That’s one of the things. So like wheels, a proper good farm dog, you sees a, a bike, a bicycle, a spokes going past a friend of mine who’s, you know, like she’s a proper.

She keeps cattle, uh, has for a long time and has proper, you know, mustering dogs. She told me that she thinks it’s because they, they, the, the spokes on a bike look enough like their feet going through a crush, right? So like, as the, as the sheep or cattle are being pushed through the, you know, the narrow fencing to go to where they’re gonna go, that looks similar enough that it triggers the prey or whatever it is in that kelpie, good luck interrupting that with positive reinforcement.

And, and what we see is a bunch of medicated kelpies or kelpies that never allowed to leave their house, right? And so you reach a certain point where it’s just not gonna work. So, so while I also am like, Hey, maybe don’t get that kelpie if you’re gonna live in the city. A lot of people then who have it then are like, well, I’m off dog ownership because the, if, if the only help I can get with this is this super ineffective front attach harness that’s just making it worse.

And a a a dog that’s dragging me down the street, losing its mind becomes dangerous. You know, the dog, they’re gonna bite that wheel if they catch it. So then if it’s a bike going past, they’re probably gonna rip their bottom jaw off, which I’ve seen a couple of times as well when they bite it and it goes through the spokes.

So, so like it’s a proper, dangerous situation. That’s the sort of person that then goes, well, uh, we have to create an aversion to doing that. There’s no other way to train that there. We, we can use as much positive reinforcement as you like it does. It’s not gonna help. Mother Nature is going to tell that dog to do that thing.

And we need to create some kind of block that tells that dog not to. So those are people who then fall outta the system, right? If we can’t service them, if we can’t do the right kind of training, they fall out. And those are people who hate their dog for 15 years. They resent the, the dog and the dog’s full-time job is turning food into shit in their backyard.

And the dog never gets to have an actual complete life and they don’t get a second dog. They’re like, nah, that was, that. The entire experience of that dog was so traumatic for me and the dog. I’m not getting another one. That’s kind of the trajectory that we’re on. So when you push people into a system of management forever for the life of the dog where you go, no, no, we’re not, we’re not fixing any of these issues.

You, you, in fact, you know, who are you to say that the dog should do anything? Right? Like we, you know, like the more progressive, the more ridiculous we get, the more difficult it becomes to actually enjoy the process of owning your dog. And you make the choice not to. One of the things that we saw here, um.

Instead of, uh, uh, banning particular sports or, or the ability to train a dog to bite it, they just made it a hundred thousand dollars fine if your dog bites someone, right? So, so the average family, right? These are not, and, and like lemme tell you, dog sport dogs don’t bite people because the dog sport people control their dogs.

They’re not the pe like it is not dog sport dogs that are trained to buy it, that are biting people in the street. In fact, when this happened, I went looking and could find no instances of that happening because dog sport people, first of all, their dogs don’t bite that way, but also they control ’em. Matt, they’re dog people.

They know how to make sure that’s not gonna happen. But if you’re just a normal family, dad works, mom, you know, dad works full time, mom works three days a week, two, three kids, whatever. You are just like, especially cost of living crisis that we are experiencing in Australia. I don’t know if it’s the same in the us I’m sure it is.

The idea when you think and the kids say, Hey, I want to get a, a oodle, the, the least likely dog in the world to bite anyone. And dad goes, yeah, cool. We’d have a look at that. And he looks and says, oh, it’s gonna cost me a hundred thousand dollars if dose, if this dog bites someone in the street. You are like, no, I’m not getting that.

I’m not doing that. Right. So that’s, I I think that it’s reasonable at this point to say the agenda is to make dog ownership so unappealing that people choose not to, right? And that they get a rock as a pet instead. And I think that that agenda. Then has then decided, well, we should infiltrate and make trainers like we need to start a war within trainers because we need to get rid of the people who can actually fix these issues.

And then the people who can’t actually properly deal with those issues are the only option. They’re the only people available to, and, and like, look, I’m not saying that there’s not merit to that kind of training and that a lot of cases where people rush to aversives that like, that can’t be done in other ways.

Of course. And there’s plenty of very, very competent force free trainers. I wanna be very clear about that. But there are certain issues that are not and fixed that way. And the more of those that we see get brought into that, that the, the space, the less people want to own dogs. So I, Matt, I, as much as it sounds like a conspiracy theory, I, I think it is the case that there are forces that are doing this to us in order to cause the infighting to see one side of our, our industry gone.

So that the other side is the only, uh, one available, um, and will significantly reduce pet ownership. So very well said, pat, for sure. And, and I hope our audience listens to all of that and takes it to heart. Because to me, this is one of, I mean, this is the biggest issue facing our industry, right? And to understand where it’s coming from.

We had Robert Cabral on a few weeks ago, and I pitched him that and said, do you know, do you think this sounds crazier as a conspiracy? And he is like, no, let me tell you why. And said many of the same things you just said here. And I think listeners need to hear that, right? And they need to understand where it’s coming from.

’cause it’s not as simple as live and let live. No one wants to let, like, they don’t wanna let balance trainers live, right? They don’t want, they don’t want us doing what we’re doing. They don’t want dog sports, they don’t want kennels. They wanna make it impossible to own a pet. And people really, really need to understand that.

Fa and you look like you’ve got a deep thought over there. No, I mean, pets really got me thinking about this thing because it’s a, I mean, it’s, you know, people are a lot smarter that than you think, you know, like, I mean, look at what we do with dogs and, and you know, on the, on the business side level in terms of like management sciences, like you, you talk about all of these, um.

You know, systemization of, of people, manpower, and you know, and, and you see your team develop certain skills. And over the years of time, you, you see, you craft a system and you understand why it works a certain way. And you understand the bureaucracy and you see the purpose of it. But you also understand that, that it was designed that way, right?

Like management, you yourself designed it that way. You designed the operations and, and people are really limited by the scopes of time, by the scope of time they’ve been involved in that one thing, right? So if you work for the company for five years, well, the company’s been around for 15, right? So you only understand.

And so what’s interesting to me is, is how people retain information and how they never second guess it, right? And, and that happens all the time here because there’s a wing at found, uh, at the facility that’s called overflow, right? And, and I’ve tried to rename that thing. I’ve changed the SOPs, I’ve relabeled the kennels over the years time, but somehow people still call it overflow.

And it’s always been so, such an interesting thing to me because no one knows. I, I could go ask to someone and say, Hey, why did they call this overflow? Why is this named overflow? And no one can give me the answer. That’s just the way it’s always been called. Because within their scopes of time, that’s what they’ve called it and they’ve been taught and so on and so forth.

But the reason we call it overflow is because we used to lease, we used to lease it out for another business’ overflow be when we first started the company because we couldn’t fill it. So we would lease that, like sublease that area to a different company so that they can store their dogs and other contractors.

So we called it overflow for their business. And you just got me thinking, well, like, I mean, if at the small business level we’re smart enough to develop systems for people to participate in, then people with a lot more money and a lot smarter, maybe in some situations have the ability to, to decide things outside our, our own understanding or, or awareness.

Right. Um, so that’s what I was just thinking. I was like, I’ve never, I’ve never thought about that and I’ve always, you know, I’m not a big conspiracy theorist person. I’m still like, I’ve still been, what Pat would say, like most of the time people think there’s these crazy things behind, you know, closed doors.

But in reality, most people are just people, right? They do dumb things and they don’t pay attention. Or they, they, you know, they get comfortable in the position and they do other things or they don’t pay attention to what they’re supposed to. And so sitting here listening to this conversation really got me thinking.

I’m like, wow, I’ve never put those two, two, and two together, which makes me think like, well, what else am I not paying attention to? You know? And I think, look, I think, and I think it’s just that, like, I think there’s more to it. I think that human nature is that we, uh, seek conflict. Um, and especially from other tribes.

So like one of the things again, to sort of, um. You tell a bit of a war story is, so within Australia there’s two special forces units, right? There’s where I was two commando regiment, and then there’s the SAS and there’s this rivalry between both units and people’s like, oh, what happened? You’re like, no, nothing happened.

You just divided a group of people in half. That’s all it took, right? And then like we with, uh, at my old unit, there were four companies, right? Four commando companies. And they all hate each other as well, but like, I’ve been in all four of ’em, right? And you have to hate all the others when you’re there because like any arbitrary line that you divide people against, then we create tribalism.

We turn against each other. And so I think like that for sure is just a, a, a part of human nature. Oh, you do things different to me. Well, you’re not in my group, but that’s why, that’s what I think is important about the ISP. And when we talk about balanced trainers, we’re like, no, my group are competent dog trainers.

Like, I don’t, I don’t. My group is not, uh, people who train in a particular way. My group is people who are competent and, and so, so like, hopefully they have me, right? Like hopefully I, I get to stay in the group. But if that’s the group that we’re striving to be a part of, then like all the, all of the cohesion that we want will disappear.

The moment you are like, oh no, but I’m a, and, and we see this in, even in the balanced training space, right? So then we’ve got like, okay, well I’m a competent balanced trainer. Oh, cool. Like, where’d you go to school? Where, where’d you learn? Oh, you’re an EPO PO guy. Oh, well I’m a T WC guy. Doesn’t, we can’t, right, right, right, right, right, right.

So like, it’s like, no, I’m not, I’m not doing that. I’m not like, are you good? Sweet. We where let’s, let’s work together. Can you, are, are you competent? Sweet. That’s all I need. Um, and, and it doesn’t need to be that you do things similarly to me, even a little bit. It doesn’t need to be that you share my ethos in anything.

If you’re good at doing what you do as a dog trainer, like you’re in my group, that’s the group that we wanna maintain, but we see it like, uh, we see it like, it’s not like the balance community is free of this. Like, you see a lot of people commenting on people’s staff. Like, one of the things that I, I took up years ago.

Was, um, I was, I was doing a podcast a long time ago, and we’re talking about ecos and what I found was that Glenn and myself were having an argument with someone that just wasn’t there, right? Like, we were, we were having this argument, we were justifying everything, and we were, it, like, every time that we explained something, it was through the lens of like, the argument that we know that we’ll be coming, we’re trying to justify everything.

And I stopped halfway through and was like, no, let’s stop doing that. Like, let’s change the way we do things. And so I put out a lot of content. I teach people about balanced training, but I don’t teach that in terms of like, I try to avoid as much as possible teaching that in terms of, as compared to what I teach, is like, oh, there’s pros and cons.

You can do everything, right? So like the, the, there’s, if you want to use this technique, here’s, here’s how you do it. And without any justification as to like, it’s okay, don’t worry. Like, I was like, no, this is how this, this is what happens there. There’s, there’s potential for fallout, of course. Like, this is what we’re gonna achieve and this is where things can go wrong, and this is how we put in the mis risk mitigating strategies to achieve that, right?

And I show that with, with all the different tools that I use, all the different techniques that I use, because there’s no right way to do anything. They’re just, you are weighing pros and cons the whole time. But what I see is people comment on my staff, right? And they’re always like, I had a comment recently where I was showing.

Was a video where I was showing just the intro to a prong, right? So I’ve got the prong collar on a dog, and I’m just like, tap, tap into food. And someone commented, I’m probably gonna get a lot of hate for this, but why can’t you do that with a flat collar? So I like spent 20 minutes answering, and it was like, like, this is the reason you can, you can do the same thing, but this is where it will fail.

This is where like, it won’t allow you to achieve this. So like, go ahead. Didn’t even respond, like no acknowledgement because it wasn’t the hate that they wanted, right? Like, that’s what they wanted. They weren’t looking for an answer. They were looking for an argument. And I was like, no, I’m not giving you the argument.

So I think that’s sort of part of the way that we go forward is the diffusing of, of, um, arguments where it’s like, no, here’s the answer. Like I, and like, I’m pretty good at this and I’m highly skilled at explaining it. So I’ll, like, I can explain it to you all day if need be. Uh, you could buy my course, I can teach you detail how to do it, if you wanna understand it, like it’s totally fine, but I’m not gonna have an argument with you about it because like, I know it to be true.

So it’s one of the things where like, I don’t get involved in those arguments because it, to me, it’s the same when someone’s like, oh, you’re being cruel to the dog. I’m like, oh, okay. Go away. Right? Because it, to me, that’s the same as someone saying, you look stupid with blue hair. And you go, well, I don’t have blue hair, so you’re an idiot.

Like, I, I, why am I gonna get into this argument when someone goes, you’re being cruel to the dog? You’re like, no, I’m not. Like I’m not, this isn’t, so I’m not gonna justify that with a response, right? Like, I’m not going to, I’m not gonna occupy the fantasy in which you are living, right? Like, I’m gonna be out here.

In reality, I’m not diving into your madness. I mean, there’s just so many issues with social media and the, you know, the madness you just mentioned. And to me, uh, some of it is that people say things on social media, they would never say in real life, of course, right? Because they’re behind a screen.

They’re not face-to-face. But circling back to what you said about tribalism, I mean, my gosh. So I hate social media for the record. Anyone who listens to this show probably knows that. And, you know, it’s, I mean, it’s so tribal. I mean, you have your feed and your algorithm that quickly figures out what you love, what you hate.

It shows you a little bit of both. Gets you fired up, gets you excited. And I mean, I just started using, uh, Instagram for the first time, I don’t know, a month ago. And it took it like two days to figure me out. It’s like, it knows what I like in two days. It’s crazy. But then that’s all you see, literally nothing else.

So I wonder how much of this tribalism is coming from these crazy algorithms that are insanely sophisticated? Well, it, it’s not just the algorithm, right? It’s the people who know how to work with the algorithm. Um, and so there’s a lot to that as well. And so you, you know. I took a sabbatical from dog training for a little while and worked as a content creator for someone else.

Uh, I was the, like, you know, the creative director of a, a marketing company. And I basically created directors a fancy way of saying I just oversaw people making social media content, uh, and made a bunch of it myself. And in doing that, I got pretty educated on how those algorithms work and how to feed them.

Um, because, you know, you, you hear people, coaches in that space talk about like how to beat the algorithm. You can’t beat the algorithm. You have to work with the algorithm, right? Like, you can’t look at the algorithm as an enemy. You have to look at it as a friend. And so the people who know how to do that, they know the controversy is what gets clicks.

And like, what we definitely see in our space is that people who were content creators, early content creators either, uh, pivoted and went to something, you know, much more. Um. Uh, TV show, like, right, so like if you’re an early content creator, if you’re early to YouTube, getting clicks and stuff was pretty easy, right?

Like, all you getting people to watch your stuff and getting your ad revenue and getting subscribers, that was all pretty easily in the early days because it wasn’t much people making it, right? And, and all you had to do was be kind of okay. Production value just had to be like, kind of okay. But then, especially during COVID, where all of the content creation kind of ramped up where everybody was like, okay, well, like I, you know, I, I put myself into this category.

I used to film it all my stuff on an iPhone. Like, I was like, what the, the hell else? Do I need anything better than this? I know what I’m talking about. So the information that I’m providing is adequate because it’s good information. But then when other people who were as good as me started making content on their iPhone, I was like, Ooh, shit.

I need to buy a fancy camera, right? I need to, I need to buy a fancy camera and know how to edit it. And so what we, what we’ve learned is that people, the, the, the social media space is now quite flooded, right? And, and any business, like all businesses kind of need a social media presence. I, I find myself explaining that to a lot of my clients.

Even if you are just a local business that doesn’t sell any sort of digital product or want work more than a five kilometer radius from your house, you still have to have a social media presence because it’s how people check the lights are on, right? Like, that’s how they check the lights are on in the business.

They look you up, they see your ads, they see whatever, they see your website, but a website’s so static and dead that then they go to your Instagram or your Facebook or whatever, and they go, when’s your post last? And so if you posted like a photo of a dog and you go and like, thumbs up, and they’re like, oh, sweet.

He posted yesterday. The, the business isn’t operating functioning thing and he still wants clients and so they can go in. But if you need that ad revenue, right? Like if you are relying on people seeing your social media, because that’s what your business is, you’re in a totally different model, right?

Yeah. Like, so you have to feed the algorithm. It’s not enough just to be like, look, the lights are on. We’re a functioning business. You have to feed the algorithm. You have to be giving the algorithm what it wants and what it wants is eyeballs. That’s all. It’s all it wants. It doesn’t care where those eyeballs come from.

It doesn’t care what those eyeballs intentions are. So, so we have it in our mind that social media like shows you things that make you angry or like, you know, it di like, you know, drives us apart and creates more tribalism. You are the one doing that. It’s just showing you what you wanna see because it wants you to watch it.

That’s all. It’s just showing you what will keep you on the platform. And what we see from people who, you know, were once, you know, capable of making content sufficient, that it got eyeballs and are no longer capable because the quality of the content has now has to change. First of all, production. Sorry, production value has to go up, right?

Because that’s what people expect nowadays. But also the quality of the content has to be like worthwhile. And when you see people now who, like any, like an iPhone these days when people ask me about making content, I tell ’em, unless you’re prepared to spend 10 grand, don’t, don’t upgrade your phone. ’cause your phone is the equivalent of like a $10,000 cinema camera these days.

So everybody is capable. I like buy a microphone and a light. That’s all you need. And everybody is capable of making really high quality content. So the barrier to entry of making an uploading staff has dropped significantly that now people who really know what they’re doing are capable of doing it right.

So some of the content that people put out see people like. Like, uh, here’s an example just off the top of my head. And Quigley, for example, right? Like, if, if you, if you’re involved in protection sports and you don’t follow her, you’re fucking insane because like some of the stuff that she puts out is incredible, right?

Like, and it’s, it’s so good quality content. Then she’s so capable as a trainer and, and lets you just watch that, that can just come up in your feed. Like you can be sitting on the toilet and watch her train a dog for 30 seconds. Like, like what a world to live in. But the people who are never gonna be able to handle a dog the way that she can, the people who will never be able to pass on any really relevant information, can still achieve social media success and the ad revenue that they’re chasing by just being controversial.

That’s all it takes, right? Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. And, and if my audience, if I’ve got nothing to actually offer my audience, right? Like if my audience are like, uh, I see you Pat, but your skillset is not particularly high, well then how do I get eyeballs? ’cause noting all I need is eyeballs.

I don’t need the eyeballs that, like me, I don’t need eyeballs that are there to learn from me. I just need eyeballs. What I do is I start a fight with someone else, right? I start a fight with, with and oppose someone with an opposing view. To me. I start saying that there should be an independent investigation into the IAP or whatever, because that will make people look and that’s all we’re seeing.

So it’s not like there’s. I, I honestly think, like with a lot of the people who cause these sorts of issues and are the big drivers, they ha they’re, they’re empty shells of people. They have no opinion. They’re like water. They fill the space that is afforded to them, right? They don’t actually have a shape or a structure of their own.

They’re like, no, I’m just gonna fill the space that is, is available to be filled because I need that ad revenue. And so that’s why it puts us in a very tricky position because to talk about it pushes eyeballs to it, and we are enabling it, but to ignore it is probably just as dangerous. And it puts us in a very tricky position.

And so that’s why my take on it. And I’m sure that eventually it’ll be my turn to be attacked online. Like it from the, like a proper orchestrate attack. I get plenty of comments, but I’ve never had the proper orchestrate attack. I’m sure that’s coming. I’m, I’m positive that’s coming for me. But we have to oppose it to some point.

We have to, right? We have to be like, Hey, I don’t recognize you as a competent person. Your opinion is invalid. And like, if I need, if I’m after some advice about how to grow my Instagram following, I’ll book a call. I’ll pay you because you’re clearly good at it. Mm. But I’m not, I’m not chasing that right now.

So, no. Thank you. Goodbye. Um. Yeah, I mean, there’s a, there’s a lot of that and, and, you know, bringing the conversation back to the ICP and the most recent comments, you could tell that we’ve been building momentum and spending a lot of time, you know, recruiting speakers. And that’s what attracted the attention to, to some of the comments Zach has, has commented on there.

And, and I can feel the board of directors kind of like not knowing what to do. And for me, my gut tells me, you just can’t ignore this. We were actually talking about that today in terms of like, how do you address some of these things? And, and in, if this was five years ago, maybe ignore it and it’ll go away.

But this is, you know, 2025, there’s a lot of social media content, no response or how you respond matters a lot. But I think it’s also time to, you know, cross that line and decide are we an organization that’s going to speak up about what we believe firmly and start to push back when for the longest time, there hasn’t been a unified front in balance training where everyone, everyone gets attacked individually.

Like, pat Stewart’s got a fire today, and everybody’s from a distance. Like, oh, look at Pat. You know, he is getting torn to pieces and, you know, he’s got their, their, their more closest acolytes defending them. But really it’s like a orchestrated attack, right? And now I feel like there’s a, some momentum with the IECP that our members and people have been like, no, we’re not gonna stand up for it.

And so it’s kind of that moment where we have to decide are we going to, I. Let it go another couple of years before we do something about it. Um, or is this something we now get on there and dedicate the time to commenting back, you know, and, and to some degree taking the battle to, um, I would say to them or to those individuals, instead of waiting it to come to our front door, right?

Because the, it comes in time where it, something’s gotta budge. Either it’s going to come over and you know, it’s gonna get legislated and tools are gonna get banned. Uh, because everyone was too concerned or scared of the ramifications, or, and this is a little bit of like my personality, right? There’s always like, there’s always an organization that wins, right?

There’s always an org. There’s just always a group of people that wins, whether it’s like the ICP or another organization, but they’re always a dom. There’s always a dominating organization within an industry. And, and in this case, it’s like, it’s not, does not speaking up affect our chances at succeeding?

Right? Like, what is your take on that specific, obviously you’ve, you’ve been in it, you’ve watched it, you have experience with that, you know, what’s your take on us responding? How would you respond? You know? And my mind, I’m just one person, right? And, and I’m like the OG on the board. People are, people are like, you know, Fabian’s been around for going on four years.

He’s like the, you know, I’ve, I’ve seen a lot of it, and in my mind I’m like. Let’s roll, right? I mean, we’re professionals. We know how to craft statements, we know how to train dogs, right? Like all of those things that, that are important to set a standard in my mind, it’s like, this is the time to act. This is the time to like, okay, you, you tapped on our shoulder, well, now we’re awake and now we’re gonna give the attention, right?

We’re reminding our own business, but now we’re not minding our business anymore. Um, and, and I’m always gonna be that person. I wasn’t always that person. I was a person to like, I don’t want any problems. But when problems keep coming up to us and to our organization, it’s not my, it’s, it’s not my strong suit to turn away, right?

Because I feel like I’ve done that for so many years, and now it’s kind of like we gotta represent, we gotta, you know, create a united front and we have to, um, decide what our standards are. So, but what are your guys’, you know, or Pat, and what do you think of that? You know, is that like the wrong move?

What’s your, what’s your, you know, wisdom on this? Um, let me, let me give some background before I give my answer. Uh, I was in the army of 12 and a half years, um, as a Lance Corporal. I did a special ops planning course, which is like a captain’s course. Um, uh, so like I, I’ve done a lot of military strategy sort of stuff.

Um, and what I know of any kind of conflict is that, uh, early disproportionate response stops things quickly. So, uh. Something that, you know, I’ve been a part of, um, on a, in a real scale internationally, is that if someone attacks you a little bit, you, you attack them a lot and just end it there because you don’t attack a little bit back.

Right? That’s how you end up with lots more casualties on both sides. So you just go like, Hey, if I’m going to point my attention at you, you will get my full attention, not part of it. Right? Like, and, and if you want my attention, you’re gonna get it. Years ago, me and my wife owned a tattoo shop. Uh, my wife’s a tattoo artist, and uh, this guy came in.

He, he wanted this tattoo. He spoke to, um, a lady that worked there. She was like, yeah, cool. She gets a tattoo and then, uh, she’s drawing it up for him. And another person, another customer in the shop said, are you gonna tattoo that? And she’s like, yeah, what do you mean? She goes, you know, that’s a Nazi symbol, right?

And it wasn’t like it was a swash sticker, but it was like Nazi, whatever it was. It was like this insignia of some kind of unit mixed with this other thing. And she’d be like, no, she did the poor girl do. It was like, no, I did not know that. Um, and stops doing the drawing and tells the guy like, Hey man, I’m not tattooing some Nazi shit on you.

Right? Like, we’re not doing that. He gets onto Google and, uh, leaves us a review, a one star review saying that we refuse to do a tattoo for him. And this is where I learned something, uh, long time ago about sunlight is the ultimate disinfectant. And so we just laid it out and just said, Hey man, like, as a response, I’ve said, Hey man, I’m gonna wear, I wrote the thing.

I said, Hey, we’re gonna wear this one star review as, as a badge of fucking honor, because right. We’re not tattooing some Nazi shit on you. So you are a weird Nazi dude. We are not doing that. We are not gonna have you back into the shop and we are not going to tattoo that. And if you wanna leave a one star review, we will wear that with pride in comparison to you because your booze mean nothing.

I’ve seen what you cheer for, right? So I think that’s, that’s where we have to go in line with this kind of stuff. So I think that if there are, uh, you know, if someone wants to point their attention at the organization, my opinion, and I’m just a member with no authority, um, my opinion is that it sh if, if the organization should either ignore it completely or give it the full attention that it deserves, and, and the response should be final.

And, and I think that. The, the way to do that would be a similar sort of approach of like, this is the reality of the situation. And not in small doses either. Like, here it is, here is our, here is the, here here’s the final picture that if you have something to say back to this, you can say it to the wall because this is the final thing that’s gonna be said.

Um, now how to do that. The problem is, it’s, it’s resource intensive, right? Like that, that’s, that’s a really tricky thing. And so, um, also, you know, there, there’s legal problems and all kinds of stuff and, and you are dealing with a person whose only intent is to have attention. And so the amount of attention that they get has to be more than they bargain for.

Um, and, and how to do that. I, I, I’m very glad I’m not the person that will get to decide nor be involved with. Um, because it, it, like, the problem is that that’s the full-time job of some people is just to create the media around in this where like, man, I’m, I’m training dogs. I got a lot of shit going on.

Right, right, right, right, right. I got two kids. I got a lot of rent to pay. I got a lot of dogs to service and I got a lot of customers that, uh, that, uh, trying to book calls with me and I’ve got stuff to do. I don’t have time to go down that rabbit hole. Guys, we just want to give a quick shout out to one of our longtime ICP sponsors, uh, blue Nine.

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To me, this is a moment that, and Fabian, you and I had this conversation earlier, it’s a moment that I think could be really useful for the industry as a whole, as a galvanizing force. Because very often people, like the three of us that run training businesses we’re too busy to argue online. Right. And you’ve said that a few times already, pat, like we all have many things to do.

Many, many dogs, many employees, many things to do besides fight online. But what that’s done, at least in my opinion when I look online, is it’s left. It’s a vacuum, right? Where the people that have plenty of time fill that space with their craziness and if we don’t stand up at some point, it’s gonna continue forever and it takes a kick in the pants.

Or Fabian, you said a minute ago, a tap on the shoulder. Right. But it takes something to. To kind of wake you up and say, you know what, maybe now’s the time. You know, maybe now it actually is worth arguing with someone online, even though I detested the idea of that. And to me, I’ve seen a lot of people, myself included over the last week say, you know what, maybe now is that time.

Right? You know, maybe we need to get more involved. And I think that could overall be a great thing for the industry when a lot of well-intentioned good trainers start speaking up. Yeah. This is, this is of course all happening while Jason’s on vacation. So while the president’s out, we’re gonna, this is, we’re rallying the troops and we’re, this is what we’re doing.

Uh, but I, but I, I do think that how you respond is, is very, very important. ’cause I’ve responded to, to those comments a couple times, and, um, you know, like I’ve, I’ve taken the time to analyze what words I’m using, taking the approach, just because, you know, I know the type, right? As soon as there’s some sort of inflammatory or, or a way get in and, and, you know, create a bigger fuss, they, they’ll take that option.

Um, but individuals or even members of the ICP, we really have to take the professional approach, right? Uh, you know, a lot of the times people give name calling or insulting this or that, where in reality this has nothing. You know, this has nothing to do with, with, um, with name calling every, everything to do with animal welfare.

Um. The competence to train animals, make people happy, right. And, and create that. And I think that I’m a big fan that the good guys are always gonna win, right? Like, that’s, that’s the way I think about it. And that’s the approach that I take is that the good guys are always gonna win. Sometimes, you know, you’re gonna make a lot of people unhappy because of the, the approach, right?

Like, not everyone’s gonna be satisfied with your answer and how you approach it, but, but essentially in the greater scope of things, you know, like other things in the ICP have been the right thing to do right at the, at the right moment or, um, because, you know, I just have this, you know, random thing where I always end up in a situation where like, I always see the inevitable happening and you’re like, well, a lot of people’s gonna, it’s are gonna be unhappy because of the inevitable.

Um, and I think some of this stuff’s already outside of control. I mean, I think, um, when people respond and start responding, I think they call attention to themselves. Uh, but anyway, uh, enough about that. I think we’d like our video real quick, so I’ll, I’ll figure that out. Um, so I think maybe the only thing I want to push back against, mate, is, um, you said the good guys always win.

It’s, unfortunately, I don’t think that’s the truth. I think that, um, the victors write the history books and nobody thinks of themself as the bad guy. Um. I think that’s, that’s the concern, right? Because the world’s so much more complicated, right? Like there is, there isn’t really good guys and bad guys.

Everybody has their own, you know, various motivations and people have really complicated and their motivations are complicated. Um, and so that’s something, you know, like I, I think that relying on just doing what’s right and knowing you are prosper because of it, that that’s an excellent moral choice to make.

And many of us make it over and over, but I think that when making only that choice, you have to be willing to defeat to someone who will cheat. Um, and, and that’s just reality, right? Like, that’s just reality. I think that, um, you know, anybody who’s, who’s a keen student of history and looks, uh, a little bit deeper at many of the things that we’ve been told over time, you can go back to like ancient history.

You know what I mean? Like, you can look at like what the Romans did throughout the world. You, you, the good guys don’t always win, but people always, but the winners always think of themselves as the good guys, right? Right. That’s, that’s more, and everyone’s more like it’s a good guy in their own story, right?

Right. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. It’s the way it goes. No one’s intentionally playing the villain character. So I guess a, a question that I have is like, what, what do, how do we behave as the ICP? What, what should, um, trainers, uh, do to advocate for themselves specifically in, in balance training?

Because at the end of the day, um, you know, every individual has a different challenge and may, uh, run into their own situation. So like, if you were a young trainer, pat, how would you represent your, like your balance training? What will you do to make sure that you, not only advocating for yourself, but, um, representing balance training, you know, adequately?

Yeah, so like, exactly what I’m doing already. So, like, you know, I, I’ve, I’ve sort of thought on this quite a bit. It, it is my business. I am my, you know, the core of my business is I educate dog trainers. And, uh, to me, I made a, a very distinct choice one time that, uh, I intend to educate the full spectrum of things that I can educate people on.

So if I know it, I’m gonna teach it to, and as I said earlier, I think I, I teach what I do and how I do it as a standalone piece of information. I don’t, I try very hard not to have an argument with somebody that’s not there, right? So, like, I, I, I, I don’t want to rebut someone else. And I think one of the most important things that I, I say, and do you know the way I comport myself in my, my day-to-day life, as well as my, my work, my business, my family.

Um, is that I try pretty hard not to say anything out loud that I wouldn’t say to the face of a person standing right in front of me. And I think that’s very important. I think that when you comport yourself like that, and because like I have had many people attack me online, um, and I don’t buy it because I’m like, I’m not like gonna argue with a, um, a, a, a missile, you know, an unidentified person online.

But very seldom ever does anybody approach me in person and complain about what I’m doing. ’cause I can see it, right? They can see the totality of what I’m doing now. It helps that I, you know, I’m, uh, I’m not a small pushover person, but even like, it’s not like I’m threatening anybody. I, I, I think it’s really important.

It’s how I try and live my life is that, uh, as I said, sunlight’s the greatest disinfectant. And so I just speak truthfully and honestly. And so for young or, or newer or, or you know, any trainer, I think. You speak on what you know, and you speak on it with confidence as to what you know, without any need to speak about it in terms of, its opposite, right?

Like the only time that I will ever say, Hey, this is the way we’re gonna do things. And it’s in contrast to the other way that you have or could do things, is if we are weighing pros and cons, right? And we’re saying like, Hmm, yeah, well, like we’re, we’re making a choice here about how are we gonna do it then for sure we gotta like, hmm, let’s weigh it up and see where we go with this.

But I don’t want to have an argument with someone that’s not there. And, and I think that. Um, like I, I’m a bit of a, a hippie at the moment, right? Like, more than a bit, I’m, I’m right into sort of the way the mind works, but through the lens of spirituality. And I think one of the things that people do for sure is create fictional villains.

And so I think you gotta be careful how you, how you talk, right? Like your words are spells, you’re, you’re putting things into action when you have them. And if you’re in your client’s home or you are, um, you know, speaking publicly, whatever it is, however the words come out, just talk about what you’re good at and why it works and how it works.

You don’t need to give the contrast unless there’s a reason for it, right? But then in your own mind, don’t have arguments with people that aren’t there, right? Like, be confident in what you do. Question yourself for sure. Be sure that you’re doing the right thing. Educate yourself. Do all those things, but don’t get s sped up around it because I think that sometimes, like I’ve been guilty of it in the past and I think that people are guilty of it still, is that they’re having an argument.

They’re going back and forth with just themselves. Yeah. And, and you can really talk yourself into a weird position and you can create a, a villain that doesn’t exist. And then when you meet someone. Who kind of fits the mold enough to be the villain for you. You then have created all these attributes and all these thoughts and all of these, you know, things that the bad guy in your head does.

And then you pick up that template and you put it over that person and, and you are very likely, very wrong about it, you know? And I think that we, we infer much too much, um, thought as to people’s motives rather than just going off their actions. I think that’s pretty important as well, right? Like, it’s hard as people, we don’t even really understand our own motives for doing stuff a lot of the time, you know what I mean?

Like, we, we tend to retrospectively justify things rather than decide to do something in the, in the moment. And there’s a lot of data on that. There’s, there’s, there’s some terrifying data actually about, you’re much less in control than you think, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. This boots drive in itself much more than you realize.

And I think that it’s very easy to say, well, this person is gonna think about this and whatever, and what you’re doing is just personifying the villain that exists within you. You are, you are like creating an external face of the villain that is within you so that you can have a face to face argument with it rather than having to confront it internally.

And so the stay outta that head space, that’s the main thing I think for anybody, whether you’re a balanced trainer, a force, that’s a good advice. That’s great advice. And then stay outta that head space of having an argument without somebody there. And when they’re actually there, don’t have an argument, like have a conversation and be like, Hey, how do you do things?

Oh, that’s interesting. I never thought about that. Maybe I’ll change. Right. Or like, uh, that’s not for me. I, I, or I’ve tried that. I didn’t see success. Oh. And you know, like I’ve had this exact conversation with, I, I’ve had people who are friends of mine, you know, and they train a different way. And I say, uh, it didn’t really work for me.

What are you doing that I’m not? And then they show me and I go, oh, I’m doing the same thing. But our, like, what we consider success is different. So I’m like, oh, right. Like, we’re not missing just you don’t like want what I want. Right. Like, you are happy to live in management over that and I want that finished or, you know, whatever it is.

But having real conversations, actually listening to people is something and not trying to, um, do the classic Oh, so what you’re saying is No, what they’re saying is what they’re fucking saying. Like, the words that came outta the mouth is what they’re fucking saying. So you don’t have to try and reframe it to go back to them.

They said what they mean. Right. And, and like, you can give people grace, give people a bit of space and be like, Hey, how do you, like I don’t, I don’t get that. What I’m thinking you’re saying is maybe not aligning to what you’re saying. Can you mind saying that to me in a different way? Maybe I can like, aggregate your answers and find out what you really mean rather than just jumping to conclusions about people.

Because as a, as you know, we’ve worked, we’ve sort of worked through, is that. Uh, the, there are for sure nefarious actors, right? There are for sure people who have sat down and they have an agenda that is separate from, from what ours is, and they want to affect us, but I don’t think those people are, are, are you, you’re not gonna get to interact with them.

Right. That the actual puppeteers are, you’re not gonna get to interact with ’em. You’re only gonna get to interact with the puppets. So you are a puppet yourself to, to other higher powers. So like, be careful and have those interactions with people at, like, I, I’m just talking to you. I, I only want to talk to you and I’m not trying to talk to the, the, the person I believe controls you because they’re probably not even aware that they’re, they’re being controlled the same way.

Like I’m sure that I’m under the spell of numerous people and agendas. Right. I’m sure. But, but I, I can have my mind individually changed. You can’t change my mind by attacking something that’s behind me, because it’s not me. You have to really decide what’s real and what’s not real. Right. Because we don’t really, I hear that like, at our team level, even like our peers, we don’t really talk about positive only or force free.

We just talk about dog training, right? Yeah. In fact, when clients come in for assessments and evaluations, we just say, cool, what are you looking to do? What is your dream goal? Okay, here’s a training plan. This is what they’re gonna do. And they’re 99% of the time, they’re like, yeah, sounds great. Cool. Uh, eco cool.

How do you use it? Take it through the whole thing and there’s never an issue. I guess it was more or less kinda like what you said too, that the whole start of this whole conversation was, you can’t just give it some attention. You have to give it a lot of attention. Right. And I think that, you know, that kind of, um, ship had sailed, at least, at least now.

Um, um, you know, going back to, to kind of the ICP in your relationship. So, you know, you’ve had, um, your happy moments with the ICP and you’ve had your unhappy moments with the ICP. Right. How do you think we’re doing now and where do you think the organization’s heading? Uh, look, if I’m gonna be totally honest, Matt, I’m not very plugged in at the moment.

Um, so it looks to me like things are going great, uh, uh, but I’m not, uh, on the inside to, uh, you know, I, uh, have retreated within quite a bit. I’m busy. I’m, I’m trying to build something. Um, and so I have neglected my side of wider responsibilities to the dog training world. Well, they, they’re not my responsibility, right?

There were things that I was choosing to do, choosing to be a part of, and I’ve, I’ve kind of wound that in. I released this course, uh, on the first of next month, and so my time will open up and I’ll pay more attention to what’s going on and. I’ll be more available to that kind of information. Um, but if I’m honest, I haven’t really been paying attention to it.

I think one of the important things about like conference is for sure that, um, we’re balanced trainers, so that includes the full spectrum. We need people for them who are competent across all the kinds of disciplines and the way they do different things so that we can see that. My concern though is that I think the ISCP, you know, I think, um, the, I p’s in a tricky position in terms of inviting people in to help educate and to speak and you know, like there’s a bell curve at like, everything of a distribution of what people think of as balanced training and some, some people’s idea of balanced training is much, much more compulsive than what I think of in my terms of balanced training.

To me, I, I’m a true, like, I like to think that I’m a truly balanced trainer. Like I, I, I maintain balance. I use, I have no bias as to what’s what I’m going to do until I observe the dog and then I make my decision. Um, and, and. I think that we have some people who are a little bit over to the right and so bringing in speakers who are much more over to the left, I don’t mean politically I like picture any scale up or down, whatever.

Right. Um, by creating more balance that way. My concern though around that is I think that we do need to be very careful not to invite the fox into the hen house. And I think that sometimes people who are competent, you know, uh, trainers who wouldn’t call themselves balanced trainers, we need to be very careful of allowing those people to, um, influence too much when they have publicly called for the banning of tools and equipment.

I think that once you cross that line, when you say, I like if you are an aggression specialist, for example, and you have said, I don’t deal with aggression with the use of any tools, ecos prong collars. I have a method by which I am effective without using those tools, I’ll say, cool, I’m very interested in what you have to offer.

And, and because there are times when I can’t use those tools, I absolutely am very interested in what you have to say, and maybe you can achieve better results than me without the tools. I’m very, very interested. But the moment that same person then says, and I think those tools should be banned. I no longer find you to be a person that I should engage with.

I no longer find you to be a person who should have any opinion on anything that goes forward, because you are not a balanced trainer at that point. And I don’t mean like you need to be balanced as in doing it in a balanced approach. You need to understand that there’s more going on than what you understand.

And when I see speakers, uh, when I see people being invited to speak, who have publicly and, uh, you know, put their name to bands of tools, those people give me the heebie-jeebies a little bit because I, I think that those people are disingenuous. I think that those people are speaking about things they don’t know enough about to make such claims.

Now you can, it’s fine. I, I think it’s absolutely great to say, I’m really good at this thing and I don’t use the tools. Come and learn from me. Fuck yeah, I’m there. I’m there to learn. But the moment you go, Hey, I’m really good at this thing. I don’t use the tools and this other thing that you do that I don’t do and I have never done and wouldn’t know how to do if my life depended on it.

I don’t think you should be allowed to use the tools and I’m gonna support legislation that stops you doing that. I think the moment you cross that line, you are no longer a person who should be invited to speak at a conference like that. So that’s where I’m at with things. I think that it’s very important to have, we’re balanced trainers, let’s achieve balance.

But I think that the moment somebody says, I want the tools banned, and the people who use them to not be able to use them, despite me not knowing how they use them, where they use them, why they use them, and don’t do the things that they do, I wanna ban it. I think you’ve ex exposed yourself as a ridiculous person.

I think that you’ve exposed yourself as a person who doesn’t really understand dog training, doesn’t really understand the totality of the industry, and maybe some like scrutiny should be applied to you. Maybe we should cast a light on some of the stuff that you say, right? Maybe we should dig into your history a little bit and we might find out maybe you’re not a person that we want to speak at our conference because of some things that you do, right?

Like, yeah. So that’s where I’m at with the no, and, and obviously thank you for, for being honest because it’s, um, you know, ultimately that’s. That’s what we wanna hear. Right. You know, we, we no longer wanna be an organization where we don’t say the things that need to be said in, in order to truly live up to, um, you know, our mission statement and you know, what our members sign up for.

Right. Um, I think that’s, that’s super important. And so I appreciate you saying that. Um, I know you’ve been holding onto that for a while. Just to, just to quantify though, like, you know, where I go with that is, um, I still work with a lot of special forces dog units, right? Or not a lot. Some, right. Uh, more than most, which is none.

Um, but I just don’t like when people wanna ban equipment. I, it, it’s sort of, it really grinds me. ’cause I’m like, you know nothing about how those dogs are used in that, in those ways. Right. Like hardly anybody does. And, and you’re dealing with dogs who are being trained to kill people. Right. And, and maybe even have, right.

Like, it’s not, it’s not uncommon that there were plenty of dogs during their sort of Afghan period that were killed themselves. But also ’cause like the dogs are off leash, man, they could be 500 meters away from you, but when they bite someone and to people who have never, um. The people who have never been in a gun fight, I cannot explain to you what 500 meters is.

That is an abyss, right? Like when you are fighting for every inch of forward momentum, to get that far away, to go and recover your dog or to, to, to be with your dog or support your dog or influence your dog, you, you just have no idea what that is like. And then to say, oh, no, no tools. You can’t use the tools.

You’re like, Hey man, you don’t understand that. You don’t have the faintest idea on what’s going down in the real world with these dogs, right? And when you want to ban the tools outright, that’s a full ban that goes across everything. And then we hear people say, well, no, but those units will still be able to use ’em.

They won’t. They’re, they’re subject to the same laws as everybody else that where they operate. Like the way it works in the army in Australia here is you, they’re bound by the, the laws of the state that they’re in, right? So if, if your SF unit is in a state where there’s those laws, they’re not allowed to use ’em.

And then if you don’t train with it, you can’t use it overseas. ’cause you can’t just suddenly, magically have it on the dog when they need it, right? Without training with it. And similarly, who the fuck teaches those people? Like who teaches them how to use this stuff if not for the experts in the real world.

And that’s true of all kinds of stuff. Like we used to get civilian pistol coaches in, there’s no one like, like you fire a a a nine mil round cost, like a dollar a shot. I don’t know what it is in America, but it’s like that, it’s like a dollar tan in Australia or more. These people who are like, I can shoot all day.

Right? I could build a fortress of ammo and shoot my way out of it. But just doing a lot of it doesn’t make you good at it. You need the guys who are like, every time I pull this trigger, it’s very expensive to me. I’m gonna pay a lot of attention. The civilians that come in and teach us are infinitely better because they don’t have the resources that, that the army has, right?

And so we get people in to teach us how to use guns. It, it is unreasonable to think that the army would maintain people who know resident experts in the eco use that they will have no external influence in so. This is what I mean when I say people don’t understand the second and third order effects of what they say and do.

Right? Like you are putting not just people’s lives at risk, but the dog’s lives also. And a lot of people, like in the dog training space, they don’t care about the lives of people. Right? But what I’m saying is like when your dog’s off leash and he makes a bad decision 500 meters away from you, you need to be able to influence that dog in that moment because these dogs are proper dangerous.

And for sure, the answer often from those people is, dogs shouldn’t be used that way. I’m like, yeah, that I, I agree, but like going to war is not something anybody’s really choosing. Okay? Like, this is like, like if we’re gonna say, dogs shouldn’t be used that way, for sure. I’m with you. We shouldn’t be going to war ever.

We should live in peace. I’m a hundred percent on board. But that’s not the world that we live in, unfortunately. So that’s why it really pisses me off when I see people say, I want the banning of these tools to say, Hey, I don’t think they’re necessary. I don’t think you should use them. I, and I’m gonna educate you in ways that you, you don’t need to fuck you.

I’m on board a hundred percent. But the moment you say it’s banned, I think you’re a ridiculous person and your opinion is irrelevant.

That’s the only pushback. Thank you. Thank you, pat. That’s my, I’m with you on, I think 98% of that Pat, the only pushback I would have is that there’s different levels of calling for banning, right? And there’s some people who their zelos, right? And like they, their goal, their life’s mission is to ban tools.

And I, I have no time for people like that. I, like you said, I don’t take them seriously. I think they’re ridiculous. I don’t think they actually care about dogs. I think they care about winning or cliques or whatever. There are some people I feel a little bad for where I feel like sometimes they’re saying they think they should ban tools because they’re weak willed and they’re afraid of the mob.

That they’re on that side, right? They’re on, if they’re a force free trainer, how are you a force free trainer in this day and age? Who doesn’t Who won’t say on the record? Yeah. I think tools should be banned. ’cause I, I think then at that point you’re canceled, you’re outta the force free movement. So I, I think there is, to me at least different levels, there’s the zelos who should never speak at our conference and should have, they want to come and watch more power to you.

They should never be speaking. And there’s some that I hope we can learn from and I hope that through time they’ll, you know, see the air of their ways and realize that banning does not make sense. And maybe they were just saying it because they jumped on a bandwagon. I don’t know your thoughts on that, but I feel like there really are some pretty big levels there.

Pretty big differences. Think. Um, we as an organization or the organization, um, should not tolerate the cowardice of others. And so if, if, if, if the answer is, oh no, I don’t really think of it, but I couldn’t have my audience torn on me like, that makes you worse, that makes you much worse. So, so if I’m honest to, to totally be honest with you, Matt, like, um, I have a level of respect for the actual zealots.

I think that the people who are die hards actually pushing for it and believe it in their heart of hearts that it should happen. I respect them much more than the cowards who let those people push them around. And I mean that with, with, with as much conviction as I can possibly convey, that the moment that you allow that sort of cowardice to run the narrative, we are lost.

It is over for us. Right. And, and I don’t think that we should be allowing any form of cowardice like that, any sort of place in our, um, organization. But that’s my opinion. I mean, I love, I love that sentiment. I feel like that gets rid of. 90% of the population in general off. I mean, people are afraid to speak their mind politically online.

So, so being quiet is one thing that’s totally fine. Like, not speaking, but signing the petition. You, that’s a, that’s an action. It’s not in action, right? Like, um, action. Like that. You know, the other thing that I think is important to, you know, keep in mind is we, we can only judge people on their actions, right?

Not their, not their intentions. I don’t know your intentions. I fucking hardly know my own intentions a lot of the time, right? Like, I, I, I act things out. But that’s the truth, right? That there’s, that, that’s the truth. You, you retros, you, you, you justify things to yourself. You very rarely make decisions.

You justify your actions to yourself. And I think that, um, that’s all we can go by. So if you’ve done it, your motives are not that interesting to me. Um, beyond, like I said, I think that, uh, it, if if you, you really feel it in your heart of hearts, then fine. Good for you. Good for you. Do what, do what feels right for you.

But if you are just doing it to appease the mob, you are the worst kind of person that there is.

All right? No, I mean, I get, I get what you’re saying, pat. I mean, coming from that, like, uh, it. I just don’t, you, you see enough of it and you’re like, uh, you just get tired of the fluff. Like people are either for it or against it. And that makes a lot of sense. The people that we don’t have patience for, the people that, that say they’re, they’re, they’re, uh, that are lying about their intentions, right?

No one’s got time for that. Not one side’s got, you know, time for that. And I think it makes life simpler when there are very clear, um, uh, ideas that people back, um, for, for a lot of different reasons. But I, you know, I completely get that s sentiment. Um, and I think that everyone has always been struggling with that sentiment because everyone kind of believes it sometimes when it shows up, right?

Like that, that initial emotion or reaction is like what you actually think and what you actually feel, right? And then there’s all this additional justification that happens after you experience that emotion. Um, and I feel like that’s where the whole organization’s at, that’s where some of the board members can be at, you know?

Um, I’m looking at it in the scopes of like, I don’t know, the last five years for the ICP. I’m also a person that I used to have people walk into the business and yell about prong collars in the lobby, and they’re gonna ban these, and you’re gonna go to jail next week. And they’re gonna, I mean, they would, they would just be crazy, right?

So I’ve also experienced that. So, you know, I’m, I can side a little bit with you in, in terms of those statements, um, but kind of like, um, uh, I guess. Wrapping up a little bit, what, um, what’s next for you? Obviously, what’s next for you and your, your next steps in, in, in your career with what you got going on?

I know you, you spent a lot of time training. You’ve been a lot of, you’ve been coaching a lot. I mean, you’ve traveled, we’ve had, you hear plenty of times, you’ve traveled all over the place, teaching and instructing. Um, what are the next steps for you? I see you have a serious, uh, I saw your emails different when, when I sent you the link, it was the serious dog business.

Um, yeah. Yeah. So that’s the new, that’s the new course. So like next for me is like, I, you’ve been building out this course, it’s finally ready. Um, I’ve gotta start selling it. So that’s everyone’s problem. Yeah. Um, so that’s what’s next. Uh, I, you know, am just sort of in the groove of working. Things are going really well.

Um, uh, in terms of like, I, I like, I love my life, man. Things are going great. And so I’ve just gotta find a way to maintain that. Uh, and so I had no great big changes. I’m just kind of plotting along. I would love to get back to traveling, like really would love to. I, I, I, it, it really is. Um. It, it’s a, it’s a real conflict within me in that I love doing it, but I also hate it as well.

Right. I love teaching in front of people. I love those sort of group settings. I really, I love teaching seminars. The bootcamps are one of my favorite things in the world to do. But also being away from my kids for a full week is hard. That’s, that’s, that’s hard on me. That’s logistically very difficult on my wife, who has to hold down the fort while I’m gone.

I’ve got dogs, you know, all that kind of stuff. So like, I would love to find a way to do more of that in the future. But for me, um, it’s about sort of just maintaining, like, I think that, uh, in the space, I want to continue to tranquil dogs to do cool things. That’s, that’s the kind of dog training that I like to do.

I like to train cool dogs, to do cool things, whatever that is. So, the kind of people that I work with at the moment, I really only work with people who are looking to achieve something. Not people who are like, ah, I got this pain in the ass. And like, I’m like, oh, there’s plenty of people that can, I, I have trained many people that can come and help you with that.

I’m at a point where if you wanna do something cool with that dog, I’m your guy. I can help you out. Right? I can sort of assist along the way. I want to continue to educate trainers. I think that I have, uh, a skill in explanation, you know, like, I’m good. I’m competent. I, I’m, I know what I’m doing. But I think that as an educator, I’m very good.

And so I enjoy doing that. And I think that, um, I enjoy seeing the influence of this, the information that I’ve passed on. I like seeing people doing it in action. I like seeing that. Um, you know, I like seeing sometimes people who are really, uh, maybe heavy handed or sort of old school hard approach soften.

And I like seeing people who are maybe too soft and, and really are not achieving much, sort of, you know, move a little bit further over and, and start seeing success in ways that they feel comfortable with but haven’t been able to achieve in the past. So that’s my goal is to continue to do that kind of thing.

Um, and doing all that through, like, for me, what has changed the most in the past and what I’m really trying to do more of in the future is doing all that through a bit of a lens of, um, as much as, I don’t wanna say it, but like as much through a lens of sort of spirituality where like, I think that there’s, uh, there, there’s a lot of wisdom since I’ve sort of gone down this really deep rabbit hole of it over the last few years, there’s, there’s a lot of wisdom in sort of esoteric and spiritual teachings that we could do with in the dog space, right?

Like we really could do with a lot of help in that space. And so, as much as I can weave that into, uh, the way that I teach, I intend to, and so, and, and as I have been doing more and more of that, um, I have seen more success, not just like my success, I mean success of the people that I’m teaching and, and more understanding and stuff like that.

So that’s what’s next for me. That’s the plan. Just sort of maintain. Um, I have to admit, I’m very scared of traveling. I, I just, uh, the idea of putting an ocean between myself and my family, like, you know, I travel within Australia because, you know, like when Mad Max happens, like I’ll be able to get home, right?

Like I’ll, I’ll become like I’m getting to my family, but if, like, I’m not, I’m not a great sailor. I don’t know how to get across the Pacific Ocean. So like, I’m, I’m, I’m hesitant to put an ocean between myself and my family at the moment. Um, you know, the world is, uh, it’s a tricky place at the moment, a lot going on.

And, and I, I, as much as that’s way outside of my sphere of influence, it’s definitely, um, within my sphere of understanding. And so I’m a little bit, a little bit scared of it. I like the spheres. Where, where’d you pull that from? Uh, I’m pretty sure that’s a, that’s a military one. I’m pretty sure that’s old school army.

Um, you have your, uh, sphere of, well, there’s a lot, right? Like, but there’s your sphere of knowledge and your sphere of, of influence. So like I know about, but nothing I can do about it, right? Yeah. Stephen Covey’s big on that, if you’ve ever read his book. Yeah, right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So like, at the moment, you know, we’re on the brink of three different nuclear wars, so I sort of like, I’m not going anywhere.

Not that I think I’m any safer here, but, um, in all honesty, my my worst nightmare that, like, the thing when I sit down and think about what’s the worst possible outcome for myself would be to be separated from my family. So, like, that’s why I’m a little scared to travel from them. Like if something happened.

And, and I think that five years ago that was a, that was a fairly, uh, ridiculous thing to say. And you could be, you could be like, Hey, that’s stupid. Why would you even consider that? But I think in the world that we’ve experienced in the last five years, it absolutely happened to numerous people. And I did get separated from my family during a COVID lockdown.

At one point I had to stay in a certain state. It was only for a week, but there was no way to get to my family for a week. And I thought, I don’t like this at all. Um, and, and I just think that that’s the reality of the world we live in at the moment, which is why I am sort of minimizing my travel, not stopping, but minimizing.

Totally understandable. So essentially life’s great up until when the a CP calls and reminds and starts rallying you up. About all these crazy things. Um, life’s great, man. And like I said, like I used some strong language back then, and I, I, I support it. I stand by it. But, um, I, you know, like I don’t get involved in that stuff.

Like, I, I’m not, it’s not something, it doesn’t affect me in my day to day because like I said earlier, like I, I, I, I don’t send any energy to it. Right. Um, I like something you said, and I think it should be a shirt and it says it, you said, I like doing cool things with cool dogs. Yeah. That’s dope. Yeah. That should be, that should be a shirt.

Um, but, um, I did a series of seminars called that. It was like a ripoff from Zoolander where I said, um, it’s the dog training seminar for people who wanna learn to do cool things with their dog. Like that was actually what it was called, had this big poster, the dog training seminar for people who wanna learn to do cool things with their dog.

Yeah. And other interesting things I think it said, and other interesting things. Um, but, um, all right, pat, we’re gonna be done bothering you on, uh, Wednesday morning. It’s Wednesday morning your time, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I appreciate you getting in the podcast. Um, obviously we’ve touched base. Yeah, of course.

Um, and, uh, hey man, if you need anything, reach out. We’re big fans of yours. I’m sure the membership, I mean, you’ve, you know, they’re, they’re big fans as well, so I appreciate you supporting the organization and all the years that you’ve supported it through thick and thin, you know. Um, but, uh, thanks again.

And, uh, Matt, any, uh, final words here? No, this was awesome. Appreciate. Oh, I guess, yes, this was awesome. Appreciate it Pat. And do you mind hanging out for a second as we wrap up here to talk about quick things off on? Of course. Yeah, yeah, of course. No problem. Awesome. Thanks for having me guys. I appreciate you.

Appreciate Absolutely. I appreciate that time. All right guys, and that wraps up our Dog Pro Radio episode. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you guys next time.