Today’s guest is Jamie Penrith, owner of Take the Lead Dog Training. Jamie’s based in the UK and he’s been training dogs for over 25 years. I’m sure you’ve all heard of him. He’s spent over a decade as a police dog handler, and now he focuses on helping dog owners. He does a lot of work on off-leash training and loves to focus on addressing predatory dog behavior, which we all know can be a pretty big deal, especially when you get out in those rural areas.

So I’m excited to dig in and chat today. Jamie, thanks for coming on the show. 

Thank you very much indeed, Matt. I’m really, really pleased to be here. I’m, you know, I’m exceptionally grateful that you’ve invited me on and I think it’s absolutely fantastic opportunity to be able to speak at the IACP European Summit as well.

I’m really, really looking forward to speaking to, uh, speaking there, um, later in the year. But yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I hope we have a decent conversation and, and I can fill some, uh, some big boots that have been before me. 

Yeah, we’re, we’ll, we’ll have a great conversation. I’m sure of that. I’m just happy I got the time zone right.

’cause when you said BSTI had to get like a pen and you used a military time. I had to get a pen and paper and like graph it out to make sure I didn’t get on while you were sleeping or something. And 

Ah, no problem. I’d have got, I’d have got up for it. I’d have got up for it. It’s not an issue. 

Well, let’s just start.

First question, you’re gonna be presenting at the IACP, the, the, uh, European Conference this summer, which is going to be absolutely awesome. Can you tell everyone just, what are you talking about? What should they expect if they come listen to you? 

Yeah, so I’m gonna talk about the, um, the current state of legislation and what led up to that current state of legislation with regards to the e-collar in the uk, specifically in England and Scotland.

Um, which was a legislative process that I was very, very heavily, um, embedded within for a good eight years, um, seven or eight years. Um, and I just basically want to explain to people, not just the state of things as they are now, but how things came about, you know, how the sort of like mechanics of things ran to be able to get to the state that we are now, where, you know, uh, the, the, there is no, um, ban on electronic collars in England and Scotland.

So we took a position from being there is a ban, it is about to come in, there’s nothing you can do about it in two different countries and stopping it. And I just wanna talk to people about how that came about. 

That is awesome. That’s gonna be a hit topic, especially with people from the states that are, you know, we watch Europe and we’re like, oh, what’s going on over there?

And a lot of times we don’t know exactly what’s happening. We just know what we Google or see on the news. So hearing about that and hearing kind of from the front lines, what happened, I think we’ll be super interesting. 

Yeah, good. I mean, I hope so. I hope so. What I, what I want to do, you know, there’s, there’s no sort of like, um, extravagance around it.

It’s extravagant enough what, what it involves and you know, how things happen, how the wheels turn and how you sort of like redirect things. Or as one politician called it, trying to stop a freight train when it’s left a station is what it was described as the, what we had ahead of us. Um, and we managed to stop it.

And like you say, the, um, the implications of that process are, are worldwide, you know, whether it’s the States, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, it doesn’t really matter. There is the same sort of attacks are happening all over, all over the world, um, in respect of certain groups wanting certain outcomes in respect of certain tools.

Um, but there’s, I’m actually writing a book as well. I’m damn near close to having finished a book on the entire process in, you know, a, a lot of depth, um, exposing a lot of stuff. That went on. A lot of stuff that goes on that, again, I hope will be of value to people, um, when facing the same sort of thing.

But one thing that I will say to anybody, anybody attending, uh, the summit, anybody who’s listening to anything on a, on a replay or on a, a podcast, is that it requires unity and it requires a hell of a lot of determination. If you have any kind of division or any kind of throwing your hands up in the air and saying, we’re beat, you know, um, that’s never gonna cut it.

But people actually coming together, even where you’ve got division, even where you’ve got differences of opinion, but people actually finding a common ground and working towards that common goal can achieve phenomenal, phenomenal successes. 

Yeah. You know, I said a minute ago, I think people are gonna be super interested in, you know, I definitely stand by that.

And I think one reason is, I know you were heavily involved in this, but most trainers were not that, you know, trainers are, are busy, right? With all this stuff happening in their day-to-day life and their dogs, families, clients, whatever. And it’s easy to just kind of watch this stuff, even if you’re in the country to kind of watch it from a distance, right?

So I would guess people that were gonna be directly affected by that in the uk the, the majority of them probably don’t know what you did and what goes into it. So I think there’s gonna be a lot of people that are really, really intrigued about what actually happened. 

I hope so. I hope so. On the flip side of that, there are a lot of people that got off their backsides and did the work that needed to be done.

There are a lot of people that, uh, you know, we’ve all got busy lives. I’ve got four kids. We’ve got medical issues that are going on in our own life as well as, you know, um, external commitments that everybody has. But you’ve gotta look at something. I looked at some, uh, this as being not something that just directs me per or affects me personally, you know, or directly it’s something bigger than that.

It’s something that the ramifications of allowing this to roll through in terms of animal welfare and people’s rights to be able to protect their animals, um, that is something that throughout my entire life, I don’t like injustice and I don’t like something that is pushed for a political agenda where animal welfare and people’s ability to protect their own animals is thrown under the bus for the sake of certain organizations looking good.

So I think when you’ve got that sort of greater. Greater push behind you, that greater motivation, right? Because you could just think, oh, well I’ll use an eco anyway if they’re gonna ban them, I’ll use an eco anyway, let someone come and find me. Or I’ll switch and I won’t use an eco. But that’s to miss the point.

That’s to miss the point and the, and as I say, the point to actually get in and generating thrust and momentum is. It, it, it is essential that you have that, that unity, you know, within people. So you can either worry about the fact that there’s some people that sit on the backside and don’t get off and can’t be bothered and not my pig, not my farm, you know, or you can sort of think there are gonna be people like that, but let’s focus on the people who are gonna work.

And the more that you see the people working, the more that you feel a little bit like an outsider for not actually throwing your hat in the ring and saying, what can I do to help? You know, and it’s important as well to realize that none of, none of that process is about one person or a group of people or an organization.

You know, there’s no ego involved in it. There’s, it’s not financially driven, politically motivat motivated or, uh, you know, ideologically driven, anything like that. It’s just a case of doing what’s right when, when it needs to be done. 

I was, I always have to follow the rules of I can’t let the guest go through their entire speech, which is a shame ’cause I wanna hear all of this right now.

I wanna hear about your bulk. I wanna hear it all. So we’ll have to, we’ll have to switch topics, which is killing me. ’cause I’m, I’m intrigued. I’ll tell you what now I wanna say not my pig, not my farm all, I just wanna use that. I’m gonna say that to my wife later. No, 

my concern, no Mike concern. You can switch it.

Any animal, any animal environment you can play around become original. 

I think I’ll do about laundry being on the floor and be like, Hey, not my pig, not my farm babe. Sorry. 

Do I wear that? Yeah. Not my pig, not my farm. Yeah. But no, no. I’m looking forward to, I’m looking forward to the chat. 

So you mentioned a few minutes ago animal welfare, and I always am intrigued by that word because it means so many things to so many people.

So why don’t we, if you want, dive into that for a minute. What’s, and you mentioned when we were offline that that’s one of your big focuses is animal welfare. What does that mean to you? What, what’s animal welfare in the context of dogs? 

I was gonna say, whether you’re talking about in the context of dogs and dog training or whether you’re, you know, I’m no animal, um, animal welfare professor, but an animal’s ability to cope with its environment, you know, and, and to best enable an animal to cope with its environment would be working towards contributing towards an animal’s well, uh, an animal’s welfare, an animal’s ability to be able to exhibit and express normal behaviors in a normal way, you know, but safely and controlled would be talking about animal welfare.

So really taking an an, you know, taking a fish and confined a fish to a bowl would arguably be against animal welfare. Whereas taking a dog and allowing a dog to run on trails and hikes and beaches and mountains and such and such, but have that dog controlled and responsive and not a threat to any other animal.

Because again, a principle thing for myself, it’s, it isn’t just about what’s at the end of my leash that’s important. It’s about the other animals and the other people that, that animal affects. They have as much of a right. To have their welfare protected as my own animal. So it, it, it’s very difficult to sort of put your finger on and pinpoint this is what it is, but for me it is, um, providing, preserving and promoting the safety and the freedoms of my dog and other animals or people that may be impacted by the presence or the behavior of my dog is enhancing that as much as possible and an eco.

Or a bron collar or a slip leash or a flexi lead or a head collar, whatever it happens to be, are tools that under the right circumstances used appropriately with quality kit, are great facilitators in a lot of areas to be able to provide and promote that animal welfare where other areas or other approaches perhaps fail in that regard or may not be able to give the animal, uh, as, as quick, uh, an opportunity to be able to experience that life.

They don’t have the longest lives in the world today, you know, dogs. And so the sooner that I can get you to be able to experience and express what nature has said to you, Hey, look, you’re capable of doing this. You’re gonna have a fantastic life, then I, I’m, I’m very much for that, you know, but it is always, as I say, my, my personal thrust and when I try anything that I put out on social media, I’m not, I try not to be.

Either an approach or a tool, but I try to be far broader than that. These might facilitate this, but it’s this, that is the driving factor for me. 

I like that you used the word freedom in there and then you said something, I can’t remember exactly, but letting dogs do just normal dog stuff. Normal animal stuff.

Yeah. Which is, which is so key because I, I’m often intrigued that people that talk about welfare then have all these reasons why a dog shouldn’t be off leash. ’cause they can’t be trusted. And to me, you know, having a dog confined to a leash for its whole life is disgusting. You know, it just, absolutely, it’s, it’s cruel and unusual punishment.

So I, I don’t see how you could ever talk about welfare and not allow dogs off leash. 

So, I mean. I’m a bit of a, I’m a bit of a solar odd wheel here, right? Yeah. Because I, I’m, I’m not a never, I’m not a never say never person. I think there might be situations or circumstances where a person or an animal, for whatever reason, that is the best outcome, that that is available for that animal, for that person.

The animal may, may well not be within the right home. Um, and a person may well not have, shouldn’t have the animal. But if they are together, then I, I can either think, do you know what that’s wrong. What you’re doing is wrong. You should be doing this. This isn’t fair. And you know, like the whole sort of like social media wars that you see whenever anybody posts anything and somebody’s always gonna say that it’s wrong.

And then somebody’s gonna say they’re wrong. But I just, I’m a bit of a live and let live sort of person as long as something I agree with you. I agree with you on the sense that, um, an animal that’s confined to a dog that’s confined to a leash for its entire life isn’t living the life that the dog is perhaps, or the dog should be living.

But if the dog’s got some kind of, you know, injury that it’s carrying or some illness that prevents it from being able to express itself in normal ways that, that you would expect dogs to do, but it’s still able to get out and about and it’s still able to go and experience and someone takes it for a three or four mile, you know, walk on that leash and it gets out and it smells the smells and it sees the lights, hears the sounds, meets of the dogs, does whatever it does.

I, you know, I, I can’t say that that is inherently wrong, but what I can say is that. For me personally, beyond the constraints and the limitations that would, um, cause that to be the norm for an animal. So if you have a perfectly fit and healthy animal in a perfectly fit and healthy family household or, or with an owner that yeah, you should be looking towards giving that dog what that dog naturally needs.

And a lot of the time people are afraid to, uh, accept or acknowledge the fact that the animal actually would choose something different to what they’re actually providing. Um, because that means that I might need to look outside of my own preference box to be able to reach towards approaches or obviously with things like ecos or tools where I’m not comfortable with that.

So I’m, it’s far easier for me to say he’s happy she’s living a great life than it is to question myself and face the uncomfortable reality that actually I may have a few, you know, problems that I need to overcome. 

I think you hit the, the nail on the head with that, with that last one. So what are your thoughts on I do, yeah, like I’ll meet people who say, Hey, I wish my dog was off leash trained.

I don’t have money to hire a trainer. And I, well, whatever I’ve tried, it’s failed. And I, people like that, I’ll often point to good YouTube channels and I’ll recommend, you know, here’s some free content you can watch to hopefully get you to where you need to be. But I’ll also recommend get a long line, get a 50 foot line.

And even if you can’t, you know, trust your dog off leash, you can take ’em to the park and at least give them 50 feet to roam and smell and do some dog stuff. It’s better than nothing. What are your thoughts on that when you come across someone who just doesn’t have the time or the money or in their mind, the per perceived skill to train their dog?

I, 

I think time and the money is absolutely fine. You know, time money’s money more so than time, because time I sort of think, well, hang on, you know, you’ve taken this animal that requires this degree of, you know, exercise and, uh, and freedom to be able to feel satisfied and for you to be able to meet. Its, its welfare needs, right?

So if you haven’t got the time to do it, don’t get it. You know, that, that would be my first thing. But then I’m not, I’m, I don’t really like the nine o’clock jury people who sound like I just sounded there who say, coulda, shoulda, would’ve when something happens. And, you know, they’re the experts of, well, this is what I would’ve done.

I wasn’t there and, you know, but I was, this is what I would’ve done. So I, I, I’m a bit careful about that, but with long lines. So I have like a. A canine classroom, an online training program. Okay. Which is, uh, just a, a monthly running Patreon program. And in there I have, um, with several dogs that that feature on it.

But the purpose of that is to provide, um, training opportunities or for people to access me. I do q and as on there pretty frequently. I answer people sending videos, I break their videos down and share them for everybody to have a look at. And plus put training videos up there. And the point that I want to get to is that all of the recall work that has been done in that program.

So one of my own dogs, Truman, and another one of my own dogs, Tinkerbell Truman’s, so called, because I’ve videoed his entire life and put it on, on Onda program. So everybody advertising the cereal watch Truman’s eating. But um, so everything’s been shown there. He’s never worn an eco. He’s never, he’s, he’s never had a prong collar.

He’s had a slip lead. That’s the most that he’s had a slip line. All of his recall training was done with a long line. All of his recall training was done with the long run. And I, I’m gonna touch some wood here now, Matt, because that dog’s never failed a recall in his life so far. And I swear on my mother’s life, my late mother’s wife, uh, life, that that dog has never failed a recall in his life.

And I, I, so I can’t say to somebody, hand on heart, don’t go for a long line. Hell yes, go for a long line. Fantastic piece of equipment. Not only as just an ability to allow your dog to take range and take distance, but as a communication tool. You know, even if you look back to the style of, um, bill Keeler, you know, with, with using a long line to, to actually get the following going and get the dog to realize that your, your presence is important.

You know that being with you is fun and bringing out, breaking out the play. All of the, the recall stuff that I do on there is centered around that sort of stuff. You know, motivational, um, work with long lines. So anybody who says, I can’t afford a trainer, or I don’t have the time, it doesn’t take a long time.

You’re not out there. I don’t go out and train my dogs three hours a day. I don’t know any dog trainer who really does have that amount of time themselves to be able to put that much in. I give them what they need and I get what I need from them as well in terms of seeing progression with them and seeing them enjoying themselves.

But when you start to see success, when you start to see progress with your dog, you’ll find the time. You’ll find the time because that becomes its own motivation for you to start giving the time. It’s when you just go out and it’s a slog, you know, and the dog’s jerking here and lunging there and reacting to this and failing to recall here and there, then that becomes problematic and then it becomes, I don’t have time.

I can’t be bothered, you know, to take the dog out. It’s a damn stress to take the dog out. But when you go in out and you’re thinking, whoa, geez, she did it. She, well, she’s never done that before. You know, even with the use of a long line, fill your boots 100%. That’s what I would say to somebody is get yourself a long line.

I use a 10 meter line. Uh, for, for my, uh, like early recall training when I work in, and a lot of it is just basically multiple direction changes, recall signal following the change of direction. Doggy either turns or it bumps the end of the long line as soon as it bumps the end of the long line bang party as it’s heading towards me.

And start to sort of like generate that motivation. There’s still a negative reinforcement in there with the hitting the long line as much as there is the, you know, the praise and the food or the toys that come at this end. But I find that stuff fun. I find that stuff fun, you know, where you are working and building that.

Um, I think you learn a lot from going through, um, the, the drudgery that some people would find it of, you know, long lying the dog and not just letting you, letting you have distance, but also using that as a tool to be able to facilitate, recall work and, and, you know, increase my significance to the dog in the outside world.

I think one reason a lot of clients are scared off by off leash training or new clients or, um, you know, just dog owners in general is that they ha, you said this earlier, they have a dog who pulls on leash. It’s crazy. They can’t get it to sit, so they off-leash training seems so far away where they think if I can’t even walk my dog without him choking himself, how could I ever get off leash?

What does your program look like? How soon? I know some trainers do off leash at the very end of their training program. Some move to it at the beginning of the program, some in the middle. Where are you at on that? If you’re working with a new client, when do they. When do you start focusing on the recall?

It depends on the immediacy of the issue. So if you’ve got a dog that you think this dog is gonna be rehomed or this dog is gonna be euthanized, it’s healthy, but it’s gonna be euthanized, but the person’s reached the end of the line and and you are like, yeah, as very often you are, you know, aren’t, if you’re somebody who works particularly with electronic collars, then you are the sort of like the last train at the stage, uh, you know, station on the track sort of thing.

You know, they’ve tried everybody else blown their money on everybody else, and then they come to you penniless, but desperate. I say that with, with a, with a pinch of sarcasm, but you know, it is sort of like, I spent thousands on it. You think, why wasn’t I the first guy? I’d be living the high life, but, um, yeah.

But um, with, with the, I want to know where the dog’s at. So when I, when I assess people, so before I work with people, I don’t. Honestly, I’ve sort of like, um, toned down more on my in-person stuff and I’m increased more on the online stuff just because it’s nowhere near the same price and it’s globally accessible.

And I enjoy it. I enjoy helping people, um, as many people as you can. But when people come and work with me, the first thing I wanna know is where are you? Where, where you at? You know, what’s it like if, if we put a long line on your dog and we take your dog out and I say, give the dog a call. Call him now.

Call him now. You know, call him now. Let’s have a look. When the dog sniff it, call him. Now what about when he sees that? Call him now. Where are you? You know, what, what level? If the dog knows absolutely nothing, then there’s groundwork to be done before I go on to, it’s so easy with a remote collar, for example, to think, wham, jump onto that.

Even if it knows nothing. Even if I’ve worked with dogs that don’t know their name, they don’t know to sit for a biscuit. They don’t know anything. You know? And, and as in dogs, when I used to do residential work. And I just thought, I just gotta start right from the beginning. I, I priced someone for a six week residential for two dogs.

They had four, so I did it twice. I’m, I’m a fantastic businessman, Matt. I priced them for six weeks. Ended up keeping each set of each pair for 16 weeks and didn’t charge for the 10 on either one of them, because when I started with the dogs, I thought, you don’t know a thing and it is not right for me, ethically to think I’m just gonna jump in and get the thing that I want with an electronic collar, for example, or a slip lead or a.

Pinch or whatever it happens to be. Just ’cause I can instead of thought, I need to get you to a level of something, a level of, some degree of decency before I can then start to move you on. But as you know, you know, when you’re working with electronics in particular, it is such a technologically advanced piece of equipment that it’s changed the game of DOB training really from where it might have been 30 years ago, you know, 20 years, even back then where kit was used quite crudely.

It was crude kit used in a crude way a lot of the time. But the sensitivity and the, the, the lack of intrusion. To be able to facilitate motivation for dogs to be able to perform behaviors that perhaps they wouldn’t or, or, you know, previously do, which then unlock the chest of the positive reinforcement where you can bring in the additional motivators that you want to bring, uh, is incredible, you know, so the ability to be able to accelerate the process by bringing that tool in, um, is certainly a, a, a, a key part of how soon do you, do you decide whether or not somebody’s gonna go to off lead or how do you get ’em to off-leash?

Um, but as I say, professionally and morally, um, personally I wanna see that there’s something there. I don’t want to see somebody who just wants to show, I want no interest in working with somebody who just wants a shortcut because they. Don’t have the time, can’t be bothered. I just want the dog to do this, this, this.

I’m not your man. You know? And I, and I’m not, I’ve turned away some big numbers in terms of, um, as I’m sure you have, you know, and a lot of other people have, some people have offered me a lot of money to, um, get dogs to a standard in a, in a space of time. And I’m not just, money’s not the motivator for me.

You know, the, the thinking, there’s a job that’s very well done, motivates me, hence the 16 weeks instead of the six, twice, because I thought, would I be happy with that? And I thought, would, I think I could get a little bit more and I think, oh, I’ll do a little bit more. But when you find yourself waking up at like three o’clock in the morning and taking a dog out into a field to do some work with it, because you think it might be nice to see how he responds in the dark, you start to think perhaps I’m invested a little bit too much in here for, you know, for the money.

But it’s just, that’s that, that’s, that was my thing with, with that. I, I, I used to enjoy it to the point, and then I found it a bit tough going. 

It can be tough, not especially, every client’s different and some really, really want the same thing you do, and then others would. It’s like you do all of that work and at the end they’re like, well, I would never take ’em outside after dark anyway.

Whatever. It’s, 

I just wanted to know, I just wanted to know, you know, I would take dogs. Um, there’s a very good friend of mine and she’s got a dog that I did a video on. Uh, I did a series of videos on her, so she was a a, a Greek. Um, ex hunting dog. And in the uk just so you know, in the UK it’s very difficult to get a dog from one of the large national rehoming shelters.

I dunno what it’s like in the States, but here you literally, I mean, I did a post on it once saying, you know, if you are a hermit living in a light house on a rock with a six foot fence, you can have one. But other than that, as long as your windows don’t face the sea, because the dog gets afraid when it sees waves, you know, and there’s the criteria that is, uh, and I understand that they’ve got to make sure that the dogs are going into, uh, you know, the, uh, the most appropriate home, but it’s.

Outrageously ridiculous. I, I have actually seen adverts where it said no forward facing windows on the property because the dog will bark with cars if cars go by. You know, well, how are you ever gonna walk it then? But anyway, um, so people import dogs from Europe instead where, um, they’re kept up in shelters there and, you know, streets are mocked up and ex hunting dogs are taken and they basically, they just come over the border in vans.

People buy them, they’ll take their dogs. This isn’t all of them, but a lot of them come over. They’ll take the dog because they have a big heart and they have the time and they want this companionship. Um, but in this instance, what dog that I’m talking about, for example. Came over hell of a hunting machine, hell of a hunting machine.

And I used her in a video to show, um, where people were talking about, you know, train the dog with food and positive reinforcement. And she was a raw fed dog. So I took a ribeye steak and I walked her down a lane, so like a little country road in, in England. And there were pheasants everywhere because it was a shooting estate.

And, uh, all the pheasants were being raised and ready to be shot. And she was like this with the pheasants. And as she was, as she was walking along, I threw the ribeye steak right in front of her face and it boom on the ground like that. And she looked at it, looked up and went on. And I did that to prove the point that appetite isn’t a motivator for a predatory animal once they’re in that predation mode, which is why so many people’s sausage goes limp when the D sees a rabbit, right?

They’re just not interested. It’s not conducive to speed and execution of the sequence on a full stomach, you know? And, and, and I did it to, uh, to show that, but she, when, when I trained her residentially, I took her out at nighttime at the end, I took her out and she went from something I videoed her out and about.

So our, our landscape is different, uh, uh, in a lot of the ways. We got a lot more what we call common land in the uk, which, uh, national parks where anybody can go, you can walk your dog eat, dog can just go anywhere, and there’s livestock animals out there and wildlife and everything. It’s not, there’s not really leash laws apart from some city parks.

You might get leash laws in them, but other than that, it’s a pretty free and easy. Society thus far. Um, but at the end of her stay residentially, so I took her from something, I videoed her knowing absolutely nothing, refusing food, everything, knew nothing about me. And then before she went home, I took her across the road from where I live is is a national park.

I’m on a national park and there’s an area of national park, which is a huge wooded area. And you get deer and you get rabbits and whatever else in and amongst that. And I took her out at about, about midnight and I, it was, it was made for a boring video. ’cause all we can see is a head torch in the eyes of a dog, you know?

But I took everything off her. She had no remote collar on, she had nothing. And I thought, shit or bust, I’m going for a walk with you. You’re either gonna respond or you’re not. And it be on my head if you don’t. Uh, but she was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. And so that, that for me was like the criteria for off leash that I would set on residentials as to, you know, that I’d be comfortable with, um, giving a dog back.

That’s a lot of work and 

I know, yeah, I know. 

Which is 

great. Hence the gray hairs. I used to be beautifully dark.

Yeah. 

So what do you think about, we all have those clients who have a dog that’s just too much dog for them. Right. And it can be, it can be a challenge getting that person to be able to handle that dog properly. What do you think about first time dog owners or inexperienced dog owners getting what we would call a challenging breed?

And you could fill in the brink of cha the blank of challenging breed, but any thoughts there? 

Yeah, I mean, again, I’m, it’s a position of, of sort of like, um, privilege because this wouldn’t affect me or it didn’t affect me when I was a first time dog owner, what I would say. But if you look, I believe Germany and um, maybe even some other Scandinavian countries have, um.

Like requirements where if it’s a particular breed that you’re taking on, you need to A, be able to be assessed on your understanding of that breed and your ability, your understanding of training, your knowledge of what the breed requires, and your ability to be able to provide for it, which I don’t think is a bad thing.

I mean, I don’t agree with like nanny states where, you know, I say you must do just because I say, but even there, I think it would be a good idea that people were warned against taking on. Certain breeds. There’s a lot of breeds though, that even something like a, an English Springer spaniel, a German Whitehead Pointer, you know, a, a lurcher, um, a lot of dogs where you would think, yeah, that’s not, you know, we’re, we’re not talking about Rotti, Malis Can of Corso.

We’re not, you know, we’re not talking about that. These are just your standard dogs, but those dogs can go, you know, and it, you get a driven, you get a dog with a lot of work ethic in it from, from those, any kind of breed really, that’s got work ethic in it. I work with Minnie Dins that have got work ethic and drive, and they’ll go and if, you know, they’ll, they’ll give people the run around.

So I, I think that the more people are educated about, um, dogs in general, the, the, this whole sort of like, um, you know, infants in fur coats, four-legged infants in fur coats, really, that just need parenting and just need love and understanding and consensual learning and this, that, and the other is detrimental to the wellbeing.

Of the animal. And it’s detrimental to the relationship that the person who, the first time buyer who takes on a dog, because that’s the way that society is projecting this. It’s like a disnification lens, you know, as in they’re all really cute little things that they, you won’t get these challenging behaviors provided that you have a pocket full of decent treats and a nice high-pitched voice and a clicker and whatever else, and time loving patience, the Holy Trinity of dog training.

Um, but you know, I think the more that people see dogs as, and I, again, I don’t wanna demonize them, but they’re opportunistic predators. You know, they’re scavenging, opportunistic predators that happen to be able to live well. With people and form long and lasting bonds with people if certain criteria are right.

But I think the more that people have a realistic view of what the dogs are and then what the breeds are, and what the breed requirements are and the history of the breed, you know, what the breed is actually bred for, what you can expect from them. I think that that, that being pushed by breeders, um, who aren’t necessarily so quick to flip dogs out, just to make, make for you quit.

Um, and just by society as a whole, swinging back more to, you know, away from this sort of, as I say, this Disney image, this cartoon caricature of an animal and back towards it is this kind of an animal. It does require this. You’ll always get people who say, well, mine was like this and mine didn’t, and which is absolutely fine, but by and large I don’t really see what kind of argument any one would have about or against having the general public have a greater awareness and a greater understanding of what a dog is.

And then specific breeds. 

I like your phrase, the disnification of, of the dogs. Yeah. Yes. I posted a video not long ago of, we have some baby goats. Well, they’re not babies anymore, but we had some baby goats and I was introducing my dogs to them and showing how I introduced a predator to a prey animal.

And some people in the comments, some were freaking out talking about, you know, basically saying that was awful. And dogs, you know, they’re not all predators. Like yes they are. Literally, every single dog is a predator. And people, some people took such offense to that, and it’s not a slur against dogs, know what I’m saying?

But they’re not a prey animal. I mean, maybe a, there’s a mountain lion around, but you know, overall they’re a predator, right? There’s just bigger predators around that might make them prey. Yep. But they’re gonna see your cat, your rabbit, your goat, fill in the blank. As prey, 

some something to enjoy. Even if I’m chasing suit a lot of time, I do a hell of a lot of work with, uh, livestock attacks.

So livestock in the states, livestock attacks is a big thing there, but nowhere near obviously, ’cause we’re a smaller space and there’s a larger number. And so, uh, dogs and, um, predation towards livestock, chasing, killing, devastating farmers, livelihoods, et cetera. Dogs get shot. Uh, they can be legally shot if they can’t be otherwise brought under control from livestock worrying.

They’ve just passed further legislation in respect of it where fines have increased and, uh, yeah, potential prison sentences have increased and areas that are in encapsulated by the legislation around, uh, dogs attacking livestock. But nowhere has anybody said train it. No, no. The, the train, it is the elephant in the room.

Uh, you know, which is something that I’ve pushed along with the association of responsible dog owners for coming up eight years, um, is everything’s all about restrain, but nothing’s about train. Put it on a leash. So I’ve got a determined dog that’s on a leash. You’re assuming that everybody has the wherewithal, the physical ability.

Do you know what I mean? The, the, the, um. The right sort of like mindset in terms of age, you know, the accidents don’t happen, doors aren’t left open. Dogs don’t leap gardens, you know, kids don’t let the dogs off for a run around when they’re out and about. And it’s not just on, uh, our, our farming system is different here than it is in the states.

So you have vast areas, you know, where our, our farming systems, our fields that contain livestock are very close to, in many instances, housing estates, like literally border housing estates. And you can take the dog for a walk in a park and right outside of the park, our fields contain in livestock animals.

So you and I would know that this dog, no matter unless I’ve trained you, I know that if you get a whiff of that and that bleeding thing starts running, you are probably gone. But again, it’s that disnification lens that we have here where, oh, they wouldn’t do that. They’re any playing, you know, they’re, they’re not chasing to harm.

There are any playing. So that’s a massive thing, um, that, that we are working towards trying to address. You know, we want, uh. The association, responsible dog owners wanna try and encourage, um, a national, um, even if it’s voluntary free training scheme, to get people in there to basically say, look, let’s get some avoidance training done with the dogs around livestock like you would do with rattlesnakes, you know, or anything mountain line if you could do it.

Brave if you try, but you know, something where you think you don’t approach those, you know, and your recall’s good, we’ll, we’ll build your recall up, but you take away just the fact where the dog thinks, you know, um, the opportunity has been removed. So I’m on a leash or I’m inside a vehicle, or I’m in a crate, or I’m in a secure compound or whatever, and the opportunity’s removed, but the desire remains.

And so when you put me in that situation, or if I find an opportunity where that situation is present or could be present, that desire will activate my behavior and I’ll do what I’ve always done. So our push is to sort of like address the desire as well as the opportunity. And then you are gonna see a far safer animal and, and.

More protected animals affected by that one. Less dogs shot, less people in trouble. Everybody’s a winner, you know? But again, it’s fighting against that mentality that in the UK everybody’s okay in the sort of like, um, animal welfare sphere that advise government, everybody’s okay with dogs being shot for chasing livestock.

They shouldn’t have done it. Nobody’s okay with dogs being startled to prevent them from doing it. You know, which is a real sort of like, that’s where you know that you’re dealing with ideological thinking, not animal welfare, rational discussion. You know? And that’s where with the association of dog, uh, responsible dog owners, we wanted to get in there and think, let’s bring some actual lived experience to this.

The farmers are great. The farmers would support you, but even the farmers here are getting a tough time from the government, you know? So yeah, the, the, the predation aspect, the opportunistic predator, um, seeing dogs for what they are very, very real. You know, it’s something that I, I deal with a lot. 

I just wrote down a series of questions there because so much came up as you were talking.

So why don’t we start with, you mentioned. Rattlesnake training. So avoidance training. Yep. Is that something you do commonly with live, like, with livestock? So, I, I don’t know. I guess let’s say what’s a common sheep? Is that, would that be a common 

She, sheep would be the principal one I’ve worked with, uh, um, I’m not gonna say dogs.

Uh, I work with a dog that killed a cow. Um, dogs that bite. Horses, ponies. Cats. Wildlife at deer is a big one. But the thing with, uh, wild animals, wild animals is rather than create an avoidance or aversion towards wild animals, you bet. ’cause you never know, you know, one, they’re flighty trying to get close enough to a wild animal to be able to do that.

A snake not so much, so it’s not gonna go too fast, is it? And you’re gonna get the opportunity to be able to do it. But, uh, deer leap and they, they, they’re gone quickly and they appear suddenly and they’re gone quickly. So for something like that, you’re better off looking at enhancing your recall, making your recall on, on the money, so that if you see something or if your dog goes, when I call, I know you are coming back, but, um, sheep.

There are thousands of sheep killed every year in the uk and this is just the ones that are reported. So as somebody who works with, I work with hundreds of people each year whose dogs have chase and attacked, killed sheep. Let’s say that somebody, I work with, somebody today whose dog has done that four times, they’ve owned up to the farmer ’cause they know the farmer and they’ve got a very forgiving farmer because the farmers here first couple of times it was just chasing, didn’t do much.

Um, and then the dog. Basically cornered the sheep off and was barking at the sheep. And then a dog, the dog attacked a sheep, and the farmers said, enough’s enough, something’s got to be done. And these guys are really, really responsible. They said, yeah, we appreciate it. We know that. And the way they came.

And we’ve, you know, done the work to secure the safety of the, the dog and the sheep. Now they live in a property where, um. The, the topography makes it non impossible to fence their property. It’s a rural, you know, we have rolling rugged rural landscapes in, in a lot of rural England where you couldn’t erect a standard fence, uh, containment systems, which are far more common in the states than they are here.

I’ve got a containment system because there’s part of my property that I don’t own, and that part of my property is a bank that a determined dog would be able to access. Now I’ve got determined dog would be able to access and it’s straight onto a busy road. So I, I cannot risk that. I can’t fence it, but I can’t risk it.

So there’s a containment system that, you know, keeps that he doesn’t even need to wear the collar anymore, but kept one of my older dogs within the property. But, um. The attacks where the dogs have attacked sheep a lot of the time. So say somebody comes to me and says, yes, my dog is chase sheep. Chasing sheep in the UK is, uh, an offense, uh, anything is, is even increased now to causing the sheep to worry, causing the sheep fear.

So even if you walk past with a dog on a leash and it like lunges towards a sheep, then nah, off they go and run and someone sees and think your dog’s, that dog isn’t in under control. You know, it’s just, it’s just that would constitute part of an offense under the new legislation. So it’s quite tight because it’s a big problem.

But the problem is it relies on self-reporting. ’cause you haven’t got police all over the countryside. Most of the police all over the countryside wouldn’t have a clue what rural legislation is anyway in relation to dogs and livestock. And you don’t have sort of like wardens or council enforcement officers going out and issue it.

So you rely upon the owner to think. That was bad. You know, there’s, there’s a, there’s a lamb that’s just been killed there. There’s another, there’s a, a yew over there that my dog’s just taken the stomach out of, and there’s a, you know, she’s dying and that one over there has got no face on it and my dog’s just done that.

So I either own up and face a horrendous fine, a social media, absolute hammering, and the potential for my dog to be. Put to sleep or seized from me or put on a control order or whatever, or I just disappear that way and pretend it never happened. And the problem that they’ve got is the more weight that they add to the legislative sledgehammer, the more they increase that as being the likely escape route.

And so the more they increase the suffering of the animals that are left there without a farmer, unless the farmer happens to go out and, you know, patrol all of their land every day, you have these animals that are suffering very, very long and agonizing deaths that could be prevented, that could otherwise be prevented.

So, um, it’s a, it’s a very, very big problem. And of most people, to be honest, let’s say that I work with people and their dogs have done it four or five times over. A lot of those people have never reported through fear of that. So the actual statistics that are available to say there are whatever, a hundred thousand sheep attack this year.

Um, or killed this year by dogs, and it’s cost farmers 1.4 million. The money doesn’t matter. The money doesn’t win people’s hearts and the money won’t change the minds of dog owners. Animal welfare will suffering, will cruelty will. So they’ve got everything asked about face. You know, it’s a really, really poor approach to trying to change an animal welfare issue problem.

Um, but because when you, when you see how many people haven’t reported, you realize the magnitude of how much of a problem this is because you’re only a relatively small island and there’s 13 million dogs in it, you know? And so those 13 million dogs on a nice sunny day, people like to go out and take them into the countryside to go for a walk with them.

And you know, you wanna do as much as you can to reduce the probability of those dogs harming any other animal. You know, any other animal? I’m not personally, I’m not really even into the dogs. You know, some dogs, if they add it’s a rabbit, it’s a rabbit, or it’s a squirrel, and I think it is. But equally you could just say.

Come and get your dog back before your dog has managed to grab a hold of the rabbit or the squirrel, squirrel, you know? So I’m a bit, I’m a bit soft like that. I think you know everything, you know, it’s a circle of life and everything, but if I can do something to prevent something that wasn’t necessary, I’ll do it.

You know, I’ll do it.

I have a long-winded answer there. Sorry. 

I love this answer. I’m, I’m just thinking about where to go next. So you had mentioned prison sentences. Can you expand on that? Is that a prison sentence for the dog owner that has gone and attacked some sheep or lifestyle? 

No, no, no. It’s the dog owner’s dog, so, so, yeah.

So if your dog went and attacked and killed sheep, it’s, it’s very, very unlikely to ever come into play because. Putting somebody, we, we don’t have that much prison space as it is, um, putting somebody in. We don’t put people to prison. It’s not like you, you know, your prison sentences are fantastic. When somebody commits a crime, they pay for it.

Whereas here, there really isn’t that much of a sort of like deterrent really for people thinking, I’ll go to prison. ’cause you think, well, there’s not really any space for it. And who is really gonna put somebody in prison because their dog accidentally slipped, a collar ran, ran over and killed three lambs.

If I in, in, uh, consistently do that. So if I’m somebody who’s irresponsible, who knowingly lets my dogs run out and I know that they’re causing havoc and I don’t care about it, you know, then that potential is more likely. Might be a suspended sentence, but it’s more likely. Um, but yeah, it, it’s, there is a clout, you know, there is the potential for people to be hit.

Uh, I’ll just tell you a story of something in Scotland. This happened in Scotland and. Where people say, keep the dog on a lead. It’s something you’ll hear a lot. Keep the dog on a lead and then it wouldn’t happen. Leash it and that’s the end of your problems. So in Scotland, I think it was about 2017, 2018, a guy was walking his dog, I believe it was a, was a husky.

And the husky escaped the collar on and the leash that the guy was on, and it ran and it worried a farmer’s sheep, farmer’s livestock. The guy managed to get hold of the husky and bring the husky back under control and put a leash back on it. So the farmer turns up and the guy is there and the farmer can see this.

Husky still struggling, still keen to get away from the sheep. So he took out a shotgun and shot it whilst it’s on a leash. Standing next to the owner, the farmer went to court for unlawfully discharging a firearm, endangering life, et cetera. Nothing cleared, nothing. So you now have this case where. Even if the dog’s on a leash, if, I think that’s, it’s completely, again, it’s completely outside the scope of what the, the Dog Protection and Livestock Act in the UK is about.

But the guy got away with it probably because it’s such a huge issue. You know, whether or not the magistrate, which is your judge equivalent, whether or not the magistrate decided or, or has links to farming and thought I’m gonna let the guy off, or I would’ve done the same thing. But when you see that, that is possible.

Then you really think, well, it clearly isn’t enough, is it? You know, so, um, there’s a lot of deterrent. You can shoot a dog for worry in livestock if there’s no other means of bringing it under control. Um, you can’t, police can’t turn up and say, destroy the dog. Th they haven’t got the power to do that. To say, put the dog down a court can, police can’t a vet, the farmer can.

Nobody can say to a person, you have to take that dog and put it down. But a lot of people will do it when they’re told, put that dog down, or us and people just capitulate and think, okay. And they’ll go over and they’ll, or they’ll say, once it’s tasted blood, you know, you hear this, this, this, this. Um, I’m not gonna say, oh wives’, someone will call me sexist.

This old spouse’s tale, you hear this old spouse’s tale, once it’s chased blood, it’ll be a child next. What if it was such and such? You know? And people just worry. They don’t know. And so they think, I can’t, there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t possibly go through this again. I must go and have the dog destroyed.

You know, behavioral euthanasia in the UK is probably is in the States, but in the UK it’s a big thing. You know, there was a research done in, um, uh, in Scotland by the Royal Veterinary College, uh, sorry. Yeah. The Royal Veterinary Surgeons, um, that basically had, um. Poor behavior, an inappropriate behavior as being, um, I think it was a second, it was a principle cause of destruction for all healthy dogs under three years old was behavior related problems.

You know, not illness, not injury behavior. And they’re killing them. You know, it’s, it’s a sad state of affairs. And again, it leads me back to that. Let’s draw it away from the, the, the Disney goggles, and let’s put on the real, let’s get the Attenborough goggles on. Let’s look at the reality of these animals and what these animals are, you know, let’s observe them and appreciate them for what they are, and let’s treat them with the dignity that they respect as the species.

That they are not the sort of like, you know, playmobile toy that we’d like to believe that, that, that they are. 

Do you, have, you made me think of this when you said the euthanasia, do you have such a big issue like we do here with psychotropic drugs, dogs getting put on drugs for everything? 

Yeah, we, we, we face the same generally when something’s in the States, it trickles across to us.

You know, we, we you, you are, are sort of like crystal g uh, crystal ball. You are, you are, you’re vision into the future of where things are likely to go in terms of a lot of things like that. And, um, yeah, there’s, there’s the, um, the amount of dogs that are, well, I, you know, I don’t wanna sort of like make myself sound as anything un or anything like unique compared to yourself or anybody else.

But I, I have dogs that are on, um, have come to me that are on, uh, anti-anxiety medications because they won’t get into a vehicle, you know, or because I, I’ve had a dog, a dog that’s been put on anti-anxiety medications, a spaniel, ’cause it chased leaves and so it was considered to be stressed. Yeah. And this is the common thing with, um.

A lot of, again, I don’t wanna stamp a label and say all, and I don’t wanna jump to the division, you know, as sort of like jump in my trench and fight against the other side sort of thing. ’cause I think there’s a lot of people that are, you know, somewhere in between. There’s a lot of good in there and there’s a lot of bad in here and wherever it happens to be.

But a lot of the veterinary referred behaviorists where you have people who they’ve gone through, they’ve got some qualifications. Everything is done in a consulting room or it may be done over a Zoom or I’ll make ’em see you in your living room once or twice. But I never actually take the dog out. I never, I don’t turn up with a trained dog.

I don’t show you how to train a dog. Everything is just regurgitation of what I myself have learned that gives me the appearance of being learned, you know, be uh, and as though it’s my own knowledge. And it’s it, when you label things, I put a post on, uh, Facebook about this a while ago. When you label something afraid, anxious.

Nervous stressed, you automatically remove the probability of somebody putting that animal through a degree of something in order to find itself out on the other side, because would you really take a nervous person and make them more nervous? What you way of dealing with something that is so anxious that it won’t get into the vehicle is to cause it to get into the vehicle you are actually gonna do.

You know what I mean? And so whe if I’m speaking to an owner who doesn’t know anymore and I say, look, she’s clearly fearful, you know, this is clearly an anxiety based behavior. We can neutralize some of the, um, the chemicals that are causing that anxiety that will help us to get inside and be able to build her up with a bit of counter conditioning and systematic desensitization and we can build it and build it.

And then, but what owner isn’t gonna think, okay. Yeah. I love my dog. I’ve brought my dog to the expert. The vet sent me to you. You know, your, you know, your onions, you know, and so I’m here to learn from you. And, and if you are saying that that is so, and you are referring me back to the vet, and the vet is prescribing this medication, you are the experts.

It must be this. And so people put their dogs on medication, almost like being led, um, innocently, but blindly into it and baffled by terminology and reasoning and justification that is just fabricated in order to support a particular approach to doing something that then serves to support the repeating of that and the repeating of that.

And so it becomes the norm, which is what you see with the, the psychotropic medications. You know, I’ve been, I’ve been on antidepressants myself before in the past. Did they do anything? No. No, they didn’t. I wouldn’t even say they took the edge off, you know, when I, when I felt, but I did it because that is what you’re told to do.

And that was what, that was what you try. Other people might think, I’ve been on antidepressants and they helped me, you know, or anti-anxiety medication. I might take propanolol and it takes the edge off when I’m feeling anxious. And for somebody, it’s fantastic. And for somebody else it isn’t. But it’s, it’s this spillover from a, a, a medicine based, um, area of animal husbandry or the animal profession into what really is in a lot, in a lot of instances, behavior modification and training, which are really one on the same thing.

You know, as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter. You call it what you want, you’re still gonna end up doing the same sort of things. A lot of the time it isn’t. We’ve created this, you know. Mountain from a molehill of a difficulty, complexity within the animal profession to, to basically necessitate our position within it.

And we as behaviorists are above the lowly trainer. ’cause that person’s just gonna teach you obedience. What I’m gonna do is reach the animal’s mind to quote Karen Pryor. I’m gonna be somebody who basically gets inside there and deals with the underlying emotional cause. Not just the external observable behavior that you are witnessing.

That there is fractious, that there is superficial. This here is deep. This here is gonna actually reach the core of the problem. And because it sounds, um, plausible, it becomes. Almost like a, like a, a monster. It’s like social media. You feed it and then it controls you, and then it demands that you feed it.

Because if you don’t feed it, you fade into obscurity and you bend up feeding something that you actually dislike. But you, you find your time, your valuable lifetime, and your thoughts being taken by something that is, you know, uh, that you’ve created. That we’ve created. And I think this whole, uh, the veterinary behaviorists, psychotropic medication, um, you know, extended protocols with very, very limited success rates in the real world, you know, over longevity, um, has become dominant in a lot of, um, areas where the resolution of animal problems is, is, you know, a principal issue.

And to tie that back to something you mentioned earlier, dogs don’t live that long. So if you spend three or four years working on pick your issue, leash reactivity, or afraid to go in the car and they lose three or four years of normal, healthy life out of their 10 to 12. At 30% of their life is wasted.

Because 

you, you imagine doing that to a child. Yeah. You imagine if a child had this thing thing and you think, nevermind, it should be sorted when you’re 30. Do you know what I mean? When the hell would that ever happen? Uh, if we say it might take you a couple of years, three years, something like that, but you’ll get there, you’ll make progress.

I hate the term, it’s a working progress. I hate that because I think of it if, you know, how are you getting, oh yeah, we’re getting there. It’s a work in progress. What does that mean? It generally means that you are not getting anywhere. You know, you’re kidding yourself. That you’re getting somewhere. Well, you might be slightly better than you were, but so you bloody should be.

It was 14 months ago. You know, I, I look at one of my dog’s, Tinkerbell, and when she was, um, we bred her and when she was about six days old, her mother got into the whelping pen and a claw caught tinkerbells eye and she blinded, um, Tinkerbell in one of her eyes, which is quite ironic because I’m losing the sight in one of mine as well.

But, uh, so she’s blind in one eye and then when she was about nine months old, uh, due to her. The vets have no idea how or why she, um, fractured her, uh, shoulder and it healed, but it healed wrong. And the vet said, look, it’s not the sort of injury that you see apart from in a textbook. It’s very unusual. So we’re gonna take the leg and shoulder off.

And I’m thinking, oh man, look, she’s eight months now. I’m months old. She’s a working fox Labrador. She’s slim, fit, fast, full of life. We’re now gonna have blind in one eye and three legs. And then Devet said, yeah, you are. And, and I basically, I’ll be honest, I said, I’m toying with putting the dog to sleep because that is no life for a dog going forward like that.

And Yvette talked me round and said, and I said, if I, if I, if I leave her as she is, what about if I leave with four legs? ’cause she’s nothing with her. It’s just at rest. She’ll lift this leg up. But she still belts around like a lunatic. I said, am I causing my dog unnecessary suffering if I leave her as she is?

And Navet said yes. So I thought, okay, you caught me over a barrel now. Yeah. I’m glad you have, ’cause I’ve asked you and you’ve said yes. So I can’t go forward unlawfully, knowingly causing my dog unnecessary suffering. So the point is, she had the operation. I videoed, um, a part of a recuperation where it was only about 24 hours because the next day she’s running up and down a flight of stairs.

One leg just went over to this one, three legs as fast as can be jumping. I have a tiered garden jumping the five foot from the bottom to the top. I’m running around with the drain still in, and the bandage still on as though nothing had happened. And that sort of like. You know, there’s certain moments that you have where you see things and you learn things, and you think, we are, we are not the same sweetheart.

You know, we we’re not the same. Because I would, I would need the medication. I would need the months of psychological and physical recuperation and, you know, building me back up to I understand what I’ve lost. I, I have a vision of my future and all my potential, and I now know how much this has impacted upon me.

Uh, and that potential and the effect that has on me. Dogs are, just get on with it. What’s next? Aren’t they God? Well, it’s move, move. Life is short. Like today’s, today live it, like live it like as you last. And so when I see this sort of like, yeah, it’s gonna take months or it’s, it might take you a couple of years, again, you’re projecting something onto an animal.

Your, um. Capturing and containing that animal within a mindset that it doesn’t possess. ’cause it suits your preference to approach something in that way. Whereas dogs are incredibly capable of experiencing and overcoming. And that’s where, you know, that, that, that’s my thoughts on that sort of thing when you’re talking about protracted, um, you know, what do you think about if it’s gonna take 30% of, of your life or whatever is they just do, they just get on with it?

And so if I, I can only be governed, but obviously I’m not gonna force you into something where I think this is perilous, you know, or it is, it is gonna have any sort of like, detrimental effect on you. Um, but if I just think, look, we gotta do this, then I’ll do it. I’ll do it. We get on and we move on.

That’s it. You know, let, let’s live for tomorrow. 

How long ago was that? 

Well, she’s three and a half. Three and a half, nearly four. So about three years ago. Do you know what was something, was something fabulous? This is a bit a bit off topic, but I’ll just tell you anyway, because it was something that I was recording a, um, I was part of my online program.

I do cent work and things like that. I’m there to show people and with, with her name’s Tinkerbell Tin and with Tink, I was, um, getting her to, um, detect and retrieve metal from underwater. So it was keys that were underwater in, um, stream and ponds and things like this. And while she was doing it, when she first started doing it, bear in mind, right, she’s had three years of no front leg and she went to towards the front of it.

And a lot of people didn’t see the magic in this that I saw and, uh, or not the magic, but the sort of like, I, I just thought, oh wow. Because as she went towards it, where this shoulder and leg has gone, she was going like that. She was bending and going like that, and she was trying to use the pore to be able to dig out what was in there.

Yeah. Even though she’s lived three years without that leg. So she’s lived three times as long without that limb and shoulder as she has with it. Yet, nature and instinct, when faced with a problem, triggers a certain pattern as being the solution. You know? And, and she, she was trying, she was trying. And I just, it opened up a wealth of questions and thought processes in my mind as to how, again, how an, ’cause I know about phantom limb syndrome.

And I, I spoke to a friend of mine who’s a surgeon, and I was discussing this, um, with her, and she’s also an international expert on pain. Really, really fascinating woman. And, um, we were talking about it and she said, yeah, you know, about phantom Lin syndrome and people where, yeah, I, I, I get the pain in my wrist despite the fact that my arm has been amputated from the elbow down.

I can still feel it because the brain is a complex thing. Um, but I said, yeah, but this isn. A, uh, ’cause an animal can’t self-report that it can feel something. This is an animal actually trying to perform a task with a limb that it hasn’t had for three years. And we were just talking about how fascinating that is.

You know, I know that’s a bit of a slide off topic, but it’s just, it’s just how dogs being this, or animals outside of the human animal being these distinct species that, that have their incredible. Worlds, their own worlds that are absolutely glorious and fascinating without us coming along and muddying the pond.

You know, with our Yeah. Period knowledge and our preferences, et cetera. 

If you think humans and dogs are alike, just look at a dog next to a dead animal and watch what it does when it flips on its shoulder blades and rubs in it. Woo 

hoo. Yeah. I stink, 

right? This is perfect. 

Yeah, but you’re gonna love this in the car on the way home.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. When was the last time you saw your child do that? 

Uhhuh. 

But yeah, we 

live outside of town and so we’ll end up with dead animals on our property from time to time. And you can see it from a hundred yards. You’ll see your dog smell, you know, and you see him turn the shoulder and you’re like, no, no, 

not the shoulder flies all around this decaying course.

Ask, ask you. Yeah. Fantastic stuff. Fantastic. Again, as I say, I just, I mean, I’ve always been fascinated by the animal kingdom. When I was a, a young boy, I was probably the same, you know, as lots of people are. I remember I attempted to raise a, a buzzard chick, which is like a, you know, where you probably got buzzards, I dunno, but, uh, eagle.

Bird of prey, um, that I remember stumbling across it on a branch when its, its mother, I guess, left it in this woodland. And I went back the next day and it was still there and I went back the next day. It was still there. So I was trying to feed it, trying to keep it alive. And plus I wanted to be a kid who owned a bird of prey because I thought that would be cool, but it didn’t make it.

But I managed to raise other birds, you know, seagulls and things and, and then all go going through my life. Animals has always been a passion. You not just dogs, you know, where a lot of people say, I’ve got into dogs and I love dogs and this, that and the other. I do love dogs, but I love animals. You know, I, I love all, I’m not a vegan or anything like that, so I’m a bit hypocritical in that sense.

I guess I love them to a degree where, you know, until I eat it, you know, so there’s, there’s, there’s that sort of like, I’ve gotta sit myself down and have that ethical face slap one time. But, um, yeah, I just love them all. They fascinate me and that’s why I think the predation with dogs with me, um, I love to see them.

I’ve got a dog that I’m taking on, uh, that’s coming this Saturday, which is a setter. Um, I did some work for somebody about three and a half years ago with a dog. I trained it for them, and Ill health means that that dog’s got to leave that home. Um, so I’ve said, look, I’ll take him and see, you know, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll keep him for a period of time and if he slots into my fi uh, home, great.

Um, if he’s better suited to somebody else in their home, fantastic. But when I was working that dog, the, the, the sort of like, you know, you see pointers, setters, that sort of cat-like stalk and the sort of precision and then the sudden scurry and the freeze and that just elongated body and perfect sort of like stillness.

And it just, I just, it is magical to me to watch that sort of thing. You know, they’re fantastic species. 

They are. And man, you, uh, you watch a cat do some of that stuff too, and it, it’s amazing. 

It is. 

So, since you brought us back to predation, I would love to, let’s dive in just a little deeper. So you, we had, you had mentioned rattlesnake avoidance training.

So if you are training a dog around some sheep and you’re working on avoidance, what does that look like? And it, it’s, what I find so interesting is in the states, you don’t really need the avoidance part of it, generally speaking, because either the animals live on the client’s farm mm-hmm. And you’re teaching them to coexist and be friends, or they live so far away, you’re just working on recall and it’s just, you know.

Come to me, but it sounds like you are close enough to strange animals that you actually need to teach them. True avoidance of, of the animal. 

Your landscape is huge. 

Yeah. 

Huge compared to ours. You know, the time it cross, it takes to fly across your country in comparison to the time it takes to fly across our, it’s enormous, your country.

And so your ability to be able to, yours is probably more wildlife animals than it is, uh, you know, wildlife species than it is domestic or, you know, commercial farm species. That would be, you know, the most likely, um, thing that your dog comes across. But avoid avoidance trail, like I said earlier on avoidance training.

So teaching the host stove stuff. Don’t go near it. Bad news. Never go near it again. It’s between you and it don’t do it. They’re not very nice. Okay. I don’t need a recall around a dog that’s been avoidance, trained for an animal, because it won’t go near it anyway. You know, it’ll keep a respectful distance from it.

I don’t want to go near something that I think is stronger than me, that I think is worse than me, that I, I, I can’t beat. You know? So the recall work is, would be more if you think, oh, she spotted something there. Get her back, you know, or something like that. Or you’re walking through the woods and you see a deer run, the dog goes fing, and you think, you know, straight back towards me.

That’s my recall stuff. But the avoidance, I don’t, I don’t, I see ’em as being different things. The avoidance is just basically, for me personally, I think every single dog in the country. Should be avoidance trained towards livestock animals. I think that’s what, that’s what ought to happen. Whether they, whether they never likely to come towards ’em again in their lifetime.

It makes no difference. It makes no difference. It’s harmless. It just has a lasting effect towards that particular animal. To be honest with you, if I could have the every single person in the country, um, never took a drug that made people violent or whatever, and you could go through a process where you made somebody say violently sick or experience something harmless but terrible when they, when they tried that, first of all, and it never happened, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Doing the same with somebody, child sex offenders, people who carry weapons with the intent to harm people. If you could set something up in a stage in early life when it’s the most successful and has the greatest impact for the greatest period of time to have that. Person or that animal. Choose not to perform.

Choose, that’s the thing. Choose not to perform that interaction or that behavior with that other species. I think it is a very difficult argument to find any ethical reasoning as to why that’s a bad idea, particularly when you can get killed for it and they die routinely. They die. I don’t understand how any kind of animal welfare focused position can say not doing that.

Is more advantageous than doing it. Hell, we take dogs nuts off. We take out the, the, the wounds and ovaries of of dogs to be able to prevent the surplus population. You’re talking about genital mutilation. I’ve got no issue with it, but that’s what you’re talking about. I doubt very much indeed that a dog would turn up at the Aries and say, these gone, please.

Do you know what I mean? We do things that perhaps that aren’t something that the animal would choose. They are invasive. They carry the potential for negative consequences thereafter, but. It happens anyway and it’s socially accepted as happening anyway, yet where you’re talking about having an animal learn not to interact with something that could cost its life.

That is a social taboo because people don’t know because it’s kept, you know, hush hush. That there is something that you can do about it because it starts to reverse the engine that is saying time, love, and patience and a high value reinforcer. That’s all you need to be able to solve every kind of issue, you know?

And so rather than threaten the ideology, we attack the solution. That’s the, the situation that we’re in. Although I do see the pendulum swinging. I do see the pendulum swinging if I’m honest, because I think more and more people, when you put these kind of more people, need to put these kind of arguments out there so that more people who have got two brain cells to knock together think that’s not a bad idea actually.

You know, actually maybe I’ve been, maybe is it that bad? Do you know, do this, do we end up with these dogs that have got learned helplessness or you know, do they become aggressive? Or do they mistrust their handler in a, their owners, you know, do they start attacking children just because they’ve been taught to avoid something that would cost them their life?

You know, and that’s the sort of questions that need to be asked. But then you start turning on the organizations that make a lot of money out of pushing that particular narrative. 

Well, I see why you were so effective in that fight. ’cause you’re, you’re passionate and persuasive. You’ve got a Oh, 

thank you.

A lot of good arguments there. 

Yeah. Thank I. Do you know what? Do you know what, Matt, it’s because you’re not, there’s no front is that There’s nothing, you’re not, I’ve got nothing. There is, there is nobody that I fear going, going up against and debating that, that, that aspect of animal welfare, any aspect of animal welfare that involves an animal experience, something n negative to be able to facilitate positives for itself and for others.

There’s not a person on earth that I would fear speaking about on that. Because, because without this, I’m the most humble person that you’d, I’m right, it’s true. And anybody with an ounce of sort of like ethical, you know. Moral, moral calibration. Anybody who’s compass points in the direction that it ought to be point pointing in when it comes to matters that are in the best interest of animals would find it Hard to argue with that.

You know, um, what, what I find utterly bizarre is the veterinary profession arguing against that, because like I say, you kill dogs routinely. Not every now and again. Routinely, you kill dogs that are perfectly healthy. They’re not ill, they’re not suffering. They’re just difficult, and you kill them. You have a problem with somebody saying, let’s just, he’s just gotta experience something.

He’s not gonna like for a moment, then we’ll be ticky boo and he can be on his way and live a nice and happy life and they’ll be all right. And it’s just, it, it, it astounds me how political the whole industry is. You know, it’s not just dog trainers, it’s, it’s above and beyond dog trainers. The rescue charities, they’re not even, you know, I say the rescue charities.

Yeah. But rescue isn’t really my principal work. You know, I like big charities in the uk. They’re political animals, you know, they’re fin very financially motivated. Some of the, uh, bigger charities in the uk they’re, they’re annual turnovers, 150 million, 145 million, you know. There’s, there’s top corridors of 10 people being paid, uh, six figure salaries each, you know, and you just think, how, how does that work?

The first million that you raise goes to pay your top corridor. Yet the old lady who’s dropping the money into the pop, when you show her the picture of the Duke, can you spare this two pound a week for a dog like Bernie, you know, who’s sort of like, is taking a pension. She hasn’t got two hate needs to rub together and is living off Christ knows what at home because she’s got, you know, the heating bills in the UK are extreme, but I’ll give money to this charity.

And then you see these guy, you know, they’re pushing political campaigns and throwing money at things or court cases that are more about sensationalism and public perception than they are about the welfare of the animal that they’re paid to protect by the people who are giving the money. It’s a, it’s a disgusting state of affairs.

It really, really is. And I don’t, I don’t know how it ever got to it, but it’s not, it’s not anything to be proud of. 

I’ve said this before on this podcast, and I’ll, I’ll say again that this is not the IACP position. This is just my opinion, that I really think it stems from groups that do not want people to own dogs, and their goal is to make dog ownership as difficult and as challenging as possible so that dog ownership goes away through time.

I agree, and I have a lot of reasons for thinking that, but, and one of ’em is just, you can’t, you almost can’t see it any other way when you step back and you look at it logically. You think smart people wouldn’t make these decisions time after time after time if they wanted people to have dogs and have a good life with them.

No, it is, it isn’t about, it isn’t about improving the lives of dogs or improving the dog owner communication, the dog owner bond. It isn’t that. It is about reducing dogs, minimizing dogs imposing so much restrictions on dog ownership, the way that you. Board dogs the way that you train dogs, you know, insurances being high with dogs, everything is coming in where people would just think it’s not worth it, you know?

Um, and, and yeah, to see a massive reduction, if not an elimination of an animal that a lot of groups would suggest is enslaved by the human, the therefore the human’s, entertainment only. And, um, the animal would be better off being non-existent than it would existing a life as a, you know, a, a, a performing monkey, um, for the person who holds the end of the leash, you know, and controls its decisions.

And, but yeah, you have these, and there’s a lot of powerful groups, you know, that, that have, uh, a lot of influence as well, that think this way, right down to, you know, even, even down to sort of like veganism for dogs. You know, dogs should be vegan, fed, vegan meals and stuff like this where you just, you know, but.

I dunno, stranger things have been proposed that have then come about and, and become the norm, you know, in society. Um, so yeah, I, I agree with you though. I do agree that there’s, there’s always an agenda when something is happening routinely. You know, in the UK we have ban ba, probably the US as well. Ban it, ban it, ban it.

It’s never discuss it, it’s never, let’s see what we can come up and how we can make this more workable. How can we make this better for everybody can ban it. It’s always ban it, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s this simple sort of like, as I say this, this wrecking ball that’ll deal with it, ban it, and it, it’s, it, it cannot, well it isn’t, I, I don’t even need to say it, cannot, it isn’t down to, um, intelligent thought, grounded in, um, animal welfare.

I’ll save some stuff for the, um. The IACP, um, summit in, in Poland, you know, in, in Europe. But, um, I’ve, I’ve had discussions with organizations, you know, and I’ve had discussions with groups, influential groups, um, to know that this is pretty much the case. To know that there is, this isn’t about the issue at hand when we talk about electronic colors.

It’s not about electronic colors, ba pro collar. It’s not about prong collar. Pro college just happens to be the, the springboard that allows me to project the actual goal that I’m aiming for into the political arena so that we can fight for it and get closer towards securing one, making us look like we’re fantastic advocates for animal welfare, for a naive public.

And two, moving our position, strengthening our position towards what it actually is that we’re looking to achieve. And I know that sounds conspiracy theories, but it’s an age of conspiracy theories. But when you hear enough. Or you personally experience enough conversations and enough justification, you know, like a very large animal, charity, dog charity in the UK saying, um, maybe about nine years ago, eight, nine years ago, when I, I put out a, a, a video that did pretty well in terms of views.

Not that I wanted the views, I wanted people to see the video ’cause I wanted it to get acted upon to say to one of these charities, the next dog that you are about to destroy for behavioral euthanasia, pick up the phone instead of the needle and gimme a call and let me have a work with it. You can watch, you can be there.

We’ll see. Let’s just see what happens. And well, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Are you gonna kill it anyway? Kill it after it’s had at least had a try. And the response that came back was that. Our dogs have been through enough and that sometimes, or they would rather basically euthanize the dog than to subject it to abusive practices.

Abusive practices. There was no mention of it, didn’t even mention ecos, it didn’t mention any tool. It was just, can we try and work? We kind of try and work with the dog, but it was So you think, so you’d rather kill and help and that sort of like, as you say, feeds into your, um, or strengthens your suspicions or cements your realization that this is far greater than simply somebody not liking a prong collar, you know?

Or, or, or not liking the way that somebody trains a dog. 

And not to mention that everything that was a conspiracy theory keeps being proven true. So, right. 

I’m not getting political, but Yeah. Yeah. Seems to be the way, doesn’t it? Well, I think the Internet’s opened up so much where, you know, what could hide behind stuff previously and you just trusted certain figures where you’re suddenly thinking, hang on, you know that that isn’t what I’m seeing.

But then who knows? In a world of AR you don’t know whether you’re seeing anything that’s necessarily real or not nowadays. 

Yeah. That is a real problem. It’s gonna grow for sure. 

Yeah. 

So you had just mentioned ban, ban it, you know, in a lot of contexts. What do you think about the Excel bully ban in the UK?

Through the, what, what do you call the Dangerous Dog Act? 

Yeah. You’ve got dangerous dogs that, so with the Excel bullies, people have still got Excel bullies, you know, it’s just that Excel bullies have to be registered and have to, um. Are required to sort of like adhere to set of criteria, muzzles in public whatever.

Um, keep ’em on, uh, leashes. It’s funny, you know, because the same organizations that are shouting for bans on tools. Despite the fact that there’s never been, so in the UK for example, with an eco, right, there’s never been a prosecution, there’s never been an investigation, there’s never been a conviction ever for anybody willfully misusing an electronic collar.

It hasn’t happened. So despite that distinct lack and that distinct lack of scientific consensus in terms of the, the negative or the positive effects of electronic collars, you know, that’s still in sort of like a state of flux. And it always will be because you’re working with animals and animal behavior, and each cohort that you use is gonna be different to the next, at any period of time.

So it’s really a sort of like insight to a possible bit of information That’s interesting. More than it is anything that’s defining and true. But with, with, with the, uh, Excel bully, it was bands don’t work. Bands don’t work. It’s a blunt instrument. It’s a blunt tool. And you think you are the same people that are simultaneously saying, ban it for this, ban it for this and ban it for this.

But when it’s, you know, your own plate, that’s, um. Likely to be turned over in front of you because you don’t want the sudden influx, ofl bullies that you’re likely to find if you get people saying they’re banned. Do I think bans don’t work? Bans don’t work. You know, there are bre the, um, uh, the feeler, the dog, Argentina, the breeds in UK that are on the, uh, dangerous dogs list that aren’t, they’re not here anyway.

Nobody owns them. They weren’t here when they were, when, when it, when it was, you know, when it was pit. 

When you look at that list, you’re like, how many people have Filas over there? 

Yeah, exactly. 

Uk. 

Exactly. Yeah. No, nobody, they, they, but that isn’t because of the ban. There weren’t any before that anyway.

But it’s just, it, I guess it makes it look effective, doesn’t it? But I don’t, my, my thing, I don’t Excel bodies is a very, very, um. Divisive and political and emotive, um, arena. And I’m not gonna say for a moment that I have experience enough to have any kind of expert opinion on the Excel Bully ban or any kind of Excel bully restrictions that have been placed on the breed.

All I would say is that, and from an ex policing background, um, there are a lot of videos that I, I obviously it’s easier to see things now online, isn’t it? With, with the internet. But there are a lot of videos that I’ve seen. There are a lot of, a good friend of mine was a dog legislation officer, uh, for the police for about 15 years, 20 years.

And he got involved in a great many stuff that didn’t make any of the press, you know, and the damage that can be caused. By Anl bully attack in comparison to a German shepherd, a Rottweiler, a dobe or whatever is catastrophic. Does that mean that it, that the breed should be sort of like singled out as being this devil dog?

No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all, but I don’t think that, I think a lot of the time the wrong dogs find themselves in the wrong hands, you know? But then even if you have, um, the wrong dog, in the right hands, errors can occur. You know, errors of judgment can occur, lapses in concentration can occur.

But where you have a dog, that, and again, without being too graphic on stuff, but where you have a dog that a certain trigger can result in devastating. Consequences and power to inflict with a determination and a commitment. Like I say, not just to any dog can kill, any dog, can kill people, and I understand that, but probably my judgment is perhaps, um, marred by.

Media coverage of, you know, if it’s an Excel bully, it goes up there. If there’s a dog that’s killed somebody, bet it was an Excel bully. You know, there was this time, this period in time where that happened and that came up. I mean, there’s a dog, a girl that’s just been killed recently, horrendously, you know, God rest a soul here from a dog that was, no, I think it was a lurcher, it was nothing.

It was no kind of, you know, family, pet beloved, family pet. You know, I a, a friend of mine, I’ve seen pictures of somebody who has no face. They have an eye, they have two holes in the face there and a row of teeth and literally like, like the, um, the Harvey two face Batman character, but with Harvey, one face that their own dog had done.

And, and when you see enough of that and it’s a particular breed, you do exercise. A little bit of caution in terms of, you know, again, I’m not an absolutist and says that should be banned, that should be whatever. But some breeds are certainly more capable of extensive catastrophic damage in a short period of time with a determination that is very, very difficult to overcome for the average person in the street, um, than others.

You know, that would be my sort of like, I guess it’s guarded. I guess I’m being a bit political there and a bit on the fence to a degree, but I can see two sides to something. I don’t fall firmly in either camp. I think where there’s certain breeds, if you think there is a disproportionate number of deaths caused by this particular breed, then I just think don’t breed the breed.

Don’t breed the, but somebody will breed something else because the sort of people that want that kind of breed and the sort of people that deliberately, or, you know, ignorantly, I guess, um, allow situations to develop or allow tendencies to, to develop, will choose a different type of breed. But again, I don’t wanna say that every person that owns a particular type of breed like that is wrong.

They’re not, they’re not. There’s some fantastic loving owners, but, um, banning something just isn’t, it’s never what we ban. Drugs, murder’s banned. It’s illegal, you know, it doesn’t stop it. You know, the only people that adhere to bans are the people that didn’t need the ban in the first place because they wouldn.

Cause the offense, it’s aimed at the people who would cause the offense and the people that would cause the offense will still cause the offense anyway. You know, they’ll, they’ll take the risks or they’ll do it in a, in a, um, covert fashion, you know, will shift it slightly this way so that you’re ever, you’re forever chasing the path of the person that you are actually trying to, uh, affect a change with.

I’m with you on that. The people that could really use the ban are the ones that you know, that the ban is basically for are gonna ignore it. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. They’re responsible owners are the ones who are gonna listen to the ban and they’re the ones that would’ve socialized their dog anyways. But I’m completely with you on the point that people will just find a new breed.

And that’s been my thought in these breed bands all along, is that, I mean, in my opinion, a dog like the XL Bully, that’s where it comes from in the first place, is when some of the breeds you might wanna get, were already on the band list. Well then you think. What would not be on there. And all of a sudden this new breed is either created or becomes more popular because it’s legal right then.

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And there’s people that will go for something that is, it reflects status or, you know, it, it projects, it, it projects, it matches your personality. And, and it, it sort of like projects who you are. But again, I, I need to be, not in a political sense, but I need to be fair in saying I’ve met some beautiful Excel bullies.

I’ve met some lovely owners of Excel bullies, the vast majority probably are, you know, and, and lovely soft dogs where you just think, but ultimately, you know, all you’re really getting is okay, you’ve gotta be leashed when you’re in, in public. You’ve gotta wear a muzzle on here and you’re sign in a register.

It’s not, you know, uh, my dogs have worn muzzles before. I had a Labrador, you know, 14 years ago that when I got that Labrador, he could be a bit iffy towards other dogs. So whilst I worked on him, he was muzzled. I kept him on a lead as well, because he could be iffy towards other dogs until he was sorted out.

And then it came off. But I guess the thing for Thel bullies is it’s there and that’s that, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, but I suppose that that may have the, the, do you know what a bizarre thing as well? Uh, Matt, one of the really, really strange things here with thel bully attacks, is it all it, uh, the legislation is most of the attacks happen in private properties, you know, and the legislation Really?

Yeah. The legislation doesn’t extend to private properties, as in with within the household. The dog isn’t required to, you know, conform. The owner isn’t required to conform to a set of requirements inside of the home, and loads of the attacks happen inside of the home. 

Interesting. ’cause the news would have, you believe it’s all the dog is running down the street, you know, attacking.

I don’t know. That happens some, but attacking an innocent person that’s just out getting, you know, shopping for groceries. 

No, you can have it. That that does happen. That does happen as well. Um, but you’ve had ones where dogs jumped outta the window of the house, or dogs have had not, not an excel. I’ve gotta be careful because I don’t want to bring up anything that anybody may be able to actually relate to and know something about the case.

But that, for example, a situation where somebody’s in a holiday home, you know, or in a vehicle, and dogs have attacked in that situation, you can’t predict that it’s just gonna be, when it’s out in public, you know that that’s gonna happen. But the, the legislation, it didn’t help those people, those people that were attacked or, or, or lost their lives in a private dwelling.

So for all of the, for all of the ban and this needs to happen or whatever, again, as in so many cases, poor legislation, probably unnecessary legislation, um, and hasn’t really addressed. The issue thoroughly enough that they sought to address. You know, 

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Not my laundry, not my, not my monkey, not my circus.

Yeah. Not my pig. Not my fault. No, it is. I, I feel for a lot of the people who was, you know, there’s, there’s been, there was a hell of a big push, um, in the UK by group. They took the government to high court and, you know, people put money in there and try to challenge, and I don’t think it, it didn’t get anywhere because ultimately these things, once, once they reach a point, there’s a commitment to do it.

And irrespective of, you know 

mm-hmm. 

The opinions or the experiences, the lived experiences of a lot of people who have counter stories to the ones that the, the media would push. But it’s difficult for, like, for members of the public, when the media do control that narrative in the way that they do only put out stories about certain breeds, you know, and it’s always bad news.

You don’t, you never hear a good news story about them. And so it, it does taint the mind of the public who think, oh, we don’t really need that. I wouldn’t like that. You know? And yeah, that’s a good idea. Um, but again, it is, it’s all just a, it’s a political game, isn’t it? It’s theory, 

you know? And as you got to, you mentioned this earlier, but there, there’s no easy answer here.

So I was just curious, your take being close to, ’cause I only know what I see on the news and, you know, that’s of course very biased. So where can people find out more about you? You obviously have your, you mentioned it earlier, your online training program. Where should people go to learn more about your offerings?

Very, very kind of you to very kind of you to ask me to, um, to promote myself, which isn’t something that I’m really into doing very often. I have a website, take the lead training.co uk. My greatest social media presence is on my Facebook, um, platform. Um, take the lead training or take the lead dog training.

I have a YouTube channel, Jamie Penrith dog trainer. Um, but on my website I have, and I, I’m gonna, I’m gonna plug this, but I’m gonna plug it not because Yeah, I’m gonna, and I’m not gonna plug it because I think I want to make some money here, but I’m gonna plug this because genuinely on both of these things, if I was somebody who either had a puppy and wanted to get the best from it.

Um, or I was someone who had a dog, and I just want some, I just wanna know some control skills. I wanna know a bit about behavioral. Perhaps I’m a trainer who wants to sort of pick the brains of somebody else who’s a trainer and see how you do the things that you do. So I have a, um, a puppy development diary, which is where I filmed the first eight months of Truman and his sister Tinkerbell in their development.

So taking them out, exposing them. The re it, it focuses very heavily on developing the bond and the relationship with the dog because the obedience can come in later on and the obedience is far more, um, reliable with a dog that considers you worthwhile and not just because I’m a treat dispenser or something like that.

So that, that, um, puppy development diary. It has about 23 hours worth of footage on there. Um, and that’s a standalone sort of purchase. There’s information on my website about it where it says online training. I also have what you, what, what’s called the Jamie Penrith canine classroom. That canine classroom is, I dunno what this works out as in, um, US dollars, but it’s about, it’s 20 quid, 19 pounds, 99 a month.

There’s no tie in. You can enter, have a look around, see if there’s anything for you, and leave for, for 20 quid. There are. Hundreds of videos in there. Probably too many videos in there because again, I go out and I train and I talk and I break down and I teach people how to do certain things. Recall, uh, leash walking, you know, general obedience behavior station.

But for the companion owner, not for competition, not for sport, but for everyday companion dog owners. But I also teach. Um, stuff that makes you realize how a dog works and understand how a dog works and how you can capture that. A lot of scent work and things like that. But again, for fun, but something that people would think, wow, you know, that’s actually quite impressive.

Or, um, taking fears and overcoming fears and turning them into confidence and things like that. And there’s, there’s live q and as. I’ll do like an hour, hour and 15, hour and 30 minute q and a, twice a month, maybe three times a month, probably generally about twice a month on there. Um, and again, people can send in as long as it’s in relation to the program, people can send in their work with their dog.

They WhatsApp that to me personally. I take that video, I break that video down from them, voice over it, put it back onto the program so that everybody can learn from it. And there’s a chat feature in there where everybody, you, our community. But the reason that I say that is because. We’re right and this is genuine.

Were I looking for something where I thought, I can’t afford a dog trainer. It doesn’t matter where I am in the world. I can’t afford a dog trainer. I would really like to access something that isn’t ideologically driven. There’s not an eco in sight in the, in the program. So it doesn’t have to be tool specific, but it, it’s, it’s real.

It features mistakes. It shows how you overcome your mistakes that people would make. And it’s good fun. It’s good fun. And obviously people can work with me one-to-one. Um, privately booking, uh, you know, appointments, zoom consultations. I speak with people in the states as well. Um, but all over the world really.

But I like to work with people on a, on a one-to-one basis. I don’t run classes. People come here, I work with ’em over a set of sessions and I train the person how to teach their dog, essentially, which is what I guess we all do. Right? Um, but, but it’s, yeah, the. Online platform. One other thing that if I just could say is if anybody wants to have a look at, um, join ardo.com.

That’s J-O-I-N-A-R-D o.com, the Association of Responsible Dog Owners set up in 2018 that has, um, uh, a survey that we did on there of electronic collar, uh, users, um, per person. People’s personal experiences in response to several questions, along with a load of free text that people put in. There were two and a half thousand, over two and a half thousand responses to that survey.

And that’s up there and there’s information on there in relation to responsible dog ownership. And there’s a blog that gets updated with stuff for people to, to know about, you know, or to be aware of. And, and hopefully they’d find interesting. And as any kind of as it will, any kind of political machine starts to steam up and roll again within the uk, parts of the uk, parts of Europe.

Anywhere where we feel that we might be able to assist. We’ve written stuff in, in the States as well, in, you know, for Hawaii and New York and places like that. I think San Francisco was another one. Um. Where we’ve put submissions in, because like I said at the beginning, that unity and that working together, this isn’t an ego thing.

It’s free. There’s no charge on it. It’s just basically a support network for people to say, when the push comes, will you help us push? You know, will you do what needs to be done when we need to do it? So that you have that, that body there, you know, to be able to present an actual realistic opposition to a lot of things that threaten the position of responsible dog owners, uh, trainers, you know, businesses or just anybody who thinks this isn’t right, you know, this isn’t right.

And I’d like to add my voice to a group who think, yeah, this isn’t right, and we’ll speak for you. And where we can represent everybody in a political arena or a media sense as well. 

I love both those plugs and I hope people join. I mean, pay 20 quit and get, get your training. But on top of that, uh, I hope they join your organization and thank you.

It’s, I mean, it’s so key for people to be involved and watch for this legislation and think about it, and, and, you know, be involved and they can 

Thank you. I really, really appreciate the opportunity for you letting me do that. Matt, as I say, it’s not something that I would, I would naturally put forward, but, um, yeah, to, to the, the, the, obviously there’s training all over the world isn’t there, but that, that’s what I offer and, and, um, it’s, it’s legit.

It’s, it is genuine. There’s no hard push. 

Awesome. Well, Jamie, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. 

No problem. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Take care.