Shawn Ryan Show - #5 Mike Ritland - Navy SEAL Warrior K9 Dog Trainer (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

In part 2 of Vigilance Elite's "Shawn Ryan Show" #005 with Mike Ritland we discuss some of his methods as a top tier K9 dog trainer working with military, police, and many other government agencies. We go into great detail about the psychology and mindset of the warrior dogs and the toll that a deployment full of combat has on the dogs as they return home from war. Mike opens up about his non-profit "The Warrior Dog Foundation" which rehabilitates and gives dogs coming back from war a home they can be comfortable in. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It'll take you right to VigilanceElite.com, click the training tab. It'll take you right to Vigilance Elite training on Patreon. Get a subscription, support the show. Thank you. Let's get on with it. was the single deadliest countermeasure that we were facing in. As the US government spent billions on trying to figure out a way to defeat them. The results were that a fucking dog's nose was the most accurate and most reliable. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Sean Ryan show. This is part two of episode 005 with Mike Ritland. If you have not seen part one, we cover his life as a Navy SEAL operator.

Clip the link above. Check that out. Now we're moving into part two, where we cover everything about Mike's warrior dogs, what they go through on deployment, what they go through when they come home. Thank you for all the Netflix suggestions. If you haven't gone to iTunes, please go to iTunes, leave us a review. With that being said, let's get on with it. Enjoy the show. All right, Mike. Here we are, day two.

And this podcast is gonna be all about you're training with dogs and kind of what the dogs deal with, you know, overseas and it's not about you anymore. Good, it's even better. Yeah, but before we get started, we've been talking back and forth about putting a documentary together and my marketing guy who you met, John Howard,

has been really pushing us, pushing me to do a documentary. And so I've been thinking about who I would like to do on in with. And after spending the last few weeks researching you, I think it would be fucking perfect. I don't think there's enough information on what those dogs are going through and with your foundation. And I think it would be really cool to kind of showcase what the life of a warrior dog and service is like and after service. So for the audience,

if you are involved with Netflix or Amazon Prime or anything and you would be interested in helping us out or anybody that can direct us in the right way to kind of produce something like that. Email me, email Mike, leave a comment and I will leave a link where you can request on Netflix a show. And so that'll be in the description. If you guys want to fill it out, I'll put what we need to say on it. That would really help us out, especially if we get a couple hundred thousand people

watching this and everybody fires it up, sends them a little message that who knows we might actually fucking make it happen that'd be awesome I would love to do it yeah it would be a real fucking pleasure yeah yeah so you get a lot of videos on your training a lot of bite videos and I think I've seen most of them one so anyways I have a pet too who you met Griffin, the Griffster. The shite eater. And yeah, the shite eater. But you have a video of walking you some of your dogs without a leash and home depot

and lows and stuff, so I'll roll the tape. So me and Griffin did a little modified version of this, but I think, you know, I'm hoping you can give me a little bit of, give me some, some pointers here. Yeah. I'm what we're doing wrong. So I'll just roll the tape for you real quick. I feel like I'm a fucking glass of this. If I can look on your faces, it leaves half a while, this is as fun as it is. I mean, he's off leash. You're all fucking business. People are

looking at you. The dog's not paying attention. I mean I'd say you fucking knocked it out of the park. I think they're a little worried. You know, you didn't see anybody fucking with you. That's for damn sure. Good smell that breath of my way maybe. Well Griffin will just look at somebody like I eat pieces of shit like you breakfast with that shit eating grin. But now getting serious, I'm gonna look at my notes here, but in one of the books I was listening to, I didn't read them because I'm a fucking slow reader, but I did listen. And one of the first things you said in one of your books, and this isn't verbatim here, but you're talking about canine to been used

ever since the beginning of war. And I thought about that, and they're still used today. And kind of thinking about that, it's actually, it's pretty fucking amazing because everything else has been phased out. We used to use spears and swords and shields and fucking horses. Catapult and all kinds of things.

Yeah, that's all been phased out. Firearms, different firearms have been phased out. Plains, fighter jets have been phased out. Drones have been phased out. Firearms, different firearms have been phased out. Plains, fighter jets have been phased out. Drones have been phased out. And they're coming up with new ones. Helicop everything except dogs has been phased out at one point or another. I mean, humans will probably be phased out here before too long. And that just, you know, when you think about it, that's... Yeah, well, so to me, there's two things with that.

As one is that it really kind of highlights just how important and how effective they are, you know, is that, you know, the application with which they're used may be different in some ways to keep up with technology. IE explosives weren't around, you know, in the Roman times. But so having an explosive detection dog was not necessary. But the way that they use their nose and the way that they augment mankind is largely unchanged that way.

And just the fact that from an asset standpoint, you know, that they're still used in that same capacity, whether it's finding enemy soldiers and biting them or, you know, just keeping soldiers safe and augmenting them from a force multiplier standpoint. They're still just as effective. The second thing, excuse me, is there was a study done at the height of the Iraq war, and it was billions of dollars, and this is where the IED was the single deadliest countermeasure that we were facing as American soldiers. The US government spent billions on trying to figure out a way to defeat them. At the end of that study, the results were that a fucking dog's nose was the most accurate and most reliable method of finding and locating improvised

explosive devices. All the machines that they tried in these machines are multi-million dollar machines in some cases with the latest and greatest olfactory, blower technology and stuff. And dogs were still better at it than they were. When you couple that with their mobile, they're a fraction of a fraction of the price of most of the equipment, but they also can bite the shit out of people

as you experienced earlier this morning. And there's an element of kind of a slice of home from a camaraderie and a morale standpoint that having a cool fucking dog with your crew makes a big fucking difference. So, yeah, they're just, they're truly remarkable creatures that way. That makes a hell of a lot of sense with the morale too. Do you have any idea what kind of dogs they were using back, I mean, way back line? Yeah, so, I mean, from what I've kind of read and researched is that, you know, way the

fuck back in like the Roman and Spartan era, there were more, you know, bigger, molosser-type breeds than the mastiff kind of breeds, but it depended on, you know, what they were using them for. If they were using them for defense and going into battle, they wanted big, strong, hard-biting dogs that they would use to hunt fucking wolves and bears and shit like that with. or if they were using them for defense and going into battle, they wanted big, strong, hard-biting dogs that they would use to hunt fucking wolves and bears and shit like that with. And obviously, if they're that physically capable,

capable because back then, it was really mostly about brute force and physical strength and what have you. So they would outfit pieces of armor and fucking collars with spikes on them and some gnarly shit that way so that people couldn't fuck with them or hurt them as bad. If they were running messages and supplies and shit like that, it would be a smaller, leaner,

more athletic dog that wasn't biting people that was just really intelligent and taught to either relay messages or again move equipment or things of that nature. So again, just like today, it kind of depends on the purpose or the application in terms of what they're gonna use to do it. Well, I mean, they've definitely evolved with all the capabilities that they're using them for now. And I mean, they've become part of the team, at least in the Special Operations Community.

Yeah, absolutely. But I'm curious, you know, you've been training dogs for how many years now? I mean, so in this capacity, professionally, for about 12 years, before that, I still, you know, use these same breeds that just wasn't, you know, making a living at doing it for about six or seven years before that And I you know messed around with training for years before that. I mean at this point over 20 years, you know of training dogs and of different breeds of different capacities You know in a lot of different ways. So and I I'm really glad that I kind of started out with bird dogs and hog dogs and from an animal husbandry standpoint learned a lot, you know, about veterinary care and breeding theory and, you know, nutrition and conditioning and things of that nature on the hunting side because that really augmented once I started to get really heavy into the into the operant conditioning and theory as it relates to, to higher end stuff like military and police working dogs. So that, that

certainly helped kind of well, or, or round out my, my perspective and, and knowledge based on just dogs generally speaking. Um, what are some of the, you know, we're talking about how they use them way back one and I'm curious in your 20 years of training dogs, how have you seen the training and what they're utilized for progress? Probably the biggest thing that I've seen that I'm happy to see is a shift from using primarily compulsion or punishment and doing more reinforcement training. Now, I'm not a pure positive trainer by any fucking stretch. I'm not the click and treat for absolutely everything. There is a time and a place for corrections

just like there is with people are raising kids. is that, you know, if I'm trying to teach the dog behaviors and shape behaviors and bridge complex behavioral patterns together, then I want that to be a positive learning environment. No difference than say a third grade, you're trying to teach him arithmetic and you set a math book down and they don't know and you slap the fuck out of him. They're not gonna pick that up very well.

And it's a stressful shitty way to try to learn something. Now, so I want that to be a sterile learning environment, set the room up in the environment for them to make the right decision or the decision I want them to make and then I reward them and reinforce that behavior. On the transfers, just like with kids, is that while I'm not going to slap somebody for not understanding arithmetic, if you tell your child, hey, I need you to tidy your room up, it's kind of a mess and they say, hey, dad, how about you go fuck yourself?

Like then you're gonna get your ass kicked, you know? And so with dogs, it's much that same way, is that the only time I'm gonna use corrections is if it's blatant disrespect and challenging behavior where it's bordering on dangerous, which a lot of the dogs that I work with, sometimes you run into dogs that way that are so dominant, that are so resource guard driven, or whatever the situation dictates that they decide

that I'm gonna take a fucking shot at the title, then yeah, I'm gonna use force to make sure that they know that that's an unacceptable behavior. But the other instance where I may do that is if I've shaped a behavior and I have done it so many times to where it's a condition response and I know they know it and they're just kind of blowing it off. Then I may give them a slight correction for that to get their attention and get their

mind back where it needs to be and focused on what they need to be doing. But that's really about it, whereas a lot of times years ago, and even today, there's still certainly some units that use it more than I think they probably should. It's just a prong collar, a remote collar, a stick, fucking just beaten dogs into submission basically. And that's, that's not a good place to be when, you know, if I'm expecting the dog to go, you know, away from me independent of the handler, you know, and have the confidence and, and, and spine and, and character, you know, to, to go in and defeat somebody.

Uh, the last thing I want is a dog with a broken spirit that is only doing what he's doing to avoid having his ass kicked. That's not a good mentality to have if you're going to fight somebody. Yeah. Portal also went on. Just for example, when I was in the SEAL teams, I know they've been using them for a while. And yesterday, they'd mentioned that you had dogs.

I'm one of your ops back in the early 2000s. I did not have a lot of experience with dogs. In fact, we had a couple dogs on missions, but they didn't really do much. They were more for, I think, sniffing things out, I didn't really get to know the handler was somebody that kind of was just attached when we got there. But I sure as hell never jumped with a dog, fast rope with a dog, slam, you know, any of that. So was it pretty common for the dogs in the early, earlier parts of the war to be more just a bomb sniffer or when did it become more common for the dogs to be attacked dogs?

So from the attack standpoint, early on, where I think the biggest transition has been made as it relates to special operations, is early on, and this is by early on, I mean, post-9-11, is that there were no special operations units using dogs at all. And so very quickly, as you start to realize, you know, factors, IEDs and explosives and cashes and shit, it would be nice to have a capability, very EOD-like, to be able to locate where these IEDs and explosive cashes are. And so what they've first started kind of doing

is using regular military working dogs that were explosive detection or patrol, patrol meaning bite dogs. And, you know, while that's a capability and an augment, I think that they realized very quickly that having a marine MP or a Navy gate guard MP patrol dog with SEAL Team 6 doesn't mesh up very well in terms of, you know, their operational knowledge and their skill set as a shooter. And so it was, while it was kind of better than nothing, I think highlighted that they needed guys, either their own guys or, you

know, folks that were much more on the level as it relates to operational competency to be able to go do those types of things, you know, so If you're taking something that just has never done that and putting them on a high-speed fucking direct assault You know, that's that's a dangerous thing to fucking do and there's a too many moving parts and it's kind of a recipe for disaster in some ways and so they ramped up Having their own guys be handlers as quick as possible. That takes time. Standing up a dog program in a unit that's never had one is no different than standing

up a new special operations unit. I mean, it's a totally different fucking skill set. It's not like, hey, we're going to throw a sniper attachment capability on. It's weapons. It's already things that we're pretty familiar with. Tactics are pretty seamless to meld into with a dog, no pun intended, it's a whole different fucking animal literally. It takes years to really get at a level where you're operating and you really understand the dog and can read the dog. No different than the scenario we did today is

that there's certain things that you guys just leaned on me to say, fuck, I don't know, should we have him come this way? Or where should we be standing or whatever? It takes a while to get to that point where you can kind of predict what's gonna happen or probably the mode that the dog is gonna operate in. And so because of that,

I think it was a rough couple of first years of getting those dogs online. And then once they did, then it was okay. Well, now we're inserting via parachute, via fast rope, via fucking 10-click foot patrol via side-by-side, player as fucking razor or whatever. And so we need the dogs to accompany us so they need to be able to do all that shit too. And so it was a hyper fucking steep learning curve, I think. But you know, within a matter of years now, they've got their own guys handling dogs that are fucking parachuting fast rope and fucking riding on boats, you know, getting thrown over a shoulder and a fucking back of a side by side, you name it. And they've had to have the dogs kind of adapt operationally

to all of the different things that we do. So if the capability is required to have a dog that can locate explosives and do squirt or patrol out the back of a target or have the ability to find somebody in a false floor, or a false wall, or sandbagged with a PKM in a corner of a room or something like that. If I could bring the dog with us, we need to figure out how to have that dog with us no matter how we're inserting.

So it's bred out of necessity for sure. Well, you know, with all the other departments that you, you know, you deal with in a, in a small special operations team, you get, you know, medical, if the medic goes down, everybody has, you know, a shit ton of med training. If the calm guy goes down, everybody has a shit ton of med training. So I guess kind of where I'm going with this is two questions and that is one, how does the rest of the team interact with the dog? Are they scared shitless of them? They generally are not. A lot of it's going to depend on the dog.

A lot of it's going to depend on the dog. A lot of it's going to depend on how good the handler is at communicating and educating the rest of the platoon, how to interact with the dog, what to do, what not to do, and how proactive they are at integrating the dog into the team. A good mode or method of doing that is making it very black and white for the dog. That's what a lot of guys do is they'll, you know, when the vest is on, the dog is at work and you don't fucking play with a dog, you don't pet the dog, you don't, you know,

treat it like anything other than what it is. When the vest is off and you're in the team room or you're hanging around or whatever, you know, then you can let your guard down a little bit and interact with it. Again, some dogs are more suitable for that than others. There's some dogs that it's just, this is a fucking do not pet, in case of war, break glass, kind of mother fucker that just hates everybody.

And it's just best that you don't fuck with them. Those dogs do exist. Now, in terms of what happens if the handler goes down, there's also that onus generally relies on the handler where he's gonna need to communicate to the people, to the rest of the members, you know, what they need to do. And from my perspective, it's two things,

which is calmly interact with the dog and try to get a muzzle on it, try to get a leash on it, and then, you know, just get it where it needs to be. If that's metavacked out, because the dog is injured or accompanying the handler because the handler's injured or whatever it is, is that guys have to practice doing that a little bit. And so it's important for the handler

to integrate different people in the platoon to be able to at least handle the dog, not give them commands and operate with them and do bite work and all other types of shit, but at least be able to clip at least to the dog, muzzle them, take them for a walk, things like that. And that's where again the handler comes in and having that dog be a part of the platoon operations as much as possible is going to help that because you can't explain to the dog, hey, this is the platoon, these are the good guys, like you just have to have that

dog around them a lot so that they can do that without too much trouble. But is that ever happened where a handler, I mean, we're talking, I mean, I hope not, but, you know, the chances are fucking high with what, you know, with the job description, that is what it is. But has there been a scenario where the handlers has been KIA on target in the middle of an op?

And I mean, after seeing what I have to feel in what I've felt today, the last thing I want to be worried about is a supposed dog that's on my side, but you know where I'm going with this. Yeah. So things like that, you know, do happen. Generally, it's the handler's injured. You know, I had Benny Olson on and he, he told a gripping fucking story of his dog, Dego, that ended up was one of the first two dogs at the Warrior Dog Foundation and they were in Iraq on a mission where they actually lost a couple of guys and Benny got severely injured like unconscious, you know, needed to be life-flatted out, it was all fucked up and Digo, the dog was too and yeah, it was a motherfucker separating Digo from Benny, they managed to get it done, but you know,

he's fucking snarling at other members and he's hurt, you know, the dog is hurt and so he's in pain and pretty reactive that way. And yeah, that is a reality of it. And that's, again, it's why it's so crucial that the other members understand how to get a muscle on the dog. And there is a process to doing that, but also that it's been done a lot so that the dog is desensitized. It's not the first time you're trying to put a muzzle

on the dog is when he's fucking bleeding out of a femoral artery and the handler's unconscious and he's trying to fucking rip your face off or come in near either one of them. Like that's not the time to try it. So just like medical training, the time to figure out how to give somebody an IV is not when they actually need it or they're going to die from it. So with the dog

stuff, it's the same way. But again, the big thing is just try to get a muzzle on the dog, clip a fucking leash to him, and get them out of there and get them where they need to be. So the dog might be a pain in the ass or you might be for a nonhandler, but it sounds like there are no concerns that it's going to turn. And so, well, it can. I mean, there are times where that dog, like, injures the own team members to the point where they're fucking out of the fight. I mean, it's happened. Okay. Not often, but it does happen, you know.

And again, that's where having the right dog goes a long fucking way in that regard. But sometimes, you know, this is the dog we have. He's good enough to do the work. He's a little sharper or more reactive than I would like, but, you know, we need one and he's it, you know, and yeah, there are times where blue on blue dog bites the wrong fucking person and fucks him up. And you try to minimize that just like there's times where we shoot each other.

It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. You do all the things that you can to try to mitigate that in training so that it doesn't happen in wartime, but sometimes it still does happen. So, again, the biggest thing is just conditioning the dog to the team as best you can so that you minimize that percentage chance of it happening. Okay.

So, in general, would you say that dogs are very aware of who the enemy is and who the friendlies are? Generally yes. And again, having guys all wearing kit around the dog and being around them a lot and going on training trips, where the dog is integrated as much as possible makes a big difference. The difference between some units and other units, police specifically is that you run into that a lot more with police where they've got a, you know, a dog that's you utilized in a SWOT application, but SWOT only meets two days a month to do their monthly training and that's the only time that the dog is around the SWOT members. Otherwise,

he's with his handler doing patrol calls and street calls and things like that. That's a good example of now, it's a real deal scenario. This dog's only been around the SWAT team eight times in four months. And now you're going into a dynamic fucking scenario where flashbangs are going off and people are yelling and there's shots being fired or whatever and the dog flays open one of the fucking team members hamstrings because he's just not used to them. Whereas a high level tier one unit where that dog is attached with those fucking 30 dudes all day every day does every training trip is around him every fucking day that happens

way less there. So a lot of it is just conditioning the dog to be what you need them to be. How attached are the dogs to the handlers? So, and the reason I'm asking this is, say, you know, some guys are more motivated than others and they really want to learn every job and I imagine it's the exact same with it. I mean, if I was in a platoon that had a dog, I would want to fucking know everything I could about being a handler in case this were to happen. But I guess my question is how attached are the dogs to their handlers and if the handler was to go down out of the fight and could not give commands. Does the dog become completely ineffective at that point or.

Can somebody you know pick up pick up the ball and and drive on and keep that dog. Effective in the fight sure so. and keep that dog effective in the fight. Sure. So a lot of that is going to vary from handler to handler and dog to dog, and even unit to unit. I've seen some dogs that were so fucking attached to their handler that, yes, they would become bordering on fucking useless if something happened to their handler,

or very, very difficult for somebody else to now pick up the leash and finish the mission, if it's a explosive detection, somebody trying to handle the dog in an explosive detection. That's a tall order for somebody who's not a handler, but there are some dogs on the other end of the spectrum that if you could hand your wife the leash, you know, and the dog at fucking work, they're just that autonomous and independent and aloof and non-dependent

on a handler, and they just love to fucking work. The dog that I have here right now would be very much that way. He's just laser-focused, super-driven, wants to fucking work all the time. And, you know, for him, he doesn't have that attachment to me the way that a lot of dogs or even most dogs do you know so he's a dog that if you put him in that environment any of the fucking handlers or any of the platoon mates or team members could handle that dog no problem and then there's dogs that are kind of somewhere in between. So it's largely dependent on the personality of the dog and how attached they get to their handler.

Interesting. I've seen pictures where there'll be a casket of a down handler with a flag draped over it and you see videos and pictures where the dog will not leave the casket Which is fucking gut wrenching, you know? And at the same time it's it's actually pretty cool to see and sad, you know, but but you know after Research and you know, after research and all that,

there was just more of the questions that really stuck out to me. But so kind of moving on from that, the way you talk about psychology of dogs is it's like you're the fucking dog whisper over there. But the whisper screamer maybe, I don't know. Yeah, but, but, and I'd go on for days about different things that you've said, but the one that, one of them that really sticks out is, and I can't remember if this was in

one of your books or if this was in one of your podcasts or 60 minutes or one of the million things you've been on. You're talking about the growl is actually a weakness. And I really started trying to put things together with all the different things that you've said. And we'll go into a little more depth here in a minute, but they are a lot like fucking humans, and you reiterate that in all of your publications and all of your content, and that everybody else who doesn't know

to include me takes that as like some serious aggression like that dog is getting ready to rip my head off, which I still think they are. But when you said that that's weakness, it made me think nine times out of 10, the loudest motherfucker in the room is always the weakest link or the biggest shit bag, and they're hiding some kind of insecurity,

which is what you said when a dog grouse, it's because I believe you said it's fear. But anyways, I just kind of want to breach that subject with the dog psychology and how similar it is to humans. Yeah. So if you think about it in the context of any time that you've ever been around a dog that's growled at you You know what is generally the human being is response to a dog growling

Here was this they in terms of the physical action that most people if you walk up to a dog and it growls and shows its teeth and kind of pops its jaws Do most people go go forward and and kind of pops its jaws, do most people go forward and continue fucking with a dog or most people say, oh, you know what? Maybe I'm gonna fucking back up on this one. Yeah. That's why they do it. Is that, you know, for whatever the reason is. Now, I think it is imperative to caveat that while growling is ultimately that the dog is uncomfortable, scared, or at a minimum, you know, for whatever reason, whether it's pain or confusion or whatever is that the dog does not want whatever is taking place to either continue or advance. If that's you, then it is what it is.

If it's a stimulus that the dog runs into and it makes them nervous, you know, sometimes you may be walking and something happens and it's not even a person. And the dog will start growling because they're not sure what the fuck it is, you know, sometimes you maybe walking and something happens and it's not even a person and the dog will start growling because they're not sure what the fuck it is You know is that it's a defense mechanism the same way peacock feathers are and that it's trying to communicate You know the same way a guy in a bar is like I'll fuck you up You know, it's like you shouldn't have to tell me that you know I should either know that or you just do it You know and and so with a dog, a good, supremely confident dog isn't going to fucking growl.

If he wants to fight you, he's just going to fucking fight you. Now just because a dog rouse doesn't mean that he won't bite you, depending on where he's at in his fight or flight mentality and physically environmentally where he's at if a dog is over in that corner laying down and you walk up and it growls even though it's fucking scared. If it's got nowhere to go and it feels like okay, it shoulder it off the pot and I got to fight this guy then they will. And I will also say the dog that growls and bites after he growls is going to bite hard as fuck because he's scared. Really, you know, that the same way, yeah, I mean, you see it in bite work a lot in the suit where when you start to get into a dog's head and make them uncomfortable and you

may get a little growling, you know, on a bite. And sometimes it's less related to fears. Sometimes it's, you know, a host of other intangibles that are going on that are probably behind the scope of this. But, but most of the time it's because the dog is a little uncomfortable. And so, but what you can feel is's because the dog is a little uncomfortable. But what you can feel is that if you start to get in that dog's head and he's a little growly while he's biting a lot of times, you'll actually feel it and he's biting even harder because now there's adrenaline going in the same thing. If you know, when you hear the stories of, you know, kids getting trapped under cars and

the fucking seven year old grandma picks up a Volkswagen, you know, because their kid was trapped under it, you know, when a adrenaline and all these hormones are going through and their central nervous system is fucking taxed and whatever is that now it's it's kind of fighting for your life, or in this case, biting for your life. And many times they'll bite even harder in those circumstances. So where you kind of use that to your advantage as a human being is looking at the big pictures, you know, as the dog behind the fence and you're coming over the fence and they're growling. In that case, like, yeah, if you pull that dog's card and call his bluff, you can get him to run. If you're committed and you have the ability to use your presence to

communicate to that dog, motherfucker, I'm not scared and I'm coming after you. In those cases, then almost every single time the dog's gonna be like, you know what? I'm fucking out of here. If I'm working a dog and they start growling, then I'll investigate it further. I'll start doing whatever I was doing to get them to grow.

I'll back off and see if he'll get comfortable when he does. I'll do it again and see if he growls again I'll back off and see if he'll get comfortable when he does I'll do it again and see if he growls again and back off and then do it again and see You know what it what is it about what I'm doing this getting in his head to make him uncomfortable And I won't say that it doesn't matter what it is But you may not know exactly why what what you're doing is is having that impact what's important is to work him through it ultimately is having that impact. What's important is to work them through it. Ultimately, as a trainer, decoy, et cetera, it's our goal and our job to make the dog stronger.

So if you expose a weakness, you wanna work them through that and build us confidence through that. If I'm in Adversary, a dog is coming at me and I don't know the dog and whatever the situation is, then yeah, I'll use that to exploit that weakness and ultimately try to feed the dog with whatever he's uncomfortable about.

But so, you know, a lot of it's going to depend on kind of what you're doing with the dog. But to your point, you know, it's an important indicator of where the dogs mind is at more than anything. And I will say that for dogs across the board is that our job is to read them, you know, and they tell you a shitload of information. If you a, know what to look for, be pay attention and see, do it enough to where, you know, you understand why, why they're doing what they're doing. And so a good handler and a good dog owner period should be able to look at their dog and know what the fuck's going on just because they've they've observed them a lot.

So you can take a dog that's uncomfortable, that's growling and you can reverse it. It would say usually, it depends on how bad it is. It depends on how slight or significant what I'm doing is to make them grow. If it's something really fucking basic and me not trying to do it, then it's probably going to be a bigger problem. In bite work, as you try to progress the dog through the goal is to make them stronger by building their threshold for stress tolerance. That's really the key concept of bite work is to teach them

that when I put stress and pressure on them, I want them to respond by natural forward aggression and coming forward. And so countering in deeper, biting hard or pushing forward, wrapping their legs around your leg or whatever they can get their paws on. Different indicators that say that that dog is coming forward and bringing the fight to me. And then what I do is I use all of my body language and I take that pressure and stress off of the dog, which in turn reinforces to the dog that what he did was

what turned the pressure off. And so when you do that over and over and over is that you condition the dog to understand that hey, this guy may smack me and stab me and punch me and try to throw me in a trash can and slam me up against a card or whatever. And if I fight harder, then I will win. And so you're just, it's the same reinforcement principle as the dog sits and you give him food. It is that when he fights me the way that I know that if he fights me that way, it's gonna maximize his percentage of chances

to survive that encounter, and I reinforce that by turning all of that pressure off. Now he feels emboldened. Now he becomes even more confident and then I put stress and pressure on him again. I get in his head, I rattle him a little bit and as soon as I see that I freeze. I don't put any more on, but I don't take any more off either because I don't want to reward him getting fucking a little squirrely and being in his head. So as soon as I do that, I wait

for him to counter in and it can be the most micro, you know, counter or aggression or indicator that he's bringing it forward. And the second he does that, I turn into a fucking gazelle and a lion's mouth and let him completely fucking dominate me. So that now he's like, fuck, that's what did it, you know, and just keep going back and forth, back and forth, overlapping those drives that way, ultimately conditioning the dog to be as strong as his genetics will allow him to be. His genetics are always going to dictate and determine how strong you can make that dog and how much pressure they can take.

There's going to be a limit to every dog. Some dogs can take a truck load. Some dogs, you know, you're tapped out a little shorter than that, or even a lot shorter than that. In terms of the growling question, that's gonna tell you a lot about how far you can get with a dog, and you're only gonna know once you start kinda navigating those areas,

pushing the envelope, putting pressure on them, seeing where they start to crack, and seeing how they develop through that. You go on to say that if a dog doesn't grow, it's gonna be a lot harder to get into his head and train him with the amount of confidence they have. Have you ever had a dog that either that didn't have a growling point or have you ever had a

dog or been trained in a dog that made you feel a little eerie? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, one kind of correction on that, and it's a small one, but you can still get in a dog's head without them growling. I mean, there's certainly times where I've been able to mind fuck a dog enough for them to be like, fuck this. And they didn't make a peep. Growing is usually accompanying that, but not always.

So just an important distinction to make to your question, yes, I've worked with a number of dogs that earlier on in my career, there was nothing I could do to fucking get in their head. I would say at this point, I think I would be hard pressed to find a dog where I can't get in their head, but there's two things with that that are important is that it's not fair because I'm wearing a fucking bite suit. So obviously that dog is at a fucking enormous disadvantage. If I take the bite suit off, then yeah, there's probably gonna be a shit load of dogs

that I can't get in their head because they're gonna fuck me up too bad, too fast for me to be able to continue to put that kind of pressure on them. But because I'm in the bite suit, even though it may hurt and bruise you up and pinch your skin and sometimes they even go through it, it's still, they can't really hurt me the way that I can hurt them, you know, so

because of that and just with the years and countless dogs that I've worked, you know, now I can flip that switch on pretty effectively and turn all of that violence and anger and aggression and presence and direct it right into that dog, real goddamn fast and make him think, holy shit, I don't want to fucking be around this guy. You know, and so, you know, it's a progression, I think, in people the same way it is with dogs, is that I've learned how to become way better at mind fucking dogs and intimidating them and getting in their head and making them realize, dude, this guy is here for bad fucking intentions and I don't want to be a part of this. Because they all have that limit. It just, some, it takes way more to get there than others.

Can you give us an example of a time maybe earlier on in your training days where maybe you'd made a mistake, maybe you didn't have the bite suit on and you were confronted and you were like, fuck, I don't know how the hell I'm going to get out of this. Yeah. So this was probably eight years ago. I had a dog in that I got for a friend of mine that wanted to, he had some security concerns and wanted a dog.

And so I picked this dog up. And within a matter of days, I was like, hey, man, this dog is too much dog for you. You know, he makes me fucking nervous. Makes my asshole, Parker, when I clip a leash to him, and he looks at me a little fucking cock at it, he's not the right dog for you. And, you know, long story short, he said,

you know, it is the right dog. Just I want the challenge. I need something fucking ASAP. And I was like, you know, as the expert, I'm telling you, like, this is going to become a problem. You know, no, no, I get it, you know, I'll sign a waiver, whatever, like, just I need to fucking dog now. And I was like, okay, but you know, six months from now, I don't call me and say my dog won't let me back in my fucking vehicle. And that's basically what happened. But anyway, just in the time that I had him,

he was walking into my garage and grabbed one of my kids. I was a brand new, expensive leather pair of cowboy boots and grab him and start trying to chew him up. And I'm like like fuck, you know, and I didn't want him to eat him and get sick or possibly fucking kill him. I didn't want him to destroy him either but I told him to let go and he didn't and I told him again I started kind of pop and leash and he kind of stiffened up and looked at me like mother fucker, you know, and just kept going at it. And so I grabbed his fucking collar and tried to choke him off of it. And he turned around and grabbed me in the wrist and fucking broke it.

Yeah. And as soon as he grabbed me, you know, that was the first time that a dog really fucking came after me with with anger. I mean, I'd had dogs before that that had come after me and broke skin and fucking opened me up and things. But this one, it was just a difference in mentality in the dog. Like, you could tell he was fucking angry about it. And I choked him unconscious. But I want to reiterate though, is that at that point as soon as his gum line was buried into my flesh, the every thought in my mind about being tough, intimidating, that I'm going to mind-fuck this dog, that I'm better than this dog, fucking evaporated. And all I could think about was how can I minimize the amount of damage that this little motherfucker is doing to me? You know, it took every fucking ounce of fight out of me.

And I just, you know, squatted down and smothered him and tried to keep him from moving and thrashing and damaging me even more. Grabbed his collar, rolled it, crisscrossed it, and lifted up and got him unconscious. And as soon as he let go, I released like that. And a couple seconds later, he went boom and fucking grabs it again. I was like Jesus fucking Christ. And at that point, I put him completely under for several seconds. And then I grabbed the leash, opened the door, put it on the inside of the door and I closed the door. So he was tied off, got back out of his range and then fucking sat down, I was pale face, fucking blood everywhere, and I was just, you know, knees wobbly, fucking shocky, like, oh my fucking

god, what happened? And it felt like, like my wrist had been fucking run over. I mean, it was just that pounding ball, pain hammer, you know, throb. And I was fucking rattled, you know, I'd be first to men. I was like, holy fucking shit. And so, you know, as one example, like, you know, again, without the suit, you know, imagine you've been bitten out, right? Yeah. Imagine not having that suit on and having that dog come do that to you. It feels with the suit on, it feels like your arms and a fucking vice with nails. Nails would be the pressure points. And I mean, shit, my fucking forearm is the bone. And so, you know, once you've been through that, it becomes very, very apparent, you know, and I think I'm glad that you went through that and that, you know, think about how

you thought it was going to be and now knowing what it is and now trying to explain it to somebody that's never been through it, like you really can't, you know, even if you say, yeah, that's what it feels like, like until you actually feel that, you don't really understand how capable they are. When they're standing six feet away and the way that they fucking look at you and Knowing how intense they're gonna come in and grab a hold you like you just can't really explain that to somebody You know until they've been through it, but taking it a step further now. That's what it is in the suit outside of the suit. You know again step further now, that's what it is in the suit, outside of the suit. You know, again, it's a fucking, it's a rough experience and it began for me.

It made me decide real quick that, you know, I'm not here to defeat the dog. I'm just trying to escape with as little damage as possible. Yeah. Mike, I want to talk about the bite a little bit later and how effective it is, but you do a really good job of kind of describing dog psychology and how it relates to humans. And one thing that really stuck out to me is you talk about how instinctive dogs are to picken up body language, because they don't speak, they don't think like we do, they don't have, they don't think with a voice. So pretty much all they have to pick up on is

body language and how much better they are at that than humans. So they get to go into that a little bit. Sure. So, you know, a lot of times you hear people talking about, you know, dogs can smell fear. And while yes, there is a hormonal shift that I think you could argue that there's some scent associated with that primarily, the way that dogs read people is through nonverbal communication and body language and a good,

I think way to look at the disparity in terms of how how much better they are than human beings are is it you know we think about this podcast as an example think about the amount of information that's been exchanged between us and the couple hours we've been sitting here body language has played a role in what we've talked about, but very little, comparative to, you know, the verbal exchange wordwise. And so if you think about, you know, you're at a Walmart parking lot, you can, you can see what kind of fucking day somebody's having by them walking across the parking lot, 300 yards away, having never met them, you know, not talking to them,

can't hear, hear them speaking if they are, but you have a good idea if that day is the most miserable day of that person's life, or if they're happy, or if they're in a hurry, or if they're confused, or they're frustrated, you can get a good idea of that from that far away with all of those intangibles. And think about, again, even though it's that easy for us to see that, that's not how we primarily communicate. Now with a dog, they don't talk at all the way that we do. You know, they don't have an internal monologue, they don't use logic and reason to figure

things out. So every interaction that they have with every other animal, every person, all of that shit is, you know, overwhelmingly nonverbal, you know, in body language. And so one of the problems you run into as a handler is queuing the dog, you know, and so they're picking up on something as simple as eye movement. You know, interact with your dog and just look, you know, looked like that.

And a lot of times you can get your dog to be like, what the fuck is it, you know, what is he looking at over there? Or think about the mood that you're in. You know, how many times have you been in a situation where you're frustrated at something as nothing to do with a dog, and your dog picks up on that and decides,

you know what I'm gonna go in the other fucking room? So they'll pick up on the most minute. Everything else. Everything. I mean, you know, again, as a handler, it's really difficult to be hyper aware enough to realize the things that you're doing. And it's basic shit. I'm not even talking about handling a dog as a canine handler. I'm talking about, you know, when you tell your dog to sit, a lot of times people will do that with their head.

Sit, you know, and they do that, or, you know, they'll tap their finger on their knee when they say, here or come or whatever, and not realize that they're doing their finger on their knee when they say, here or come, or whatever, and not realize that they're doing it, or move their head that way, you know, here, or whatever. There's all these little microgestures and nuances and body language that we as human beings do, that accompany what we say to them or what we mean or what we're trying to accomplish. And they pick up on that shit all the time. Another example is the context associated with it. You call your dog over and you have food in your hand. The next word out of your mouth,

if the dog knows sit or you think he knows sit, is gonna solicit a sit response from that and I encourage people to try it. Call your dog over that go through the same mechanism, the same routine that you always do before you tell your dog over that go through that the same mechanism is the same routine that you always do Before you tell your dog to sit but but use it completely fucking different word You know when it comes over say broccoli, you know and watch your dog fucking sit and look up at you like you told him sit You know and it's because you did all of the same fucking things and then went through the same queue and the same

Manorisms that you always do to tell the dog to sit same with grabbing a leash and connecting it to the dog and taking them for a walk, is that, you know, you're doing all these little things that are queuing the dog for them to understand that that's what it is. Now, how that relates to stuff like bite work and protection dogs and police dogs and things of that nature is that when people are angry and they're violent and they have an intent to harm, they do certain things. Human beings act a certain way. Cops are very good at reading body language appeal because they interact with people all

fucking day long and a few years into being a police officer, they all say the same thing. They get to the point where just interacting with somebody on a traffic stop, they all say the same thing. Like they get to the point where, you know, just interacting with somebody on a traffic stop, they know, you know, what the fuck, if that person's up to no good, or if they're just in a hurry, or they're having a shitty day, or they're legit fucking criminal, or whatever, how many times overseas were you somewhere?

And Yemen as an example, where you don't speak a lick of the fucking same dialect or language, but you know that motherfucker is a bad guy. You can just tell by looking at him, you know, same type of shit. And so with them, it's just, it's hyper focused that way. And they're absolute masters at reading body language. So when you're training and you're trying to reinforce behavior, it's really crucial that you are really aware of what you're doing

and focus on not doing certain things and trying to remove all of your body language so that you're shaping the behavior without influencing it non-burbley that way. Well, you know, I'm almost embarrassed to say, but until I started digging into your content, I had discredited a lot of that with dogs and not realizing how intelligent they actually

are, but will they actually pick up emotional facial expressions? Again, it's all part of a big puzzle, right? Is it the dog just like with, say, you walk into a restaurant restaurant, like are you just pinpointing one thing? No, the facial expressions are part of the context that exists, that paints the whole picture of the room. To answer your question, yes, but does that, is it just the facial expression? No, it's what else are you doing? What are you not doing? And so just like with people, dogs identify patterns and behavior, whether you even realize you're doing it or not. If you see somebody walking through, let's say the mall, and it's a middle-aged guy, and he's pale-faced and rubbed in the back of, well, there's his wife and his three daughters that are

driving him fucking nuts, that makes sense, right? Because that's the bigger picture. Whereas, if that guy is by himself and he's looking around and now it's like, who's this fucking guy? Or let's say he's at a park with kids, but he has no wife and no kids there. Like, that's way out of fucking place. So with them, it's that same kind of thing. Is that when things don't add up, that's when you see

them queue up on people and like, wait a minute. Let me size this motherfucker up. So they're just like with us, they walk into a restaurant, are we walking to a restaurant, they walk into a crowd or they're into a room filled with people. They're sizing everybody up. And if nothing is blaringly standing out, they'll fucking ignore it. They'll check, yeah, you have nothing's fucking going on, but this fucking squirrely guy, you know, that's fucking moving, you know, like he's on fucking drugs. Now I'm paying attention to this fucking guy, and so that's how they do it. And pet dogs are no different. It's just how they react to it, or, you know, the lack of what they're probably going to do about it is very different, but they still notice it. And that's where it comes into play probably going to do about it is very different, but they still notice it.

And that's where it comes into play with training your own dog, is just be hyper aware of what you're doing and focus on making sure that you're not influencing the dog. Unless that's what you wanna do in terms of teaching hand signals and shit like that. But have you ever attempted to train a dog without any verbal commands?

Oh yeah, I've worked with deaf dogs before. No shit. Yeah, and so in fact, I've had some clients that had deaf dogs and we use fucking flashlights. You know, so you take a surefire and the mark instead of the which a deaf dog is never going to fucking hear you flash a light and then do it. And so you're marking that behavior the same fucking way.

And then you're just teaching hand signals. So, you know, the thing is, it actually works the exact same fucking way. You know, is that, yeah, if the dog's not facing you, you can use a laser pointer or a flashlight with a tight beam on it, and you can flash it in front of his face, get his attention, then flash him and mark it that way. But the principle with how you're going to train him is the exact same way. And it's actually, I would say, probably even a little easier to train a deaf dog than it is, educate a deaf human being, because there's less for them to figure out that way. And the principles are a little more parallel that way,

because what you're teaching is just behavior and not stuff, like you are trying to teach a child, you know, arithmetic or how to read or fucking whatever. My wife gets migraines and she swears that when she gets migraines, one of the dogs comes up and lays on her head and I assumed it was not, yeah, you're sleeping. The dog probably just wants to take a nap with it,

but the dog will actually wrap her shell lay on her forehead. And I mean, what do you make of that? Did you smear peanut butter on her forehead before she laid down? No, maybe you should. I don't know. The 100%, you know, one of the addages we talk about in the industry, and it's usually more about being nervous or amped up is that your emotion travels down the leash and it absolutely fucking does. You know, now when I caveat that with, it's more about

all of the other things that you're doing in conjunction with feeling that is that I have no doubt if you videotaped her. The next time she had a migraine and went to lay down, videotaped what she does, how she does it versus when she just goes to bed normally. It's going to be very different. I'm sure there are a number of things that she doesn't do, but the way that she normally would to go lay down in bed. Brush her teeth, get into a fucking night again, whatever it is, slap you around.

I don't know. Put a suction cup dildo on your forehead. You only happen sometimes. But maybe you need a better routine. I don't know. But, you know, so my point is, is that, you know, you get into a routine that you do it every time before you go to bed and so the dogs pick up on that. So when you do something outside of that,

that's gonna be that cue to the dog that, well, this is fucking different. You know, she just went and laid down, but didn't do X, Y, and Z in conjunction with, you know, just acting different. You know, your eyes are closed while you're fucking sitting there, or, you know, you look like you're in pain,

or maybe you make, you know, really almost hard, hard for anybody else to hear or pick up on little noises like just that you know or fucking you know grunts and groans and shit like that that they pick up on. There's so many little fucking things that again that you that most people don't realize that they do that the dogs pick up on and the absence of those things are every bit as much of an indicator as the presence of certain things. So if you do something the same way every time and now some of that thing is, some of that routine is missing, that's going to make the dog pay attention.

On the transverse, you do something the same way every time and now there's several more steps into the end of the routine, the dogs and be like, well, what the fuck is that? So you can almost always reverse engineer when a dog does something that you're like, wait a minute, why is the dog doing this? It's different, or even if it's predictable, is that you can walk or work your way backwards and figure out why the dog is doing what they're doing most of the time. Well, this is fucking interesting because if you're saying that dogs will react off emotion, off the human emotion and body language, you know, getting into, or I wasn't planning on going here, but service dogs are huge for guys coming home with PTSD.

Now, I know that my dog will react differently when I'm fucking pissed off around the house. You know, if somebody ruins my fucking day, I know my dog knows that because he won't come around. You know, so I guess my question would be for somebody that has severe PTSD and is constantly very aggressive and you know, maybe a little short tempered, maybe a lot short tempered, but always on edge. And they're giving these dogs out for, as therapy, as to help with PTSD. How do those dogs react to that kind of stress that's consistently displayed all fucking day long, all week, all year, you know, four years.

Yeah, I mean, there's two things. One is for sure it's taxing on them. It's no different than putting a working dog to work and that it's, you know, it's going to be work for the dog. The biggest thing is in the selection, is in finding a super social dog that is relatively unimpacted by that, because there are some, just those happy, go lucky dogs, that whether it's a combination of not being that intuitive as to anger or temper or things that nature are being so confident, such a good resting character, such a low drive from a working

capacity dog that they're not reactive towards any fucking thing. So a dog like that is a great fit for that. I mean, I get asked all the fucking time, like, hey, same thing, like, hey, man, I did fucking nine tours and I got PTSD, and I want to get a service dog. Is that something you do? No, I don't. Everything that makes a good dog, a good dog for what I train for makes them a horrible fucking service dog on the transverse, all the things that make a great service dog,

a great service dog make them a terrible fucking working dog. So, you know, to your question, it's really about finding the temperament that's appropriate for that to where they're not super reactive, they're not super, you know, high charged in terms of being startled by things or being super keen to every little fucking movement, you know, a low prey saying a service dog maybe isn't as intuitive as a working dog. Probably not. How the fuck are they? I mean, they're the ones I've seen are externally well trained. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, their training is training.

You know, your respective of what the level of drive is. You can always find things to motivate a dog. Sometimes it's, you can always find things to motivate a dog. Sometimes it's food, sometimes it's attention, sometimes it's the lack of interaction dogs that don't like it. I wouldn't probably put a dog that doesn't particularly like attention and affection in a service dog home, but training is repetition and reinforcement. You know, training is repetition and reinforcement, you know, just pans down, you know. So, you know, I wouldn't say that those are related in terms of, well, if the dog isn't maybe as intuitive as it relates to emotion or drive or things of that nature, that they

couldn't make a good service dog, or I would even take it a step further and say that their intuition relies more on certain types of human emotion than it does reacting to social competition, i.e. this human is showing aggression and dominance and challenge towards me and so I'm going to rise up and challenge and fucking back. That would obviously be the last dog you would want to put with somebody who's fucking angry a lot. So it just needs to be a socially more submissive dog that has no fucking resource guarding that's not socially challenging, that's not super reactive, that is still environmentally very, very fucking stable and confident enough to not be threatened by somebody who's angry.

It's a tough build to find a dog. It's truly remarkable and all that. The same way it's really difficult for me to find a dog that has all of the working characteristics, but will still integrate into a normal household well. I mean, I go through several dogs to find the right dog for the family application. And I suspect that most of the service dog trainers out there probably do the

same thing. They have the luxury of going to a shelter and maybe finding good candidates there because they're looking for a specific skill set that isn't funneled working drives. It's just amicability and, friendliness and compatibility. So, they're very specific skill sets. They're just very, very different in terms of, you know, they're on polar ends of the spectrum in terms of drive. Okay, that makes sense. You know, continuing on with psychology of the dogs.

You mentioned a lot in all of your content as well about how a dog is not happy unless it has a fucking purpose and it's working. And what I want to say is, I think just saw it. And my marketing guy picked up on it when we were filming me in the bite suit when when Duke ran up the hill and about took my arm off. But when he was when he came down, I was talking to him because it was barking. And as I said, man, I can't believe, you know, a

dog like that, you wouldn't expect like a high pitch bark. I was expected more of a deep, honestly, to be honest with you, a little more intimidating of a bark. Now, the dog is very fucking intimidating. But the dog, so John said, you know, hey, you know, the dog actually sounds pretty fucking happy. And then I thought about, you know,

all the different things that you would said. And I was like, well, shit, you know, even though the dogs about ready to eat me for fucking lunch and attack me, he's doing what he's trying to do. He's working right now. And even though his work is obviously very violent, he was happy. So is that why do they do dogs have different barks? Do they have a deep bark and a high-pitched bark or is a dog's bark pretty much same all the time? No, it's very significantly. I mean, if you had to pinpoint or parallel the dog's language is that's it. You know, they're they're bark and what it sounds like, again, is a window into where their mind is at. Today is a classic textbook example of a prey bark. And at the risk

of getting to into the weeds, prey relieves stress for a dog. You know, when a dog is in prey drive, 100% they're happy. They're excited. They're fucking motivated. And that's why you get that high-pitched fucking bark. And I asked you earlier, did you hear him bark last night when I took him out late? And you said, yeah, I think so. I don't know if you noticed what that sounded like in comparison to what it sounded like today. It was the exact opposite of what you heard today.

And it was because the Alpaca movement down at the barn in the dark, it was the most thunderous, I mean, echoed in the entire goddamn valley. I mean, it sounded like Ceribris getting his fucking vocal cords butt-fucked. I mean, like, it was the deepest, most guttural fucking intimidating, like, shake your goddamn soul bark that I've heard out of him ever. Really? Because he wasn't sure what the fuck it was, and there's a little bit of nerve in there. So when a dog has a guttural deep super low fucking bark, that means he's trying to fucking intimidate you similar to a growl. Okay. And many times when you see a dog, what you won't see is in the bite work where there's that high-pitched bark, you'll never see any hair up on the dog ever. Last night when he barked like that, his hackles were up a little bit, which I don't particularly like to see. But, you know, every dog is going to show a little bit of that sometimes.

There is a benefit to having a little edge like that, a little defensiveness. A dog that's so fucking confident that nothing ever worries them is a hard dog to put into defense because they never feel that way. A lot of times, pit bulls are that way. That's why most of the time pit bulls, even though they have crazy high prey drive, and bite like a motherfucker, is that they're terrible protection

and police dogs from an apprehension standpoint most of the time, because they're so goddamn confident, almost to the point where they're stupid confident, is that you almost can't get them to fucking worry about anything in a bad way Just like with most things in life and that there needs to be a healthy balance You want a dog that you can put into defense But you don't want a dog that goes into defense so fucking quick that they're reactive and nervy and edgy and biting the wrong

Fucking people for not doing something that's justified being bitten for To your questions slash point. It's neat that you pick that up, but yes, there are two disparate different barks and dogs, and that's when you see them. And again, as an owner, a trainer, a handler, what have you, it's important to log that mentally, say, well, when we're in this environment, I notice a prey bark out of them. I see the same thing. Let me cover the other side. When you're doing certain things and you hear a defensive bark,

log that too and realize the different stimuli that elicit a deep defensive fucking defense bark as well and know the difference and know kind of the dog's threshold of what elicits both of those. One of the things that people will say, like the dog's in a crate and a kid runs by any barks, that's a big indicator again, is that a high-pitched prey bark because there's just movement or is it a gutter or a low bark, a gutter or a low bark for kids running back and forth would be a huge fucking red flag for me. If I was going to put a dog in a house with kids or something like that. I don't particularly want to see a prey bark, but I can manage that and condition the

dog to ignore that much more than a dog that feels threatened and has a gutter-old deep defensive bark with something that he shouldn't have. Again, it's one piece of the puzzle that for somebody in my position or really anybody trying to evaluate and getting to know your dog better is that those things are windows into the dog's fucking mind as to what they think about the different stimuli that they come in contact with. Well, you mentioned Prairie Drive, and that's exactly where I want to move into next. You talk about it and you talk about it a ton and the different levels of prey drive. And can a dog have, I mean, you kind of just said it,

I believe with the Bipples, but can a dog have too much prey drive? What is the right amount you're looking for when you train a dog? So for police, military, even personal protection work, I want a significant amount. On the personal protection dog side, I like dogs with a little less. They still need to have it. They still need to have enough to want to play ball and if I'm cracking a whip or a decoys running away, that incites them, but it's far more manageable.

For a military working dog or police dog, scale a one to ten. Fucking twelfth. On a prey drive, you want a twelve. Yeah, I want as much as I can fucking get out of them. Absolutely. I want it to be bordering on unmanageable. Okay. And here's why is that when I talk about doing the overlapping of prey and defense in bite work and building that stress threshold, of prey and defense in bite work and building that stress threshold. So again, prey relieve stress. So when the dog is in prey drive, they're happy, they're fucking emboldened, they're enjoying it, they're driven, firing on all cylinders. When you start to put them into defense drive, that's when now stress starts to build, and

you can see it, their pupils will dilate. Their lips move different, their tail may set down a little lower. Excuse me, their ears may move in different, be pinned back more than I'd like to see. They may stiffen up, they may get a little chewy in their grip, they may seem like they're not sure, they may start getting whalied and looking around. They'll do all these different things, and you'll know that when you're at the point where

if you put really any more pressure on them that they're going to crack and it's going to be counterproductive, that's when you freeze. And again, you don't back off, you just don't put any more on and then you let them make that decision. Now, once they make the decision to come back and come forward, then now I go back into pray. And for me to go into pray, that's high pitch screaming on my end. That's flailing around and moving. That's turning my head away. That's letting them push me back.

All of the things that you see predatory in the animal kingdom across the board, what do predators do? Well, they don't fucking scream. You know, think of a lion stalking something. It's not making any fucking noise. Fears fucking eye contact, you know crouching down slow methodical very fucking calculated movement, right? So that's gonna put a dog in defense because you're doing Predatorial body language to him. So that's gonna raise the stress in the dog that's combating you

Once he shows me that he wants to fight me now I turn into the fucking gazelle. I scream, I flop around, I let him physically dominate me. That relieves all of that stress by putting him back into prey drive and bolden some and conditions him to work through that. And so, understanding that is really the key concept for bringing the most out of a bite dog while you're working them in that capacity. To your question about why I want that kind of prey drive, the higher that is, the more I can use that

to help the dog through stressful situations by relying on his ridiculous fucking prey drive. I've seen some dogs with prey drive so high that it almost didn't matter if they had a defensive side to them or not because they were so fucking keyed up on something and so retarded about chasing something to where if you just condition them to go through your series, you know, whether it's grabbing their collar,

slapping them on the ribs and and making a preparatory command, or whatever is that you go through that. Now the dog knows whatever's standing in front of me is it their prey drive is so fucking high that when they go in there, they can run through a goddamn barbed wire fence, it could be a building that's on fire, and they don't even realize it

because their drive is so high, it's carrying them through all of that shit. And so for, if it's just a working application, yes, I want as much fucking prey drive as I can possibly find in a dog, a dog like Duke, it's a fucking 11. You know, it's really fucking high. That dog wants to chase absolutely fucking everything.

And so when he's biting you, there's a lot of things you can do to him that he's not even in a fucking notice. No different than you in a street fight, right? Is it when it's, you know, when you're in that mentality and you don't feel pain quite the same way because you're so loaded and fucking drive to do what you're doing, you know, they're very much in that same mentality when their drive is really high that way. Well, for the home protection dog scale, I'm one to 10, what are you looking for, Prairie Drive?

Like a five or six. A five or six. Yeah, I mean, to me, that's a very nuanced, like it's kind of a gut feeling, or you get a sense of how reactive and how driven they are. And I want just enough to be able to train them what I want them to do Just enough to be able to overlap drives and build their threshold and make them

able to put up with some shit in the bite work, but that's it, you know, okay a dog like Duke as an example to get him to where kids could play soccer in front of him and him just lay down and fucking watch it, would be almost fucking impossible. You can do it, but I mean, it would take an absurd amount of conditioning and training that you would have to maintain fucking constantly to have him in an environment like that where he's not just losing his goddamn mind watching that. Think about that dog now in a household with three kids under the age of five.

Like, that's a fucking nightmare. You know, so it's just like with finding the right dog for military and police application selection is everything. One of the things that seal training has taught me, I've transferred over into dogs very much that same way, it buds as a selection process and it's really fucking good at what it does. And so I take that same approach and that my selection process is almost fucking impossible. It's absurdly difficult for me to say yes, this dog passes for whatever, you know, fucking capacity I want them to work in and I keep my standards supremely high

because that's going to make my job easier to train them and I keep my standards supremely high because that's going to make my job easier to train them and it's going to make the end user's life way fucking easier for the application that they actually have them in. Wow. Well, if you have a dog like Duke with a very, very high prey drive, I'm just curious, once he has his prey, once he's got his bite, say you don't stop him. How long is it? How long is that going to go on? You know, I mean, is it good? Yeah, I mean, it's fucking, I mean, really, I'm telling you, stop him or the dog is so exhausted, he just can't

go anymore. So it's he will go into physical exhaustion. Absolutely. We'll use it. And there's there's, you know, times where that that can happen. You know, I know people that, you know, their own dogs turned on them, you know, they were really nasty fucking dogs or whatever. And the dog reacted, you know, whatever the circumstances were. And, you know, they were they were battling out for 45 fucking minutes with their dog or instances and police applications where because of the environment that the dog is in I'll give you in a gory fucking example is that it was a warehouse is a robbery suspect police showed up had a dog they saw

the guy go into some ventilation duct that was you know about whatever fucking 20 inches 24 inches you, big enough to crawl in, but not near big enough to turn around. And he's in this fucking warehouse. They know he's in there. Well, they sent the dog in after him. So the dog came in after him and got him in his fucking hamstring and ass area, because that's what was there.

And for the better part of an hour, literally ate his fucking ass. I mean, the guy was unconscious. Shaki from the bottom of his ass to the back of his knee was just fucking bone. Do they always stay in one section? It depends. A lot of it's going to depend on, you know, in a situation like that, yeah, because that's really all that's accessible. But it took, you know, the police, you know, a fucking long time to be able to get up there

and cut the duct out and get both in the doghouse. I mean, they almost killed the guy. High drive dog, you know, only one spot to focus on. So yeah, it's a fucking worst case scenario. Now, let's say where you were at if it was just you out in the woods and the dog got got a hold of you and for whatever reason, you know, the dog got loose from somebody or whatever, just there was nobody to intervene. A lot of it's gonna depend on what you do, what you don't do, how much open terrain there is, you know, how much movement there is, you know,

when I was telling you to give them a little bit of movement, if you sit there and just are totally still and frozen like this, he may, after a few minutes, let go and grab you somewhere else, you know, if you pass out from shock and are face down, yeah, he's probably gonna, and has just unfettered access. He's gonna work you over until he's exhausted

and he may go several spots. He may stick to one spot. It's just, you know, there's a lot of variables there that are gonna kind of dictate some of it as the dog, some of it's the environment, some of it's the person. Damn. Well, moving into, you know, the bite, you call it bite force, which I can't wait to talk about today

when I was out there, even with that suit on, I mean, that's a fucking intimidating, you know? And I wasn't so intimidated about him bite my arm, but I'll tell you man, I was fucking nervous as shit. And I wasn't as I wasn't so intimidated about him bite my arm, but I'll tell you man, I was fucking nervous as shit that he was gonna miss my arm and grab my throat or anything that wasn't covered by the bite suit because when he did bite, I mean, you'd mentioned it before several times, you know, people that think, oh, you know,

just punch the fucking dog or kick him or strangle him or whatever. And that isn't going to work. And I figure that out real fast. They're not letting go. It's like a vice with nails in it. And it's a constant pressure. That pressure, if it does let up, it's only because it's about to be more pressure. So he didn't let up, maybe for like a split second, you know, and we'll roll the tape and you can see it maybe for like a split second, and we'll roll the tape and you can see it on screen.

But every time there was just that fraction of a second where he let up, it was because he was getting more leverage and more leverage and find, and it seemed like he was finding like a sweet spot to where he could get the maximum amount, maximum amount of force on my arm and tell you we're there to get him off. But so anyways, I was at Asshole that thought,

you know, that thought that now you've made me a believer. And I've heard you describe it, it's like a fucking chain saw. Yeah, so, you know, the thing to keep in mind is that even with that suit on the amount of pressure that you feel gives you a healthy respect for it, but when there's not, you know, that preventative measure from, you know, fucking tooth going gum deep into your flesh. And just, I mean, it is. It's the mechanics of the teeth into your flesh

and the disparity in hardness coupled with the force behind their jaw while they're doing it. And then anywhere from 50 to 90 pounds of body weight, shaking and moving on top of that, it is. It's no different than, you know, fucking spikes going into your fucking arm and somebody treating it like a goddamn joystick is that it's going to do a ton of damage. And so the one thing that's very common is people say, or they ask, you know, how hard

does a dog bite? You know, like, what's the PSI behind it? And it will fuck it depends. It's like saying, how hard does a dog bite? You know, like, what's the PSI behind it? And it will fuck it depends. It's like saying how hard does a human being punch? It's like, well, some of them will fucking rip your head off and some of them, you know, it may hurt but it's not gonna knock you out and everything in between.

All of these dogs bite hard enough to fuck you up. You know, some of them bite way harder than others. I mean, there's some that'll break your fucking bones. I mean, I've been a victim of that more than once. You know, some of them, you know, much less than others. I mean, there's some that'll break your fucking bones. I mean, I've been a victim of that more than once. Some of them, much less than that, some of them even harder than that. But the overall bite force is magnified dramatically by the fact that it's not just the pressure with a flat surface. It's spikes in serrated triangles going into soft flesh and then being moved around and tugged on and things of that nature. So It is a very violent process. Now I will say from a training standpoint and you talked about it a little bit is that You know that the split seconds that he led up you felt that that he was getting deeper and there was kind of a sweet spot one of the things that we teach

In the in the bite or call so. One of the things that we teach in the in the bite work also, another layer of it is that when they're biting, if they're grabbing real shallow, they're not going to be as strong. No different than if you try to grab my wrist like this. Towards the first, like that, you're going to have way more leverage by getting as much of my wrist in your in your possible. And so they understand that inherently, but to take it a step further is that because the suit is on, I don't want a dog being reinforced to just have suit material where you can't feel them. And so when I'm in a bite suit, I wear the thinnest bite suit that I can possibly stand with no gauntlets or wraps or anything underneath. And if I can't feel him, I won't give him any fucking pray movement to reinforce or reward that bite.

I'll be boring and whatever. And wait for him to counter in and go deeper and find me. That way, if whether the guy is fucking naked or wearing a North Face Puffy jacket, and a car heart shell over top of it, is that the dog is gonna bite until he finds you. And when he finds you, that's when he gets rewarded because that the dog is going to bite until he finds you. And when he finds you, that's when he gets rewarded because that's what that's what

it needs to be. Because if you have a dog that, and you can imagine, you got a big loose fucking flowing puffy jack and he just grabs material and is tugging, well, now that doesn't hurt, right? So that's not really neutralizing in. And now you can fuck the dog up. So I don't want the dog just grab and shit and pull on it. Sometimes you do see police dogs that have been trained that way unfortunately and I disagree with it anytime

I do seminars or workshops or conferences with any departments I always you know explain why I disagree with that and from a attack standpoint I want the dog searching for fucking bone and I want him to get as much of it as mouth as possible because that's going to give him the best chance at getting out of that situation alive and ultimately neutralizing that threat. But the bite pressure is one of those things that, I wouldn't say it's controversial, but it's a big ticket item in the dog industry because everybody wants to know how hard the fucking dog bites. But again, the short answer is they all bite hard enough to fuck you up when you don't have a big,

big puppy suit on. Yeah, well, I don't know how the fuck you relate PSI pain, but if anybody does want to know how hard a dog bites, you can go to my grill and then I'm sure I'd be happy to show you. But short answer is fucking hard. Yeah. That's interesting though. So the reward, the dogs reward is the struggle. So, I think that's what you're saying. So if you're not struggling, they're going to find the spot

that makes you fucking struggle. And so, somebody were to pass out going to shock and pass out or maybe fucking blood loss, I don't know. And there is no more movement. Are they still going to look for that reward and just eat your entire body? Well, yeah. So again, I hate to say it depends every fucking every question, but the struggle equaling the reward example I want to talk about that for a second is that, you know, have you ever played tug of war with a dog? Yeah. So, you know, when you, if you stop tugging, what does the dog do?

It gets bored. But if it's a dog that really wants to play, will they tug harder? Yeah. So, if in these dogs, it's, you know, at a super high level of that. So, yes, they'll get bored and they may start to tug harder. And if there's still nothing, then that's when they may let go. And we'll let me try it here then. And now I'm going to dig the shit out of that and shake the fuck out of it.

And it's not there. Okay, well, let me try here then. And they'll, they may move around. And again, if you're unconscious and you have no fucking suit on, you're going to turn into a human fucking pin cushion that way. If the dog gets a little bored and is trying to get you to squirm and squeal. And so, you know, that struggle is more about the dog understanding that they're causing pain and inflicting harm and things of that nature. If you've ever watched a cat with a mouse, you know, they kind of play with it.

And when it's squealing and screaming, like it emboldens the cat and they fuck with it harder and want it to scream even more, you know, most animals unfortunately are a little fucking twisted that way. And that, you know, it makes them feel powerful when they grab things and they squirm and shake and scream and it just further incites that prey instinct to capture and possess quarry or prey or whatever. So, you know, it's just, again, understanding that concept, you can use that to your advantage to ultimately use that as a reinforcement component while you're doing by or to reward the bite behavior. They're not even necessarily related. It's just

understanding that this makes the dog feel good, removes a lot of the fucking stress that he's under by me being, you know, in his head, and ultimately in insights further fucking prey drive by doing it. So I'm going to use that when the dog finds me in the suit and counters in or if I put pressure on him and he comes forward, I'm going to use that prey instinct that he has to my advantage by rewarding him for it so that I get that behavior more and more often or in a greater capacity. Damn, you know, I see a lot of these pictures on the gram and I've seen a couple of videos and of dogs on target overseas, you know, in the Middle East.

And these fucking dogs, I mean, look like they just ate an entire man. I mean, blood all over their face, blood all over the jacket, blood, I mean, literally dripping out of their fucking mouth. And where do you train these dogs to bite? So it's a great question. And I think a lot of people think that the dog will, you know, go for the throat or the

crotch or fucking anywhere. What I like to do is two things is I like to give the dog a front target and a rear target in terms of a human being is that if they are coming towards somebody facing them, I train them to come into the into the left bicep area or if the person puts either of their hands in front of their face then they get the exterior of whatever forearm. If they put both, it's just one of the two of them. If it's from the back, and the dog is running fast, typically it'll be the right tricep, which facing a human being.

That's basically the same spot the dog is going to the top right fucking corner of the human being. Sometimes if it's, you know, a transporter or a, you know, that it's walking and it's a quick movement, then then it may go into the back right, right knee. Again, logistically, if if it's not, you know, a prey scenario where somebody's running and flaying at a high speed, and they're in real close, then then a lot of times the dog will go low or will have them go low depending on what they can get to or not. So they're looking for the first thing that's presented. Sort of. I mean early on we'll do what we call stapling the dog on, like you'll grab them by the jowls and place them on that fucking spot and do it over and over until

they naturally go there. And I do think that it's important to teach a dog to target certain areas, plural, not just one. If you teach a dog to target one fucking area, and that's all they ever do, and then that's taken away from them. A lot of times dogs will be confused, and they may just sit there barking at them, and because they're like,

what the fuck is, doesn't compute. So I do like to do, you know, top and bottom, at least give them a few different target areas, but then also teach them past that. Once that's dialed in, then also put them in positions where, let's say you brought the dog up here, and I'd put somebody face down, ask up behind that chest right there with both their legs sticking out, is that the dog may come in at the side of the thigh. And if they come in confused at first, then I would come grab the dog, I'd pull him back and kind of let him almost fuck with him and have the guy move his leg and move it up and down and insight that prey drive,

get him fired up and let him go pull him back, let him go pull him back, and then finally let him go or staple him on and get him to take that. Because you may run into a scenario, and a police or military application or even personal protection, where somebody's hanging out of a fucking window, or they're under a vehicle, or I showed that picture of one of the police dogs I sold that grabbed a guy underneath a wheel well of a big fucking cement truck or whatever, and that was the first thing that it came to and they grabbed it. So you want to do both, you know, teach targeting at first, but then also teach the dog that in situations where it can't get to one of those targeting areas, that it will take whatever the fuck is there.

I mean, those bites are, it's down to the bone. It's not like a little pen hole, It's several holes in your flesh down to the fucking bone. I mean, you can see the tendons and damn, you know, like I said, I've never worked with dogs overseas, but I have talked to guys that have said that there are times where they won't even make room entry to go if they're after like an HVT or something and they will just send the dog in. And a lot of times that person may actually just come out if they announce, hey, if you don't come out, we're not coming in, but we're gonna send the fucking dog in. And I've heard from several different guys that a lot of times that person fucking actually come out

because they don't want anything to do with the dog because rumors out that they are, you know, that fucking vicious. Are these dogs getting kills? I mean, it's happened a few times, but it's really a classic example of what I just talked about in that environmentally, the situation terrain wise and the environment could combine presented the situation where that's just where the dog happened to come in on entry. And you know, the person's throat was there or something of that nature. I've heard of instances of, you know, if it's an older, really skinny guy,

and it's a big fucking long snouted hard bite and motherfucker that gets him, you know, in the thigh, where, you know, it'll break a femur and several femoral artery,oral artery, something of that nature, but those are very rare instances. The dogs of all of the apprehensions that happen nationwide, worldwide, whatever you're talking about, a fraction of a fraction of a percentage, they're really anomalies and fluke kind of things. The dogs aren't taught to go after throats or nuts or anything like that.

They're generally taught to target external limbs. Oh, that, you know, so extremities. Yeah, but, you know, again, sometimes, you know, if they get somebody bad enough and they bleed out or, you know, the person's got a heart condition and they're on fucking drugs or something like that. Maybe it induces a heart attack. But again, those are very, very rare instances where something like that happens. I would kind of equate it to a taser. They're both non-lethal means of apprehension. Have there been people that have died after being tased? Yes, but it's very fucking rare. Maybe it causes a heart attack or they fucking stiffen up and they fall and they

hit their head on a fucking curb and whatever, but it still dogs overwhelmingly are considered and I would consider them non-lethal means of apprehension. I mean, even just the fact that you said that I'll you're trying to dogs to hit, uh, and hear, you know, and then or bicep, I mean, fuck, to break your lottery, you know, and, uh, and, uh, from what I felt in a fucking bite suit, that dog would have been in my break your lottery or an artery in about, fucking point two seconds. Yeah. But, well, this is sucking in. Kind of wrapping up by force. What is the worst bite you've ever seen from a dog?

Probably the one that Benny talked about. His dog, Digo, was in Iraq and it was an ambush scenario where they were understanding you know, understanding that they were about to be ambushed and they sent the dog. And just the way that the, it was like a palm grove or something like that, and they had some sandbag set up where it was just kind of a little gun port. The barrel sticking out of it kind of aimed down and the guy was behind it sitting, you know, with his face and neck right through that gunport and Dego air-centered him came flying through and jammed his muzzle right through the fucking air,

the port there. And that's just where the dude's face. And so just, because that's what was there, he shot in right on his fucking throat. I was there to see it. In terms of stories that I've heard, when they came up, the guy was already basically unconscious and probably dead or almost dead. And it sounded like the dog was breaking fucking celery in the esophagus and just fucking mutilating that shit.

Degos are pretty hard-biting dog and been pretty forward in that manner too. So again, in a situation like that where it's kind of a fluke thing, that's pretty, pretty gnarly, you know, but you know, the femur, another story of a guy, again, it was a thin older guy. The dog was a big hard bite and 90 pound fucking,

got a long muslin' got in on his inner thigh and broke his femur and and guy passed out and it you know fucked him up pretty bad. You know things like that aren't uncommon. I mean the dog that showed you that picture of the I mean I still have a pretty good size scar on my forearm or the dog bit all the way through the bite suit and flayed my fucking forearm open. That dog was a was a law enforcement dog here in the United States that had, I don't know, 15, 16 live bites, I think, and they were all fucking gruesome because it was just that hard biting of a dog. One of them was a bit the guy in the back of his leg, he was hidden in a fucking tree stump. The first party got to is right behind the knee, upper calf area, and peeled his entire

fucking calf muscle completely off of his leg. Again, just like the ductwork scenario is that it was just from the back of his knee, it was a kille's tendon, it was just fucking bone and nothing else there. When you get a dog that's angry, that bites that hard, that is well trained and has some time to work that person over wherever they grab is generally going to be fucking destroyed. So, yeah. Well, that's some pretty gruesome shit. Talk shit, get bit, all right. Like, like I saw, I shirked with that on it.

I think it was your shirt. But hey, let's take quick commercial break and when we come back, we'll pick up. I got a great question. So... I hope you guys are enjoying the show. I think this is a pretty good one. Hit pause, go over to vigilancelete.com, pick yourself up one of these sweet shirts. And if you're lucky, maybe these hats will be ined too.

Alright, we're back from the break and I kind of want to get into some of the tactics and stuff that these dogs are doing. And you know, back to your book, I was listening to it and it made me realize that the dogs are, I mean, they're essentially, they're a fucking, they're a part of the team. And you had rattled off a lot of the things that they do and it made me realize that these dogs are actually, they seem like they're fucking actual operators. Yeah. Um, you know, when, when you, when you list them all out like that together, I mean, they repel, they jump out

of planes, they swim, they attack, they track people. Um, repelling, jumping, fast-roping, swimming, all that shit. One thing I'm curious about is if they do send a dog in and say it is an HVT situation for those of you that don't know what an HVT is. It's a high value target, and that's somebody that's high on the kill list. I thought it was huge vagina tunnel. Is that what it is? I thought that's what it was. I've been fucking this informed. But if a dog makes entry, and they are looking for an HVT and there are civilians that don't

the innocence, is there a way the dog actually fucking knows, do they have any level of target identification? There are instances where they've displayed that and it's I think it speaks more to the intuition of the dogs or the intuition of the dog and their level of confidence in terms of knowing what's threatening versus not. It was a great story of a handler that shared with me that they sent the dog in and you know they did a call out basically where you know hey everybody fucking come out the person that they wanted to come out didn't come out and this

fucking shit bag I think was a mother left their fucking newborn baby like in a little fucking bassinet or whatever on the floor in one of the rooms. And there were other grown men in there, whatever. But long story short, the dog went in, located the baby sniffed it and fucking kept moving. Wow. And ended up in going and biting the right guy. Now for me, that's less about target identification because they have no real concept of that. I think that's more of the context of never fucking,

you know, going after little children, you know, and in thousands or hundreds of training scenarios of always biting, grown fucking men that are displaying aggressive tendencies, etc. But also a dog being confident enough to walk into a room be like, you know, no different than you see dogs that are pretty nasty with adults or good hunting dogs or even good protection dogs that'll let a puppy fuck with them and bite them and nip at them and they'll kind of roll over and play with them. Dogs aren't fucking dumb. And so they know

what's worth being worried about or not most of the time. To your question, again, there have been instances where they did a remarkable job at discerning women and children and non-combatants and people just kind of fucking milling about and ignoring the dog and whatever and going after somebody that had the intent. I think it's more about that is that if there's a room filled with 10 fucking grown men and one of them has a machine gun and is angry and waiting for American forces to come through

because he wants to kill him. There's going to be a very different fucking vibe coming off of that guy than the other nine that are scared, shitless, and have no weapons and have no ill intent. I think it's more about that than it is anything else. Okay. But there are instances of the dog going in and just nuking the first motherfucker that they come in contact with. That happens also.

So there's just a lot going on and there's not a cookie cutter answer to that really. Okay. Maybe I don't know. It may seem like a kind of a weird question, but from where I was at two weeks ago, before I kind of started researching it, where I'm at now. Now I'm on the complete opposite end of the spectrum where I'm starting to realize just exactly how fucking capable these dogs are. And, you know, where's the limit? You know, where do the capabilities end? Yeah. But I'm still trying to figure that out. But, you know, kind but for the handlers, when I'm going to relate this to a J-Tack, and sometimes guys will take credit for a kill.

More times than not, I think it's multiple guys that shoot the target or the, you know, the threat. And so essentially it's not one person that takes credit for a kill. An exception being J-Tax, you know, if they call in a fast mover or, you know, direct air support and get, I don't know, 100 fucking kills. A lot of times a J-tag that says he takes credit for that, you know, maybe even more so than the pilot. And I've heard on several of your podcasts,

you'll say this dog, particular dog, got a bite or the handler got a bite. And so I'm kind of wondering if that is, I'm kind of wondering if that is kind of the same kind of accomplishment, you know, maybe a portrait of words, I don't know, but fuck it, who gives a shit. Is a bite, you know, is it kill, you know, like I killed that person. There's a handler and you know, he gets credit for the bite. And is it, um, is it on the same level? It absolutely is.

I mean, that's, that's kind of the, the measuring stick of, of handlers, you know, dick measuring their dog versus, you know, I got fucking 16 bites or 50 bites or the stag at over 100 bites, you know, or whatever. Same thing with either drug finds or explosive finds like, yeah, stag found, fucking 97 IEDs on this deployment or whatever. So for sure, it's a measuring stick, but I also think that just like with most operators is they realize that, you know, a lot of times people are just in the right place, the right time, and they're presented with opportunities that a lot of other handlers aren't Most people realize that you know, just like like I said most operators realize well

It's fucking this platoon at this team got fucking you know 400 fucking kills in this deployment It's like, you know, they were in the right fucking place the right time whereas you know this group maybe got six Yeah, you know, so there is some of that as well, but this group maybe got six. So there is some of that as well, but to your question, yes, absolutely the number of bites and finds are a point of pride in bragging rights and a bit of a measuring stick for handlers, absolutely.

Okay. Do you think this traumatizes the dogs at all after being in service or is this, I mean, do they, does it affect them like humans, you know what I mean? It does, or it can. It's a little different in that it's generally a negative association with a certain stimulus. So it could be gunfire, it could be helicopter noises, it could be the sound of, you know,

tank turret, I mean, fucking, just like with, you know, the way that we teach them to do certain things through repetition is that they can learn to be stressed out by certain things, you know, no different than dogs with, you know, thunder. It may start out as the first time they ever heard it startled them, but then now every time they heard it, the next 30 fucking times it startled them, and now it's, you know, created into this, or it's been created into this monstrosity in terms of a dog completely shutting down and blowing its anal glands when it thunders

because they're so scared of it, it's that same association. The symptoms that manifest from PTSD and canines are fairly similar to human beings shutting down, being reactively aggressive, you know, things of that nature, where there's a huge disparity as in how you treat them to a certain extent anyway, is that, you know, human beings are going to try to rationalize it. They're going to think about that. They may dwell on it. They may ask why. You know that dogs don't really do that,

there's just an association. So the good news is, if you think of it like a piggy bank, is that you've got all these negative coins in a piggy bank as it relates to, we'll say, gunfire. And so you can replace those negative coins with positive ones and essentially rewrite the hard drive of the dog in contextual association with that stimuli. and essentially rewrite the hard drive of the dog

in contextual association with that stimuli. So the way that we do it is, if it's gunfire as an example, is that I'd use like a 22, 300 yards away while I'm playing tug or playing ball with the dog. So it's barely fucking registering while I'm doing something that he really enjoys. And there's a prey element there again, like we talked about is that that's going to help relieve stress.

And then maybe it's 2200 yards away and then 50 and then right next to him and then it's a 45 caliber pistol or a fucking AK 500 yards away and then you're slowly moving it in and you're just desensitizing the dog and rewriting that negative association with positive ones very, very carefully and solely over time. So you can get rid of those types of issues and dogs. I think quite a bit easier than you can with people because it's just very cut and dry black and white that way. Really, do you think dogs like with us, you know, you had mentioned yesterday, you know, you wanted to screen and go to damn that, you wanted to take it to the next level, you wanted more action.

And, you know, I myself do with that, a lot of guys do with that, you know, you get a taste, and then you want more, and you want more, you want more, because you like the way it makes you feel. more, you want more because you like the way it makes you feel. And do you think a dog that has the more the more bites a dog gets, do they get addicted to that fucking adrenaline, to that action, to that feeling that they get? They do. They do. Not only does that take place. I mean, you see it, look at the, you know, Duke when he first came out versus, you know, the next time or like, you know, once he realizes what's going on, he wants to do it, he wants to keep doing it, you know, Duke when he first came out versus, you know, the next time or like, you know, once he realizes what's going on, he wants to do it, he wants to keep doing it, you know, until he's fucking exhausted and then repetitions that are independent of each other. In other words, there's a space of time, a period of time in between when that's happening

that, yeah, it's magnified that way. On top of that is that, especially with a bite dog, where they're going into combating a human being that's four or five, six times their size, and they're defeating something that's bigger than them. The more times that happens, the more confident they become. And in some instances, the harder they are to deal with, because it's kind of like a dog that's used to growling at people and getting them to fucking back off. And they're punching out people because they're growling and fucking bullying people.

And they get used to that. And they get even more confident. A dog that goes in and fucking annihilates somebody for real, yeah, over time. It absolutely emboldens them even more and makes them more and more confident most of the time. Do you think they ever develop like an addiction to the taste of blood? Not to the taste of blood. No, I don't.

You know, you hear people say, well, once a dog tastes blood, I think it's total, total bullshit. And I think it's the genetic drive that they have to do that coupled with the training and experiences that they have that are positively associated with getting to do that kind of shit. And they're just driven for it. I don't think it has anything to do with that. Well, you've trained dog for seal teams for several different agencies, for law enforcement, SWAT teams, fucking you name it, every unit somewhere, almost every unit seems to have a micro-itland dog. Have you ever trained a dog, and I'm getting into the water dog foundation?

Have you trained any dogs that have gone to work and then come back to your foundation? I have. There was a seal dog on top of that, which was really fucking cool. It was a dog that Wayne Dodge and I brought into the program. He selected the dog overseas. That was right when I got there as a trainer. And so, you know, as the dog showed up, we put him through his first handler course with his first handler entire first workup for that deployment, the dog deployed with that handler. And then it had a different handler after that.

Several years later, the dog ends up coming and then it had a different handler after that. Several years later, the dog ends up coming to the Warrior Dog Foundation after he had been retired from that program. They're the first two handlers that the dog had or the two handlers that the dog had, and either one of them could take the dog one because of a family situation. The other was still on active duty.

So we had the dog for several years with the word dog foundation and then Taylor can field as his name is the former seal race car driver. Came came to the ranch and and came and adopted him a couple of years ago now. He's had him now for a couple of years. So to have that kind of full circle impact with a dog was that was really special, was it was neat to be able to do that? No shit. Well that answers one of my questions. So, so this don't with all that fucking action, I was going to actually ask if you think that some sort of therapy could, you know, could, you know, a dog that has seen that much action and comes to your foundation, if therapy or, you know, whatever you want to call it can rehab that dog to be able to, you know, live more of a pet life.

Yeah. Was that guy a handler? He was. He was an askar driver. Yeah. So he was actually that dogs handler. And that's what was so neat about it. All of that.

So he was very comfortable and used to the dog to your point slash question of, you know, do we have the ability to rehab some of these dogs and get them out into more civilian type settings? Yes. I would say that, you know, to put it, it would be impossible to put a percentage on it just off the top of my head, but I would say that it's more dogs,

you know, are not really in that category than the ones that we can do that with. But we have done it with a number of dogs. We've also been able to repurpose some of the dogs where they come in and they're they're actually young enough to where we spend enough time with them and then and then find the right fit department wise that's maybe a little better equipped to handle a dog that's that kind of dog and have been able to send some of the dogs that we've brought in after you know

several months of rehab to back out and then they go on and work several more years, which is a pretty neat thing to be able to repurpose these dogs if they can do it. What is the average working time frame of the dog? I'd say about 7, 6, 7 years. I mean, from 3 to 8 or 9 for a dual purpose dog is about it, you know, 5 to seven years. Sometimes it may be two to ten, maybe three and a half to six. I mean, a lot like another parallel with humans and dogs is that some seals operate for 30 fucking years and some do one one, one enlistment, one deployment, and that's it. It's kind of that same way. You know, there are our times where dogs do one deployment and it's a hard, you know, opt-tempo-driven deployment.

They went through a lot and it just fucking kind of ruined them and they're just never the same and they have to retire after that. I mean, that does happen. I wouldn't say that it's that it's often, but there are instances where that's the case. What are some of the things you're doing with these guys, with these dogs at the foundation? So most of it is using food and just playing ball and kind of exercise, using good food and positive reinforcement with food to kind of unline their mind. Take the pressure of having to perform and operate off of them entirely. We're really not asking anything

of them in the way that we're getting them to just do basic stuff like putting a muzzle long going into a crate going back into their kennel run, being able to have their teeth brushed or a veterinary exam or bathed, you know, using food and lots of positive reinforcement and taking it slow with doing those types of things that historically are some of the reasons why a lot of them end up, you know, with us is that, you know, the handlers trying to do certain things with them and the dogs biting the shed out of the handler or the handler's family members or other cops or just the wrong people because you know, for a number of reasons. So we try to desensitize

the dogs to all that, that type of triggering type of behavior that, that has landed them with us. That's our primary goal is to, both act as a resource or a sanctuary so that the dog won't be euthanized and then rehabilitate that dog based on on why it's here in the first place and try to balance that out a little bit so that they're a little bit more manageable and ultimately and hopefully get them to a civilian household and have them live more like a pet. These things, I mean, have you maybe already done it, but do you think a dog like that that comes to your foundation

who's seen who knows how much fucking combat a lot? Is it possible or has it happened to where they could go and live within a normal family? Not somebody that was a handle or not a pro like yourself, like someone like me. Yeah, we have done that with a number of dogs, yes, which is a great feeling to be able to do that. I'd say there's a lot of them that we haven't been able to do that with.

If we do adopt them out, it needs to go to somebody that really understands these dogs and can provide that type of an environment for them. But yeah, we have. We've had a number of dogs that when they first came in, they came in because they were a handful and a bit of a bunch of people. And they just needed that kind of pause of being able to unwind and take the pressure off. And then also a big component to that is educating the new handlers. And we've got some requirements for anybody listening out there that potentially wants

to, you've got to own your own home, got to have a privacy fenced in backyard, no other pets and no young kids. Those are things that we just won't budge on, won't compromise on because what you need to understand is that no matter how much rehab you do, as the fact is, is that they're proven fighters, they've proven, you know, that they've made the wrong decision enough times to land them with us in the first place. So it would be irresponsible of us to put that dog in a position to make that same mistake again. And so it needs to be an environment where, you know, if push comes to shove, you have

people that physically are capable enough to at least keep the dog from, you know, doing serious, serious damage. You know, and if there's young kids or other pets and other stimulus in the house that, you know, could potentially trigger that dog, it's just, it would be and other stimulus in the house that could potentially trigger that dog, it would be foolish to put them back in that environment. So, yeah, I can see that. What is it if you had to put an average, I'm asking for an average, what is the timeline look like for a dog?

What is the recovery process or not the process, but the recovery timeline of, you know, this dog is mean as fuck, you know, traumatized, wants to fucking bite everything it sees to, it's time, you know, we think he's ready. Yeah, that's it. A little family. Yeah, it's hard to put an average because they're all as individual as we are. You know, it's the same question as, you know, how long does it take most PTSD vets to recover from that? You know, it's like some of them never do, some of them

a couple of weeks. You know, you know, looking back historically on that, I mean, at this point, we've taken in almost 200 dogs in the last, you know, 11, 10 years. You know, I would say generally five, six months, if it is kind of where, after a few months, you have a good idea. I think this dog is going to be able to be turned around. We've seen a ton of progress in that few months, a few more months, and they'll probably be where they're at. That's generally the timeline where I would say, will probably be where they're at. That's generally the timeline where I would say, just thinking back of all the dogs that we've done that with is that that's about what it took. There are some dogs that within a couple of weeks, I'm like, yeah, this dog for sure is going

to be a dog we can do. And maybe it's even a little quicker than that. There's many instances where a dog will come in. And in the first few days, this dog is probably not going to leave here. You can tell that quite sometimes. Sometimes, yeah. I mean with humans, you know, they say that, you know, when it comes to PTSD and shit like that, it's kind of a lifetime struggle. And you may improve, but chances are it's never going to completely go away. Is it the same for dogs? Do you think it will ever completely go away or is there always a little edge? I think that it's hard to say that it completely goes away or not, because the biggest factor is getting it to subside from a triggering standpoint, and then putting them in a position

where you're not gonna have them in the position to trigger it any more anyway. So, I mean, you don't really know. I suspect that it's probably kind of similar that way, and that, you know, even a few years go by of good rehab and never putting in that position, that if you put them in the positions that elicited that response, you know, a time or a couple of times, it would probably come back easier than it, than it, it's initial onset, no different than like fucking heat stroke, you know, I think just logically

it's easy to ascertain that that that would would be the case that if you put them in that same position several times or enough times and yet it's going to come back if it came there in the first place from nothing for sure it can come back if it's already happened. So the key really is educating the new owners. Like here are the problems that he had that landed him with us in the first place. Here's what you need to ensure, so that you can kind of do your best to guarantee that you'll mitigate any potential instances

of that recurring issue. Do you think another thing, and it's fucking crazy, how similar it is to humans but You know with humans just like anything, you know some guys with With PTSD to come home. It's all about the work you put in if you want to fucking get better Then you get to put the work in to get better if you're not gonna put the work in then you're gonna be fucking miserable forever Yeah, and so do the dogs go through any kind of decision making process

or is DC dogs that are more willing to? I really want to try and say here, but I know what you mean. I think that's one of the very big differences between humans and dogs is that it's really, not really about the dog so much as it is, the human beings that are putting them through those paces. I think where the factors put in play, whether or not that dog can make that kind of recovery is how bad did it get, how many times did it trigger the dog after it was an issue, how many times did it continue to happen and continue to shut the dog down and make him spiral further

down? How much baggage is there is the first factor and then the second factor is just, you know, the genetic plasticity of the dog's brain as it relates to being able to heal in that regard. And I think that's largely genetic. I don't see it being an effort issue on the dog's part. I mean, if you put them in a position and do the things that you're supposed to do with them because they have all the genetics and drive to do the work to you're supposed to do with him because they have all of the genetics and drive to do the work to begin with.

They're gonna do it either way. It's really more up to the human being and how bad it got before they decided to wash them out and try to rehab them, I think. Okay. Well, Mike, I could drag this on all day. I have questions for days, but I want to end it. I know you want to hit the road and get home,

but closing this thing out, I just want to say, you know, what, I mean, I cannot think of a fucking better person, you know, to be training dogs to go to these teams, to seal teams, to, you know, SF teams, to SWAT teams, you know, knowing the tactics and being an operator yourself, I'm sure that you've come up with things that, you know, a typical trainer could never think of. And I just, just I mean between what you're doing with that and and and the War Your Dog Foundation I mean damn man you're doing animals fucking solid no doubt about it and so if you

want to donate to Mike you know War Your Dog Foundation all is social media websites everything will be linked in the description, but you're a solid motherfucker man. I mean, damn, you know, I appreciate the kind words. I mean to me, I just enjoy working with dogs. I'm fascinated by them. I marvel at their capability and just the things that they're able to accomplish and how many lives of our brothers and fellow countrymen that they've saved. And I feel like we owe it to them, to do our very best for them because they do that for us. Some of it's genetic, but they're creatures that I honestly, I think we don't fucking deserve.

But they're phenomenal and I can't imagine not being a part of them. So, I appreciate the platform in having me on and I could talk about them fucking nonstop too. I usually do. So. Yeah. Well, nice work, man. I appreciate it.

Can't wait to make that documentary. So yeah, well, nice work man. I appreciate it. Can't wait to make that documentary. Hey man. It's time to get away in a new Hyundai vehicle during the Hyundai Getaway sales event at Woodhouse Hyundai. The Hyundai lineup of sedans at SUVs has the capability you need and technology and features you want, like the all-new 2023 Hyundai Powseed and Hyundai Tucson. This holiday season, get into a vehicle that will give you confidence with Hyundai owner assurance

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