Imagine the place where you can escape for a day, get immersed in a world of rooms, inspiration, and expertise, where you can lay luxury, accommodation and kids cam fees from ninety five sets. Tickets are free to everyone and include all the attractions you've just imagined a day out at the kia Ikia the Wonderful every Day.
He saw Potty Von dad Ward with another episode of Ologies. Hi Tally word so quick question, who doesn't love a dog? If you were like me, then just go shoot, go on, get it.
That's right.
This episode is all about the beasts that live on your couch. You're just drooling, very very hairy, best friend. I love dogs so much. I've cried about it. I've cried about it probably so have you. So before we get really into it, I just want to say a quick thanks to all the folks on Patreon who support the show Patreon dot com slash ologies. Also to all the folks who cover their bods with t shirts and such, all available at ologiesmerch dot com. You all support the show.
Thank you for zero dollars supporting just by reviewing on iTunes or Stitcher.
So as I write.
This on holiday weekend, Hey Ologies is number fifteen in the Apple Podcast Science Charts, which is huge and crazy and wonderful. Also, you know, like a dog tearing through your bathroom garbage and eating things. I read all your reviews like fucking creep, and just to prove I read them, I read you one every week. This week's Rich the Beach says this is fast becoming one of my favorite podcasts.
It's hard to imagine that you can get so into a podcast about trees or bees, but this gets me every time I look at this subject and I'm like, trees dendrology, Okay, that sounds boring, and then an hour later I'm riveted to the seat and listening intently. Thanks rich the Beach. I love it when people are like, am I gonna like this topic?
And then they're like, I love this topic.
That's why I make this show. Okay, let's get into it. Dogs dogs to dogs, dogs dogs, so real quick. The words sinology it comes from the Greek for sinos, which means dog boom. It's pretty rare to hear sinology in English. People don't use it much, but it is a real word and it usually means a canine specialist from a breeder to maybe a show judge or a professional dog handler. So it checks out. And a dog, by the way,
if you're like, what exactly is a dog? Species? Canis familiaris, which I find to be adorable families right in the name dogs share a common ancestor with wolves. Some historians think dogs were domesticated from this common ancestor over thirty five thousand years ago, So us and dogs we go way back.
Now. I've known this ologist's work for so.
Many years, and I've watched his TV show about dog training, and we both work on Saturday morning educational TV shows. So shout out to Innovation Nation and Lucky Dog. I'm sorry for swearing already, which I don't do on your show. So I've been a fan for years, and this year we were at the Daytime Emmys and he was nominated, and we were sitting next to each other, and his category was literally the last to be announced in a
four hour ceremony. All of our feet hurt, everyone was hungry, but we were all stuck it out and he won. It was his third Emmy. We were all so excited. He gave a heartfelt speech dedicating it to the shelter dogs who didn't make it out and everyone almost cried their mascara off. I was like, come on, dude, I moren fake lashes.
What are you doing to me?
And then at the after party I cornered him and I was like, hey, Sinology, what do you think Please be on my podcast?
Please?
He was like sure and I was like yes. So Wikipedia has called him dog Trainer to the Stars. Having calmed down and charm schooled the pups of Ellen DeGeneres and Don Cheatle and Kate Hudson and Ronda Rousi and our mutual pal Chris Hardwick, who loves him. This ologist lives and works on a huge ranch full of dogs. It is my heaven. So he invited me up to the ranch to record, and y'all, it was like Charlie about to go meet Willy Wonka.
I was like, oh god, huh. I arrived.
I met his personal tiny dog Lulu and Utah, who appears to be a small werewolf, as well as a bunch of dogs getting rehabbed, and one skittish, emaciated and kind of droopy faced foxhound named Betsy who had just been sprung from the shelter the day before. By the way, This ologist is super tall, well over six feet tall, very tan from being outdoors, and is great with both big dogs and super tiny ones, which was really adorable to watch. Now, I thought this episode would be like
aren't dogs goofballs? But in tone, I'll be honest, this interview is kind of less clown whistles and giggles and slightly more cocktail party mixed with Sarah McLaughlin SBCA commercial, So you'll learn about his own fascinating like are you kidding me? Backstory, and where dogs come from and why they love us, and how to calm down your anxious pup, more about emotional service animals, and of course the rescue versus breeder debate. So please sit stay for a man
you know as animal Brandon online. He is a field behaviorist and thus a sinologist. Brandon McMillan.
Too one too.
All right, you're you're rolling, but.
We're actually on Well yeah, but where I got to turn on the filter.
This is where you stop confessing to murders and swearing exactly JK. I was discussed already, I said the effort, So sorry, mom, okay, let's get right into it. So you are technically a sinologist, but you specialize in animal behavior across the board.
Right, yeah, yeah, sinology. I guess you can call myself that. I just call myself an animal behaviorist. There's a there's a believe it or not in the animal world. There's there's two kinds of experts. Okay, you have what we call the book smart experts. These are the people that went to school, they studied in books, and this is why you go to a university and you get a degree.
And the other half of the field that I'm in, the other the other half of the expert is the we call them the field experts, and these are the people that actually go out and they work with animals all day. So I grew up in the circus. My parents were both wild in my entire family were all wild animal trainers. So I never read a book on
animals my entire life. So if you read a book about animal science from like the nineteen thirties, right, it's all been debunked in debunked in the nineteen fifties, and then the ones in the nineteen fifties have been debunked in the seventies and the seventies, the nine you know, I'm saying.
So Apparently dog science is subject to trends and tweaks, not unlike your uncle's mustache and the rise and fall of denim crotches. But I checked into this, and Brandon knows this stuff. It's been all over the place. Like In eighteen forty eight, a dude named W. N. Hutchinson
published a book with a quick and snappy title. It was called quote dog Breaking, the most expeditious, certain and easy method, whether great excellence or only mediocrity, be required with odds and ends for those who love the dog and the gun. How eighteen forty eight is that also dog breaking? Get bent? W? N.
Hutchinson?
So fast forward to the eighteen forties when dog trainer Blanche Sanders, a cool kind of Catherine Hepburn betrousered Gal, was known for her catchphrase command, jerk, praise, and I unearthed this nineteen forty six YouTube time capsule called training You to Train your Dog to.
Be blunt about it.
Then you'll get top drawer information in this series, not just some nonsense dreamed up by a self styled expert who gets giddy about every little dog in a window.
Leash jerks and throat chains kind of stayed the norm and then in the nineteen seventies there was a group of monks in upstate New York who had a best selling book about establishing dominance over your dog. It was based on the theory that wolves live in packs, so you have to be alpha.
But studies have.
Since shown that wild wolves actually have a way more chill family existence with like the mom and the dad wolf sharing leadership, way fewer power struggles, which is sad and crazy when you're like man, I wish our.
Culture where is civilized as wild wolves.
Anyway, beating your dog into submission, as it turns out, monks can make them dangerously aggressive, probably pretty emo. They're probably on Tumblr being like my dad sucks. So in contrast to say Blanche Sanders command jerk praise, Brandon's go to is control train treat. But he never got certified with that. He just developed it from working with animals from the time he was but a wee pop.
So, especially this day and age, you have there's a big misconception. A lot of people think that to be a dog trainer that you have to be what's called a certified dog trainer. Certified dog training just became a big thing in the past, like ten twelve years. Certified dog trainer was never a thing when I was growing up. Certified dog training became a thing when the Internet really exploded. And the people that created these certifications they're not even
dog trainers, they're just businessmen. But all the old school dog trainers were refused to become certified because I will never take a certification course from somebody who, does you know, is not a top expert in their field themselves.
So I looked into this and there are approximately one bazillion schools offering dog training certificates, crossing up to six grand for some courses. So odds are that some trainers of trainers are less experienced and in it for the money. So do your own research if this is a field you're considering. Now, how did Brandon learn all of this stuff by growing up with a totally normal, not unusual childhood at all, totally run of the mill, nothing to see here. Well, so you know you grew up around
the circus and I've seen pictures. You posted a picture around Mother's Day. I think your mom holding like a tiger cub. Like, what was that? Like? How did your parents get into it? And what were some of your early memories working with animals.
My father got into it. So my I'm first generation American on my father's side and he's from the UK, and this is post World War two. Times were tough in England. It was not like the modern day England we see. It's just you know, booming economy and technology after World War Two, especially up in the north of my family's from. We're from a town called Workington, which is about ten miles south of the Scottish border, and
it was very poor. It was so poor back after post war that basically people were a lot of crime in the streets, a lot of stealing, a lot of you know, a lot of begging, and so what was happening is people my father was actually he was debating what did he do should he should he go to the military or should he do something else. The circus happened to be in town and he went to the circus.
He was mesmerized by the lion trainer. His name was Gunther Gable Williams, who was the most famous lion tamer from the nineteen fifties into about the nineteen seventies into the eighties. And my father was so mesmerized by him, he jumped on the train and became an apprentice for him. Oh my god, I'm fifteen years old.
Oh my god, he's like Bie, yeah exactly. I was like, maybe I should see what this guy look like, and so I pictured someone in a mustache wearing like a wool three piece suit and a monocle incorrect. Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god. Oh the Majesty so gunther Gable Williams image search returns are deeply gratifying photos of just a lemon juice blonde, sun kissed Demi God wearing bespangled, flared spandex pants and a matching vest. Hold
the shirt not needed here. He looks like a wholesome, sexy Billie Idol, but with a cheetah draped around his neck. And if there's one thing you can learn from looking at him, dude could get some tail. And I'm not just talking about elephants. So if this dude swung through my post war town, I would hop onto a circus wagon so hard I would break it. So Brandon's dad was like, this dude is cool.
I'm in. This is my new career Workington, I'm out.
Well, there's nothing going on in Northern England. At that time, He's like, I'm either going to grow up here and become nothing, or I want to see the world. So, you know, my father always said the same thing that I said when I cause I ran away from home at fifteen, and I say, I wasn't running away from something, I was running to something. And so my father basically after about seven to ten years of apprenticing with him, he became a tiger trainer himself and Ringling Brothers. This
is back in the late sixties early seventies. Ringling Brothers recruited him for his own act.
Oh my god.
And by the way, this is before the circus was controversial. In fact, the circus was cool back then.
As so, when you ran away at fifteen, were you running away from the circus?
Innocent?
No? No, we were Actually my family was out of the circus by them. No, I ran away. I wasn't meant to be at home. I'm like that. I'm like that cage bird. The second you left the cage open, I was out of there.
Yeah.
Yeah, And it wasn't a bad thing. I lived in Hawaii for almost four years. That's a great place to live when you don't have a home.
Yeah, it's very Yeah it's great.
So side note, I thought I would find some cute statistics and just like pop them in here on a maybe like a Van Dweller's subreddit about surfers who live in VW's on the North Shore and have a better life expectancy than more traditional American lifestyles. But then, to the contrary, I fell down a rabbit hole reading about Hawaii's homelessness epidemic and a build a classify homelessness as a medical condition, and one man saying I don't have
a house, but I'm not homeless. This island is my home, and this public land should serve the people. Everyone here has a home. It's Hawaii. And then I started crying reading that. But anyway, Brandon said that Hawaiian's taught him everything he needed to know, including had a shark dive.
You may have also seen Brandon on Shark Week and in essence, Brandon's story of liberation went from feeling like a bird fleeing captivity in adolescence at fifteen to an adulthood of being dangled in a steel cage confronting great white sharks. Super normcore sequence of events one through line in his life clearly animals. So when you started training animals, how old were you were you doing that? You did that before you left for home Hawaii, before you kind of went off on your own.
Oh yeah, No, I used to prep the animals for my father's act. So I grew up with tigers in our backyard. We had lions, we had grizzly bears, we had elephants, we had primeates, we had some hoof stock, we had some reptiles. So we were true animal trainers. And so by the time I was, you know, fifteen years old, I already had more experience than half the trainers in the industry that were, you know, forty and fifty and so. So after I ran away when I
was nineteen, my uncle found me in Hawaii. He brought me back to California. He had one of the biggest companies out here. They were called Hollywood Animals. They did a lot of animals from movies over the years.
Remember the tiger from the Hangover filter.
You're not going to the bathroom filter, there is a tiger in the bathroom. What's going on? There's a juggle kind of bathroom.
Yeah, that was Hollywood Animals.
So by the time I was nineteen. Look me, gave me an option. He goes, listen, you're joining the military, or you're coming to India with me, because we're doing a movie over there right now. And I was actually thinking about going to the military because my grandfather was World War Two veteran, and so he actually like I was literally, you know, signing the paperwork, and he like stopped the pen right there. He's like, oh my god. He was like, I was trying to hint to you,
you little. He was like, you're coming to India with me. We're doing We're doing a movie. So it took me about three months to learn his animals. He had. He had a pride of lions. He had a few tigers, he had some leopards, he had some grizzly bears, he had elephants, he had some zebra. So it took me about three or four months to learn his animals. I had to slowly but surely, like acclimate myself to them
so they wouldn't keep coming after me. You have to enter each of the cages, and eventually they don't look at you as prey. They look at you as one of their own.
Oh my god. So do you do it a little bit, little by little, like, Hi, guys, me good.
You know, believe it or not. When it comes to wild animals, they're all the same. It's it's not what you It's not what you do that's gonna help you survive. It's what you don't do.
Okay, you know.
So when you're dealing with predators, for example, the worst thing you can do is turn your back. If a predator is actually facing you and running towards you, believe it or not, the best thing you can do is run towards.
It, an act and look big.
Right.
Yes, predators are not used to getting stocked themselves.
Do you take any of this knowledge and wisdom with animal behavior and apply it to your own life? Yes, Like when you're in a business meeting and someone's trying to score you over, you're like, oh, I'm not.
Going to back down one hundred percent. I do with I do it with people. I do it because you have to remember everyone you're talking to in the world, they're they're just like you. You know, whether they're smarter than they're in my opinion, they're no smarter than you, they're no better than you. So everyone is a human we all bleed, we all have emotion, you know. So yeah, I apply the exact same theories to humans too.
So at what point did you go from training tigers for movies and being in India and you've traveled all over the world, like you you are trained in how to survive in the bush, Like, at what point did you say dogs rescuing dogs?
That's going to be my deal?
It was. It was a slow process. I can't say this one moment that changed it all. It was basic evolution. Look when I when I joined my uncle's company, Hollywood Animals, he had every animal. And when you have a wild animal company, you always have a pack of dogs. And the reason why is because every commercial, every movie, every you know, advertisement on whether it's a magazine, there's always dogs. Not every movie has a tiger, right, you know.
I just want you to know that there is an entire Wikipedia page called films about tigers, which would lead you to believe that there are a lot, but there's only twenty seven entries. Maybe someone started this and was like, who's every.
Going to look at this page?
And then just gave up too soon. Though the answer is me, I'm looking at it and I love it.
That's what his company was known for. But believe it or not, the dogs were working way more than the tigers ever were. Oh I bet, yeah, yeah, and so so we were always working. I forget exactly what year it was. I believe I was in my early twenties. I must have been like maybe twenty one twenty two. And with any dog pack you always have, we call it our you know, our basics. In other words, we have our goldens, our labs or retrievers. Our shepherds are roddis.
And these are the most common dogs you'll ever see in like a movie or commercial. And as time goes on, of course, dogs unfortunately don't live forever. So next thing, you know, a Rottweiler she hit fourteen, and you know, she passed away on us. And my uncle was old school. He said, we got to go to the breeder and get a new one. And I said, at the time, I was living in an apartment and it was right in West Los Angeles, and I was about a block away from the shelter, and I could hear these dogs
just sparking all day and all night. And I went in there a couple of times just out of curiosity because I, you know, I was old school too back then, and so I found the shelters to be a place that you know, we were lied to. We were lied to from the nineteen fifties. People always told us that the shelter dogs are damaged goods. Shelter dogs have only
the worst or the worse, you know. And and suddenly you walk in there and you're surrounded by, you know, all these dogs that you were, you know, taught to be afraid your entire life, and suddenly they walk up to your face and kiss you. So I found a rottweiler in there. Her name was Raven. And I went to my uncle and I said, why are we going to go to a breeder? When I said, we can get this female that she's great, she's about a year and a half. I said, I promise you, I won't
let you down. Let me just rescue her. He's like, shelter dogs are damage goods. You know, they're the worst of the worst. He was old school, and I said, okay, I put my job in the line. I know I wasn't get fired.
Like literal nepotism.
Nepotism side note is derived from the Italian for nephew because popes and bishops were like, well, shoot, I'm not allowed to procreate and have sons, so I'll give this cool thing to a different younger male, such as, for example, my nephew. So despite his uncle being dubious, Brandon went back to the shelter.
I rescued her and he was telling me not to. I just went in and pulled her. I'm like, there, there's a new dog for the company. And it took me about two three months a trainer, and she went on to become one of our best Rottweilers of the company. So I changed his mind right there and from there, as the years went on, you know, other dogs were
passing away and we replaced. We replaced our goldens and our labs, and our shepherds and our jack Russell's next thing, you know, we had a full pack of dogs that were all from the shelter. And as in this process, I started reading about the statistics of shelter dogs just in America alone. You know we're talking. You know, back in those days, it was more like, you know, two million dogs a year were euthanized because they couldn't find
homes in the shelter systems. Thankfully, that number has dropped in this day and age, Yeah, but it's still it's still we're pushing. Pushing a million is debatable too, because shelters are not required to keep a number on the on the euthanizations, so it's all on average.
Oh I thought that they would have to have spreadsheets.
No, no, not the euthanizations, because because some shelters they actually euthanize so fast. But there's some shelters, I mean, they will euthanize the dog the second and comes in. If they see that any aggression, they won't even give it a chance, so that dog won't even be on the record, they won't even be on the books.
Us go, yes, God, that's so sad. I'm so sorry.
I didn't know that this episode will be such a heart tugger and desipated.
So when I started reading about these statistics, I'm thinking to myself, we have an epidemic here in America that most people don't even know about. So it's become this underground you know, warrior club of us that basically have to fight behind the scenes, and we don't get a lot of recognition for it. I lucked out. I got recognition for it. For being you know, a lone ranger. You know, I got a show from it. I'm one in a million.
Yeah, you know you mentioned that your uncle didn't have a lot of faith in this rottweiler.
Like, what do you think about shelter dog's being damaged goods? And what have you noticed in trying to train them or in looking at the behavior versus you know, breeder puppies that you get, you know, as soon as they're weaned. What challenges do shelter dogs have and what advantages do they have?
Well, look, you have to understand a shelter dog is basically someone's it's someone's trash in you know, I'm using that metaphorically. It's basically someone threw them out. They screwed this animal up as much as they possibly could, and then finally the last straw was getting that shelter get
out of my life. So you have to remember you're dealing with a lot of residue from the past from someone else's irresponsible you know behavior or just I basically call it uneducated you know behavior, because you know, a lot of people don't realize how easy dogs are to train. They might be you know, high energy, or they might you know, have different personality traits. But dogs are actually very easy to train. Now they're the biggest drawbacks of a shelter dog. I will say this, They're not a
blank slate like a puppy. A puppy is a blank slate. Okay, that is a great thing to have training wise, but you have to remember, most shelter dogs you're gonna get, they're going to be past the destructive point, past the chewing, past that that age where it's like it's it's a lot of work. So a lot of shelter dogs, you know, you're talking, there's very few that are going to be like under a year. We're talking, you know, most of them are going to be a year, two years, three years.
And believe it or not, it's a lot easier to deal with a dog after they've hit you know, that year mark. Because a puppy, when you're talking about a six to eight week old puppy, you're talking, it's like twenty four hour care. You're not going to sleep for the first you know, a week or two, I promise you. You know. Because everyone has this idea, like this fantasy land of like just rolling in this green grass of puppies all over them. I'm like, yeah, until you bring
it back to your house. It's chewing everything. It is just releasing all of its body fluids everywhere in your head. Yeah, say goodbye to your Grandma's rug. You know, your favorite chair is going to look like, you know, a Nila bone on the side. So there's a lot of there's a lot of drawbacks to having, you know, a puppy from a breeder. You know so, and look, the bottom line is there's any any dog's gonna be work. That's where the lines come together. So you have, you know
your pros and cons of both. But regardless, you're gonna have to train both. You're gonna have to train a puppy. And by the way, you're gonna make mistakes with a puppy. Everybody always has this idea, Oh, it's a puppy, so it doesn't have any any history. Well, you never guaranteed, because there's there's there's two basic laws when it comes to animal behavior. You have you have it's called the
nature versus nurture. Well, as we all that's that's a common phrase we all understand, and that means there's some things that are that are that we that we teach the animal, and there's some things the animal automatically has in its personality traits kind of wrapped up in their DNA.
I read a bunch of canine biology articles and I'm gonna boil it down for you. So yes, it is nature and nurture, genetics, and experience that contribute to a dog's personality and abilities, which has led dogs to different jobs like stubby legged Doxies used to charge into badger holes like bitches, watch out, and they were so good at that. And your keys were bred to be tiny and accompany miners in small places to eat the rats.
Poodles were bog dogs. They were good at navigating the water to pick up hunters dead ducks, and even the Queen's Corgies once had the job of herding geese, hence they are very short. So today we rely on apps and robots judicia for us. But back then it was like, I need an animal with a gangly face and no tail and boat arms for the purpose of finding and biting the village witches.
And they were like, cool, here you go, we bred you a new dog for that.
Now here's the best part of a shelter. Dog, most shelter dogs. Most are some sort of mix. When you have a mix, you're creating new genetics. New genetics is much healthier than a purebread. Purebreads are very expensive. Purebreads, especially the more pure the dog, especially the more popular of the purebread. So, for example, a lot of your shepherds, a lot of your goldens, a lot of your labs,
they come with a longer list of health problems. And the reason why is because it is such high demand for these for these breeds, especially this day and age. You have the French bulldogs are very popular, and the more popular the dog, the more of the demand the breeders are going to be out there, you know, breeding these dogs like you know, we call them. I call them pez dispensers. That's what I call the females that are actually I call them that because that's exactly what
these females are doing. You know, these breeders are literally turning these females into a pezzes. They're just that their only job is to produce babies, produced puppies, you know, and it's sad. Now you have an entire litter of dogs with a lot of health problems because you're not. You're not taking you know, you know, you're not taking brand new genetics and and and mixing. You're kind of taken the same dogs, you know, in the same region of the of the state, and you're breeding those same
dogs together, and they're all like distant, distant cousins. This is why hypdasplacia is so prominent in German shepherds this this day and age. This is why French bulldogs have every health problem you know under the sun.
Yeah, frenchy problems include, but are not limited to, deafness, laryngeal collapse, hairy eyelids, screwtails, and heat stress. They also commonly have giant heads and narrow birth canals, so they have to be delivered by c section. They are deeply, ridiculously cute. But that salad of selected pure bread genetics isn't always the healthiest.
Now shelter dogs, because they're not. Even when you see like a pure shelter dog, a lot of times it's got a little bit of a mix in that that little bit of a mix makes it ten times healthier. That right there saves you a fortune in a long run, dog lives a happier, healthy life.
I thought about it in those economics that you're going to be going to the vet last.
Oh yeah, because a lot of people they have this idea pure bread, it's beautiful this and not. I said, well, you know, it's not beautiful your credit card at the end of the month because you're taking that thing to the vet constantly. Allergies. Oh yeah, it's very common.
Well okay, now you said training a dog is very easy. It's definitely very easy for you because you grew up in in like a crazy idyllic circus life where you got to learn a lot of this stuff. When you're trying to explain it to someone who is not as say, master follows you, when what do you think is the easiest thing about trackin dog? Do you what are the fundamentals?
Okay, so I tell people dog training is just like martial arts for anyone who's ever done martial arts, even if you haven't done martial arts, I have not done martial arts. Martial arts is a very simple theory of technique and conditioning. That's it. As I've been I've been a student of several martial arts my entire life, and it wasn't until I was older that I understood how easy martial arts really is that I that I that
I started applying it to my animal training techniques. So if you were to join I don't know if you know kickboxing, but if you don't, I do not. Okay, if you were to go into a kickboxing class right now, it would only take that instructor an hour or two to teach you the theory of here's how you punch. After the class, you now have the technique. I get it.
Conditioning takes weeks and months, if not years. Okay, that's what gets you fast at it, and that's what gets you in in you know, in combat mode where you can actually use it in a practical, you know, a real life situation. There's no difference between martial arts and dog training. Dog training is the same thing. I can teach anybody a technique on how to teach a dog to lie down. So, whether I'm teaching a human or
whether I'm teaching a dog. If I'm I'm teaching a dog to lie down, all I do is I teach the dog to lie down it only it only takes the dog about an hour to truly understand. Oh, I get it. You want me to lie down now? I'm not saying the dog's going to be great at it, and you could say it twenty times, the dog might only do it, like, you know, one or two times. But guess what the technique is in there in their
their their arsenal you know of training. Now, the conditioning, that's where that's where most people fail because you have to understand people. They have this idea. Oh, they'll just go to like a dog trainer, and the dog trainer says, okay, we're gonna get your dog to stay. So after that one hour, the family of the dog, they're like, this is amazing, I taught my dog to stay. But that's where they end it right there. They don't condition the dog.
If you don't condition your animal, your dog is barely going to be trained. Okay, there's trained, and there's well trained. Conditioning is what makes the animal well trained. So you want you to teach your dog that stay every day, three times a day, just for five minutes. It's like muscle memory. Remember the karate kid, I do remember wax on wax off.
Sure do, wax on, wax on, wax on wax So why.
Did he do that?
He got so good at it without even realizing.
It he was. He was teaching his body muscle memory. You know that. Whenever he actually started teaching him the theory, I think it was was he teaching karate? I think so karate kid, right, karate? That's all he wanted to do. He wanted to teach him muscle memory. And it's exact same thing with with animal training. It's just conditioning. I'm going to teach your dog a sit. Now your dog has the technique. You have to condition your animal. Okay, So I, as a trainer can teach your dog the sit.
But I can't move into your house for the next six months and keep teaching the sit.
That's a higher fee.
Yes, I imagine exactly.
So when you're doing your show, how long does it take for you to train certain dogs? By the way, during parts of this interview, there was a tiny Chihuahua in my lap and I loved it.
Hi you Lulu, Lulu? Am I going to have to kick you out of here?
Mute?
How long would you say it takes you to train a dog from shelter to like you can?
You are now home ready?
You know where to go potty, you know what furniture to go on, which ones you should stay off.
Like how long is that? How long should that process take?
It depends on the dog. Yeah, you know, dogs are just like humans. You have your A students, and you have your average students. Every once in a while you have your D students unfortunately, which we try to edge them up to a C plus. But every dog is different. So I always say this, here's the here's the best way I can always describe. People are always under the mindset they say there's certain dogs that are just smarter than others. I say, that's that's completely false. And here's
why I say that. It's not that any dog is smarter than the next. I say, there's response time. Response time is really what you're what you're seeing. So for example, you have your you have your your main dogs that we always think of, like, you know, our most intelligent breeds are Border Collies, Aussi Shepherds, German Shepherds, labradors. What
else is the smart poodles are very smart. Yeah, there's a lot that I'm missing here, but all you all you're seeing is response time because in reality, a loss of apso or a Pikinese, which are not known to be the most you know, I don't want to throw any breezes into the bus. I know there's a lot of people listening right now. They're not playing chess, but of hunters of breeds, there's like the top ten. The Pekinese generally is not making in the top ten, or
remember the top fifty. But it doesn't mean that a Pikinese cannot learn everything a German shepherd or a border calling can learn. It just means the response time is not as quick. So think about a computer. You have a twenty eighteen MacBook and a two thousand and three MacBook. They both kind of do the same thing. Gase type of the letter the same and they both kind of do the same thing, but this one's a little slower. But it does not mean they're not as intelligent. It
just means response time. That's all we're talking about.
Do you have a favorite breed? Do people ask you that a lot?
The one you're petting right now, lug Yet I have my top I have my top five that I like to train, And it's mainly because of what we were just talking about, response time, Because I like I like training dogs for not only a purpose, but I like training them for like a job. I love. I love seeing dogs work, especially when they're working in the original jobs that they were originally bred for. So like, for example,
you know you saw outside I had that bloodhound mix. Yes, I just got her yesterday, but I'll probably do some nosework with her. And nosework means, you know, you're teaching the dog to use their no and you're teaching them actual scent like kind of games, fun stuff they can do with their nose. So if you can actually work an animal and identify what they are originally bred for,
those are the kind of dogs I like working. So for example, like the Golden retrievers, the laboratory retrievers, I love teaching them service dog techniques because retrievers they like picking things up off the ground and handing it to people, you know, so I train them for people in wheelchairs.
So Brandon, alongside a military dog trainer named Mike Hurstick, started Angus Service Dogs and it's a nonprofit that trains service animals for disabled veterans, many of whom were hit by improvised explosive devices and are just learning to walk on prosthetics. And yes, I watched some videos about how these dogs brought independence and true joy back to veterans' lives and yes, I cried again.
Okay, Now, when you have prosthetics, it's very difficult to reach down to the ground and pick up your keys, or your sunglasses or your hat. These dogs are trying to pick up the objects for them, and so good at that.
They're bread for that.
I prefer the retrievers because now I'm teaching a dog to use their natural instincts. That's why it's called the retriever. They were originally bred to assist a hunter when they shoot the.
Waterfowl, right and go grab that duck yep.
And furthermore, and the reason why the retrievers were were the ideal dog is because goldens and labs, they're known to have a very soft grip.
Is that what the egg test is? Yes, so google.
Dogs plus egg test highly recommended. Although I do need to have a word with people who attempted this with a raw egg in their carpeted rumpist rooms, like, no, don't don't do that.
So you can teach any dog to retrieve, Okay, you can do it with pit bulls, you can do it with rotwilers. The problem is you try it with a rotwiler with your with your sunglasses. You might not want to try your expensive sunglasses because they're gonna retrieve it for you to bring it back to you, but they might clamp down on it too hard.
Yeah, you know, Oh, don't think I'm a baby.
Exactly. You know, same with I find. I find the same way with the pit bulls. I find the same way with a lot of the like like a mastiff for example, they just they can't help it, you know. But the retrievers, they were that's what their original job was, so they would they would have these retrievers go out and bring the water fowl back because they would literally it's almost like like a four year old just grabbing
your hand. Come this way. Yeah, these are natural talents the dog has, so same with the you know, same with the shepherds. The shepherds are working dogs. Same with the border collies. You know, even though they're a herder, they're a working dog. They need a job. So I love breeds like that. I love German Shepherds, I love Border Collies, I love Jack Russell's. You know, these are dogs that were meant to work. They're meant to to thrive on a job and if you don't give them
a job. That's where the behavior problems come in.
Right, they need something to do.
Yes, well, I'll give you the best example of the modern day working dog. There's very few breeds out there left in the world that are bred specifically for work, because we have technology that does all the jobs they did in the past.
Right we got robots.
Well, yeah, we have exterminators. That's why we don't need Jack Russell's anymore. That's why the skipper key below you right now, they are outdated because we now have termin x coming to our house to get ridding our rats. You know, I prefer a skipper key. But yeah, but you have what's called the Belgian melinwah. You ever heard of that bran?
No, that sounds like a sooux fle It's a.
Okay, so the Belgian melinwall will just give you one guess where it's from.
I did some research on this and it turns out it's Belgium.
It's a it's a military police dog. This is when you see the canine units. Huh. It looks like a like a copper Brownish German shepherd with a black face. Oh, people think it's a German shepherd. It's actually a Belgian shepherd. And so what they did was they capitalized on this dog's high energy and they found out this dog is so high energy. All it wants to do is is have a ball. That's all it wants, like I need that ball. I need that like almost like an addiction.
And so what what the what these military and law enforcement trainers figured out years ago, they said, this dog basically it doesn't work for food. It works for one thing, it's favorite ball. So now what they do is they say, they take the ball and they hide it, and now they train the dog to become like explosive detection, contraband detection. This is why these dogs are trained so well because the dog, it all it thinks about all day is
that ball. It's just wants that ball. And this is why they're a working dog because basically they're so like just they want that ball so bad, whatever toy it is, they're kind of fixed on, you know, they're addicted to. Basically, that's why they are such good workers. So so cute dog's noses are much more reliable than any machine out there in the world, like scent hounds, like a bloodhound. Yeah, oh yeah, it'll put like a Belgian melonwater shame.
That's so crazy. That must be so confusing for them all the time. It must be like.
Hearing ten different playlists going all the time because you're smelling everything.
Well, that's why hounds are very difficult to train.
Because they're so distracted.
Yes, So for example, people always call me with how like bloodhounds or like a beagle that fascinatings? Oh yeah, and they say my dog doesn't listen to me, and so I say, okay, bring it over. They bring it over, and I'm like, oh, well, that's why you could have told me that over the phone. Your dog is a hound. So their sense of smell is literally I don't know exactly what the numbers are. Maybe you could find this you're good at that house.
So a little cursory research revealed that humans have about five million scent receptors, but bloodhounds have three hundred million. And the long ears and that chin wattle, the blue gee, blue blue blue bo that's called a do lap, and they help sweep scents toward the nose. So there's a lot of reasons to be happy you don't have a flappy neck, but smelling bus farts would be the main one.
It's crazy how how much more powerful their sense of smell, which is why they're the number one dog for homicide protection because they can find a body out in the woods miles away. I mean, once you get a little, just a trickle of a scent of what they're actually looking for, they can track it for miles.
Is that how you're gonna train Betsy. You're like, I hated body for you to find it.
Well, you won't see that, unlucky dog. I don't think we'll find a dead body, but we'll figure something out.
Do not hold your breath for that spin off and stupid question. But with all the species he's trained to get to his current career, are dogs his favorite animal? Or is there a sneaky one he likes more?
Dogs have stolen my heart but that way, yeah, dogs have. They've They've made me a better person. They've taught me a lot about myself. They taught me a lot about, you know, just human nature. There's there's a there's a ying and the yang of human nature. They teach me on how just vicious human beings can be. Because I see this in the shelter, I have to pick these dogs up from the rubble. You know, I have to pick these dogs up from the rubble. They're physically defeated,
they're mentally defeated, they're psychologically defeated. There's nothing that they collapse when they get to the ranch here. And but there's the other side of the ying and the yang.
Then it also tells me there's you know, there's there's hope for humanity because there's also an army of people out there that are trying to help these dogs that right there, there's no other animal in the world that I can think of that really does that to you, like a dog that basically they look and they stare out of your soul and they're like help me, you know. So yeah, I mean, I mean, you got Lulu on
your lap right now. Was she was pretty much you know, she was like the template the foundation of the show.
So just FYI, thirteen year old Lulu still in my lap. But it's easy to forget because she weighs about as much as a mango.
Now.
Brandon saw her in around twenty eleven, and she was already a little older for an adoptable dog, like four or five back then, which is a lot in dog ears, and then you know even more when you multiply it by la years.
She was in a shelter, and she was I saw her there every day when I was going, and she was there for probably about three or four months. She's at Chihuahua.
So side note.
I used to think the most fun way of pronouncing this breed was Chihuahua, But after hearing New Jersey born Brandon pronounce it, I have determined that his is the best and the most endearing.
Chiuas are very common in the shelters get they get overlooked, very very often. So finally it was down to her last day and I said, what's going on with that Chihuahua. She seems so sweet, she seems so cute this and now they're like, no one has any interest, you know. So I rescued her, thinking, actually I was sorry. I drove about you know, probably about a mile away, and I was in rush hour traffic and I was thinking about her, and I made a U turn went back
and I got her. And you know, a little dog like this, who'd have thought that, you know, here's me, I'm six foot three. You think I would have like the rott Wilders of the pitbulls and the chihuahua is what you know I roll with, So yeah, I mean dogs do that to humans. You know, there's so many stories of that. You hear of an animal helping a human out. There's so many stories of you know, people just going through cancer, whether they or not, they said,
the dog was there with me the entire time. You know, that doesn't happen with crocodile. You know what I'm saying that. You know what I'm saying.
My pet rooster exactly so much.
I'm sure once or twice. I just want to say, I researched and there have been many emotional support roosters as well as peacocks, podbillied pigs, therapy turkeys, some spiders. Not all of those species care. However, if you're like going through a breakup, they're like, I'm a turkey, are you?
Why are you hugging me?
Dogs understand human emotion. They understand especially the more they hang around us, and this comes with a mix of their sense of smell. They understand there's chemical changes going on our body, which is why they can They can detect diabetes, They can detect a blood sugar drop, they can detect cancer. They can detect a seizure about to happen. You know, they can detect pretty much anything in our bodies that our noses, our weak little human noses cannot detect.
You know what I'm saying, We don't even know we have you know, diabetes, are about to have a seizure, and suddenly the dog starts changing its behavior ten minutes before a seizure. And next thing you know, you have a seizure and people say your dog is actually identifying, it's indicating on you. You know, I don't know of another animal that does this, right, Yeah, and I've worked with them all. You know.
Does it change the way you look at yourself as like, do you have to see yourself as the alpha of this pack?
And do you do you.
See alpha behaviors and beta behaviors in groups and apply that to humans at all?
Not? Really, I'm not believe it or not. I'm not that egotistical to be the alpha male in a group. Honestly, you know, the loudest one in the room is the weakest in my opinion. Ah, you know hear that now, I'm usually honestly, I'm I'm pretty much I'm a loner.
I'm a loner, Doddy Rebel.
I like, yeah, I don't like hanging out big groups of people. I don't like you know, so I'm kind of a lone ranger in life.
And also you have ten friends on the proper right now. They're all very hairy and small. But do you do you think that the dogs are important for people who who have introversion or who are who are lonelier. That's one thing about dogs. I feel like there are so valued for because a lot of times in life we don't get unconditional love the way that we get it from a dog.
You know what I mean.
Your dog does not care what kind of cards you drive, you know what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely, you know there's people are seeing the there's you know, the emotional support dogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So that became very popular in the past ten years now. Emotional support dogs have been around for thousands of years. You know, this is where the you know, original lap dogs came from, right, like a Maltese for example, that was like one of the true original lap dogs. And so it was it was to provide you know, comfort and emotional support to somebody you know who has just
you know, needed a companion. And in the past ten twelve years, emotional support animals have also just had a resurgence, you know, and everyone's like this a new new word of the decade, and I'm like, well, that's just actually an old world that's been around from you know, since the biblical times. Yeah, and the reason why it's become very popular is because people are seeing more and more. I see it all the time with for example, autistic kids.
I work a lot with autistic kids, train a lot of service dogs for them, and we train these dogs to do kind of all kinds of tasks whatever. But the most important thing that these dogs offer these kids are emotional support. Because a lot of these kids, whether they're you know, whether they're autistic or whether they just have anxiety or they're just very shy and they just can't you know, open up to the world. The dog does not see them with a disability or a condition.
They don't see you as as any as as any different than anybody else. They're seeing, you know, everything but the but the surface. You know, dogs are they're they're they're like the ultimate poker player. They can read tells, they know what you're thinking.
So, yes, dogs have evolved to care.
Even chimpanzees don't follow a human gaze or pointing like domesticated dogs do. So the whites of human eyes they're called sclera, and they were adapted and evolved to communicate with other humans. So we have these non pigmented sclera and small irises in our eyes, so we can tell where each other's eyeballs are moving and if we're averting a gaze because we're shady, and dogs are capable of
following that in ways that even chimps can't. So evolutionary speaking, this helps dogs predict like, Okay, you're looking at a microwave. That must mean you're about to pick up the hot pocket. Some steamy ham may soon drop on the floor. I'm watching what you're doing.
I got this.
Now on the topic of hot things dropping, let's get to your questions. But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of the show.
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Okay, your questions one question and I got a lot of questions from the Patreon page.
I FI, are you ready for a rapid fire a round?
Yeah? Go?
Okay, patrons are got to be easy to answer. Laura Mulligan wants to know wired dogs always ready.
To just party, party like what in your house?
Or just hang? Just why are dogs always so down to hang?
Well?
I mean they're dogs. Dogs are very dogs are very social creatures. I'm as well put it this way. Here's what I cannot answer. And this is a million dollar question I have for anybody, right, why do dogs love to play underneath your feet?
I don't know.
There's a so I you know, I have a massive ranch here, I have a big training yard. They can run around there all day. But when I go down there, they choose to play right underneath my feet, you know, feet.
I'll look into that.
I don't know why they love to party, but dogs know they're they're party animals.
You know.
I started looking into the origin of party animal, and it seems to have sprung up in the late nineteen seventies on Saturday Night Live. But predating that is a usage in the nineteen twenties, when people who loved to drink and just carouse around were called, quite aptly party hounds. The dogs Toefer Mendoza, Michael Shay, and Anthony Stole all the same question. Why do puppies or puppy paws smell so good like corn chips or free dos? Have you ever smelled dog feet?
Yeah? I don't know. There's certain odors. Well, first of all, believe it or not, dogs sweat through their paws. Oh they do, yes, so that might be one of the theories.
That's their boh yeah, okay, yeah, so that could be.
It seems like, okay, well, if a dog eats grain, it's gonna sweat out free doo do. But actually it's due to paw dwelling yeast that happens to smell like corn. So it doesn't make it any less delicious. Well maybe it does, but it's still cute. Michael saidam Bouga wants to know can an old dog really learn new tricks? And then his follow up question, along with Evan Simkowitz, was does my dog really love me as much as I love them? So?
Can they learn new tricks? And do they love us?
Can an old dog learn nu tricks? Yes? Absolutely. There's a big misconception. They always say, you know, you can't teach an old dog nu tricks. I would one disagree, And the reason why I disagree is because I train old dogs here at the ranch all the time. From the shelters. You just can't teach them as fast. Think about a sponge. You have a dry sponge and a wet sponge. The dry sponge is a puppy Okay, I'll talk to your terms. Okay, about two computers, sure, think
about two hard drives. You have a brand new hard drive empty, and you have an old hard drive that is full of information that you need to kind of like move things around, eliminate a few things.
Here in defragment.
Yes.
Now, the new hard drive, it retains information very quickly and you can just load it up quick the old hard drive, Yes, you can still put information on there, it's just not as fast.
Okay.
Yeah.
And do dogs love us?
Of course? Okay, just check out what ask that.
I think we doubt it.
There's no way my dog can love me as much as it seems like it loves me, is what a lot of people think. And maybe people just need to come to terms with how lovable they are.
Yeah, you have to remember our form of love and dog's form of love is much different. We require love for you know, out of like a out of like a want. Dogs require love out of.
Need because they're dependent on us.
And so of course, of course we've domesticated these animals to the point where they are dependent on you know what, everything they must survive with, and love is one of those one of those actual you know survival skills. That's I'm a firm believer of that.
I love that though.
Well it's true. It's true because you know, look, if you just give your dog the basic needs, the basic necessities, and you don't ever, you know, pet it and love it, it's going to have social problems.
Right, yeah, So you gotta love your dog and they gotta love you back.
Yes, that's part of the basics that it needs.
So go pet your dang dog right now. Or if you're like me, you can pet someone else's dog, even if you don't know the people and they're just at the next table over a brunch and you're like, look, it's a friendly dog. It's not my fault that it's cute and in public, that's on you. Jacob Qughle wants to know. Am I ruining my nine month old puppy by letting her sleep in the bed with me?
Absolutely? Not, Okay, absolutely, let I let all my dogs sleep in the bed. The only the only time I ever have an issue with that, and this is just me, And the only time I ever have an issue with a dog sleeping in the bed or getting on the couch is that they get possessive of over it. Okay, you tell them get off, and now the growling at you, that's where the buck ends.
Okay.
Yeah, But as far as dogs sleeping in the bed and you kidding me, you got nine dogs in the bed here, you know, I find myself sleeping in like the fetal position up near like the pillow.
Area, because there really are nine that there were ten dogs in the property.
And then you have that's just what you saw, right, You're so lucky.
Dustin Mills wants to know do dogs enjoy hugs. I'm going to guess that's a yes.
Yeah, but it's it's different, not like a hug. Put it this way, I would not agree with a dog liking a hug like we like to hug where you're talking chest to chests. That might make a dog feel a little bit uncomfortable because it's a very unorthodox. But as far as like a like a like a side saddle hug or something like that, they like more petting. Now, there's a lot of bait whether they like being pet in the head, But there is one thing you can't deny.
Dogs like a nice, long, firm stroke, So they don't like a a trickle touch. That's almost like annoying. They like a firm, long stroke from you know, shoulders all the way to tail.
Oh, like a firm paint brush all the way down making a skunk strike.
And there's also been a lot of a lot of scientific evidence that not only petting a dog lowers their stress and lowers their anxiety, but it also lowers ours. Ugh, So petting a dog is actually a win win for everybody.
I need a dog yesterday. So why this may be?
Some studies suggest that a bonding hormone called oxytocin is released when you snug a pup. Now, this is the same chemical that your body pumps out after you nut, that's scientific term, or when you have a newborn baby. And evidently it has a lot of physiological and psychological benefits. And now I'm just dreaming of a world where doctors prescribed MutS and health insurance covered chew toys.
That's weird.
Wants to know what do dogs dream about when they're making those cute little wines in their.
Sleep chasing rabbits?
Yeah, stroke career wants to know why do some dogs kick their leg really fast when you itch a certain part of their body.
We all have our spots. We all have our spots. Oh yeah, I'll tell you a little secret of me right now when I because I love getting massages because I'm tall and I'm very athletic, and my back always takes a beating, like I have Hernietta diss salt in my back and I'm always in pain. And so there's one spot right at the top of the butt where it meets it back. You could dig your elbows in there so hard, and I swear I would start kicking my leg like a dog just for some reason. It's
my spot. And I think it's because of the spot that I can't get myself. I just can't get any leverage for it, you know. And so yeah, it's sometimes it's the areas they really can't touch.
I think that's them saying, oh, that's the stuff, Mara Spencer. He wants to know what breed is best for cat people aka low maintenance and very lazy dogs. What's the best kind of dog for someone who's used to having cats? Like, what is a dog that's like the most similar to a cat?
I would say the sheba e Oh really? Oh yeahbody who has a sheet of you know, anyone listening right now. Uh huh, I promise you just tell them to tell them to tweet you and they will. They will. We call those the cat the cat.
Dog really oh yeah, and they look like foxes.
Also, oh they're gorgeous. Yeah. Very difficult to train. Okay, yeah, very different, very feral, very cat like.
Do they knock stuff off of shelves? Uh?
Yeah, probably. They're known for not listening. A lot of people think they're they're when they have a sheep at Uni. If they're not experienced with the breathe, they think that the dog is deaf.
Okay, oh my god, it's that much like talk to the pot like you don't even look at me.
Yeah, and it's hilarious.
Dog trainers, you know, they make a lot of money off those dogs because you're constantly calling them back.
Jamie Gibbon wants to know what's the strangest cross breed you've ever seen.
I saw, Okay, years ago, I saw a Corgie and a I want to say it was a kind of corso, which is a large, very large pitbull type breed. Oh Jesus, we're talking. We're talking like eighty ninety pounds. But then it was mixed with a CORKI. So it had these it had these legs that were I want to say these things were probably four inches tall, and they bowed out almost like a sea lion, you know, and it walked me a sea lion. So it had this long body with these four inch legs, and it had this giant,
giant shoulders and head. I mean it looked like just something out of like you know this, Uh, it looked like you you something out of beetlejuice, like you just combined these two animals. Yeah. I've seen some pretty cool mixes out there, but yeah, that was definitely the weirdest one. And he was sweet as could be.
Oh my god.
Oh yeah, people looked at him. If you if you just saw a headshot, you're thinking of yourself. Man, that's a big pit bull, and all of a sudden you see the whole body. You're like, what happened?
What was its name? Do you remember?
I forget his nick but I did train him.
Man, it has an Instagram coount. You better let me know.
Yeah.
Yeah, So in trying to track down an Instagram account, I failed. I straight it failed. But I did end up scrolling through a lot of core pit pit g corbul hashtags, and I can say twelve out of ten would waste precious many minutes of my life doing that again.
Mad's Clement, Jen Durbin, and Dave Miller all wanted to know a little bit about emotional support dogs, whether or not, what your thoughts are and people registering them, if whether or not that privilege is being abused, and what the best dog if you are looking for an emotional support dog, what the best kind of dog would be.
Okay, So, emotional support animal, there's there's three. A lot of people they get emotional support animals confused with service dogs. Now let me let me just explain to you. There's three categories of technically service dogs. So you have emotional support, you have therapy dog, and you have service dog. Okay, Now there's a massive difference between each one. Emotional support animals they require no training zero. Okay. Now this is
where the problem lies. This is where I put my foot down, because the biggest problem is they can go into areas that you you can have like service service dogs or other animals. So, for example, emotional support animals or ESA as we call them, they're allowed to go into planes and fly with This is why you see a lot of dogs on planes, those are most of
them are not service dogs, are emotional support animals. The biggest problem is all you have to do is you have you have to get a note from your doctor. I'm not I'm not discrediting. These people are denying the fact that they need this this animal because they don't want to take drugs. That's good, that's a great thing.
But I think there should be there should be strict guidelines that these people should have to train their dogs, at least some sort of basic standards, basic obedience, you know, you know, a good good canine citizen tests something that says this dog is qualified to go into public places and you know be with me around other dogs and
safely around children and stuff like that. The biggest problem is you have everybody registering their dogs and then they bring them into you know, planes, and now we're seeing a lot more problems. We're seeing a lot of these emotional support animals that are you know, they're biting people, they're attacking of the dogs.
So last year a Southwest passenger was bitten by another passengers support dog. And Delta Airlines has also recently cracked down and they require ESA animal owners to sign a voucher, essentially saying, my support animal won't fuck anyone up. But I think we can all agree that the problems are somewhat rare, and when there's an animal on a flight, everyone gets so stoked. Like take for example, Daniel urduck in stinker Butt, who recently accompanied his owner, a PTSD sufferer,
on a flight. By the way, he's a duck. Everyone loved it. Daniel turduck in stinker Butt. The duck was decked out in tiny red flappy shoes, was wearing a Captain America diaper. Honestly, I feel that airlines should charge more for flights with diapered waterfowl on them do it on their first in line. But not all emotional support dogs or service animals. Those are kind of leveled up.
So that is the difference between the emotional support dog and the service dog. The service dog there they come with I mean high level training. We're talking six months to a year to even two years sometimes and the service dog. That's part of our testing we do. We test it around other dogs, test it around kids, We test it around all kinds of all kinds of environments to make sure this dog will never buy a kid, he'll never buite another animal, won't cause a problem. So yes,
do I think people are abusing it this day and age. Absolutely? Okay, And this is the hard part. It's hard to it's hard to filter out Okay, this is one of the good guys, it's one of the bad guys. This this woman's doing it right, and this one's abusing it. So there needs to be some sort of standardized tests to say this is a this is emo emotional support animal, and it has to pass these guidelines.
I had a ton of patrons on Patreon ask me what to do if their dog has anxiety? And are we just more aware of dog anxiety or is it becoming more prevalent? But what do you do if your dog it seems like an anxious part.
I don't think. I think anxiety is the same today as it was, you know, thirty forty years ago. It's just it's just people where yeah, we are identifying it now. You got to remember. I think the reason why it's it's become such a big thing nowadays because you have dogs are much they're part of the family. There's an old saying that we say in the in the dog world. Dogs went from the farm to the backyard, to the house,
to the couch to the bed. This is the chronological order of events that this is how the dog has evolved in our families. So yeah, sure, back in the nineteen fifties, dogs had anxiety, but we didn't notice because they were stuck in the backyard in the doghouse, so we didn't notice. It hasn't been, you know, until recent times that we've started seeing there the dogs with heavy anxiety because now they're just living in our homes, on our couches, in our beds, you know what I'm saying.
So I think the anxiety is the same nowadays as it always was. Now there are ways to help it. You're never going to eliminate it, but there are always a hell. I actually use this product now, it's called Soloquin, And there's also something called Calm. It's a supplement and stuff like that works. There's also these what's called the compression shirts. Those are a big help sometimes. There's also there's also music boxes. These music boxes what they do
is they they've I guess they've found out. I haven't read the exact science behind it, but I have them here I've tested them out and probably about five hundred dogs over the years, and I'm actually a fan. Really, I'd say yeah, I'd say, let's say, of one hundred dogs it works on about I'd say twenty five of them, which is a good number, right, because you got to remember you're not going to ever get one.
So when Brandon said music boxes, I thought he meant this, which is tinny and kind of creepy, and it seems annoying if your ears pick up like everything. But I did all the digging and it's more like a Bluetooth speaker with spa jams like this sample from Relax my Dog on YouTube, which has over a mi million plays.
So either a few.
Dog owners use it a lot, or it's not uncommon for dogs to need just a little bit of help chilling out anxiety.
Is it's it's inside them. There's something going on inside them. The reason why they have anxiety is just like humans. And so there's all kinds of stuff on the market that can help their dog. Now here's what I will say about helping your dog with anxiety. There's something I do all the time on the show, and I do it in training videos. I don't stop at one product.
So in other words, if I try one product and I say, oh, it's not working, I don't eliminate that product and try something else, and eliminate that product and try something else, and so on and so forth. What I do is I call I call the layered layered system, the layered training system. If I don't see results of that one product, I keep I keep them on that product, and I layer another one on, and I keep stacking
things on until I find the combination of what works. Because, believe it or not, you can try one product and eliminate it and you might strike out. But sometimes you have the combination of three or four of those things and it works.
Really so like maybe melatonins involved or magnesium or things like that.
Depends.
It could be. It could be a music box and a thundershirt, you know what I'm saying. It could be the combination of both that actually you see the best results. Okay, So I always say it's it's called the layered the layered approach, almost like a Rubik's cube. Oh there we go. I found the formula with these two combined or these four combined.
And just unlock it. And you know what, summer's coming up. What do you do for fireworks? I know that there's so many dogs in shelters after fireworks because they freak out.
I wish I had the magic you know, code for that. I Look, fireworks, it's just like it's just like thunder's it's a very it's it's scary. Look, it's scary to wild animals. And you have to remember, domesticated domestic dogs they're just they're one step away from a wild animal. Everything we see our domestic dogs do, it's the traits came from the wild animal. So wolves are just as scared of fireworks and just as scared of thunder as domesticated dogs. It's an instinct.
Oh man.
Just thinking about a bunch of scared raccoons clinging to trees on the fourth of July.
Oh man, I'm gonna cry again.
Oh shit.
But you should keep your dog somewhere safe during firework season.
Oh absolutely, now, believe it or not. There's two days of the year where the shelters are the most populated, and I'm not talking about human populas. I'm talking about dog populated. And that is the fifth of July and the first of January and the reason why is because a lot of people they go out to whatever the fireworks show and they just leave their dog in the backyard. The dog starts freaking out when they hear the booms everywhere, and the dog will do anything to save its own life.
It will dig under the fence or jump over a six foot fence. It's amazing what they can actually do when they're scared. And so the fifth July, everyone is out there looking for their dog.
Yeah. I feel like in the summer, I see those icy posts more on social media, see a lot.
Yeah, So I always try to remind people of that, you know, especially when you get around that week or the fourth July. Look, just if you have to, even if you have to create your dog, you know, just keep it safe. I'm usingly not a big you know, fan of of Crates. Typically I do. I use crates for for create training. As far as like you know, house breaking, that's kind of where it ends. Yeah, but
then that's about it. But if we're talking about saving a dog's life, yeah, or I'm saying creating for the fourth of July, right, so maybe dog won't hate you, don't.
Worry your dog's like never again, will I trust you exactly.
Okay, So last two questions.
I ask every ologist, what do you dislike about your job or your work as a sinologist? What's the most annoying thing? Is it picking up poop?
Is it lint rolling? Is it scheduling? Is it billing? What is it?
I guess the most annoying thing about my job is whenever I'm done training an animal. Believe it or not, you know, no news is good news. I like the idea of no news is good news because that means everything's working. What irks me the most, and it ticks me off more than anything, is when I spend all this time training an animal. I put all this time and energy, you know, and I donate a lot of training to people that can't afford it. And the only
thing I ask is make sure it sticks. I don't want to see you here, but I don't want to see you back here. And if they didn't take the time to do it, you know what I'm saying, Oh, I was busy, I didn't you know. Listen, here's the reality. Dog training is just like it's just like a daily diet. You know. You can get the gym membership, but you have to actually go to the gym. You know a lot of people they they when they get an animal,
then they start having problems with that. All they want to do is they want to pay a dog trainer to take care of their problems. Like, that's not how it works. You are paying me, And I'm showing you, you know, because if you if you're not going to put the time or the effort into your own animal, I am I'm not going to call you back, right, And so I make sure people know that. And you
know a lot of people believe it or not. They get pissed off when I say, you know, look, I want you to buy this, buy my book, and they're like, oh, it's all about the money, huh. And I say, okay, let me tell you something. You have an animal, Okay, it's going to live the next thirteen to fifteen years. If you can't spend it seventeen dollars, okay, where you can have a reference book and say, oh, let me see here, Oh this is how you teach a dog
to stop counter surfing this and that. It's a reference book if you can't sit there and spend a week year life reading it and spend seventeen ninety nine. You know, when you just paid two thousand dollars for this pure bread dog. You know what I'm saying. You bought it a three hundred dollars bed. You bought it some little jacket that I probably won't wear with it a South of California. But you're not going to invest seventeen dollars
and spend a week reading that book. You do not deserve that animal, period, you know, textbook, yes, forgot yestake. It's just like having a kid, you know, if you're not going to, you know, read up on how to raise a child, read up on how to you know, how to teach your child a few things, you do not deserve that kid. You know. This is basic parenting, whether it's a kid or it's a dog. And so this is why I always tell people education is very important.
Whether you read my book or someone else's book, read something that will give you the basic information if you if you're the kind of person that just says, oh, I want to just pay someone for my problems, just go ahead, and you know, find another home for your dog right now. Get about dog exactly.
Okay, So what is the best thing about dogs? What is your favorite? What what do you love the most about your work.
Not only saving the dog's life, but I see it all the time. You know, people say you saved my life too, So my job as a as a trainer and a rescuer. I love seeing. I love seeing that both sides of the coin. I love seeing the dog's life change. I love seeing, you know, how they came out of their shell, like, for example, that that bloodhound mix you saw it side, this is this is day one for her. Technically she came last night, but this is true day one for her. You're seeing she's a
little timid or tails tuck. She want to know part of it. Come back here in a month, you're going to see her do a full one eighties. She'll be the most popular dog here at the ranch, you know. And that's what we do. We changed lives. So I love, I love, you know, changing the dog's life. But then there's another side to that. You know, the woman that she's going to that I have in mind that I think she's going to. Oh, she's just she's over the moon, you know, she's over the moon about it, and it's
going to change her life. You know a lot of these people that I that I trained dogs for they've lost something, you know, whether it's a whether they've lost a dog, or they've lost a family member, or they've lost a part of their life that they're not going to get back. These dogs are almost like a new chapter for them. It's a new, you know, only chapter of life. They're going to look back and say, that
was the best period of my life. You know, that Golden Retriever I had, that that Bloodhound, that Jack Russell, that little Chihuahua that I had. It was the best dog I ever had. And that's what I say about every dog I've ever had my entire life. That was the best dog I ever had. And I keeps saying it. Honestly, they're all the best. Yeah, there's that saying. I love saying. You know, who has the best dog in the world? We all do.
Oh that's so sweet.
Uh, just heads up here, Maybe I might be talking about myself in this next question. What if you're so into dogs you're afraid that you're not going to be a good enough owner.
Well, does that ever happen?
Yeah?
I mean, look, that's that's a hard one to answer. That's that's the that's a million dollar question, you know, I'm I'm I'll just to be honest, I don't know if i'd be a good father for human, you know, like I don't know if i'd if I ever have a kid. I always ask myself that I've had a million people to be like, no, you'd be a great dad, because well, see you sound like everybody else. I don't know the answer to that, you know, going back to
going back to the dog, I don't know the answer to. Uh, you know what what if they're you know what if they're not going to be a good dog parent? Look, you you don't know? Do you try? But the thing is what I what I will say is I wouldn't. I wouldn't get the dog unless you are, you know, dedicated to I'm going to give this thing every single thing it needs. I'm gonna give this animal all the love, all the all the you know, all the training, all the education, everything it needs in life.
So perhaps one day you'll see old dad Ward on Lucky Dog, and yes, I will start sobbing when Brandon changes the dog's collar from a red in training one to a green one, meaning this dog is yours.
Oh man, ho water works.
See this is why we got to get You on season seven.
I know seriously, so thank you so much for doing this. So to learn more about Brandon McMillan, you can go to Canineminded dot com and there are links to his Facebook and Twitter. He's Animal Brandon on Instagram and his book once again is called Lucky Dog Lessons. I purchased it even though I don't have a dog, So if you have a dog, it's worth it even more.
Go get it.
Lucky Dog is on Saturday mornings on CBS. You can check your local listings. And as long as we're talking about it, so is my science show, The Henry Ford Innovation Nation with Morocca.
It's a long.
Title, it's a great show, no swear words. Ologies is on Twitter and Instagram at Ologies. I'm on Twitter and Instagram at Ali Ward with one L and for shirts and dad hats and pins and tots and baby clothes, you can head to ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you Shannon Feltus and Bonnie Dutch for running that, and you can join the Facebook Ologies group. Thank you Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo for admitting that. Thank you to the patrons
who keep the podcast going. You can join that for as little as twenty five per cents an episode, and you get to hear what episodes are coming up next, and you can submit your questions. And you also allow me to pay the incredible Stephen Ray Morris to help me edit all this together.
He is the best.
I owe him a basket of puppies and by puppies I probably mean cats or dinosaurs. Let's be honest. He knows this brand. The theme song was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands, which is a very good band in case you want to check them out. Now, if you stick around to the end the show, you know I tell you a little secret to say thanks for sticking through the credits. And this week I'm gonna tell you a secret. I don't have a dog. Clearly, all I want is a dog, and my family and
friends know how much I want a dog. That this past Christmas, my parents were cruising past a thrift store and saw a mechanical robot dog named Biscuit and purchased it for me for Christmas.
That is Biscuit. Biscuit.
It's the size of a normal dog, and it's mechanical, and it's covered in fur, and you can hug it like a normal dog.
It's Westworld as hell.
And my secret is the a that I own Biscuit, who responds to you when you pet him.
And also can you even you guys? It was the best Birches ever.
And I hug Biscuit and Biscuit has been sitting next to me this whole time I recorded this episode. When my parents bought it, They're like, our daughter would love this. It's all she wants as a dog. And I think the owners of the Snowline Hospice thrift store near my parents' home were like, oh, hell, hold your daughter.
And they had to be.
Like, oh, she's in She's in her thirties, She's a grown ass woman.
So I own Biscuit. He loves me. Okay. Continue to ask smart people stupid questions.
By Bye Pacadermathology, hobbiology, doo zoology, lithology and technology, meteorology, paology, ethology.
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