Garret Wing: The Art of Canine Training

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. We're on a mission to make you remarkable, and helping me in this episode is Garret Wing. Garret is the founder and owner of American Standard Dog Training. He has over seventeen years of experience in law enforcement. He served as a commander of the Tactical Investigations Unit, Senior Police Canine Unit supervisor, patrol canine handler, and narcotics canine handler.
This basically means he knows a lot about dogs. With his extensive experience in law enforcement, dog training and instruction, Garret has become a highly respected figure in the field of canine training and handling. If you've ever wondered about what it took for a dog to be in the canine unit, you're about to find out. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. And now here is the remarkable Garret Wing.
When I walk past a canine unit, can you just tell me what it took for that dog to be in that car? How did they find the puppy? How did they train them? Do puppies fall out of training? Is there a rejection rate? And how long do they serve? What happens when they retire? I just want to know the whole story of canine units.
Garret Wing:
Typically, they're born often overseas. They're pairing up championship litters. We're talking about dogs that have competed in sports overseas such as Schutzhund, IGP, Mondioring. Depends which country we're talking about where they have different variations. But in other words, they're protection sports. And these are typically civilians who instead of going golfing on the weekend, this is their passion. This is what it's all about for them. After work, they come home and they start training dogs.
They need to continue to produce offspring, so they'll have a litter, and then they'll typically take that litter, they'll get a few of them, and they start working those dogs as young puppies. Now, as those puppies start to develop around six months, eight months, nine months old, ten months old, they can really dial in on which ones have it and which ones don't, which are going to likely succeed, which ones are healthy, which ones have the drive.
And what ends up happening is they don't want to take a puppy. If you're competing in the sport, you obviously can't compete in the sport with an eight-week-old dog. We can't compete until maybe that dog's twelve months old, a year and a half, a little older.
But you don't want to hedge your whole bet on one puppy because it's always a roll of the dice, so they don't just pick one puppy and then invest all their time and energy into that one puppy. God forbid it's not healthy or it doesn't have the drives they need, so they are going to spread their bet or hedge their bet on a handful of puppies.
Now, what ends up happening is once they develop these dogs to a certain age, now they'll make their selection and spend most of their time on that one dog, maybe two dogs. They want to take that one dog to the championship. They want to title that dog. And there's different levels of titling. This is not my area of expertise. This is what they do over there. But they're going to try to put all their energy now into the one dog.
Now what happens to the three, four, five, six other dogs that they were grooming, they're not going to just throw them in the trash, so what they end up doing is we have folks over in the States who are considered like vendors, and they will fly over to Europe, meet with their contacts there and say, "Hey, I'm a vendor for the police and military. We're constantly looking for the best dogs that we can get."
And so they'll visit those kennels over there, and those kennels are now basically bringing these dogs back or saying, "Hey, this dog's still excellent. It's still an A+ dog, we just don't have anyone that's training it. The owner of this dog decided to go with this one. But we have plenty left over. Which would you like?" And so the vendors will then import those dogs.
If you want to talk price, again, not my area of expertise, and it constantly changes, especially with the political climate and whatnot and import fees, but you're talking on average 3,500 dollars, 5,000 dollars, depending upon the quality of the dog. What's the genetics of the dog? Oh, both parents were champions. And so anyways, they'll import those dogs maybe a handful at a time, a dozen at a time.
Then they'll end up stateside because the police departments locally, they're not spending money typically to send their trainers overseas for a one or two week paid travel to check out these dogs.
Furthermore, if you haven't developed good relationships with the folks over there, they're just going to pawn off their leftovers, their not so good dogs, because they got to get rid of those dogs too. They got to get rid of the good ones and the not so good ones. If you come over unsuspecting or you don't speak the language, they're going to hide the good ones and only show you the bad ones. We're typically, as police departments, relying upon vendors who have built these relationships over decades.
And so they'll bring the dogs over, and then that's where we come in where we, as police canine handlers and trainers. Usually we have a vendor, a preferred vendor that maybe the department's been working with for decades, or sometimes there's multiple vendors. We keep our options open because it depends what they have brought in lately. Then we will test the dogs.
Now, every department tests their dogs differently. Some departments go to the vendors on their home turf, and other times we'll say, "Hey, look, we're going to buy six dogs. Can you make a trip down here?" However many hours of travel that is. "And we're going to test whatever you have."
Also, the vendors start to know what each individual department is looking for. Some departments want harder, tougher dogs, and so they'll know to bring that. Or if you have a good relationship with them, say, "Look, we've got four handlers that need dogs. Two of them are veteran handlers. You already know what they want. They want something similar to what they had last time. They want a German Shepherd; they want a Belgian Malinois.
They want high drive. This guy likes to compete with his dog in police canine trials and competitions, so let's get him something turnkey. Oh, we also have a brand new rookie handler; happens to be petite," whether it's a female or just a smaller framed male. "They probably don't want that 120 pound dog. Do you have something a little more on the small side like a pocket rocket?" All of this is taken into account, and then the dogs will be tested.
Now, we can talk about the kind of testing we do, but we are typically examining the dog's drives. What kind of drives are we talking about? It could be prey drive, hunt drive, fight drive, defensive drive, just their overall courage. Also, their social drive. We used to not care about social drive, but it's a new age. And we used to think we one of the biggest, toughest, hardest dogs.
And just a little bit about my background, I was a police canine handler and a police canine supervisor for the city of Miami Police Department. My father and stepmother were also members of that canine unit. Combined, we probably have, I don't know, thirty or forty years of experience in the canine world, so when we go to test dogs, especially back in the day, we just wanted tough dogs.
We used to think you either had to get a tough dog or a social dog. And it was hard to find a dog that was super sweet with people and your family could pet it and other police officers could pet it, but it would still be a good police dog. We used to think, no, we're going to go into backyards.
We're going to go on tracks for murder suspects, rapists, armed robbers. I'll err on the side of a harder dog. He doesn't need to be pet by anybody, he just needs to bite when I need him to bite so he can save my butt in the backyard.
I would say, at least during my tenure, towards the end of it, we started to switch because we would get these almost unicorn dogs like robots, turnkey. Super social, but if you said the right word and you turn that dog on and put them into the right drive, at the drop of a hat, they would go into action and handle business. And we try to get more social dogs. There's no reason to have a dog that is so hot that nobody can get near it. And we've had dogs like that in the past.
They're so dangerous, to be honest with you, that even backups can't get close enough to you as a handler to back you up, so now you end up going into a backyard, and we always say, "Hey, backup, do me a favor. Stand about thirty feet behind me." Because we might be using a fifteen or thirty foot lead, and so you got to give that canine dog and the handler some space.
If you get too close to the handler, the dog's going to bite you, the SWAT backup, just as quick as he's going to bite anybody else. But the point being, sometimes we still get dogs like that. We tend to try to get dogs that have all the drives and yet they're clear headed. We like a clear headed dog.
Anyways, we'll do the testing. We can get more into the details. Some of the testing's pretty cool that we would do. And yes, some of those dogs get maybe washed out in the sense we're telling the vendor, "Hey, thanks for bringing these twelve dogs. We'd like these four right here."
Now, other departments might come along, and maybe they're a softer, kinder, gentler department or they haven't been in the game long enough, they don't know what they're looking for, and so same thing. The vendors are like, "Hey, this is a great dog." It's a dog we might rate as a C+, maybe. We're not taking it, but if they want to take it, sure.
Maybe it turns out to be a great dog for their purposes because all they need is a dog that looks pretty and shows up to the school demos and can catch a ball. We need a dog and the department that we worked in that needs to be everything and handle business, so we were very selective on what dogs we would get.
And oftentimes too, even after we selected the dog, you might be a month or two into training, call the vendor up and say, "Yeah, this dog's too much," or, "Hey, we tested this dog and we thought it was good, but it doesn't quite have what we need. We found a problem."
We also would test for health. And so health issues might pop up. And there's a certain level of guarantee from the vendors. But we try not make that happen too often. It's just bad business to constantly take dogs and actually mess the dog up in your training. Because you can mess up a good dog with bad training, send the dog back. The vendors don't like that. They don't want to do business with you anymore.
Never asked me a question without expecting a thirty-minute answer. But this is my passion, this is what we love. Then, after selection, they passed that selection. We've now selected them to go through a canine training. Every state is different, but in the state of Florida, we do what's called a 480-hour canine certification course. The dog and the handler must go through that.
On average, it takes around three or four months. And we're following a state standardized curriculum that hasn't probably changed much in twenty or thirty years. But what worked back then is still working now. And we are getting the dogs trained to do tracking, to do what we call area searches, which is using their nose to find a hidden subject. Obedience obviously is a big portion of it, agility, and just general control of the dog. We build the dog up so that it can pass certification.
And this may be a little risqué, but soon as they're certified, technically you can hit the street and go handle business. However, a lot of agencies will hold the handler and the dog back for above and beyond training, which we often call dirtying the dog up. And what that is, the state certification is the bare minimum standards, if you will. It's all textbook material.
Do this, do that. Make sure your dog bites the guy in the suit. And when you recall him, he recalls. In fact, the entire test that's done for certification happens on a training field. For anybody who's been in the game long enough, the training field is one thing, the street is a whole other thing. And so after the dog passes its ABCs, then we say, "Okay, now let's make it real. Let's now focus."
And by the way, at this point, we need the dog under tremendous control; beautiful recall, beautiful obedience. We try to maintain that, but when we talk about dirtying a dog up, we're saying, "Hey, get ready for the real deal. You might get in a fight tomorrow with a real bad suspect.
He might punch you in the face. I don't want, when we're in a backyard, the police dog for the first time ever realizing that you might get hit too." We have to prepare the dogs for that. We start exposing them to any type of scenario that you can imagine to prepare the dog for real-life encounters on the street.
And I'll just give you one example. In certification, it's on a sanitary field with a guy in a Stay Puft marshmallow suit, the big bite suit. And dogs are very visual creatures. On the street, it's not going to be a guy running away from you in a big old puffy suit. What it's going to be potentially is a guy hiding, let's say in the bushes maybe with no clothes on.
Maybe he shed a lot of his clothes because he's trying to get rid of whatever it is we saw him wearing. And this happens a lot; you'd be surprised. Guys will break into homes. They're running from the police. They bail out of a stolen vehicle or an armed carjacking vehicle. You go searching for them, they'll find an open door, they'll go in and start taking a shower in somebody else's house.
Just, "Oh yeah, I live here, man." I'm taking a shower." And while they're taking a shower, you're like, "Hey, what's the address?" And they're like, "Yeah, I don't know."
Anyways, has your dog ever bit someone with no equipment on in the shower with the water coming on? And you'd be surprised. There's a lot of hard-ass police dogs who'd be like, "Nah, I don't feel like getting wet. I don't feel like slipping on the floor." A lot of dogs, even police dogs are a little terrified of slippery floors. These types of things we do over the coming, not just weeks and months to dirty them up, this is what training is like now for the rest of that dog's career.
It's all about getting that environmental exposure, showing different pictures: biting a guy in a river, biting a guy in an attic, biting a guy in a tree, biting a guy under a car. And I keep saying bite, but that's what we're preparing the dogs to do to be able to make a physical seizure on a subject that's either refusing to come out or that wants to fight the police. That key. We get the dogs from overseas, into our training program, and then on the street.
And the only thing I missed was pre-COVID, we used to get what we would call turnkey titled dogs. Remember, we go back to the folks who maybe have a handful of puppies, they raise them up, they select one, then they take that one all the way across the finish line; try to get it as high up as they can in competition and get all the titles.
We used to buy title dogs, give or take 15,000 dollars, 20,000 dollars. When those dogs came, they were fully mature, two, two and a half, sometimes three years old, pretty much turnkey. We called them Ferraris. You put a competent handler behind the lead there, you could pass certification the same day. You have to put in your requisite hours, but those dogs are ready.
In fact, you know what often happened? We'd give rookie handlers the turnkey dog, and the dog was actually worse three or four months later than it was when we first got it. Little rusty, not as clean and sharp as it came right off the boat because those folks over there don't play. They want those dogs perfect. It's like if I gave a gated manual Ferrari to someone who didn't know how to drive a manual and I said, "Oh, just good luck to you. Go drive that."
It might have some dents on it, you might've burned up the transmission. We give these turnkey dogs to someone who's never worked a dog before, and their timing is off, their leash pressure skills are not there. It's still a great dog. It's just not as sharp as it used to be.
That's what we used to get back in the day, title dogs. Then when COVID came, you couldn't title a dog in Europe because you couldn't have the competitions. Everything was shut down for two years, so it was a really weird time in canine world where we couldn't get two-year-old turnkey dogs. We started getting what we call green dogs, which is what I described to you earlier.
Green dogs, meaning they don't really know their name, they don't know how to sit or down, they just know how to bite things. They're just very raw, animalistic. Think of if you had ten and twelve-year-old boys and you just let them raise themselves on an island; almost feral. That's what we get.
And then we take the best of the feral dogs that are just high drive, and we say, "Okay, I like this one." Then we put in all the training, the obedience, the out command, the searching, the tracking explosives or narcotics detection, et cetera. There you go.
Guy Kawasaki:
Why do you have to get these dogs from another country? How come we don't just have them here?
Garret Wing:
That's a great question. There are vendors here that will take a lot of these import dogs, take the best of them and have their own breeding program. However, I think it's one of those if you want a Ferrari, you got to go to Italy. Honestly, I don't have an answer for you. There are some. There definitely are some breeding programs here that are just as good as the breeding programs over in Europe, but it's just past practice.
But again, I think it depends where you are in the country. There are some police departments that have their own breeding program. But there's a lot of expense in that to raise your own puppy. And we don't even know until the dog's six, eight, nine months old if it's even worth anything. Now, if you have a litter of eight and four make it, now what do you do with the other four? What are you going to do with the dogs that don't cut it? And so I got to find homes for them.
Guy Kawasaki:
When you have a litter of puppies, what can you tell at the puppy stage? Is there already dominance going on? Do you want a dominant dog? What's the characteristics you're looking for?
Garret Wing:
I think it depends who you ask, but even when you look at a litter of puppies six, seven, eight weeks old, one of the tests that we encourage our customers to do because sometimes we often help customers procure a dog, find a breeder. We're not talking about police dogs right now, we're just talking about dogs in general. And they're working with a particular breeder.
We help get the right breeder, and then now they get pick of the litter. How do I pick the one I want? And it all depends on what you're looking for, your lifestyle. But when it comes to the dominance, absolutely. If you throw, let's say, a ball or a toy or, even better, a bone with some meat on it but there's only one bone and there's eight puppies, not every puppy is going to get a bite of that bone.
You're going to see the top one or two dogs out of that litter, maybe three letting everybody else know, "Hey, this is mine." And you'll probably have a pretty clear winner and that's going to be repeated over and over again.
And there's some theories as to how that happens. I find it very interesting, but what makes this puppy more dominant than his brother or sister right next to them. The thought process behind that is that when the mother's feeding them, more milk comes out of the middle teats, so there's more milk. And what makes a dog more physically capable and more mentally capable?
By the way, dominant and alpha type dogs are not always the biggest, though sometimes they are, they're the smartest. And so they say that, "What is it that makes a puppy develop? Why did this one develop better than this one? Why is one the runt of the litter?" Obviously there's some genetics in play, of course; who got the luck of the draw when the sperm hit the egg.
But also, when it comes to feeding time, the stronger dogs already are going to fight their way, crawl and fight their way to the middle teat to get more milk. They're also in the middle of the bunch, so they're flanked on either side, and they're getting warmth from their brothers and sisters.
What happens to the guy on the end or the gal on the end? Less milk, less warmth, less development. And so that's where you might get a runt of the litter because they didn't get as much calories in, they didn't get as much warmth, and so their brain and physical development was not on par with their brothers and sisters.
Now, what do you want for a police dog? Very interesting conversation. There's alpha dogs, if you will. What I like is a beta dog. Now, beta is often referred to in a negative connotation. You're either an alpha or you're a beta. Now actually, alphas are super tough dogs, very smart, and they don't like being second to anybody.
If you get a real strong alpha handler and a real strong alpha dog, they will clash for their whole career. It may not happen every day, but every once in a while, that dog will literally turn on the handler.
Here's an example. The dog's in full drive. And it's very hard to explain what a police dog in full drive is like. It's like having a 1,000 1,200 or 1,500 horsepower engine in a car; rip-roaring ready to go. And you better hope you've installed some brakes on it by brakes, obedience, some level of control. But the dogs have serious drive, one of them being bite drive.
And this happens in real life all the time. You get a suspect that's run from the police. He's putting off a ton of what we call fear odor. This dog has been trained his whole life to find and bite. It's his whole in life. It's beyond a game, it's their life's mission to satisfy their urge to track down basically a prey item and capture it. And so their urge to bite, they'll literally chatter their teeth. And they're building up, and they just want to go for it.
Now, what ends up happening is sometimes at the end of that track, remember the handler's full of testosterone and adrenaline is just dumping. All the backups are like that too. The dog's seen this picture before. This all, by the way, happens even before you get to the scene with the lights and sirens. The dog goes, "It's on." The dog gets its own type of adrenaline dump.
And so you're in a backyard, it's all culminating to this point, and the dog knows, "I've done my part. I found this guy. I'm going to take care of business." Problem is the guy's giving up. The guy's on top of a shed. This is the worst. He's not giving up, he won't come down, but the dog can't get to him. And so the dog's building frustration like, "Man, I know you're there, man, I can't get to you." And they finally hit a limit. You know what they do? They turn and bite the backup.
Guy Kawasaki:
What?
Garret Wing:
They turn and bite the handler. Oh yeah, it happens a lot. They have to unload. The best way I can explain it, remember, they're animals. We're animals too, but we are our most animalistic when we are enraged, when we are frustrated, maybe if we're drunk. You combine all of that and you might say, "Why would a guy ever smack or hit or punch his own loving girlfriend?"
And a guy that would never do that? I'll tell you how that happens. He's enraged, he's frustrated, he's got adrenaline pumping in his system. He's about to fight maybe another guy in the bar. And the fight's probably over his own girl. And his girlfriend's trying to hold him back, but he's already determined, "I got to unload on this guy." Anything holding them back might get an elbow to the face. It's not even personal at this point, it's, "Get off me."
And the dog sometimes go, "Will you just let go of the leash, man? I got to go handle business." And sometimes they get frustrated; they'll reach back, they'll bite the leash, they'll bite the handler's hand so that hopefully the handler lets go and they can go handle business. That's what we call sometimes too much drive, uncapped drive. We're always riding that razor's edge. We want full horsepower, but sometimes if you go around a racetrack, you're going to go off the racetrack if you go a little too fast.
Guy Kawasaki:
And is that why you want to a beta, not an alpha?
Garret Wing:
Ah. Yeah, thanks for circling back. If you have two strong alpha males, meaning the handler and the dog, they're just constantly vying for who's the boss. And there are some police dogs out there you might correct the behavior, you might teach the dog a lesson for that day. And you may do this in training. It may happen because it's planned, or it may happen, and you didn't suspect it to happen.
But one of those situations comes about where maybe the dog gets frustrated and he wants to bite, but sometimes in a training and in real life, it might not always end in a bite, so the dog doesn't get what he wants, and so he'll do something stupid, let's say; be non-compliant, go after the handler.
The handler corrects that behavior and says, "Don't do that." The handler wins that battle. And then you got to repeat it all over again the next training day. And so there's just these dogs that they're just too tough for their own good.
Now, a beta dog is what I call second in command. It's the general. It's the general's right-hand man; however you want to look at it. Very strong, very confident, physically fit; just a tougher, bigger dog, but likes being second in command. Doesn't want the alpha role. Loves being second in command.
Now, what often people think about as a beta is what's considered an omega dog. That's the runt of the litter. A lot of folks out there actually have omega dogs. And this would be the sign that you have an omega dog. It's what I call alarm barking. Someone knocks at the door. An alpha or beta dog is going to put a deep guttural bark. An omega dog usually does you could call it omega howl. They're scared.
Hey, so where does this all come from? In the wild, wolf packs have alphas, they have betas, and they have omegas. Omegas are super anxious dogs. They're usually on the perimeter. And they are so quick to sound the alarm because they generally are just anxious dogs. There might be a crack of a stick fifty yards away; the omega dog's going to start howling immediately. It's paranoid. An alpha or beta dog's going to get up and see what's going on.
Now, here's one more thing that I find super interesting. And I read this in a book; the name will come to me in a minute. But it's a gentleman who spent time living with a wolf pack in the wild for months. And so this is what he gained from it, among many things, but this one thing that sticks to me. When he was trying to make inroads with the pack, he couldn't just show up one day and be part of the pack. He would hang around, get near it, try to follow them.
One day, one of the pack members came over to see who he was and what he was all about. And when you think about it, this gentleman poses a threat to the pack. Who from the pack, who should be selected to go check on that guy? That's not going to be the omega; it's too scared. It's not going to do that. Most people would say, "Oh, it's the alpha because he's the toughest and the baddest."
Guy Kawasaki:
No.
Garret Wing:
No, he's the smartest. He basically, "Hey beta, you're big and bad. Go over there." And oftentimes, I think of betas as kind of dumb jocks; big and bad, but just ready to take an order. When he went to go check that pack out, the beta male is what came over to him and basically checked them out to see if he was a threat. Are you a friend or a foe? And furthermore, are you tough enough to be part of us? And anyways, very interesting.
Guy Kawasaki:
Man, simple question led to a whole doctoral thesis here. Let me ask you something. Let's suppose, God forbid, one day I'm a suspect and I'm in a backyard and you're hunting me and this dog shows up, knowing what you know, what would a smart suspect do?
Garret Wing:
Give up. Give up. There's nothing you can do really to hide your scent or evade it. These dogs have thousands upon thousands of years of development. This is what they do. It's very hard to hide your scent signature. And once the dog's on you, if the dog's trained right and it's got the proper genetics, we train these dogs to not give up no matter what. We call it the 1 percent. We train our dogs for the 1 percent.
Say, "What is that?" Rough math here. If you have one hundred suspects and you pull a police dog out. You got a guy, he's not giving up. You bring the dog out, you make the announcement, the dog barks. Around fifty people out of the one hundred who say, "You know what, man? I don't even want to mess with that dog. I'm giving up right now." Then you'll have the other forty-nine or so who will say, "I heard the dog, but I'm going to keep in my hiding spot.
Maybe he won't find me." Yeah, maybe you're right, maybe you're not. Dog finds you. As soon as it bites you, they don't want to play. We've had full grown men, they pee themselves, they poop themselves, and they scream for their mama, which I always find funny; grown men screaming for their mama. We could laugh about it or not, but it's like they're terrified. You're actually getting eaten by another animal, and it's not an everyday phenomenon, and it hurts.
But what about the 1 percent? The 1 percent of the guys that mentally deranged, they're on drugs, they've been to prison before; they're ready to die out there. They are not going back to prison no matter what. And we've encountered them in real life. I've encountered them. The dog is biting them; it doesn't matter. You think the dog would handle business for you and it'd be over.
Nope, it's all hands on deck. You can bite them. You taser them, taser's not working. You pepper spray, it doesn't matter. You're in a fist fight for your life and you hope the dog stays in on the fight. And a lot of dogs will.
Because see, for them when we train this for them, all this is a game of tug-of-war, by the way. And people ask, "How do you get a dog to bite someone?" It's just an elevated game of tug-of-war. We teach them as a young puppies, "You see this little piece of rag or this little juke tug? Just bite it and hold it." Their natural prey draft to bite and hold and chase things.
And then we transition that from small little pieces of equipment to larger and larger pieces of equipment as they get bigger, and their mouths get bigger, and they get rid of their puppy teeth; now they have adult teeth. Now they bite the bite suit or the sleeve. It's just a big, old toy. Then the trick is now that we've got you biting this big bite suit, now we have to find interesting ways to teach you if the person's not wearing a bite suit, you can still bite them. And it's okay; it's just a game.
Then you some dogs that go their whole life thinking it's a game, and then they're in the street and they get punched or kicked in the face. These bad guys out there now, they're not getting any better. They're stabbing police dogs, they're biting their ears, biting them on the mouth. And the last thing you want when you're in an all-out battle in the backyard, you don't need a police dog backing out on you going, "I've had enough. This is not what I signed up for." And we've seen dogs do that. Very scary to have.
Can you imagine? It's you and me, Guy, and we're going in. You're a trained police officer, I'm a trained police officer. And then we didn't plan it, but this guy's not going to jail and we got to get put hands on. And as soon as you get punched, you're like, "I'm checking out, Garret. I'm going to go to Dunkin Donuts and get a coffee and doughnut. I'll see you in a bit. Good luck to you."
Guy Kawasaki:
That would be me.
Garret Wing:
I'm sure you'd hang around for a while, but that happens. And we don't want that. But what we train our dogs to do is, that's what I said, we're looking for those dogs that maybe a little lean towards being a little too much to handle because these are the types of dogs that thrive. They're like, "Oh, punch me in the head? No problem. I'll just bite you harder." And we need dogs that can stick it out for that two, three, four minutes, or whatever it takes to get this kind of custody.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. My last canine question, which is earlier you said something like now that you want dogs that have some social skills and the kids can pet them and all that kind of stuff. And you said you say one magic word and that turns into an attack. Literally, you say one word and bada bing, bada bang, now that dog is a weapon.
Garret Wing:
Yes. In a perfect world.
Guy Kawasaki:
Is that secret word, is it only a handler can say that?
Garret Wing:
No, it can be literally made up words, it can be a sound. Oftentimes, these dogs are trained in either Dutch commands, French commands, German commands. Hey, but here's a fancy one. You know the French command to bite someone or to attack? It's attack. It's not really a secret. But it's more to it than that. It is and it isn't. Because usually there's a buildup to this.
And the dogs are really interesting, man. They love their routines and habits. And there's cues. Everything's with classical conditioning. Everything you do to train a dog, whether it's a police dog or a pet dog, it's all classical conditioning, meaning pairing. And we go back to Ivan Pavlov: ring the bell, present food. The bell didn't mean anything to the dog before.
Just like the French dog, when it hears, "Attack," they don't speak French, they don't speak English; that word doesn't mean anything to them. A lot of people tell their dogs, "No." I'm like, "Does your dog even know what no means? Because you just told it, 'No, get off the couch,' and it's still on the couch." It's either not listening to you, or more likely it doesn't speak English. It doesn't know what you're saying. There's nothing behind it.
Anyways, back to Ivan Pavlov, he found that the secret formula is ring bell and exactly a quarter second later, there's room for error there, but around a quarter second, later, if you ring the bell and present food, you will now classically condition that the bell means food. How do we know that?
Because after so many reps, he would ring the bell, no food in sight with the dog salivating. It's a mind trick. The bell equals food. Now that's technically what the attack command would be. It could be a bell. Except it's not bell equals food, it's bell equals bite. And so we create that phenomenon, if you will.
But there's more than just the verbal cue. They can smell it. They hear the police sirens and they get jacked up. When you put the tracking harness on, a lot of times that means go time. They know what that equipment means.
With our police dogs, I always find this an interesting fact, both for my father, myself, they don't know what day of the week it is, so if you work a Thursday night shift, they don't know that it's Thursday, but they see you get out of the shower and you're going to get dressed. And they look. They'll wait until you put the pants on. They will walk over and smell the pants. "Is that the polyester pants that my dad goes to work in? Yes, it is." And they're ready.
Guy Kawasaki:
Go time.
Garret Wing:
They start waiting by the door. Or some dogs will take a nap, like a little pregame nap. But they smell to see what you're wearing because it's classically conditioned, "When I smell polyester pants, we're going to work." But if they come over and smell blue jeans, "Man, I'll go chew a bone because dad's not taking me tonight." All of that's classically conditioned. It's pretty cool.
Guy Kawasaki:
And speaking of Pavlov and classical condition, is that the role of the clicker? I saw you in many videos using a clicker. The clicker is now the reward, just hearing it?
Garret Wing:
Yes. Yes. It is all about what we call marker system or marker training. That's different names. It all means the same thing. I like to use the marker idea. Some people call it clicker training. The whole point by it, you're exactly correct, when you first click, it doesn't mean anything to the dog, but when we expose it, it's click, and guess what; the secret sauce, a quarter second later, preferably, present food or a treat or a toy.
Click equals party. Click equals awesome. And so what it allows us to do is considered a bridge so that if you're fifty feet away from a dog, for instance, and you tell it to down and it nails it, dogs have horrible short-term memory, and so they say you have a three to five second window to let the dog know whether it did right or it did wrong.
And I think the difference between a good trainer and a great trainer, or in this case a good owner and a great owner, and as far as communicating with your dog, is timing is everything in dog training? Three to five seconds is like on the extreme end. I like to mark behaviors within milliseconds.
We say, "Down," the dog drops into a down. We need to be able to communicate to that dog at the speed of sound, "I love that." The second he hits the ground, we're going to click. And that's letting him know what you did right there was perfect.
Now let's contrast that with we tell the dog, "Down," he drops into a down. We're happy with that. We're so happy that we walk over with food to pay him for that down. By the time we get over to him, he breaks the down, comes into a sit and maybe takes a couple steps towards you. As he does that, he breaks the sit. He's in the sit, he comes towards you, and now you pay him. What did he get paid for?
Did he get paid for the down that was twenty seconds ago or is it getting paid for breaking? And that's the beauty of a marker system. One advantage would be the ability to mark literally like a timeline right here is where you did perfect. When I walk over and pay you twenty seconds later, you know what I'm paying you for is for. It's for the click you heard earlier. It buys you a little more time.
Guy Kawasaki:
And don't dogs figure out that how come sometimes there's a click and I get food and sometimes there's a click and I don't get food? I'm confused.
Garret Wing:
Sure. Two ways to answer that. One is when you click, you always give food. It's a guarantee of payment. It's a promise of payment. You will get paid. However, when you get more advanced in training, we bring up the idea of, there's a scientific name for it.
Robert Sapolsky, he's a neuroscientist, I believe. And he does a lot of experiments with Primates and things like that. And they'll put them in a Skinner box, and they're hooking up things to the brain and checking blood, but they're really looking for dopamine dumps. That's what he talks about, the dopamine hit.
Let's just go with that for a minute. And he has a really killer maybe fifteen or twenty minute video on YouTube where he talks about variability of rewards. And we can talk about this. I find that so interesting.
If you put a monkey in a cage, and if he knows that every time he pulls the lever he'll get a treat, some kind of banana or whatever he's into, you can check the dopamine levels of that creature, and maybe in the very beginning it'll be excited about this game, but then it stops being fun for the animal because it's so repeatable, it's so known.
"I'm going to pull and I'm going to get something." He says, "But when you introduce the idea of maybe you might, you could, you might not," it makes them crazy in a good way. They start pulling this thing, and they're pulling in and pulling and they're pulling. They know the pulling will work, they just don't know when they're going to get paid.
The way I equate that to is people do not go to the casino because they know they're going to win, they go for the hope or the chance that they might win. I love this. This is the example I use. Hopefully you like this. This is where the idea of the clicker can get charged up. And we say the clicker is more powerful than the actual reward itself. What are you talking about? There's verbal markers.
You can use yes in place of the clicker. Whatever. What we end up doing, let's take this example: You got a forty-year-old guy, doesn't leave his house very often. He ends up going to Vegas for some business trip. He goes into casino. He's never played a game in his life. He goes in, he is got twenty dollars to spend. He goes, "I'm here. I might as well play."
He puts the twenty dollars in the machine, and he pulls the lever. When he pulls the lever, the lights and sounds go off and 30,000 dollars comes out. And he gets a huge dopamine hit. He go, "This is amazing." And he really needed that money. It's perfect. He calls his mom, his girlfriend, he goes, "Can you believe it? I just won 30,000 dollars on my first pull." And he's set. He's done. He takes that money and he runs. That would be the dog's first exposure to click reward.
Now, what ends up happening is he ends up spending that 30,000 dollars, and now he can't wait to come back into the casino. He comes back a couple weeks later and he goes to that same machine, and he brings another twenty dollars. He puts the twenty dollars in, and he pulls the lever, but nothing happens. He's, "I'll try again." Of course he's going to try again. He's feeling lucky. He keeps pulling, he keeps pulling.
Man, nothing's happening. He pulls, and that same sound comes on, dink, the lights and everything; huge surge of dopamine. He's already pulling his phone out. He's calling his mom. "I won. I won. I knew I was a winner." And then he looks to see what the payout is: five dollars. But he got the dopamine hit. He got the same dopamine hit. Whether it was five dollars or 500,000 dollars, he still got that hit.
And that's what ends up happening potentially with the clickers. And we do the same. We do variability of rewards. When we click, sometimes you get one piece of food, sometimes you get thirty pieces of food. And then we always end on, guess what, like a gambler, on a jackpot. The dog, when it comes out to train with us, never knows when the jackpots coming.
There's also different markers called duration markers, which is to let the dog know again at the speed of sound, "I like what you're doing. Keep doing it. You're on the right path. But I'll pay you soon. I'm not going to pay you for this one. You just keep on doing that." We might tell the dog, "Down." It's holding a beautiful down. We're going to let it know, "Good."
Good is what we use for a duration marker. Some trainers use it, some people don't. I like to use them. "I like what you're doing. Keep doing that." And then I'll walk over. Maybe the dogs held it down, stay for ten minutes. "Yes," or click, and then I give it a big old jackpot, say, "this is all your hard work paying off."
Guy Kawasaki:
I want to move into broader areas. I got the canine part now. Can you just address for me how accurate are these stereotypes of dogs? Should everybody be afraid of pit bulls? But then every time you hear that story, there's a counterpoint, no, it's the breeder, it's the owner. It's not the pit bull. Pit bulls are not inherently bad. Are there stereotypes that are actually true about dog breeds that people should be aware of?
Garret Wing:
Yes and no. And very sensitive topic, depending upon who you're asking. Yes, but again, a strong no. I'll give you an example. Golden Retrievers, it's like America's golden child. That and the Labrador. Generally speaking, they're great with families, great with other dogs. You don't really see Labradors or Golden Retrievers doing police work. You never see that.
Yes, they do explosive detection, but I'm talking about utility dogs or, in other words, apprehension or bite dogs. You're never going to see a Labrador or Golden Retriever do that. Why? They just don't have the genetic predisposition for that. They're retriever dogs. In fact, Golden Retrievers have what they call a soft mouth. They were trained or genetically selected over maybe 100 of years, 100 or 200 years, however long they've been developing that particular breed.
I'm not a Golden Retriever expert by any means. But they didn't want the Golden Retriever or other retriever type dogs to go out there, find the duck that they just shot and squish it and crunch it on the way back, they wanted that soft mouth.
When you try to take a Golden Retriever, I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but you're really going against nature, mother nature trying to get a Golden Retriever to bite a bad guy really hard. Could they do it? Yeah, maybe. You could probably over train it. With that perfect dog, you might find it.
Now, one of the meanest dogs I've ever met in my life was a Labrador Retriever named Bronco. That's a mean son of a gun. And he was an explosive detection dog. He had some of the worst what they call food aggression and also barrier aggression. He was okay with you when he was out of the crate. You could pet him, and he'd like it.
As soon as you put him in the crate and close the door, he'd spin around and fire off and let you know, "It's my crate. Back off." You put food down, back up. Mean son of a gun. I would never let that dog around any of my kids or anybody else's kids. But he's a Labrador Retriever.
There's variations on a theme. Yes, generally speaking. We'll talk about pit bulls. I think pit bulls can be some of the sweetest, nicest dogs on the planet. I've not personally owned any. I've trained a ton of them. My old roommate had one. That dog wouldn't hurt a fly. However, if you get a pit bull that isn't properly trained maybe with improper genetics and they have tremendous drive, what makes pit bulls so dangerous is they have incredible levels of drive.
Remember we go back to that, they have those 1,000, 1,500 horsepower engines. Not all of them, but a lot of them do. And because of how they bred those dogs back in the day, they wanted those dogs in the pits to first go after rats, bears, and then other dogs. And maybe not in that particular order.
We did a little research on it. Where did this come from? And then they outlawed the blood sports over in the UK with the pits going after each other. It still happens to this day underground. I call it misplaced prey drive. And it still runs in the bloodlines of some of these dogs where through man's genetic breeding selection, "Hey, we have six dogs came out of this litter. These two are too soft, these two got it," they're going to continue that down the line.
And what it could be is what I call misplaced prey drives. I'm not saying this perfectly, but you understand man tinkering with the breeding program. And that's how breeds come about anyways. Golden Retrievers didn't exist 10,000 years ago. All breeds come from the wolf. A Chihuahua comes from the wolf; 99.9 percent of the same genetics. In fact, a Chihuahua and a Great Dane, 99.999 percent, same genetics.
Anyhow, point being pit bulls have sometimes what I call misplaced prey drive. We would think nothing of my personal dog. If he sees a squirrel or a deer, it's game on. And we'd go, "Yeah, man, good for you. Go chase that squirrel. That's what you're bred to do. You want to chase things. Good for you." What happens, however, and I've seen it a few times, and it's scary when you witness it.
And it doesn't have to be a pit bull. And I'm not picking on that breed, but some of these dogs have a misplaced prey drive where they look at another dog as a prey item, and they go, "I want to chase that. I want to chase that down, grab it by the neck and shake it just like I do with a squirrel, except I want to do it to that dog." And it's an anomaly that they just kept breeding. I don't know how it came about, but it came about.
But anyways, going back to your original question, yes, there's generalities, but Rottweilers can make great home protectors. There's also Rottweilers out there that are big and fat and lazy and wouldn't hurt a fly. Yeah, you're hedging your bet when you get the right breed, but there's no guarantee that even if you get the breed that fits your lifestyle, so you hope. There's no guarantee that the dog will be exactly what you want.
Now, we always say when it comes to dogs, I'll end with this. 50 percent genetics, 50 percent of what you put into it training. That's how you can get the dog to be where it's going to be. But you'll never get a Chihuahua to be a police dog. The genetics aren't there. But anyhow, but you could have a dog with perfect genetics primed and ready to do X. Let's say police work. If you don't put in the training, it's not going to get there either.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, if it's 50 percent genetics and 50 percent training, what happens when you go to the Humane Society, or you go and you rescue a dog? You're not sure about the genetics, you're not sure about the dog's history. I tell you, we've had several rescue dogs, and they were great dogs. I don't know, are you telling me that rescue dogs is like rolling the dice? Are you just shooting craps there?
Garret Wing:
That's exactly what I call it. But it's a roll of the dice even when you go to a reputable breeder of any breed of your choice. It's still a roll of the dice. You don't know what you're going to get. Yes, you're hedging your bet a little more, but there's no guarantee.
Here's how you're hedging your bed a different way. When you buy a puppy from a breeder, those puppies are eight weeks old. You get a rough idea what that dog's going to be like. I could go to the preeminent researcher scientist who studied human behavior and understands childhood development. We'll go to a nursery, and I'll say, "Hey, you see all these babies? They were just born in the last forty-eight hours. Which one of these is going to become a CEO?
Which one's going to become a drug addict?" You don't know. You don't know. Now, you could look at the genetics, you could see who mom and dad are, but even that doesn't predict everything. And again, that's the nature versus the nurture. Why is Elon Musk who he is? I don't know. Is it how he was raised or is it something genetic going on there? Now are his kids going to turn out to be successful like him? Who knows?
Now, what happens when you go to a shelter? The good news is where you can hedge your bet in a different way is now some of these dogs are already six months old, one years old, two years old. Now we take that same person, the researcher who knows human behavior. Now I get them in a room with, argument's sake, it's a whole room of twenty and thirty-year-olds, maybe forty-year-olds.
And I'm like, "Look, I'm not going to tell you what these people do for a living, but you can spend fifteen minutes with each of them. You can test them." And that researcher will probably be able to tell you, hey, who's a drug addict. Who tends to be shy, outgoing, because your personality is set.
Why am I saying all of this? Dogs are fully, physically and mentally mature around two years old. But the older they get, meaning six months old, nine months old, especially around twelve months old, the personality's pretty set. We just used a contrast of babies in a nursery and a room of twenty, thirty and forty-year-olds. What about that middle ground? Maybe a ten, twelve, fourteen-year-old kid. We'll still have a much better idea at ten, twelve or fourteen years old.
What is that? That's the puppy around six months, eight months, nine months, ten months old. We're going to have a much better idea what that puppy's going to turn out to be. That's why you're not seeing police agencies, among many other reasons, selecting eight-week-old puppies and crossing their fingers is going to be a police dog. No, we're going to hedge our bet by waiting to see how their personality develops.
When you go to a shelter, that's the added benefit is you can meet with maybe that dog that is two, three, four years old. What is what you get. That's the dog's personality. Can we cheat it a little bit? Of course we can. Just like you can come across maybe a thirty-year-old who has been addicted to smoking for the last five or ten years; there's still hope that we can get him to quit smoking.
If you have a two or three-year-old dog that's in the shelter and they have habitually been peeing in the house, you can break the habit. They're probably in there for a reason. A lot of these shelter dogs are in there for a reason.
There's some bad habit: jumping, barking, biting, bad potty training, just bad manners in general. A good trainer can go in there and get that 50 percent that was missing, the training, and see what they can do with it. There's no guarantee. There's some dogs that are a lost cause.
And then I'll end with this. And I think this will really blow your mind because we get these calls a lot with dogs. I'll give you an example. Hey, I have a four-year-old dog. Right off rip, I'm like, "Four years old? Pretty set in their ways." In fact, the older they are, the more set in their ways there are. It's a Rottweiler.
Again, breed or not, it doesn't matter. And it's bitten six people, and the last two it's sent to the hospital. Can you fix it? It's like, "Oh my God, man. I don't know. There's no guarantee there." We might not fix it, but we might get it to be more manageable. Anyone coming across, say, "100 percent, I'll fix that," they're lying to you because we don't know.
This is where it makes sense. You ready for this one, Guy? And I went to the most, again, preeminent behaviorists, psychologists, it could be a whole room full of them, and I hand them a forty-year-old pedophile who's committed crimes in the past, and I say, "Can you fix him and make him not a pedophile anymore?"
Guy Kawasaki:
No.
Garret Wing:
I don't know if you can do that. You can do a lot of things, but would you ever trust that human in a room with your kid? No. Just like I probably wouldn't ever trust that four-year-old Rottweiler that's already bit six people. I don't care how much training you throw at it, can we make it better? Yes. Would you ever trust that 100 percent? No.
Guy Kawasaki:
Are you telling me these dog whisperer shows, it's like bullshit. In the first part of the thing, you take the Rottweiler that's bitten six people, and then at the end of an hour, this is a perfect family dog. It is just all bullshit in Hollywood, then?
Garret Wing:
No. Of course there's a little bit of movie magic going on, because it's not happening usually in one hour. A lot of those shows, they're taking the dog and training it over a month or two, or whatever it is, and bringing it back. We've done this. We've been able to do this. And yet honestly, sometimes you can do it as little as fifteen or thirty minutes. You can absolutely transform a dog.
Sometimes what we find in homes where these dogs are wiling out, they're just misbehaved. It's just basically a lack of leadership and a lack of know-how. What would the example be? You remember those old Maury Povich talk shows? And whether it was Maury Povich or not, but they bring those kids in that were fifteen, sixteen, eighteen years old, and they're really just bad kids mouthing off. Mom seems to have no semblance of control. Usually a single family household.
There's just no one putting rules. And this kid's out of pocket, sneaking out, maybe getting pregnant at a young age, all that stuff. And then the drill sergeant comes in. Remember that? And then the drill sergeant would come in and get in the kid's face, and now this hard kid that was mouthing off to everybody in the audience and Maury Povich himself or whoever it was all of a sudden starts crying. You see a completely different look on the same person, it just depends who's in the room.
Now, and then they send that kid away to some kind of boot camp. It comes back two, three, four weeks later back on the show and it's hugging their mom and it's apologizing. And it's like there's a transformation. Does it work 100 percent of the time? No. But yeah, you can absolutely have some huge transformations.
That's what I love about dogs is they can be molded, and they can change very quickly with proper leadership, with proper tools, with proper timing, all the good stuff. But a lot of owners just don't know what to do. I was just reading one today on Instagram DMs. "My dog's jumping on me. And it jumps on me, and it bruises me.
And I tell it, 'No,' but it doesn't seem to help." I'm like, "That's because your no doesn't mean anything. You could tell it banana; it's not going to stop your dog from jumping on you." It's a self-rewarding behavior. It jumps on you, you fall to the ground, the dog gets enjoyment out of that, thinks you're playing. Maybe you pet it when it jumps on you, so of course that's not going to stop the behavior.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, in that specific example, what are you supposed to do?
Garret Wing:
Sure. A dog that has bad behaviors, pulling on the leash, jumping on your counter and stealing food, jumping on you, these are all typical behaviors, maybe chewing on a couch. All of these are in the same category in the sense that it's a self-gratifying behavior.
If you just leave the dog to its own devices, it's going to repeat it because every single creature on the planet, humans included, and not to get too deep in the science of this, but we're talking about operant conditioning. Either the behavior is reinforced with a reward or it's diminished with a punishment. If your dog jumps on the counter, even if you yell, "No," at it, if it grabs your sub sandwich and eats it.
And I cannot wait until Elon Musk gets that Neuralink for dogs. I want to communicate with them. I'd love to hear what they have to say. And I say this to owners all the time. I said, "If we put Neuralink on your dog right now and I asked your dog in your home with you, your husband, and your kids, 'Hey, Fido, who runs this household?' 'Oh, I do.' 'Who's this lady right here, your mom?' 'Oh, she works for me. She scratches my belly, and she picks up my poop.'
'What about this guy?' 'Oh, he's an idiot. He just sits on the couch. He does nothing. He's useless.'" I'm like, "A lot of times, these dogs that are out of control, no leadership, no guidance," just like you might say a kid. Most of these kids that are out of control these days, lack of good parenting, strong parents. I'm not trying to make this a sociological political discussion, but you see the same thing happening. Raising and training a dog is a lot like raising and training a kid.
But how do you fix it? Well, self-gratifying behavior. A lot of trainers out there, especially the ones on TV in this softer and gentler and kinder society we live in, would say, "You just ignore the behavior, it'll go away." That's a lie. It's plain and simple. If you put a sub sandwich on the counter, what happens is the dog knows what happened last time. It's not the best short-term memory. And we'll come back to this in a minute.
Remember the difference between short-term and long-term memory in a dog. Long-term memory in dogs is great. Next time they smell that turkey sub sandwich on the countertop, they go, "Man, I remember what happened last time. That sub sandwich was on the counter. I jumped up, I ate it. I felt better."
Dogs are always trying to improve their position in life at every moment of every day. They smell that turkey sandwich, of course they're going to jump up and get it again. There was no consequence last time.
Now what we have to do is institute a positive punishment is what it's called. This is going to confuse some of your listeners, but on the operant conditioning chart, the only way you change behavior in both humans and dogs and every other creature on the planet is through positive punishment. Positive, by the way, does not mean good, it just means the addition of. Let's just call it adding a punisher. You could also do a negative punishment.
Say, "What the hell is that?" That's removing something from the equation that creates a punishment. The example there would be you tell your dog to, "Down," it sits instead. No payment. And the dog's, "Oh man, I got to try again." Negative punishment's very powerful also.
And negative punishment in the example of the sub sandwich on the counter would be it jumps on the counter, but you remove the sub sandwich. And you wash, rinse, repeat that. But good luck. Good timing. By the way, that just sometimes ends up builds more drive. "Let me jump faster and try to get it before you get it."
Back to how do you fix it? The only way you're going to decrease that behavior from happening again is by adding a punisher. And the punisher in this instance is going to be, for instance, a leash pop correction. There's a leash hooked up to the dog. This is where it gets a little weird. Everything is about timing.
Remember the short-term memory idea? You have to set the dog up to make the mistake that you know it's going to make. It's made it in the past. We know it's going to make the same mistake in the future. What would be unfair is to put the sub sandwich down, walk out of the room, come back in, the dog ate the sandwich.
And it's only meant dog's going to eat a sub sandwich in about ten seconds. Thirty seconds later, the sandwich is gone. You cannot go over there and punish the dog. It has no idea what happened. It forgot it ate the sandwich. He said, "What are you talking about?"
And then some people say, "But the dog had the look of guilt on its face." It had the look of guilt because dogs can read our emotion. They can smell our frustration. Actually, the pheromones that we're putting off, they can see the look in our eye.
And then we turn and look at our dog like this and go, "Fido," and the dog goes, "Oh, I don't know what I did, but mom's pissed." And they see that look of guilt. Dog does not remember. And people can't wrap their head around that, so they go and punish the dog.
Where does this happen a lot? Potty accidents. You leave the house for eight hours, you come back, the dog's pee or poop somewhere. I don't know if that happened five minutes ago or five hours ago. You cannot punish your dog for something that they don't even remember happened. You missed the moment. Remember, we said three to five seconds to capture behavior and let the dog know it's either good or bad.
But people say, "No, the look of guilt." I'll say, "Let me switch it on. You forget the punishment. You tell your dog to, 'Down,' in the kitchen before you leave for work and the dog does it. Then you get in your car, you go to work and come back eight hours later. Of course the dog's not going to be in a down. It might be who knows what; running around the backyard.
How on earth can you give that dog a treat eight hours later for the down it did? There's no trainer on the planet that will be able to tell the dog eight hours later, 'Hey, you know that down you did eight hours ago? Here's a treat for that.'" The same concept. If it makes sense that way, of course it makes sense the other way. How can you punish a dog for the pee accident it did even thirty minutes ago? Three to five seconds is the window.
The point being, what I was getting at is when you try to fix a behavior in a dog, we do what's called a setup for failure. It seems evil, but it's the most fair thing you can do. We know the dog has the likelihood of jumping on people. When does it happen? When they come in the front door. We know the dog likes to jump on the counter and eat food. When? When we put the food on the counter. Perfect. You put everything in place. It's a setup.
The dog doesn't know. You do everything as natural as possible, but now you have a proper tool. In this case, we would use a leash attached to a collar. For harder dogs, you might use a leash and a prong collar. Why a prong collar? Long story short, it emulates what we call mama's teeth. How do dogs correct each other in the wild, in nature, at a dog park?
With their teeth. They don't use their hands, they don't use fists, they don't write each other a letter, they don't have their attorney send out lawsuit papers, they bite each other. When do they bite each other? Right when the bad behavior happens, and then they're over it two seconds later.
We use the prong collar as mama's teeth. We set it up. What does that look like? Hey, when I give you the winkity-wink, I want you to come in the door. And I'm going to say, "Hey, how are you?" And what's the dog going to do like it's done every other time in the last six months? It jumps on the guest.
The moment it jumps on your guest, down to the millisecond, you used the leash to deliver positive punishment, meaning we add a punisher. The dog feels a correction on its neck and it goes, "Ah. That didn't feel good." "That's right. When you jump on people, it doesn't feel good, so stop doing it."
Then, ideally, if you're really good at training, and this is the stuff we teach in our courses, we will show how you use the leash to then communicate to the dog, "I don't want you jumping. It doesn't feel good when you jump. However, if you go into a sit, you're going to get all the love and pets and treats and toys and everything you want."
Now what we call is called giving your dog a job to do. All dogs were bred to do some type of work, but what we've done in the last fifty or eighty, maybe 100 years. And we're not all farmers anymore. These dogs aren't pulling carts. These dogs aren't herding sheep. They have no job, nothing to fulfill them. They sit on the couch all day, and then they chase your cat, they jump on your guests. They think that's their job. And they get really good at that.
The problem is it's not the right job, so instead we flip it on them. That's where obedience comes in. "Your job is to sit, to down, to heal, to recall. If you do a good job, I'm going to pay you. If you mess up, just like an owner of a restaurant, if you're not doing a great job, we're going to counsel you, we're going to train you, you're going to do a better job."
Problem is you can't fire your dog, but you can correct the behavior. And the dogs learn this quick. That's why he said, "Hey, those things where it's like they transform the dog in one hour," I can get pretty much any dog on the planet to stop pulling on a leash in about five minutes. I can get just about any dog on the planet to stop jumping on people in about five minutes, maybe ten minutes if I take my time, because it's pretty clear.
In fact, I'll throw it to you, Guy. How long does it take to teach a human to stop touching a 400 degree oven or stove? How many times do you have to put your hand on it to realize that thing's hot and it's going to burn you? By the way, what's real interesting is do you need anyone there screaming at you saying, "No"? No. We set it up. "Hey, turn the oven on." Hey, Guy likes coffee. Perfect. Put the coffee right there on the oven. Guy reaches for the coffee. "Ooh, that burned."
What's funny is dogs and humans alike will always go for a second. They will always try one more time just to confirm. When you go, "Ooh, yeah, that really did. Yeah, that's hot. I don't want to touch that," that's it. Now, why do we do this? Because some people say, "what's the harm on jumping?" You got your grandma coming over.
Some dogs are big enough to break grandma's hip. What about a dog eating rocks? That's a 3,000 dollar, 4,000 dollar, 5,000 dollar surgery. If you don't catch in time, you could kill your dog. What about in some parts of the country, there's rattlesnakes? In south Florida, in the southeast of the United States, we dealt with Bufo toads. Extremely toxic to dogs. Just one lick of those toads will kill your dog in just a couple hours.
And what's better, letting the dog figure that out and it's too late, it's dead, or we would use, in this instance, an e-collar? An e-collar, same thing. For trainers who use it, they love it. It's the best thing to happen to dog training since the invention of dogs. The e-collar allows us to reach out at the speed of sound or the speed of electricity and say, "I probably wouldn't touch that Bufo toad because it's going to kill you."
And I'll go on the record and say I would rather shock a dog on the full level of an e-collar just a couple of times. Why twice? At least two or three times. I've been doing this a long time, they will feel the burn on the first one and go, "Oh, that hurt. But man, that toad looks pretty good. Look at it hop, man. It just wants me to go chase it."
And now you're dealing with thousands of years of mother nature saying, "You must chase things that hop and move and run away from you," and so they're like, "Ah. It burned, but let me go one more time." When it goes for it the second time, it learns just like it did the first time it will burn you every time. Don't touch that toad.
By the way, e-collars can be used much more than that. This is just an aversive example. But you can use the e-collar to basically teach the dog certain things are electric. You probably don't want to touch them. When you put your feet on the counter to eat that sub sandwich, go for it, go for the sub sandwich. I just want to let you know that the countertop is now electric, so I don't know how you're going to get that sub sandwich. Is it worth it to you to get the sub sandwich?
Let the dog make that decision on their own, but it's probably not going to be worth it. They jump up, they feel the electric, they go, "That doesn't feel good," and they don't get the sub sandwich. The dog makes a pretty quick calculation, "It's not worth my time."
And then when they don't jump for the sub sandwich and they sit down on the ground or lay down, you come over with a piece of the sub sandwich and say, "I'm proud of you. Here's some sub sandwich for you, bro. Thank you for doing a good job." Makes sense?
Guy Kawasaki:
Makes sense. All right. Is there an e-collar that also you can use as a clicker to put out the positive sounds so you've got one thing?
Garret Wing:
Yeah, there are e-collars that have a tone, and some people will use the tone of the e-collar to mark good behavior. The tone is charged up just like a clicker. You can also use the tone to be charged up as the recall command.
The world is your oyster when it comes to dog training. For instance, my dog, Thanos, we use the vibrate to mean down. I have him laser trained like you might have a special forces dog. Some police dogs are trained with this. I can use a laser pointer. If he can see the laser, he will run there. I can send him out 300, 400 yards, he will go exactly where I want him because he's going to follow the laser. And then when he gets where I want him to go, he can't even hear me, he's so far away.
Or in a tactical application, not that I do that anymore, but I still like to play like a toy soldier, I will use the vibrate to drop him right where I want him. Now, how does that work in a tactical application? You might want to put your dog, your police dog or your military dog downwind of an area of concern. Hey, it's a pretty open backyard. I don't see where a bad guy could be hiding, but hey, there's a shed over there. That bad guy might be in or on top of that shed.
And everything we do in police work, when you're using a dog, it's all about the nose. And the only way a dog's going to smell a bad guy is to be downwind of him, period. A dog's not going to smell someone upwind. It just won't happen. You read the wind, and then you laser the dog downwind of the object in question.
And then you might drop him there with a vibrate on the down. And then watch the dog's behavior. He'll let you know pretty quick whether he's wind scenting something or not. And then you might move a tactical team up.
Anyways, in this instance, the point being I used the vibrate to teach down. You could also use the vibrate to teach recall. You could use the tone to teach down. It's however you want to shape it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. I saw one of your videos. And I just want to confirm this, that God forbid if you are attacked by a dog or you're witnessing an attack by a dog, the only way to stop the dog is to choke him?
Garret Wing:
110 percent. Yep. I'm not talking about a dog that just nips at your hand or just nips at a dog, I'm talking about a dog that's locked on. The cleanest way, the fastest, the guaranteed way is to shut off oxygen and blood flow to the brain. It's exactly what we do.
Where does this come from? This may shock people. I don't care how much training you put into a police dog. If you have a high enough drive, police dog, ninety-nine out of one hundred if not one hundred out of one hundred police dogs will not let go of a bite on the street from a verbal command alone. I get a lot of flack for that.
Guy Kawasaki:
Really?
Garret Wing:
Yep. It's just the nature of the beast. We put so much horsepower into these dogs that you tell them to let go. I'm not saying it can't be taught. Of course it can. Yes, there are police dogs that will let go on a verbal out. However, more often than not, you can give the commands. I just saw a video the other day; it happens all the time.
I encourage you, next time you see a police dog deployment, you're going to see one of two things probably happen when they go to remove the dog. The handler is either going to give multiple commands for the dog to let go or he's going to come over and do a physical removal or both because the commands aren't working.
Why are the commands not working? You are fighting thousands of years of mother nature. You've created the monster. Good for you. Now you got to get that monster to let go. And they don't want to let go. And I don't mean monster in a bad way, I just mean it's just tremendous drive. You have to come over.
Now, how are they getting these dogs to let go? We teach this in training. There's multiple ways, but you're either using the collar, you're lifting up on the collar. That collar is now restricting airflow. This is crazy. They don't make a conscious decision to let go, it's a physiological response.
It's a gag reflex. They're holding on for dear life. They're saying, "I don't care how long you choke me. I'm not letting go," until they start to gag and their body is saying, "You got to let go if you want to breathe." And that's how we get dogs off. It's called the physical removal.
Now what about the verbal out? You can tell the dog to let go, but every time you tell your dog to do something, whether it's your pet dog that's sitting on your couch and you said, "Get off the couch," or a police dog that's on a bite and you tell it to let go, they make a conscious decision every time you tell them to do something whether it's in their best interest or not.
The recall's a great one. Your dog's chasing after something, and you say, "Fido, come here." And the dogs will look at you and go, "What's in it for me? I don't see a treat. I don't see a ball. I am chasing a bunny. Now, the bunnies a pretty good time. You don't look like that great of a time.
I'll chase the bunny instead." Now that's where we come in with the different tools or the different training. We say, "You have to come back. By the way, if you come back, I'll reward you. But I promise you, if you don't come back, there's a price to pay for that."
Same with the police dogs. Why would they want to let go? What's in it for them? Every time they let go, there's not really a prize. It's not like they get a cheeseburger shoved in their mouth as soon as they let go. There are ways to train it where if you let go of this, I'll give you a toy. But oftentimes on a real deployment, you're not walking around with a toy in your back pocket, you're dealing with a hard ass criminal who might be armed.
And we joke about this a lot: Hot dogs can and will treat, hot dogs will solve a lot of problems with a pet dog, but you're often not seeing a police dog or a police handler deploying on a track for a murder suspect with a pouch of hot dogs in his back pocket.
We are not controlling that horsepower by adding fuel to the fire, drive to the fire, we're going into those backyards using a leash, using a prong collar, using an e-collar and what we call as a steering wheel and a brake on that 1,200 Malinois that we just brought back there. When we tell the dog to let go, sometimes they don't even hear you because they have auditory occlusion.
They're literally not even there. They're almost possessed. They're just satisfying that bite drive. And we say, "Hey, let go," they're like, "Yeah, I'll be with you in a minute. Let me finish this." "No, you got to let go right now because you're about to cost me a lawsuit. You better let go. The guy's giving up."
Like I said, you'll hear multiple commands. Oftentimes, if they're letting go from a verbal command, it's not really the verbal command by itself, it's that the verbal command is paired with an e-collar. You'll see the guy fidgeting on his equipment, on his gun belt or on his vest stimming the dog. It's because I told you to let go. You didn't let go, so there's a price to pay. That's one way.
But again, more often than not, you're seeing what's called a tactical or physical removal where they're either cutting off oxygen and blood flow through the collar. There's other methods. And what we've been seeing a lot in the last decade or so is what's called a breaker bar. And the breaker bar, when used incorrectly, they try to put it in between the teeth. It's like a bar and then they twist it to try to open the jaws.
That's not how it's supposed to be used. What a breaker bar actually is a gag reflex tool. They come in different shapes, but it's basically some type of item that's long and cylindrical. They have different types. And what you're doing is as the dog's on the bite, there's usually a little gap in the back by the molars, and you put that tool back there and you actually are aiming down. I guess you'd could call it the tonsils area of the dog, the back of the throat. It induces a gag reflex, and they let go.
When done correctly, you can get a dog off a bite in three to five seconds. But most of us aren't walking around with a breaker bar or a gag tool in our pocket, so what we would suggest. I know it's a roundabout way of getting here. If the dog has a collar on or there's a leash, you got to get that collar high and tight on their neck. You got to get that leash potentially wrapped around their neck, and you got to lift and hold. Some dogs will let go in one, two, three seconds, some will go for the ride.
And it's funny because one of my good friends was telling me the other day, he said, "I watched your video on that." He's got no police canine experience. He was at a dog park or some park and two Dachshunds, the little wiener dogs, brother and sister or something from the same owner got into it and they were just eating each other up. And the owner could not get this little Dachshund to let go of the other one.
And there's blood everywhere. People are screaming. A crowd's forming. And you've seen the videos; people are pouring water on the dogs. Can that work? Yeah, sometimes. Now, I'm not the Dachshund, but I'm going back to the videos you've seen. People are hitting dogs with shovels, with bricks, with sticks; ain't working. And then with a real hard dog, oftentimes a pit bull or some other bully type of breed, that just makes the dog fight harder and bite harder the more pressure you put on him.
My friend, Mike, came over. He's like, "This is going on for minutes, Garret. Nobody can get this dog to let go." I came over, grabbed the little wiener dog with my hand and turned off oxygen, said the dog let go in two seconds. I said, "Oh, that's great. But what'd the owner think of that?" She was so thankful because some people are like, "Ah, you hurt my dog."
But she was desperate. The other dog was all but killing the other Dachshund. I'm like, it's wild, you wouldn't think those little dogs would do that much damage to each other, but hey, they don't know how small they are. Dogs are dogs.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Oh, my God. Okay, my last question is this. Knowing all that, just give us the general gist of how to select a dog. You've brought into so many aspects to think about. It's not as simple as going to the shelter and finding the cute one, so how do you pick a dog, and specifically for a family? Not a guard dog, for family.
Garret Wing:
Sure. And it's interesting too because nowadays, for whatever the reason is, a lot of people want, quote, "a protection dog." They are getting that family dog, but they're getting dogs that are more like the Cane Corso, one of our breed of choice. They're getting a German Shepherd, Doberman, Rottweiler. I get those questions more than anything. "Hey Garret, what's the best guard dog for my house?" But regardless, whether you're getting a guard dog or you're just getting the Golden Retriever family pet.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, stop for a second. Then first address the question is do you really want a guard dog? What's the probability that someone's going to come in your house and try to murder you or rob you? It's much more likely a guard dog is going to attack your family than you're going to get the guard usage from the guard dog. Or am I making this up?
Garret Wing:
No. I think it could go so many different ways. Studies have been done. And I'm not going to quote it. I don't have it in front of me, but it goes without saying if there's a bad guy that wants to break into your home as a burglar. You’re not home let's just say.
Or you are home. Middle of the night, middle of the day, whatever it is, they come to break in through an open window or your back door and there's 130 pound Cane Corso Italian Massif on the other side of that door, they're probably going to skip that house.
Of course there's some real bad dudes who have a gun. And what's your dog going to do against an armed intruder? Not much other than maybe slow them down just a little bit, maybe at least alert you that someone's there. But any dog can do that alert. You could have a chihuahua that's a great alert dog.
For that, dogs are great. That's one of the best things about dogs. But if I saw a chihuahua on the other side of the door, I might be like I'm on drugs, I need the money, I'm breaking into your house or somebody's house, I might take my chances with the chihuahua.
Now, to your other point, I don't care almost what breed you get. You can get the baddest breed on the planet. You can get a Belgian Malinois. Everybody thinks Belgian Malinois are the best dogs. Yeah, they're great for police work. They don't make great house pets, let me tell you. But Belgian Malinois aren't naturally really territorial nor are they really vicious. They're actually super friendly, generally speaking. They're social creatures. But again, it depends what training you do or not.
Anyways, what I'm getting at is do people need a protection dog? I don't know. The more you tell them not to get one or that it's too much for you to handle. I know this from personal experience because it's what we preach all day long on our channels. Hey, the Cane Corso; amazing dog. Not ideal for 99.9 percent of people. It's too much dog for you. I equate it to having a battle tank.
Do you need a battle tank in your suburban neighborhood? I don't know. Probably not. But then again, I'm a big Second Amendment proponent. It is a free country. If you want a Cane Corso, you want a hold pack of them, more power to you. But training is really the essential part.
Now, here's the other thing. Even if you get a, quote, "protection dog" or a guardian breed, that doesn't mean they're going to do anything. There's Cane Corsos out there, you get it from the best breeder on the planet and it might be just the biggest softie. It might do nothing. But then true protection training, that's where people get all. They don't realize you're talking 60,000 dollars to 120,000 dollars to get a, quote, "protection dog."
Now, here's this crazy part. You can get 120,000 dollar protection dog. There's no guarantee it's going to bite human flesh. And it's not going to stop a guy with a gun. I don't care. It's just not. Now, we'll help you raise and train and select a protection dog. I'm here for you. But I'm also, I'm just a realist. I will tell them, "I don't care how much training you put into this dog, it's not going to replace, say, a firearm. It's just not going to do it."
But anyways, when it comes to selecting a dog, back to your previous question, what dog should you get? You got to do your research and you really got to compare that dog to your lifestyle. But not just your current lifestyle. Remember, these dogs are going to live eight, ten, twelve years, fourteen years. What does it look like? Where are you going to be living ten years from now?
You might get a Cane Corso because it's a big, bad guard dog. Great. But you live at home with your mom or you're planning to go to college or you're going to be more of a renter in a condo. A lot of places and HOAs will not allow certain breeds like a German Shepherd or Rottweiler, a Corso. Pit bulls are banned in a lot of places. You've got to think about that too.
Really what it comes down to is look at your lifestyle currently and into the future. Are you the type of family that likes to sit around the house and do barbecues and watch Netflix? Do not get a Belgian Malinois that wants to run twenty miles a day. If you're the type of family that goes on hiking adventures and you're always outdoors, then don't get the English Mastiff or the Bulldog who can't barely make it to the mailbox without needing oxygen therapy. Look at that.
How much time do you spend outdoors, et cetera? Also, just generally the size. Great Danes are cool, they're cool looking dogs, very expensive in the sense of how much do they eat? And you got to rearrange your whole house to have a Great Dane in there. They're just monsters. It's like a horse in your house. And they only live so long.
All these variables, it's size and it's the temperament. But again, it's always a gamble when you buy these dogs. Generally speaking, if you get a Golden Retriever or a Labrador, it's probably not going to make the best, quote, "guard dog." It probably won't bite your mailman.
And actually, there's a video we're going to put out. I'll give you a little glimpse now. To contrast two videos to really drive home the point, some type of delivery driver comes up to a house, knocks on the door to drop a package, and an Italian Mastiff, probably 130 pound Cane Corso, breaks through the glass window and chases this guy down the street. I'm telling you now, no training required. That's the natural protective guardian defensive drive instincts of that dog.
They're not all like that, but you're hedging your bet. Yeah, maybe 60 percent, 70 percent, 80 percent that come out of the womb will do that with no training. Then we're going to contrast that video with a mailman comes up to the front porch and there's a Golden Retriever, but he didn't know it was there, so he's going to deliver the package and the Golden Retriever comes out and rolls on its back and says, "Rub my belly." No training required there either.
But that's the genetics of the dog. Chances are your Golden Retriever won't bite the mailman, he'll probably lick him to death.
And then again, like you had mentioned, be careful what you wish for. There's actually a crisis going on right now with the Cane Corso. It's one of the most popular breeds on the planet right now. I actually feel guilty because I think we're part of that because we show our dogs on the channel, and we show how well-trained they are.
And the same thing has happened, and it's continuing to happen with the Belgian Malinois breed. They see police dogs, they see police agencies in the military using them, and they make this assumption that these dogs come out of the womb like that, they come out of the womb knowing how to sit down and heal. No. They're wild animals. And in fact, it's just a lot of dog.
Same with the Corso, same with the Malinois. Just because you see us doing it doesn't mean get the dog, but where people mess up is in the training. They just think the dog's going to just train itself. It won't. You have to train it one way or another. You have to so you can enjoy the dog, so the dog doesn't eat your neighbor by accident, run away from you, get hit by a car and all these things that can happen, or just make your life miserable. Training is the answer always.
Guy Kawasaki:
You mentioned the mailman. He goes up to the porch and there's a Doberman, German Shepherd, Corso, whatever. And this dog is now starting to chase him. What do you do if you're the mailman? Do you drop to the ground? Do you keep running? If you're in that situation, what's the best thing to do?
Garret Wing:
Great question. And we do a lot of these breakdown videos where we show incidents like these happening. If you run away, you are showing you're less dominant and you're also activating prey drive, which is only going to make the dog chase you even harder.
However, if you can run away and jump on a car or run away and climb a tree real quick, go for it. You'll see me doing the same thing. However, sometimes that option's not available to you, and so the best thing you can do is look big, get big. Let that dog know you mean business and you're not a prey item, you're a predator.
We just did a video recently where a gentleman had a small dog on a leash and a big mastiff, got to be 140 plus pounds, comes barreling out of nowhere and goes to attack his basically a puppy, a twenty pound dog. He's doing what we call the keep away game. This dog's coming, and he has his dog at the end of his leash, and he's just spinning it around to keep the dog from getting his dog. I don't blame you for doing that. I'd probably do a little bit of the same thing.
Reactionary, get your dog away from this dog that's chasing it. All he's doing is we call it a flirt pole training. We do this to encourage dogs to bite things that are at the end of the leash, the end of the pole. We make the item like a prey item like a rabbit. And so now he's just incentivized this dog. Yeah, you probably want to chase this thing because it's running from you. Now you're tapping into thousands of years of prey drive.
And so what ends up happening is he plays the keep away game, plays the keep away game. This is happening in seconds. After about ten or fifteen seconds, the big dog can't quite get to the little dog, he's now got the little dog up on his chest and he's still playing the keep away game. Finally, the Mastiff's had enough, says, "I'm going to bite something," and bites this guy on the arm. And that's a lot of dog. And this dog brings him straight to the ground and just going to town on his arm.
The only reason this guy got away less harm than he did was somebody was watching this and came up with a car and actually bumped the dog with the car. And the dog goes, "Whoa." But, see, what happened there, he kept playing the runaway keep away game. What did the car do? It played the, no, I'm going to chase you game.
And so what am I getting at? If a dog comes at me like that, I'm going to get big, get loud. If I have a leash on me or a box, anything, you throw it at the dog, what's called an English kick, meaning get your foot out. If you can get that foot out and make contact, that's a dog that maybe's never been struck in the face before.
And it might think twice, "Ow, that didn't feel good." "Yeah, stop chasing me. I'm not a prey item. I'm going to kick your butt." And so you flip the game on them. "Don't chase me, I'll chase you." And the dog goes, "Wait a second. I didn't sign up for this." Yeah, get big, look big.
And then in this case, had I had that little twenty pound dog and this big Mastiff's coming up to me, it's counterintuitive because you want to run away, you've got to confront the threat and get in their face, and then you are really increasing your odds of coming out of that. Because look, you're not going to outrun the dog. It's not going to happen. Again, if you can climb a tree, great, but that's the best thing you can do.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, I got it. I learned more about dogs today than in my entire sixty-nine years of life before, so thank you very much.
Garret Wing:
I'm happy to hear it. And we're only skimming the surface.
Guy Kawasaki:
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Remarkable People. It's a little bit different from our usual episode where we have professors and authors, but Garret Wing was a very interesting guest. I hope you learned a lot about dogs, not just dogs in canine units but dogs in general. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People.
Now let me tell you about the rest of the Remarkable People team. That would be Madisun Nuismer, who's the producer of this Remarkable People podcast, as well as the co-author of our book, Think Remarkable. I'm honestly getting tired of plugging this book, but I really, really want you to read it. It'll help you make a difference and be remarkable. Again, it's called Think Remarkable. Now, the rest of the team, Jeff Sieh and Shannon Hernandez on sound design, Luis Magaña and Alexis Nishimura as well as Tessa Nuismer.
We are the remarkable team, and we're going to help you be remarkable. We're going to do that by covering a range of topics from astrophysics to behavioral economics to influence and persuasion to writing to training dogs. That's a remarkable range of topics, but this is a remarkable podcast. Until next time, mahalo and aloha.