 Hey, what's going on guys? Tom Davis here, America's canine educator. Thank you so much for joining me today. Today you guys, we have a great video with a young dog dealing with some basic stuff. Something that a lot of you guys are probably struggling with and dealing with. And I'm really excited to bring you guys this video because it's a start of a new series. I just wanted to point out a couple different things because I've been getting some messages and some comments from people who live all over the world because we've built the coolest dog training channel right here on YouTube and I couldn't be more grateful to be a part of it and have you guys join me for the ride. So a lot of you guys are saying, hey Tom, I live in a country that doesn't allow tools and hey, do you always have to use tools to train? I wanna be clear and I wanna make sure that you guys understand that the demographic and the dogs that I deal with come from all over the country to work with me on very specific things. These dogs are very aggressive. These dogs have killed other dogs. These dogs have been in bites and fights and so I wanna be clear that a lot of the tools that I use are strictly because it's a lot of the same dogs that I'm dealing with. So I hear you guys loud and clear. So we're gonna create new series with very limited tool usage. So in this session, it's an eight month old golden retriever. She's the sweetest thing of all time and it's really lovely for me to be able to work with a dog that doesn't maybe wanna hurt me or isn't terrified of me. And so in this series, we're gonna start, I'm gonna put a playlist together that you guys can watch with very minimal or no tool policy in these series. So this is the start of that series. I hope you guys enjoy it. It's a beautiful progress of a dog that really is just struggling with the basic commands. The owners are kinda struggling with the relationship and the dog is very all over the place and there's a lot of playful energy and they're really trying to tighten up their basic obedience. If you guys haven't yet, you guys wanna support me, you guys wanna support the channel, like this video, leave a comment in the comments below. Let me know where you guys are from as well as you guys can cop some brand new no bad dog merch. We have the I speak dog, the no bad dogs, the t-shirts, the leashes and so on and so forth. That's how you guys can support the channel, support me. As I'm moving into doing this more full-time because we're growing and growing and growing and I can't wait to continue to help you, communicate with you, engage with you, go live with you. Anyway, let's get into the video. Not very sharp with your commands. Okay. She will definitely decide whether or not she wants to listen. Just not like as well engaged as we would want her. I said heal right now, she doesn't know what I'm talking about. Okay. So you wanna take a eight-month-old dog and then tune up all your obedience and relationship? Right. Perfect, we can do that. So we'll just start with the basics. So see how she's doing this a lot? She hates it, right? So we'll probably just switch to a slip collar. That's good. Yep. So the slip collar works very similarly to this gentle leader. The only thing about the gentle leader is is the dog constantly is doing that. It's fine to use, nothing wrong with it at all. It's just like, I think we can get a little better. And you can also see like, it almost covers up her eyes and she does this and she's like, take this off. No worries at all, you know, whatever you guys are comfortable with too, you know? So this is just a slip. So all this does is it just slips like this. Okay, good. So it applies the same pressure except it's not on this pressure point. It's just right around her muscle on her head here. So it gives you that power steering that you need, okay? So, you know, when it comes to equipment, I never tell people what they have to do. I mean, if you came in here with a flat collar and you said, or Harness, you said, this is what I want to work on. I do it, sure, no problem. I want your relationship with her to really be as organic as possible, just like, hey, do this. And so if you're wearing equipment, it doesn't really matter how much you have on her necessarily. It matters how much you're using it. With harnesses and gentle leaders, you're using it all the time. It's never decompressing. And with like prong collars, slip collars, whatever, they're rarely used after the dog understands the pressure, right? So the first thing I like to do is just teach the dog what leash pressure is, how to turn it on, how to turn it off, why it turns on, why it turns off. So what I'll do is I'm not gonna bring out food because with a golden, it's gonna be game over after that. I won't be able to know if she's listening to me or if she's just food, food, food, food, food, food. And I don't love that because then it kinda, yeah. Yeah, if I had food, she would bring it on it. Right, and then it's just food, food, food. So then we don't matter. All right, so what I'm gonna do is just some directional changes. Sophie, come. Yes, good, come. Yes. Okay, so good. So now I'm gonna bring her out. So you see that little pop I gave her there? Sophie, come. Yes, good girl. So I'm not really throwing in the sit yet, but I will in a minute. But I wanna just break down what I just did. I let her out. I said her name. I said, come. The first time she's like, nope. And then she got that pop. And then the second time I said, come. She turned right to me and came to me. So that's a top behavior. She learned that through pressure. Sophie, come. Yes, good. Come. Yes, good girl. Come. Good girl. So just verbal positive reinforcement right now. Good girl. So now I'm gonna even tighten that up a bit more with just the heel. Because I feel like she's smart enough to understand that pressure. So now I'm just gonna move forward and then I'm gonna work on a tighter directional change. So typically with a new dog, what I'll do is the difference between common heel for me and these directional change patterns, the heel is gonna be tighter where the common, the recall is gonna be, she's pretty much at the end of the leash. Sophie, heel. Yes, good heel. So same kind of principle here. Sophie, heel. Yes. Good heel. Sophie, heel. Yes. Good heel. Sometimes that takes almost the whole session. Every single dog is different. Every single case that we do is different. So now what I'm gonna do is, okay, that looks really great. She's doing a fantastic job. She's absolutely lovely. She's beautiful, she's fun to work with. Good. Now what I'm gonna do is tighten that up even more and I'm gonna create like the invisible line here in front of me for the heel pattern moving forward. Cause that's the harder task or exercise to do is to say directional change healing. Because it's so apparent. Hey, we're doing this. The dog's like, okay, I'm queuing on that. But now I'm just gonna walk forward and I'm gonna say, hey, you have to pay attention to this invisible line now. Are you ready? Oh, she's so lovely. She's so sweet. It's so nice cause I always work with dogs that wanna eat me. So it's really nice. Yeah, it's really nice. So now what I'm gonna do is like the heel, I think historically would be the dog at your heels, right? So the dog is walking on your heels. I'm not too particular. I'm not a competitive obedience dog trainer. I'm a relationship guy of like, let's just teach some basics really nice. Basically, my invisible line will be like here. So I'm just gonna give a little leash pressure with the slip collar. And I'm just gonna throw in like a marker. Like some people go, ah, or like no. Yeah, so I'll just do that. I'll do what you guys do to make it easy. So I'm just gonna go from A to B and to turn into a sit. So I'm gonna go here to the other side of the room. So for heel. So you see that little pressure there? Good girl. And then she looked up to me and she said, what did I do? Very common. She just doesn't know yet, right? But as soon as I start marking this and I start layering in the verbal cues, she'll get a little better at it. So for heel. Now I can start verbally. Good heel, Soph. Good heel. So you see that nice, loose leash heel engaged? Ah, sit. Yes. Okay, break. Well done. Well done. So looks good, right? Yeah, yeah. Very good girl, sweetheart. She's so sweet. I just love this girl. I just love this girl. Every, you know, just like chefs, every dog trainer is different. So what I say isn't like traditionally in the books of like, this is exactly how you have to do it. Even if you guys throw your own spin on it for comfortability, it doesn't matter as long as we're making progress. So with her, all I'm doing is I'm teaching her very basic leash pressure and small incremental patterns. So I'm just going from A to B, break. A to B, break. So I'm telling her to heel. I'm giving her that verbal check of like, ah, ah, and she's like, ooh, ooh, you know. So she doesn't know what heel is yet, but she's starting to understand, hey, if I pass this or if I do this and, you know, whatever, so I'm teaching her that there's certain limitations she has on the leash that she can't go past. And then I'm also introducing the break command, because I think it's very valuable for any dog, not just a puppy, to let them know, I want you to work, I want you to work, I want you to work, now break. So it's recess, it's break for us when we're training and we're working or whatever, it's just telling the dog, now you can be a dog and do what you want. And then over time, as you get better at healing and your increments get longer, you can heal for as long as you basically want to. And then after that, you can say break and then the dog can be a dog. So for me, it's all about handling. When your correction is all gonna be predicated off of the dog. Some dogs are like super sensitive, other dogs are like, please don't ever talk to me again because I don't care about you, right? And so like for me, working with all of the dogs just coming in and I'm just here just like, okay, let's go, let's go, like I'm just rolling with everything that's thrown at me. So every single dog, their pressure is very, very discretionary exactly. So with her, it's not a, well here's the pressure we're gonna get. Every dog that comes through, it's, hey, this is what I think we should start doing and you cool with that? And you're like, yep, we're comfortable. Okay, great. So with this, it's just a slip collar. So with her, it's just a flick of a wrist. So it's literally just a little flick. Let me show you, this is what I try to show people. So I'll take this chair out. So when you're handling my corrections are literally like a flick of a wrist here. That's what I'm doing. I'm literally taking my wrist and I'm flicking. So what this does is when you do that, if she's here and you go, it's just, it's just a quick pop, okay? So when you're doing this, you're getting the dog's attention, right? You're like, hey, what are you doing? And they're like, oh, me, sorry. And that's, you're just almost disrupting their thought process, right? And you're like, hey, and they're like, heal. And they're like, oh yeah, right, sorry. So on the contrary of what a lot of people think, especially even with like the prong collar, is if a dog's here, right? And this is tight and they're here and you're doing this and this, none of that matters. It doesn't do anything. All it does is it annoys them. It kind of chokes them out a bit, but it's not correcting. So you have to make sure that your pressure is nice just like this. And when, yeah, exactly. And when I'm walking with her and she passes, you'll just, and you just do that quick pop. Yep, so it's a good question. But that's really what it is. And of course, like I said, like every single dog is different. And that's why it's important for me, because I love dogs. I love animals just in general. I'm the type of guy that will take an ant out on a piece of paper and put it outside. But for me, it's like, I need to be able to switch up gears. Like I need to be South Paw. I need to be able to literally do anything with any dog that comes in because I need to help. People are counting on me, you know? That's my job. It's my whole life. And now I want you guys to try it out. So we'll just go one by one. Let's just keep her on her left side to stay consistent. And then I'll walk you through the process. Nice. So one thing I want you to do is because you're gonna get dizzy is I want you to just look forward, okay? So just look right at, yeah, just look straight ahead. See, she's looking at you, which is good. But I want you to start to feel your way around. I don't want you to be robotic with her. I want you, because that's not very natural at all. I want you to just be out for a walk and she's with you. Gotcha. Yeah, that's the one thing I know this like often is like I end up like just so much focused on her. It's very nice. Perfect. Nice job. So how did you feel about that? Good, actually. Yeah, that was actually the best that she's ever done. Like I said, usually she's like a couple steps ahead of me every single time. Right. I really have to like drag her behind me. You know what I mean? To really get her. Yeah, that was definitely the best she's ever done. Awesome, super, super happy for that. Two things that are going into this is obviously like I'm helping you, I'm coaching you, but being able to have that like structure. Like for me, what I want to do is I want to teach her things. I don't want to have to restrain, restrain, restrain. When you were walking her, she was just walking nice and relaxed and she was looking up at you. She was engaged, which is something you didn't have 28 minutes ago. So like if you guys came in and you're like, I want to learn how to play basketball or I want to learn how to swim or I want to learn how to roller blight or whatever. And I'm the guy, right? For whatever it is. I'm going to say, let's start from, you know, right here, put it in the basket. Let's swim from here to here, you know, whatever. So I'm not going to tell you, okay, you guys go to the deep end or go half court shots or whatever. That's where people make the mistake. As you start off, you're like, oh, I get it. This is, this is the form. This is the philosophy. This is the style. This is the tools we're going to use. Here's how we're going to do it. Here's how to hold that leash and all that stuff. Then a lot of people just go right all in. And you're like, man. And I say, I say, hey, good to see you guys again. How did everything go in your break or whatever? And people will say, oh, well, not that good. And I say, well, what happened? Well, we went downtown and it was terrible. And I'm like, well, duh. So you just have to make sure that like with anything else that we do in life, you have to start off here, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. And then once you feel like, okay, we're knocking this out of the park, then you can go and start copying and pasting this into reality. A lot of you guys asked me about my personal dogs and I just want to show you Lola really quick. This is Lola. She's about 17 years old. I've had her since high school. She's been with me throughout all of my 20s and my early or my late teens. And she's a mix. I absolutely love her to death. We adopted her at a adoption clinic at PetSmart here in upstate New York. So this is Lola. I hope you guys enjoy this video. I hope that you appreciate the new limited or minimal tool usage videos because again, all of the dogs, the majority of dogs I deal with really needs some sort of support because the owners are on their last stretch. They're on their last, they're on their wits end of handling this dog. And they certainly need tools because they're not professional dog trainers. On the contrary, in this case, puppy, lovely session, absolutely beauty of a dog. Loved working with her. The owners are great as well. If you guys haven't yet, do me a favor. Slike, like smash, like, like smash. This, like this video. Smash the subscribe button. I appreciate you guys so much. Leave a comment in the comments below. Cop some no bad dog merch. At the very least, comment below. Let me know where you guys are from. Support the channel. Share this with friends and family. I will talk to you next time. Peace.