Dog Trainer Reacts: ZAK GEORGE TAKES HIS DOG TO THE DOG PARK – THIS IS WHY PEOPLE HATE POS REINF!

what's up guys it's done with Doug liaison where I coach you on how to enhance your dog's mental health if you're new here welcome I am a positive reinforcement dog trainer and I break down scientific research to inform us on how to educate and train our dog we're talking about a pretty uncomfortable top topic today I was sent this video of Zack George taking his dog inertia to the dog park and I haven't seen all of it I've only seen part of it thus far we're gonna watch it together but the little parts that I have seen I have some thoughts on the primary thought being this is why people hate positive reinforcement trainers in an effort to vindicate positive reinforcement training and attest that this is not effective positive reinforcement training we're going to watch the video together so let's get started really excited about today's lesson cuz it's a little bit different we are at our local park there's a dog park over there so I wanted to do some training to start to improve communication with her when there are dogs nearby I'm gonna show you how I'm gonna do that so already we can see in her stiff body language you can see that she's kind of boxy and I know that border collie is our boxy anyway but you can see how she's got her head low and her shoulders are scrunched and to the point where her rear legs are actually higher than her top leg so you can see that her body just kind of looks awkward standing there and already we can see that she's like on edge for example just because she listens to me around our other dog Indy doesn't mean that she's going to listen to me around any dog that's an excellent point Oh oh my gosh okay she literally was just already putting on the stops in the middle of this street in the middle of parking lot it looks like she was putting on the brakes stopping saying I can't go forward and he literally was just like let's go this guy's this is exactly how reactivity starts as soon as the dogs start saying hey I can't move forward I need to stop right here is my limit we need to be listening to that and if he's really so confident that his dog is gonna become while there then clearly when he stops she'll just start walking again right like that would be the idea if she's also comfortable she's just gonna keep walking if he stops right I think I'm ready to move forward now and see how she does being closer again I think I'm ready to move forward has your dog indicated that she's ready to move forward cuz from what I see she's got her mouth closed in a stiff body language and a sit so she's not indicating to me that she wants to move forward so now a much closer reserved and well behaved the same thing so she he knows that this dog is reactive he knows that his dog has some some things that she needs to work through and he's just gonna take his reactive dog to the dog park for the first time and see how it goes yes about dogs and that's fine so when we talk about desensitizing your dog too being around other dogs this is precisely what we're talking about in general I like to do these in 30-minute chunks 1 hour chunks just hang it out not doing a whole lot of anything I'm not asking for too much at all right now guys here's the problem with having 2 point 1 4 million subscribers ok the problem with that is that you end up talking to the mass public and when you talk to the mass public and you talk to a lot of people in one short condensed video you have to speak in generalities when you talk in big grotesque phrases like that you are setting standards that aren't necessarily accurate for the general public taking your dog to a dog park and working on the outside of a dog park for 30 minutes to an hour is a really really really long time okay now she's 6 months old and I know that he makes a lot of videos so let's give him the argument that while she she trains for a long periods of time for a lot of days and she's accustomed to it even in that case the vast majority of Zack Georgia's audience is not working their dog that often every single day to build up the tolerance if you will to be working a dog for a half hour to an hour that is are such a long time the longer dog is under pressure the more cortisol they have the more stress they're under the more likely it is that they're gonna make mistakes and had issues so I already know that there's some sort of biting incident that happens in in the coming up and now I know why it's because he was there for an hour I mean yeah you're gonna have issues the longer you work your dog nificant of that is she's doing something a little harder than sit in this case wave-wave is something I don't ask her to do quite as often we light out look at that I'm standing completely up and she just lied down in other words I didn't have to point to the ground or lure her so this indicates a semi responsive dog let's walk over here a little bit and probably those behaviors have a conditional emotional response which is positive and that means that she enjoys just doing the behavior themselves which is wonderful that's how it should be training you know any dog should enjoy a behavior every behavior they do so doing these self reinforcing behaviors like tricks like just teaching a spin and taking it into a stressful environment can absolutely desensitize the environment and I use that all the time with my clients see the loose leash here just beat away from the dog part so he mentions the loose leash which okay cool there's a loose leash but he's not mentioning why the loose leash is there so for example when I take my clients out for walks a lot of times they're like oh look my dog is on a loose leash and I'm like yeah but the loose leash is there because they're apprehensive the loose leash is there because they don't want to walk away from you and they don't want to approach whatever that stimuli is there so there's a difference between a dog that wants to approach something and is still walking nicely on the leash or is still showing some a little bit of impulse control which is delayed gratification versus what happening here with inertia which is that she doesn't really want to approach but she's not showing any indication that she wants to move forward so of course there's going to be a loose leash all of a sudden it's a miracle oh my god who can seen it coming it's not natural okay reactivity on a leash is not natural just because it's normalized and just because it's common doesn't mean it's natural I like that he gave the loose leash again good walk in I like that walk in and he just did that that's that walk in to her was perfect you definitely want to continue doing that you don't want to pull her away ah crap I literally just gave him I really just gave him kudos and he's about to go pull that dog again he worked so well to step into her and set it up and everything and then he turns around and pulls her and I was so proud of him we were doing so well guys let's get a little closer and see what happens so there's a dog over so her just heard the his dog just went over a threshold I don't know how many minutes are in between this we'll never know how many minutes are in between us but his dog just went over threshold Musil while already walking her back up to the gate no I've got to tell you in general I'm not really a huge fan of going inside of dog parks because there are so many different personalities and you just don't know if all the dogs are gonna be good with other dogs but I'm looking around here there's not that many dogs in there and they all seem to be doing pretty well together so this might be a good opportunity to give in or show some additional socialization experience he thinks that after working his dog for 30 minutes in a brand new environment and she's already been showing all of these stress signals her tails been between her legs she's been licking her lips she scratched herself at the very very beginning of getting there she's demonstrating a lot of stiff body language she stopped herself multiple times she's backed up multiple times she has been on edge when a dog came up to the fence she's gone over threshold and barked at another dog and he and he thinks that after 30 minutes of all of that her body just on a reasonable chemical level her body can handle going into a dog park for the first time listen guys anytime your dog goes over threshold Adrenaline's being released which means there's an immense amount of cortisol being released anytime that that happens it takes a lot of time for a dog to come back down to homeostasis anywhere from an hour to 72 hours depending on what the incident was so I mean he's been there for let's approximate 30 minutes it may be and he's now made his dog go over a threshold now twice and she's already barking at dogs through the fence she's pulling on the leash she's demonstrating stiff body language her posture is awkward her tail is often tucked between her legs and he thinks that it's still reasonable to take dog in the park but don't do that guys don't do that oh she's looking for a flight response guys she's looking for a flavor sponsz look at this ears her mouth is closed she's even got it looks like she's even got a little bit of a smile like a smile we call him were those just like the lips are pulled off to the side her ears are back her tail is tucked she's standing in a triangle now which is even worse than a square she's got her body all the way up against the fence fence she's looking for a flight response and if a dog approaches her right now she could very easily turn in to fight just because she doesn't have a flight availability oh my god it's typical of her behavior you guys if you do have a dog that's this sensitive it's not necessarily a testament to you know we have to work through that but don't take your dog to the dog park like if you know that your dog has issues with dogs and with environments like this why would you decide today is the day to take your dog to the dog park for the first time it just I don't understand poor dog so I know that this is gonna be a little bit confusing for some of you but the jump up that she just did on him was another way of choosing flight it's a way of saying I need out of here it's a way of displaying stress and discomfort and when she feels like she can't rely on herself to solve a problem she's gonna resolve to someone who does so usually solve her problems like her owner and that jump up on him was very much like oh my god what's going on oh my god I'm stressed I need your help and his response is yeah good girl here's a tree and it's like you don't want to feed fear necessarily what we feed is bravery so if you're creating a Pavlovian response to something and you're trying to just create that classical response that something is good there's no harm in treating but that's not what he's doing here he just demonstrated a behavior and now he is reinforcing it as opposed to capturing her throughout the process and making sure that she's comfortable go play with that puppy that dog looks fast so you can see a nurse is starting to open up a little bit oh what's that oh so the first indication that I'm seeing that she doesn't like to be chased she was just playing with this smaller dog which she looked pretty happy with so maybe she enjoys smaller more petite dogs to interact with because this looks like it was like a lab or something was chasing her and that did make her a little bit more sensitive okay so she's a little nervous there with a surprise it's ok good girl she got a little defensive there but she recovered really well from that oh nice easy easy so let's clear that up boy Oh when a dog comes on strong and fast or she doesn't like that so much it's okay you see it's all right yes good quark good jump no those dogs are big and scary Vaughn they just want to play it's okay so we just got a yawn Anna lip lick and again we're rewarding fear one of the people one of the reasons positive reinforcement trainers get a bad rap is because they think that we just automatically give treats off to fear we just automatically feed feed feed anything the dog is fearful of and that's not at all the case we reinforce bravery and we give the dogs opportunities to show bravery not to demonstrate fear so that when we're feeding them we are feeding good things that we want to see it more and this is a prime example of a positive reinforcement trainer not understanding how to execute these techniques positive reinforcement on the whole is not the issue the techniques are not the issue the execution of those techniques is often the issue and this is an exact example of that people are going to see him coddling this fear that yawn that lip lick holding her up high so that she has no escape and she's likely if a dog came up to them right now she would have no choice but to fight I mean she might choose freeze but dead but given the fact that she's already had to aggress a couple of times she would have no choice to choose fight right and the problem with this is that people are going to see this and think that that is positive reinforcement training and it's not it's not possible this is not okay and I do not want this representing me but I don't represent what that's representing what industry standard is we are better than this and this is very frustrating for me to see him continue to reinforce that fear instead of just letting her leave instead of just letting her escape like she really really wants to so that you can give her more opportunities to be okay to reinforce good behavior he's keeping her in a situation where she's demonstrating unhealthy unsafe behavior and then literally treating that so that it's replicated in the future even though her tail still in between her legs here he's a little thrown off but think she's just skeptical but deep down she wants to be friends and play with this dog I can tell how can you tell I mean the thing is is this is what gets me so frustrated because when we're talking about true animal behaviors when we're talking and now I'm not just talking about dog behaviors at this point I'm talking about animal behaviors that have committed their life to understanding animal behavior right we very rarely just throw out I can tell and well she probably wants to do this and we very rarely give these you know subjective impressions and we only pinpoint what is actually visible what is actually happening and what is actually happening in that case was that her tail was tucked she was doing the banana curve they had a nice rotation she they were smelling nose to boat which was good it was healthy they were off leash but she was definitely showing some sensitivities and you know he was right that that was indicative of skepticism but to say that didn't turn around well but I can tell that she really wants to be his friend I can tell it's like well what about what you just saw makes us think that you can tell I mean if you are going to speak to two point something million subscribers you need to be able to tell us why you can tell in your dog that she's able to handle this learning here she looks a lot more comfortable under that bench I'm gonna let her hang out under there as long as she okay finally finally he's like I'm gonna let her sing me the benches like she wants to yeah that's what you should have done before in the parking lot when she was saying I don't want to move forward you should have stayed there as long as she wants to why are you letting her freeze in moments that are way too late you should be allowing her to freeze in moments and be apprehensive in moments that are safe because her reaction was a little disproportionate in my view but overall she had a lot of really good experiences in there her reaction was disproportionate in your view it's disproportionate only because you weren't paying attention to all of these other signals that she was demonstrating to you showing that she was building in stress it's not disproportionate to anyone with an eye who can see that she stopped in the parking lot she had her tail tuck she had stiff body language at the sit at the outside of the barrier she was giving a lot of lip licks she was crawling up your legs at the very beginning she went hit in the corner how is that disproportionate how is that surprising to you how is that you know unreasonable when you're the one who ignored all of these signs of course she had to build it out of proportion of course she had to start taking it to the next level because you weren't listening at the other levels she was giving you these more reasonable reactions at the lower level she was doing that and you weren't listening to any of that so she had to take it up a notch and now you're surprised and you're like it's unreasonable guys listen I just get very upset when crap like this represents the positive reinforcement training community he has a lot of subscribers he has a lot of viewers people take his word as gospel and it's understandable I mean he's made a very successful career but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's educated in these techniques and these more specifically that he's educated in the execution of these techniques it's not enough to just be able to know the techniques off your head like what is a caption what is the Lord what is a shape you need to be actually able to execute those when it counts and when it counts is when your dog is fearful it counts when your dog is cautious it counts when your dog is is alarmed and needs your help and you're not doing it the right way it's no wonder why other trainers look at this which represents positive reinforcement training and goes that's why positive reinforcement doesn't work it's no wonder why people look at this and say yeah go figure this that you know he's just fluff and treats and you know party that's not what I do and that's not what other professional educated positive reinforcement trainers do we don't do that we would never do that we have a much more methodical strategic reasonable response to these things and we definitely would not be reinforcing the fear that he is we definitely would not be as oblivious as he is to those stress signals and we definitely would not be surprised when the dog aggressed I mean this wasn't a surprise to anybody yeah I mean I hit the punch line at the very first ten seconds of the video I knew that she was inevitably going to aggress so I kind of knew that already but even if I had it she had shown all of the signs throughout the entire day that this was going to happen so it definitely would not have been surprised if you're interested in more videos like this make sure you like hit subscribe tell me in the comments if you want like this sort of honesty and make sure to check out some of my videos I'll see you soon

Channel: Dog Liaison

Views: 11,213

Rating: 3.1449275 out of 5

Keywords: #positivereinforcmentdogtraining, #zakgeorge, #dogtrainingrevolution, #dogtrainingtips, #reacts

Id: yJPpFXFt-cM

Length: 20min 58sec (1258 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020