The crazy life of a Military K9 handler / How to start your dog on raw diet? No Bad Dogs Podcast

foreign [Music] a little bit but start with where you got into dogs I think that's a really interesting story and you don't see a lot of the steps that you've taken to be where you're at in dogs and I and I and generally like curious too so you started off growing up in Yonkers growing up in Yonkers not being allowed to have a dog in my own home my parents were primarily my mother didn't want to know anything they didn't own their own home we lived in a in an apartment on a dead end Street and uh every chance I got every stray dog every opportunity including I got a chance to become a dog walker for a local guy owned a restaurant and he had a Great Dane and so I used to walk about seven miles each way to get to the dog from where I lived holy yeah um just you live in the city you gotta walk especially when you're 10 11 years old I got a bike eventually I didn't always have a bicycle but I got a bike and I used to ride once in a while but three dollars was the was the rate and I used to take this great dane out in the morning and bring them back five six o'clock at night these were during the Summers school days I used to get them only for an hour or so but I grew to love this dog and that's what started it off I started collecting Strays every once in a while and I lived in a very predominantly Italian neighborhood and every Italian guy in the neighborhood had a beagle in their backyard and so most of the dogs I started with were beagles is there a reason that Italian people like rabbits and a lot of them hunt and they use beagles to hunt that makes sense that's what was there so that's when I started working with and uh it just started off just trying to get them to uh be friendly and have a have someone in their lives you know and they were they weren't pets though right the beagles they live in the no these I mean I would keep them in the woods where I lived I lived on a dead end and at the end of the road was a was a section of wooded area and I could never let my mother know I had a dog so I used to keep them up there every once in a while uh after I'd come home at night I'd go back and forth leave them a couple little things to eat leave them some water and then that's really how it started off was you did your parents know that you were walking the dogs though they knew you were they knew I was the dog walker okay because I would come back up to my own neighborhood but this the great day was shoulder High to me you know very well behaved never gave me a hard time and no one ever messed with me sure he's probably bigger at 10 years old he's probably he was a big he was probably about 140 pounds and he was a harlequin so he was really different looking yeah he was a harlequin and uh good boy Brutus that is his name that was his name so you went from so your your parents are they Italian yes yeah yes my father was in construction my mother was a housewife cool and and you and Yonkers where's where is that in the in the that's not in that's not its own Bureau right or city of Yonkers is the is the southernmost part of Westchester County it's just for the Bronx line Okay so I uh I lived there until I was about 20. but in that time I mean I started with uh with the dog walking but then I I really enjoyed spending the time with the dogs that I was able to cultivate on my own these dogs that were just walking the neighborhoods eating out of garbage pails and uh I did that I mean until I was about 14 and then my connection with the great day and led to some other things um so the guy the guy that owned the restaurant was he like an Italian guy too oh very much so yeah very much so and then he he knew other guys he knew other guys that he you know he was so happy with the job that I did that uh all of a sudden I was getting calls from other guys that frequented his restaurant right and uh I said always I only knew one word and that was yes and so before I knew it I had a little Enterprise going on as a kid just with the dogs that's with the dogs I mean to to Really clarify how my mother refused to allow animals in the house I I was given a little duck around Easter time once from an uncle and uh I snuck it in the house and my mother took it and put it in our little back porch area and when I woke up in the morning he was standing in this little thing of water the duck and his feet were frozen into the water he couldn't move oh so I mean that's how really strict my mother was I'll say my mother because my father he didn't have much to say about it but my mom just didn't want animals in the house and so I found other ways to to get around that so you had this kind of so you were walking the dogs and then you kind of had your own dogs in the woods and and then I started growing the dog walking thing before it was probably even a thing right oh it wasn't a thing right we're talking I mean I was we're talking like in this early 60s mid 60s no one ever thought of of the dog industry being what it is today right and so that's how it started that's interesting but there was always a seed that stuck with me I mean even though I got into other things and as we continue to talk I might surprise you on how many other things yeah that developed in my life but the dogs always carried through even though I did many many other things and if you'd like I'll let you know right now as a young adult it started as a floral designer I'm an award-winning floral designer had my own flower shop worked in shops in Scarsdale in Manhattan in Yonkers from there I I enterprised a little bit I got into the uh I had a I sold the florist I had a Coke franchise Coca-Cola Coca-Cola franchise where I used to deliver Coke to different places like a distributor correct huh after I sold the floors I bought a Coke route but it was a little bit too crazy they had return bottles and I said you got to be crazy to be not only selling them but then having to take them back so I sold that I went into the food business where I really got a good education in in meat handling and things like that because I I bought a coffee route where they would go to different construction jobs in the city of Yonkers so it's kind of like a paper paper I don't want to say now because now they're gone but how a paper route was when I was a kid where you'd be responsible of the route and you'd go and deliver for the for the company for Coca-Cola for coffee they'd be like hey here's the stuff you go no the coffee stuff all the food was prepared and I would go to different businesses and as the companies that I was going to they would get breaks in the morning lunch breaks afternoon breaks I would be at these different places at certain times when they got their breaks and they would come out tear the food apart pay me and then I'd leave that was your own thing that was my own thing okay okay yes so from I I built that into from one route I built it into a 14 route uh commissary where I made my own food I didn't buy everything made I started making everything on my own and then I leased each of these routes out where I would they would buy all the food from me go out sell it and then have to pay me for the food so I did that for a number of years how old were you at that point I was in my early 20s and I had I had married and I had a daughter at two years old was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia at two two and a half years old and so changed life a little bit Yeah but the dog stuff I always dealt with some dogs maybe only one at a time sometimes two or three but then I started you know people would say to me hey I'm looking for a dog what do you think I should get then I started getting more Technical and doing some research on and and figuring out what the best dog would be not necessarily the kind anybody wanted but somebody came to me and wanted a pet and they were looking at German Shepherds or working dogs I would try to turn people away from a working dog if they wanted a pet turn them onto something like a lab that was a little more mild and I started matching dogs with people and and it just worked out and all of a sudden before you know it everyone they called me the dog man everyone started talking to me about dogs to a point where in my wife will laugh about it now I go to a wedding I say to her I don't want to talk about dogs anymore it's all I talk about but it was always very deep-seated there was always something about it that that was part of me it felt right and so to move it along a little quicker uh I got into the meat business where I had a Boar's Head Provisions thuman Provisions routes all these type of routes a company called Shaolin Webb who make these dry sausages and everything I got into that business did that for four or five years but I still would get dogs there was a place in Yonkers called um canine command dogs it was operated owned and operated by Tony malardi who uh who was his son-in-law this really well-known trainer Jack Healey who used to be on the back cover You're gonna laugh at me now the back cover of Book of matches Jack Healey school for dogs come and learn about dog training and all this stuff that was advertising back then advertising back then and they used to it was a big deal they had a lot of these department stores like Macy's would have dogs dropped off at night picked up in the morning and they used to do this at a lot of places in the Bronx and since I lived right on the Yonkers Bronx line they used to do like if you had a business and you wanted to prevent break-ins you'd call this company Yonkers K-9 Patrol dogs they'd come to your place when you close drop off a dog come back six o'clock in the morning and pick that dog up they'd have a truck and a route and they'd go around wow and again that word route is big for me because I was a route man so I I understood the way it all worked and so I got into it a little bit that way where I was uh dropping off dogs training them how to stay off the fence because I had instances where I I leased dogs to companies and somebody wants to get in they'd take a long pipe or a stick tie an arrow at the end of it tape it up and as the dog leaped up on the gate they used to stab the dog with this Arrow yeah so you know somebody wants to get into something they they find ways then you get into poison proofing because you don't want your dog people would throw poison hot dogs in so we started I used to use a uh a solar it was a box that they used for uh electrified fences for cows yeah and I would hook up wires to the both ends of the hot dog and set the dog up so if he went to touch the hot dog he'd get a shock I see these are these are the way I personally develop my own ways there wasn't there was no fancy companies that provided any type of equipment anything like a Ray Allen or it was nothing like that so and they would that's fascinating that they would they would drop the dogs off at these stores without a Handler without a Handler no no one can handle it but the guy that drove the truck that's the point that's the point so if anybody that is including the owners right so they didn't have security guards or anything like nothing like that Ah that's interesting and Manhattan I mean I remember Macy's they used to drop like five Dobermans off at Macy's because at the time the Dolby was the big dog wow big popular dog movies about Dobermans or on television you know they bite their own masters they kill their own masters and so that was the tough dog of the time but I developed a little company like doing that and then I got a I got an idea to go out to California I was reading a dog magazine there used to be a a working dog magazine um dog Sport magazine okay and it would have advertisements in the back and there was a company out in California called mandolin Kennels in Bakersfield California and they would they were giving trainer courses three-month trainer courses and I was bound to go so one year my son was born October of 81. and January of 81 I left for Bakersfield California my son was three months old and I had a daughter at the time with uh acute lymphocytic leukemia and I have an older daughter so I go out to California did you bring the the kids I went by myself okay kids stayed home with the wife okay and uh that was really the start of my professional career where I consider it to be the start where I was bound to make dogs my primary income and what age was that so okay so uh 4 23. so yeah I was just trying to timeline from when you went so it makes sense because you started off with the routes and the kind of like the the almost the food industry with the meats and making everything to the construction sites before before that right and then you got hooked up with like oh you know this company's kind of doing the same thing that I would do with food but with dogs in a different business and then you were like kind of connecting dots and then a couple years later you went out to California to do dog training to do to do what I felt was the beginning of the professional end of it where I was really determined but it wasn't about connecting dots I wish I looked that far in advance that is just the way the flow took me naturally it was a natural flow and so I spent uh I spent all told about a year out in California came back hardly recognized my son because he was he was grown you know he was yeah much different did you drive I flew to California and I didn't rent the car when I was out there I mean it was a very desolate Place everywhere you looked was one of those oil rig Pumpers Bakersfield is that Southern California right next to the Baja yeah it's Southern California and at the time there was nothing there it was uh the oil rigs and and that type of lifestyle and what was the what was paint me the dog training scene back then did you know anything about it or was just what you saw in magazines just what I saw in magazines and what I had I had uh been exposed a little by this Yonkers canine company and and that was run by Tony malardi but they would never let you see the what went on behind closed doors like the process the flanking I mean at the time that's the way they got dogs to buy primarily flanking and uh being the agitation part of it now by flanking in context that would be them physically grabbing the flanks of the dog to agitate them towards the bad guy the decoy or the bad guy at the time absolutely and it was PR just like a dog that had no retrieve drive we used to do what they called Force retrieve you would pinch the ear to the point where you hold an object you pinch the ears so that the dog would grab the object to teach him to hold on to that object I mean these are the ways I learned just like using a throw chain they called it you take a regular chain collar yeah you spin it so that it's half the size but it looks like a little half a hot dog and it was called the throat chain when a dog was disobedient if you put a dog on the down stay and you start to walk away and the dog moved yeah today they'd lock you up for that would you throw it at the dog or would you throw it at the dog okay that's the way I was taught right you hit the dog with that right but it worked so with the with the force fetch that was like a very aversive type of negative reinforcement they would go hey this sucks and they're like how how does how do I get how do I get it to stop and as soon as they grab it it stops right and I admit it's a crazy process but it's the way things were there were no computers that communication was you know a pay phone if you could find one so the only education that you could get on training dogs were in the magazines because the people that were training dogs at that time weren't really transparent about the process and how they were doing correct I learned a lot from from an army a military trainer Bill Keeler he's got a lot of books out some people pronounce it Kohler he pronounced it Keeler but he's probably right I I think he would be Bill Keeler uh and he's got a lot of books out on uh any any produced books by step so you can get a basic obedience book you can get a a book that incorporated some scent work uh and then once you got real confident then you get into the bite work but also Captain Hagerty big pitbull guy uh big a big bunch of a man I mean he was a big tall guy and he was very good with pit bulls and I was in California he was in California at the time we hooked up and uh all these different steps Advanced me a little bit more and made me more determined to to get into it the way to the magnitude that I wanted to so that so that place that you went to in Bakersfield that was a school for dog trainers it was a school for dog trainers but it was also a boarding kennel uh they did grooming there and so when I went there I you know I did a lot of classroom time and he sold the books he sold everything you needed he had every bit of equipment that you could possibly need but then all his boarding customers would leave their dogs there and while they were there those were the dogs that we worked with to train and it was a it was a good Circle as far as he got his customers his boarding customers free training he was being paid by the students to be there and then we would also work on dogs that people came in to have trained so he had all bases covered he used to do public obedience classes that's where I got great experience I would do public obedience classes at night lights lighted field 75 people you try controlling 75 newbies with dogs yeah all at the same time in a public obedience class so I started doing it and he thought I did such a good job he made me continue and not much to my liking as far as you know the volume but we used to do an hour and a half two classes three times a week an hour and a half for the two and uh it just it just kept going it just kept going then I left Bakersfield California while I was there I had a brother that was a police officer in Westchester County and I trained his dog now I'm going to show you this is where the dots were purposely connected I trained his dog and as it turned out later in life I'll just jump for a second you know 35 years later I was hired as a police officer by one of the he was just a he was a police officer a canine Handler at the time he hired me as a police officer on his Department and I handled the dog for him on his Department and he was A co-worker of my brothers that I trained 30 years prior with a dog did you did they know oh yeah okay yeah and so the way I mean he didn't hire me because he knew me he just I hadn't I hadn't seen him in years I didn't even recognize him and he said I can't even believe it and so you went back to New York and then you were training dogs back in New York well I went back to New York after California but then I also went to uh I met a guy his name was Hans Muller and I went to Germany buying some dogs I wound up making some contacts there and stayed there for a while and attended this police state school in Germany or in Germany for Rottweilers I learned a little there I also had the opportunity to uh get hooked up with a guy in Slovakia where we were going to uh in the in I'm jumping up to the 90s now we were going around to uh some of the prisons in Slovakia doing muzzle fighting I I became a real good helper and started to do a lot of muzzle fighting with dogs and uh they used they used dogs with muzzles in the prisons they used to have these um wire box muzzles with with little um pieces of metal coming out and these dogs would just do a lot of damage without even biting you so I started doing a lot of muzzle fighting it opened up it opened up a whole world the whole dog world to me where now I started looking at the big picture and it started as a way to make money and now it combined I had such a great love for the dogs but it it developed into [Music] a way of life for me everything was dogs everything I did and so there wasn't there wasn't the kind of equipment that we have today like I used to get a motorcycle tube cut it into cut it cut the tube in half and then slice it down the middle wrap it on my arm and then get an old corn set burlap corn sack put it over my arm that's why my tattoos here my arms are all scarred up I would I would wrap the burlap on it and and that's how I take the bites sometimes they'd get this the right spot sometimes they wouldn't yeah but this is how it all developed it's it's really cool because for me I got into the dog space very organically similar to you but it's a completely different field now like with education Styles equipment unfortunate politics Etc so it's cool because the generation that started working with dogs that you were in you guys were like frontiering all of this they were like okay I agree how do we get a dog to not Mall a prisoner but you know make them submit you know things like that or doing that so I just want to get more granule on the process of getting from to Germany so you did you did Bakersfield you came home um I'm assuming you're working dogs back at home well when I came home from Bakersfield while I was there I got onto that little portion about my brother who was a cop in Westchester County and I did some training on his dog he found the kennel for sale while I was in Bakersfield and he contacted me he said look there's a kennel in lewisboro which is about uh at the time I was living in Somers it was about 35 minute ride and he said it's for sale so when I got back I went right over to that kennel and I spoke to the guy and I wound up purchasing that kennel that that's perfect right it was it was perfect timing and to boot while I was in Bakersfield one of the other guys that that were there one of the trainers he was a Hawaiian guy and his name was Charlie and I convinced him to come back to New York with me he lived in my home for a while he came back with me I bought this kennel and we started doing training there we actually it was a boarding kennel boarding and grooming kennel and which I had really at the time no interest in I wanted to be a trainer and so uh we started developing a training business there and we had the boarding and grooming which which was the steady money because at the beginning the training wasn't steady but like everything else the more you get the word out there and the more you do the right job the word of mouth that people provide was more than enough this this kennel was on the Connecticut New York border a very affluent area lewisboro in in New York Ridgefield Connecticut uh Danbury Connecticut um it was money in Danbury a lot of money in that entire area South Salem lewisboro North Salem and so I I built a tremendous business there and that's how I met the Goldstein Brothers Dr Bob and Martin Goldstein because I took this candle I did a total renovation on it made it capable of holding 200 animals cats and dogs included but it helped 200 animals we were doing a phenomenal grooming business where I had taken I had two groomers five days a week 20 dogs a day just for grooming and then I had boarding when I bought the kennel it only held 20 dogs and I I renovated it and I was able to hold uh 122 dogs of different sizes I had indoor outdoor runs and then I had um Shoreline stainless steel cages I purchased which a lot of veterinarians use for their Animal Hospital yeah I bought them because they were all rounded edges easy to keep clean stainless steel very secure and I had them all different sizes and so we would put dogs and we would put dogs of different sizes in them and then take them out for exercise and a little bit more work that way but I didn't have time or money to do a large scale indoor outdoor facility you have to go through the whole process for for building different zoning ordinances and stuff like that oh yeah yeah and so uh that kennel after a while I decided to uh expand on on the Animal Hospital side I was building an animal hospital there and the two Goldstein Brothers met me they had just sold their practice and they came and said look you know we might be interested but we want to let you know something we are 100 holistic they were getting away from conventional men both they're both veterinarians they're both two brothers both veterinarians the older brother Bob and the younger brother was Martin and so we struck up a deal and they leased the same portion of the animal hospital and at the time people looked at it as quackery they said what are you talking about well Bob wound up becoming the the first name in cryosurgery developing this technique to freeze a tumor and have it do minimal damage to the to the tissue surrounding it but would literally I've seen I've seen golf ball-sized tumors that these guys were treating with cryosurgery two weeks later looked like a dried fig on their face and then subsequently portions of it get removed and portions of it get absorbed by the body and this technique was working and they teamed up with uh Dr Lawrence Burton in the Bahamas who was a cancer research therapist who was kind of slapped out of the United States he went down there even being very successful in his therapies he went to the Bahamas built his own animal built his own hospital for for people okay yeah he wasn't treating animals got it the Goldstein Brothers applied his um cancer therapies to animals that's cool it was really cool I got to know him very well because having a daughter with leukemia so having a daughter of my own with cancer and being very interested in alternative Therapies uh he called me one day he had a problem with the native people breaking into his facility still and trying to steal drugs he wanted to buy a couple of protective protective Rottweilers right up my alley so he flew me down for a couple of weeks I took three Rottweilers down with me did some training down there set up a whole kennel situation for him secured everything we fenced everything in down there and uh in my time with them I got to know a lot more about his therapies and stuff like that and so some of that was applied to my daughter and was very successful so I looked at that and it changed my life I got very holistic I got very holistic started really looking into what I was eating taking care of myself and um wow I kind of bringing back a lot of things for myself here yeah that's a lot that's that's cool though how all that lined up the way it did just lined up and so from from that kennel which unfortunately the trips away from home took their toll because I wound up in a divorce I had to sell that kennel and when after I sold that candle I went to the only alternative I knew and that was me I I had had these routes selling different types of meat so I wound up getting a small route and still doing the dogs but the kennel had to go so you're just doing like in-homes and stuff just if I would come to the home do the training I wasn't able to keep dogs anymore and so uh I did that for maybe a couple more years it was difficult difficult time for me in my life my daughter was doing better after after involving some of these Therapies but the Goldstein brothers are the key to this part of the story because I really learned a lot yeah learned a lot not only not only about the the health aspect but I watched surgeries I really got involved with the entire process of animal health and and getting into some of the uh what I would consider to be the more difficult aspects of caring for a dog like that and so I saw all different kinds of issues and they they were very instrumental and very helpful to me in developing myself further uh and that's why when I started with the Organics I went back to them I went back to Bob and asked for some help and he was very willing we talked for a while then we got together I had brought the process along before I had gotten in touch with them but I knew which direction I wanted to go in and that was Animal Health and to give context and to get contacts from you as well holistic Veterinary practices today are not that popular as as as many other vets are so back then that must have did did you did that did the clinic get like pushed back from the the public of like what's this why are we not So Much from the public as much as from other veterinarians and as they do today today but I re I mean I'm I'm glad that the goldsteins were so hooked on their ideas they had started their own dog food company it was called lick your chops health food for dogs but it was a kibble and so through the time I spent with them I learned it was a college education for me from both of them and I learned it wasn't so much what I what I liked it was what was better for the dog right that makes sense you're not eating the food you're not eating the food but even something as simple as what most people make mistakes with today when they feed kibble and raw you can't mix them and something that basic I would have never known I mean just from the difference in the digestion and the time it takes to digest kibble and digest raw there's there's a vast contrast so you don't want to mix them together because then your your raw is pulling down undigested kibble the raw takes three to four hours kibble three times that so to fully digest fully digest and and it'll produce gases and and make it very uncomfortable a lot of people blame the raw for that but what they what they need to do is feed it in two separate meals you give your morning meal I I would recommend giving the morning meal kibble if that's what you're going to use because it takes longer to get through the dog and then in the evening you give your raw so that four hours later you could take your dog out again and he's empty for the night but that makes sense it's a schedule it's it's a factual plus when when having to feed both you really shouldn't feed mixed together but people don't always listen to what you say you know you know just like you know I bore dogs too and people say you know customers of mine bring their dogs in for boarding but I can tell if they're eating only my food or if they're eating kibble too just because I clean the poop yeah and so you could tell the difference I want to ask you this before I forget because I'm just interested in I know I'm bouncing around no no you're not you're trying to keep it no you're not at all no you're not at all I just especially when I listen to podcasts I'm always like wait but I wanted to know interrupt me anytime so what and I'm just trying to get a gauge for the scene back then so you so I'm just curious on what was there no other options to do working dogs like you went immediately from Bakersfield back home or that space and then you immediately went to Germany to do like Dobermans Rottweilers and Shepherds was that just something that you were interested in my personal interest okay actually Rottweilers uh and I owned I had one at the time a phenomenal one there was a uh there was a kennel in in New Jersey I can't recall Saddlebrook New Jersey and it was owned by a Hungarian woman Dr Vladimir Dr um I'm sorry doctor if you don't remember that's okay I don't remember what I ate yesterday can't remember her name she had a broken back and she walked very crooked but she had put an ad out looking for a trainer so I went to visit her Dagmar holder not over oh sure doctor how'd you forget Dr Dagmar holder no Rover and uh Von palisadon Rottweiler she was in the Palisades of New Jersey sure yeah and so she had a adult male rottweiler specifically Champion Dog and she needed somebody to handle this dog in obedience trials and so I walked out on her deck and she comes walking out with this 115 pound four-year-old Rottweiler who was incredibly beautiful I had a lot of experience with rotties so she hands me the leash and she says let me see you do some obedience now I knew this dog from nothing and I knew the results the first little correction I gave this dog he came up on me and I did what needed to be done and walked off good boy come on give him a couple of little clicks and we go off and the dog was mine after that and she was like no one can control this dog but you cool and that was another little thing that developed where I started with all these Rottweilers and and so it kind of happened like that I think mostly because there were not very many people like today there's one on every corner there were not many people doing dog training and so when somebody was able to see results in a short period of time that's what they wanted ask you this Rottweilers so I I mean I deal primarily with pets right so I don't see a lot of working Rottweilers and so well you know what I mean they're not working I might see a working Rottweiler with the pet owner but I'm not you know so Rottweilers had had been in my experience one of the only dogs that has stayed characteristically breed specific and how they act like consistently meaning I'll meet a Shepherd an Aussie um any other breed right and they're all different but Rottweilers consistently to me have always been the same type of behaved dog and as far as personality goes they kind of always have this like this stoic like really um I don't know hard-headed presence yeah like they're just Worth right yeah I want to disagree with you a little bit on one thing sure I don't find them all the same I find that unfortunately when a dog gets popular in this country it gets destroyed a little bit at a time oh yeah over breeding poor breeding um terrible genetics I have taken in dogs out of Germany and this Hans Mueller I mentioned earlier was a phenomenal contact for very excellent Rottweilers out of Germany they have a totally different personality they have a lot of it has to do with the upbringing okay the way they're handled as puppies and I find that the dogs I get out of Germany are like them the Ferraris of of the breed they have a very refined they're not 190 pounds like you see in this country they look like wine barrels with legs they're not supposed to be like that I mean my average my my Rottweiler if I could make my own would be about 115 pounds cubby body big head with an occupant you can put your cup of coffee on you say stoic I say very deliberate I see a dog that will look right through you has very little to say until he does right but here I find that people want something specific in terms of appearance and don't pay much attention to what's inside right so they'll take a dog that has certain temperament issues whether it be genetic or learned behavior doesn't really matter but you take a dog that oh that starts off with a fault and you breed it for one specific thing but what comes with it you don't want but you have no control over it and so so many customers call me I have a Rottweiler 180 pounds and I need him to listen I don't even take the job I don't take the job because I find American dogs are just always so much more difficult do you think it's just well there's probably a lot of reasons a lot of reasons so I just find um in the United States that dogs are bred for people just are getting a shell right they're getting like I want a Rottweiler because they don't think about what's inside they just think about how it looks and looks like big they are and I think that it's just a weird place that we're in especially as a pet owner trainer right somebody that trains yeah people with dogs right um the working dog training is completely different because it's a it's a different Handler it's a different job it's a different dog hopefully and but but what I deal with is families getting dogs because they saw it in a movie or they wanted a big dog or they there's egos involved a lot like I see a lot of people getting these huge Tibetans or these giant Connie Corsos or these big Rottweilers and they're getting a shell so when you said that you see in Germany in particular I have um family in Germany my mom my mother-in-law is fluent in German we go there often and the way that and and same thing with her her mom which is our great Oma um it's it's they the way that they are as humans is very structured very disciplined um it matters to them and they have breed wardens yeah so they can't so when you say breed wardens explain to that a little bit okay I don't know if it's different today because obviously I'm a little older now from when I was there but if it hasn't changed when when you have a dog a female that you want to breed I don't care what breed it is but let's talk about Rottweilers you have a local breed Warden who you can go to who is charged with keeping record of all the bloodlines and he will give you a choice of maybe three or four or maybe more maybe maybe six different local males that you are approved to breed to because they look at the Bloodlines they look at The Offspring and they choose they make the decision as to what dog to breed to that would best suit the female both genetically size every important factor wow and it's so important whereas to compare it to here what happens is if you want a dog and you want to breed it you can go breed it to another breed and no one cares there's no control over it here so we take poor quality dogs not that all of our dogs are poor quality and over the last 20 years it's gotten a lot better because dogs have become more prevalent very yeah okay since 9 11 I really believe and I put a a brief thing I wrote up a brief article for something I don't recall who it was for but I said that they've become more prevalent since 9 11 because people now trust them they see what they were able to do wow I didn't even think of that so now you have a whole different whole different game in the United States but what I'm talking about are people that take poor quality dogs put it together with their neighbor's dog in the backyard and they have a litter of 12 poor quality dogs cha-ching cha-ching correct that's what it's about yeah whereas in Germany I don't care what kind of money you you follow the direction of the breed Warden and it was like that with all the communist countries just like Slovakia just like Poland just like Hungary Austria I can't tell you how many times in the middle of the night I went through little Creeks trying to get through the borders in in Hungary with dogs you know sticking them into a car back in the day it was a totally different world but that's the problem in the United States that I feel where there's no control and when it's only about the money you give it your dog suffers yeah you get what you pay for or not even you know well that's you know maybe flip side of that point it's uh it's just a weird thing because for me I have this really um pivoting aspect because I'm educated in what like what you're talking about what you've been through and what you do dog owners wouldn't have any idea that that existed or meaning uh working Dog's Purpose good genetics good diet good nutrition good structure good training there's the side of pet ownership in the United States it's been commercialized so much it's part of our lifestyle which is good that's what dogs are for pets are pets are for but they don't they don't understand what you're talking about where you know because there's this whole so I guess my point is is I deal with a lot of people it's already too late they've gotten the dog the dog is already eight months intact and now is having problems and the family loves the dog and now this giant intact Shepherd or this working line dog is starting all of a sudden right always all of a sudden when we hit this sexual maturity the dog changes and I'm like well what happened to you after you stopped watching Barney and you started watching Top Gun or whatever I'm like you matured absolutely so I'm in this weird space where um it's too much information and it front loads the dog owner too much to tell them exactly why their dog is doing the things that it's doing you know what I mean I agree but I don't it's not gonna it's past that it's too far I find the only difficulty I've had and kind of carried through my training career is it's never the dog right it's the people the people are the ones that need to get the education you need to teach the basics of why a dog will respond to different things differently as it matures yeah but I've always given the people more time because for me the dogs were the easy part the people were always difficult especially and I'll probably make some enemies saying this book after I became a police officer now you have to deal with that police mentality and I'll call it police mentality where it I found it always or not always but most of the time had to be how do I look how does it look it was about them yeah it was about them and I I constantly tell my wife it's never about me it's always about the dog it has to be if you want to get the best job it has to be about the dog and no matter what they throw at you and Rottweilers can throw a lot of different things at you you know you get one that's a little I'll call it fourth right I won't call it stubborn you get one a little forthright and he's a little uh sensitive about Downing a little insecurity maybe you know a couple of different reasons but he doesn't want it down you have to come up with different alt alterial excuse me you have to come up with different methods to achieve the same goal for example I had a Rottweiler whenever I wanted to get him to down he would try to eat me I got a post hole digger and I dug a hole in the ground and I put a four by four a two foot four by four post in the ground dirt level and I screwed a big eye hook into the top of it put my leash through the eye hook so all I had to do to down that dog was pulled it to me and that dog went straight down well you know what it worked for a while until he realized that he was strong enough to stand up and pull that thing at the ground so I had to cement it in okay this is how I got around it but I never try to muscle them you'll lose every time if you think he won't bite you you're fooling yourself and so you develop different techniques to get around it I try to explain to people as a professional trainer I don't expect you and I very rarely will show people how I get it done because you don't want them putting themselves in a bad position yeah you have to watch what you show them it's a perfect example of too much information is not good so I usually like to tell people leave your dog with me for a month and then I'll start the hard part I got to work with you okay and and it worked for me yeah yeah and it's it's and I and I grew up in it I'm I'm growing up in the industry in a different time so for me it's easier and harder at the same time because when I work a dog especially when I'm paid to work with the dog and an example a seminar when there's 70 people around and everyone's got their phones out it's I have to be more talented and more creative because when I have a dog that needs to do something or not do something I have to be mindful about the opinions of not only the people that are holding the cameras one's watching that the people who are gonna watch where they're gonna post this so it's it's you can argue about social media and what it's done to society and specifically the dog training industry but for me I find it to be the biggest learning opportunity because anytime I'm at a point in my career that anytime I get a dog out there's eyes everyone wants to see what I'm going to do you know and of course you know and it's like oh what's going to happen here and then if I'm in an environment where again people are paid to watch me do that or learn from that or see how I'm going to do it I have to be very mindful that I can't I can't do certain things or think about certain things and it's not even about doing things that are maybe taboo it has nothing to do with that it's about I need to be able to relay information to the dog successfully and the owner while looking good on the Fly and that's become really challenging for me so I would argue um and I not argue but I guess just give Insight on um it's it's definitely changed where I think if you have because there's there's great there's dog trainers that will do circles around me that will work in the back but they can't teach the owner how to do it because are you are you crazy why did you do that and and then and then the lever review and say this person is an you know what I mean I think you're describing me so that's that's what I always tell people is like like you just said and I say this all the time like the dogs are 95 or I'm sorry the people are 95 of the dogs are five percent and in some cases maybe if it's a neurotic behavioral case it's maybe 10 but I say it's not about how it is it is important how good you are with handling dogs but what's more important is how you're able to teach the owners I know that you know this but I think that for me it's such a it makes you a better trainer a better Handler because you have to get so creative and so well spoken about how you're going to do things because there's always going to be very rarely do I just get a dog to mess around with with myself anymore unfortunately I'm going to add something to that okay first of all I agree I would love to just be one-on-one with a personal dog yeah not rushed not have a million other things to do that's like a dream but I have two children that are police officers a daughter and a son I was a police officer sometimes early on in their careers which wasn't that long ago but they would ask different things about you know how I handle things cannot be handled the same it's a different world out there today right what I was taught in the police academy may get someone jammed up today um it's the same with dog trainers yeah it's it's the cell phone it's it's the camera on the cell phone yeah yeah because like everything else you see on TV that's getting stuck in you know and they and they edit it you know they know how to make it look yeah bad and you have a lot more to think about not only that but I'll say this I did very little Public Training what I would call Public Training I didn't do pets for the most part right I was a working dog guy I was a you know I I actually at one point I I almost started my own helper school I was big into being the helper I was a I was the dog bone all the time I enjoyed it I did explain what the helper is for people who maybe okay the helper is the guy that that has to have I'll call him an actor he has to really he has to have the ability regardless of the environment and the situation to be authentic enough to turn that dog aggressionally on um and know whether it's offensive defensive different techniques that always benefit the dog it's always about the dog so you want to do things and you have to know when to get in when to get out what I mean by that is sometimes you know you present your bite and you may see something in the dog that you don't want to reward them so you don't give him the bite is there a difference between a decoy and a helper I don't know a decoy and a helper to me is the same thing so it's to get and for those of who are listening it's basically because you know people are listening we may not know that it's the the guy in the suit or the the sleeves and stuff fight suit bite suits have gotten more popular now but for me in my early days it was only a sleeve and it didn't come all the way up to the shoulder either but and it didn't have extra padding no no no actually we used to use I I had a a leather Gauntlet yeah and and you put a jacket over the top of it oh that's it that's it that's it but that's where that's where I really prevailed I was good at at getting that dog I could probably get any dog to bite me without touching it but uh you know the that's that's the way I handled people that watched me train so I had a neighbor who wanted some help with a dog and the wife said to him oh no he's like in the Army he you know he does this he does that well you know what she's not wrong I I'm a very strong Handler um and while I know when to and when not to dominate a dog they know that I had a little saying g-o-d-d-o-g I'm God he's dog the sooner he knows that the better off this relationship is going to be and as a police officer and a certified New York State canine trainer I got the job done my dogs were noticeable they were called pompilio dogs if you got a dog from me you could tell what's that pompilio that's my last name oh it is Frank pompilio that's it now I know there you go the sound is it sounds it sounds like way more like not that technical okay A little Italian guy from Yonkers but I will say that to give context again and this is why I I really wanted John and I'm enjoying you on is because people need to realize that not every dog so here's what's happening I think and especially in the politics which we won't get into but the when you get somebody that has a let's say a um I don't know golden retriever or lab or a mix at home and they're just this pet mom was a pet dad was a pet has been for they're all their genetics has just been sleeping at home and going to the lake house on the weekends what you're talking about are not those dogs definitely not definitely not so the training that you are doing and still do is requires to be different because the dog that's in front of you is completely it's the difference between a fake gun and a real gun absolutely and I think that that's important for people to realize because out of context or anybody watching or listening to this or just in general whoever the thousands of people are going to listen to this in the future it's important for and I think that's the pro that would solve most politics in the dog space is because I think what happens is is you get you get lobbyists and pet owners that will say this is the way to train a dog this is the way to feed a dog this is the this is how things go and it's they're like this is applicable for all little cute dogs that we see and you are from a completely different um era go ahead you could say it's not era it's it's uh it's a department right with military dogs working dog police dogs dogs that we are getting dropped off at Macy's in the 70s to to they are getting faced with people um criminals thugs that are willing to kill them on the spot free a a suitcase and so the training that you're doing or have done or other people do I think it's important for people to realize that because that's what happens is you'll see and it happens to me too is I'll see a dog that comes in That's supposed to be that dog right somebody paid five thousand dollars for this really well-bred working dog or what I've been seeing a lot of or these bourbals and these dogs that are just not supposed to be in pet homes absolutely they spiral out of control the breeder shouldn't have I don't know how they get these dogs right but when we're training with those dogs the tools techniques methods and training style has to be different from the dog that I train at home that's the doodle or the golden or the couch potato but that's not what they see they say oh you don't need to use this wine the my dog at home I just use and a couple pieces of cheese so I just want to a give context to people out there who are listening for your sake um not that it matters but I think it's a such an important piece of this conversation because not an era it's the style of training in your history and your background and your knowledge and your expertise is working with dogs but it's not pet dogs and that that line needs to be drawn I agree and I won't go as far as saying it is less refined my style it is refined but it it encompasses the fact that not most all of the dogs that I've worked with for police military executive protection because I also left out a little section of my past I had a very large security company and I had 50 man dog teams working at different homeless facilities I was hired by different counties because these facilities were producing so much trouble that it was it was causing stress on the local police departments they didn't have enough Personnel to be going to so many calls in one location so I was hired by by um a firm to come in and help resolve the issue it was almost like having a private Police Department right my guys were armed um they were they had dogs and they patrolled and it was extremely successful was the guys that you usually had on your team were they um retired police or some were some were not but I I trained everyone you know I whether they were retired police or just security guards if you will um I trained them all and they all handled import dogs they all handled uh I mean I had no they were all Dual Purpose dogs we did drug searches we helped local police departments in the area and it was very very successful but what I find is I'll put it plainly they have to be handled firmly you you know I'm not putting pulling out a little slice of liver and handing it to the dog to to listen to what I'm telling them I'm not into tree training and I I notice and my wife and I have this conversation more often than I'd like to admit I'm I'm not a firm believer in treats at the end of the whole thing oh yeah I'm gonna love them up but I want him or her the dog meaning I want the dog to want to obey I want him to do it for me not because of what I'm going to do for him I believe that the bond is the most important thing between the Handler and the dog and the dogs are getting better now in this country but in the day and I'll use that term because for me it applies everything had to come from Europe if you really wanted a good dog because of the way they they did it there and I say something frequently to people when they start talking about dogs in Europe the first time I I had the the opportunity to go to Europe and I was traveling the countryside every every field that you come to would have a schutzen club or a group of people with a group of dogs and I I kind of compared in this country to the Little League here you see you know so many Little League games and all these people that's how they treat their dogs in in Europe they always held them in a much higher regard yeah and that's what changed in my opinion with 911. where suddenly you saw the value of what we have here because of all the dogs that went into Health after exactly and how successful they were and now all these search and rescue dogs you really I can't tell you how many times I was on the street with Mike Canaan and you're doing the track and you got three or four people little old ladies standing there pointing to the left and your dog's pulling you to the right and she's going he went over there how many guys listen to the people right not me I let that dog do his thing the guy might have went that way but he's over here now and and I and I want to say this too and I'm and it's just a really nice conversation I'm really happy that you agreed to do this but I want to say that when when you say things like you want the dog to do it for you it's important again I want to paint a picture for people out there because again this is where the negative side of being in um being a trainer and then being a trainer and producing content because there's a lot of ego involved so if somebody does it different they don't care that their yielding results and or um that they're a trainer they're they're upset because they're doing it differently than them and that hurts their ego right and I want to say something and highlight something that you said so when you say that you want the dog to perform for you when you ask not because you got cheese and beef liver and you're you know and you're whatever yeah you don't have that Italian I always say that you don't have an Italian deli to get your dog to do stuff it's important to understand before uh I'm a big fan of watching cops it's my favorite show it's great you lived it for a while I just like sitting at my couch eating pork rinds watching it it's a lot easier so I was watching this canine and and I want to paint a picture so there is this armed robbery where this this guy in California robbed or not he he did a robbery I don't know what it was but then he carjacked this old lady get out he had a gun um and then he went on the run and so the the police officers were chasing they found out where he was and and adrenaline and I couldn't imagine what that's like to know that you're searching for a guy that could ultimately fire at you like that's gotta be it's dangerous it's every it's everything normally humans want to run away from that you guys most humans yeah you guys want to go towards that and and that's that's uh incredibly um it's just a different different way of thinking it's and it's it's really Brave and there's a lot to say about that but anyway so they all kind of waited for the canine because they were like because they were he was behind this wall and that's the thing and all the neighbors were doing this and so they got the canine out and I just want to paint a picture when and it's not necessarily this dark in this scenario but when this guy came out with his dog he tracked him they're going he's got his long line on and the dog's got his nose to his ground and he was apprehensive he was he was he was going to bite this guy you know he wasn't just going to say hey there he is okay give me my ball so when they got there they found out where he was and he kind of locked himself in this back um it was like a lean-to garage outside and so we had like old cars and like a bunch of metal stuff and he kind of like was pushing all these things like um the power tool sets and the the big um whatever claw big wardrobes and just pushing everything and he's back there and so the dog is you know he's getting fired up and in these moments this these are moments between life and death for human beings that's what people don't understand you having that dog here ready to talk you know you know packing this guy in he's got him here and he's getting ready to let go of the he can't say hey buddy hey um let me give you let me give you a little treat you're gonna sit down first no no no no it's when I tell you I need you to down or or whatever command you're going to use to go there is Noble well everyone hold on let's pause the chopper in the sky the 40 officers that are around with guns drawn waiting to go home to their Wife and Kids when their heart is going when you're sweating it's just a really um stressful environment they can't look at the dog and say like is this dog gonna perform for treats or a ball today it has to be done and I want to say that because I watched it last night and it kind of like what they give me Goose Goosebumps bringing back memories am I you are so I I just want to be clear because it drives me it used to drive me mentally insane when there were people out there and still to this day that will say this is the way that we train dogs not not that way and I want to be clear no no no no that's a way to train a dog but when we're talking about so then I want to just really quickly we're going to take that same dog that same Malinois in this case that or German Shepherd that's supposed to be doing that and then Karen and Scott next door get the same dog as I can't listen I'm not going to train this dog the way that you trained your doodle or your Boston Terrier because this is a different dog yeah but the guy online or the girl online said that we shouldn't and I go I don't care that's what I was just going to interrupt you to say cool you gotta know as a trainer went to tell them you got to let them some people are apprehensive and sometimes it gets down to that dollar yeah okay some people don't want to let the work go but as a police officer with a dog you I used to watch that cops too okay you know anymore I can't because when I see these guys come out of a car and grab their dog with a pinch collar on and they're holding them trying to hold them back and almost get dragged down that's a training problem yeah my dog was never on a leash unless I wanted him on a leash I would keep my if I had a little uh little button on my my belt if I needed to it had a solenoid in the car I pressed the button the back door popped open my dog knew if that door was open unless I told him to stay it was because I wanted him out so I'll give you a quick example please I was I was on a stolen car chase through the city that I worked in and they called for Mutual Aid and so what's that Mutual Aid other departments send cars to help so it's a big thing it was a big enough thing and so you know you got you got four cars from other departments so two different departments send two cars each so we had four cars plus two from my job and I was in direct pursuit of the car the guy bails out I get in a foot chase the guy goes up the stairs now of course when I bail out I pop my door my dog is running the guy goes up into a house now not every situation is for a dog no matter how hairy it gets and so I downed my dog like right at the curb as I come up the stairs I go up into the house after this guy so I follow him into the apartment you know you're kicking down doors knocking things out of the way I grab hold of this guy all of a sudden the door is bust open four cops come running in one cop with a dog on a leash and I hear him say oh yeah you can curse holy did you see that mountain Wild on the street they ran right past my dog my dog didn't move because he didn't hear me call him or he didn't see me in trouble that's the kind of control that you need to have and the biggest issue that I find and this is the reason I'm bringing this out right now not trying to make enemies out there you got to work on what your dog does the worst you got it all the all the weak points is what you should work on most the bite work is always fun but the control in that environment is the most important thing in my opinion safety always because you always have to be first let's say like you know switching Switching gears a little bit if let's say your dog you know saw um all the chaos going up and your obedience wasn't good and he gets up now he's just searching for who knows part of the problem exactly so it becomes part of the problem it's like um you know now you got a loaded gun just kind of walking around thinking like oh that kid's running that that seven-year-old's running absolutely you know and then absolutely and then and then you know it's just important because people don't realize that I I always put this for my dog owners who are really struggling with taking things seriously and I go I want you to think of the worst case scenario that can happen and I want to let you know that that could happen if you don't take this seriously so you got to push it's not about what's good for you it's about what's good for your dog like you said always so all right so fast forward to when did you get in did you did you go military first or or long military first law enforcement and law enforcement was really and I don't mean to put it this way but the truth of the matter is I had done everything with dogs I possibly could do a little bit of work with black water um as a as a bomb dog Tech I I wanted to become a police officer because I wanted to handle the dog on the street that makes sense however I was already 40. I became a police officer at 42. how when did you get into the military 18 years old when you were 18 18 years did you work you work dogs in the military or I did the whole time one year however as a police officer having the opportunity to run the gamut of tracking obedience because we would do many demos of uh you know you we had their programs I don't think they do dare anymore but every DARE graduation in the city where I worked all dog demos we used to do a thing called the iron dog competition still do that they may I used to win them all I'll tell you the truth but there was there was the gamut of training that you got an opportunity to actually see in the process yeah you know so I used to love doing tracks hard surface tracks you know down the street up into a house and really finding the guy and watching and trusting that dog however like you said not every track ends in a bite so as a trainer we had to we had to do both we had to give your dog a bite at the end of some tracks but you had to keep you had to maintain a balance of training you do a bite at the end of every track and then you expect your dog to go track a little kid or or right like I had a track one time an old man had just uh Alzheimer's suffer had wandered out of his house and when the people woke up their father was gone and so I had to do a track you don't want your dog tearing up some poor old guy I found him in the front porch of some house a half a mile away that was covered up for the winter with all tarps he was underneath it sitting on a chair like zero degrees outside in his underwear so you know things like that that come up you have to maintain a balance all the time too much of one thing will will interfere yeah with something else you do too much obedience you're going to suppress your bite your your aggressive work right you do too much aggression work you're going to lose control you know everybody has like as a trainer and you say everybody has a different way of training should I believe like I started doing uh obedience outs I call them I taught my dog to out during obedience not bite work because now he's at the height of distress action yeah you know it's almost like slapping you in the face and then trying to talk you down instead of trying to talk you down and then smacking in the face you know it's there's a absolutely there's a progression and and so I was criticized for some of my training techniques um another thing I like to do is I like to get puppies biting right away I like to get them on a sleeve I'll show you pictures my wife my wife's last litter I got five little puppies on the sleeve they pulled my pants down I'm standing there in my mudons you know just shaking these dogs everyone has a little bit different way of doing it but I found that what worked best for me was the way I was doing it I got the best results set you know even and I'll touch on this too you do a building search the way the way when I became a police officer that the police were doing it they'd get a bill you know they they have their buildings that they work and you know you get different different people different building owners in your community that let you use empty buildings and stuff so these guys were standing at the front door giving their warning and this is even with a green dog giving their warning then releasing that dog into this vast area to search find the bad guy and alert whether he's barking if he can't get at him or if he goes right in for a bite so it's not even alerting it at that point it's just it's just yeah sending them in I would start I would take the dog into the building give my warning but go into the building with the dog on a lead and at least initially knowing where the guy was going to that location and letting the dog alert and giving the dog a bite and then gradually moving them further and further out rather than starting them with the vast area right and having to make too many mistakes before he actually gets to the guy and so it's probably also too mentally about the reward that the dog will get immediately absolutely they didn't work for it they didn't have to work that hard for it yeah I make them work nobody gets away without work and if Frankie has to work everybody's working but it worked for me so I I would try to implement my way of doing things and it doesn't get looked on as favorably when you try to change things that have been going on you know what's interesting I find that maybe you have experience on this is when um so Chris Jones was a he is a he was a he was a law enforcement officer before he was a canine but he was the one that was uh training a lot of the dogs he was the helper he was the decoy because he just and he wasn't doing it for any money he was just like we need good help here as I did myself I used to help I used to do all the helper work for the local police departments before I became a cop so I've so I one thing I found really interesting is I remember we sold this um that Shepherd that I was telling you about Lucas he was just like you said he was he was a European dog from Slovakia and he was the most when he turned on it was like you know he turned on but then when he chilled like he was just like like a family pet he was just like chilling you know he was just like on a on the benign yeah just I couldn't believe how I think your wife passed your water here I don't know if you need some I sound like I'm getting a little dry so I just when you talk about breeding that dog stands out to me because he was kind of like this dog and I'll never forget like the the way that he would look at situations like we'd have him on a downstay at our facility and he'd be just chewing on this bone and and then we'd get him up and then we'd do this whole scenario where we'd do a we do our announcements coming into the building with a passive decoy and that's really when you know the doc if you need the dog to bite they will you know Chris is just just standing standing there and then he'd do all that and just be a beast and then he'd go over with his bone and be chewing on it and dogs would be bark and he'd just be and I was just like ma'am I have never seen a German Shepherd stateside that balanced where they knew when to turn on and then they're like I'm done working I'm gonna let it go yeah but it's a good dog it was unbelievable and I've and I and I and I work primarily eighty percent of my clients are either they're Shepherds um and then the other 20 Doodles so but I remember after we sold him or during the process of we sold him we went to meet the guy that basically is the he's the one who distributes dogs for the area canine guy and uh and then he brings him to the academy but anyway so we get out and he said hey this is the potential Handler meet him nice to meet you good this is Lucas and you could tell he was the handler was nervous the officer was nervous kind of like well you know and we're like he's totally cool like you're good like you don't have to worry about him at all you know because I think their mentality of a police canine is like their mean and aggressive all the time yeah and I'm sure some of them are but heat wasn't and so I just remember him being nervous and I'm sitting there kind of thinking like right I don't I'm a pet guy right I don't get it I mean I have gotten into it because I'd like to know I like to educate myself about it because it makes me better when I'm talking to dog owners absolutely so I'm sitting there and I and I've never you know done it before so we're doing this basically business like he's got to find the ball and Tall Grass and whatever and that's all they really cared about to be honest was that drive that hunt Drive they finish everything else off in the academy so the guy's like oh I've never had it I've never had a dog before and I'm like oh like okay it's your first street dog he's like no I've never had a dog before and I'm like I'm thinking like really so it really caught me by surprise because we're like hey you know let's take a picture because we were excited we sold the dog we did good work accomplishment yeah and we were excited about that we didn't you know we we got paid for we didn't make any money um so it wasn't that it was just like this is cool because I felt cool knowing that I used and Chris had used our innate capabilities and now that dog is going to go keep a community safe he's going to find the bad guys in the drugs and he's going to go to parades and cool that's a cool feeling but the guy was so nervous and I just I have never forgotten that and he's probably they went through the academy and they're great and he's on the streets and he's really great dog but that just really surprised me that uh the amount so I guess my point is is a lot of departments it's kind of like a lottery system it has seen but Chris Jones for an example who was decoying everyone's dogs in the area and had more knowledge about working dogs and breeding and everything and he couldn't get the position because it's more political or whatever it's not I shouldn't say that he couldn't get the position it's just you got to wait your turn but it was just interesting seeing how all that worked where like when you got into the industry did you or into the police force did you find it that it was easier for you to get the canine position because you're like guys I've been doing this already 20 years you want to hear another story yeah I do all right and so I get hired by this department and I had sold them dogs prior the department the department I had sold them dogs prior so we had a work and relationship and so when I got hired um a good friend of mine was on the job already and they had gotten his dog from me it was a they had four canines and so when I got hired I had a I had a street dog already I came from one Department one part-time Department to a full-time Department with my dog your dog well I had a dog but my dog didn't transfer onto the new job they didn't they didn't hire me as a canine got it and so about a year later the Chief came to me he said you finish with your one year probation how about when you're going to bring your dog on I said is that an invitation sheet he said absolutely let's start you with your dog so now we were going to five dogs and uh you know word got around the job and one of the guys come up to me and uh he snapped me in the balls doubled me over he says I just want to tell you something it ain't right that you're getting a dog he said people are waiting here five years and my answer to him after I was able to straighten up and breathe is if you ever do that to me again I'll kill you but the fact of the matter is that Chief was smart because he wanted the best guy for the job and he got it and so that was the beginning of my police canine career a little bit Rocky but uh and I came out with a dog that was ready to go on the street I just had to certify him and so I went through the process and uh that's how it happened but it is still very political now I started I got my uh instructor's certification so I was able to do canine schools how do you do what do you who do you go through for that uh New York State Bureau Municipal Police BMP and so they they set out the correct at least then they set out the criteria and they make you go like I used to train in the city of Yonkers with their canine trainer and then I used to go down to New York City and train with them and you have to put in a certain amount of hours as what they call the co-trainer in the schools and so they would have a canine school with maybe 15 20 different departments in the city of Yonkers coming depends sometimes it was five or six but I had to do a certain amount of schools as a co-trainer before I was able to certify and qualify as a as a canine trainer so you know all that took place and oh you know the biggest problem I had I got a call one time from a chief of one of the guys that was in school and he said I just want to tell you my guy's not going to have to scoop the poops because what we used to do is well each guy would have one week of taking care of the kennel because all the dogs stayed at the school kennel while these guys were in training well I said I'll tell you what if he ain't going to scoop he's going home because I ain't gonna teach him and it became a big thing why wasn't he scooping he didn't want to okay he didn't feel like uh you know it was the thing to do and so I said while everybody's doing it and if he's not doing it I'm not I'm not including him and so it kind of came around my way because it's all part of it you know it's it's a team him and the dog but you're also going to be in a situation sometimes especially uh where you you know you got multiple dogs on one department or Mutual age you get somebody from a different department with another dog these dogs all got to work together and so do the guys right and so you know this is this is something that everybody has to participate in it's not about it's about paying your dues but it's also making sure that you can trust that person to play with it take care of these dogs and and you know be an acting part of the team yeah how long were you on the how long were you a canine Officer uh to all toll different job 17 17 years when you're retired now obviously I'm retired for a long time now I retired in 2006. officially 2011. I got hurt a number of times I went out on disability I had I I had a situation with the dog where I sent my dog and he went over he went up some stairs and he jumped over the railing and he was running on a flat roof it was night chasing the perp and I jumped over the railing and I was you know in tow right behind him and then all of a sudden I didn't realize we got to the end of the roof oh sh bad guy got down the dog went down and Frankie went down behind the two of them uh the door got him uh bit him real good on the top of the back of the shoulder I couldn't even I couldn't even get up off the ground I I managed to get to him but that was the beginning of the demise of my knees sure and so I went out that time and then I re-injured it again and after a while I I'd be in a foot pursuit and I would just go down it would just give out and the doctor said that's it and so I tried they I went through 18 independent medical exams trying to get back on but uh it didn't work out so a few years later they retired me how many live bites did you have your dog for a year for a year no like in your career do you have a lot I averaged probably six to eight a month holy crap I used my dog listen my jobs at the time and now again we're going back a little bit um my my criteria set forth by my department was misdemeanors and above Okay so at the time if you're sitting down smoking a joint you know in public and I tell you you know put the thing down or and you decide you're going to run and I can send my dog I didn't right but I could yeah okay now you know the in the force continuum the dog use has elevated and rightly so they do a lot of damage really fast yeah but uh um what was the do you have a story that you could tell me that was like really memorable of like just memorable in general doesn't have to be dangerous or scary or absolutely what's like what's the most memorable story you had with your dog okay so myself and a couple of other guys from my job went to uh we were in the 2000s World Police Olympics and so it went very well for us but on the way back I noticed at you know during tracks and stuff during training I had a German Shepherd at the time he was getting tired very quickly now when you're one-on-one with your dog I mean I was always my dog and I were one and I've had a few of them on the street you notice little things like my wife knows if they they breathe different she knows every little aspect of the dog something's wrong with the dog he's he his face doesn't look right and it ticks me off because she's always right yeah and so I'm I get back and I get a new dog what happened was this dog I he started getting an extended abdomen I took him to the vet he had a football-sized tumor attached to his heart he was only four years old whoa the vet said I don't even know how this dog is alive but he said we can take it off and if he survives he'll never be able to go back to work so I talked to the chief I personally I was in a bad way financially at the time so I couldn't afford to five six thousand dollar surgery so the chief said to me listen you know I I I I could see pain for the surgery if if you said to me the dog would be able to come back to work he said I can't justify it that the dog will not be able to return to work he said I'm sorry he said if you want to you know get up donations and everything else I I'm really big on the quality of life for my dogs and so I made the decision myself and I'm not sorry for it but I put him down really difficult for me really difficult for me but I put him down and the chief approved me to go to Slovakia to get another dog I go to Slovakia they give me they give me the time to go and uh I'm there for a week I check 140 dogs wow I can't buy one there wasn't one that I wanted there was one that was okay but it was a really long-haired German Shepherd really big dog I really I liked I bought them I took them back but I wound up selling them to another department very small Department without half the problems of the one that I worked for so he worked out good for him but I wound up bringing in a Malinois from the Netherlands 100 pounds he was like a torpedo without fins this dog was incredible and I I do all the training I go and certify him first day on the street we got a um possible burglary alarm going off Open Door spotted they send me so I'm like all hept up Mom I can't believe it the first day on the street with this dog and we're gonna go so I get to this place it was a mechanic shop repair shop something like that down by the river and sure enough an open door so you know sometimes when you're on a job you have some of the other officers that like the dogs and some that don't well the lieutenant that I was working for that night did not like the canine unit he thought we were a scam so I was out to set to change his mind I get to this place I give my warning city of zone so please canine come out I'm going to release my dog I give my warning three times and the dog's name was bricks I said oh come on Mom get in there bricks he was all fired up he goes blasting in this place and it was around Christmas time all of a sudden the fight was on there's all kinds of ruckus coming on from the inside break and you hear stuff hitting the floor all of a sudden everything gets quiet myself and this Lieutenant he says come on we got to get in there we all go in tactically my dog has got a six foot rabbit a stuffed rabbit that was leaning up against this Christmas tree he had that all torn off and this Lieutenant looked at me and he said I told you you scammer all right so there you go that's a good story and let me tell you I don't live it down I thought it was hysterical but boy they were mad at me this guy's office was torn apart but that happens sometimes that happens sometimes you know that is really funny wow that's funny but I've had you know I've had the fortune The Good Fortune of never you never found that guy never found him but I also had a situation where there was somebody hiding under a vehicle in a similar type of business my dog went in and now people you got to understand as a Handler you got to think of a lot of things when you have a dog you know you got to think about the other offices you got to think about where your dog is you I think about tactically how you're being my dog goes under the vehicle and grabs a guy by the top of the head that's but you know those things are bad you got to be careful of that stuff you don't want anybody dying from a dog bite but he was under the car he didn't come out you know the warnings were given he didn't come out maybe he didn't think the dog go underneath that car but he wound up getting scalped a little bit have you ever had your dog shot at I had I didn't have shot at but I had him stabbed um it's got to be scary well it was scary to look up at my sergeant and and he had to cut across his forehead uh it looked like a smile on his head and all the blood was just and his head was shaved so it didn't make it look any more appetizing yeah but I had I had a couple of close calls but you know also as a Handler I was always very cautious on what I sent my dog in on you know we got some guy in the building with a gun why would I send my dog in there unless he's got to save the life of somebody else I'm not going to give his life up right you know again it's about the dog yeah wow so I what led you into the dog nutrition what was the I guess the switch when you started to get so you retired and then um I retired and I actually got my retirement in 2011 but I hadn't been working since April of 06 mm-hmm I was on disability and so after 2011 uh you sit around for a couple of years and you start feeling like you're dying every day right this is hurting no I got cancer in the back I got cancer in the neck every ache companion you know you think the worst of it and so I realized that I had to do something I had to do something to keep busy and I've always reverted back to dogs it's all I knew and so having having the the the experience of the holistic approach through the goldsteins and uh you know I had I had before I retired I had purchased a farm and I certainly had space I was looking for something to do so I I just started moving toward an alternative feeding method and I say that because in all my travels throughout Europe related to dogs I paid a lot of attention to what went on around me and most of those little farms and and the countryside that I traveled on whether it be in Russia Slovakia Holland I always watch the way they fed their dogs and like for the most part it was always Farms provided you know animal scraps yeah and a lot of bone a lot of these dogs ate a lot of bone they they crap almost pure white from the calcium yeah and so I started along those lines I really didn't even do research I just went by what I knew the dogs did best on and I started selling only beef with no other ingredients um really didn't pay much attention to fat content or any of the particular nutritional value it was just like you know being able to give your dog some raw meat with his food and so um that it kind of went along pretty much selling beef in one pound bags it started off selling maybe 500 pounds a month because I knew a lot of dog people right and everybody wanted to come and get a little bit of this so I used to have um one pound bags just ham just basically hamburger meat not ground up so so small though I used to like big chunks because you want a dog I I know enough that when a dog chews he he produces digestive enzymes and you want them to do you want to provide chunks rather than something like ground beef so it was chunky and to be more specific it was ground up in a one-inch plate which means that each chunk was was about an inch in diameter almost like like getting a stew like yes yeah like stew meat yeah okay and um I was selling it like that and it went from 500 pounds I used to go up like once every every six weeks um to the slaughterhouse and get 500 pounds then it went to 750 pounds then it went to a thousand pounds then I started having into one pound bags and two pound bags and then I went one pound two pound and five pound bags and then before I knew it within a year's time year year and a half it was like three thousand pounds a month that we're going out the door how what's the time frame that that went from the 500 pounds to the I'll be very specific once I started getting into the larger amounts I didn't have freezer space for it all I had to go people knew when I was coming home back with it and they were there to pick it up right it had to go supply and demand and and I'm going to get into how that turned into something else yeah but then I started really thinking about taking some of the my retirement savings and investing it into something that would carry through not only providing me additional income but I would really get a chance to get into a different phase of my life you know I I was having trouble I couldn't do any dog training anymore my one knee was bad it bowed out so bad it looked like uh I would kick myself in the foot when I walked and the other foot when I walked it was like a horseshoe oh and so uh it was really painful I was bone on bone in the in the knee joint so I couldn't do anything and and uh I started delving a little bit more deeper into the nutritional value and and I always knew like I used to sell dogs I would bring dogs in from Slovakia they'd be gone in two weeks and then three months later the people would be calling me hey this dog looked so great when I got it and now he looks crappy his coat isn't shiny he doesn't have the energy and it's always you know you always got to look back at the diet you know what produces the energy you know how come your dog's coat's not shiny and so they learned very quickly that when they went on Raw even if it has no additives even if it's just me the Shine Comes Back after about a week the poop gets small because they're able to digest more of it they get more out of it their eyes are clear they're alert they feel good and when you feel good you're more active your attitude is different and and I recognize this so I started delving a little bit educating myself about animal nutrition and the first thing I thought of were the goldsteins so I had gotten it to a certain point and then I went to Bob Goldstein and I talked to him about what I was doing I knew he had already you know made an attempt to do some health food for dogs was he doing raw at all no no not at all and so it was for me very much like it was for him at the beginning with the holistic people were so negative especially veterinarians about raw and the worst in my opinion and and my daughter will hear this whenever it airs and she'll be mad at me but the vet techs were the worst because they only had a little bit of knowledge of what the vet was telling them and they were telling everyone do not feed your dog raw if you feed your dog raw and then he goes and licks your child your child can get salmonella and all these crazy things so again like in dog training I found it was really important to educate people on what you were doing simple process and so I started working up a formula got to a certain point and was not confident enough in myself and my ability I mean I knew the meat business I knew how to handle it I did research on on the general diet requirements of dogs but I wanted something more professional I wanted something more definite so I turned to Dr Bob Goldstein better known as Dr Bob and uh he was he was extremely helpful and made the the tweaking and and the initial setup very very easy for me and so I started producing what I called complete and balanced diet only beef started providing it for people and it was I never did advertising I never put one ad out about what I was selling but the product sold itself because people could actually see and it didn't take a long time you know it's not like hey look you do this in three four months down the road you're going to see some difference um you feed this and within the first week to 10 days you will see enough of a difference that you're going to want to come back and buy more you have to it's exactly what happened and all of a sudden people started asking me well what about chicken and what about this and how about and so now I will Fast Forward I mean we've been Organics has been now I think it's on its 14th year 13th or 14th year my daughter is just completing her degree in animal nutrition the company has grown astronomically we've got over 200 products and I mean to me it's a great success story it's like the end it's like the Final Chapter for me well it's a perfect storm for you it worked out that way the only thing is I hope it has a better result than the movie yeah so and that's and that's where where we admit because my um I got to stay in I stay in my Lane always you know I don't try to preach about things I don't know I just say you know all my clients are always like Tom you're the expert and what do you feed your dogs I'm like I feed raw food and why what's the benefits what's it blah blah but my experience getting into raw was I had a girlfriend at the time her and I got Saint Bernards together she got one I got one and uh he uh his my dog's brother his name is lucky he ended up having really bad hot spots you bought litter mates yeah yeah first mistake no we didn't live together but oh okay yeah we were young we were I don't even remember we were it was it was a long time ago uh yeah a long time ago you don't have to remember yeah anyway so he started getting hot spots and licking and licking licking and licking licking and this was all local here in Saratoga and so she went she she went to a couple vets and they're like oh just here's Hot Spot spray and um whatever and nothing really helped and um so he was like basically digging himself raw you know and it looked granuloma I don't know yeah but it was bad you know and so she she kept looking around and I don't know how she found but she found oh you know what it was and I and this it's just crazy like your the butterfly effect which we talked about is um she ended up linking up with Chris Dallas and Saratoga which is a holistic vet which I ended up I still use to this day she's wonderful I'd love to have her on the podcast actually but she's a holistic vet here in Saratoga she helped me with um basically the end of life care for my dog who passed away at 18. and she ended up saying like you need first of all anything on the skin uh things like that is typical ears you know these things are going to be first thing is nutrition like whatever your dog is typically bringing in is what's causing these things I would suggest you just try raw food there's a there's a lady named Lisa rosamino I know her yeah down yeah yeah so so down exit whatever and this again this was uh 15 years ago or whatever go talk to her she has a co-op and so we go down to this Farm and it was like the day for pickup when she uh my ex girlfriend at the time she she ordered some tubes raw or whatever and it was pickup time and we'd get there and it's just this farm and there's just all these things of raw food all over and there's horses and there's people coming to pick it up and we're you know it's just chaotic I'm like a little intimidating right yeah I was like what is going on here and I meet Lisa and she's super cool I've had her on the podcast way back in the day and um so anyways she ended up feeding raw and it cleared like that like like you said like within the first week he stopped itching in his hot spots would would be healing scabbing over and hair would grow back and he'd look like he looked like he had mange he was so like itching and itching and itching they're wet and ugly wet and ugly and stringy and greenish looking sometimes yeah the scab would get green and lick granuloma bad yeah so anyway it literally within like a week I'm like that's pretty cool you know all the other vets were like here's this here's that here's the medication and nothing worked so she found the raw food and and I'm a big believer which I trained the way that I think as I do what works period I don't I don't have an agenda I don't have tribalistic beliefs and like oh I do what works always you know why not so after that I said let me try some of that so I tried it for my dog and he's the same he was 145 pounds he passed away last year it's 145 pounds uh eight four cups a day of kibble right so he ate four cups he pooped four cups maybe five right maybe more so after like his first meal of raw food we went out for a walk and he you know found his tree and he pooped and I'm like I'm go to scoop it and I'm like looking I'm like where's the rest of it yeah you know you got a dog a hundred you know he's big dog pooping out you know huge poops right yeah and then all of a sudden it was like scat half a hot dog yeah it was like it was like owl pellets spent some time I spent four summers in and out of Southern Colorado at a wolf sanctuary working with Timberwolves and they used to poop the same he was pooping but they also ate everything elk horse meat anything that they can get their hands on Raw and I said this looks like wolf poop and I said this is weird so then um just over time I noticed his coat got a little shinier and things like that but he was young when he started eating raw so I didn't see where you see with some dogs where they go from not moving to like the guy off Willy Wonka like the old grandpa laying in the bed and we've had you actually have a client of that story and we'll talk about it in a minute but so I was hooked and then that's where I was like where did you get this stuff and then we I came down to your farm probably the first time I don't know again this is probably 10 years ago or whatever um and then all my other dogs since then had been on it and I met you and um I remember you gave me some soft bones and one of the overlooked things that I don't know how to tell people which I hope that you can do is the soft bones was the only thing that cleaned my dog's teeth I so we use the Greenies and the toothbrushing because periodontal disease in dogs which is basically gum disease in dogs is is a very big factor in their overall health and their longevity right if they're if they get diseases in their mouth it affects other parts of the body of course so just like you're swallowing disease all day long so anyway so I got the bones and I came home and my dog's teeth started looking better and I was like this is this is a different and they were raw buns so I don't know if you can explain to maybe the people listening what these soft bones were it almost seemed like cut femur or something no actually it's not the femur because the femur is a weight-bearing bone and also a very thick wall very hard very thick wall and and when you get a a working breed and they start chomping on a femur you'll see that they'll that that bone will shed shards that could be very dangerous not only if the dog swallows it but I mean even eating it it can give them it'll slice the tongue cut the gums so I don't we sell femers but I don't recommend femurs what I started doing was cutting the pelvic bone the rib cage all the non-weight-bearing bones that have a very thin pliable wall and I cut them into four to six inch squares and when the dog the dog is actually able to penetrate the bone not like a femur where he's gnawing at it trying to get at the marrow he can eat the entire piece of pelvic bone or the ribs I mean you give the dog a bone and come back half hour later it's gone so it does a few different things the only thing people have to watch for when they do feed bones is they have to make sure the dog gets adequate water because when all that bone gets into the digestive tract it absorbs the moisture and so you'll see that we call it poop and dust if the dog's not drinking enough water and he's eating bone his stools really have to be worked out I mean they'll sit there for you know minutes yeah trying to get them out and they'll come out breaking apart so you want to make sure the dog gets enough water but they're phenomenal I have gotten so many before and after pictures of dogs teeth within one week after eating the the bone the soft bones yeah they're clean they're white and that's a and and you know that action by a veterinarian when you take a dog in for a teeth cleaning I don't know if they do it differently now but you just have to put the you know under anesthesia and scale those teeth and everything that's an expense and and I never want to put my dog on anesthesia when they really don't need it so this was a much less expensive alternative and I believe it worked better yeah because you can give a dog one a week like what I do ice fast my dogs on a Sunday they don't eat but they get a bone so they don't produce digestive enzymes and they don't vomit bile from not eating it gives the the digestive tract a chance to clear out and they get the the calcium boost they get the the calories from the marrow and they get their teeth cleaned and they only cost like maybe 35 a box of 20 pounds it's real cheap and there's a good good remedy yeah they're great and that's how so that's my getting into raw food and then now so you own Organics and it's becoming it has continuing to grow so now kind of um we'll get into the raw food well let's just dive into that now so let's just say okay um raw food for people is I'm sorry raw meat for people is typically you know not good for you depending on what you eat and stuff like that but one thing I my and my dog professional career that kept kind of resurfacing was raw food and raw diet and the more I call them OG's working dog people you know the people who are really in it not pet owners yeah the people who really were in it they were all doing raw so I got my dutchie from a lady she's she didn't I she basically said hey I got this washout military dog he's a two-year-old dutchie from um I don't know some some knpv line whatever and she's just an old school like she's been working with dogs and horses her whole life you know she's been doing it longer than I well passed I've been alive and so she said I got this dutchie I have two dutches I have a female and I have this male can you come up and help me train this was when I was early on in my training career and I said yeah sure I'm not too familiar with the breed but I really want to get a working dog for my demo dog for my career and I remember going up there and I worked with it was just a you know I was kind of it was like the first time I was scared I was like you know because everyone kind of hyped up these duchies and these Malinois as like oh you know and you're like they're just they're you know they're they're they're they're not what they're anyway I went up there I did some training and she said hey this has been great and that was cool for me to hear this is a lady that's been working with working dogs well over 30 years she complimented you yeah and I was like wow that's kind of cool yeah so she um she said I can't really pay you for your services past you know this shoes on disability and whatever and um I said okay that's fine you know and she said but I said I if you want are you interested in a puppy and I said yeah I'm actually looking for a demo dog she said I'm planning on breeding these two I think they would be good and she had like the old school Dutchy lines where it was more blonde and I can't remember the Peggy ain't Peggy something or other so she ended up breeding these two dogs she said I'll give you a pick of the litter for your services you come around until the dogs are born and all the deal yeah I was like sure good deal so I did that but going back to Raw she said can you help me feed him I said sure So she said here she handed me this whole um it was a chicken thigh right whole chicken bone in yeah because here go give this to him I said a raw chicken yeah yeah the raw chicken I go the I was so confused I'm like it was it was thawed out and just hang in there you know nice big lung yes yeah yeah and she just gets him down at the price right and bulk freezes them she thought it out and she said here and I said well what do you but this is what I mean is like this is what taught me the dog culture and dog culture to me is why I'm on this Mission especially with like when I do podcasts and I do different types of documentary-esque type videos um on my YouTube channel is the dog culture needs to be explored more because other people would understand their dogs more if they were introduced to people like yourself she gave me this thing and what do I do she said just go give just go throw it to him like I'm like thinking like a cartoon like just so she said yeah so so I'm sitting there and there's this working line intact like you know and his Tail's just doing this he's licking his chops I'm like just just give it to him she goes yeah but just be care be careful and I start to kind of open the door and this dog's just coming at me you know hitting hitting the doors what's coming and I'm like holy this is crazy and I'm seeing this dog like for the first time he he really was like his Drive peaked before that he was just I think being polite to me so I just threw it to him and he just went over there and he's sitting there looking at me just crushing this Heaven yeah and before I left it was gone and I'm and it's rolling in the dirt and it's getting all that in the grass tasty exactly it just taught me like I'm like this is real dog culture like this is this is it you know what I don't get look all these commercial Foods even raw they talk about the wild even I mean they even go into naming their food about the wild yeah okay well damn it if you want everything natural why would you feed your dog kibble I like to make it as natural as possible you want to you want to emulate the wolf's diet listen we can get it as close as we can get it but the fact is the dog is domesticated so you don't really want them to have a wolf's diet but the Raw you can give your dog big chunks of raw meat where he has to put it in his mouth like I have clients who buy chicken parts and and they get big chunks of beef and they get a couple of uh chicken feet maybe a turkey neck um they'll whack off a hunk of liver and throw it in there so the animal actually has to get it like a wolf would and get it into the back teeth not using the front teeth getting it into the back and really chomping down on it I mean this is so then it starts producing more enzymes digestive enzymes this all works the way the body is supposed to work it's the best way to do it so the rougher you are at it throw it down give it to them let them have it they get the most out of it and it's so from the average and again I have a good Insight of that I'm a pet owner myself you know with a really good observation of um reality so I think one of the things that people would be afraid of is choking so like if they're chewing up well two things is to say well it's raw so isn't that bad form and what about the bone what are what do you say about that okay as long as the bone is not cooked it's perfectly fine it's not going to splinter again like I explained the femur bones those will Splinter but a chicken bone we're talking about specifically now it's a soft bone it's very pliable it's got all those great tendons attached to it and so the dog will have no problem with it now so when somebody says to me raw chicken hey when I was a kid I lived in the city you know how many dogs I looked at eating food in the hot summer out of a garbage pail flies and maggots on it and that dog will be chomping down on that old meat that's sitting in there they were perfectly happy they didn't have a vet to take care of them they were there every day for years the same dumpster eating the same crap out of it yeah they have a different digestive tract their their digestive enzymes and their their stomach acid is so it's like battery acid they're much different than us you know then if you want to become technical yeah you know you got to worry about parasites and stuff but there are alternatives much simpler to you know to introduce to take care of parasites then would be harmful such as feeding your dog kibble I mean if like for us we manufacture um a product they call it Frank's ticked off because I'm ticked off about something every day so they call it Frank's ticked off and it was actually developed because of ticks and fleas and so it's got a base of excuse me garlic smells like garlic I know that it's got a base of garlic it's got brugees and everybody says oh you can't give a dog yeast well it's all dead it's all dead anyway the the yeast uh cultures and so a little bit of Bruce and then a couple of uh other additives that I can't divulge and you know I needed something that will transport all the stuff to the skin so that this emanates through the skin and it becomes a preventative so while you're getting rid of ticks and fleas by accident with the same ingredients I'm also and I learned this after the product was made I'm also protecting against internal parasites hooks whips tape rims worms uh and so this one product covered you know a variety of issues so it's a lot easier doing that than not feeding your dog raw because of obvious reasons what's the what's the biggest benefit to feed your dog raw compared to kibble and and I know that this is probably mundane for you at this point but if if people are out there listening and they're saying okay um all right raw food cool and we talk about raw food it would be this and correct me if I'm wrong and I'm not making a statement here I'm asking when when we're talking about raw food it just means that it's it's all the when you cook stuff like it's same thing with like raw vegetables right raw minerals raw the raw it's it's in the Raw it's not being taken you cook out the best of what you want if if you cook it so when you feed kibble it um huge industry right I mean obviously very huge so what's the biggest you know Keynotes that you would say like look okay here's what raw food at scale is is why it's better okay I mean obviously it's more natural it's made I mean dogs genetically are made to eat raw something wrong they get there they get their nutrition from a raw diet so if you want to revert back to the wild I don't care if a dog if a wolf is out there and grabs a rabbit it grabs a bird the bird eats seeds off the tree off the the grass so you're getting you're getting some Nutri some veg vegetable nutrition you know or a rabbit is eating leaves and it's eaten grubs and stuff like that so eat if you if you go back to kibble and you and you look intricately into what it's comprised of the best advice I give to customers who call me and question it I ask them if they're a member of uh of Netflix because if they have Netflix there's a documentary it's called dog food but they they move the letters around so it looks like dog food but it's the name of the of the the video was dog food a dog food yeah and it will show you the entire process of how kibble is made from incorporating the use of dead animals um it was pre it's produced primarily because during World War One they needed something that they can package for for pets that was not in metal cans they needed the metal they needed the steel and so they produced something instead of making the nutritional value the primary objective they produce something that could be put in a paper bag and not leak through wow and so that's what they got now there's a you know like some people come to me and they say oh we use the high quality kibble well I mean that's really good but that's like having uh you know cancer that's not really frightening it's it's still crap still terrible it's it's not for them and the reason I went as far as and I had a laugh when you were talking before about you give your dog four cups of kibble and it shits out four cups and I said maybe five you know what I did for a customer one time she was a real hard sell didn't want you know the vet said don't use it her friend said don't use it I said I'll tell you what go buy a 20 pound bag of whatever dog food you use empty the bag into a pail and keep the bag feed your dog every day out of that pail and when it shits put it back in the bag that the food came in and when you're done I want you to weigh the bag it was three pounds heavier now maybe she got a couple of rocks and stuff in there when she picked it up but it was heavier from the poop than it was when it was full of kibble it doesn't keep it it doesn't retain any of it it gives it just enough nutrition to get by it's like eating corn every day yeah for humans right because you're still in the kernel yeah exactly absolutely like eating flaxseed instead of eating crushed flaxseed yeah you don't you don't get past the kernel you don't you don't get the nutritional value so I don't know if I'm too far away it seemed like it was echoing you're good um if you need to move it go ahead I'm cool so um nutritionally you want to stay on track so the biggest thing to get back to your question the biggest thing that I would say you take away from it if you really love your dog Wellness the wellness and longevity of your dog because they live longer that life is less troubled with different types of recurring infections in the ears look it's not a cure-all dogs get cancer when they're on Raw you know but you know crappy things happen to dogs even though they eat raw but so few and far between in comparison also and I believe and this may be a little selfishness on my part but I believe that a lot of the contradiction and a lot of the issue against raw being no good is because there's a lot of veterinarians who paid a lot of money for an education that raw diets will cut into your dog does not have to go to the vet as much it's it's you know it's not anything to be hidden it's the fact you eliminate a lot of these minor issues right off the get-go like what like hot spots like reoccurring ear infections um like chewing on the toes and and licking and and you know a little bit of analogy the dog starts to lick all of a sudden from it being wet you wind up with a hot spot or a lick granuloma the longer it goes the uglier it gets you start losing hair from the from that spot you bring your dog to the vet well the vet says does your dog have all of its shots which is another topic you want to talk to me about someday so I tell people you go on Raw just try it I hate to say how much I gave away at the on the early years here take 50 pounds if it if if you don't come back it you don't pay anything try it everybody came back not one person didn't come back and I've had people that started on it and then said I can't use it anymore okay was there a problem with it or did your dog have a problem no my vet said he won't he won't take care of the dog if I keep it on Raw Abby can you throw me my phone I want to show you this there's a there's a picture that my mom had sent me that she she recently went to the vet and there's this I want to read that I don't to be honest I didn't read it I have no idea what it says but I wanna I wanna read it to you and see what you think about it because I know it had something to do with raw food and I go I'm going to read this to Frank when I see him so and this is no you know I I don't know anything about the vet or anything like that I just I know that she had sent this to me because it was on the door like it says right here scientists confirm the harm in feeding raw Pet Foods by Amanda carrazzo incorporating raw meat into the diet in comparison to animals has always been widely debated proponents argue that raw foods provide nutritional value that can't be achieved through cable promote healthier digestion and reduce periodontal disease critics include the FDA denying such benefits and worn raw pet foods to expose animals to bacterial infections several raw food pet products have been recalled in recently months due to potential blah blah blah blah blah so this is just another thing you know in the thing so other than there's got to be more than just them trying to make more money the vets do you think it's also just education oh I don't think they're trying to make more money I think I think that like all of us they need to pay the bills you know I think that when I'm not going to get in into the into the governmental aspect of it because the FDA mean the FDA and and I think education is is important and you know about introducing your dog to all these different new bacterias dogs eat their own come on I mean what are you kidding me yeah you know what I'm saying like let's be realistic it's about it all comes down to the Benjamins that's where we're at in this world well in Science Diet is pumping the Vets that's paying them with food it's medicine every sponsor is either Purina Science Diet Royal Canin look look we all do what we need to do however I'm not saying that that it's bad but it's bad for the dog yeah and so right now Organics you guys have over 200 products and um one thing that I've been I've been ordering from you for I don't know I I would say close to well Lakota is seven now she's been on it and she'll probably take seven or eight years I was gonna say at least you've been I know you're coming down I was going to say at least five or six years yeah maybe I'm off a little bit yeah a little bit more because we've been feeding it with Lakota since she was a puppy but my Saint Bernard Thompson lived until he was 12 which is old for a large breed yeah and orthopedically he was so well oh yeah because because of his diet and just hit historically dogs that size don't live that long with a good quality health and what ended up with him is he unfortunately had um pneumonia which then kind of hung on because of his age and then he his appetite was kind of iffy and then he ended up getting bloat and and then whatever but orthopedically he was so well um intact with everything lean muscle mass he probably didn't get overweight right you know that's another thing you know it's much easier to maintain weight in an elderly dog feeding raw then then cable and you know I know they have a lot of different and since raw has become more popular kibble companies have started producing more breed specific or age-specific products which may be better for dogs than the the run in the milk crap but it's still kibble it's still it's it's cooked out everything good right and to boot now with raw they are uh they're interjecting things that I personally I don't like but you know you have to follow the law you know um HPP with raw food you mean yes yeah HPP it's high pressure Pastor high pressure pasteurization yeah so it's almost like you know putting your meat in the washing machine before you give it to your dog yeah it but but you have to do it in order to you have to meet ethical standards yeah you know but it's still better than kibble by a long shot yeah now you you mentioned the age of your dog I lost one last year um not the dog I was talking about earlier his name is bricks his son who I named bricks I had to dutchie Malinois Malinois and he was 20 years he was two months shy at 20 years old whoa however he died in July last two years ago he died in July the October before my wife videoed me taking some bites off him I mean and this dog was into it he came alive at 19 years old he's still fighting me good yeah but at the end we were both knocked out but yeah my my older dog who lived until she was 18. I I I I again like you can say all you want about raw Dot and that's the thing is like I'm not gonna say what you have to do I'm not I'm not even gonna say what you should do I just say and and I'm like this from a training standpoint too is I say here's what's worked for me do what works and my thousands of you know and as I continue to grow I think the message becomes more validated because it's it's like okay it worked for this person and this person and this person right so she was 18 and then tell her until we put her down the day that we put her down she couldn't really get up and walk on her own but she'd eat her raw food and typically dogs who are on their way out one of the things that kind of like Nails the the nail in the coffin if you will is their diet appetite exactly for sure and and that's one thing that it was so hard for me almost because like every day I put that raw food in that bowl and she'd go and she'd just gobbled it up and that was amazing to me and my and Chris Dallas my vet because it it's one of those things that the dog's like all right here we go I'm gonna eat this and then towards the end of their life they're like screw this I'm done with this that gives you a little indication too and when they're eating raw it's hard that indication becomes more difficult yeah and do you remember that um there was the the uh her husband is a doctor they live right over by my other facility she's uh she's from England she's a client of mine yes absolutely oh I can't remember so so so really love delivered to her yes still today really lovely and um they live Ballston Spa yeah yeah they're over by our other facility I did some work for them and she's really lovely and they I think they have another younger Shepherd that I worked with at the time he's probably not young anymore and I'm very big yeah very large dog yeah and I I can't imagine the older one's still around but I remember she told me the story because she got linked up I don't know we got either whatever but they they were feeding your food and um she said yeah the the older dog because I I said man the older dog the older Shepherd moved around good she said well um she she wasn't or he wasn't or whatever he said um the dog was pretty much decrepit and kind of ending very angulated yes and they switched to raw food and she said the dog gets up and runs in the fields and that to me was like damn you remember that absolutely that's a very nice lady and I'm I'm really sorry I can't remember her name yeah she's really nice but she had that dog that really couldn't get around and she said after she switched diets from kibble to Raw changed it all yeah it was unbelievable and on a personal note I can't even explain the feeling that one gets from providing a product right that damn it I don't care what anybody says it makes a difference it's a difference the dog has the dog has a better day the dog has a better life and in and just for me I'm like a brick and mortar guy I'm like take it day by day if you have a better day you have a better you know blah blah so so if somebody's out there and right now um I know so rock Annex I get um one good thing about another thing about and I'm not just trying to say go on raw food I'm just trying to trying to figure out um I guess journalistically if that's if that's a word trying to figure out and pull out the information of why it's good and so it's good because it's a natural diet for the dog so their body knows what to do with it they have all of that acid in their in their intestines and their stomach to be able to break it down and then when you feed kibble it's not the body's probably like what is this like this this is just going this is all we got it's going out the back door right so uh one one other thing I want to ask well not one other thing but one of the things I want to ask you is one thing that I find interesting two actually two things before I forget this is this is gonna probably make you laugh but first thing is why why do you feed less raw food than kibble so I know like with my again my Saint Bernard I think he was on I can't remember exactly but Lakota my duchy she's on a pound um twice a day so she's got two pounds a day but like kibble I'd have to give her more than that in the bowl so why does why do you have to give less raw food than you would kibble okay my daughter's probably the better one to answer that question but I'm going to answer it for you in my opinion I would say that the dog is the dog's digestive system is more capable of extracting more nutrition from the raw than it is from the kibble okay okay so it's getting nutritionally it's getting more from less so rule of thumb and this is scientifically developed rule of thumb is 2.5 percent of a dog's body weight daily so 100 pound dog being the mathematician I am it's going to take two and a half pounds of meat so our product consists of 80 percent muscle meat 10 percent ground bone and 10 organ that's all in a complete and balanced product along with all the other vitamins minerals we have four varieties of live probiotics in the in the complete and balanced diet and that also I get that I get the complete with you guys that also comes with veggies we make it both with and without veggies now the nutritional value of veggies it does contribute but not a greater extent not as much as meat nowhere near and and on a on a really upfront note in my personal opinion it does contribute but is not necessary I like how you know I I like putting like now we're starting to uh we have a whole line of treats we're starting to dehydrate sweet potato pumpkin different things like liver oh we have beef liver already beef liver chicken hearts chicken liver you know we have we slice we slice um like large pieces of beef chicken breast turkey breast they're sliced like a potato chip and dehydrated the treats are phenomenal yeah I I use phenomenal I don't have any in here but one thing I haven't been able to really resource myself and brand and sell because everyone's always like what are you I got my own treat pouch I got my own e-collar I got my own leash is uh I use Stewart's Pro treats uh dehydrated um beef liver and it's the because it's sink first of all single ingredient it's got good protein and the dogs love it now let me plug my product okay all of our all of our treats are single ingredient that's number one number two and I would I would just air on a little bit of caution when you use heart for your treats chicken heart beef heart turkey heart keep in mind that there are about 60 65 protein so you could really if you've given a lot of treats during the day you can really up the protein level which is not good for the kidney so just be aware of that if you're using the heart but you know we dehydrate liver like one of our products that Frank's ticked off when I first came out with it we were having difficulty because you put it in the dog's food and they didn't want to eat it anymore it had a bitter taste because we had to um what we did was we dehydrated pork liver and put a little bit of pork liver in there now watch out they'll eat it out of the bag without taking it out of the bag and to give to give contacts for people who are listening and watching the Franks ticked off is basically a powder form um like you like you were saying earlier tick repellent uh all the all that stuff that you would see from like a Seresto it's just more natural I think the only downfall to Frank's ticked off which is why I'm not I have some at my house which is I'm not consistent with it is you have to do it every so just scoop that you put into the food and do you distribute that nationally or just locally um because you gotta be careful maybe it it's it's local but you know we may ship out a little bit nationally like we have some people who ask us to mail it to them yeah it's good so we mail it we mail it all over now I'll tell you something since we're on that right now there's a big problem going on with ticks because they've become I don't want to say completely immune but they're not even working with Seresto collars or our vet my wife's dog had to go two three times now bad case of limes and he was telling us how with his clients you know they're on a couple of different front line and all this stuff a couple of different types of tick prevention and none of it's working wow because they're you know it's almost I guess like the rats in New York City they become immune to the poisons after a while yeah you know they and they get past it so only takes one so the the the Frank's ticked off as just that powder um and then right now so I get duck from you guys I get beef from you guys I get chicken from you guys all right I don't get duck anymore because you guys know we we stopped the duck but I do get the r75 mix um and it comes in uh and I'm giving people because some people out there are like okay this this raw food sounds great what does it look like what does it taste like for the dogs what does it smell like and and I just want to give people a picture of how easy raw food has been for me uh and I work with a company now that does uh ship uh nationally um in the United States right to your door called we feed raw and they have they package it up and boom they give it right to you and like you were saying before um just pretty much any raw diet is going to be better than the Iams that they're giving their dog not a doubt so it's it's the same thing with beef feedron what you do is you freeze it at a ridiculously low what's the temperature like negative 45 something crazy 65 yeah because that deep freezes it but also kills all the all the bad potential parasites yeah because the bacteria is good some yeah some bacteria is good but this when when you blast freeze it negative 65 years Fahrenheit yeah you uh you take care of the potential hazards of parasites so and then when I get like your product or we feed Raw it's it's um it's it's already Frozen and you you do you still do the patties oh yeah yeah so so you do eight ounce patties four ounces four ounce patties and we do in some in some of the product we do make what we call nuggets it's a 1.5 ounce looks like a uh I don't know marshmallow like a marshmallow exactly what it looks like let me tell you this story because I knew I was going to forget and I I did forget okay this is nuts and I've I may have talked about this in the podcast before okay so raw food is not only good for dogs but it's good for cats okay so my cat pip eyes 13 probably now which not is not super old for a cat it's you know it's an older cat but not some of them live 20 whatever so he was eating he was obsessed with Friskies just a corn and sugar that's what they like right like kids yes so we were feeding the Friskies out of the blue bag and he was obsessed with it and everything we started feeding and you know cats I'm like I'm thinking like okay raw food for cats it's probably not going to take much to feed him you know I had to say I had three dogs I was feeding raw right I had the you know so anyway it was a lot of money it's a lot of freezer speeds absolutely there's a lot of logistics you know going to get it that's why you know it was Frank it was so hard for me when people I would say well I would just just die in The Sword for raw food because it changed my life it gave me more years with my dog which you can't pay for unless you get raw food I agree right so I just said look you know I've had clients it's not just me it's my clients it's other people it's people who really enjoy raw food and and it extends the life of the dog which is invaluable I mean it's just it's your best friend and in some cases it's your it's your canine off Handler it's a partner it's everything exactly your partner so anyway so he's eating Friskies and I said well Frankie got um you got the raw food for cats you say yeah I got cat nuggets I said okay let me try a box well we gave him did I ever tell you this no my wife oh she's anyway I'll tell you we gave him the box of um and we gave him the two cat nuggets and he wouldn't eat it so he went probably a week without eating and I was like oh man like he's not gonna eat it I just have all this cat nuggets what am I gonna do and I'm not sure the difference between the cat nuggets and whatever but I'll explain it to you later okay so so I said okay he's not gonna eat this so I so then after like the sixth day he finally was like and I wouldn't leave it down I would pick it up put it back leave it you know so I'd put it down again I tried to get just like just like a puppy that wasn't eating it's okay it's gone until next time right because it teaches them and encourages them like you can't just you're scarred it yeah it's you got to eat it once it's there no one it'll be back exactly we got to do so anyway he started eating it and then he just turned into a monster he was like and I'm not kidding you to this day to this very day and it's kind of like a it's a thing now in my house where it's like you don't have to worry about my dog taking your cheeseburger or anything off the counter the carnivores this cat after feeding raw food turned into an absolute Savage and I don't know if it was like what is this I don't have to how did I wait so long I don't have to yeah exactly I don't have to kill the Chipmunk for this I don't have to kill the squirrel or the rabbit for this because he's you know cats are savages they kill more things in the United States than a lot of things and people don't realize that they're Savages so he changed from being this cute little kind of like house cat to a Savage and right now he'll get up on the counter and he'll take your bagel off that and run away with it and eat it because he just he I think he went from there's something else out there after we fed him raw it was like a movie he turned into a werewolf or something he completely changed and I'm and my wife is like losing her mind because he will literally like I have a 10 month old now uh human oh congratulations thank you I didn't know yeah he'll literally like go up and she'll be like feeding him like little chicken strips or something you know and he's just chewing on it and the cat will be there trying to take it out of his hand and the other day he caught Banks as my son's name caught him and he started crying and all he's an absolute Savage and it's so interesting how we went from being obsessed with the eating his little scoop of Friskies hitting the bowl now every morning 5 a.m he's outside of our door we have to put him in the basement like when we're like oh man I don't want to wake up at five tomorrow or whatever we have to put him in the basement and then when we again like I I've had three dogs sometimes more in my house at a time my dogs are always trained obviously we never have to worry about them you put your you eating breakfast and you turn away and it's good you don't touch it you don't have to worry about that but my cat he'll be up there eyeing it and he'll come up and like like I'm not even kidding like a ferocious prey driven animal come up grab it and run a run away with it and he's done it with breasts of chicken and steak and it's crazy how many times was I cursed I I can't every day it's this thing it's this constant thing with this cat and I don't know why the other thing I want to mention do you remember the time that I called you and I said Frank um I got this client that really wants to switch to raw food and he just needs more information about it and I don't really know what to tell him because it's the same thing when I wanted to have you on this podcast I'm like I want you to just tell people why it's good and if they're interested here's how to do it which we'll get into next about like people want to go home and do it they can or they can find your stuff or whatever but I remember I called you and I said hey I got this client that really wants um to to get into raw food I'm not sure how and why and when and you said oh well just uh tell them uh um tell them this and tell them that and I said okay and then I went and I told him and then I remember I uh I caught I I called you and I said Frank um I got the client on the other line and he's he's feeding his dog pork is that okay and you're like no you don't want to do pork and I go can I put you on three with them and you're like sure I'm like it's the Governor Cuomo and you go uh yeah sure and I remember you were probably like waking up drinking coffee not expecting you're about to get three-wayed with the governor of the entire state of New York but I remember sitting there and and Governor Cuomo used to call me he still calls me his dog is here every other all the time so and I've always had good experiences with him besides the politics I don't really give a so he said um hey you know you know a big Italian guy absolutely you know he's like I don't you know and I said uh I said well I got a guy that can tell you and I'm and I go can I put you on hold Governor he's like he's probably not used to that right I was probably the only person in the state that told him I'm gonna I'm gonna put you on hold put you on hold because when they when his office would call over to me it was very like hey Tom Governor's on the line you have time I'm like yeah sure no problem whatever I said let me put you on hold and I'm thinking back on this I'm like holy so then I called Frank I go my help Frank answers you know hey Tom Marie I said hey I got the guy on the other line could you talk to him like it's Governor Cuomo and you're like sure and it was so cool because you didn't miss a beat you were like and you went right into it because I think that would kind of frazzle some people they're like okay so it was nice I appreciate that I'm going to tell you something funny because you reminded me of it when I started this company I used my personal cell phone as the number to call people want you know you got to get in touch with me here call me sure you know here I am now 12 14 years later sometimes I Gotta Throw That phone because it just never stops even though we've transferred everything and you know the company is a big company now it's got its own phones and this and that people still call on that line and that's me I do that well I you know I answer it when I can but you know I'm so tied into things that you got a phone in your back pocket you just don't hear you're sitting on a tractor or something you know you just don't get a chance to hear it so it automatically trans over transfers over to the office but I want to say something about your cat and the cat food please the way it's different is first of all a bone is finer ground and cats require more touring touring touring the body produces you know the cat produces some but not enough dogs require a little bit too but the cat requires more so it has a very similar um nutritional value but it's got a higher touring level and the and the uh the bone is like toothpaste in it you don't get you know it's it's finer ground and the meat is finer ground yeah because if you give a dog the cat pellets or the the cat food you'll see they'll lap it more than chew it yep and that's what I wanted to prevent I don't want the dog to lapen up his food I want him to chew it that's where he gets the benefit of producing those enzymes yeah Pavlov's theory of conditioned response yeah so well that yeah whatever you did with the cat nuggets it worked my wife's not happy my cat is real happy my wife is very happy because we have an older cat born with that missing one foot and when he doesn't get it and that really angers me like if if I forget to leave his food before we go to bed my wife gets woken up consistently he'll lick her hair he'll rip the out of the out of the the bathroom waste basket he'll start licking the bag and he gets crazy crazy you know this angry little Rumble but uh put it down and he and he also he's an older cat and I'll tell I'll tell you listeners if you have an older cat that really has digestive issues it makes it so much easier to feed raw for the cat for the cat to digest that is so much easier than this kibble it will make him eat more he'll feel better he'll digest it easier and a tip to you if your cat gives you trouble eating some of this would you just feed him intact like put that little nugget in a bowl because there's nothing wrong with taking an extra minute crushing it adding a little bit of warm water mixing it around a little bit to make it like um a smoothie like a sauce yeah like a little smoothie because the older cats they like they like it easy you know they like to yeah they like to lick it and push their face in it and yeah he yeah but boy he now this cat he got a little quaff on him now he started eating that stuff and he's looking good yeah so um I want to get into some questions some people had asked um what uh so I know one of the questions that people are going to ask and I and I want to help people on this is okay if they're interested in raw and they're going to do their own research and whatever um but you know as an expert and obviously you being an expert how long you've been working with dogs 52 53 years yeah 55 50 to 55 years yeah so you're more than an expert right so and it's it's your business it's your livelihood it's your passion right so um I I two things is um if if somebody wants to transfer to raw food they're like okay I get it I got it right how how would they successfully do that like meaning like if they went with like we feed raw our company that I worked with or if they found somebody like you that's more local that does their own raw food you don't suggest just going out and getting it putting it down right do you do you mix it how do you okay remember what I said earlier you never mix it ever you just you go right to Raw well you don't have to go right to Raw but you don't mix the raw with the kibble because that's going to create issues in digestion what you want to do is you feed your regular stuff at the mo in the morning table right and you feed your your meat product as a separate meal in the evening yeah you do that for two or three days and then you start feeding less of the kibble and more of the raw over a period of a week you will be onto the raw completely right now like everything else with dogs it varies from dog to dog any dog that I've ever changed over I stopped feeding the raw uh the the kibble and went right to raw and I never had a problem but again these are all working dogs if you got a you know King Charles Cavalier Spaniel or a little Yorkie right it may be a little bit different that's what my mom just had a problem with I gave her a little bit of Raw to use for her she has a 16 year old Shih Tzu that probably ate junk her whole life and she had diarrhea and she said well you know she had diarrhea she well she said she wasn't eating so I said we'll try raw food I've never met a dog that wouldn't lap up raw food especially if they're coming from kibble right that's like eating Burger King every night to go into a Michelin star restaurant it's like this is different usually so she said yeah she ate it but she had diarrhea that's probably common for I would I would think it would be it wouldn't be anything that would alarm me I would just continue on that course okay yeah I mean you don't want the dog to con you know to go on with a with diarrhea but you also have to the meat that she gave her did it have bone in it because if you give just I'm not sure yeah if you give just me you you will have a problem with with a loose bowel okay and what um so like so what's the process that you have right now because you're far you have a farm right how big is your farm well we've got three forms actually but um all combined in Dutchess County uh 20. around 60 Acres yeah it's not small 50 70 acres is your is your farms for your livestock for your food or how do you go to the slaughterhouse used to be because now we have Farms that grow for us because it's expanded to that point so yeah and this is really cool that and and I don't want to say it's cool because nobody else is doing it because I don't know how other people are doing it but I do know that for me like when I go to a farm to table uh restaurant I'm excited I don't care what's on the menu I agree I'm like cool you got this down the road I want to eat it this is cool I remember I was doing a seminar in London a couple years ago and uh for we all went out to dinner after and I had this duck I said this is the best I said I just pulled the waiters you know I just said this I said I just want to say something I said not for nothing this is the best duck I've ever had I don't know and I said I don't know what's and I'll never forget this I was like I don't know what about this particular duck it's so good it's duck breast with like good equal fat to it and I was like this is so good and you know in our London Voice or what whatever it's like oh yeah it was just harvested literally down the road and I'm like that matters to me and it matters to the product yeah so you so all you so right now briefly you don't have to get into the exact details but so you have Farms that you would you know basically say hey I need cattle from you I need we provide yes it's it's grass or beef is only grass-fed uh everything else is organic uh not certified organic certified organic makes a very big difference in the price okay okay that's a label on it right out there everything well every you know everything is numbered it's a very strict process to be certified organic but I mean it's not a hard process but it makes a difference in the price it's it's almost a difference like if you go to the supermarket and buy something organic or not you know a couple of dollars or more for for half the amount so but no antibiotics no vaccines not even my dogs get vaccines okay um due to titers that's how we check yeah you do title checks especially this rabies stuff do you know you I know a guy who tied a checked his dog for seven years and didn't have to get the shot and what that means for people who are listening a tighter is essentially taking a blood panel that gives you the result of what's in your dog to see if they need these vaccines or not and so a lot of places veterinarians and all vets will over vaccinate dogs because hey it's the law in most cases and some vets will tighter so if you if you don't want to over vaccinate your dog you just ask your vet if they do titering just because that's important I mean that little thing that we just said I mean people probably don't even think of that but you know the only thing I want to add to that and I'm not saying it's for this reason but I find that the cost of tighter checking is five times the cost of the vaccines right sure and so people unfortunately say forget that just give them the vaccines right but the vaccines are the reasons for so many different cancers coming out in my opinion sure I'm sure they're poorly I'm going to leave it at that yeah because that's another conversation so you see so you the the beef is great that's amazing by the way because when I go to the store I know I'm paying a little bit extra for the grass-fed strip steak that I'm getting but it's better it's is it is it grass-fed all the way through is it finished grass fed all the way through that's and I know a lot of farmers who sell grass-fed beef that the last four months is finished they give them potato chips and anything else they can give them to fatten them up yeah you know that's a huge difference our cows are smaller but see that so and I don't know how other places are doing it but they're I mean when you're doing kibble they're they're not only throwing in all the stuff that they're importing from China all the the minerals and vitamins that that are in there because they say they're in there but they're also taking in roadkill and all sorts of anything else maybe some people in there too who knows who knows gotta put them somewhere so so that's amazing and is that all of your protein chickens too everything is your everything is uh no antibiotics completely natural I've got a great a guy that does our chicken um he's a phenomenal guy he's a he's a really good guy and I've many times I'll tell you listen is this I I make no bones about it no pun intended many times and my wife's sitting right there I take I'll go out to our our slaughterhouse and I'll tell the guys you know give me a bag of chicken whatever they're making at the time that I go in there give me a bag I take it inside I'm gonna cook it up and we eat it that's the that's the type of product that is it's all human grade no no you know there's no leftover stuff in this food this is you know you can see chunks of chicken breasts turkey breast and and we do the best we can you know our our product it was difficult when covet hit the supply chains everything was fouled up we didn't change our product from the first time we made it everything is the same we've made slight changes in we the availability of flax became difficult so we went to Chia we replaced Chia but but the Chia was more expensive we didn't raise the price but we went to the better you know they've got three different uh levels of quality in a lot of stuff that we use in the product we don't we we don't buy the we buy the best in everything that we can buy especially to vitamins minerals and and probiotics um and your probiotics is in your complete mix right in the complete and balance yes yeah because alternatively you should be adding those in because that's one thing like again same thing with we feed raw and some other companies that are out there that do a good job is you for for your company which I which I've used for a long time now for my dogs is it's a kind of a set it and forget it type thing because I think it's an overwhelming experience so what I do for my my food your food and we feed raw in their company that I'm using is you get it you thaw it out and in your case yours comes in big tubes so your clients will get big tubes of raw food and and I usually just put it in a container put it in the fridge and then I get my um scale out put my bowl on and then I'll just pinch it off or I'll scoop it up depending and then they eat it twice a day and so it's really not that hard I guess is what I'm saying can I simplify that a little sure and I had this issue a few other times it isn't that exact you don't have to be that exact I look at my dog all the time right if I mean if if you fill the bowl with the same amount every day and you get a visual on how much in that bowl it looks like you can basically do it by eye after if you see that after a while your dog looks like it's a little thin so that couple of days you give them a little bit more it doesn't have to be so exact one of my clients had all these special containers and she'd have the whole table lined up and she'd be putting this and weighing it in the scale and this and that doesn't have to be like that scoop that up put it in there you'll get a run on what your dog needs yeah and what he requires it makes it a lot simpler I mean people can do it your way don't get me wrong you could take it right down to the morsel but I find it not necessary right yeah yep you just kind of look at your dog I look at my dog he looks good I'm happy yeah um because it varies right like uh from dog to dog 2.5 percent of the body weight per day is what's recommended but there's a webs a couple websites that help you yes absolutely they have for raw feeding but I can tell you now we've got a large amount of kennel dogs that's a stressful environment a lot of bark and a lot of jump and always moving moving moving in the winter time they get three pounds a day plus each okay which is probably closer to ten percent of their body weight yeah so you know it it varies from dog to dog yeah I want to get into some questions go ahead all right so questions from some some followers I guess and I'll rifle through them so you can you can take as much time as you want you can say yes or you can talk five minutes on each thing and I'm not gonna go over all of them but I'm gonna go over some ones I think are are good that I want to know how's that you got it raw toppings for raw topping for Kibble dye I already know that answer it's going to be no because you don't mix right so raw right our raw chicken eggs fresh from your own chickens okay to feed your dogs with the shells with the shells put it right in drop them right in okay um and you don't have to clean the poop off yeah they love that um affordable things to add to kibble feeders who can't afford fully raw so let's say somebody's out there because that is a big thing that a lot of people when I talk about you guys and we feed her on I'm like this is you know they can't afford it so what are some things that people can simply put into their their kibble that would go to the supermarket and buy chicken backs for 16 cents 18 cents a pound I don't know of anything that could be less expensive uh yeah that's that's cheap that's cheap chicken backs um you want to stay away from a lot of chicken skin so the backs I like the backs because they get the bone and there's meat attached to it okay um what what are some resources that you find for for raw food like for dog nutrition do you have books podcasts uh websites that people can go alternatively to our conversation raw I'll tell you now there's there's a few um there's a few podcasts out there that I I uh I've been on like uh Habib up in Canada um that they get into nutritional he's very closely connected to uh to Marty Goldstein and they get into different discussions on on nutritional values and and how to best turn dogs onto Raw um but there's a lot now there's a lot of information on the web you know you get out there you can Google some stuff you could you can give yourself tons of reading just do a little research and this is again this is this question has ComEd up a lot and I think we've talked about it but there's the pushback from the veterinarians is it safe to say to just a don't don't get into it to your vet because they're going to probably disagree with you I mean I I would say absolutely well it depends on the person me I'd rather fight with the vet um thoughts on HPP versus living raw food I don't even know what that is so um that's why I asked I I don't like HPP because like I said earlier it's like dropping your food into the water machine got it um how to do um you might laugh at this hold on one second I want to add something to what I just said about HPP Oh I wanna I wanna put it in as lay a term as I can people in the United States many and I say the United States because obviously I live here they get into it too much as far as these preventatives HPP was done I'm sure to improve the quality but it doesn't and is the difference it makes in the food worth what they're trying to prevent right and I would add because I know I had this conversation with the owner of we feed raw and one of the things that they were having a really hard time with especially with the FDA for Mass distribution is they had to go through that process absolutely it's not a choice right so there is companies out there that have to go through HPV because of those reasons and again it's much better to feed your dog HPP product rather than kibble absolutely but alternatively to not go through that process you'd have to find somebody like Frank or they'd have to go out and do it then they'd have to buy human food and then do it themselves that's how you that's how you have to do it human food Yep this is an interesting question did you have any sorry did you have any more on that no no okay um do I have to wash the raw meat before feeding the dog absolutely not does she wash her own I don't know if she eats it I don't know it's a one-way Street here um so I have found it so hard finding exactly all the nutrients that needs to be sourced from the food or sort and sourcing for the food so again if somebody's self-feeding much like somebody we know that who is going out there trying to you know put together their own raw diet but it does get overwhelming because you see the people on Instagram and Tick Tock and they got the sardines and they got the chicken feet and they got the turkey necks and you're like look at the rabbit feet the alligator feet and some people buy the rabbit heads with the hair on it yeah you know there's a lot of different uh so so again for somebody who's overwhelmed with like seeing that and they're like I'm gonna I'm gonna stick to this scoop what do you what if you had to feed if you had to go to Walmart this is a good question if you had to go to Walmart and get everything that you would need to feed your dog what would you get I would get any supermarket I'd get turkey breast I'd get turkey necks I could probably I would I would Source most of it from a turkey I actually like turkey as a protein Source okay I find that animals digest it really well it's got a high enough fat content that uh and I mean within the meat it's got a high enough fat content to uh to maintain a good body weight and so I mean I like our turkey product actually and that's probably what I should have said from the beginning the turkey product that we make completely balanced I like out of all of our products because I find that both the dogs and the cats do better on it so as a dog owner and a cat owner I would go with turkey even rather than chicken like turkey like a turkey breast like whole turkey um turkey well you gotta you gotta have to get you gotta have gizzards and you gotta have the yes you gotta have some organs you gotta have the gizzards um turkey heart turkey gizzards um I'm gonna eat that twice a day or absolutely twice a day okay so when you do your turkeys in your um when you used to do your duck did you do feather and everything or no no uh and the reason we didn't is because our clients would certainly most of them would certainly Run for the hills all right well but it's in the food though you think you'd still see it pretty good oh yeah oh yeah okay oh yeah um um what's your thoughts on feeding whole prey Quail rabbits Etc go for it cool um closer to Natural you can get the better I'm going to like it so buying a rabbit let it run go right ahead why is the risk of foodborne illness to the dog and humans who interact with it worth it why is it worth it well I've been in this business of raw for only let's say 14 years but I've been feeding raw for 25 years that's how I had a clientele that wanted to buy it they would see my dogs see what I fed and want that for theirs and so what was the question again um is is it worth it like because is the dangers of it yeah risk reward okay so the point of the time I've been feeding in 25 years let's say maybe even longer I've never had an issue and so after that much time doing it without an issue human nature is you tend to get sloppy and I'll be very specific on what I'm talking about I was explaining earlier that we have a kennel full of dogs I'll mix it with my hands I let them eat it out of my hands it splashes in my face everything negative that I can come up with I've never had an issue personally I've never had any type of infections any type of negative anything from using raw and so and and I've got lots of clients and they'll stand behind me and say the same thing so if the odds are that in my favor I don't have a problem with it yeah and what about like like for me I have a 10 month old he's crawling he's not walking she'll give him a tries to give him a bath with her tongue is that something that I should worry about is that something that other people should worry about after they I don't believe it is now I'm not a doctor I'm certainly you know I never had a problem I have grandchildren that were little at one time they're not now but uh my dogs always lick them in the face our cat licks Us in the face if you stand there long enough it'll probably start eating your lips but you know he doesn't we we don't have a problem and that's a tough one for like for me to give you a definite oh don't worry about it my experience has been this yeah um I could talk all day to you but well I appreciate that I appreciate you coming on I enjoyed talking to you too I think this is the most we've yeah it's usually pretty quick because if you're not in a hurry I am oh yeah you know there were never that's off life that's why I wanted to sit down and do this not me Corral and I was just looking at the clock and I'm like okay it's 2 30 now so um any do you have anything else for and again like this pie what I like to do is is is to is to try to educate dog owners on not what they have to do but what has worked for me over time and being an expert and um anything other than we're going to talk about where to find you and stuff like that but is there anything else that you would want to say to anybody out there as far as dog related it could be anything food related if not that's cool too well I always have something to say all right all right uh one thing worries me with regard to raw food like anything else in this country if it becomes a threat to a multi-billion dollar industry this government is going to step in and I know already a lot of companies have been shut down for no reason at all and you know I don't I don't want to say too much to bring hell down on myself but it's such a contrast such a sharp contrast to the betterment of the animal why would anybody want to fight it I just I just don't get it it's um they'll start putting the bigger it gets the more restrictions are going to be put on it and it's unfortunate because what happens is people go to other means and maybe not so maybe not such good means in terms of how to get it and what to what to feed and I don't want to see that happen to it it's been it's probably the single most the single the single most marked improvement in in animals in in dogs at least and cats in my lifetime I feel really honored to be a part of I've been in it early on and I feel really honored to be a part of the help that so many of these animals have been given I will show you can you pass me my phone please I want to show you and I think I could bring it up I'm going to show you my daughter's dog at one year old and a nine-year-old before one year old we weren't in the business and at nine years old we were and I want to show you the difference in a dog nine years later the top picture is a year old on cable same dog wow nine years later can I screenshot this and send it right myself go right ahead as long as you know how because I don't yeah I'm gonna send it to myself so we can use it in the podcast check it out and look this is this is my daughter this is our dog she runs the company now and this is what I meant when I said even as far as our our kennel dogs where you know they're eating all this stuff we see what it does we see the benefits of it and wow it's just it'll blow your mind yeah that's a that's a good advertisement right there and then Frank you're not looking right now you're not so that's it's been hard for me that's why I'm excited that's why I've been excited to work with a company like we feed raw that will deliver you know a raw diet to people's homes yes but because I kept saying I I can't tell everybody to go to Frank because Frank can't take that you're a long way off I'm going to tell you we've got a few things up Our Sleeve we've got some things coming I can't talk too much about right now but I hope you have me back because when we're ready we're going to change the raw feeding in this country I got a few things coming I'm excited about it and like I said I I could talk to you all day but I'm mindful of you know your wife being very patient over there team player thank you very much she's great and thank you for introducing yeah yeah yeah yeah I appreciate it I appreciate you guys coming on um anything else I'll put all your information in the description so people can find you yeah and I I mean right now Organics is not taking on new customers we can't produce enough to fulfill our requirements okay but we've got that 90 percent handled and we're gonna we're going to be taking a big step it's okay it's going to be cool awesome well thanks Frank appreciate it I really enjoyed you cool [Music]

Channel: Tom Davis Dog Training

Views: 249,241

Keywords: Dog Training, Dog Trainer, Dog behavior, dog training tips, Dog Training Advice, Best dog trainer, puppy training, how to train a dog, dog videos, aggressive dog, dog training videos, obedience, tom davis, dog training basics, reactive dog, german shepherd, german shepherd dog, podcast, upstate canine academy, No Bad Dog, no bad dog podcast, dog podcast, k9, k9 dog, k9 dog unit, k9 police, K9 military, k9 law enforcement officer, RAWGANICS, raw feeding dogs, raw feeding

Id: WxNX9HIy1VM

Length: 187min 30sec (11250 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 01 2023