What If Every Dog Problem Is A Consistency Problem

If you’ve ever said “my dog knows better,” we’re going to challenge that with a hard truth: dogs don’t follow your intentions, they follow your patterns. Michael and Chris break down why consistency is the real foundation of dog training, and how small exceptions like “it’s fine when he jumps on me” quickly turn into confusion, conflict, and behavior that feels out of control.

We get practical about obedience and communication, including why we like implied stay, how clean rules make it easier to chain commands, and why keeping training simple helps both the handler and the dog stay on the same page. We also talk about boundaries, dog-specific capacity, and how permission-based behaviors can work only when the signals are crystal clear. From there, we move into working dog and protection dog training, where consistency becomes muscle memory under stress, from bite targeting systems to building a calm on and off switch.

Then we shift into a tough news story out of Martinsville, Indiana: a police handler shoots a reactive department canine and buries the dog. We unpack what that says about canine selection, patrol dog social stability, maintenance training, handler responsibility, and the trust a community puts in a K9 unit.

If you care about dog behavior, obedience training, reactivity, or working dogs, hit play, share this with a friend who needs clearer rules, and leave a review. What’s one rule you’re ready to enforce consistently starting today?

Transcript

Why Consistency Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Talk Shit Get Bit Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Parker. Yeah, I'm your co-host, Chris. And on this episode, we're going to talk about why consistency is important, especially when it comes to dog training. So there's a lot of different directions we can go with this, right? But I guess what makes consistency so important? And you kind of got to look at it from the working dog perspective versus the pet dog perspective, you know? Like the that answer is going to be a little bit different on both sides, but we can just start generically, right? Those aspects that kind of encompass both, right? So the biggest aspect is relationship, right? Like if I'm not consistent with my dog, then I create confusion, which confusion breeds conflict. And that's on that for house pets or working dogs. An example of that is, you know, I'll talk from the pet dog side first. Like this is something that those listeners listening that don't have a working dog might understand and be able to relate to. Is you know, clients will come in and they'll be like, Well, my dog just jumps on everybody, right? Like, I'm okay with it, but I don't like it when they do it to grandma. And you're like, okay, well, your dog can't understand the difference, right? So it's either none or all. You know, that's one area where it you're you're you're being inconsistent. Whereas if I cut it all out, but then I kind of make it a command, now I'm being consistent. Oh, I'm only allowed to jump when I'm asked to, right? Or the other aspect is like we don't teach a stay command, we teach an implied stay. Well, if I let the dog get up one time on its own and I don't force it to go back into whatever position it was in, so say a sit, I don't make it go back into a sit, but then the next time I correct it for getting out of its sit, I'm not being consistent, and now the dog is confused, right? So I would say that's probably the biggest impact of consistency is confusion. The biggest thing that comes out of that.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Yeah, I agree. And that's uh that's so we do the same thing, we don't teach a stay command. Everything that we do is implied, and the reason for that is is as you progress and you start getting more into advanced obedience, you you want to be able to chain commands. So I want uh, you know, my dog personally, I want to be able to look at him and go, zita, oof here, oof, zita. And if I have to say stay in between each of those, I mean that's gonna sound ridiculous. Plus, it creates more opportunity for confusion. We we have a knack over here about breaking things down to where anybody can understand it. That's one of the one of the biggest points that we've been receiving feedback on. And we compare it to human relationships. So in a relationship with a significant other, if you don't have consistency and you don't have communication that's firm, crisp, clear, understandable, and respectful, you you don't have a relationship. I mean, there's there's no arguing that you can define it how you want, you can be wrong if you want and disagree, but you know, that's your choice to be to be incorrect at the end of the day. But long story short, you have got to have relationships. So it's the exact same when we deal with our dogs, and especially if you have, you know, when we say high drive dogs, we're not necessarily just narrowing it down to Malama's or Dutchies or yeah. I mean, I've seen lots of non-high drive shepherds, and I've

Boundaries And Respect With Pet Dogs

SPEAKER_00 4:00

seen several high drive, you know, border collies and blue healers and labs and golden retrievers. And so it's really not breed specific, it's dog specific. And if you have a high drive dog, the only thing that that dog craves more than attention and affection, food, water is direction and consistency.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Yeah. And you know, with with that too, like boundaries. Like you mentioned something that that I can't remember exactly what you said, but it made me think of this as the boundaries, setting boundaries in place. I can't have boundaries with the dog if I'm not consistent. Uh, I think you're talking about human relationships, and that's kind of what brought that up when you're talking about those different aspects of the human relationship. It's kind of the same with the dog. Like you establish boundaries, or you should have boundaries in your relationships. If you don't, I can't help you with that. That's not my not my my my lane, but I can help you with having boundaries with your dog. But you should have boundaries with your dog as well, right? Like again, back to the jumping aspect. If my dog is jumping all over me and I'm I allow it, but then I don't allow it when somebody else comes over. I'm being inconsistent, those boundaries are blurred, or one time I allow it, but I'm in a bad mood now. So I'm like, get the heck off of me, right? Like I'm being inconsistent, and that inconsistency is blurring those boundaries. Well, am I allowed to do that or not? Or the same with like pulling on the leash, dogs pulling you all over the place. You have no boundaries with that dog, you're not being consistent either. So you you you've got to have that consistency to establish those boundaries, and you know, without boundaries, there can't really be respect. Your dog's not showing you respect, it's walking all over you, and you're it it runs the show, you know, there's there's not a cohesiveness there at all,

High Drive Dogs Need Direction

SPEAKER_01 6:00

and it's the same with working dogs, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

And that's uh you mentioned something when you when you started about applying a command. So if that that is something that's possible, it can potentially blur the lines. Again, that's gonna be dog specific. If your dog has the capacity to understand and comprehend that, then sure. For example, Cooley, Cooley knows better than to just go up to anyone to get pets. If I have him in a heel, if I have him with me, you can have treats, you can have a ball, you can do whatever you want. You can stand there and try and call him. He's not gonna come to you. But if I put him into a sit and then I approach you and I wave my hand with the back of my hand towards you, and I say, Okay, he knows that he's allowed to come over there and receive affection from you. So there's definitely a possibility of, you know, hey, you can jump on this person, you can't jump on that person. I think it's clear. One of it, yeah, but it has to be clear, and you have to keep in mind, again, like I said, the capacity of the dog. So all the best dogs in the world, you know, the the super, super cool advanced TikTok dogs that are being chucked out of Blackhawks and like climbing rope ladders and all that crazy tactical stuff, they have the average mentality of like a three to seven-year-old kid. Now, in that range, the reason there's a range when when we break that down is because you have the ones that are closer to the seven-year-old capacity, and you have the ones that are closer to a three-year-old capacity. I have several kids, and there's a massive difference in capacity between a three-year-old and a seven-year-old. Oh, yeah. So, but then again, you know, my oldest versus my uh second to youngest at five or six years old, they were at completely different levels, and that that's why I say it's very much dog-specific, which is why you we do the evals, we kind of run through that. Yeah, I'm not gonna recommend you do a bunch of extra complicated stuff that has a potential to blur those communication lines. If I don't feel that your dog has the ability to hold that, so it's definitely something that is worth looking at if it's something that you're you're interested

Commands And Dog Capacity Limits

SPEAKER_00 8:20

in. I trained a blue healer one time out in Lebanon Junction, and one of the biggest complaints was, well, he he nips at my grandkids' feet. And I said, Well, yeah, he's a herding dog, and he's attempting to herd the kids. He said, Well, I want him to stop. I said, Okay, that's that's not a problem. I'll just you know fight genetics and and bring that out of him, and we did. He was very, very mannered after that. And then the next request from that same owner was, Well, I still want him to go work the field because he actually had cattle. So I'm like, all right, luckily, this dog had the capacity to do that, and that was a learning experience for me. That was early on in the business where I didn't really have all my ducks in a row, and I was just kind of going after it and hoping for the best. You know, I had my skills and I had my education, but like the business aspect of it was still very, very new to me. And I didn't I didn't think to gather all of that information at the beginning because I would have approached things differently if I did, you know, we would have combined training. Hey, this is a small child, you don't get to herd that one. Use this site picture. Oh, that's a 1500-pound cow. You can bite that one. So we end up getting it, getting it done, getting it done successfully. And fortunately, that dog had the capacity to realize the difference between the two site pictures, but not every dog can. And the the biggest thing that we run into is people that end up getting their feelings hurt when we tell them that.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Dude, I run into that quite a bit. You know, people are like, Oh, I want my dog to be a protection dog, it's protective, and this and that. And then it comes in for an eval. And I'm like, your dog has little, if any, potential to be a protection dog. Your dog is actually the last thing I would do is teach your dog how to actually bite somebody because your dog is fearful and reactive and and all of this, right? And you know, setting setting those expectations straight from the beginning with those those clients. But you know, kind of back to to the obedience aspect and how consistency plays plays a key there. And like, God, I used to hate it when my dad would say this as a kid, and he would say it all the time. But kiss, keep it simple. Actually, he would say keep it simple, stupid. Yeah, keep it simple. I I I use just kiss, keep it simple with my clients, but it's the same concept, right? Like, and that's that's the way we we approach the training. One for the clients, most of them, you know, if I overcomplicate it, they're gonna struggle with it, which is gonna impact that consistency. But also for the dog, like the simpler I make it, the easier it is for me and the handler or owner to maintain

Keep It Simple For Real Consistency

SPEAKER_01 11:20

that consistency. And back to your point, you know, switching between commands and being able to go from sit to down to heal to go bite somebody to recall and and just flowing through commands, keeping it simple is how we're able to do that. If I overcomplicate it, I'm making it very hard on myself. And we teach our dogs through everything that we do. Like this this ties into reactivity and and you know, other behavioral issues. They're learned. We've we've kind of talked about that in the past. Those are learned through consistent responses. So, like dogs that are you know fearful and or reactive, you know, they they learn to be that way because one, it's allowed, you know, the the owner doesn't say, hey, no, we're not doing that, but also by the consistent response from the people that they're lunging, barking, whatever at, because you know, you get a 100-pound German Shepherd lunging at the end of the line, barking at you. What's your natural reaction? Well, our reaction is like, yeah, whatever, dude. I'm gonna keep keep coming. But

Reactivity Is Learned Through Patterns

SPEAKER_01 12:40

normal people, normal people are like, yeah, I'm going the other direction. And every time that happens, guess what? That dog has learned. I bark and lunge at the end of the leash, and that thing that I'm afraid of goes away. And it's again, that's consistency. Like it's that's consistently the response. So everything ties into consistency and and working dogs, like protection dogs, for example. Yes, we're painting all kinds of different site pictures, but we're consistent in the way we deploy the dog, right? We're consistent in well, consistent in the regularity of training and painting those different pictures, but you know, you could question whether being consistent impacts how they perform. I would I would say it impacts it positively because you're creating yes, it's gonna be different in training than in real life, but by consistently building within that dog all the different sight pictures, but the core structure of everything is consistently the same. It's not chaotic, it's calm, it's it's a game, whether it's real life or or training, teaching it, you know, as a game so they're not defensive. I mean, I personally don't want to turn don't train dogs to be defensive. I I teach them it as a game because that's how you get that really good on and off switch. That's again, that's that consistency and training. Every time I pull my dog out and we do a bite, it's calm, it's controlled, and I teach it as a game. We're playing the game. All right, now we're done. Chill. And so she has that understanding as soon as I tell her to out, the game's over, and she's gonna lay there. And that's why my protection dog, you could be pet, she you could be petting her, I could tell her to bite you, she's gonna bite you, I can tell her to out, and you can go back to petting her because of that consistent picture.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Yeah, and I think

Protection Work Needs Clear Structure

SPEAKER_00 14:40

I think a good example of where consistency plays a role in protection work or apprehension is the way that the dog targets and bites. Uh that's true. You you have a targeting system, I have a targeting system. So for me, I don't care what the scenario is, I don't care what the sight picture is. Um I have watched my dog uh deploy, uh chase down a suspect, the dude he launched, he missed, and the dude turned and ran back towards me, and the dog completely repositioned himself in order to get that bite in that position that he was trained for. That actually when we went down and did our our certification, it actually created an issue. So I hadn't I at that time I did not have a bite suit, and essentially it was just me. So I was decoying my own dog, which is you know, it that's a that's a debate in the field whether you should decoy your own dog or not. Listen, I decoy my own dog, I've decoyed my own dog hundreds and hundreds of times, and he has never bitten me outside of a training scenario, never even looked like he was gonna bite me outside of a training scenario. You know why? Because we have clear communication, yeah, we have consistency, and I control his economy, and he knows that. But outside of that spectrum, at the time, because I didn't have a suit, all I had was a left-sided intermediate sleeve. So a hundred percent, well, the 99% of our bike work was done on a forearm. Every once in a while, I was able to have a buddy come out that that has a suit, and we would get like some good, some good actually reps in. But when I deployed, when I got to the school, they said, Hey, is he set up? I had already been there several times. They said, Hey Chris, is he set up on apprehension already? I said, Yeah, he's good to go on everything, man. Let's run him. So they ran out in the field, they took off running, they're running away from the dog, and coolee ran up to the dude's back, took a sharp turn, ran around in front of him, ran past the decoy, spun around and come back so he could get a front-left forearm bite because that was his sight picture and that was his consistency. He was used to that under pressure, you know, consistency. For those of us

Targeting Systems And Bite Placement

SPEAKER_00 17:10

that carry, we go to the range. We've talked about this a little bit before. I do not like ranges that will not let you fire from the holster. I don't walk around Walmart with a pistol in my shopping cart like it's sitting on a bench at a range. I don't draw from there, I don't shoot from there. Yeah, it's good for you know plinking and just basic marksmanship and target practice, but if you're gonna be preparing for an actual encounter or real life situation, you you need to draw from the holster. And that's definitely been been a muscle memory point, and the consistency hits muscle memory for us and the dog.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, you know, I I go to the ring, I draw the same way, and I'll I'll do it, right? And and then that muscle memory, now I'm doing it on the move and building that up so that it's muscle memory. Because guess what? And the chaos of a real life situation for us, right? What's taking effect? Your training, your muscle memory. You don't have time to think really about what you're doing, you are responding based on how you have trained, and it's the same with the dog. You're you're deploying them. That I don't actually know if dogs have adrenaline. I would assume maybe if they have what? If they have adrenaline.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

So dogs can have elevated cortisol levels, which is essentially the same thing, yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Okay, so you know that that adrenaline for us is is pumping. I was like, Yeah, you know what? I've actually never even looked into that, I'll admit that. I don't know, but I can imagine they're all of their senses, just like ours, are heightened and focused on what's going on in that situation, and they are reacting on on pure instinct, and that instinct is developed by how we train them. So they're gonna do exactly what they train to do. So that's why there's that importance in the consistency in the training with the working dogs. Like, I have to create that consistent picture, and like to your point, if I consistently have them target the same area, that's what they're gonna go for, right? Now, mine people probably, you know, some trainers might think that she's shitty because she just she'll bite whatever is there, right? Whatever she gets a hold of first. With that said, she's gonna bite. If I have a sleeve on, she's gonna target the sleeve, and she's gonna hit whatever she hits, and she's gonna latch on and hold. If I have a suit on, she's going to for whatever part of that suit she gets a hold of first, which is fine. And she I will say she's a dirty bitch because like you're talking about how Cooley's never like bit you in real life situations. She has an either either in real life, but working her, she she will try to bite me sometimes when I work her, when I'm working her with no gear, because that's just as important as working her with gear. In a real life situation,

Handler Muscle Memory Under Stress

SPEAKER_01 20:20

the person's not gonna have a sleeve on, or I hope not, because if they do, then my dog's not actually really gonna bite them, it's gonna bite the suit, right? Or the sleeve. But my my favorite jacket actually has I was working her with a jacket on, which I don't usually, it was kind of cold, and I had the jacket on, and now it has teeth marks in it where she nearly missed me and she got a hold of my jacket. But like, but it's all about that that consistency in the training. Like, okay, if if that if that sleeve's there, she's gonna target that area. I know because that's consistently been how she's trained. Whereas the suit, she's gonna bite whatever's present, and I allow her that for that very reason, though. Like you said, if I always have her bite the same spot, that's where she's gonna go for. And so if that's not readily available, she's gonna end up pulling a a coolie and spinning around the decoy, coming back for that instead of just launging out and biting. And she's like I said, she's dirty. I feel like if I deployed her at somebody and they were facing her, she's probably gonna go for their face or the throat based on how she interacts with me during bite work. Like, she's uh if you don't put arms or anything up, she's she's she's launching, and that's she's probably gonna get you in the face or the throat. Like, I don't want to find out, but based on how she reacts, I would say that's probably gonna be her go to unless you put an arm up or you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Yeah, and that's so you mentioned hey, you know, some people may think that's shitty. That's actually really common in dogs that have only Been worked in prey drive or mostly worked in prey drive versus prey and defense. There's nothing wrong with it. A lot of the dogs that I've trained in prey drive solely, when we do step-ins, you have to be really careful. And in school, we would use an imaginary line. When I train people up here, I put an actual leash on the ground. So I'll say, okay, you know, get your dog ready, give them the command, we'll get the dog fired up, and I'll watch and I'll say, You plant your feet. And it it's that communication is critical because if you waver a half inch, the dog has an extra two or three inches to get closer to me. So we'll uh especially if we're working like hidden equipment, like a hidden sleeve under a hoodie or a shirt, we'll put an actual physical leash on the ground that way. Me as the decoy, I can monitor, I can watch the dog

Teaching Self Control And Association

SPEAKER_00 23:00

and also be able to tell what's going on with that handler, if that handler's moving back and forth, stuff like that. But we'll tow to that line. But dogs, especially dogs that are that are trained in prey drive, they're going to get whatever they can get first. So if you step over that line, you're you're probably getting a leg bite. Yeah. And you you really have to be cognizant of that and aware. We do we train in prey and defense for one, for that reason. Two, we want to create the scenario of handler defense, and a lot of times that's driven from defense drive. But that's why you mix up that site picture, passive bites, things like that. So, I mean, I'm not cooley's not perfect, I'm not perfect. We still have plenty of room to grow. We did a passive bite the other day, and the decoy that I was using is a green decoy. He's a good dude, and he's he's very brave to uh voluntarily get in the suit for cooley deployments. However, he was not moving his leg enough to activate that prey drive. So I targeted and I planted Cooley onto the calf. He kind of the dude kind of freaked out when he bit the calf because it's a different feeling than he was used to and sensation. So he stopped moving his leg and cooley held for a second, come off, and looked the decoy up and down, and then immediately went to the pocket and just drug him across the field because he wasn't moving. So he resorted back to that muscle memory from consistency. So that's something that, and that's why training is important because we need to see how the dog is going to react to these different scenarios. We just put a video on our TikTok the other day of Cooley deploying from a vehicle, and he had never been in that scenario before, never been in that situation. So there was mishaps. There was a couple times that he just got amped up and like auto-deployed. So me and the decoy were setting up a scenario where the dude, the decoy, was a homeless guy. I was sitting at a red light, and he starts to approach my vehicle talking shit, and I was gonna send Cooley out the window. Well, Cooley went after him like three times before I even deployed him because he's trained in handler defense, and this dude was approaching the vehicle aggressively, also because he had a full bite suit on, so he's like, Oh, I know this game, and he got excited. But once that you know, we we can't let the emotions get involved in it. So I wasn't disappointed and I wasn't mad when that happened. I learning opportunity, yeah. It's a learning opportunity for both of us. So I stopped, I corrected it, I outed him, I put him back in the truck, I watched him closer. I started watching that canine body language, looked for the precursors, and then we got it to where we could nail it down. And then when he did it successfully, he did it right. We made it a huge party and a huge deal, and he he was able to make that association. Everything we do with dogs is association. They have to say, This means this. This means that one of my clients today, there is a kid, we're actually training the dog for service work. So we were doing some DPT and some positioning, and we've already done the obedience on him. And there is one specific kid, he's he's a young teenager in the neighborhood that this dog just does not like. I don't know if something has happened, I don't know if he's ever taunted the dog or if he just gives off bad vibes. I don't know what it is. So they set it up to where the kid was walking around the back side of the fence today, so I could see the reaction. And when we went outside, I had spent the last three weeks explaining to them that when we correct, we use the word nay. We use the word nay for no, even with pet dogs. And the reason is is association and consistency. So we pair a correction with nay. If you pair a correction with no, then figuratively, in theory, every time you and your significant other get into an argument, y'all are yelling in the house, and you're like, no, you're not gonna do this. Your dog should be sitting in a corner somewhere twitching, waiting for a correction because they've made that association through consistent communication. So we use nay because at no point, I mean, unless you're just like a really pissed-off German dude or a Dutch guy, at no point are you gonna be like, Nay, you're not gonna use my debit card. No, you're not gonna do that. We don't use that, so it's an abnormal thing or abnormal word. When we went outside, every time that the dog, which of course I was monitoring response, monitoring your behavior, watching for redirection, watching for over-titration, over-stimulation. And every time that the dog would notice the kid, I would leave it be. As soon as it made a noise, it got corrected firmly and clearly with no words. What I was doing was creating the association with if I make a noise at that person, I get corrected. The reason is is because they're never, we don't want to strip the communication away because that's how dogs verbally say, get away from me, I don't like you, you make me uncomfortable. However, there's never a scenario where this kid is within physical contact of this dog. So we're not stripping that power away as a warning for the dog to communicate to us because that's just as important. But we're associate, we're making the association that if you do this, it's paired with a correction. It took about, I don't know, 12, 13 times, and that 14th time, he growled and corrected himself. And I rewarded that. Good boy.

Police K9 Shooting Case Breakdown

SPEAKER_00 29:10

So when I pop, when I when I give a pulse using compulsion, when I give a pulse on the the correction, he would stop and he would look at me. So what happened that you know that that last time, which was where we ended, we always end on a good note, is I didn't give a correction. I waited for him to make his own decision. He growled, he started to bark, he immediately stopped and he looked at me instead. So he got a huge reward for that because you're looking at me for reassurance on how to handle the situation.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Right. And see, that's honestly, that's where a lot of people will mess up during training. I see it with clients a lot, is they don't give the opportunity for the dog to make the decision. You know, we'll use like the climb command for example, you know, like the climb. We use the elevated dog bed to teach that command. And the rules of that are all four paws stay up there. I don't give a shit if you spin in circles, you want to sit down, lay down, whatever, as long as you're up there and you're quiet. Those those are the only two rules. All four paws on the climb and you're quiet. And I see clients mess it up all the time. The dog goes right to the edge of the climb and they pop them back on there. And I'm like, Well, your dog didn't even break the position yet. And you preemptively corrected them. I'm like, let them make the mistake. And I was like, Because you'll find out if you let that dog make that have that decision, and I see it all the time, you know, when they're learning, they might they'll like step one pole off and immediately jump back up. Am I gonna correct the dog for stepping that one paw off? Or am I gonna actually take advantage of that and use it as an opportunity to reward that dog? I'm gonna use it as an opportunity to reward that dog, but if I'm correcting it before it even makes the mistake, I'm not even giving it that possibility that possibility. And I was like, a lot of times you'll see like the dog will go right up to the edge, and then they think about it and they're like, oh, and so were you just corrected the dog, I actually would have rewarded it, you know. But again, that's that's consistency. I the dog is consistently allowed to make a decision. If you make the right decision, it's rewarded. If you make the wrong decision, it's corrected. So then they start to think about what what they're doing. But if I correct them preemptively, I'm taking away that possibility and kind of damaging that that thought process for the dog. You know, I use so we we use we use no. But again, it's we we proof all of these commands, right? And to your point, like, yeah, you're you're you're yelling if you're yelling no at somebody else, like theoretically your dog should be like, oh shit. But the way we use the e-collar is primarily as communication. So anytime I'm talking to my dog, I'm tapping the e-collar. So that way the dog knows that I'm talking to it. And a lot of that is we deal with a lot of reactive dogs or dogs with behavioral issues. And if they're fixating on another dog or a person or it's a fearful dog and they're just overwhelmed, I could tell them a command 17 times and they probably didn't hear me any of them, right? So it's a way for me to get through. It's like me tapping you on the shoulder, like, hey, bud, I want your attention. And like if you're hyper-fixating on something, you probably don't hear a word I'm saying. So I might have to tap you on the shoulder. Sometimes it might be a little tap, sometimes it might be a little harder, depending on how hard you're concentrating. It's the same with the dog. So then they learn to associate. Oh, there's that tap that comes along with the commands, because I might say use the word free in in in conversation. I might say sit in normal conversation or down and and know, right? Like I might use those words in normal conversation. Those are normal words that people use. Uh, just because I say that word doesn't mean that I'm talking to you, the the dog, that's associated with that tap from the e-collar letting you know, hey, free, which is our release command. Or, you know, come. That's another one. Like that's the word we use for recall, come. Well, I use come all the time. Hey, come over here. Just because I say come here doesn't mean I'm talking to the dog. I can be talking to you. The dog knows it because I say come paired with that tap from the E-collar, letting him know that, hey, I want you to come over here, right? Again, but that's all consistency. I kind of want to talk to you a little more about like the behavioral aspect, because again, a lot of what we do is behavior modification. If I want to change those negative behaviors that we like we were talking about, are caused by consistent responses from people. What do I have to do? I have to consistently train the opposite. So a dog that's underconfident, scared of people, what do I have to do? I have to consistently create positive associations with people or other dogs, and I have to build that up over and over again, along with consistently correcting the bad behavior or not necessarily bad behavior, the unwanted behavior. So I pair that unwanted behavior with a correction consistently, create these good situations consistently, so that I rewire and reframe that dog's way of thinking, whether it's about people or dogs or you know, fear. If it's scared of this stuff, I gotta create those consistent good associations. So it's like, oh, that's nothing to be afraid of, and build that confidence up. So consistency is key to every aspect of dog training. I feel, I feel like that's man, I I I I think we pretty well covered consistency pretty well. Yeah, I agree. The the biggest takeaway from this is consistency is key. And you know, we talk about we have three fundamentals for dog training. I'm sure you probably do as well: timing, motivation, and consistency. And every time I'm working with a new trainer, I always ask them which one's the most most important. And there's not a right or wrong answer, they're all the fundamentals because they're all important. But I'll ask them which one do you think is most important? For me personally, I think it's consistency because timing deals with consistency. I have to be consistent with my timing. If my timing is off, it impacts my consistency. Everything kind of impacts the consistency. The same with motivation. If I don't bring the right consistently bring the right motivation, then the training is off. So to me personally, consistency is the biggest aspect of dog training. It's the biggest way to mess your dog up, or the biggest way to build your dog up. Correct. So we'll transition into the second part of our of our podcast where we break down a news article. This one is from it's from 2025, so it's it's not brand new, but it was a really interesting one. Bears mentioning. Uh, so this one came out of Martinsville, Indiana. I feel like our last one came out of Indiana, too. I don't know what's going on up there with them and canines, but this one in particular, this department, they had a canine. It unfortunately passed away. They got another canine. This one was a was it a lab or a retriever, one of the few golden retriever.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

They've been retriever being reactive.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

Yeah, and and so the dog ended it up, you know, it wasn't really a good fit for this department and what they needed. It was reactive towards started being reactive towards kids and people and dogs. And one point it actually attacked somebody else's dog, and the handler shot the dog to death, in their words, and then she proceeded to bury the dog, and she did report it immediately to her supervisor. They didn't really do anything about it right up front. They let her come to work and then they decided to launch an investigation, and probably should follow up on what's happened with that with that case. But they did launch an investigation. And in Indiana, a canine officer is treated the same as a police officer. If you you know injure or kill a canine, it is the same punishment as injuring or killing a human officer. So there's that dilemma with it. I I'll let you go first on your takes about that situation, man.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

Yeah, so it's that was a real interesting decision path. Even in a state that the the canine's not protected as an officer, there's a few states, mainly down south. For example, I know Georgia and I think I think Alabama and probably North Carolina too. If you have your own canine, um, some departments, especially smaller departments, will allow you if you're certified, they will allow you to utilize your canine as a canine handler. But aside from like unique circumstances like that, this is in Indiana. I know for a fact Indiana doesn't let you do that.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

So oh, they did say that after the the first canine passed, there was actually a huge fundraiser to help the department get the money. So I think that's an important part that I missed out is this was the property of the department, basically. Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

So so I mean, at that, if you know, so even in a state that the the dog's not viewed as an officer, okay, we'll view it as a tool or an item. So if you're driving around and you're the transmission in your patrol car goes out, do you just take it to the scrapyard and sign the title over to them? You're like, all right, well, screw that, I'll just go get another car. No, it doesn't work that way. That it doesn't belong to you. You can't just do whatever the fuck you want with it. So, with that being said, I mean, no matter how you look at it, it was it was improper. But to like willingly choose and make your own decision to shoot the dog and then tamper with the evidence by disposing of the evidence is a whole nother issue. And uh, there was a follow-up on the on the article, I think, up towards the top, and it said that the uh county attorney decided not to press charges. I I'm imagining that was a part of a either a hush deal or a plea agreement where the officer is no longer an officer and probably had their certification revoked in the state, which is I mean, that would be the absolute minimum from what I would imagine. I when we work with police dogs, one of the biggest things that we emphasize, because there's still some, I'm not gonna say who it is, but there are some very large police dog vendors that are still very, very stuck in the old ways.

unknown 40:52

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

And they're like raw aggression, that's what you need out of a patrol dog. Listen, Cooley has proven himself to be able to do everything that a patrol dog is required to do. Tracking, article search, narcotics detection, apprehension. Doesn't matter, he can do it. He can also go to a daycare and roll around on the floor and be loved on by kids. I can take him to do a demo at a school. I take him to do searches at the schools where we're surrounded by children. We search in elementary school. So I've got little kids that are

Duty Of Care For K9 Teams

SPEAKER_00 41:30

just running around screaming, and he has to be able to handle all that. If you don't have the most important part of a social dog or a police dog, is having a social dog. So if your dog is animal reactive, it's not it's not cut out to be a police dog.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

Well, kind of like too, we talked about on that other one, right? Like where that dog, that little dog was pestering that police dog. How I mean that dog was initiating it and distracting that canine, but it's this would be like the opposite. You know, if your dog, that dog is dog reactive, then how is it supposed to do its job? And and I'm assuming since it was golden retriever, that it probably was only for most likely narcotics. How is it supposed to conduct a narcotic search if it's if it's so focused on on other dogs? You can't do your job appropriately if you're focused on other things.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

Yeah, exactly. I mean, that and that's uh that's a whole nother situation. So imagine imagine that one that we covered where the dude punted that little little shihtzu across the parking lot or the yorky or whatever it was. That dog did very well to stay focused on task and to continue to do its duty. So, I mean, I agree with you. Usually, from from what I've seen, retrievers, when they're put into a law enforcement capacity, they're either a single or dual purpose. So it's either tracking and detection or just detection. So when that happens, you you can't, but what if you pull someone over that has a dog with them and you have to have them and the animal exit the vehicle so you can do an open-air sniff of the vehicle? Your dog's not gonna focus on the search because there's another dog within sight. So that was a failure on the agency's department. Whoever headed that up and was like, yeah, we'll take that dog, that was a complete and utter failure. They they set that up for failure from from the get-go, but the response reaction from that officer is also 110% unacceptable. Whether you look at it from if they if that I don't understand how there weren't charges pressed if police canines are regarded as officers or equal to human officers, that should have been a murder charge.

SPEAKER_01 43:54

Oh, yeah. And you know, like that that's my biggest thing is like thinking about the Because I'm I'm a troubleshooter and I like to think about the process behind things. And so my mind is like, what's what is the train of thought and process that led you to that? Because, you know, if the dog is attacking another dog, take away its air, you know, grab its collar, choke it off of that other dog. Why did you jump to the most extreme reaction possible? And then the other way I look at it is, you know, having lost my service dog and training a new one, there's that you have to avoid that natural, you know, train of thought. Well, my old my old dog wouldn't have done this, or my my old dog would have done this better and such forth. And so you could see where I could see where having that first dog, who was probably stellar, and then having this dog that's subpar could create frustration for that officer. But even then, like how did you come to that rational or irrational line of thinking to just shoot the dog? One, it's department property, and and I love the way you said it. You like tamper with the evidence. So you took it out and buried it. You didn't even take it to them. You hit that tells me that there's something else that would transpired. Things probably didn't go as reported. But again, yeah, the the failure on the department, I think that's a that's a huge part that needs to be taken into consideration, and that might be part of why there weren't charges pressed, is because the department failed to boot that dog from the program, and and they basically disregarded these warning signs that this dog is not a good fit and just tried to push it through. That's that's a failure on the department, but that even then that still doesn't make the actions of the officer uh uh right or appropriate at all.

SPEAKER_00 46:04

Yeah, and and kind of like you said, part of being a handler, we've touched on like maintenance training and education, stuff like that. You know, a lot of departments require an in-service every year, and it's a specific number of hours, and then specialty units usually require a little bit more maintenance training, the field standard 16 hours a month. And we we've already covered that in depth. It's not enough. But to look at it, it's like you have a responsibility. So you carry a weapon at work every day. It's your responsibility to make sure that you are proficient with your firearm. Just like if you are issued a canine, it's your responsibility to make sure that you are proficient in tasks and drills that are required to upkeep, maintain that equipment and that team safely. If you don't know how to safely remove a dog from a situation like that, like you said, pinch off the collar, get that high blood choke, get the dog off, use a bite bar, use a breaker bar. If you don't know how to do that stuff, then you you don't really need to be, you're not putting in the time and the effort that somebody else probably would, who may have been able to work with a dog in a better capacity. Maybe not that dog, because like we've determined that was a bad setup from the get-go, anyways. But you know, that's like saying, Well, I'm a I'm a police officer, not a medic. So when your dog goes chasing after a suspect and and gets a fracture, you don't know how to field splint it and then litter it back to your vehicle so you can go seek proper veterinary care. That's your responsibility. Like you need to know how to do that shit. And if you don't, you failed yourself and you failed your team and you failed your department, and in turn, you failed your community. You were assigned a task, you volunteered for that task because most people, most departments don't just wake up and be like, Hey, Smitty, you're the new canine dude. Congratulations. Usually there's an application process, and people put in for that. So if you're gonna put in for that drive, you need to you need to measure up to the task.

SPEAKER_01 48:24

Yeah, I I I like the fact that you brought up you failed your community because you know that was part of it, is the community raised the money so that the department could get that dog. You really failed the community. Honestly, the department failed the community as well with the dog. But another aspect of it that I kind of popped into my brain while you were talking is she shot the dog to death while it was attacking another dog. So you jeopardized the life of somebody else's dog to do so? Either your train of thought is very fucked up.

SPEAKER_00 49:00

Do you have the critical thinking ability to hold the position of a law enforcement officer? Right.

SPEAKER_01 49:07

Like you really what were you thinking? Like, were you thinking? Like, or it didn't actually go the way that it was said. Those those are kind of the two options. Either you lack critical thinking skills, or it didn't actually go down the way you said it went down. But yeah, man, an uh failure. I guess the best way to sum this up by the department and that handler. But on that note, thank you guys for tuning in to another episode

Closing Thoughts And Sign Off

SPEAKER_01 49:40

of the Talk Shit Get Bit Podcast. We hope to see you back next time.