0233: Eric Gilbert, The KC Dog Guy

Eric Gilbert, The KC Dog Guy, shares his insight on dog training and we talk about when he used to hang out with our dog Peaches before we even knew her.

The KC Dog Guy online:
Facebook
YouTube

Also check out his colleague Robin Greubel at K9Sensus.org.

Eric’s archival Peaches footage:
Noodles, Peaches, Jester, Otter and friends
Peaches: Young at heart!

Celebrate 5 years of Rosie Fund by supporting our campaign to sponsor 50 dogs. You can donate at RosieFund.org or through our Facebook page. You can contribute by making a purchase from the store on our website or buying a t-shirt at Bonfire.com. Also check out our page on BarkYours, the online mall with gifts for people who love their dogs.

Music for this episode is provided by alternative string duo, The Wires. Visit them at TheWires.info. Learn fiddle and cello-fiddle online — even if you've never played before — from Laurel Morgan Parks and Sascha Groshang at FiddleLife.com. Join The Wires as they explore new music on their show Sound Currents.

The transcript for this episode is available on the Dog Words Buzzsprout page: Buzzsprout.com/840565.

Make a donation at RosieFund.org or through our Facebook page. You can contribute by making a purchase from the store on our website or buying a t-shirt at Bonfire.com. Also check out our page on BarkYours, the online mall with gifts for people who love their dogs.

Rosie Fund online:
RosieFund.org
Facebook.com/rosiefund
Instagram.com/rosiefund
YouTube.com/rosiefund

Transcript

ERIC  0:04 
We should look at our pet dogs as a working dog because they're given the most amateur handlers. No offense people, but we all are. And then they're given a daily routine that changes almost all the time and we have high expectations and low training.

PHIL   0:22 
I'm Phil Hatterman and this is Dog Words presented by Rosie Fund.

Today Eric Gilbert, The KC Dog Guy shares his insight on dog training and we talk about when he used to hang out with our dog Peaches before we even knew her.]

If you're new to Dog Words, in each episode, we explore the world of dog care and companionship. "We save each other," is the motto of Rosie Fund, which simply means the more we do for dogs, the more they do for us. And they already do a lot.

If you love dogs, you'll love Dog Words. We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Go to the podcast page at RosieFund.org to share your thoughts. Please download, follow, rate, and most importantly, share Dog Words.

Celebrate five years of Rosie Fund by supporting our campaign to sponsor 50 dogs. You can donate on our website or Facebook page. You can also contribute by making a purchase from the store on our website, buying a t-shirt at Bonfire.com, or buying our note cards and shirts on BarkYours.com. Links are in the description. Your donations and purchases help fund the Rosie Life Starter Kits that make sure these senior and harder-to-adopt dogs have some of the items they'll need in their forever home.

Please follow Rosie Fund on social media. Subscribe to the free Rosie Fund YouTube channel that offers great videos of Rosie, Peaches, and shelter dogs, including some exclusive content like the sweet KC Pet Project dog featured in our latest post.

Next time on Dog Words, Executive Director of the Nashville Humane Association Laura Baker discusses animal welfare in one of the nation's fastest growing cities.

The mission of Rosie Fund is to provide humans with the resources and education they need to give senior and harder-to-adopt dogs a better life. Thank you for joining our mission.

Today I get to say something I don't often get to say. "Joined in studio!" Actually getting the look across the console and see my guest's face to face. I have KC dog Guy Eric Gilbert. Welcome to Dog Words, Eric.

ERIC  2:26 
Hey, thank you for having me here. I'm excited to talk today. You know, the one thing people will tell you is, "Eric likes to talk dog." So I am just super excited. Even more excited to meet Peaches today. Oh!

PHIL   2:40 
It was so beautiful when you came to the door and she reacted the way she reacts when anybody comes to the door, which is letting us know there's company. As soon as she stepped out and started sniffing you that tail was just going nuts. It's like, " Where have you been the last five years, Eric?"

ERIC  2:58 
"What is that scent? What is that scent?" Like we talked about. You know, I don't ever put my hand down anymore to let dogs sniff. That's kind of a passé way of having dogs meet you. And I knew that I was going to be meeting Peaches again today. So I just stood there because what a lot of people don't realize is that especially with an older dog that can't maybe see well, or hear real well, scent is the one thing they're going to remember the past with. And that's why whenever I meet old client dogs, or old shelter dogs who I know I've spent a lot of time with, I just stand there and wait. And then as soon as they start smelling me, I know those memories are gonna come rolling back. And 99% of the time, it's what I get. And I love it. That's wonderful about dogs.

PHIL   3:41 
Yeah, she did her once over and then the twice over and then turned around and led you into the house and did her howling to let you know she had thoughts which is kind of her thing.

ERIC  3:52 
I love, I love her talking. I love the old dog talk. "I can't hear much but I'm gonna talk!"

PHIL   3:57 
And then, "Eric, here's my belly!" She is—and I've talked about this a lot on the show— when someone comes like to service the furnace or anything like that, that I always ask them before I open the door, "Are you okay with dogs?" Invariably they say, "Yes." Some with a little less confidence than others. She'll step out and do her sniff. And with you, it's like, "I know this guy." She was so excited to come in. With these people that she's meeting for the first time, she'll come in, wait for them to follow, and then she'll go get them a toy.

ERIC  4:33 
Oh, how nice! I love that.

PHIL   4:35 
She'll pull a toy out of her basket. Here's Star Chop, Baby Chop. We have lots of variations of lamb chop. Will show off her toy. With you,  no toys. Just, "I'm ready to go. Let's, let's catch up, Eric." Let me tell folks how we found you.

Unknown Speaker  4:52 
Okay.

PHIL   4:53 
In my YouTube feed, a recommended video is Peaches and then names of several other dogs playing. It's like, "Oh, what a coincidence. A dog named Peaches." And but I can see from the thumbnail, "This looks a lot like the playgroup area at the old KC Pet Project."

ERIC  5:12 
Absolutely.

PHIL   5:14 
And then I noticed how long ago the video was posted. "Well, that's about the time Peaches would have been at Main."

ERIC  5:22 
And what year was that?

PHIL   5:23 
It was the end of 2015.

ERIC  5:27 
Okay.

PHIL   5:28 
So November 2015. We adopted her from the Zona Rosa location. So she wasn't even at Main for more than just a few weeks before they sent her up to Zona Rosa. Maybe a month at Main.

ERIC  5:42 
Yep.

PHIL   5:43 
So I thought, "Well, this is the timeframe she would have been there."

We watched this video—which I will put a link to that in the description of this episode—and you immediately know that's Peaches. Just the body language and mannerisms. That's her.

ERIC  5:58 
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. As soon as you said, you said, "You remember Peaches?" I's like, "Yeah!" And I actually think she was one of our tester dogs. She was the dog, because she was even older then, she was five or six years-old.

PHIL   6:11 
Yeah, she was other than most of the...

ERIC  6:12 
Yeah, whenever you do play groups, you always have a group of tester dogs. At that time we were using the pretty janky playgroup outside yards that the old shelter had. And it was fun, but yet it was, you know, the way they were designed, they weren't designed the best but...

PHIL   6:27 
Yeah, for people who've never been there, it was rows of cyclone fence pens.

ERIC  6:33 
Yes.

PHIL   6:33 
With artificial turf.

ERIC  6:33 
Yep, under a bunch of trees.

PHIL   6:38 
So you would— So it was kind of damp and but it was shaded.

ERIC  6:41 
Yeah, it was shaded and that's why we put them there. And when Theresa and those guys first took over Kansas City Pet Project, and Shannon Wells was there, they needed somebody to help with playgroups. And at that time the playgroups weren't as structured but I had done play groups for over 10 years over at Wayside Waifs. So I helped design their playgroup program at the time when really back in '02 people didn't really do dog to dog play groups in shelters because they thought, "Oh, my God, you'll pass diseases. Oh, my God, you'll..."

Fights will break out!

"Fights will break out! Oh, my God! What would we do?" All we have to do is walks. Well, Courtney over at Wayside Waifs allowed me to do that. And that's where I started breaking my paws on doing playgroups over there. Learned a lot. Learned some wrong ways to do it. And then I helped Pet Project when they weren't as organized with their playgroups start to do some playgroups over there. And that's where I met Peaches. And you wanted a dog like Peaches, an older dog who had some dog skills that you could use her to help you read another dog.

There's a couple of videos, I'll link to both of them. But the one in particular, there's four or five dogs in there. They're all a little bigger than her. She's not intimidated at all. She's never intimidated by any dog. She'll be in awe of a dog, particularly big dogs, like sometimes Great Danes or Bullmastiffs. Her jaw just kind of hangs open that she's fascinated by them for some reason. You wonder about...

Hey there, big guy.

PHIL   8:06 
Yeah. You wonder what was her previous life. Did she have like a dog, buddy, that was a big dog? And she's wondering, "Whatever happened to him?" But these dogs you can tell are kind of getting to know each other. They're swarming around. And she just kind of marches in between dogs and next to dogs like she's sizing them up. And I'm anthropomorphizing here, but letting them know, these are the rules.

ERIC  8:32 
You know, and again, some of this is science. Some of this is my own observations. So what I observed is dogs who walk in, and if they're really tight, that shows that they're nervous. A lot of dogs who are real comfortable know that if I walk into a group of dogs, and I don't just stand still, and let them sniff me, it's probably safer to do it that way. So a lot of dogs who are probably confident like her will come into a play yard of multiple dogs, which is scary for a lot of dogs. And instead of being defensive, she'll just stand, let them all sniff her. You might see a little bit of a rattlesnake wag from her tail, just real light. As long as the rest of her body language is comfortable, you'll notice that they all kind of sniffed her, let her know...

PHIL   9:12 
Yeah, she would just charge into the group and then stop.

ERIC  9:14 
Yep.

PHIL   9:15 
I'm here.

ERIC  9:15 
Yep. Yeah, because even a dog knows if you rush into a pack of five other dogs and you're not gonna win if you're being a complete jerk to all the other dogs there.

PHIL   9:25 
And that's not the energy you want to bring to a group of dogs already excited. "I'm going to rush in!" That's going to escalate things and you see that so many times at the dog park.

ERIC  9:34 
Yes.

PHIL   9:34 
Where dogs are getting maybe a little too rough in their play. And at Bar K, they do a great job with their dogtenders knowing, "I'm not gonna add to the energy." That they'll have a, like a noisemaker to distract them. But if they need to get in between the dogs, and some are better at it than others. But...

ERIC  9:55 
I was gonna say that's anybody who does play groups, that'll be a touchy subject. And I understand why Bar...

PHIL   10:00 
My favorite dogtenders are the ones who aren't yelling. They just step in and break it up.

ERIC  10:05 
I was gonna say, you can't...

PHIL   10:06 
And it's the dog owners who are panicking and screaming and adding to the chaos. Drives me nuts.

ERIC  10:12 
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'll go to a dog park and I'll just step back and watch the owners start to get upset at the dogs and the dogs then get upset. I learned that when I first started putting playgroups together. And I'll admit when I first started putting playgroups together in a fight would break out I'd have too much energy. And then one of my really good friends who's one of the best at putting shelter dog playgroups together, Matt over at Kansas City Pet Project, just showed me the more energy you put into breaking up a dog altercation, it's just gonna add to it. You have to come in and read the situation. And 99% of the time it takes very little energy to dissuade the dogs from having a fight or anything that's gonna be damaging. Because the first thing that a lot of amateur people do is they go in and try to grab the dogs. And what happens? The humans get bit. Once a dog bites a human, that's not a very good future for that dog even though it was a redirected bite. We're soft. We're cushy. Our skin breaks open easy. So people say, "Well, how do you get better at playgroups? How do you get better at breaking up dog fights?" I said, "Unfortunately experience and learning how to do it the right way how to do it the wrong way."

PHIL   11:17 
Yeah, people want what's the magic word? What's the magic move? And they'll watch dog behaviorists on TV. Some who are more reputable than others.

ERIC  11:28 
Or go to YouTube and learn how to not...

PHIL   11:30 
Oh, this is what you got to do. We want we want shortcuts.

ERIC  11:34 
Yeah. And sometimes it's...

PHIL   11:35 
And with everything. It's like, you know, how can I learn to play the guitar? By playing the guitar.

ERIC  11:41 
Yes, yes.

PHIL   11:42 
What's the best fingering? What's the one chord I have to know? What can I...? Ya gotta just sit down and play.

Stairway to Heaven. Stairway to Heaven is what everybody learns. And they do it over and over and over.

You gotta build up those calluses. Get experience. Just like with any sport. You gotta play the sport. That's the only way you can get a feel for it. Same way with interacting with dogs or interacting with people. You get the experience. Before we started recording, you were talking about looking at videos that you've shot of playgroups.

ERIC  12:12 
Yes. Years ago I started filming dog playgroups at Wayside Waifs just to get more exposure. Because before dog playgroups at a shelter, we would do a dog to dog the day the person brought your dog in and we take a dog out of the kennel. And we try to do a dog to dog with them. And it's like, well, we haven't put them with the shelter dogs. What do we know about them? So I put these dog videos together. And I would just sit cameras up and just film, film, film. Well, I found out, one is takes a long time to edit a three minute dog video.

PHIL   12:44 
Absolutely.

ERIC  12:44 
Absolutely. It was just amazing. So I had to slow down my videos, frame by frame, to try to piece together dogs playing and piecing together the ones that would make the dogs look the best. And what I started finding out is when I slow these videos down, if anybody's ever read anything by Malcolm McDowell and it's a...

PHIL   13:03 
Malcolm Gladwell Blink.

ERIC  13:04 
Blink, exactly. He talks about thin slicing...

PHIL   13:07 
I'm pointing across the studio to where it is on my bookshelf.

ERIC  13:10 
Uh huh. And a good friend of mine said, "How do you know what dogs to put together?" Well, after slowing down the video for so many years, I tell people I said when I was doing playgroups a lot, I said I could see things unfolding in slow motion because I saw it being done in slow motion on video over and over and over and subconsciously, your brain starts to see that. So I would look at micro behaviors that I didn't know I was looking at in dogs that I would then put together. Now sometimes you still put dogs together and go, "That didn't work out well. Crap." So you're trying to break them apart safely and to a lot of people who do playgroups now, I did these playgroups by myself back in the early 2000s because Dogs Playing for Life by Amy Sadler wasn't popular. She has a great program. But again, I was just kind of a dope learning it on my own back then. But slowing the videos down I always tell people when I work with my clients, I said, videotape your dogs at home during COVID. I guess we're still in COVID. But I would have people Zoom feed their dogs to me because when I come into the environment, I change the environment. Changing the environment changes the dog's behavior. So videotaping for me...

You become an observer participant that impacts the study.

Oh yeah, the dog never acts, either acts better or extremely worse. If I have a stranger danger dog I can't walk into a house with a stranger danger dog and really do much with the people and the dogs because the dogs already what we call above threshold. Like when you talked about Rosie that helped you create Dog Words that sometimes Rosie would see a dog from a block away and start barking. Well, anything closer than a block, Rosie's going above threshold. So when I work stranger danger dogs, a lot of times I'll have them show me video of the dog just with them. And then we can start working about. But yeah, the videos are what helped me learn dog behavior and then of course, I supplement it with lots of readings, seminars, and all that.

PHIL   15:02 
But yeah, in Blink, Malcolm Gladwell talks about thin slicing. And one of the examples he gives is of an old tennis coach who would watch someone serve and would know immediately is that gonna to be a net serve is that going to be in and then realized, "I'm really good at this." And so he started with mark down on a notepad, a little tick mark in one column or the other, as soon as the tennis player would toss the ball. Before they even made contact...

ERIC  15:34 
Yep.

PHIL   15:34 
...the racket on their serve. And almost invariably he was right. But it was because of thousands of hours of watching people toss a ball and seeing the result that his brain had connected the dots. That it knows if your feet are off just a little bit, or if your shoulders are turned this way, or if your grip is, and put all that together without even knowing what you're looking at. He didn't know what the variables were. Is it the feet? Is it the hands? Is it the combination? But just that experience turns into being able to make that blink assessment. When you're working dog playgroups, you need to be able to make a blink assessment. You can't just, "Oh, let's see how this plays out. There at each other."

ERIC  16:22 
Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

PHIL   16:24 
So, but the only way you get there is with experience. And, yeah, there's gonna be some times where dogs get nipped. And where you get nipped. Or worse.

ERIC  16:29 
Oh, you'll have times when things go—no, we have times when dogs get tied up really hard. And then that's when people ask me, you know, what do you do when two dogs are tied up, or it's a serious fight. Most issues in dog playgroups are, like you said, that I don't like you my personal space, you've put the wrong personalities together. But then you do get dogs who are horribly bad. These are the high prey drive. If I get in a fight, I will kill the other dog. And those are the fights you hate breaking up, because you already know by the time you have to reach in and—I call restraining it. But unless you've broke up fights like this, that you're the human running on adrenaline, but you also have to realize now that you have one dog that's probably very serious. If you have two dogs that are very serious, it changes it. But basically, you go into these modes where you hope the hell that your person helping you is as experienced as you are to do that, because as soon as those dogs let go to each other, there's a good chance they're going to redirect on you. And those are the scariest fights in the world. I've worked with Matt and some other handlers to deal with those kinds of dogs. Not as much as I would like to the past three or four years. But those are the ones that after you get done, you're just happy and lucky that nobody else got hurt. But unfortunately, those are the high damage fights that people only seem to remember. Every owner fears the fight. You had a dog aggressive dog. So you understand that. That when people have dogs meet on leash, you can tell that they fear the fight because both owners are at the end of their six foot lead and the dogs are as far as away as they can. We're trying to avoid the conflict. But at the same time, we're screwing up the dog to dog introduction.

PHIL   18:04 
Yeah, when I'm walking Peaches, obviously on a leash, and you meet someone else on a leash who says, "Oh, can we meet?" I would rather you follow me back to our yard where we can drop the leash and let them meet. Because most people I don't trust their energy on the leash.

ERIC  18:23 
Oh, I hate leash to leash meetings with strangers. That's one of the big thing I teach my clients how to meet dogs on leash and we practice that in my to be classes coming up on my private classes.

PHIL   18:32 
Because it doesn't matter how good I am on the leash.

ERIC  18:34 
No, no.

PHIL   18:35 
If they're not good on the leash.

ERIC  18:37 
Nope. Nope. I've actually taken leashes from somebody else and just hold both leashes and let the dogs meet. You know the biggest pet peeve most owners have when they're walking the dog is, "Why I can't believe Bob the neighbor let his dog out the door off leash and it ran up to my dog on leash. Argh!" You know, that's the greatest bane even though I tell people I said, "Someday your leash will break. Someday, your dog will rush out the front and you'll be the a-hole neighbor that let your dog off leash to meet somebody else's dog on lead." And they said, "Well, what do you do with your dogs and a strange dog rushes up to your dogs and you have mine leash, what do you do?" I drop the leash. My dog won't run away. And I trust my dogs a lot more to meet this dog on lead. And then again with my background, if they get in a fight, I'll grab the offending dog. And my dogs will click off. All I have to do is tell my dogs, but again, I put a lot of foundational training in on those. But that's what I tell people I said, "You know, everybody trains for kind of this Pollyanna utopia world that we live in." And if you go out to my Facebook feed or anything or ever hear me talk more...

PHIL   19:36 
Which will be linked in the description.

ERIC  19:37 
Absolutely. You'll hear me go, "You gotta train for when crap happens." That's not exactly what I say. But, ya gotta train for when crap happens. And that's when your dog training comes into play. How do you handle the emergencies? How do you handle the dog that's running away? Or unfortunately, if you're walking a dog and another dog who literally does want to hurt you guys comes up? That's where we have to give our dogs that foundational training. Sit down. Stay. Doesn't do crap for that. And that's what we always focus on. So like I said, I'm a big one, as you see with my shirt says, "Build trust, not fear." Mine's about the relationship with the dog and making sure that the dog has foundation work for us. But also can think and work on their own.

PHIL   20:18 
We tried to work Rosie into play groups, and get her socialized, and it wasn't clicking. And it might have been we just weren't with the right trainers or she was just locked in where she was.

ERIC  20:34 
That happens. That happens. Yeah.

PHIL   20:34 
And we decided, so yeah, and so we decided this is her life.We will isolate her from other dogs. And she's gonna have the best life with us that any dog could have. We were fine with that. With Peaches, she's a very social dog. We can take her anywhere. And there are people who have the same goals for their dogs. But don't lay that foundation. We were fortunate that Peaches pretty much out of the box we didn't have to...

ERIC  21:01 
Oh, yeah.

PHIL   21:02 
...teacher anything.

ERIC  21:03 
Oh, yeah.

PHIL   21:03 
If anything, she taught us.

ERIC  21:04 
Yeah, you didn't have time to screw her up. Somebody else did a better job.

PHIL   21:06 
Yeah. So yeah, she was she was a great, great dog. Is a great dog. But the person you described who's so concerned about their neighbor whose dog gets off leash and what's that gonna do with my dog. If you're going to live a lifestyle where your dog is going to be interacting with other dogs, you have a responsibility either to train them yourselves or find someone. And that's why you describing how you got better is so important. 'Cause it's not just someone who likes dogs. You need to be, whether you're a professional trainer or just training your dog on your own. Someone who's had the right experience with dogs. If your only experience with dogs has been, yeah, they've just been well-behaved. They've been great on the leash. And so I'm gonna train this one. Well, then you don't know how to respond to an emergency.

ERIC  21:58 
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'll give a great example, I decided to try something back in, oh 2010, 2013, I decided to take my three year-old Akita and tried to do search and rescue with her. And I still keep in contact with a lot of those folks I met during those three years of search and rescue. And they all laughed. They said, "It's not the right dog." And she was good. But she wasn't great. But what I learned that what working dog handlers do—and this is from narcotics, cadaver dogs, police dogs, I met all sorts of these people over my three years, and I still follow all these people—what I learned is, they work on foundation. And again, you think about a working dog. The dog isn't always attached to the handler. The dog has to learn to do the job. But the dog is also, they focus on so much foundation work before they ever focus on the search work. And it was just one of those things that I realized that one of my dog friends that, and again, a great site, go to K9Sensus, follow Robin, but she talks about her goal is to make a versatile dog that can adapt to any situation, any environment. Because as a working dog, you have to. You can't say, "Oh, it's rainy today. I don't want to go look for narcotics. Oh, it's raining today. I I can't search for that lost person."

PHIL   23:16 
Yeah. "Oh, they're in the forest? I'm not good with forests."

ERIC  23:19 
"I'm not gonna do that today." And then what I realized is that the most difficult working dog in the world is our freakin' family pet. A working dog knows exactly what they need to do. They have a handler who knows exactly, for the most part, how to train 'em. A lot of handlers would say, "I'm still just a dope on the rope." But that's when I realized that we should look at our pet dogs as a working dog because they're given the most amateur handlers, no offense people, but we all are. And then they're given a daily routine that changes almost all the time and we have high expectations and low training. And one of the examples was that I got mega respect from the training people because they said Jade was the best Akita they ever met. But one day, we were at a seminar and they said, "Okay, that guy's police dog is nuts. If he gets out, he will attack your dog." I'm like, okay, good to know. I'm getting Jade out to go work. Guess which dog gets out of the kennel and away from the police handler. And all these handlers are like, "Holy crap, he's out!" And I have my Akita, Jade, getting out of the kennel and this dog comes rushing up, this police dog comes rushing up and what do I do? They said, "What would you do if a dog rushed up, Eric?"

"Drop my leash." I dropped my leash. Jade met the police dog. Defuses the situation like Peaches did. And it gave us all enough time for the handler to grab his police dog, me to call Jade back. And it was gonna be a nasty fight. But because Jade defused it and gave me that 30 to 60 second buffer to defuse it. That's the foundation that I built.

PHIL   24:59 
Jade had that foundation. So Jade, not a good search and rescue dog? But she had...

ERIC  25:07 
No. But she could do water cadaver awesome. That's the one thing everybody laughed about. She's a great water cadaver dog.

PHIL   25:14 
So, her niche. But she had the foundational skills that she could adapt to that situation.

ERIC  25:19 
Yes. Yes. And that's the one thing that the search and rescue folks said that they said they don't do a lot of dog to dog work because you work on pretty hot dogs. The dogs have to be dog neutral, meaning if there's four dogs in a search area working and a lot of times they're off leash, they'll give the dog spaces, but those dogs have to be dog neutral. They say, "I have a job to do. Oh, there's a dog, but I have a job to do." And that's kind of what I started changing my philosophy in dog training to focus on is that I look at every pet as a working dog. It's just that the job description varies day by day, and you have a manager that doesn't tell you really what is expected. You think about it, you know, it's like you get a puppy and it's, "Well it's supposed to be good with the kids. Why's the puppy bite the kids? Or why is it just run away? It should just stay with us."

PHIL   26:03 
It's hard to set boundaries and discipline a puppy because they're so adorable and they'll grow out of their puppy phase.

ERIC  26:12 
Then they'll grow out of their puppy phase into an obnoxious dog that you've never set the patterns for.

PHIL   26:17 
But if you invest the time as a puppy and socialize them and expose them to a vacuum cleaner.

ERIC  26:26 
Within reason. And again, that's one thing that, you know, we're kind of going down that road is people always tell me in shelter, "It's not the breed. It's how you raise 'em." I'm like, "No. Genetics plays a lot into it." I won't go into bully breed versus Dobermans versus Malinois versus Labs. Let's just say that dogs are born with a particular temperament. A study in the 1800s with a hunting dog called Allegheny Sue. Allegheny Sue was a hunting dog that was completely phobic. Could barely move. And she happened to be bred. 80% of her offspring had that phobic genetics. Meaning they were almost catatonic. They couldn't hardly be worked with their handler. That's how scared they were. So unfortunately, when we do look at dogs, there's only so much your dog's genetic potential can be brought out. Jade was an Akita. I should have kept her in more tracking because they were originally bred to track bears for hunting. I'm not going to take a bloodhound and make it into a border collie. Okay. So it is a lot of recognizing our dog's temperament. Like Rosie. Rosie might have just been a puppy who she had, okay, genetics, given a crappy life. Until you got her. Peaches happened to be a great, maybe a little bit better genetically, temperament-wise, and given an okay life, but a great dog. So I always tell people, I said, "You can't make a bad dog that has genetics against them great dog. Pobably given a perfect life, you make them a good dog." But like a Peaches, you probably couldn't have made her a bad dog.

PHIL   28:02 
Yeah.

ERIC  28:03 
You could have made her an okay dog. But because of her genetics, and just who she is as a dog who could recover. And that's again, that's my own philosophy. But I've read a lot of books on the genetics of animals and crossbreeding and that, that there is something to be said. And if we realize that, not everybody's dog's going to be like Lenny and Lux who go jeeping and hiking and go off leash and do things. And like Rosie, you realized Rosie had a defined environment that she could be in. And I love that.

PHIL   28:31 
And let her succeed and enjoy that.

ERIC  28:35 
Right.

PHIL   28:36 
An experienced trainer, an experienced behaviorist is going to recognize when you're bumping up against a dog's genetic limits.

Good way to put it. Great way to put it.

Whereas someone who's inexperienced, "The dog I had as a kid, we kept working on it, and it got to that point, so I'm gonna do it with this dog." It's like...

ERIC  28:56 
Right!

PHIL   28:56 
...it might even be the same breed.

ERIC  28:58 
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

PHIL   28:59 
But the genetics, it's just not in that dog's DNA to turn it into the kind of dog you want it to be. The lifestyle you want to have. This dog might not be as social. This dog might not want to do the things you want it to do. But that doesn't mean you give up on the dog. It just means you adapt.

ERIC  29:18 
You adapt. You may not have, you know, your first three Labs were dogs that you never had to teach to be on leash, they just stuck with you. You take them everywhere, loved everybody. And your fourth lab you get now all sudden, it's like it's nervous of its own shadow. And again, you may realize that, "Oh, I don't have my hiking buddy anymore or if I hike I have to stay within that guideline."

PHIL   29:37 
This is an instance where we should be treating dogs the same way we treat people. This is the relationship I have with this person. I don't try to turn them into, "Well, my best friend when I was 14, we did these things. So my best friend when I'm 54 does the same..." It's like no, this is a different person. Treat them as an individual.

ERIC  29:56 
Yes, absolutely.

PHIL   29:59 
Well, I'm so excited to have more conversations with Eric Gilbert, KC Dog Guy. And again, we'll link to your social media in the description, so that if somebody wants to chat with you, or look at some of your videos.

ERIC  30:14 
Absolutely. They can look at my dog videos. Hopefully, everything's going to be expanding more. I actually left my corporate world in May. And I hopefully will be full time KC dog guy after 20 years of my passion and my side hobby and hopefully going forward here the next few years into my twilight years.

PHIL   30:33 
We're about the same age.

ERIC  30:35 
I was waiting for that! I was waiting for that!

PHIL   30:38 
Let's pump the brakes on twilight years, Eric.

ERIC  30:42 
No, people will find that I'm very open for phone calls, emails. That's why I like to do you know, I like to talk dog and I'm a different kind of dog trainer. I train for real life. If you want that solid obedience dog to go win ribbons, probably not the guy. But if you want to get an honest opinion, and hopefully have a good chance of creating what I call an everywhere dog or adventure dog or just a solid partner in your life of adventures, whatever those would be. Whether that's sitting on the TV watching eight hours of football or it's like what I might do is head out and go wheeling for eight hours with my dog. I mean, it's like I said, I try to get you the dog that you want.

Well, if you are ready for that, talk to KC Dog Guy, Eric Gilbert, and I look forward to you coming back and updating us on your journey from the corporate world to full time...

Full time dog. Yes!

PHIL   31:30 
Full time dog guy. Thank you so much.

ERIC  31:33 
Hey, thank you. I really enjoyed it.

PHIL   31:43 
I'm Phil Hatterman and you've been listening to Dog Words presented by Rosie Fund.

Thank you to Eric Gilbert, The KC Dog Guy for joining us today. His Facebook page and YouTube channel are linked in the description along with direct links to two of his Peaches videos from her first few weeks at KC Pet Project in November of 2015.

Next time on Dog Words, Laura Baker joins us from the Nashville Humane Association.

A big thank you to alternative string duo The Wires featuring cellist Sascha Groshang and violinist Laurel Morgan Parks for playing the wonderful music you've heard on today's and previous episodes of Dog Words. Supporting The Wires supports our mission. Now you can join Laurel and Sascha as they explore new music and delve into the inspiration behind each work as hosts of Sound Currents on 91.9 Classical KC. Click on the sound currents link in the description for more information. Learn more about The Wires at TheWires.info and download their music on iTunes. Check out FiddleLife.com and learn to play fiddle and cello fiddle online from Laurel and Sasha, even if you've never played before.

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