The Bitey End of the Dog

Play More, Argue Less - with Jay Jack

• Michael Shikashio CDBC • Season 7 • Episode 3

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Dog training gets messy when we treat methods like identities and disagreement like a moral failing. I sit down with Jay Jack for a candid, sometimes blunt conversation about what actually helps dogs and what helps trainers grow. We talk about the real cost of staying inside a single “camp,” how cross-training in sports like MMA changed the level of skill overnight, and why dog training needs more curiosity and fewer boxes. Jay also shares how he draws a firm ethical line against cruelty while still being willing to study ideas from outside his comfort zone.

A big chunk of our conversation is about language. Words like punishment, pressure, and aversive can mean totally different things depending on whether you’re thinking in behavior science, psychology, or everyday speech. We dig into how misunderstandings start, how to slow down and define terms, and why even the four quadrants of operant conditioning make more sense when you think in gradients and zones instead of “allowed” versus “forbidden.”

Then we go deep on structured play as a behavior tool. Jay explains why play is a genetic need, how objective-based games teach focus and delayed gratification, and how toys, food, and personal play can become powerful systems for emotional regulation. We walk through how to use play in behavior modification for reactivity and aggression with clear steps, and why over-arousal is often a sign that the “game” has no real objective or boundaries. If you’re building a better relationship with your dog or sharpening your skills as a professional dog trainer, this one is packed with practical takeaways.

If this conversation helps you think differently, subscribe, share it with a trainer friend, and leave a review so more people can find it.


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Labels, Boxes, And Training Silos

SPEAKER_00

In this episode of The Bitey End of the Dog, I sit down with Jay Jack for a thoughtful conversation about dog training philosophy, the role of play in behavior work, and why stepping outside our usual circles of influence can help us grow as trainers. We explore how labels and training camps can sometimes limit learning, and why curiosity and open dialogue are essential for moving the profession forward. Jay also shares insights on how language shapes the debates in dog training and why many disagreements may come down to how we define the words we use. A large part of our discussion focuses on play. Jay explains how structured, objective-based play can build focus, emotional regulation, and cooperation in dogs, and how games can become powerful tools for teaching life skills and working through behavior challenges like reactivity. We also talk about arousal, common mistakes trainers make with play, and how thoughtful use of games can strengthen both training outcomes and the relationship between dogs and their people. Jay is the co-founder of Next Level Dogs, founder of GRC Dog Sports, a Brazilian jujitsu instructor, and a formal professional mixed martial arts fighter. Known for his dynamic teaching style and emphasis on relationship building through structured play, Jay has spent years helping trainers rethink how games, boundaries, and communication shape the dogs we work with. And just a little note, Jay does use colorful language in this episode, so if you have young ears around, listener discretion is advised. And before we jump into the conversation, if you want to learn more about helping dogs with aggression, head on over to aggressivedog.com. You'll find the Aggression and Dogs Master Course, which is the most comprehensive course available on aggression, along with webinars, mentorship opportunities, and the Ultimate Access Membership, which gives you ongoing learning for just $29 a month. You can also learn about the 2016 Canis Conference this October in Schaumburg, Illinois, which is going to be the world's largest dog behavior conference with tracks covering training, behavior, science, veterinary care, dog sports, scent work, and shelter and rescue. That's all at aggressivedog.com. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Bitey End of the Dog. This week I've got J Jack with me, and I think this is going to be an interesting episode because uh we've been we were talking a little bit before I hit the record button, and it's it's just becoming interesting because I think when uh people put trainers or well-known trainers like Jay Jack, or even myself, I guess, into boxes uh or categories of trainers, there's a lot of um, whoa, you're gonna do that, you're gonna have Jay Jack on, and you know, so Mike, you're this type of trainer and Jay is this type of trainer. How can you do that? But we're talking about with a show in, we're realizing that, you know, we're actually so much more similar in many aspects of life, but also in our training approaches and how we work with dogs than any of our differences. And that's that's the goal of this episode. It's really just to say, hey, here's a couple guys, just they may be classified by others into certain boxes, but um, in reality, neither of us like the labels. And most of the time we're training very similarly. So um, welcome to the show, Jay. Thanks, man. I appreciate you having me on.

SPEAKER_02

Uh, it'll be good to talk. We have we've met a couple of times maybe, but like haven't had a chance to actually sit down and and talk.

SPEAKER_00

So this will be nice. Yeah, you know, and that's the other interesting part too, is that we tend to end up in our silos, right? And you hang around with the same people or you're in the same workshop circuits, or you go to the same conferences, so you see the same people a lot and you see the same ideas and even the same language used in certain um communities, right? And what happens is this significant loss of potential information coming from somebody from what again is classified as a different camp, but yeah, so like people some people may not know that you know your skills in like, for instance, play and teaching play is high, high caliber. And from what I've seen, it's amazing. So it's a missed opportunity, I think. And um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

How I think people kind of predetermine who they're willing, what they're willing to learn from, and who they're willing to learn from. Not just like, so there's the camp thing, of course, right? Because you're like, oh, you're from a different school of thought, therefore, whatever. Like, dude, if I'm of a certain uh religious persuasion or whatever, it doesn't mean I can't read about all the other religions. Like, I want to learn about stuff. Like it, I'm not a bad person from reading the other book to see what the hell these people think. Like, yeah, you know what I mean? It's like I think you can get stuck in this, like, I can't open that book because that's sacrilegious when we're talking about training and stuff, and it's like it's wild, you know? It's not just the camp thing, it's also to me, uh, I see it sometimes with a perceived skill level. Somebody's very, very good, and they're gonna kind of poo-poo a new idea because it's some new guy or some young kid. And you're like, I mean, just look, dude, it might be cool. Like, just look. I've changed stuff on my curriculum in in jiu-jitsu anyway, from like brand new white belts, and I'm like, do it this way because that's the way I was taught. And they're like, Man, I just can't get myself to do it because it seems like I'm more open. And as I'm looking at it, I'm like, Well, shit, you kind of are. And actually, the way that you're doing is kind of better. You're like, wow, okay, I'm gonna have to adjust this. But if I was stuck on, I can't learn from you because you're new, I can't learn from you because you're young, I would have missed it. So it's like, I think it's wild that people, I mean, dude, broken clocks are right twice a day. Like you can learn something from anybody if you look hard enough. So when people just decide there's nothing to learn, I'm like, wow, that's crazy, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think um, you know, we were chatting a little bit again before the show started the about your background in MMA. And I've been a longtime MMA fan. I've done a lot of martial arts myself uh when I was younger. And uh, you know, it and we're making these comparisons is that for for like literally thousands of years in some of these arts, it was like, okay, there was very little cross-pollination. It was like this one's the best, that one's the best, this guy could totally destroy that guy because he knows this. And then when the UFC came about, this is going probably I don't know, this was been like 30 more, probably 30 years now. Yeah, and it was wild,

Learning From Anyone Without Selling Out

SPEAKER_00

those were wild times, like you know, it had a lot of different rules than what you see today.

SPEAKER_02

I was fighting back then, it was like uh it was no rules, no gloves, no weight classes, no time limits. We'd fight two, three times a night, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, that was what it was. I did probably 20-something fights after it became MMA, like you keeping databases and stuff, and like yeah, keeping all that kind of it was like I did probably 20-something fights after it was regulated, but back then it was like it's i mean, it was why it was the wild west, dude. It was crazy, do you know what I mean? Like, I was a criminal until 2010 they legalized it across the world, like uh across like in Maine state of Maine, it was legal. I was still like, I mean, it's it's like how are you gonna? I had to like the schools, like how we launder fight money because like how am I gonna explain coming back from the Philippines with twenty thousand dollars? I can't I got no way to claim that, you know. I mean, we had to like it was it was weird, man. Like yeah, growing up on the off side of society, and then all of a sudden you're like, Congratulations, you're a professional and an entrepreneur, and you're like, Whoa.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, it's but you know, we were we were talking about like sort of the parallels to dog training, is that you know, you get different methodologies or different views of approaching things. And when there's um number one, no real testing grounds for it. But number two, it's like people get caught in those silos and they think this is the only way because they don't branch out into other methodologies or views. If anything, just to understand them, it does it's not to say you need to use them or agree with them. You can be like, well, I know where you're coming from because you know, and then maybe you say, Okay, um, Aikido, right? It's like, okay, wait a minute, at 25 years ago with Stephen Segalia like this, that was Steve could kill anybody. But now you realize that, okay, maybe like 0.01% I can take and apply that to MMA, right? So it's the same thing for dog training, is that we've seen that is that, and I'm not obviously suggesting we like throw everybody into this like fighting match with dogs or anything like that, but it's the approaches and the methodologies we we need to talk to each other more to really see what's working.

SPEAKER_02

Cross-training, I think cross-training is a huge potential uh source of learning and growth that again back in the day, people didn't do like Taekwondo people did not train with karate people, and like it just it was one of those like don't go over there, don't look at that, you know? And it's uh it's sad because once people started training together, the level of skill just exponentially went up because everybody started learning from one another and keeping what is useful and getting rid of what is not, and like finding the truth in the way something actually works. Crazy, right? So cross-training is is an amazing idea to be able to learn from people, even if it's like, man, even if it's like stuff that you I don't want to make it as patent as as oversimplified as even if it's learning what you don't want to do, I don't need to watch somebody abuse a dog to I don't have to like study it to make sure I don't like I don't that like catchphrase of like even if it's learning what you don't want to do is not something I subscribe to. But what I mean is like studying something to understand it as its mechanism, even if it's really bad, to really understand how it occurred, how did somebody come to that decision? How did they talk other people into that decision? What is going on? Like, how'd we get there? How'd that happen? There's value in that, even value in like understanding the dog stuff. Like, man, we'll just make dog trainers, man. There's that old school that killer method, do you know what I mean? The old it is the classic bad ex it's the classic, like you know, like it's not good, right? Yeah, yeah. But if you read that book and you can read it not thinking of how irritating it is that somebody had done that to a dog or whatever, if you can read that book, man, you can reel, like I can see one of the valuable things out of that book is like this idea of success of approximation and progression, this idea of understanding like uh classical conditioning and how this repetition sets up a signal for a non-expectation and the dog starts to. I mean, there's a lot of really interesting ways of putting material together, not what they did, but how they put how they structured material to make it digestible for other people. Because they made a system and the systemization is the interesting part of it, not what the system was. It's like who cares what McDonald's makes? The fact that they figured out how to make a reproducible, systematized thing that puts out the world's worst hamburgers. It doesn't matter that they're the world's worst hamburgers. It's the it's the systemization, it's the idea of making a system that can be followed and made sense by somebody else. That's the value of looking at that book, not what they did, not the hamburgers they made. Because if I don't want to make hamburgers, I want to make Italian food. If I can look and see how McDonald's structured the idea of systematizing something, I could get benefit in how I'm gonna run my restaurant, even if I'm not gonna go crazy chain and I'm not gonna do fast food. I could learn from their ability to systematize. Do you know? So it's like you can learn anything from any source you can get something from if you're hungry enough. If you're looking hard enough, you can get value for sure.

SPEAKER_00

And I think that's a that's one of the struggles we see in our industry because you know, we're not talking we're talking about animals, right? Dogs, sentient beings, and and people are gonna have their ideological lenses on and their uh ethical lenses on, and that's where it can be difficult to read something like a Keeler Brooke and read it objectively, right? Without the subjectivity in your emotions. And so but but cross that cross-training you mentioned is so important in several ways. So we could talk about cross-training to different types of training, meaning I'm I work with aggression,

MMA Cross-Training As A Dog Training Model

SPEAKER_00

of course. So somebody that does agility, right? I don't do agility, I don't know much about it. I would terrible, I'd be failed miserably if I tried it, probably, but I'm sure I can learn a lot. And then when I do watch agility trainers or or listen to them, I'm trying to digest whatever I'm like, oh, that's useful information or something I can apply. And that the same could be said about people with other methodologies or approaches if we're talking the different divides. And that that's difficult, though. I think it's a difficult lens. So, how like how do you navigate that?

SPEAKER_02

It's super difficult. Yeah, well, so okay, there's there's there's two elements of that, right? First of all, I would never ever ever tolerate abuse in any format, whether we're talking to dogs, to people, I don't care. I'm not gonna watch anybody be cruel to a disempowered being, regardless of species. I'm not watching that. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm not gonna watch people say racist stuff, I'm not gonna watch people say misogynist stuff, I'm not gonna watch people do bad things to dogs. I'm not, I'm like, I will not tolerate mistreatment of any animal ever in my presence. I'm not gonna watch that. So I'm not suggesting going to a patently abusive trainer and calmly watching them do it so you can clean information. I'm not suggesting that. Yeah, I'm talking about reading a book that's already on the shelf. I'm not gonna burn it. Like, you know what I mean? Like, might as well. Like, yeah, do you know what I mean? I don't suggest that we do field amputations like we did in the Civil War either. But any doctor could read those things and go, oh, that's crazy how they made do with this tool. And the reason that it worked is because of A, B, and C. I'm not saying we do that, but if we can like take the per take the view of like, I don't want to watch open surgeries either. Like, I think that's gross. Like, I'm grossed out by that. But if I really want to understand how the body works, I kind of have to look at some anatomy stuff that might be like I don't want to look at it. It's kind of gross to look at a skinned body. I don't want to do that. But like, if I really want to learn about anatomy, I kind of got to face the grossness and like you know, watch it or not watch it. But again, I'm not suggesting that people see or tolerate terrible treatment of dogs because I would never do that in any capacity. Of course, yeah. Yeah, balance to me, and I'm not I'm not defending balanced trainers. I don't claim a team and two-thirds of the balanced community I would slap the shit out of if I saw them in you know what I mean. Like I want nothing to do with a good portion of the balanced community, which doesn't mean half the if you're purely positive people. I just don't like most people. I don't agree with I don't, there's not a single camp that I've ever found that every single person flying that flag, I feel comfortable saying I fly that flag with you, brother. You know what I mean? Like I can find tons of people in the purely positive camp that I can absolutely have over for dinner because we gel and think the same about dogs, and I can do the same with some balanced people, but I could find people in both camps that I'm like gross, get away from me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So it's like I don't fly the flag, but it's like I feel like if I can watch somebody that makes choices that I necessarily wouldn't make, I don't find immoral or unethical or horrible, but I probably wouldn't have made that choice. I just it's not my gig. I probably wouldn't have made that choice. I can learn about what they did, why it worked, how'd they do it, how do they learn it, how'd they teach it to the dog, how'd they teach it to other people? Like there's so much information that you can watch. I mean, shit, I can learn stuff from watching basketball coaches and how they motivate their athletes. And I'm like, oh man, that gives me an idea about how I want to talk to my clients or how I want to bring a dog into that same feeling. Like, how can I do that without language? Because this coach relied on language, but I want to make that same motivational moment, but I can't use language, or how can I motivate my clients and get them to find inspiration and not just push them through negative reinforcement to train their dogs? How can I inspire them to be hungry to train their dog? And I can learn that from things that don't have anything to do with dog training. Like people just have to be more open to learning from sources that aren't just the system that you're doing and the person you already learned from. Like you gotta be open.

SPEAKER_00

How much how much do you think the younger Jack has played a role in the Jack of today in that regard? So you're able to see things like uh, you know, bad behavior in people or or people treating dogs poorly, but or reading a book like the Keila book and and walking away with information without as much, you know, you are gonna, of course, have natural reactions, emotions, and judgment, but you can you can still process that information, right? And that's hard for some people, right? Because experiences can build resiliency for you.

SPEAKER_02

It's like there's there's there's two parts of it. There is a there is a level, I want to make sure it's people are clear. There is a level, there's like a level of current event. I'm watching it currently right now. There is a a gradient that I can tolerate and therefore learn from. And then there's gonna be a line in the sand that I'm not gonna tolerate. I'm not gonna walk, I'm not gonna support you, I'm not gonna give you money, I'm not gonna attend your seminar, I'm not gonna recommend people like I'm not gonna learn from you. Like I'm gonna shun the hell out of you because you're doing terrible things. That's like current event right now. Then there's knowledge gleaned from past sources. There's nothing off limits in my head of knowledge gleaned from past sources. Like it's already done. I'm not supporting the idea. I like you know what I mean. Like, this is not a current person that's pushing an agenda. This is past information. Surgical text done from experiments to prisoners. That was terrible. We shouldn't have done that. That's horrible. We shouldn't have done that. But the worst thing we can do is throw the book away and like to like at least read the information, like, like at least figure out, like learn from it to the best degree that you can. So it's like past information, 100%, nothing's off limits. I can read the most intolerable, horrible shit and try to learn from it because it's already happened. The best thing I can do is process it and understand it. Current

Ethics Lines And How To Stay Curious

SPEAKER_02

things happening. There's a line at which I'm gonna push my comfort level because it's choices that I wouldn't have made. And I'm like, it's not that I disagree, but I'm like, I don't like it. That was kind of a I wouldn't have done that, but it's not at the level where I feel like I need to go take your dog from you. Because 100% I will. Like, if I saw somebody hurting a dog, I would be like, Yeah, that's my dog, get away from me. Like, I'm not gonna watch bad stuff. I'm just not gonna do it. You know, it's not gonna happen. So it's like, I think that I need to make sure that when I see something, I need to make sure in my mind, I want to make sure that I am not letting emotions push me towards a decision. I want to make sure that I'm doing it based on my ethics and my honor, not my emotion at the moment. Because there are times where I can get really upset at seeing something, but that's a reaction based on some trauma I've got in my past that caused me to view it that way and take offense to it, you know, not actually what it was. And if I can stop and process it for a moment, I'm gonna see it for what it is. And I realize that was my baggage that was making me upset. And then I will have missed an opportunity to learn because I let my baggage get in the way. Likewise, I've put myself, I could put myself in a position where there's somebody I really want to like. Like I'm right, this guy's great. I've heard a bunch of good friends from all my friends. We have lineage in common, we're supposed to be home team, and then they'll start to do some stuff, and everything in me is like, mm-mm, not okay. But then some part of your brain is like, yeah, but they're from a good, you know what I mean? Like home team. That's my emotion making me accept something I shouldn't have accepted. So I don't want my emotion to pull me into accepting something I shouldn't or rejecting something I shouldn't just because I've got some baggage going on. I want to make sure that I'm making decisions clear-headed on like this is actually inside the scope of what I find tolerable and can learn from it, even if I don't want to do it. I'll give you the example. I'm not just talking about people being mean to dogs. I also like I hate free shaping. Free shaping makes my eyes bleed, dude. I just can't do it. I can't do it. Every time I try to do it, I get like, oh, I get viscerally angry like a child. I just I hate it. I hate it, hate it, hate it. Everything about it, the way it feels the action of the dog, leaving them alone, letting them suffer and figure it out. I'm just like, Jesus Christ, it makes me so now I admit fully that that's my issue. That's I am at least enlightened enough not to go, that means it's bad. It's me, dude. I just have an ick at the choice of free shipping. I just don't enjoy it. But I at least can say, oh, that is my bias. That's not factual, that's not logistical, that's not ethical, that is pure bias. And if I really wanted to make myself work past it, I would. I don't find a reason to, and so I'm not pushing myself to deal with it. I just go, I accept that that's a bias. But I also will absolutely study trainers that are really good at it, and I'll watch the process and I've studied the process, and I do believe that I actually have a full understanding of the process. My my lack of into itness, my lack of being into it is because of a bias, not a real reason. And so I may not make that choice, but I'll study everybody that does because there's things there to learn, there's things there to see, you know.

SPEAKER_00

There's a lot of wisdom with what you're saying because it's just born out of years of of experiences, but Just processing in the moment what you're thinking and being in recognizing that how your experiences are influencing your mind today. So, so what advice do you give newer trainers? Let's say you got some newer trainers, we have newer trainers coming into the street all the time, but they maybe haven't been put in a camp yet or haven't decided, and they're just starting to navigate all this craziness that's happening in the dog world. Um, what advice do you have for them? Given some of that that what you were just talking about there, right?

SPEAKER_02

It's not even so much like I would say it's not advice to brand new dog trainers, it's advice to everybody. I think that you need to so there's have life lesson statute of my fingers. I think there's this thing, uh, I call it uh controlling the bridge, right? There's this bridge between your thoughts and your emotions. And this is an issue that is uniquely human because most animals don't have the cognitive ability that we do. And so we have emotions, and those emotions can trigger thoughts. And the problem is it's a it's a loop. Thoughts can then trigger emotions, and emotions can trigger thoughts, and you can run yourself into a spiral. And it's not necessarily based on your actual belief structure or reality of what is occurring, it's this uncontrolled loop where you have this, you get an ick about something, and then you're like, okay, I have an ick about that. And then your brain starts making all these logical validations of that ick feeling, which then gets you deeper into the hole of feeling the ick. And then it's like if somebody tries to talk you out of it, have you ever heard the saying like you can't logic somebody out of something that logic didn't get them into? Like if emotion got you into that choice, I can't logic you out of that choice. Oh, logic didn't get you there, emotion got you there. Like, I can't, you can't, it doesn't work. And so when we'll sometimes be trying to discuss something with somebody logistically, like it's I'm gonna explain this to you again. If that's not the thing that got them there, if what started is this emotional thing, and then the validations they're giving you are really just justifications for the feeling that they're having, it can be a problem. And it's like, I think until you can control that bridge, until you can kind of recognize like you have a thought, and then you start spiraling on these emotions, and you're like, oh, I see what's happening. My thought has kicked an emotion loose, and that's now getting momentum, and I'm gonna have to try to control the bridge between those two things. Where you have an emotion that wants to start spiking some thoughts, you're catching these repetitive thoughts, and you're like, why am I doing that? You're like, Oh, I get it. I had this emotion, and that started to kick it off. I think learning how to discern when you're having a feeling and when you're having a thought, and is it a reaction or is it me?

Controlling The Bridge Between Thoughts

SPEAKER_02

Is that my formulation of an idea, or is that just like a reactive thing that's happening in my head that I'm not choosing, you know? Because I think so much of our reactions are not choices, they're just happening, you know? And I don't think people are as in control of their faculties as they'd like to be. So I try to really think what is what I actually believe and think about life, or what is me just having a response, you know, whether it's ooh, that's amazing, it's not really amazing, you're just into it, or like, oh, that's terrible. And you're like, it's not really terrible, you're just not into it, you know. Like, which one is it?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you know. You think about the parallels in how we work with dogs too. So, you know, we we we as trainers or the clients, they're focusing on what the dog is doing, so their behavior or their statements, right? And but really what we should be looking at is how is the dog feeling in a lot of these situations. So the same thing online, you know, you get somebody yelling at you online. My uh when I change that from focusing on like what they said, are you this method's not going to work? And I try to, you know, uh do you know, rationalize with them or try to explain it without recognizing that, hey, they're actually feeling a certain way, and that's why they're sniping at me in this kind of critical tone. That's so important.

SPEAKER_02

Like, if you can just make a being feel seen and understood, it's so much easier to address behavior than if you're coming at it from like behavior first, bro. Like, stop saying that to me. You're like, that's so hard to do. I was thinking there was this period where I was uh essentially doing debate practice online. It was like this clubhouse app. You remember that thing during COVID? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I remember I got some. There were some really good conversations, there were just some wild brawls, dude. People were just like, I hate you. It was so bad. Yeah, but like there was somebody that was there was somebody that was arguing, and I can't remember what it was. I can't remember the word it was about, but it was one of those things where you get into it, these semantic discussions about dog training, where somebody goes, uh, well, that's bad, like the thing that you just said, whatever it is, like oh, use of pressure or or whatever. It was like maybe one of those stress, youth stress, distress kind of I don't remember what it was, yeah, but it was something. And this woman got so mad and like I would never do that to my dog, and she's pissed. And all these people are like, that's ridiculous because that's what you have to do, and they're just arguing about it. And I was like, Man, wait, stop. Everybody stop, and I go, just tell me what you think that word means. You know what I mean? I was like, listen, describe if you're right, if if you're the director of a movie and you have said, I want this scene to feel like that word, whatever word it is, give me the scene, tell me the scene that you in your head see when you give me the description of give me the movie scene that describes this feeling. And she was like, You're hiding in the closet from the axe murderer, and you can't escape. And he's gonna chop down the thing and he's gonna kill you at any second. And everybody in the room was like, Jesus, that's not what I'm talking about. And I was like, But that's the problem, is you guys aren't even you somebody said a word, this person took an image of that word in their head. All you guys have a different image of the same word, and now we're brawling. She's not wrong. When she said, I would never make my dog feel XYZ, neither would I. I just wouldn't call what you described that as that word. And so we're not even fighting about the right subject anymore. Like we're arguing, she thinks we're advocating for putting people in a closet and making them think knacks were trying to kill them. You know what I mean? And this other guy is having the image of making your kid get on the school bus when he doesn't want to. And it's you know what I mean? Like clearly that way he's made her kid get on the school bus.

SPEAKER_00

So the kid, yeah, that's such an important.

SPEAKER_02

But it's like if you can't even, if you can't even see the other person's viewpoint, like what are we doing? Like, we gotta have language.

SPEAKER_00

The the language and the words just matter so much in our conversations, and we see it all the time. And you know, the way I look at it too, it's like because the silos get formed and harden so much that what happens is, you know, like whereas you're saying before, like everybody attends the same conferences, the same workshops, they stick around the same trainers, you develop your own language. So it's when I I'm obviously known for going visiting both silos, right? I I have conversations with everybody in the industry. But what's interesting to me is it's like I'm traveling to two different countries. So I it's almost like I'm using a different language and having to translate certain words in my mind of like when you hear like the word pressure or aversive or abuse or all these different words have different meanings depending on which sally you're sitting on. And do you see the same?

SPEAKER_02

It's not just like camp to camp, it's also like scientists for some reason did us no favors. Like their use of language was not helpful. They're like punishment. You're like, bro, if you could

Why Dog Training Words Start Fights

SPEAKER_02

have called that diminishment, yeah, we could have a bunch of bullshit. You know what I mean? Because, like, yeah, there's no if they said, look, this is reinforcement, this is diminish. Like, we're gonna reinforce this, we're gonna diminish this. Everybody's like, Yeah, that makes sense. I would like to see less of that. It makes sense, but we use punishment linguistically in such a negative, like, so for example, like, okay, dude, I just did this CrossFit workout, it was fucking punishing. You're like, Oh, you're gonna do it less. You're like, oh no, I'm gonna double, I'm gonna do it twice a week now, so I can get better at it. And you're like, Yeah, but you just described it as punishing. You're like, that's because it sucked. And you're like, okay, you're using punishment as an adjective that describes horribleness, not as a mathematical term about doing it less. Because if you if that CrossFit workout was really punishing, you just would do it less. You would stop doing CrossFit. You know what I mean? People go to CrossFit and go, This is the most punishing workout I've ever been involved with. And you're like, cool. So you quit. Oh no, I signed up. And you're like, but then it wasn't punishing, you know? It's like we use punishment as an adjective for horrible. And if that's how we view the word punishment, clearly I don't want to make my dog have horrible experiences. I don't want to, I didn't get a dog to make him have horrible experiences. That's ridiculous. I want to minimize all horribleness for every being I love. Why would I want beings to go through bad shit? That's terrible. Like, that's what a stupid idea. I am also anti-horribleness, but diminishment, I need to diminish certain behaviors because they're dangerous and not good. Like, I gotta diminish behaviors, right? Of course you do. But I don't like if they'd have used a different word, we could have skipped the argument. But they chose that word, and it's a big pain in the ass because they chose that word. Oh, yeah, huge.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, even when you're talking about, I actually just had somebody message me that they asked how I felt about punishment or positive punishment. And and I'm like, it's how should I feel about it? Because it's just describing a phenomenon that happens in an ABC contingency, right? So it's not like I should I I shouldn't think of it like in that moralistic. How do you think about subtraction?

SPEAKER_02

You're like, oh, I'm super offended by subtraction, dude.

SPEAKER_00

It's not, do you know what I mean? It's it's it's yeah. So language, language is huge.

SPEAKER_02

It's like we got to make a determination. Like, dude, what are we talking about? And it's not even that, dude. I talk about this at seminars all the time. I'm like, there's different like negative, positive. Do you know what I mean? Like, it depends on which layer of the science we're talking about, you know, because like if we're talking about behavioral science, you're talking about addition, subtraction. If something is positive, it was added. If something was negative, it was removed, right? But if we're talking about psychology, that's not true anymore. We're talking appetite of aversive, good feeling, bad feeling. So it's like even in dog training, in dog training, sometimes we're discussing the science and application of behavioral science. Sometimes we're talking about the science of psychology. So if we're talking about psychology, this word means one entirely different thing than if we're talking about mathematics of behavior. That's a totally different meaning. And people are just throwing these words sometimes they're adjectives, sometimes they're behavioral science descriptions, sometimes they're uh, you know, uh uh psychology descriptions. And it's like, holy shit, you can get people arguing about the word and they're not even talking about the same thing, dude. It's crazy. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I love I love you know, going back to your clubhouse conversation there. I love what you did there. It's just like, hey, let's define this word because you could solve so many arguments online if we just say, hey, what do you mean when you say aversive? Or what do you you know? Because people sometimes think aversive is just like the blasting with the shot collar, right? So there's a there's that term, like is it an e-collar shot collar? It depends who you're talking to. Right. And and same thing with aversive. It's like, what is an aversive? Yes, and it's you know, the animal's gonna decide what what is what is it aversive or not? But it's also it's not universally just this awful thing that happens all the time.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

I here I'll throw one at you that we've never talked about before.

SPEAKER_02

Uh this discussion that I've been having, it's not super well thought out, like because I've only been having it recently. It's not like some of my thoughts are like dialed in because I've been doing it for years, right? This is a little bit of a newer thought.

Quadrants Have Gradients And Zones

SPEAKER_02

Um, you know, the whole quadrant thing, man. The it's like people when they talk about quadrants, you'll have this. Some people, the the theory is that in balanced, we'll use all the quadrants and in purely positive, we've decided some of the quadrants are off limits. So if you have like red, yellow, green, like purely like positive reinforcement, all green, and then like you know, uh negative reinforcement, we'll say dark yellow. See what I mean? And then punishment, red, and then you know what I mean. So it's like we have these like this is acceptable, this whole quadrant is off limits, right? But I've come to realize that there's this fundamental misunderstanding of the quadrants in the sense that we can be, this is the saying I've been having, we can be in the same quadrant and not in the same zone. It's like if you imagine each quadrant having its own gradient, right? There's giving one piece of kibble is positive reinforcement. Like going cold, going click with zero facial expressions, and the guy in the white suit does a PES dispenser with one kibble. That is positive reinforcement. That is not remotely the same experience as somebody going, yes, and having a party and throwing a giant bag of kibble and just loving all around, and oh my god. Like both of them are positive reinforcement, they're not remotely the same experience at all, right? And so we'll look at something like negative reinforcement. And this is the thing that was making me think about it, because people will poop the entire quadrant of negative reinforcement because they disagree with its use. Like they're like, that's I would never hammer a dog into a position because why would I ever do that? That's ridiculous. Of course, that's ridiculous. The truth is there is emergent negative reinforcement where you do the thing because if you don't, you feel like you're gonna die. And that is negative reinforcement, classically. If you do a thing to avoid a thing, negative reinforcement. But that has this emergent, oh my God, survival quality. Okay. Then there's also negative reinforcement of I'm in the sun, I get a little hot, I decide I'm gonna move to the shade because I'm a little too hot in the sun. Well, I did a thing to make a thing go away. So technically, negative reinforcement, I did a thing to avoid a thing. That doesn't have remotely the same experience. That doesn't have the same emotional profile, it doesn't have the same effect on the dog. Right is not remotely the same experience. And people will then argue about high-level or low-level negative reinforcement, never once discussing that negative reinforcement can be done playfully in play. It is still, dude, if we're playing dodgeball, I did a thing to avoid a thing, but it isn't the same as emergent, and it's not the same as you know, mild discomfort. Emergent and mild discomfort, two totally different things. Dodgeball is a totally different experience than both of those, and it is pure negative reinforcement. There is an element of playful negative reinforcement that I don't think, not only I think most purely positive people don't see it, but also I think most uh balance trainers don't see it either. Then we get in this whole discussion of we excuse the emergent negative reinforcement by saying we only do the discomfort negative reinforcement, but the truth is we kind of do this. And then all the purely positive people see people doing the heavy shit, but excusing it with the light shit and going, it's all the same. And most of them, both camps, aren't really understanding the idea of making playful negative reinforcement, which is a wonderful way to create behaviors, and it feels good to dogs because they're playing the game of Simon says, Do you know what I mean? They're playing the game of it, and it it doesn't have shitty feelings, it's all the same quadrant, and all three are vastly different experiences emotionally to the dog, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, once we layer that moral compass over that graph of the quadrants, and we've seen that done. I've seen different graphics and that's the vision, it's not wrong. Yeah, once you start saying this is it's not wrong, right?

SPEAKER_02

So, like there is a it just describes a zone in each quadrant that I don't want to go to. But I will I will I will seek out the opportunity to use playful negative reinforcement because it's fun as shit. The dogs are having a blast because it's a game that we're playing. Do you know? When we play chase in the yard, when you chase the dog around, we're playing a game of negative, don't you catch me? Like we're playing negative reinforcement games, right? I'll seek out opportunities for playful negative reinforcement. If I end up in a situation where I'm like, shit, I kind of didn't want to, but I'm in this zone where I kind of need to use a little negative reinforcement, and it's not the playful version, it's the kind of compulsive version. I will do my damnedest to keep it in the lower level inevitability version, not the higher level emergent version. And I do not go into higher level emergent versions, I just don't. Like, that's not my bag. I'm not doing that. So it's like I also, when they go, I would avoid this at all costs. I'm like, no, me too. Me also. I also don't want to do that either. High five, bro. We're on the same page.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But they throw all of it out because it's all in the quadrant.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I I like where this is going. I want to talk more about play, especially.

Sponsor Break And Program Spotlight

SPEAKER_00

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Why Play Is A Genetic Need

SPEAKER_00

All right, we're back here with J Jack, and we've been having a fascinating conversation about a lot of things. And I want to jump into this topic of play because uh that's one of the things you're you're really well known for. And um, you know, I'd love to layer in this again, going back to the negative reinforcement conversation, you know, because obviously you've been doing it for a long time. So you can see those nuances, those little movements. And obviously, you're very skilled with your own movements, having the martial arts background, you know. So you you have good functional control of your mechanical skills. We could probably say that. And and so when you play, well, let's actually let's just talk about play in general first. Let's, you know, how you approach it, the benefits of it. Just give me your spiel of like if you're at a workshop, you want to give the two-minute spiel of like why is play so important? Well, there's no such thing as a two-minute spiel.

SPEAKER_02

I'll try as best I can. Okay. Play as a general rule. Play is not just a primary reinforcer, it is a genetic necessity, right? Dogs and humans both play into adulthood, some of the only species that continue to play into adulthood. But like, absolutely, play is a genetic predisposition. It is not a gravy situation. You're not like, oh, and by the way, if you can stick some play in there, go ahead. It is without play, we are fundamentally genetically not fulfilled. And there are literal uh mental, emotional, psychological problems that can occur from lack of play. You can look at this in humans. There was that, can't remember what country it was like Budapest or something, but somewhere they have like an orphanage and they did not allow those kids to play in any way, and they were wildly fucked up. Do you know what I mean? Like providing opportunities to play is not just an uh a good thing to do, uh an ice cream on top situation. It is a genetic necessity. You must be playing or you are fundamentally unhealthy. And this goes to people too. One of the reasons people have such uh bad mental health is because we have stopped playing as much, right? And this causes all kinds of problems, right? And so for in the adult world, martial arts is a form of play. And so that is how I'm making humans healthier is by bringing them into an avenue of play. Okay, so dogs, same way. We need to provide play to dogs. Cool. Then we get into what kind of play, like what flavor of play do we do? Because there's a myriad of different types of play. There is free form non-objective play, which does satisfy the pre-des the the genetic predisposition for play, of course, but it doesn't teach the life lessons that game play, objective gameplay does, right? Because one, if you're just doing stuff, wee, this is fun, and it's free form and non-objective, it's cool, it's creative, it's interesting, but it doesn't teach you about socializing, it doesn't teach you about collecting data, it doesn't teach you about looking at your approach and basing your success on this and trying to empathize. What is the other person going to try to? Do now because they're trying to make this objective. And last time I did this, you did this, and I'm going to counter that by doing this. Like, that's a deep level of psychological development of emotional mental skill that goes into objective-oriented play. So freeform non-objective play is cool, it's neat, it's interesting, but it doesn't give the depth. Gameplay is where we get the depth of development. And nature teaches all life lessons through play. And this is weird because we do this with kids, dude. Of course, we we send kids at what age do they go to kindergarten? You know what I mean? Like five or six or whatever it is. I don't have kids, right? Like five or six. How old was your kid the first time you gave them chores? Like you must wash the dishes, you must make your bed. How old?

SPEAKER_00

Mine, probably about eight or nine, if I had to guess. I could be all my year, too.

SPEAKER_02

We're talking five, six, seven, eight when they're starting to get arbitrary focus. There's no value in it for them. You're asking them to do something that makes no sense to them, and you're like, hey, I need you to focus on task, block out temptations or distractions, use delayed gratification skills, do it because I asked you to. You know what I mean? Like we're all these things. How many games did that kid master? Master before you asked it for its first responsibility? So many, dude. Hide and seek, fucking peekaboo, tag, probably, kickball, probably, charades, probably. Do you know what I mean? Like they'd mastered so many games before they were ever given responsibility. They learned to keep their eye on the actual ball long before they were ever metaphorical ball. Right? Before you said focus on your math homework, they could actually focus on the game at hand. Nature teaches you focus in play. I'm looking at my objective. I hear a sound, I go, what's that? And my objective escapes. And I go, shit. And the next time I'm on objective, a sound happens and I go, I can't look. I got something to do. I just learned about delayed gratification. I just learned about task orientation. I just learned about resisting temptations and distractions for objectivity. These are all things that apply to life when we start to hunt or do obedience. These are all things that are going to apply to life. But people, when we get dogs, we're dog trainers. We're not dog players, we're dog trainers. And so when we get a dog, we're like, okay, obedience, man, sit down, stand place. He'll come. And we're trying to teach them about focus and discipline and authority and all this other bullshit that nature teaches through play. We're trying to teach it through the work. Imagine taking a kid that had mastered no games and trying to get that kid to focus on homework. It's impossible, like literally impossible, not like motivationally impossible, structurally impossible. They do not have the focus. They cannot focus, right? And so it's like to me, objective-oriented play is the way that you teach life skills. It's where we teach all of our signaling. It's where we teach all of our being willing to give and accept boundaries, being able to empathize and see the needs of another because we must play partner match in order for us to play games together well. You know what I mean? There's all these skills that go into it. If we master play first, I can make the character of a dog strong and good and our life quality good together, our cooperation level good together. Teaching a dog obedience, the physical actual skills of obedience is that's a day, dude. That's nothing. Teaching a dog to put its elbows on the ground is that's who cares? Using the down to teach character

Toy, Food, And Personal Play

SPEAKER_02

is tough. Using play to teach character makes the down easy because now my dog has character and relationship and responsibility and focus. Do you know?

SPEAKER_00

Talk to me a little bit about like how what the play looks like. I know we're we're on audio format here, but you know, you have different types. Some people use toys, some people just be silly with the dog, some people like all kinds of different forms of play. So just for the audience, you know, what does that look like for you?

SPEAKER_02

So, as a general rule, when we can play can be as unique as you want it to be, but there are some broad categories, right? Um, broad categories. As a general rule in dog training, we will usually talk about the three big categories: toy, food, and personal. Toy play is a game that we play where the objective is the toy itself, right? I throw the ball, you're not jumping on me, you're chasing the ball, right? Or tug, you're not trying to grab my shoes, you're trying to grab the tug toy in my hand. The objective is the goal, the object is the objective. Okay, cool. Food play, very obvious. Food play is the objective is get the food. Through whatever means that is, if we're free shaping, you're trying to guess the correct position to get the food. If we're luring, you're actually physically chasing the food as it tries to escape you, you know? Yeah. So, like whatever type of play we're doing, there's food play, toy play, and then personal play. And Finzie is the only person I'd ever heard talk about personal play outside of myself, uh, as an actual training modality in like her last, I think the third volume of her play skills book. Uh yeah, see, I read purely positive people's stuff. Like uh talking about personal play, which is there is no object that they're trying to acquire. The game is just the game with me. That is the most difficult form of play to teach because the objective is not implied. With toy and food, obvious objective, get the toy, get the food. In personal play, it could be that we're wrestling, it could be that we're playing chase and catch. We could be playing hide and go seek, we could be playing touch foot, you know, like the little herder will get with its butt in the air and its feet spread wide, and it goes, ah, don't touch my feet. We're trying to play touch foot, you know. I say with bulldogs, I teach a lot of what I call shovel head. You can totally see it if you've ever played with bulldogs. Yeah, like I'm trying to get my head under you and lift you up like a shovel, and you're trying to do the same thing to me. Okay, cool. I mean, I've seen some really, really wildly contrived games that were personal play that are so bizarre, but the person and the dog have worked it out, and the game has an objective, it has boundaries. You know what I mean? Like there's objectives and boundaries. It's a real game, honest to God game. It's just that there is no object, there's an objective, but there's no object of play. It's personal play. So it's the hardest form to teach, but it's also one of the most beneficial because the pro of it is the con of it. The con of it is it's very difficult to teach personal play because it takes so much trust and so much communication and so much reading of the other and cooperation to get to, to agree to terms. But that is in itself the pro. That's the con, but that's the pro because by doing this, you guys get such a good understanding of one another and the ability to communicate and read one another through play that that the con is actually the pro, right? And then the other pro of it is you can take it anywhere in the world. I can take it onto any competition field and I can I can impromptu pull it out in any B mod situation. So, like imagine having a toy that never leaves you, dude. You know what I mean? Like I always have it on me no matter what I can deliver, right? So, yeah, toys, food, and personal are kind of the broad three categories, but you don't want to get stuck with anything because weight pull is a game, agility is a game, lure coursing is a game, like dock diving is a game. Any game can be used as a

Using Play For Reactivity And Aggression

SPEAKER_02

training game if it has an objective and boundaries. Any game can be used as a training game. But as a general rule, when I do seminars, I usually start with the big three toys, food, personal.

SPEAKER_00

Let's talk about applications in in training or like and we can even take a step back and look holistically. So, you know, some trainers will use play as a uh reinforcer, some use it as a barometer to say, hey, are you doing okay out here? And if you not, if you're not playing, you're probably not doing okay. Uh, some some will just use as an enrichment and obviously relationship building. So um, since we have a lot of trainers on the podcast, some of the more advanced or like concepts of of using play, like for a case of predation or something, and you might incorporate it there. Or I see dog that uh aggression cases, and you might use it there. Like, talk me through some of the applications of play in those in your experience.

SPEAKER_02

I think there's an interesting thing. Again, people don't understand the depth of it. I think a lot of people use it only as a reinforcer. Typically, not the best application of it, but very common. Typically, it's used as a distraction or as a reinforcer after the fact, right? So I'm gonna distract you. I'm gonna put the toy out in your face and you're never gonna notice the little shihtzu.

SPEAKER_01

Like you never saw it.

SPEAKER_02

Like you're on the toy, you never saw the bad thing, right? That's not training, that's management, which is acceptable under certain circumstances. Uh, very often we have to manage because we're not prepared for training, right? And so, but that's management, that's not training. And then other times people are like, you do the heel past the shihtzu, and when you heal past the shih tzu, I pay you for that heal with the toy. And it's used as a reinforcer in and of itself. So, first for me, if we're using play as uh dealing with aggression, the very first thing is this I need it on signal control. I need to be able to give you a signal that brings you into play with me, just like a clicker that is conditioned. I click and you spin to me, right? I need my signal that starts play to be heavily conditioned and very, very motivating, right? That's important. My play needs to be opportunistic, which is a thing that most people miss. You hear very often like be sexier than the squirrel, and you can't be. It's impossible. It's just, it's, it's stupid to even think, right? The problem is in most situations, people's play is not opportunistic in the sense that if you don't pay attention to the squirrel, the squirrel goes away. Right. If you aren't paying attention when you like when I look away and we're playing soccer, you kick the ball. Real games are opportunistic and they cost for lack of attention. Most of our play with our dogs because we're not thinking about creating a sense of opportunity, we're just trying to fulfill and enjoy. We're not thinking about crafting a sense of opportunity. The dogs can get distracted. We'll be on the tug with the dog and the dog will look away for on the grip, will look its eyes over there and then come back to us. And I'm like, what are you doing? And they're like, What are you talking about? I'm like, why did you not pull the? Do you know what I mean? If you were playing soccer with a person for realsies and they looked over, you kick the fucking ball. You don't wait for them to come back to you. So you're like, you ready, Johnny? And then kick the ball. They would never learn to focus because their inattention never costs them anything. And I don't mean cost them the game, I mean cost them inside the game. If there is objective, now there must be attention. And if there's objective and attention, it's opportunity. If the I don't have to have, if I can look away from the objective and it doesn't cost me anything, it's not an opportunity. And so the best thing on the constant list will lose to the worst thing on the opportunity list. You can have the best toy in the world, the most exciting thing, and your dog loves to play with you when it feels like it. And if an opportunity runs past, you're screwed because you're not on the opportunity list, you're on the constant list. First, we got to get on the list of things that are opportunities to even compete with it, right? It's not about being sexy, it's about creating a legitimate system of opportunistic towards objective, right? So I got to make sure my game is opportunistic. I need to make sure that my dog knows that outside distractions cost them in the game. And so they learn how to block out the magnets that pull them away from my game. This is not triggers. This is just conceptually. A ham sandwich will pull you off my toy. I don't care what it is. I need you to develop the actual skill of focus. Can you even block out any? Because if you can't block out benign shit, you sure can't block out triggers. No way. So if I get to the point where I can play my game, I can pull my dog with a signal into play anywhere in the world. And you cannot take my dog from me while we're playing. You ham sandwiches, other toys, belief blowers, my dog is flipping you off like I'm on a task, man. Get away from me. Once I have that, now I'm ready to use it as training. Up until then, it's just been building the tool itself, building the dog and building the tool. Cool, man. Now I'm gonna go out in front of a dog and we're gonna do differential reinforcement of an alternative behavior because people skip DRA and they go to DRI way too fast. They go straight into heel sit, downstand, bullshit, right? First thing I want to do is make sure my dog can play this game and fuck off the distraction that is the trigger. Because I know he can fuck off real distractions because we've done that. But now he's got to use the skill of fuck off distraction to fuck off the trigger distraction, which is gonna be hard, but doable now because we've proven success. So they see the dog, I signal them into play, and we play this game in the face of that dog, no problem. Once that is 100% reliable, one or two days max, right? Once it's 100% reliable and I can successfully DRA all the way past this dog, no issue. That's when I insert my little out. I go out. Now we're gonna do this for one second. There's one solitary moment that you are in front of the dog that you fucking hate, you're not being given the pacifier pillow, and you're also not aggressive. One moment, but is still success. One moment, one moment. I go out, yes. In that one moment, we were doing DRI, an incompatible behavior. You're not being given your vent pillow, and you're also not aggressive. And you know the dog's there. So that is DRI. And I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna wean them off of DRA into DRI until I've got huge chunks of DRI. I can go like this out, and they do it, down, fuss, down, yes, back to the toy. We've got a big 20-second gap of DRI in front of a dog. Now I'm gonna put that DRI at the beginning. We're at like a 70-30 split. I put it at the beginning. We see the dog, I don't bring out the pillow, I go foos, and we do. And then about halfway past the dog, I go, yes, and we play. So now I'm extending my ability to begin with DRI and wean them off of DRA until we get to the magic thing that all dog trainers want to get to, where I say foos all the way past, and then I'm giving you the toy not as DRA, but as a reinforcer for the DRI that you just did. Nido. Now I have a dog that heals past a shitty dog. No problem. We're not done, dude, because I'm still over-relying on obedience. I'm still having to provide you with the heel lest you go for the dog. Okay, we're not done. We're not done until I can trust my dog to make good choices at liberty without my instruction. That's when we're done. So now how do we do that? It's the same process. We have 100% successful DRA. I, we're gonna switch to DRO. There's a moment where I'm gonna take you out of behavior. I'm gonna go, enough, you're done with your job, but my signal enough means we're done with our job, but nothing's gonna happen. There's no reinforcement, there's no drive. It's just you're free, but nothing's gonna happen. And I go, enough. Now I've made sure I proofed my enough before he knows what the signal is. I go enough and he's not in foos. Now we got a one five-second gap where he's not being told what to do. He's not being given a vent pillow, he's not being given an incompatible command, he's just in front of this dog and not being addicted. And then I go back to foos and we're cool. And I wean them off of the need for DRI until we can be in front of this dog the entire time doing nothing but DRO. I like what you did. Good, good, good, good, good, good. Yes. Just differential reinforcement of any other behavior, behavior besides the target behavior. And at that point, we would then decide what our ethics tell us about our use of punishment, right? Because at this point, when if the dog, now we've got a long history of the dog being able to fuck off the distraction, knowing that it can do several other behaviors and get paid for it without being in trouble. Like we've got a good solid chance of him not being a dickhead because he's got a history of reinforcement in other behaviors. But we've never specifically said don't do it. So there's a chance he's like, ah, it goes back into the habit, right? Chance. We either have two choices. We either dance on the threshold, call a fail, back up, reset our threshold, and do DRO at a greater distance of threshold, and we play that game until the threshold is reduced until they can successfully do DRO next to the dog. Or we go, dude, knock it off and we give what we do to believe ethical, fair, valid use of non-abusive type of actual punishment. Not shittiness, but just going, hey, I wish you would sure would be cooler if you didn't. You know what I mean? Like, but we either then dance on the threshold to make the DRO successful, or we enforce the threshold with a little bit of proper punishment. But that's we gotta, that's the process of using play to first develop the dog in his own capabilities and then using it for DRA, and then using it as the engine that drives DRI, and then using his ability to turn the game off and be free at liberty to wean him off of DRI to get him as close to liberty as we can. Most dogs can get to good choices on their own without our influence. Some axe murders, you're gonna have to use a little DRI for life because they're just dickheads. But like you get them as close as you can to the most amount of freedom possible, is my my idea, you know?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. I love I love how you get into the nuances there. I think uh that's you did a really good job explaining the process. And I think a question, and maybe

Arousal Problems Mean The Game Is Weak

SPEAKER_00

just to wrap up this episode, is uh that a lot of people are probably burning in their mind, is the arousal that happens with play. So you probably get that question a million times. Like, how do you how do you work with that? What's your system of like working with arousal or dogs that get over aroused? You get that classic. What do you do with the dog that gets over aroused when a toy comes out or during play?

SPEAKER_02

Actually play. So that sounds like a simplistic answer, like you know, like actually play, right? That's the jujitsu answer. It annoys the shit out of people. Like when you're doing jujitsu and somebody's like, hey coach, how do you find the rear naked choke? And they're like, Don't let them do it. You get so mad. You're like, shut up, right? But this is the deal. This goes back to the beginning when I said there's objective play and non-objective play. Most people, when they play with their dogs, they imagine that because we're playing with a toy, we're playing an objective game of get the toy. But in many, many most situations, they're not. That game is not objective. That game is free form. We are biting a toy, we're thrashing a toy, there's no clear objective. I'm getting the toy, and there's no boundaries. And because there's no boundaries and no objective, there's no need for attention, delayed gratification, nothing. If we're playing an objective game, what must occur in order to play an objective game with boundaries? First, I have to keep in mind my objective. While I keep in mind my objective, I have to also keep in mind my boundaries. I have to make sure that all of my strategies and tactics stay inside the boundaries while being directed towards an actual objective. Then I have to notice your patterns. Because if you always go A, B, C and then there's a break, I can make a pull on your break and have a better chance. You know what I'm saying? Like I have to watch your tactics and strategies and adjust my tactics and strategies based on efficacy. I have to start to predict what I believe you're gonna do based on my data collection of previous games with you. That's some deep shit going on that you cannot do in high arousal. Now, the reason I'm like this with all the bulldogs that I train and play is because this is what worked on me. I was super temperamental as a kid, really bad. Like, like mental facilities did a lot of jail time. Like I was real bad, diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder, like I would black out and like legitimately hurt myself and others. It was a I was severely emotionally um dysregulated, right? And weirdly enough, what saved my life was fighting, which doesn't make sense. If you if somebody hears there's this kid that's got a temper and he blacks out, he beats the shit out of people. What should we do? Put him in a ring. You're like, that sounds like the worst idea possible. Would you do that? Right. But the truth is, I couldn't fight skillfully because I couldn't think. My arousal, anger, whatever, my arousal was so high. When arousal goes high enough, when sympathetic nervous system activation goes too high, you can no longer process details, notice patterns, or make uh strategic decisions. You're just freaking out. And so if the play we have is non-objective, it allows for intense arousal beyond all cognition because it's not necessary to think in order to engage in the activity. If I have an objective and I have boundaries and I have an opponent that is actually trying to achieve their goal while blocking me from achieving my goal, now there's a lot of deep processing that has to take place in order to play the game that requires I drop my own arousal level. Like, look at dogs when they stalk. A dog that is batshit bananas ain't never gonna catch a rabbit. If they're like rabbit and they freak out, they'll never catch it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

They've gotta learn to contain it. And it's not that it's not high drive, but they learn how to control their own arousal. And the only reason they're doing that is because they fail to make their objective if they let their arousal carry them away. So the entire thing about oval arousal, to me, it's a diagnostic. If your dog is playing in over arousal, it means you're not playing objectively because they can successfully engage in the play without having to self regulate. If your game has objectives and boundaries and an opponent, you must be collecting data and experimenting and doing and reacting to strategies and tactics as Come. You cannot do that in over arousal. So the first thing is make sure your play is true gameplay because that solves most arousal issues to start with. Then you can get into whether or not we're going to negatively punish, positively punish, blah, blah, blah. But most of the time you don't need to do any of that bullshit. Most of the time you just play well, like productively, like intentionally play a game and not just be sexy, be silly, be crazy, swing the toy around. You know what I mean? Like actually play a game and it solves immediately all of the over-arousal issues. Again, nature teaches life lessons through play. How dogs learn to control their arousal in nature is through play. And then the hunt. But both of those are objectives that you suffer in your objective, not suffer, you are thwarted in your objective by having too much arousal. You are self-reinforced for controlling your arousal based on your ability to meet objective. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00

Beautiful explanation. Beautiful explanation. I love

Where To Find Jay And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_00

that. I love that. Oh man. Jay, thank you so much for doing this. Um where can people find you? What's the uh what's the best place for people to reach out?

SPEAKER_02

NL Dogs is uh the website that we have. And uh we have a Patreon page, next level dog talk on Patreon. There's a ton of stuff on there. Uh if you want. If anybody's listening to this that is in the balanced world, you know that uh most people in the balanced world have not that they've heard of me, it's not like I'm a big name, but they could expect to learn uh a type of balanced training, if we're gonna if we're gonna make me call it that, a type of training that is exceedingly social in nature and uh not heavily physical. Um I work with dogs that give no shit about pain. I give no shit about pain. So to me, it's not a a valid operating procedure. I don't care about it because the beings I love don't care about it. Um, and so when you work with dogs that don't register pain and you want to create a desire for them not to do things, it has to be almost entirely social. And so I've gotten really good at working with extremely hard, dangerous dogs and being exceedingly gentle. So there is balance on it, there's aversive usage and stuff like that on it, but it's not what you imagine at all. It's not what you imagine. And yeah, if anybody that is in the purely positive world is curious about learning about it, I have a one-hour lecture on punishment. It's a whiteboard lecture on punishment talking about it in terms that are trying to explain it without emotion and and going into the theories of it and not necessarily using tools in any way, you know what I mean? But just to really try to understand the idea of it. So if you're into that stuff and you want to look into it, man, you're welcome to Patreon, uh, next level dog talk. And uh and I'm around, dude. If you Google me, you'll find me. I'm around.

SPEAKER_00

I appreciate it. I'll be sure to link to all that in the show notes as usual. Jay, thanks again. And um, I'm looking forward to seeing you soon. Actually, we'll both be at the IACP conference at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02

And if you ever want me back on, man, just let me know. We can talk. I don't care.

SPEAKER_00

Awesome. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_02

People will get mad at us all they want. I don't care.

SPEAKER_00

That's all right.

SPEAKER_02

Right on him.

SPEAKER_00

It was a real pleasure sitting down with Jay and exploring these ideas together. Conversations like this remind me how much we can learn when we step outside the boxes our industry sometimes puts us in. Jay brings a thoughtful perspective to dog training, especially when it comes to the role of play, communication, and the importance of looking at behavior through a deeper lens. I'm truly grateful for his willingness to share his experiences and insights, and I hope this discussion encourages more curiosity, open dialogue, and thoughtful exploration within our profession. And if you're ready to go deeper into understanding and helping dogs with aggression, visit aggressivedog.com. Whether you're a professional or a dedicated dog guardian, you'll find everything from the Aggression and Dogs Master Course, which is the most comprehensive program of its kind, to expert-led webinars, informative articles, and the Canis Conference happening this October in Schaumburg, Illinois, with both in-person and virtual options. Thanks for listening in, and as always, stay well, my friends.

SPEAKER_02

My dog is like, I can see my ball, and I'm gonna start squeaking if you don't give it to me.