Hi {{first_name}} ,

I started using social media about 15 years ago.

Not for my business. Not for courses or subscribers. I did it to help facilitate shelter dog adoptions and to educate dog owners. That was it. I thought it was a good tool to get the word out that shelter dogs needed help and how to keep dogs out of the shelter.

At the North Central LA Animal Shelter, we documented around 200 animals. Every one of them got adopted.

IN THIS ISSUE

Reading time: 4 minutes

I want you to think about something.

I have never, not once, seen a dog trainer online make a mistake.

Never.

I've never seen a dog that wouldn't cooperate. Never seen a session fall apart. Never seen a trainer get frustrated, go back to basics, lose ground, start over.

The mistakes are always edited out.

And here's why that matters: the most important part of dog training is learning how to move through mistakes. That's where the real work is. That's where you develop the eye for what's happening and what to do next.

If all you're watching is 60-second reels set to catchy music, where a dog that was behind a kennel bar snarling is magically calm at the end, you're not learning dog training. You're watching entertainment. You might as well be watching a music video.

I trained with Schmoo for close to two years. He's a lot of dog. We've gotten to some really good places together. And I can tell you,  not once was there a moment where I thought "oh, try this" and everything clicked. That is not how dog training works.

There are no miracles in dog training. I'm telling you that right now.

I had a conversation with Jamie in England not long ago. Jamie is one of the most respected dog trainers working today. We got to talking and, as we always do, got deep into the current state of dog training.

I said to him near the end of our conversation: “At this point, I often feel closer to the purely positive trainers than to a lot of people on our side of the fence.”

Not because corrections don't work. But because the first thing, before anything else, is utter compassion for the dog.

That is the thing trainers I respect have in common. They approach the dog with compassion first.

The trainers showing off bite work to music, the ones who never fumble, the ones whose dog is always perfect on camera, I scroll right past them. Because what they're doing is a freak show. And the people watching think they need their dog to do that. And they go get a dog from a backyard breeder. And when it doesn't work out, that dog ends up in a shelter.

I watched it happen with pit bulls for years. Everybody said pit bulls are nanny dogs. No aggression. Just misunderstood. People believed it, brought the dogs home without understanding what they were actually getting, and couldn't handle them.

Now I'm watching it happen with Malinois and German Shepherds.

A Malinois female was dumped at a local shelter with a box of two-week-old puppies. A month before Christmas.

That's what happens at the end of the miracle worker pipeline.

Here is the simplest and most useful thing I can tell you.

A lot of things that dogs do wrong, they do wrong because they learned it wrong.

Read that again.

You may be teaching your dog something right now without knowing it. You may be reinforcing a behavior you're completely unaware of. And that behavior is growing. A sunflower seed doesn't look like a sunflower. An acorn doesn't look like an oak tree. But that's what you're planting.

This is also why I’m mostly against board and trains. When you send a dog away, the trainer spends three 15 or 20-minute training sessions a day with a dog.  The dog lives in a kennel and gets a couple of potty breaks and a play session…  that’s it!   The trainer builds a relationship with a dog that isn't theirs. And when the dog comes back, he knows what to do with that trainer in that context. You're still back at square one.

You need to be the one doing the training. And you need to see the mistakes, work through them, and come out the other side. That is the only way any of this sticks.

Jamie and I put together what we call the Cabral-Penrith quadrants. Not because we think we're special. Because the existing way people talk about dog training is so overcomplicated that it's stopping people from understanding something very simple.

Good things happen. Good things don't happen. Bad things happen. Bad things don't happen.

That's it. That's dog training. Everything else is terminology designed to make you feel like you can't understand it without someone's help.

My goal has always been the opposite. I don't want you to need me to train your dog. I want to give you the information so you can do it yourself. A trainer who makes themselves indispensable to you and your dog has failed you.

Until next Tuesday,

- Robert

1. Watch the work, not the highlight reel

The Dog Training Videos on my YouTube channel shows full sessions, not edits. Dogs that don't cooperate. Sessions that don't go smoothly. Real training, start to finish. That's the playlist that will actually teach you something. 

[DOG-TRAINING VIDEOS]

2.  Ask me directly

Every week inside my online membership I run a member Q&A. Members post questions, I answer them on camera. You get access to over 230 lessons, more than 85 hours of instruction, and a weekly answer to whatever you're actually dealing with. If you want to see how training really works, the stumbling blocks, the adjustments, the resolution, that's where it lives. [MEMBERSHIP]

3. The Decision Matrix - FREE: If you don’t already have it, and if you're not sure when to correct and when to redirect, that confusion is costing you every session. I put together a free guide that walks you through exactly how to make that call.