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With over 20 years of professional experience training both police dogs and pet dogs to be the best that they can be, in this video we're going to be sharing with you some of our proprietary systems—our secret sauce, if you will—on how we take dogs and puppies from Zero to Hero.
We're talking about taking them from an F-student, failing at life, embarrassing you at every turn, frustrating you to no end because they never listen to you, all the way to an A+ student that you're so proud of because you can take them here, there, and everywhere, knowing they're going to listen to you the first time, every time, and they're going to be on their best behavior regardless of what's going on around them.
Now, in order to help you achieve that, we're going to show you step by step how you can train your dog or puppy at home through all of the necessary commands in order to make them 100% reliable, both on and off leash. Let's get into it. All right.
Now we're going to show you how we use food to shape just about any behavior you want. So we think of the food as a magnet and the dog's nose as the other magnet; so wherever the one magnet goes, it leads the other one where you want them, which allows you to get them on a place board, into a sit, into a stand, and into a down, and we can Mark and pay. Next thing we can do is use the food to get him off the place board by throwing a free on his way back. We'll pick him up with the food and get him into the crate. Now, once he's inside of the crate, we can also Mark and pay once he's in the crate. If we want him out of the crate, once again we can touch his nose and throw a free. Now he's out. But now what if we want him to heel? Well, first thing is maybe we get him to come into heel position, just like that. Now if I want him to rotate, we use the food once again to help teach him how to rotate. Now if I want him to heal with me, we simply start moving, use that food to lure him along, and as you can see, you can use food to shape just about any obedience behavior that you want.
Now, once the food lures are looking money, then we can transfer that food lure into a hand command. So I want you to think about that as your food lure is the hand command. Say, "What are you talking about? No food this time." We then take him and we can point him onto the place board. Then from the place board we can get a sit, we can get a down, we can touch his nose to free him off, we can once again use that hand to get him to—let's just got to spin him the right way—right into the crate. Once again we can get him out. And what if I want him to heel? Same thing. I get him right into that heel position, touch that nose, and we can start moving. Wherever I go, he goes. Little distracted with the crate; he loves going in there 'cause that's where he gets paid. But you can see how that food lure turns into a hand command.
Now, everything we showed you here was just a real crack course in it. If you want to dive deeper and learn how to train your dog like a pro, we highly recommend you check out our obedience 101 course, and it's in the obedience 101 course we show you how you master food luring, hand commands, and charge up amazing verbal commands on any and every command you could ever want for your dog. Now we'll see you in the next section.
Now, before we progress any deeper and start showing you how to charge up that voice command and get that amazing reliable obedience, we got to start tracking the progress of these dogs and your dog as well. Well, now how do we do that? This is our proprietary system; it's like a progress report or a report card for your dog. We call it the FHV chart. If you see this anywhere else, they stole it straight from us, and more power to them, 'cause this is the way to do it, baby. This is our secret sauce of track and progress with dogs. But let me explain this chart to you so you know exactly what we're looking at. So we call it the FHVL chart because it has to do with food commands, hand commands, voice commands, leash and e-collar commands. But let's just talk about the food and hand 'cause that's what you just watched here. We have Sunny and Rudy on the chart, and in a minute I'll show you how they're tracking, but ultimately what we're trying to do is get them to what we call an A+, fully trained, ready to go home or ready to live the best rest of their life with you. So Thanos is up here; he's got five check marks in all FHV in every single command. But right now Sunny has two check marks in each category. Say, "Why does he have two check marks in each category?" Because he has a food lure in the sit, he has a food lure in the down, the place, the recall, or heel position and crate, and so on and so forth. So that means he's got at least one check mark along the way, but he also has the hand command, baby. And now we're going to go and give him two check marks in each category. Say, "Hey, that's pretty good." You know what I'd call pretty good? I'd call it a D minus. D minus, baby. As good as he's looking, it ain't that good, baby. We're just starting, but that's not not bad; that's still better than probably most of the dogs in your neighborhood. So you're doing well. But let's talk about your dog real quick. I would like to think that if you had a treat on you, you can get your dog to sit in the kitchen for a treat. You know why? Because I said every dog in the world can sit in the kitchen for a treat. That ain't that hard. An 8-week-old puppy on day one, minute one, if it's hungry and I got food on me, I can get it to do everything you see here, and you can too. It's a simple manipulation of letting that food, that magnet to magnet, they follow you around, and you give the illusion that the dog knows what it's doing. And yes, that's the beginning; that's the building blocks; that's the base layer. And more power to you. But if you can only get your dog to follow you around with food and nothing else, I'm sorry, I hate to say it, but your dog has got an F, an F across the board, baby. Now in the next section we're going to come back to Sunny, show you how to go ahead and add in that next check mark, taking from a D to a C, adding in the voice command. Let's get into it.
All right. In this section we're going to show you how you properly pair a voice command on top of the food command or the hand command. So let me show you how that's done. We got Mr. Sunny here, and I'm going to start first by showing you how you don't do it. This is how most people are doing at home; they're screwing it up; they're spinning their tires in the mud, and they're not getting anywhere as fast as they'd like to go. Professional dog trainers do this a lot too, and that is trying to charge up the voice command at the same time as the food lure. So I'm going to take Mr. Sunny here, who does not know the command "middle." "Middle" would be coming in between my legs. He doesn't know how to do it; in fact, I don't even think he likes doing it, but I'm going to show you what it's going to look like if you're trying to overlay the verbal on something the dog doesn't know how to do. All right, so here it goes: "Middle, middle, middle, middle, middle, middle." By the way, "middle" would look like that. So that's me saying it five, six, seven times in a row. What ends up happening is you sound like a broken record, like the air conditioner running in the background; you'll tune it out: "Middle, middle, middle, middle, middle, middle." The name of the game—you can write this down—don't name it till you love it. Now there's some commands he actually knows really crispy clean with both a food lure and a hand command. So if this is 99.9% guaranteed and I'm loving the way that looks, now I can name it. I'm going to show you how we name it. So I'm just going to make up two words; we'll use two fruits; we'll use "strawberry" and "banana." He knows how to sit and down with verbals. We're going to now show—if I wanted to teach him in a different language or whatever you want—this is what it would look like: "Bananas," just like that. I say it and about a quarter to a half second later, show him what I want. It's called new before known. So the new thing is "strawberry" and "bananas." "Strawberry" and—help—we'll do a couple more reps and you'll see him start to—it'll start to sink in. "Bananas." See, look how quickly they learn if you do it right. If you do this wrong, you'll be spinning your tires in the mud. "Strawberry." All right, that's the name of the game, folks. Don't name it till you love it. Say it, pause about a quarter to a half second, then help them, and then you can charge up those voice commands lickety-split. See you in the next section.
All right. Now you've seen exactly how we overlay voice commands on anything and everything you want, as long as you've started with a nice base layer of food and hand commands. So we're going to come back to the board. Let's see how Sunny's doing. Let's check in with him. We now have three check marks across the board; he knows how to do all of these things with voice, and we're going to go ahead and add that in there. So he's looking great, man. I'm like, "Man, we are really progressing." Most people would be pretty happy with that. Now we have three check marks; we got the food, we got the hand, we got the voice. What kind of grade are we talking about? A C minus, baby. That's all you got? Don't get too excited; you're only halfway there. And this is where most positive-only trainers will stop and fail you, because in the real world, when distractions are present or you walk some distance away or your dog is a distance away from you and you're trying to get that recall and you got no leash on and you got food maybe on you or maybe you don't have food on you, your dog is not going to listen to you—maybe, maybe in the best-case scenario, 30% reliability or less. You've seen it; you've experienced it. When you're out in the real world, your dog is not listening to you, even though it has the voice command. It's not what we call an empowered voice; it has no power behind it. This is a C minus; this is not an A+. We're now going to switch over to Rudy. Now Rudy is already got the three check marks; he's got the FH and V, but does he have the very important L? Let's go ahead and jump in with Rudy and show you how you use the leash properly to get some reliable obedience in the face of distance, distraction, and duration. Let's go.
All right. In this section we're going to show you how you use the leash to obtain 100% on-leash reliable obedience. What you're going to see is we're going to give you a little demo of how we use the leash to achieve butter-soft reliability, meaning when he's 140 lb, my 5-year-old will be able to walk him on a leash because we're going to teach him proper leash pressure. If done correctly, what will happen is is that leash pressure will empower your voice so that the dog listens to you the first time, every time. But before we get there, let me give you a little demo. So I'll use a little leash pressure right now—butter soft—get him into a sit; he does it; he gets paid. Then I'm going to use forward leash pressure to get him to walk this way. Here he goes. All right. Now I'm going to put him on the place board using that same leash pressure again—butter soft, as soft as I can do it. Once he goes on, we can Mark and pay. Now I'll show you a sit and a down. We'll lift up—beautiful sit. Now what if I'm feeling lazy and my back hurts or things are in my hand? Then I can use what we call a lazy down by using my foot and simply pulling him in a downward direction. Easy peasy; hardly any force used at all. When you master leash pressure, it makes loose-leash walking a breeze. Let me show you what that looks—looks like—freak. All right. So we have the leash gathered up. Look how loose the leash is. Look how this goes; wherever I go, he goes. I'll spin around, and you're going to see him come into a beautiful auto sit. Now if he doesn't auto sit, we would once again use the leash to enforce the rules. Now once the dog understands leash pressure and goes with it each and every time, now you can use the leash to empower your voice. What are you talking about, Garrett? That means if I tell him to down and he refuses to down because he's being stubborn or he's distracted, then I can use the leash to enforce the down and say, "You must listen to me each and every time, because if you don't listen, there is a consequence via leash pop corrections," and then you have what we call a correction with direction. Now once you master that, in the next section we're going to show you how you overlay all of these techniques on the e-collar, baby. So now you can have 100% reliable obedience when your dog is off leash, which is going to give them incredible freedom both in your home and outside of your home. All right, we'll see you in the next section.
And we're back, baby. We just seen how we can use the leash—it's got intended to get unbelievably reliable, butter-soft leash pressure on any dog and every dog—and now we're going to go ahead and track that progress, go put that L there, 'cause he's just rocking and rolling. And so we're going to go and change it from a C minus to a B+. He's finally, finally got that passing grade, looking like a rockstar. Now I don't know where your dog is; hopefully you're tracking along, and we're able to get your dog from an F up to at least this amazing B+. What you're going to see next is we're going to go ahead and add in the amazing e-collar, probably which you all are here for, to get that off-leash reliability. Let's go ahead and check in with Rudy and show you what looks like when your dog is properly conditioned to the e-collar, and we'll see what that off-leash obedience is looking like. Let's get into it.
All right. Before we get started with the dog, want to let you know this is a real e-collar and kind of give you a basics of how it works, and you'll know when we're using it because we have a speaker box off camera that we can't hear, attached to a second mic, and when you hear this sound, you are hearing that this thing is on. You should see the light, and you should see the light. This is just a finger kick that allows us to have our hands free, but same thing, if I use the actual unit. Now we'll use it on my neck, on a level higher than we'll be using on him. I feel it right now; feels like a TENS machine or feels like a little ant crawling on me. Again, we'll use it on my arm; wherever you like, test it everywhere. I felt more e-collar stems than any dog on the planet, and we don't let any owner use this tool on their dog until they felt it on themselves and gone through an entire 15 or 20 minute routine with me, getting hundreds of stems. Now, having said all of that, let's put it on the puppy and watch how it works, and we'll use a lower level than we're even using on us, 'cause that's all he needs, baby. All right, without further ado, let's get started. Free for this—for demo purposes here—I'm just going to use it to put him back on place. As you saw there, you should see him immediately turn and shoot back with fire and enthusiasm. Free. We'll even lower it a little bit more. All right. There are so many uses with this tool when and only when you introduce it properly. If you just go pressing buttons on your dog, your dog is going to hate you; you're going to get horrible, horrible, horrible reactions from your dog. Instead, what you're seeing is a dog that's been properly conditioned that with fire and enthusiasm jumps into the position that we want. Now, just for one more sake, I'm going to show you how this tool is going to communicate to him exactly what we want. So he's sitting there; I'm going to say and do nothing; watch what he does. Exactly my point; he's not in trouble; I'm not mad at him; it simply means if you go and do that, I'm going to hook you up, baby. And this is a beautiful showcase of when the e-collar is done correctly; it is not a punisher; it is not a hammer; it is simply helping guide them to—to do the obedience that we want them to do so that they can get paid.
All right. As you can see, Rudy is crushing it off leash. We've taken the prerequisite time; we've conditioned that e-collar over many weeks, and now we can go ahead and add that E across the board on all of the commands that it's paired up with, and we can go on and on; it continues on, but the board is only so big. And now we can say he's an A+, or can we? What if you're out in the real world and someone comes up to you—isn't your dog going to break the heel? Well, let's find out. Let's take both puppies out in the real world with and or without food, with and or without a leash and e-collar, and let's see how these dogs actually perform and see if they have a passing grade.
All right, folks. We're here at Lowe's, a fantastic place to really test and proof your dog off of distractions, and this is all of the culmination, all of the hard work we've put in. We're here to really showcase their talent and test and see if they truly have real obedience that's both on and off leash, without food, without bribes, without treats, just everyday reliable obedience. Let's get after it.
All right. So they're passing the first step—on-leash obedience—no ripping my arm off. We come into the store—no muss, no fuss—energy level right where we want it. Let's continue to the next step down.
All right. So now we're going to talk about not only the down and motion but a practical application of a down stay. So we're in the light bulb aisle, and as you know, it could take you 5 or 10 minutes to find out exactly which light bulb you need for which lamp in your house. So instead of heeling up and down and holding on to the leash and—no, we got to stop and look and figure out, do we want the 60-watt, the 40-watt—you get the idea. But instead of walking up and down with your dog and your hands are tied up with the leash, now you can work the whole aisle, and you don't need to worry about what your dogs are up to because you've mastered that down stay, no matter who comes through the aisle, no matter how many carts, or if even if another dog comes walking through the aisle, they must maintain that down stay no matter what. And again, again—down stay—one of the best commands you can teach your [Music] dog. "Good boy, Rudy. Sit. Good sit, Sunny. Good boy, huh."
All right. Now we're getting into the phase where we're going to test them off leash, baby. That's what it's all about. "Rudy, Sunny, here. Good boys. Heel. Yeah."
All right. Now let's talk about the place board. Now we have him on place right here, but you'll say, "Garrett, this is not a place board." No, Sherlock. Once your dog understands the place board, you can get anything to mean the same—whether it's a dog bed, whether it's a cart, whether it's a whole pile of wood somewhere in the hardware store—you name it. No matter where you go—restaurant, hardware store, the beach—you can find a place board or anything that resembles a place board. Simply say "place," and you're going to get incredible duration and stability in the position, as you see here.
And we're back, baby. I hope you are as impressed as I am. I'm going to go ahead and give them—at not even 5 months old—an A+. And if we can do it with these young puppies, I promise you you can do it at home. But how, Garrett? This video wasn't quite detailed enough. That's why we have our amazing suite of online courses available at DIYk9.com, where we take our time and we hold your hand and we walk you through step by step with full support from me and my staff and my entire list of certified trainers. We come into those course comment section, and any single question you got gets answered, and—and then if you want to really step it up, we have memberships available where you can get time with me face to face in our weekly and our monthly live training calls where we're either training a dog live or answering your questions live, in person, back and forth, making sure we help you every step of the way, because our number one mission at DIY K9 is to help you train your dog from Zero to Hero so they can have an A+ and no longer dealing with these Fs down here. I hope you learned something here. I think it's one of—be the most powerful dog training videos you'll ever see for free on the internet. So thank you so much again. Post in the comments below; let us know where your dog is. You got an A? You got an F? Let's track your progress together. And more importantly, I hope to see you in the courses. See you in the next one.