#5 Mike Ritland - Navy SEAL Warrior K9 Dog Trainer (Part 2)
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I've heard you describe it, it's like a fucking chainsaw. It's no different than, you know, fucking spikes going into your fucking arm. This episode of the Sean Ryan Show is brought to you by Vigilance Elite Patreon. Vigilance Elite Patreon is how you support the show. It also has an entire library of tactical training and...

behind the scenes footage of the sean ryan show go to vigilance elite.com click the training tab it'll take you right to vigilance elite training on patreon get a subscription support the show thank you let's get on with it the ied was the single deadliest counter measure that that we were facing as the u.s government spent billions on trying to figure out a way to defeat them

The results were that a fucking dog's nose was the most accurate and most reliable. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Sean Ryan Show. This is part two of episode 005 with Mike Ritland. If you have not seen part one, we cover his life as a Navy SEAL operator. Click the link above. Check that out.

Now we're moving into part two where we cover everything about Mike's warrior dogs, what they go through on deployment, what they go through when they come home. Thank you for all the Netflix suggestions. If you haven't gone to iTunes, please go to iTunes. Leave us a review. With that being said, let's get on with it. Enjoy the show. All right, Mike.

Here we are, day two, and this podcast is going to be all about your training with dogs and kind of what the dogs deal with overseas, and it's not about you anymore. Good. That's even better. Yeah. But before we get started, we've been talking back and forth about putting a documentary together and...

My marketing guy who you met, John Howard, has been really pushing us, pushing me to do a documentary. And so I've been thinking about who I would like to do one with. And, you know, after spending the last few weeks researching you, I think it would be fucking perfect. I don't think there's enough information on what those dogs are going through and with your foundation. And I think it would be really cool to kind of showcase what...

the life of a warrior dog in service is like and after service. So for the audience, if you are involved with Netflix or Amazon Prime or anything and you would be interested in helping us out or anybody that can direct us in the right way to kind of produce something like that,

Email me, email Mike, leave a comment, and I will leave a link where you can request on Netflix a show. And so that'll be in the description. If you guys want to fill it out, I'll put what we need to say on it. That would really help us out, especially if we get a couple hundred thousand people watching this and everybody... Fires it up. Sends them a little message that...

Who knows we might actually fucking make it happen. That'd be awesome. I would love to do it Yeah, it would be a real fucking pleasure. Yeah So you got a lot of videos on your training a lot of bite videos And I think I've seen most of them one. So anyways, I have a pet too who you met Griffin the griff stir the shit eater and yeah the shit eater but

You have a video of walking some of your dogs without a leash in Home Depot and Lowe's and stuff, so I'll roll the tape. So me and Griffin did a little modified version of this, but I think, you know, I'm hoping you can give me a little bit of, give me some pointers here on what we're doing wrong. So I'll just roll the tape for you real quick.

Oh, for the love of fuck. Dude, they're fucking glasses. The fucking look on your face is at least half of why this is as funny as it is. It's all business. It is all business. When me and the grifter get to training, it's all business. Oh, it's fucking great. I do love it. But any pointers?

I mean, he's off leash. You're all fucking business. People are looking at you. The dog's not paying attention. I mean, I'd say you fucking knocked it out of the park. I think they're a little worried, you know. I mean, you didn't see anybody fucking with you. That's for damn sure. Could smell that breath a mile away maybe, but... Well, Griffin will just look at somebody like, I ate pieces of shit like you for breakfast with that shit-eating grin. But now, getting serious, I'm going to look at my notes here, but...

In one of the books I was listening to, I didn't read them because I'm a fucking slow reader, but I did listen. And one of the first things you said in one of your books, and this isn't verbatim here, but you're talking about canines have been used ever since the beginning of war. Yeah. And I thought about that, and they're still used today. And kind of thinking about that, it's actually pretty fucking amazing because...

Everything else has been phased out. We used to use spears and swords and shields and fucking horses. Catapults and all kinds of shit. Yeah, that's all been phased out. Firearms, different firearms have been phased out. Planes, fighter jets have been phased out. Drones have been phased out, and they're coming up with new ones.

helicopter, everything except dogs has been phased out at one point or another. And I mean, shit, humans will probably be phased out here, you know, before too long. And that just, you know, when you think about it, that's... Yeah. Well, so to me, you know, there's two things with that. One is that it really kind of highlights just how important and how effective they are, you know, is that

you know, the application with which they're used may be different in some ways to keep up with the technology, i.e. explosives weren't around, you know, in the Roman times. But so having an explosive detection dog was not necessary. But the way that they use their nose and the way that they augment mankind is largely unchanged that way. And just the fact that

from an asset standpoint, you know, that they're still used, uh, in that same capacity, whether it's, uh, finding enemy soldiers and biting them or, um, you know, just keep keeping soldiers safe and, and augmenting them from a force multiplier standpoint. Uh, you know, they're, they're still just as effective. Um, the second thing, excuse me, is, um,

There was a study done at the height of the Iraq War, and it was billions of dollars. And this is where the IED was the single deadliest countermeasure that we were facing as American soldiers. And so the U.S. government spent billions on trying to figure out a way to defeat them.

And at the end of that study, the results were that a fucking dog's nose was the most accurate and most reliable method of finding and locating improvised explosive devices. All the machines that they tried in these machines are multimillion dollar machines in some cases with the latest and greatest olfactory blower technology and stuff.

And dogs were still better at it than they were. And when you couple that with their mobile, they're a fraction of a fraction of the price of most of the equipment. But they also can bite the shit out of people, as you experienced earlier this morning. And there's an element of kind of a slice of home from a camaraderie and morale standpoint that having a cool fucking dog with...

with your crew makes a big fucking difference. So, yeah, they're just, they're truly remarkable creatures that way. That makes a hell of a lot of sense with the morale too. Do you have any idea what kind of dogs they were using back, I mean, way back when? Yeah, so, I mean, from what I've kind of read and researched is that, you know, way the fuck back in like the Roman and Spartan era,

There were more bigger molosser-type breeds, the mastiff kind of breeds, but it depended on...

you know, what, what they were using them for. If they were using them for defense and going into battle, they wanted big, strong, hard biting dogs that they would use to hunt fucking wolves and bears and shit like that with. And obviously if they're that physically capable, capable, because back then it was really mostly about brute force and physical strength and what have you. So they would outfit, you know, pieces of armor and fucking collars with spikes on them and some gnarly shit that way. So that,

people couldn't fuck with them or hurt them as bad. If they were running messages and supplies and shit like that, it would be a smaller, leaner, more athletic dog that wasn't biting people, that was just really intelligent and taught to either relay messages or, again, move equipment or things of that nature. So, again, just like today, it kind of depends on the purpose or the application in terms of what they're going to use to do it. Well, I mean...

They've definitely evolved with all the capabilities that they're using them for now. And I mean, they've become part of the team, at least in the special operations community. Yeah, absolutely. But I'm curious, you know, you've been training dogs for how many years now?

I mean, so in this capacity professionally for about 12 years before that, I still, you know, use the same breeds. I just wasn't making a living at doing it for about six or seven years before that. And I messed around with training for years before that. I mean, at this point, over 20 years of training dogs of different breeds, different capacities, you know,

you know, in, in a lot of different ways. So, um, and I, I'm really glad that I kind of started out with bird dogs and hog dogs and from an animal husbandry standpoint, learned a lot, uh, you know, about veterinary care and breeding theory and, um, you know, nutrition and conditioning and things of that nature on the hunting side. Uh, because that, that really augmented, uh, once I started to get really heavy into the, into the operant conditioning and training, uh,

as it relates to higher-end stuff like military and police working dogs. So that certainly helped kind of well or round out my perspective and knowledge base on just dogs, generally speaking. What are some of the, you know, we were talking about how they used them way back when, and I'm curious, in your 20 years of training dogs, how have you seen the training and what they're utilized for progress?

Probably the biggest thing that I've seen that I'm happy to see is a shift from using primarily compulsion or punishment and doing more reinforcement training. Now, I'm not a pure positive trainer by any fucking stretch. I'm not the click and treat for absolutely everything. There is a time and a place for corrections, just like there is with people who are raising kids, is that

You know, if I'm trying to teach the dog behaviors and shape behaviors and and bridge complex behavioral patterns together, then I want that to be a positive learning environment. No different than, say, a third grade. You're trying to teach them arithmetic and you set a math book down and they don't know and you slap the fuck out of them. They're not going to they're not going to pick that up very well.

And it's a stressful, shitty way to try to learn something. So I want that to be a sterile learning environment, set the room up in the environment for them to make the right decision or the decision I want them to make, and then I reward them and reinforce that behavior. On the transverse, just like with kids, is that while I'm not going to slap somebody for not understanding arithmetic, if you tell your child, hey, I need you to tidy your room up, it's kind of a mess, and they say,

Hey, Dad, how about you go fuck yourself? Then you're going to get your ass kicked. And so with dogs, it's much that same way, is that the only time I'm going to use corrections is if it's blatant disrespect and challenging behavior where it's bordering on dangerous, which a lot of the dogs that I work with, sometimes you run into dogs that way that are so dominant, that are so resource guard driven or whatever the situation dictates that they decide that,

I'm going to take a fucking shot at the title, then yeah, I'm going to use force to make sure that they know that that's an unacceptable behavior. But the other instance where I may do that is

If I've shaped a behavior and I have done it so many times to where it's a conditioned response and I know they know it and they're just kind of blowing it off, then I may give them a slight correction for that to get their attention and get their mind back where it needs to be and focused on what they need to be doing. But that's really about it. Whereas a lot of times years ago, and even today, there's still certainly some units that use it more than I think they probably should.

you know, it was just a prong collar, a remote collar, a stick fucking, you know, just, you know, beating dogs into submission basically. And that's, that's not a good place to be when, you know, if I'm expecting the dog to go, you know, away from me, independent of the handler, you know, and, and have the confidence and, and, uh,

spine and, and character, uh, you know, to, to go in and defeat somebody. Uh, the last thing I want is a dog with a broken spirit that, you know, is only doing what he's doing to avoid having his ass kicked. You know, that's, that's not a good, good mentality to have if you're going to, to fight somebody. Yeah. Um,

Part of also what I meant, just for example, when I was in the SEAL teams, I know they've been using them for a while. And yesterday you had mentioned that you had dogs on one of your ops back in the early 2000s. I did not have a lot of experience with dogs. In fact, we had a couple of dogs on missions, but they didn't really do much. They were more for...

I think sniffing things out. I didn't really get to know the handler. It was somebody that kind of was just attached when we got there. I sure as hell never jumped with a dog, fast roped with a dog, swam, you know, any of that. So was it pretty common for the dogs in the early, earlier parts of the war to be more just a bomb sniffer or when did it become more common to

for the dogs to be attack dogs? So from the attack standpoint, you know, early on, where I think the biggest transition has been made as it relates to special operations is, you know, early on, and this is by early on, I mean post 9-11,

is that there were no special operations units using dogs at all. And so very quickly as you start to realize, you know, fuck there's IEDs and explosives and caches and shit, it would be nice to have a capability very EOD-like to be able to locate where these IEDs and explosive caches are. And so...

What they first started kind of doing is using regular military working dogs that were explosive detection or patrol, patrol meaning bite dogs. And, you know, while that's a capability and an augment, I think that they realized very quickly that, you know, having a, you know, a Marine MP, you know, or a Navy gate guard, you know, MP patrol dog with

SEAL Team 6 doesn't mesh up very well in terms of their operational knowledge and their skill set as a shooter. And so it was, while it was kind of better than nothing, it I think highlighted that they needed

guys, either their own guys or, you know, folks that were much more on the level as it relates to operational competency to be able to go do those types of things, you know. So if you're taking somebody that just has never done that and putting them on a high speed fucking direct assault, you know,

That's a dangerous thing to fucking do, and there's too many moving parts, and it's kind of a recipe for disaster in some ways. And so they ramped up having their own guys be handlers as quick as possible. That takes time. Standing up a dog program in a unit that's never had one is no different than standing up a new special operations unit. I mean, it's a totally different fucking skill set. It's not like...

you know, hey, we're going to throw a sniper detachment, you know, capability on. I mean, it's weapons. It's already things that we're pretty familiar with. The tactics are pretty seamless to meld into with a dog, you know, no pun intended. It's a whole different fucking animal, you know, literally. And,

So it takes years to really get at a level where you're kind of operating and you really understand the dog and can read the dog. And, you know, no different than the scenario we did today is that there's certain things that you guys just leaned on me to say, fuck, I don't know, you know, should we have him come this way or where should we be standing or whatever? You know, it takes a while to get to that point where you can kind of predict what's going to happen or probably, you know, the mode that the dog is going to operate in. And so...

because of that, um, you know, it was, I think it was a rough couple of first years of getting those dogs online. And then once they did, then it was okay, well now we're inserting via parachute, via fast rope, via fucking 10 click foot patrol, via side-by-side Polaris fucking razor or whatever. And so we need the dogs to accompany us. So they need to be able to do all that shit too. And so it was a hyper fucking steep learning curve, I think. Uh, but

You know, within a matter of years now, they've got their own guys handling dogs that are fucking parachuting, fast roping, fucking riding on boats, you know, getting thrown over a shoulder in the fucking back of a side by side, you name it. And they've had to have the dogs kind of adapt to.

operationally to all of the different things that we do. So if the capability is required to have a dog that can locate explosives and do squirt or patrol out the back of a target or have the ability to

you know, find somebody in a false floor or a false wall or sandbagged with a PKM in a corner of a room or something like that. Fuck, we need to bring the dog with us. We need to figure out how to have that dog with us no matter how we're inserting. And so it's bred out of necessity for sure. Wow. You know,

With all the other departments that you deal with in a small special operations team, you get medical. If the medic goes down, everybody has a shit ton of med training. If the comm guy goes down, everybody has a shit ton of med training. So I guess kind of where I'm going with this is two questions, and that is one,

How does the rest of the team interact with the dog? Are they scared shitless of them? They generally are not. A lot of it's going to depend on the dog. A lot of it's going to depend on how good the handler is at communicating and educating the rest of the platoon how to interact with the dog, what to do, what not to do, and how proactive they are at integrating the dog into the team. A good mode or method of doing that

making it very black and white for the dog. And that's what a lot of guys do is they'll, you know, when the vest is on, the dog is at work and you don't fucking play with the dog. You don't pet the dog. You don't, you know, treat it like anything other than what it is. When the vest is off and you're in the team room or you're hanging around or whatever, you know, then you can let your guard down a little bit and interact with it. Again, some dogs are more suitable for that than others. There are some dogs that it's just,

This is a fucking do not pet, you know, in case of war break glass kind of motherfucker that just hates everybody. And it's just best that you don't fuck with them. You know, those dogs do exist. Now, in terms of what happens if the handler goes down, there's also that onus generally relies on the handler where he's going to need to communicate to the people, to the rest of the members, you know, what they need to do. And from my perspective, it's two things.

which is calmly interact with the dog and try to get a muzzle on it, try to get a leash on it, and then just get it where it needs to be. If that's medevaced out because the dog is injured or accompanying the handler because the handler is injured or whatever it is, is that guys have to practice doing that a little bit. And so it's important for the handler to integrate

different people in the platoon to be able to at least handle the dog, not give them commands and operate with them and do bite work and all other types of shit, but at least be able to clip a leash to the dog, muzzle them, take them for a walk, things like that. And that's where, again, the handler comes in and having that dog be a part of the platoon operations as much as possible is going to help that because you can't explain to the dog, hey, this is the platoon. These are the good guys. Like you just have to have that dog around them a lot.

so that they can do that without too much trouble. Has that ever happened where a handler, I mean, I hope not, but the chances are fucking high with the job description. It is what it is. But has there been a scenario where the handler has been KIA on target in the middle of an op?

And I mean, after feeling what I felt today, the last thing I want to be worried about is a supposed dog that's on my side. But you know where I'm going with this. Yeah. So things like that, you know, do happen. Generally, it's the handler's injured. You know, I had Benny Olson on and he told a gripping fucking story of

his dog Digo that ended up was one of the first two dogs at the Warrior Dog Foundation and they were in Iraq on a mission where they actually lost a couple of guys

And Benny got severely injured, like unconscious, you know, needed to be life flighted out, was all fucked up. And Digo, the dog was too. And yeah, it was a motherfucker separating Digo from, from Benny. They, they managed to get it done. But, you know, he's fucking snarling at other members and he's hurt too. You know, the dog is hurt and so he's in pain and pretty reactive that way. And, and yeah, that is a reality of it. And that's, you know, again, that's why it's

so crucial that the other members understand how to get a muzzle on the dog. And there is a process to doing that. But also that it's been done a lot so that the dog is desensitized. It's not the first time you're trying to put a muzzle on the dog is when

you know, he's fucking bleeding out of a femoral artery and the handler's unconscious and he's trying to fucking rip your face off or coming near either one of them. Like that's not the time to try it. You know, so just like medical training, you know, the time to figure out how to give somebody an IV is, is not when they actually need it or they're going to die from it, you know? So with the dog stuff, it's the same way. But again, the big thing is just try to get a muzzle on the dog, clip a fucking leash to them. And, uh,

and get them out of there and get them where they need to be. So the dog might be a pain in the ass, you know what I mean, for a non-handler, but it sounds like there are no concerns that it's going to turn. And so... Well, it can. I mean, there are times where...

where that dog like injures their the own team members to the point where they're out of the fight i mean it's happened okay uh not often uh but it does happen you know and again that's where

Having the right dog goes a long fucking way in that regard. But sometimes, you know, this is the dog we have. He's good enough to do the work. He's a little sharper or more reactive than I would like. But, you know, we need one and he's it, you know. And yeah, there are times where blue on blue dog bites the wrong fucking person and fucks him up. And, you know, we try to minimize that just like.

There's times where we shoot each other, you know, it doesn't happen often, but it does happen. You do all the things that you can to try to mitigate that in training so that it doesn't happen in wartime. But, you know, sometimes it still does happen. So, you know, again, the biggest thing is just conditioning the dog to the team as best you can so that you minimize that percentage chance of it happening. Okay. So in general...

Would you say that dogs are very aware of who the enemy is and who the friendlies are? Generally, yes. You know, and again, having guys all wearing kit around the dog and being around them a lot and going on training trips, you know, where the dog is integrated as much as possible makes a big difference. The difference between, you know, some units and other units, police specifically, is that you run into that a lot more with police where, you know,

They've got a dog that's utilized in a SWAT application, but SWAT only meets two days a month to do their monthly training. And that's the only time that the dog is around the SWAT members. Otherwise, he's with his handler doing patrol calls and street calls and things like that. That's a good example of now...

It's a real deal scenario. You know, this dog's only been around the SWAT team eight times, you know, in four months. And, uh, and now you're going into a dynamic fucking scenario where, you know, flashbangs are going off and people are yelling and there's shots being fired or whatever. And the dog fillets open one of the fucking team members hamstrings because he's just not used to them. You know, whereas, you know, a high level tier one unit where that dog is attached with those fucking 30 dudes, uh,

all day, every day, does every training trip, is around him, you know, every fucking day, that happens way less there. So a lot of it is just conditioning the dog to be what you need him to be. How attached...

How attached are the dogs to the handlers? So, and the reason I'm asking this is, say, you know, some guys are more motivated than others and they really want to learn every job. And I'd imagine it's the exact same with, I mean, if I was in a platoon that had a dog, I would want to fucking know everything I could about being a handler in case this were to happen. But I guess my question is,

how attached are the dogs to their handlers and if the Handler was to go down out of the fight and could not give commands does the dog become completely ineffective at that point or Can somebody you know pick up pick up the ball and and and and drive on and keep that dog? Effective in the fight sure so

A lot of that is going to vary from handler to handler and dog to dog and even unit to unit. I've seen some dogs that were so fucking attached to their handler that, yes, they would become bordering on fucking useless if something happened to their handler or very, very difficult for somebody else to now pick up the leash and finish the mission if it's a...

explosive detection. You know, somebody trying to handle the dog in an explosive detection, you know, that's a tall order for somebody who's not a handler. But there are some dogs on the other end of the spectrum that fucking, you know, you could hand your wife the leash, you know, and the dog would fucking work. They're just that autonomous and independent and aloof and non-dependent on a handler and they just love to fucking work. The dog that I have here right now would be very much that way. He's just...

laser focused, super driven, wants to fucking work all the time. And, and, you know, for him, he doesn't have that attachment to me the way that a lot of dogs or even most dogs do. Um, you know, so he's, he's a dog that if you put them in that environment, uh, any, any of the fucking handlers or any of the platoon mates or team members could handle that dog, no problem. And then there's dogs that are kind of somewhere in between. Um, you know, so it, it

It's largely dependent on the personality of the dog and how attached they get to their handler. Interesting. You know, I've seen pictures where, you know, there'll be a casket of a down handler with a flag draped over it. And you see videos and pictures where the dog will not leave the casket, which is fucking gut-wrenching, you know. Yeah.

And at the same time, it's actually pretty cool to see and sad, you know. But, you know, after researching you and all that, that was just one of the questions that really stuck out to me. But so kind of moving on from that, the way you talk about

psychology of dogs is, is, um, it's like you're the fucking dog whisperer over there, but, um, the whisper screamer, maybe, I don't know. Yeah. But, uh, but, um, and I could go on for days about different things that you've said, but, uh, the one that one of them that really sticks out is, and I can't remember if this was in one of your books or if this was in one of your podcasts or 60 minutes or, or one of the million things you've been on, um,

You're talking about the growl is actually a weakness. And I really started trying to put things together with all the different things that you've said. And we'll go into a little more depth here in a minute. But they are a lot like fucking humans. And you reiterate that in all your publications and all your content. And that...

Everybody else who doesn't know to include me takes that as like some serious aggression. Uh, like that dog is, you know, getting ready to rip my head off, which I still think they are. But when you said that that's weakness, um, it made me think nine times out of 10, the loudest motherfucker in the room is always the weakest link or the biggest shit bag, you know, and they're hiding some kind of insecurity, which is what you said, uh,

When a dog growls, it's because it's, I believe you said it's fear. But anyways, I just kind of want to breach that subject with the dog psychology and how similar it is to humans. Yeah. So if you think about it in the context of any time that you've ever been around a dog that's growled at you, what is generally the human being's response to a dog growling?

Fear. In terms of the physical action that most people, if you walk up to a dog and it growls and shows its teeth and kind of pops its jaws,

do most people go for, go forward and continue fucking with a dog or do most people say, Ooh, you know what, maybe I'm going to fucking back up on this one. Yeah. Uh, that's why they do it is that, you know, for whatever the reason is now, I think it is imperative to caveat that while growling is, is ultimately that the dog is uncomfortable, uh, scared, uh, or at a minimum, uh, you

you know, for, for whatever reason, whether it's pain or confusion or whatever, is that the dog does not want whatever is taking place to either continue or advance.

If that's you, then it is what it is. If it's a stimulus that the dog runs into and it makes them nervous, you know, sometimes you may be walking and something happens and it's not even a person and the dog will start growling because they're not sure what the fuck it is. You know, it's a defense mechanism the same way peacock feathers are in that it's trying to communicate, you know, the same way a guy in a bar is like, I'll fuck you up. You know, it's like, you shouldn't have to tell me that. You know, I should either know that or you just do it.

And so with a dog, a good supremely confident dog isn't going to fucking growl. If he wants to fight you, he's just going to fucking fight you. Now, just because a dog growls doesn't mean that he won't bite you. Depending on where he's at in his fight or flight mentality and physically, environmentally where he's at, if a dog is over in that corner laying down and you walk up and it growls, even though it's fucking scared, if it's got nowhere to go and it feels like,

okay, it's shit or get off the pot and I got to fight this guy, then they will. And I will also say the dog that growls and bites after he growls is going to bite hard as fuck because he's scared. Really? You know, the same way. Yeah. I mean, you see it in bite work a lot in the suit where when you start to get into a dog's head and make them uncomfortable and you may get a little growling, you know, on a bite and sometimes it's,

it's less related to fear. Sometimes it's, you know, a host of other intangibles that are going on that are probably beyond the scope of this. But most of the time it's because the dog is a little uncomfortable. And so, but what you can feel is that, you know, if you start to get in that dog's head and he's a little growly while he's biting, a lot of times you'll actually feel it and he's biting even harder because now there's adrenaline going. And the same thing if

You know, when you hear the stories of, you know, kids getting trapped under cars and the fucking 70-year-old grandma picks up a Volkswagen, you know, because their kid was trapped under it. You know, when adrenaline and all these hormones are going through and their central nervous system is fucking taxed and whatever, is that now it's kind of fighting for your life or in this case biting for your life. And many times they'll bite even harder in those circumstances. So, yeah.

Where you kind of use that to your advantage as a human being is looking at the big picture. Is the dog behind the fence and you're coming over the fence and they're growling? In that case, like, yeah, if you pull that dog's card and call his bluff, you can get him to run. If you're committed and you have the ability to use your presence to communicate to that dog, motherfucker, I'm not scared and I'm coming after you. In those cases, then, you know, almost every single time the dog's going to be like, you know what?

I'm fucking out of here. Uh, if I'm working a dog and they start growling, then I'll, I'll investigate it further. I'll, I'll start doing whatever I was doing, you know, to get him to growl. I'll, I'll back off and see if he'll get comfortable when he does. I'll do it again and see if he growls again and back off and then do it again and see, you know, what, what is it about what I'm doing that's getting in his head to make him uncomfortable. And I won't say that it doesn't matter what it is. Um,

but you may not know exactly why what you're doing is having that impact. What's important is to work him through it. Ultimately, as a trainer, decoy, et cetera, it's our goal and our job to make the dog stronger. So if you expose a weakness, you want to work him through that and build his confidence through that.

If I'm, you know, an adversary, a dog is coming at me and I don't know the dog and whatever the situation is, then yeah, I'll use that to exploit that weakness and ultimately try to defeat the dog with whatever he's uncomfortable about. But so, you know, a lot of it's going to depend on kind of what you're doing with the dog. But to your point, you know, it's an important indicator of where the dog's mind is at more than anything. And I will say that

for dogs across the board is that our job is to read them, you know, and they tell you a shitload of information. If you a know what to look for, uh, B pay attention and C do it enough to where, you know, you, you understand why, why they're doing what they're doing. And so, uh, a good handler and a good dog owner period should be able to look at their dog and know what the fuck's going on, uh, just because they've, they've observed them a lot. So, uh, so you,

You can take a dog that's uncomfortable, that's growling, and you can reverse it. I would say usually. It depends on how bad it is. It depends on how slight or significant what I'm doing is to make them growl. If it's something really fucking basic and...

and me not, not trying to do it, um, you know, then, then it's probably going to be a bigger problem, you know, in, in bite work, as you, as you try to progress the dog through the goal is to make them stronger by building their threshold for stress tolerance. That's really the, the key concept of bite work is to teach them that when I put stress and pressure on them,

I want them to respond by natural forward aggression and coming forward. And so countering in deeper, biting harder, pushing forward, wrapping their legs around your leg or whatever they can get their paws on. You know, different indicators that say that that dog is coming forward and bringing the fight to me. And then what I do is I use all of my body language and I take that pressure and stress off of the dog, right?

which in turn reinforces to the dog that what he did was what turned the pressure off. And so when you do that over and over and over is that you condition the dog to understand that, Hey, this guy may smack me and stab me and punch me and try to throw me in a trash can and slam me up against a car door or whatever. Uh, and if I fight harder than I will win. And so you're just, it's the same reinforcement principle as the dog sits and you give him food is that

When he fights me the way that I know that if he fights me that way, it's going to maximize his percentage of chances to survive that encounter. And I reinforce that by turning all of that pressure off. Now he feels emboldened.

you know and so now he becomes even more confident and then I put stress and pressure on him again I get in his head I rattle him a little bit and as soon as I see that I freeze I don't put any more on but I don't take any more off either because I don't want to reward him getting fucking a little squirrely and being in his head so as soon as I do that

I wait for him to counter in and it can be the most micro, you know, counter or aggression or indicator that he's bringing it forward. And the second he does that, I turn into a fucking gazelle in a lion's mouth and let him completely fucking dominate me so that now he's like, fuck, that's what did it, you know, and you just keep going forward.

Back and forth, back and forth, overlapping those drives that way, ultimately conditioning the dog to be as strong as his genetics will allow him to be. His genetics are always going to dictate and determine how strong you can make that dog and how much pressure they can take. There's going to be a limit to every dog. Some dogs can take a truckload. Some dogs, you know, you're tapped out a little shorter than that or even a lot shorter than that. In terms of the growling question,

that's going to tell you a lot about how far you can get with a dog. And you're only going to know once you start kind of navigating those areas, pushing the envelope, putting pressure on them, seeing where they start to crack and seeing how they develop through that. You go on to say...

If a dog doesn't growl, it's going to be a lot harder to get into his head and train him with the amount of confidence they have. Have you ever had a dog that didn't have a growling point or have you ever had a dog or been training a dog that made you feel...

little eerie. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. One kind of correction on that, and it's a small one, but you can still get in a dog's head without them growling. I mean, there's certainly times where I've been able to mind fuck a dog enough for them to be like, fuck this. And they didn't make a peep. Growling is usually accompanying that, but not always. So just an important distinction to make.

To your question, yes. I've worked with a number of dogs that earlier on in my career, there was nothing I could do to fucking get in their head. I would say at this point, I think I would be hard pressed to find a dog where I can't get in their head. But there's two things with that that are important is that it's not fair because I'm wearing a fucking bite suit.

So obviously that dog is at a fucking enormous disadvantage. If I take the bite suit off, then yeah, there's probably going to be a shitload of dogs that I can't get in their head because they're going to fuck me up too bad, too fast for me to be able to continue to put that kind of pressure on them.

But because I'm in the bite suit, even though it may hurt and bruise you up and pinch your skin and sometimes they even go through it, it's still they can't really hurt me the way that I can hurt them. You know, so because of that and just with the years and countless dogs that I've I've worked.

You know, now I can flip that switch on pretty effectively and turn all of that violence and anger and aggression and presence and direct it right into that dog real goddamn fast and make him think, holy shit, I don't want to fucking be around this guy, you know, and so...

Um, you know, it's a, it's a progression, I think in people, the same way it is with dogs is that I've, I've learned how to become way better at, at mind fucking dogs and intimidating them and getting in their head and making them realize, dude, this guy's here is here for bad fucking intentions. And I don't want to be a part of this. Okay. Um, cause they, they all have that limit. It's just, um,

Some it takes way more to get there than others. Can you give us an example of a time maybe earlier on in your training days where maybe you'd made a mistake, maybe you didn't have the bite suit on and you were confronted and you were like, fuck, I don't know how the hell I'm going to get out of this. Yeah. So this was probably eight years ago. I had a dog in that I got for a friend of mine that –

He had some security concerns and wanted a dog. And so I picked this dog up and within a matter of days, I was like, hey, man, this dog is too much dog for you. You know, he makes me fucking nervous. Makes my asshole pucker when I clip a leash to him and he looks at me a little fucking cockeyed. He's not the right dog for you. And, you know, long story short, he said, you know, it is the right dog. Just I want the challenge. I need something fucking ASAP.

I was like, you know, as the expert, I'm telling you, like, this is going to become a problem. You know, no, no, I get it. You know, I'll sign a waiver or whatever. Like, just I need a fucking dog now. And I was like, OK, but, you know, six months from now, don't call me and say my dog won't let me back in my fucking vehicle. And that's basically what happened. But anyway, just in the time that I had him, yeah.

He was walking into my garage and grabbed one of my kids. It was a brand new expensive leather pair of cowboy boots and grabbed him and started trying to chew him up. And I'm like, fuck, you know, and I didn't want him to eat him and get sick or possibly fucking kill him. I didn't want him to destroy him either. But, you know, I told him to let go and he didn't. And I told him again, I started kind of popping the leash and he kind of stiffened up and looked at me like, motherfucker, you know,

you know, and, and just kept, kept going at it. And so I grabbed his, his fucking collar and tried to choke him off of it. And he turned around and grabbed me in the wrist and fucking broke it. And, uh, as soon as he grabbed me, um, you know, that was the first time that, uh, that a dog really fucking came after me with, with anger. I mean, I'd had dogs before that, that had come after me and

and broke skin and fucking opened me up and things. But, but this one, it was just a difference in mentality and the dog, like you could tell he was fucking angry about it. And, uh, I choked him unconscious and, uh,

But I want to reiterate, though, is that, you know, at that point, as soon as his gum line was buried into my my flesh, the every thought in my mind about being tough, intimidating, that I'm going to mind fuck this dog, that I'm badder than this dog fucking evaporated. Yeah. And all I could think about was how can I minimize the amount of damage that this little motherfucker is doing to me? You know, it took every fucking ounce of fight out of me.

And I just squatted down and smothered him and tried to keep him from moving and thrashing and damaging me even more. Grabbed his collar, rolled it, crisscrossed it and lifted up and got him unconscious. And as soon as he let go, I released like that. And a couple seconds later, he went boom and fucking grabs it again. I was like, Jesus fucking Christ. And at that point, I put him completely under for several seconds.

And then I'd grab the leash, open the door, put it on the inside of the doorknob, close the door so he was tied off, got back out of his range, and then fucking sat down. I was pale-faced and fucking blood everywhere, and I was just, you know, knees wobbly, fucking shocky, like, oh, my fucking God, what happened? And it felt like my wrist had been fucking run over. I mean, it was just that pounding ball-peen hammer, you know, throb. Yeah.

Um, and I was fucking rattled, you know, the first two minutes I was like, holy fucking shit. Um, and so, you know, as one example, like, you know, again, without the suit, you know, imagine you, you've been bit now, right? Yeah. Imagine not having that suit on and having that dog come do that to you. It feels with the suit on, it feels like a, your, it feels like your arms in a fucking vice. Yeah. Uh, with nails. Yeah. Um,

nails would be the pressure points and I mean shit my fucking forearm is the bone is sore yeah and so you know once you've been through that it becomes very very apparent you know and I think

I'm glad that you went through that and that, you know, think about how you thought it was going to be and now knowing what it is and now trying to explain it to somebody that's never been through it like you really can't. You know, even if you say, yeah, that's what it feels like. I can tell you actually feel that you don't really understand how capable they are when they're standing six feet away and the way that they fucking look at you and.

and knowing how, how intense they're going to come in and grab a hold of you. Like you just can't really explain that to somebody, you know, until they've, they've been through it, but taking it a step further now, that's what it is in the suit outside of the suit. You know, again, um,

It's a fucking... It's a rough experience. And again, for me, it made me decide real quick that I'm not here to defeat the dog. I'm just trying to escape with as little damage as possible. Yeah. Mike, I want to talk about the bite a little bit later and how effective it is. But you do a really good job of...

kind of describing dog psychology and how it relates to humans. And one thing that really stuck out to me is you talk about how instinctive dogs are to picking up body language.

Because they don't speak. They don't think like we do. They don't have, they don't think with a voice. It's so pretty much all they have to pick up on is body language and how much better they are at that than humans. So I'd like you to go into that a little bit. Sure. So, you know, a lot of times you hear people talk about, you know, dogs can smell fear and

And while, yes, there is a hormonal shift that I think you could argue that there's some scent associated with that, primarily the way that dogs read people is through nonverbal communication and body language. And a good, I think, way to look at the disparity in terms of how much better they are than human beings are is that we think about this podcast as an example. Think about the amount of information that's been exchanged online.

between us and the couple hours we've been sitting here. Body language has played a role in what we've talked about, but very little, comparative to, you know, the verbal exchange word-wise. And so...

If you think about, you know, you're at a Walmart parking lot, you can see what kind of fucking day somebody's having by them walking across the parking lot 300 yards away, having never met them, you know, not talking to them, can't hear them speaking if they are. But you have a good idea if that day is the most miserable day of that person's life or if they're happy or if they're in a hurry or if they're confused or they're frustrated. You can get a good idea of that from that far away with all of those intangibles.

And think about, you know, again, how that's, even though it's that easy for us to see that, that's not how we primarily communicate. Now with a dog, they don't talk at all the way that we do. You know, they don't have an internal monologue. They don't use logic and reason to figure things out. So every interaction that they have with every other animal, every person, all of that shit is, you know, overwhelmingly nonverbal, you know, and body language. And so one of the problems you run into as a handler is,

is cuing the dog, you know, and so they're picking up on something as simple as eye movement. You know, interact with your dog and just look, you know, look like that. And a lot of times you can get your dog to be like, what the fuck is it? You know, what is he looking at over there? Or think about the mood that you're in. You know, how many times have you

Been in a situation where you're frustrated at something that has nothing to do with the dog and your dog picks up on that and decides, you know what, I'm going to go in the other fucking room. So they'll pick up on the most minute signals. Everything. I mean, you know, again, as a handler, it's really difficult to be hyper aware enough to realize the things that you're doing. And it's basic shit. I'm not even talking about handling a dog as a canine handler. I'm talking about

When you tell your dog to sit, a lot of times people will do that with their head. Sit, and they do that. Or they'll tap their finger on their knee when they say here or come or whatever and not realize that they're doing it or move their head that way, here or whatever. There's all these little micro gestures and nuances in body language that we as human beings do that accompany what we say to them or what we mean or what we're trying to accomplish. And they pick up on that shit all the time. Another example is

is the context associated with it. You know, you call your dog over and you have food in your hand. The next word out of your mouth, if the dog, you know, knows sit or you think he knows sit is going to solicit a sit response from that. And I encourage people to try it. You know, call your dog over that go through the same mechanisms, the same routine that you always do before you tell your dog to sit, but, but use a completely fucking different word.

When he comes over, say, broccoli, and watch your dog fucking sit and look up at you like you told him sit. It's because you did all of the same fucking things and went through the same cue and the same mannerisms that you always do to tell the dog to sit. Same with grabbing a leash and connecting it to the dog and taking him for a walk. You're doing all these little things that are cuing the dog for them to understand what

that that's what it is. Now, how that relates to stuff like bite work and protection dogs and police dogs and things of that nature is that when people are angry and they're violent and they have an intent to harm, they do certain things. Human beings act a certain way. You know, cops are very good at reading body language of people because they interact with people all fucking day long. And a few years into being a police officer, they all say the same thing. Like, they get to the point where

You know, just interacting with somebody on a traffic stop, they know, you know, what the fuck, if that person's up to no good or if they're just in a hurry or they're having a shitty day or they're a legit fucking criminal or whatever. How many times overseas were you somewhere? In Yemen, as an example, where you don't speak a lick of the fucking same dialect or language, but you know that motherfucker is a bad guy. You can just tell by looking at him, you know, same type of shit. And so...

With them, it's just hyper-focused that way, and they're absolute masters at reading body language. So when you're training and you're trying to reinforce behavior, it's really crucial that you are really aware of what you're doing and focus on not doing certain things and trying to remove all of your body language so that you're shaping the behavior without influencing it non-verbally that way. Okay.

Well, you know, I'm almost embarrassed to say, but until I started kind of digging into your content, I had discredited a lot of that with dogs and not realizing how intelligent they actually are. But will they actually pick up like emotional facial expressions? No.

Uh, you know, again, it's, it's all part of a big puzzle, right? Is it the dog, just like with, say you walk into a restaurant, like, are you just pinpointing one thing? No, the facial expressions are part of the context that exists that paints the whole picture of the room to answer your question. Yes. But does that, is it just the facial expression? No, it's, it's what else are you doing? What are you not doing? You know? And so, you know,

Just like with people, dogs identify patterns and behavior, whether you even realize you're doing it or not. You know, if you see somebody, you know, walking through, let's say, the mall, right? And it's a middle-aged guy, right? And he's pale-faced and rubbing the back of his neck and he's looking around, right?

Now, if there's not the context of, well, there's his wife and his three daughters that are driving him fucking nuts, that makes sense, right? Because that's the bigger picture. Whereas if that guy's by himself and he's looking around and now it's like, who's this fucking guy? Or let's say he's at a park with kids, but he has no wife and no kids there. Like that's way out of fucking place. So with them, it's that same kind of thing is that when things don't add up, that's when you see them queue up on people and they're like, wait a minute.

Let me size this motherfucker up. So they're just like with us. They walk into a restaurant or we walk into a restaurant. They walk into a crowd or into a room filled with people. They're sizing everybody up. And if nothing is blaringly standing out, they'll fucking ignore it. They'll check. Yeah, okay, nothing's fucking going on. But this fucking squirrely guy that's fucking moving like he's on fucking drugs, now I'm paying attention to this fucking guy. And so that's...

That's how they do it. And pet dogs are no different. It's just how they react to it or the lack of what they're probably going to do about it is very different. But they still notice it. And that's where it comes into play with training your own dog is just be hyper aware of what you're doing and focus on making sure that you're not influencing the dog unless that's what you want to do in terms of teaching hand signals and shit like that.

Have you ever attempted to train a dog without any verbal commands? Oh, yeah. I've worked with deaf dogs before. Oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah. And so, in fact, I've had some clients that had deaf dogs and we use fucking flashlights, you know, so you take a surefire and the mark instead of the which a deaf dog is never going to fucking hear. You flash a light and then do it. And so you're marking that behavior the same fucking way. And then you're just teaching hand signals.

So, you know, the thing is, is it actually works the exact same fucking way, you know, is that, yeah, if the dog's not facing you, you know, you can you can use a laser pointer or a flashlight with a tight beam on it and you can flash it in front of his face, get his attention, then flash him and mark it that way. But the principle with how you're going to train him is the exact same way. And it's actually I would say.

Probably even a little easier to train a deaf dog than it is educate a deaf human being, you know, because there's there's less to for them to figure out that way. And the principles are a little more parallel that way, because what you're teaching is just behavior and not stuff like you are trying to teach a child, you know, arithmetic or how to read or fucking whatever. But.

My wife gets migraines and she swears that when she gets migraines one of the dogs comes up and lays on her head and I assumed it was not, yeah, you're sleeping. The dog probably just wants to take a nap with it, but...

The dog will actually wrap her... She'll lay on her forehead. And, I mean, what do you make of that? Did you smear peanut butter on her forehead before she laid down? No. Maybe you should. I don't know. A hundred percent. You know, one of the adages we talk about in the industry, and it's usually more about being nervous or...

amped up is that your emotion travels down the leash and it absolutely fucking does. You know, now I want to caveat that with, it's more about all of the other things that you're doing in conjunction with feeling that is that I have no doubt if you videotaped her the next time she had a migraine and went to lay down, videotape what she does, how she does it versus when she just goes to bed normally, you know, it's going to be very different. I'm sure there are a number of things that she doesn't do that,

The way that she normally would to go lay down in bed, you know brush her teeth get into a fucking night game You know, whatever it is slap you around. I don't know put a suction cup dildo on your forehead. It only happens sometimes But maybe you need a better routine. I don't know but you know So my point is is that you know You get into a routine that you do it every time before you go to bed and so the dogs pick up on that So when you do something outside of that that's gonna be that cue to the dog that well, this is fucking different and

you know, she just went and laid down, but didn't do X, Y, and Z in, in conjunction with, you know, just acting different, you know, your eyes are closed while you're fucking sitting there or, you know, you, you look like you're in pain or, uh, maybe you make, you know, really almost, uh, hard, hard for anybody else to, uh, to hear or pick up on little noises like just that, you know, or fucking, you know, grunts and groans and shit like that, that they pick up on. And the other's,

So many little fucking things that, again, that you that most people don't realize that they do, that the dogs pick up on. And the absence of those things are every bit as much of an indicator as the presence of certain things. You know, so if if you do something the same way every time and now some of that thing is some of that routine is missing, that's going to make the dog pay attention.

on the transverse you do something the same way every time and now there's several more steps into the end of the end of the routine the dogs and be like well what the fuck is that so um you can almost always reverse engineer when a dog does something that you're like wait a minute

Why is the dog doing this? It's different. Or even if it's predictable, is that you can walk or work your way backwards and figure out why the dog is doing what they're doing most of the time. Well, this is fucking interesting because if you're saying that dogs will react off emotion, off the human emotion and body language, you know, getting into...

I wasn't even planning on going here, but service dogs are huge for guys coming home with PTSD. Now, I know that my dog will react differently when I'm fucking pissed off around the house. You know, if somebody ruins my fucking day, I know my dog knows that because he won't come around. So I guess my question would be,

For somebody that has severe PTSD and is constantly very aggressive and, you know, maybe a little short-tempered, maybe a lot short-tempered, but, you know, always on edge. And they're giving these dogs out for, you know, as therapy, as, you know, to help with PTSD. How do those dogs react to that?

That kind of stress that's consistently displayed all fucking day long, all week, all year, you know, four years. Yeah. I mean, there's two things. One is, is for sure it's taxing on them. It's no different than putting a working dog to work and that it's, you know, it's going to be work for the dog. The biggest thing is, is in the selection process.

is in finding a super social dog that is relatively unimpacted by that. Because there are some, just those happy-go-lucky dogs, whether it's a combination of not being that intuitive as to anger or temper or things of that nature, or being so confident, such a good resting character, such a low drive from a working capacity dog, that they're not reactive towards any fucking thing.

And so a dog like that is a great fit for that. I mean, I get asked all the fucking time, like, hey, same thing. Like, hey, man, I did fucking nine tours and I got PTSD and I want to get a service dog. Is that something you do? No, I don't. Everything that makes a good dog a good dog for what I train for makes them a horrible fucking service dog. On the transverse, all the things that make a great service dog a great service dog make them a terrible fucking working dog. So, yeah.

You know, to your question, it's really about finding the temperament that's appropriate for that to where they're not super reactive. They're not super aggressive.

you know, high, high charged in terms of being startled by things or being super keen to every little fucking movement, you know, a low prey drive dog, a dog that's just, again, has a great resting character and is almost unflappable nerve and environmental wise. No shit. So if, if you're saying a service dog maybe isn't as intuitive as a, as a, as a working dog, probably not. How the fuck are they? I mean, they're the ones I've seen are extremely well trained. Yeah.

I mean, so, you know, training is training, you know, irrespective of what the level of drive is. You can always find things to motivate a dog. Sometimes it's, you know, food. Sometimes it's attention. Sometimes it's the lack of interaction, dogs that don't like it. I wouldn't probably put a dog that doesn't particularly like attention and affection in a service dog home, but...

You know, training is repetition and reinforcement, you know, just hands down, you know. So, you know, I wouldn't say that those are related in terms of, well, if the dog isn't maybe as intuitive as it relates to emotion or drive or things of that nature that they couldn't make a good service dog.

Or I would even take it a step further and say that their intuition relies more on certain types of human emotion than it does reacting to social competition, i.e. this human is showing aggression and dominance and challenge towards me and so I'm going to rise up and challenge him fucking back. That would obviously be the last dog you would want to put with somebody who's fucking angry a lot. So it just needs to be a socially more submissive dog that

that has no fucking resource guarding, that's not socially challenging, that's not super reactive, that is still environmentally very, very fucking stable and confident enough to not be threatened by somebody who's angry. It's a tough build to find a dog that's truly remarkable at all that. The same way it's really difficult for me to find a dog that has all of the working characteristics but will still integrate into a normal household well. I mean, I go through...

several dogs to find the right dog for the family application. And I suspect that most of the service dog trainers out there probably do the same thing. They have the luxury of going to a shelter and maybe finding good candidates there because they're looking for a specific skill set that isn't funneled working drives. It's just amicability and social friendliness and compatibility. So

They're, they're very specific skill sets. Uh, they're just very, very different in terms of, you know, they're on polar ends of the spectrum in terms of, of drive. Okay. That makes sense. Um, you know, um, continuing on with, with continuing on with, uh, psychology of the dogs. Um, you've mentioned a lot in, in all of your content as well about how a dog is not happy unless it has a fucking purpose and it's working. And, um,

What I want to say is I think we just saw it, and my marketing guy picked up on it when we were filming me in the bite suit when Duke ran up the hill and about took my arm off. But when he came down, I was talking to him because he was barking, and I said, man, I can't believe a dog like that, you wouldn't expect a high-pitched dog

I was expecting more of a deep, honestly, to be honest with you, a little more intimidating of a bark. Now, the dog is very fucking intimidating. But the dog, so John said, you know, hey, you know, the dog actually sounds pretty fucking happy. And then I thought about, you know, all the different things that you had said. And I was like, well, shit, you know, even though the dog's about ready to eat me for fucking lunch and attack me.

he's doing what he's trained to do. He's working right now and even though his work is obviously very violent, he was happy. So is that why, do dogs have different barks? Do they have a deep bark and a high-pitched bark or is a dog's bark pretty much the same all the time? No, it varies significantly. I mean, if you had to pinpoint or

you know, parallel the dog's language is that's it. You know, their bark and what it sounds like, again, is a window into where their mind is at. Today is a classic textbook example of a prey bark. And at the risk of getting too into the weeds, prey relieves stress for a dog. You know, when a dog is in prey drive, 100%, they're happy, they're excited, they're fucking motivated. And that's why you get that high-pitched fucking bark.

And I asked you earlier, did you hear him bark last night when I took him out late? And you said, yeah, I think so. I don't know if you noticed what that sounded like in comparison to what it sounded like today. It was the exact opposite of what you heard today. And it was because of the alpaca movement down at the barn in the dark. It was the most thunderous. I mean, it echoed in the entire goddamn valley. I mean, it sounded like Cerebrus getting his fucking vocal cords butt fucked. I mean, like it was...

the deepest, most guttural fucking intimidating, like shake your goddamn soul bark that I've heard out of him ever. Really? Because he wasn't sure what the fuck it was and there's a little bit of nerve in there. So when a dog has a guttural, deep, super low fucking bark, that means he's trying to fucking intimidate you similar to a growl. Okay. And many times when you see a dog, what you won't see is in the bite work where there's that high-pitched bark, you'll never see any hair up on the dog ever.

Last night when he barked like that, his hackles were up a little bit, which I don't particularly like to see. But every dog is going to show a little bit of that sometimes. There is a benefit to having a little edge like that, a little defensiveness. A dog that's so fucking confident that nothing ever worries them is a hard dog to put into defense because they never feel that way. A lot of times pit bulls are that way. That's why most of the time pit bulls, even though they have crazy high prey drive, they

and bite like a motherfucker is that they're terrible protection and police dogs from an apprehension standpoint most of the time because they're so goddamn confident, almost to the point where they're stupid confident, is that you almost can't get them to fucking worry about anything in a bad way.

Just like with most things in life and that there needs to be a healthy balance. You want a dog that you can put into defense, but you don't want a dog that goes into defense so fucking quick that they're reactive and nervy and edgy and biting the wrong fucking people for not doing something that's justified being bitten for. To your question slash point, it's neat that you picked that up. But yes, there are two disparate different barks in dogs and that's when you see them.

Uh, and again, as an owner, a trainer, a handler, what have you, uh, it's important to, to log that mentally of say, well, you know, when we're in this environment, I notice a prey bark out of them. Uh, I see the same thing. Let me cover the other side. When, you know, when you're doing certain things and you hear a defensive bark, log that too, and realize the different stimuli that, that elicit a deep defensive fucking, uh, defense bark as well. And, and know the difference and know kind of the dog's threshold of what, what elicits both of those. Um,

One of the things that people will say, like the dog's in a crate and a kid runs by and he barks. That's a big indicator again. Is it a high-pitched prey bark because there's just movement or is it a guttural low bark? A guttural low bark for kids running back and forth would be a huge fucking red flag for me.

If I was going to put a dog in a house with kids or something like that, I don't particularly want to see a prey bark. But, you know, I can manage that and condition the dog to ignore that much more than a dog that feels threatened and has a guttural, deep, defensive bark with something that he shouldn't have. So, again, it's one piece of the puzzle that

For somebody in my position or really anybody trying to evaluate and getting to know your dog better is that those things are windows into the dog's fucking mind as to what they think about the different stimuli that they come in contact with. Well, you mentioned prey drive and that's exactly where I want to move into next. You talk about it.

and you talk about it a ton and the different levels of prey drive and can a dog have, I mean, you kind of just said it, I believe with the pit bulls, but can a dog have too much prey drive? What is the right amount you're looking for when you train a dog? - So for police, military, even personal protection work,

I want a significant amount. On the personal protection dog side, I like dogs with a little less. They still need to have it. They still need to have enough to want to play ball. And if I'm cracking a whip or a decoy is running away, that incites them. But it's far more manageable. For a military working dog or a police dog, scale of 1 to 10? Fucking 12.

On a prey drive, you want a 12. Yeah, I want as much as I can fucking get out of them. Absolutely. I want it to be bordering on unmanageable. Okay. And here's why is that when I talk about doing the overlapping of prey and defense in bite work and building that stress threshold, you know, again, prey relieves stress. So when the dog is in prey drive, they're happy, they're fucking emboldened, they're enjoying it, they're driven.

firing on all cylinders. When you start to put them into defense drive, that's when now stress starts to build and you can see it. Their pupils will dilate, their lips move different, their tail may set down a little lower, excuse me, their ears may move in different

be pinned back more than I'd like to see. They may stiffen up. They may get a little chewy in their grip. They may seem like they're not sure. They might start getting whale-eyed and looking around. They'll do all these different things and you'll know that when you're at the point where if you put really any more pressure on them that they're going to crack and it's going to be counterproductive. That's when you freeze.

And again, you don't back off. You just don't put any more on. And then you let them make that decision. Now, once they make the decision to come back and come forward, then now I go back into pray. And for me to go into pray, that's high-pitched screaming on my end. That's flailing around and moving. That's turning my head away. That's letting them push me back.

All of the things that you see predatorily in the animal kingdom across the board, what do predators do? Well, they don't fucking scream. Think of a lion stalking something. It's not making any fucking noise. Fierce fucking eye contact. Crouching down. Slow, methodical, very fucking calculated movement. So that's going to put a dog in defense because you're doing predatorial body language to them. So that's going to raise the stress in the dog that's combating you.

Once he shows me that he wants to fight me, now I turn into the fucking gazelle. I scream, I flop around, I let him physically dominate me. That relieves all of that stress by putting him back into prey drive, emboldens him and conditions him to work through that. And so understanding that is really the key concept for bringing the most out of a bite dog while you're working them in that capacity.

to your question about why i want that kind of prey drive the higher that is the more i can use that to help the dog through stressful situations by by relying on his ridiculous prey drive i've seen some dogs with

prey drive so high that it almost didn't matter if they had a defensive side to them or not because they were so fucking keyed up on something and so retarded about chasing something to where if you just condition them to go through your series, whether it's grabbing their collar or slapping them on the ribs and making...

preparatory command or whatever is that you go through that now the dog knows whatever standing in front of me is it their prey drive is so fucking high that when they go in there they can run through a goddamn barbed wire fence it could be a building that's on fire and they don't even realize it because their drive is so high it's carrying them through all of that shit and

And so for, if it's just a working application, yes, I want as much fucking prey drive as I can possibly find in a dog, a dog like Duke, it's, it's a fucking 11, you know, it's really fucking high. That dog, you know, wants to chase absolutely fucking everything. And so when, when he's biting you, there's a lot of things you can do to him that he's not even going to fucking notice, uh, no different than you in a street fight, right? Is it when it's

You know, when you're in that mentality and you don't feel pain quite the same way because you're so loaded and fucking drive to do what you're doing, you know, they're very much in that same mentality when their drive is really high that way. Wow. For the home protection dog, scale of 1 to 10, what are you looking for per drive? Like a 5 or 6. A 5 or 6? Yeah, I mean, to me, it's a very nuanced, like, it's kind of a gut feeling or...

You get a sense of how reactive and how driven they are. I want just enough to be able to train them what I want them to do, just enough to be able to overlap drives and build their threshold and make them able to put up with some shit in the bite work, but that's it. A dog like Duke as an example, to get him...

to where kids could play soccer in front of him and him just lay down and fucking and watch it would be almost fucking impossible. You can do it, but I mean, it would take a, an absurd amount of conditioning and training that you would have to maintain fucking constantly to, to have him in an environment like that, where he's not just losing his goddamn mind, watching that. Think about that dog now in a household with three kids under the age of five, like that's a fucking nightmare. Yeah.

You know, so it's just like with finding the right dog for military and police application selection is everything. One of the things that the SEAL training has taught me, I've transferred over into dogs very much that same way is that buds is a selection process and it's really fucking good at what it does.

And so I take that same approach and that my selection process is almost fucking impossible. It's absurdly difficult for me to say, yes, this dog passes for whatever, you know, fucking capacity I want them to work in. And I keep my standards.

supremely high because that's going to make my job easier to train them. And it's going to make the end user's life way fucking easier for the application that they actually have them in. Wow. When, if you have a dog, um, like Duke with a, with a very, very high prey drive, I'm just curious, uh, once he has his prey, once he's got his bite, say you don't stop them. How long is it?

How long is that gonna go on? You know, I mean, is it gonna-- Yeah, I mean, it's fucking, I mean, really, until you stop him or the dog is so exhausted, he just can't go anymore. So he will go into physical exhaustion. Absolutely, he will. Jesus Christ. And there's, you know, times where that can happen.

I know people that their own dogs turned on them. They were really nasty fucking dogs or whatever, and the dog reacted, whatever the circumstances were. They were battling out for 45 fucking minutes with their dog. Or instances in police applications where because of the environment that the dog is in, I'll give you a gory fucking example, is that it was a warehouse, it was a robbery suspect.

Police showed up, had a dog. They saw the guy go into some ventilation duct that was, you know, about whatever fucking 20 inches, 24 inches, you know, big enough to crawl in, but not not near big enough to turn around. And he's in this fucking warehouse. They know he's in there where they sent the dog in after him.

and so the dog came in after him and got him in his hamstring and ass area because that's that's what was there and and for the better part of an hour literally ate his ass i mean the guy was unconscious shocky from the bottom of his ass to the back of his knee was was just bone do they always stay in one section it depends you know a lot of it's going to depend on you know in a situation like that yeah because that's really all that's accessible

But it took, you know, the police, you know, a fucking long time to be able to get up there and cut the duct out and get both him and the dog out. I mean, it almost killed the guy. High drive dog, you know, only one spot to focus on. So, yeah, it's a fucking worst case scenario. Now, let's say where you were at, if it was just you out in the woods and the dog got a hold of you and for whatever reason, you know, the dog got loose from somebody or whatever, just there was nobody to intervene. Yeah.

A lot of it's going to depend on what you do, what you don't do, how much open terrain there is, how much movement there is. When I was telling you to give him a little bit of movement, if you sit there and just are totally still and frozen like this, he may, after a few minutes, let go and grab you somewhere else. If you pass out from shock and are face down, he's probably going to, and has just unfettered access, he's going to work you over until he's exhausted. And he may go several spots. He may stick to one spot. It's just, you know, there's a lot of...

a lot of variables there that are going to kind of dictate some of it as the dog, some of it's the environment, some of it's the person. Damn. Well, moving into, you know, the bite, you call it bite force, which I can't wait to talk about. Today when I was out there, you know, even with that suit on, I mean, that's fucking intimidating, you know. And I wasn't as, I wasn't so intimidated about,

him bite my arm, but I'll tell you, man, I was fucking nervous as shit that he was going to miss my arm and grab my throat or, uh, or anything that wasn't covered by the bite suit. Because when he did bite, um, I mean, you had mentioned it, uh, before several times, you know, people that think, oh, you know, I'll just punch the fucking dog or, or, or,

kick them or strangle them or whatever and that isn't going to work. And I figured that out real fast. They're not letting go. It's like a vice with nails in it. And it's a constant pressure. And that pressure, if it does let up, it's only because it's about to be more pressure. So

He didn't let up, maybe for like a split second, you know, and we'll roll the tape and you can see it on screen. But every time there was, you know, just that fraction of a second where he let up, it was because he was getting more leverage and more leverage. And, yeah.

And it seemed like he was finding like a sweet spot to where he could get the maximum amount of force on my arm until you were there to get him off. So anyways, I was that asshole that thought that now you've made me a believer. And I've heard you describe it, it's like a fucking chainsaw.

Yeah, so the thing to keep in mind is that even with that suit on, the amount of pressure that you feel gives you a healthy respect for it, but when there's not that...

preventative measure from, you know, fucking tooth going gum deep into your flesh. And, and just, I mean, it is, it's the, the mechanics of the teeth into your flesh and the disparity and hardness coupled with the force behind their jaw while they're doing it. And then the, you know, anywhere from 50 to 90 pounds of body weight, uh,

you know, shaking and moving on top of that. It is, I mean, it's, it's no different than, uh, you know, fucking spikes going into your, into your fucking arm and, and somebody treating it like a goddamn joystick is that it's going to do a ton of damage. And so, um,

The one thing that's very common is people say, or they ask, you know, how, how hard does a dog bite? You know, like what's the PSI behind it? And well, fuck, it depends. It's like saying, how hard does a human being punch? It's like, well, some of them will fucking rip your head off. And some of them, you know, it may hurt, but it's not going to knock you out and everything in between. All of these dogs bite hard enough to fuck you up. You know, some of them bite way harder than others. I mean, there's some that'll break your fucking bones. I mean, I've been a victim of that more than once.

Uh, you know, some of them, you know, much less than that. Some of them even harder than that. Um, but yeah,

The overall bite force is magnified dramatically by the fact that it's not just the pressure with a flat surface. It's, you know, spikes and serrated triangles going into soft flesh and then being moved around and tugged on and things of that nature. So it is a very violent process. Now, I will say from a training standpoint, and you talked about it a little bit, is that

you know, the split seconds that he let up, you felt that he was getting deeper and there was kind of a sweet spot. One of the things that we teach in the bite work also, another layer of it is that when they're biting, if they're grabbing real shallow, right, they're not going to be as strong, no different than if you try to grab my wrist like this. Towards the front of the mouth. Versus like that, you're going to have way more leverage by getting as much of my wrist in your hand as possible. And so,

They understand that inherently, but to take it a step further is that because the suit is on, I don't want a dog being reinforced to just have suit material where you can't feel them. And so when I'm in a bite suit, I wear the thinnest bite suit that I can possibly stand with no gauntlets or wraps or anything underneath.

And if I can't feel him, I won't give him any fucking prey movement to reinforce or reward that bite. I'll be boring and whatever and wait for him to counter in and go deeper and find me. That way, whether the guy is fucking naked or wearing a North Face puffy jacket and a Carhartt shell over top of it, is that the dog is going to bite until he finds you. And when he finds you, that's when he gets rewarded because that's what it needs to be. Because if you have a dog and you can imagine you've got a big...

loose fucking flowing puffy jacket and he just grabs material and is tugging well now that doesn't hurt right so it's not really neutralizing and now you can fuck the dog up so I don't want the dog just grabbing shit and pulling on it

Sometimes you do see police dogs that have been trained that way, unfortunately, and I disagree with it. Anytime I do seminars or workshops or conferences with any departments, I always explain why I disagree with that. And from a tactic standpoint, I want the dog searching for fucking bone and I want him to get as much of it in his mouth as possible because that's going to give him...

Yeah.

And again, the short answer is they all bite hard enough to fuck you up when you don't have a big puffy suit on. Yeah, well, I don't know how the fuck you relate PSI to pain, but if anybody does want to know how hard a dog bites, you can go to Mike Rutland and I'm sure he'd be happy to show you. The short answer is fucking hard. Yeah. That's interesting, though. So the reward...

The dog's reward is the struggle. So I think that's what you're saying. So if you're not struggling, they're going to find the spot that makes you fucking struggle. And so is that so if somebody were to pass out, go into shock and pass out or maybe fucking blood loss, I don't know, you know, and there is no more movement.

Are they still going to look for that reward and just eat your entire body? Well, yeah. So, again, I hate to say it depends every fucking every question, but the struggle equaling the reward example, I want to talk about that for a second, is that, you know, have you ever played tug-of-war with a dog? Yeah. So, you know, if you stop tugging, what does the dog do? It gets bored.

But if it's a dog that really wants to play, will they tug harder? Yeah. So if in these dogs, it's, you know, at a super high level of that. So yes, they'll, they'll get bored and they may start to tug harder. And if there's still nothing, then that's when they may let go and we'll let me try it here then. And now I'm going to dig the shit out of that and shake the fuck out of it. And it's not there. Okay. Well, let me try here then. And they'll, they may move around. And again, if you're on,

conscious and you have no fucking suit on, you're going to turn into a human fucking pin cushion. Um, that way, if, if the dog gets a little bored and is trying to get you to squirm and squeal. And so, um, you know, that, that struggle is more about, um, the dog understanding that they're causing pain and, and inflicting harm and things of that nature. Um, if you've ever watched a cat with a mouse, you know, they kind of play with it and they, and when it's

squealing and screaming like it emboldens the cat and they fuck with it harder and want it to scream even more. You know, most animals unfortunately are a little fucking twisted that way in that, you know, it makes them feel powerful when they grab things and they squirm and shake and scream and it just further incites that prey instinct to capture and possess quarry or prey or whatever. So, you

It's just, again, understanding that concept, you can use that to your advantage to ultimately use that as a reinforcement component while you're doing bite work to reward the bite behavior. They're not even necessarily related. It's just...

understanding that this makes the dog feel good, removes a lot of the fucking stress that he's under by me being in his head and ultimately incites further fucking prey drive by doing it. So I'm going to use that when the dog finds me in the suit and counters in, or if I put pressure on him and he comes forward, I'm going to use that prey instinct that he has to my advantage by rewarding him for it so that I get that behavior more and more often or

in a, uh, in a greater capacity. Damn. You know, um, I see a lot of these pictures on the gram and, and, uh, I've seen a couple of videos and of dogs on target overseas, uh, you know, in the middle East and these fucking dogs, I mean, look like they just ate an entire man. Yeah. Um, I mean, blood all over their face, blood all over the jacket, blood, I mean, literally dripping out of their fucking mouth. And, um, um,

Where do you train these dogs to bite? So it's a great question and I think a lot of people think that the dog will go for the throat or the crotch or fucking anywhere. What I like to do is two things. I like to give the dog a front target and a rear target in terms of a human being. Is that if they are coming towards somebody facing them, I train them to come into the left bicep area.

Um, or if the person puts either of their hands in front of their face, then they, they get the exterior of whatever forearm. If they put both, it's just, you know, it's one of the two of them. If it's from the back, um, and the dog is running fast, typically it'll be

the right tricep, which facing a human being, that's basically the same spot. The dog is going to the top right fucking corner of the human being. Um, sometimes if it's, you know, a transporter or a, uh, you know, it's walking and it, and it's a quick movement, then, then it may go into the back, right, right knee. Um, again, logistically, if,

If it's not a prey scenario where somebody's running and fleeing at a high speed and they're in real close, then a lot of times the dog will go low or we'll have them go low depending on what they can get to or not. So they're looking for the first thing that's presented? Sort of. I mean, early on we'll do what we call stapling the dog on. Like you'll grab them by the jowls and place them on that fucking spot and do it over and over until they naturally go there. And I do think...

that it's important to teach a dog to target certain areas, plural, not just one. If you teach a dog to target one fucking area and that's all they ever do and then that's taken away from them, a lot of times dogs will be confused and they may just sit there barking at them because they're like, what the fuck, it just doesn't compute. So I do like to do top and bottom targets.

At least give them a few different target areas, but then also teach them past that. Once that's dialed in, then also put them in positions where, let's say you brought the dog up here and I'd put somebody face down, ass up behind that chest right there with both their legs sticking out as if the dog may come in at the side of the thigh.

You know, and if they come in confused at first, then I would come, I'd grab the dog, I'd pull him back and kind of let him, you know, almost fuck with him and have the guy move his leg and move it up and down and incite that prey drive, get him fired up and let him go, pull him back, let him go, pull him back, and then finally let him go or staple him on and get him to take that.

Because you may run into a scenario in a police or military application or even personal protection where somebody's hanging out of a fucking window or they're under a vehicle. I showed you that picture of one of the police dogs I sold that grabbed a guy underneath a wheel well of a big fucking cement truck or whatever. And that was the first thing that it came to and they grabbed it. So you want to do both. Teach targeting at first.

But then also teach the dog that in situations where it can't get to one of those targeting areas, that it will take whatever the fuck is there. I mean, those bites are, it's down to the bone. It's not like a little pinhole. It's several holes in your flesh down to the fucking bone. I mean, you can see the tendons and, damn, I'm, you know, I'm...

Like I said, I've never worked with dogs overseas, but I have talked to guys that have said that there are times where they won't even make room entry to go if they're after like an HVT or something, and they will just send the dog in. And a lot of times that person may...

actually just come out if they announce, hey, if you don't fucking come out, we're not coming in, but we're going to send the fucking dog in. And I've heard from several different guys that a lot of times that person will fucking actually come out because they don't want anything to do with the dog because rumors out that they are, you know, that fucking vicious. Are these dogs getting kills?

I mean, it's, it's happened a few times. Um, but it's really a classic example of what I just talked about and that environmentally, um, the situation terrain wise and the environment combined presented the situation where that's just where the dog happened to come in on entry and it, you know, the person's throat was there, uh, or something of that nature. Um,

I've heard of instances of, you know, if it's an older, really skinny guy and it's a big fucking long snouted, hard biting motherfucker that gets him, you know, in the thigh where, you know, they'll break a femur and sever a femoral artery, you know, something of that nature. But those are very rare instances.

You know, the dogs, you know, of all of the apprehensions that happen nationwide, worldwide, whatever you're talking about, you know, a fraction of a fraction of a percentage, you know, they're really anomalies and fluke kind of things. You know, the dogs aren't taught to go after throats or nuts or anything like that. They're generally...

taught to target external limbs. Oh, good. Extremities. Yeah. But, you know, again, sometimes, you know, if they get somebody bad enough and they bleed out or, you know, the person's got a heart condition and they're on fucking drugs or, you know, something like that, maybe it induces a heart attack or, you know. But, again, those are very, very rare instances where something like that happens. I would kind of equate it to like a taser. You know, they're both non-lethal drugs.

means of of apprehension uh have there been people that have died after being tased yes but it's it's very fucking rare you know maybe it causes a heart attack or um you know they fucking stiffen up and they fall and they hit their head on a fucking curb and you know whatever but yeah but it's still you know dogs overwhelmingly are considered and i would consider them non-lethal uh means of of apprehension i mean shit man i mean even just the fact that you said that oh a

you're training dogs to hit uh in here you know on the inner bicep i mean your brachial artery yeah you know and uh and uh from what i felt in a bite suit uh that dog would have been in my brachial artery artery in about point two seconds yeah but um wow just a second here um kind of wrapping up bite force

What is the worst bite you've ever seen from a dog? Probably the one that Benny talked about. His dog, Digo, was in Iraq, and it was an ambush scenario where they were understanding that they were about to be ambushed, and they sent...

the dog and the just the way that the it was like a palm grove or something like that and they had some sandbags set up where it was just kind of a little gun port the barrel sticking out of it kind of aimed down and the guy was behind it sitting you know with his face and neck right right through that gun port and digo air sent him came flying through and jammed his muzzle right through the fucking air uh you know the port there

And that's just where the dude's facing. So just, you know, cause that's what was there. He shot in right on his fucking throat. I mean, I was, I wasn't there. I didn't see it, but you know, in terms of stories that I've heard, you know, when they came up, it was, the guy was already basically unconscious and probably dead or almost dead. And, you know, it sounded like the dog was breaking fucking celery, you know, in the esophagus and just fucking mutilating that shit. You know, Digo's a hard, pretty hard biting dog and pretty, uh,

pretty forward in that, in that manner too. So, um, you know, again, in a situation like that, where it's kind of a fluke thing, that's pretty, pretty gnarly, you know, but, uh, yeah, I'd say, you know, the, the femur, another story of a guy, again, it was a thin, a thin older guy. Uh, the dog was a big, hard biting 90 pound fucking got a long muzzle and,

got in on his inner thigh and broke his femur and, and the guy passed out and it, you know, fucked him up pretty bad. Um, you know, things like that aren't uncommon. I mean, the dog that I showed you that picture of the, I mean, I still have a pretty good size scar on my forearm where the dog bit all the way through the bite suit and filleted my fucking forearm open. That dog was a, was a law enforcement dog here in the United States. Um,

that had, I don't know, 15, 16 live bites, I think. And they were all fucking gruesome because he was just that hard biting of a dog. One of them was he bit the guy in the back of his leg. He was hidden in a fucking tree stump. And the first part he got to was, you know, right behind the knee, upper calf area and peeled his entire fucking calf muscle completely off of his leg.

Again, just like the duct work scenario is that it was just from the back of his knee to his Achilles tendon was just fucking bone and nothing else there. When you get a dog that's angry, that bites that hard, that is well-trained and has some time to work that person over, wherever they grab is generally going to be fucking destroyed. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that's some pretty gruesome shit. Talk shit, get bit, right? I think I saw a shirt with that on it. I think it was your shirt. But hey, let's take a quick commercial break, and when we come back, we'll pick up. I've got a great question. I hope you guys are enjoying the show. I think this is a pretty good one. Hit pause, go over to VigilanceElite.com, pick yourself up one of these sweet shirts. And if you're lucky...

maybe these hats will be in stock too. All right, we're back from the break and, uh, kind of want to get into some of the tactics and stuff that, um, these dogs are doing. And, uh, you know, uh, back to your book, I was listening to it and, uh, it made me realize that the dogs are, I mean, they're essentially, they're, they're a fucking, they're a part of the team. And, uh,

you had rattled off a lot of the things that they do and it made me realize that these dogs are actually, they seem like they're fucking actual operators. Yeah. Um, you know, when you, when you list them all out like that together, I mean, they repel, they jump out of planes, they swim, they attack, they track people. Um, and the list goes on. But, uh,

Which is fucking amazing. Free fall, rappelling, jumping, fast roping, swimming, all that shit. One thing I'm curious about is if they do send a dog in and say it is an HVT situation. For those of you that don't know what an HVT is, it's a high value target and that's somebody that's high on the...

Kill list. I thought it was huge vagina tunnel. That's not it. Is that what it is? I thought that's what it was. I've been fucking misinformed. But if a dog makes entry and they are looking for an HVT and there are civilians, you know, that don't, the innocents, is there a way the dog actually fucking knows, you know, do they have any level of target identification?

There are instances where they've displayed that. And it's I think it speaks more to the intuition of the dogs or the intuition of the dog and their level of confidence in terms of knowing what's threatening versus not. It was a great story of a handler that shared with me that they sent the dog in and, you know, they did a call out basically where, you know, hey, everybody fucking come out.

the person that they wanted to come out didn't come out and this fucking shit bag I think it was a mother left their fucking newborn baby like in a little fucking bassinet or whatever on the floor in one of the rooms

and there were you know other grown men in there or whatever um but long story short the dog went in located the baby sniffed it and kept moving wow and ended up and going and biting the right guy now for for me that's less about target identification because they have no real concept of that i think that's more of

The context of never fucking going after little children in thousands or hundreds of training scenarios of always biting grown fucking men that are displaying aggressive tendencies, etc. But also a dog being confident enough to walk into a room and be like, no different than you see dogs that are pretty nasty with adults or they're good hunting dogs or even good protection dogs that'll let a puppy fuck with them and bite them and nip at them and they'll kind of roll over and play with them. Dogs aren't fucking dumb.

And so they know what's worth being worried about or not most of the time. To your question, again, there have been instances where they did a remarkable job at discerning women and children and noncombatants and people just kind of fucking milling about and ignoring the dog and whatever and going after somebody that had the intent to

I think it's more about that is that, you know, if there's a room filled with 10 fucking grown men and one of them has a machine gun and is angry and waiting for American forces to come through because he wants to kill him, there's going to be a very different fucking vibe coming off of that guy than the other nine that are scared shitless and have no weapons and have no ill intent. I think it's more about that than it is anything else. Okay. Yeah.

But there are instances of the dog going in and just nuking the first motherfucker that they come in contact with. That happens also. You know, so there's just a lot going on and, you know, there's not a cookie cutter answer to that really. Okay. You know, I don't know, you know, it may seem like kind of a weird question, but...

You know, from where I was at two weeks ago before I kind of started researching it to where I'm at now. Now I'm on the complete opposite end of the spectrum where I'm starting to realize just exactly how fucking capable these dogs are. And, you know, where's the limit? You know, where do the capabilities end? But, and I'm still trying to figure that out. But, you know, kind of for the handlers, you know,

when and i'm going to relate this to a jay tech you know and uh you know sometimes guys will take credit for a kill um more times than not i think it's multiple guys that shoot the target or the you know the threat and uh so uh essentially it's not one person that takes credit uh you know for a kill um

an exception being JTACs, you know, if they call in a fast mover or, or, uh, you know, direct air support and, uh, get, I don't know, a hundred fucking kills. Um, a lot of times a JTAC that that's his, he takes credit for that, you know, maybe even more so than the pilot. And, uh, I've heard on several of your podcasts, um,

You'll say this dog, a particular dog got a bite or the handler got a bite. And so I'm kind of wondering if that is, I'm kind of wondering if that is kind of the same kind of accomplishment, you know, maybe a poor choice of words. I don't know, but fuck it. Who gives a shit? Is it bite? You know, is it kill? You know, like I killed that person. Does the handler, you know, he gets credit for the bite. And is it...

Is it on the same level? It absolutely is. I mean, that's kind of the measuring stick of handlers, you know, dick measuring their dog versus, you know, I got fucking 16 bites or 50 bites or this dog had over 100 bites, you know, or whatever. Same thing with either drug fines or explosive fines. Like, yeah, this dog found fucking 97 IEDs on this deployment or whatever. So for sure, it's a measuring stick. But I also think that just like with most operators is they realize that,

You know, a lot of times people are just in the right place at the right time and they're presented with opportunities that a lot of other handlers aren't.

Most people realize that, you know, just like, like I said, most operators realize, wow, this fucking, this platoon at this team got fucking, you know, 400 fucking kills in this deployment. It's like, you know, they were in the right fucking place at the right time, whereas, you know, this group maybe got six. Yeah. You know, so there is some of that as well. But to your question, yes, absolutely. The number of bites and finds are a point of pride and bragging rights and a bit of a measuring stick for handlers. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah.

Do you think this traumatizes the dogs at all after, you know, being in service? Or is this, you know, I mean, do they, does it affect them like humans? You know what I mean? It does, or it can. It's a little different in that it's generally a negative association with a certain stimulus. So it could be gunfire, it could be helicopter noises, it could be the sound of, you know, a tank turret. I mean, fucking...

Just like with the way that we teach them to do certain things through repetition is that they can learn to be stressed out by certain things. No different than dogs with thunder.

It may start out as the first time they ever heard it, it startled them. But then now every time they heard it the next 30 fucking times, it startled them. And now it's, you know, created into this or it's been created into this, you know, monstrosity in terms of a dog completely shutting down and blowing its anal glands when it when it thunders because they're so scared of it is that it's that same association. The.

symptoms that manifest from PTSD and canines are fairly similar to human beings shutting down, being reactively aggressive, things of that nature. Where there's a huge disparity is in how you treat them, to a certain extent anyway, is that human beings

human beings are going to try to rationalize it. They're going to think about that. They may dwell on it. They may ask why they, you know, dogs don't, don't really do that. There's just an association. So the good news is if you think of it like a piggy bank is that you've got all these negative coins in a piggy bank as it relates to, we'll say gunfire. And so you can replace those negative coins with positive ones and essentially you're

rewrite the hard drive of the dog in contextual association with that stimuli. So the way that we do it is if it's gunfire, as an example, is that I'd use like a 22, 300 yards away while I'm playing tug or playing ball with the dog. So it's barely fucking registering while I'm doing something that he really enjoys. And there's a prey element there again, like we talked about, is that that's going to help relieve stress.

And then maybe it's 20 to 100 yards away and then 50 and then right next to him. And then it's a 45 caliber pistol or a fucking AK 500 yards away. And then you're slowly moving it in and you're just desensitizing the dog and rewriting that negative association with positive ones very, very carefully and slowly over time. And so you can get rid of that.

those types of issues in dogs, I think, quite a bit easier than you can with people because it's just very cut and dry, black and white that way. Really? Yeah. Do you think dogs, like with us, you know, you had mentioned yesterday, you know, you wanted to screen and go to damn neck, you wanted to take it to the next level, you wanted more action. And...

I myself deal with that. A lot of guys deal with that. You get a taste and then you want more and you want more and you want more.

Because you like the way it makes you feel. And do you think a dog that has, the more bites a dog gets, do they get addicted to that fucking adrenaline, to that action, to that feeling that they get? They do. They do. Not only does that take place, I mean, you see it, look at Duke when he first came out versus the next time or like,

you know, once he realizes what's going on, he wants to do it and he wants to keep doing it, you know, until he's fucking exhausted and, and repetitions that are independent of, of each other. In other words, there's a space of time, a period of time in between when that's happening that, yeah, it's magnified that way. Uh, on top of that is that, especially with a bite dog where they're, they're going into combating a human being that's four or five, six times their size, uh,

And they're defeating something that's bigger than them. You know, the more times that happens, the more confident they become. And in some instances, the harder they are to deal with because it's kind of like a dog that's used to growling at people and grumbling.

getting them to fucking back off and, you know, they're, they're punking out people cause they're growling and fucking bullying people and they get used to that and they get even more confident. A dog that, you know, goes in and fucking annihilate somebody for real. Uh, yeah, over time it, it absolutely emboldens them even more and makes them more and more confident. Uh, most of the time. Do you think they ever develop like a, uh,

An addiction to the taste of blood? Not to the taste of blood. No, I don't. You know, you hear people say, well, once a dog tastes blood, I think it's total, total bullshit. And I think it's the genetic drive that they have to do that coupled with the training and experiences that they have that are positively associated with getting to do that kind of shit. And they're just driven for it. You know, I don't think it has anything to do with that. Wow.

Well, you've trained dogs for SEAL teams, for several different agencies, for law enforcement, SWAT teams, fucking you name it. Every unit somewhere, almost every unit seems to have a Mike Ritland dog. Have you ever trained a dog? And I'm getting into the Warrior Dog Foundation. Have you trained any dogs that have gone to work?

And then come back to your foundation. I have. And it was a seal dog on top of that, which was really fucking cool. It was a dog that Wayne Dodge and I brought into the program. He selected the dog overseas. That was right when I got there as a trainer. And so, you know, as the dog showed up,

We put him through his first handler course with his first handler, entire first workup for that deployment. The dog deployed with that handler, and then it had a different handler after that. Several years later, the dog ends up coming to the Warrior Dog Foundation after he had been retired from that program.

they're, they're the first two handlers that the dog had or, or the two handlers that the dog had, neither one of them could take the dog one because of a family situation. The other was still on active duty. Uh, so we had the dog for several years, um, with the warrior dog foundation. And then, uh, Taylor Canfield is his name. He's a former seal race car driver, um, came, came to the ranch and, uh,

and came and adopted him a couple years ago now. He's had him now for a couple years. So to have that kind of full circle impact with a dog was really special. It was neat to be able to do that. - No shit, well that answers one of my questions. So this dog, with all that fucking action, I was gonna actually ask if you think that some sort of therapy could, you know, a dog that has seen that much action and comes to your foundation,

If therapy or, you know, whatever you want to call it, can rehab that dog to be able to, you know, live more of a pet life. Yeah. Was that guy a handler? He was. I mean, he was. The NASCAR driver? Yeah, so he was actually that dog's handler, and that's what was so neat about it. Oh, okay. You know, so he was very comfortable and used to the dog to your point slash question of,

Do we have the ability to rehab some of these dogs and get them out into more civilian type settings? Yes. I would say that it would be impossible to put a percentage on it just off the top of my head, but I would say that it's more dogs are not really in that category than the ones that we can do that with. But we have done it with a number of dogs. We've also been able to repurpose some of the dogs where they come in and they're actually young enough

to where we spend enough time with them and then find the right fit department-wise that's maybe a little better equipped to handle a dog that's that kind of dog and have been able to send some of the dogs that we've brought in after several months of rehab to back out, and then they go on and work several more years, which is a pretty neat thing.

neat thing to be able to repurpose these dogs if, uh, if they can do it. What is the, what is the average working, uh, timeframe of a dog? I'd say about, uh, seven, six, seven years. I mean, from, from three to eight or nine for a dual purpose dog is, is about it, you know, five, five to seven years. Um, sometimes it may be two to 10 and maybe, you know, three and a half to six. I mean,

A lot like, you know, another parallel with humans and dogs is that, you know, some seals operate for 30 fucking years and some do one fucking, you know, one enlistment, one deployment, and that's it. You know, and so it's kind of that same way. You know, there are times where dogs do one deployment and it's a hard, you know, op tempo driven deployment. And they went through a lot and it just fucking...

kind of ruined them and they're just never the same and they have to retire them after that. I mean, that does happen. I wouldn't say that it's often, but there are instances where that's the case. What are some of the things you're doing with these guys, with these dogs, you know, at the foundation? So most of it is using food and just playing ball and kind of exercise, you know, using good food and positive reinforcement with food.

to kind of unwind their mind, take the pressure of having to perform and operate off of them entirely. We're really not asking anything of them in the way that we're getting them to just do basic stuff like putting a muzzle on, going into a crate, going back into their kennel run, being able to have their teeth brushed or a veterinary exam or bathed, using food and lots of positive reinforcement and taking it slow and

with doing those types of things, uh, that historically are, uh, some of the reasons why a lot of them end up, you know, with us is that, you know, the handler's trying to do certain things with them and he's, and the dog's biting the shit out of the handler or, uh, the handler's family members or other cops or just the wrong people because, you know, for a number of reasons. So,

We try to desensitize the dogs to all that type of triggering type of behavior that has landed them with us. That's our primary goal is to both act as a resource or a sanctuary so that the dog

won't be euthanized and then rehabilitate that dog, uh, based on, on why it's here in the first place and try to try to balance that out a little bit so that they're, they're a little bit more manageable and, and ultimately, and hopefully get them to a, uh, uh, you know, a civilian household and have them live more like a, like a pet. Do you think, uh, I mean, have you, maybe you've already done it, but do you think a dog like that, that, um,

comes to your foundation who's seen who knows how much fucking combat a lot is it possible or has it happened to where uh they could go and live with a a normal family not somebody that was a handler not a pro uh like yourself like like someone like uh like me yeah yeah we we have done that with a number of dogs yes um which is a great

to be able to do that. I'd say there's a lot of them that we haven't been able to do that with. If we do adopt them out, it needs to go to somebody that really understands these dogs and can provide that type of an environment for them. But yeah, we have. We've had a number of dogs that when they first came in, they came in because they were a handful and had bit a bunch of people and they just needed that kind of pause of being able to

to unwind and take the pressure off. And then also a big component to that is educating the, the new, the new handlers. And, you know, we've got some requirements for anybody listening out there that, you know, potentially wants to, you've got to own your own home, got to have a privacy fenced in backyard, no other pets and no young kids. You know, those are things that we just won't, won't budge on, won't compromise on because we're

What you need to understand is that no matter how much rehab you do is the fact is, is that they're proven biters. They've proven, you know, that they've made the wrong decision enough times to land them with us in the first place. So it would be.

irresponsible of us to put that dog in a position to make that same mistake again. And so it needs to be an environment where, you know, if push comes to shove, you have people that physically are capable enough to at least keep the dog from, you know, doing serious, serious damage.

Um, you know, and if, if there's young kids or other pets and other stimulus in the house that, uh, you know, could potentially trigger that dog, it's just, it would be foolish to put them back in that environment. So, yeah, I can see that. Um, what is a, if you had to put an average and I'm asking for an average, not a, what is the, what is the timeline look like for a dog? What is the recovery process or not the process, but the recovery timeline of, you know, this dog is, um,

Mean as fuck, you know, traumatized, wants to fucking bite everything it sees, too. It's time, you know, we think he's ready to go to a family. Yeah, it's hard to put an average because they're all as individual as we are. You know, it's the same question as, you know, how long does it take most PTSD vets to

to recover from that. You know, it's like some of them never do some of them a couple of weeks, you know, you know, looking back historically on that. I mean, at this point we've taken in almost 200 dogs in the last, uh, you know, 11, 10 years. Um,

I would say generally five, six months is kind of where after a few months you have a good idea like, yeah, I think this dog is going to be able to be turned around. We've seen a ton of progress in that few months, a few more months, and they'll probably be where they're at. That's generally the timeline where I would say just thinking back of all the dogs that we've done that with is that that's about what it took to

There's some dogs that, you know, within a couple of weeks, I'm like, yeah, this dog for sure is going to be a dog we can do. And maybe it's even a little quicker than that. There's many instances where a dog will come in and in the first few days, this dog is probably not going to leave here. You can tell that quick sometimes. Sometimes, yeah. I mean, with humans, you know, they say that, you know, when it comes to PTSD and shit like that, that it's kind of a lifetime struggle. Yeah.

And he may improve, but chances are it's never going to completely go away. Yeah. Is it the same for dogs? Do you think it will ever completely go away or is there always a little edge? I think that, you know, it's hard to say that it completely goes away or not because the biggest factor is

getting it to subside from a triggering standpoint and then putting them in a position where you're not going to have them in the position to trigger it anymore anyway. So, I mean, you don't really know. I suspect that it's probably kind of similar that way and that, you know, even if years go by of good rehab and never putting them in that position, that if you put them in the positions that

that elicited that response, you know, a time or a couple of times, it would probably come back easier than it, than it, uh, its initial onset, no different than like fucking heat stroke. You know, I think just logically it's, it's easy to ascertain that, that that would, would be the case that if you put them in that same position several times or enough times, then yeah, it's, it's going to come back. If it, if it came there in the first place from nothing, uh,

For sure it can come back if it's already happened. So the key really is educating the new owners, like here are the problems that he had that landed him with us in the first place. Here's what you need to ensure so that you can kind of do your best to guarantee that you'll mitigate any potential instances of that recurring issue.

Do you think another thing, and it's fucking crazy how similar it is to humans, but...

You know, with humans, just like anything, you know, some guys with PTSD that come home, it's all about the work you put in. If you want to fucking get better, then you got to put the work in to get better. If you're not going to put the work in, then you're going to be fucking miserable forever. And so do the dogs go through any kind of decision-making process or do you see dogs that are more willing to...

I don't know what I'm trying to say here, but... No, I know what you mean. I mean, I think that's one of the very big differences between humans and dogs is that, you know, it's really not really about the dog so much as it is, you know, the human beings that are putting them through those paces. I think where...

Where the factors put in play whether or not that dog can make that kind of recovery is how bad did it get? How many times did it trigger the dog after it was an issue? How many times did it continue to happen and continue to shut the dog down and make him spiral further down? How much baggage is there is the first factor. And then the second factor is just

you know, the genetic plasticity of the dog's brain as it relates to being able to heal in that regard. And I think that's largely, largely genetic. I, I don't see it being an effort issue on the dog's part. I mean, if you put them in a position and do the things that you're supposed to do with them, because they have all of the genetics and drive to, to do the work to begin with, they're going to, they're going to do it. You,

Either way, it's really more up to the human being and how bad it got before they decided to wash him out and try to rehab him, I think. Okay. Well, Mike, I could drag this on all day. I have questions for days, but I want to end it. I know you want to hit the road and get home, but closing this thing out, I just want to say, you know, what... I mean, I cannot think of a fucking better person, you know, to...

be training dogs to go to these teams, to SEAL teams, to, you know, SF teams, to SWAT teams, you know, knowing the tactics and being an operator yourself, I'm sure that you've come up with things that, you know, a typical trainer could never think of. And I just, I mean, between what you're doing with that and the Warrior Dog Foundation, I mean...

Damn, man, you're doing animals fucking solid. No doubt about it. And so if you want to donate to Mike, you know, Warrior Dog Foundation, all his social media websites, everything will be linked in the description. But you're a solid motherfucker, man. I mean, damn, you know. I appreciate the kind words. I mean, to me, I just enjoy working with dogs. I'm fascinated by them. I marvel at their behavior.

their capability and just the things that they're able to accomplish and how many lives of our brothers and fellow countrymen that they've saved. And, you know, I just I feel like we owe it to them, you know, to do our very best for them because they do that for us. You know, some of it's genetic, but they're just

They're creatures that, honestly, I think we don't fucking deserve. But they're phenomenal, and I can't imagine not being a part of them. So I appreciate the platform and having me on, and I could talk about them fucking nonstop too. I usually do. Yeah, well, nice work, man. I appreciate it. Can't wait to make that documentary. Amen.

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