#5 Mike Ritland - Navy SEAL Warrior K9 Dog Trainer (Part 2)

In part 2 of Vigilance Elite's "Shawn Ryan Show" #005 with Mike Ritland we discuss some of his methods as a top tier K9 dog trainer working with military, police, and many other government agencies. We go into great detail about the psychology and mindset of the warrior dogs and the toll that a deployment full of combat has on the dogs as they return home from war. Mike opens up about his non-profit "The Warrior Dog Foundation" which rehabilitates and gives dogs coming back from war a home they can be comfortable in. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:30Shawn Ryan?

  I've heard you describe it, it's like a fucking chainsaw.

• 1:34Speaker 05

  It's no different than, you know, fucking spikes going into your, into your fucking arm.

• 1:42Shawn Ryan?

  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 vigilanceelite.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.

• 2:18Speaker 05

  The IED was the single deadliest countermeasure that we were facing.

• 2:26Speaker 05

  As the US government spent billions on trying to figure out a way to defeat them.

• 2:34Speaker 05

  The results were that a fucking dog's nose was the most accurate and most reliable.

• 3:04Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 3:50Shawn Ryan?

  Alright Mike, here we are, day two. And this podcast is gonna be all about your training with dogs and kinda what the dogs deal with, you know, overseas and it's not about you anymore.

• 4:06Speaker 05

  Good, that's even better.

• 4:08Shawn Ryan?

  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 in 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.

• 4:41Shawn Ryan?

  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, 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.

• 5:26Shawn Ryan?

  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, then 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, fucking A. 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 Griffster. The shit eater. And yeah, shit eater.

• 6:11Shawn Ryan?

  But you have a video of walking some of your dogs without a leash and Home Depot and Lowe's and stuff, so I'll roll the tape.

• 6:37Shawn Ryan?

  So.

• 6:40Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 6:55Speaker 05

  Ah, for the love of fuck.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  These are fucking glasses.

• 7:03Speaker 05

  The fucking look on your face is at least half of why this is as funny as it is.

• 7:07Shawn Ryan?

  It's all business. It's all business. When me and the grifters, when me and the grifter get to training, it's all business.

• 7:15Speaker 05

  Oh, it's fucking great. I do really love it.

• 7:18Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, any pointers?

• 7:21Speaker 05

  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.

• 7:28Shawn Ryan?

  I think they're a little worried, you know?

• 7:29Speaker 05

  You didn't see anybody fucking with you.

• 7:31Shawn Ryan?

  That's for damn sure.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  Could smell that breath a mile away, maybe, but...

• 7:35Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Griffin will just look at somebody like eight pieces of shit like you for breakfast with that shit-eating grin.

• 7:44Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, now, getting serious,

• 7:50Shawn Ryan?

  I'm gonna look at my notes here, but, um, 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.

• 8:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:12Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, and I thought about that, and they're still used today. And, kinda thinking about that, uh, it's actually, it's pretty fucking amazing because

• 8:27Shawn Ryan?

  everything else has been phased out, you know, we, um, we used to use spears and swords and shields and fucking horses.

• 8:37Speaker 05

  Catapults and all kinds of shit.

• 8:38Shawn Ryan?

  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, you know, they're coming up with new ones.

• 8:53Shawn Ryan?

  Helicopter, everything except dogs has been phased out at one point or another. And I mean, humans will probably be phased out here, you know, before too long. And that just, you know, when you think about it, that's...

• 9:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, so to me, you know, there's two things with that. As 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 in that same

• 9:51Speaker 05

  capacity, whether it's finding enemy soldiers and biting them, or, you know, just keeping soldiers safe and augmenting them from a force multiplier standpoint, you know, they're still just as effective. The second thing, excuse me, is there was a study done at the height of the Iraq War, and it was billions of dollars, where, and this is where, you know, the IED was the single deadliest, you know, countermeasure that we were facing as American soldiers. And so the US government spent billions on trying to figure out a way to defeat them.

• 10:34Speaker 05

  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, you know, finding and locating...

• 10:48Speaker 05

  Improvised explosive devices, you know, all the machines that they tried in these machines are, you know, multimillion dollar machines in some cases with, you know, the latest and greatest olfactory blower technology and stuff. And, uh, and dogs were still better at it than, than they were. Uh, and when you couple that with their mobile, they're, you know, a fraction of a fraction of the price of most of the equipment, but they also, uh, can bite the shit out of people, uh, as you experienced earlier this morning. And, uh, and, um, you know, there's an element of, of kind of a slice of home from a camaraderie and, and morale standpoint that having a cool fucking dog with your crew, uh, makes a big fucking difference. So, uh, yeah, they're just, they're, they're truly remarkable creatures that way.

• 11:32Shawn Ryan?

  That makes a hell of a lot of sense with the morale too. Um, do you have any idea what kind of dogs they were using back? I mean, way back when?

• 11:40Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, I mean, from, from what I've kind of read and researched is that, you know, way the fuck back in like the, the Roman and Spartan era, uh, it, they were more, you know, bigger molossor type breeds than the mastiff kind of breeds, uh, 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

• 12:21Speaker 05

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

• 12:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, they've definitely evolved with all the, uh, capabilities that they're using them for now.

• 12:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:57Shawn Ryan?

  And, and, I mean, I mean, they've become part of the team, at least in the special operations community.

• 13:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 13:04Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, I'm curious, you know, you've been training dogs for how many years now?

• 13:10Speaker 05

  I mean, so in this capacity professionally for about 12 years. Before that, I still, you know, used the same breeds. I just wasn't, you know, making a living at doing it for about six or seven years before that. And I, you know, messed around with training for years before that. I mean, at this point, over 20 years, you know, of training dogs of different breeds at different capacities, you know, in a lot of different ways. So, 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, you know, about veterinary care and breeding theory and, you know, nutrition and conditioning and things of that nature

• 13:54Speaker 05

  on the hunting side. Because that, that really augmented, once I started to get really heavy into the, into the operant conditioning and training theory as it relates to, to higher end stuff like military and police working dogs. So, that, that certainly helped kind of well, or round out my, my perspective and knowledge based on just dogs generally speaking.

• 14:18Shawn Ryan?

  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?

• 14:37Speaker 05

  Probably the biggest thing that I've seen that I, that I'm happy to see is a shift from using primarily compulsion or punishment and, and doing more reinforcement training. Now, I'm not a pure positive trainer by any fucking stretch. You know, I'm not the click and treat for absolutely everything. There, there is a time and a place for corrections, just like there is with people or raising kids, is that, you know, if I'm trying to teach the dog behaviors and, and shape behaviors and, and bridge complex behavioral patterns together, then I, 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

• 15:21Speaker 05

  of them, they're not gonna, they're not gonna pick that up very well. And it's a stressful shitty way to try to learn something now. So I want that to be a sterile learning environment, set the, the room up and the environment for them to make the right decision or the decision I want them to make, and then I, I reward them and reinforce that behavior. On the transverse, just like with kids, is that while I'm not gonna 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?" Like, then you're gonna get your ass kicked, you know? And so with dogs, it's much that same way, is that the only time I'm gonna use corrections

• 16:01Speaker 05

  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 gonna take a fucking shot at the title," then yeah, I'm gonna 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 kinda 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.

• 16:46Speaker 05

  But that's really about it, you know? 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 beating dogs into submission, basically, and that's not a good place to be when, you know, if I'm expecting the dog to go away from me, independent of the handler, you know, and have the confidence and spine and character, you know, to go in and defeat somebody. The last thing I want is a dog with a broken spirit that is only doing what he's doing to avoid having his ass kicked, you know? That's not a good mentality to have if you're going to fight somebody.

• 17:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Porto, 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... 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 was just attached when we got there.

• 18:10Shawn Ryan?

  But I sure as hell never jumped with a dog, fast stroked with a dog, slam, you know, any of that. So was it pretty common for the dogs in the earlier parts of the war to be more just a bomb sniffer? Or when did it become more common for the dogs to be attack dogs?

• 18:39Speaker 05

  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.

• 19:23Speaker 05

  And, you know, while that's a capability and an augment, I think that they realized very quickly that, you know, having a Marine MP, you know, or a Navy Gate Guard, you know, MP patrol dog with, you know, SEAL Team Six doesn't mesh up very well in terms of, you know, 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

• 20:08Speaker 05

  high-speed fucking direct assault, uh, you know, that's, 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, uh, having their own guys be handlers as quick as possible. That takes time. Uh, you know, 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, um, you know, hey, we're gonna throw a sniper detachment, you know, capability on. I mean, it's, it's weapons, it's already things that we're pretty familiar with. Tactics are pretty seamless to, to meld into with a dog, you know, no pun intended, it's a whole different fucking animal, you know, literally. And, uh,

• 20:53Speaker 05

  so it, 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 are certain things that you guys just leaned on me to say, fuck, I don't know, you know, should we have them come this way? Or where should we be standing or whatever? You know, it, it takes a while, uh, to, to get to that point where you can kind of predict what's gonna happen or, or probably, you know, the, the mode that the dog is, is gonna, uh, 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

• 21:34Speaker 05

  rope, via fucking ten-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, 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 a fucking back of a side-by-side, you name it. Uh, and, and they've had to, to have the dogs kind of adapt operationally to all of the different things that, that we do. So if, if the capability, uh, is required to have a dog that can locate explosives

• 22:15Speaker 05

  and do squirter patrol on, uh, out the back of a target or, uh, have the ability to... You know, find somebody in a false floor, 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.

• 22:39Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. You know, with all the other departments that you deal with, in a small special operations team, you get, you know, medical, if the medic goes down, everybody has, you know, 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 him?

• 23:16Speaker 05

  Yeah. 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 is 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,

• 23:57Speaker 05

  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's some dogs that are 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 gonna 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,

• 24:42Speaker 05

  you know, just get it where it needs to be. If that's medevac'd out because the dog is injured, or accompanying the handler because, you know, the handler's injured, or whatever it is, is that, you know, 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 him, take him 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 gonna 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

• 25:27Speaker 05

  much trouble, but.

• 25:29Shawn Ryan?

  Has that ever happened where a handler, I mean, we're talking, I mean, I hope not, but, you know, the chances are fucking high with what, you know, with the job description, it is what it is. But has there been a scenario where the handler's been KIA, on target, in the middle of an op? And, I mean, after seeing what, 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?

• 26:05Speaker 05

  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 lifelighted out, was all fucked up. And Digo, the dog, was too. And yeah, it was a motherfucker separating Digo from Benny. 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

• 26:49Speaker 05

  that way. And yeah, that is a reality of it. And that's, you know, again, that's why it's so crucial that, you know, that the other members understand, you know, how to get a muzzle on the dog, you know, 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 not when they actually need it or they're gonna die from it, you know. So with the dog stuff, it's

• 27:31Speaker 05

  the same way. But again, the big thing is just try to get a muzzle on the dog, clip a fucking leash to him and get him out of there and get him where they need to be.

• 27:40Shawn Ryan?

  So the dog might be a pain in the ass, you know what I mean, for a non-handleer, but it sounds like there are no concerns that it's gonna turn? And so...

• 27:51Speaker 05

  Well, it can. I mean, there are times where that dog, like, injures the own team members to the point where they're fucking out of the fight. I mean, it's happened.

• 28:03Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 28:04Speaker 05

  Not often, 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, you 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.

• 28:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:37Speaker 05

  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.

• 28:55Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, so in general, would you say that dogs are very aware of who the enemy is and who the friendlies are?

• 29:06Speaker 05

  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 they've got a, you know, 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.

• 29:48Speaker 05

  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 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 flays 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 thirty dudes all day, every day, does every training trip, is around them, 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.

• 30:29Shawn Ryan?

  How attached are the dogs to the handlers? 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?

• 31:12Shawn Ryan?

  Or can somebody, you know, pick up the ball and drive on and keep that dog effective in the fight?

• 31:22Speaker 05

  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, 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.

• 32:05Speaker 05

  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, you know, for him, he doesn't have that attachment to me the way that a lot of dogs or even most dogs do. You know, so he's a dog that if you put him in that environment, 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. You know, so it's largely dependent on the personality of the dog and how attached they get to their handler.

• 32:49Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting, you know, uh, I've seen pictures where, um, you know, there'll be a casket of a down, a down handler with a flag draped over it and, uh, and you see videos and, and, and pictures where the dog will not leave the casket, which is fucking gut wrenching, you know, um, and at the same time, it's, it's actually uh, pretty cool to see, uh, and sad, you know, um, but, but, uh, you know, after, um, researching and all that, um, that was just one of the questions that really stuck out to me, but, um, so kind of moving on from that, uh,

• 33:34Shawn Ryan?

  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

• 34:13Shawn Ryan?

  uh, a weakness, and, and I really started trying to put things together, um, 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, you reiterate that in all of your publications and all of 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.

• 34:54Shawn Ryan?

  Nine times out of ten, the loudest motherfucker in the room's always the weakest link or the biggest shitbag.

• 34:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:00Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and they're hiding some kind of insecurity, which is what you said. 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.

• 35:19Speaker 05

  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, you know, what is generally the human being's response to a dog growling?

• 35:33Shawn Ryan?

  Fear.

• 35:33Speaker 05

  Was is they, 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 forward and continue fucking with a dog?

• 35:45Shawn Ryan?

  But no.

• 35:46Speaker 05

  Or do most people say, ooh, you know what, maybe I'm gonna fucking back up on this one?

• 35:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 05

  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 ultimately, that the dog is uncomfortable, scared, or at a minimum, you know, 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 him 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, is that 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,

• 36:34Speaker 05

  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, you know, and so with a dog, a good supremely confident dog isn't gonna fucking growl. If he wants to fight you, he's just gonna fucking fight you.

• 36:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:50Speaker 05

  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 gotta fight this guy, then they will. And I will also say the dog that growls and bites after he growls is gonna 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 him uncomfortable and you may get a little growling, you know, on a bite and sometimes it's, it's less related to fear.

• 37:33Speaker 05

  Sometimes it's, you know, a host of other intangibles that are going on that are probably beyond the scope of this, but, 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, 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, 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, it's kinda fighting for your life or in this case biting for your life and many

• 38:18Speaker 05

  times they'll, they'll bite even harder in those circumstances. So where you kinda use that to your advantage as a human being is, is looking at the big picture is, you know, 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, 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, in those cases, then, you know, almost every single time the dog's gonna be like, "You know what? I'm fucking outta here." 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.

• 39:01Speaker 05

  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, but you may not know exactly why what, what you're doing is, 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 wanna, you wanna work him through that and build his confidence through that. If I'm, you know, in 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

• 39:43Speaker 05

  ultimately try to, uh, try to defeat the dog with, with whatever he's uncomfortable about. But, so, you know, a lot of it's gonna depend on, on kinda what you're doing with the dog. But to your point, um, you know, it's, it's a, 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.

• 40:27Shawn Ryan?

  So, uh, so you, you can take a dog that's uncomfortable, that's growling, and, and you can, you can reverse it?

• 40:37Speaker 05

  I would say usually.

• 40:38Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, good.

• 40:39Speaker 05

  Depends on how bad it is. Um, 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, and me not, not trying to do it, um, you know, then, then it's probably gonna 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, and coming forward.

• 41:20Speaker 05

  And so, countering in deeper, uh, biting harder, pushing forward, wrapping their legs around your leg, or, or whatever they can get, get their paws on. Uh, you know, different indicators that say that that dog is, 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, 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. And if

• 42:01Speaker 05

  I fight harder, then 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, when he fights me the way that I know that if he fights me that way, it's gonna, it's gonna maximize his percentage of chances to survive that encounter. And I reinforce that by, by turning all of that pressure off. Now he feels emboldened, you know, and so now he, 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

• 42:45Speaker 05

  to counter in and it can be the most micro, you know, counter or aggression or, 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, that's what did it, you know, and you just keep going back and forth, back and forth, overlapping those, those drives that way, ultimately conditioning the dog to, to be as strong as, 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 gonna be a limit to every dog. Some dogs can take a truckload. Some dogs, you know, you're tapped out a little, a little shorter than that, or even

• 43:29Speaker 05

  a lot shorter than that. In terms of the growling question, that's gonna, gonna tell you a lot about how far you can get with a dog. And you're, you're only gonna know once you start kind of navigating those areas, pushing the envelope, putting pressure on them, seeing where they start to crack and then seeing how they, they develop through that.

• 43:47Shawn Ryan?

  You go on to say that if a dog doesn't growl, it's gonna 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 either didn't have a growling point? Or have you ever had a dog or been training a dog that made you feel a little eerie?

• 44:13Speaker 05

  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 mindfuck 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

• 44:57Speaker 05

  is that it's not fair because I'm wearing a fucking bite suit. You know, so obviously that dog is at a fucking enormous disadvantage. If I take the bite suit off, then yeah, there's probably gonna be a shitload of dogs that I can't get in their head because they're gonna 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. So because of that, and just with the years and countless dogs that 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

• 45:42Speaker 05

  and direct it right into that dog real goddamn fast and make him think, "Holy shit, I don't wanna fucking be around this guy."

• 45:51Speaker 05

  You know, 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 is here is here for bad fucking intentions and I don't want to be a part of this.

• 46:08Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 46:09Speaker 05

  Because they all have that limit, it's just some, it takes way more to get there than others.

• 46:16Shawn Ryan?

  Given, can you give us an example of a time, maybe earlier on in your training days, where 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 gonna get out of this.

• 46:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, so this was probably eight years ago, I had a dog in that I got for a friend of mine that wanted, he had some 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. And I was like, you know, as the expert, I'm telling you, like, this is gonna become

• 47:14Speaker 05

  a problem, you know, no, no, I get it, you know, I'll sign a waiver, whatever, like, just I need a fucking dog now. Shit. And I was like, okay, 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, 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 looked

• 47:58Speaker 05

  at me like, motherfucker. 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, and grabbed me in the wrist and fucking broke it. Shit. And, uh, as soon as he grabbed me, um, you know, that was the, 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, and fucking opened me up and things. But, but this one, it was just a difference in mentality. And the dog, like you, you could tell he was fucking angry about it. And, uh, I choked him unconscious and, uh,

• 48:38Speaker 05

  but I, I want to reiterate though, is that, you know, at that point, as soon as his gum line was buried into my, my flesh, um, the, every thought in my mind about being tough, intimidating, uh, that I'm gonna mindfuck this dog, that I'm bader than this dog, fucking evaporated. Yeah. Um, and, 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. Um, and, and I, I just, you know, squatted down and, and smothered him and tried to keep him from, from moving and thrashing and, and damaging me even more. Grabbed his collar, rolled it, crisscrossed it and lifted up

• 49:20Speaker 05

  and, uh, and got him unconscious. And as soon as he, he let go, I released like that. And a couple of seconds later, he went, boom, and fucking grabs it again. I was like, Jesus fucking Christ. And I, at that point, I, uh, I put him completely under for several seconds. And then I grabbed the leash, uh, opened the door, put it on the inside of the doorknob, closed the door. So he was tied off, got back out of his, 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, and it felt like, like my wrist had been fucking run over. I mean, it was just that pounding ball peen hammer, you know, throb.

• 50:02Speaker 05

  Um, and I, I was fucking rattled, you know, I'd be first to admit, 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've been bitten now, right?

• 50:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 05

  Imagine not having that suit on and having that dog come do that to you.

• 50:19Shawn Ryan?

  It feels, with the suit on, it feels like a, it feels like your arm's in a fucking vise.

• 50:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:27Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, with nails.

• 50:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:30Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, nails that would be the pressure points. And, uh, and, I mean, shit, my fucking forearm is, or the bone is sore.

• 50:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, 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, uh, you know, think about how you thought it was gonna 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," like, until 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 knowing how intense they're gonna come in and grab a hold of you, like, you just can't really explain that to somebody, you know, until they've been through it. But, taking it a step further now, that's what it is in the suit.

• 51:21Speaker 05

  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, uh, you know, I'm not here to defeat the dog, I'm just trying to escape with as little damage as possible.

• 51:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Mike, I wanna talk about the bite a little bit later, and how effective it is, but you do a really good job of, um, kinda describing dog psychology and how it relates to humans. And, uh, one thing that really stuck out to me is, you talk about how instinctive dogs are to picking up body language, 'cause they don't speak, they don't think like we do, they don't have, they don't think with a voice, um, it's, 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.

• 52:20Speaker 05

  Sure. So, you know, a lot of times, you hear people talk about, uh, you know, dogs can smell fear, and, uh, while, yes, there is a hormonal shift that, uh...

• 52:33Speaker 05

  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, you know, we, think about this podcast as an example. Think about the amount of information that's been exchanged between us in 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, you can

• 53:13Speaker 05

  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, 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, 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

• 53:58Speaker 05

  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 cueing 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, 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 gonna go in the other fucking room? So they'll pick up on the most minute signals? Everything, I mean...

• 54:39Speaker 05

  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, you know, when you tell your dog to sit, a lot of times, people will do that with their head. Sit, you know, and they do that. Or, you know, 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, you know, 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.

• 55:22Speaker 05

  Another example 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 gonna solicit a sit response from that. And I encourage people to try it. You know, call your dog over, go through the same mechanisms, the same routine that you always do before you tell your dog to sit, but use a completely fucking different word. You know, when he comes over, say broccoli, you know, and watch your dog fucking sit and look up at you like you told him sit, you know? And 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.

• 56:05Speaker 05

  Same with grabbing a leash and connecting it to the dog and taking him for a walk. Is that, you know, you're doing all these little things that are cueing the dog for them to understand 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,

• 56:49Speaker 05

  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, same type of shit. And so with them, it's just, it's, it's 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.

• 57:31Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, 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, with dogs, and not realizing how intelligent they actually are, but will they, will they actually pick up like emotional facial expressions?

• 57:53Speaker 05

  Uh, well, you know, again, it's, it's all part of a big puzzle, right? Is it the, 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, 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, what are you not doing? You know, and so, just like with people, dogs identify patterns and behavior, whether, 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, and it's a, a middle-aged guy, right?

• 58:35Speaker 05

  And he's pale-faced and rubbing the back of his neck, and he's looking around. Now, if 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 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.

• 59:17Speaker 05

  And if nothing is blaringly standing out, they'll fucking ignore it. They'll check, yep, no, yeah, okay, nothing's fucking going on. But this fucking squirrely guy, you know, that's fucking moving, you know, like he's on fucking drugs. Now, now I'm paying attention to this fucking guy. And so that's, that's how they do it. And pet dogs are are no different. It's just how they react to it, or, you know, the the lack of what they're probably going to do about it is 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 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, but.

• 59:56Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever attempted to train a dog without any verbal commands? I'm just curious.

• 1:00:00Speaker 05

  I've worked with deaf dogs before.

• 1:00:02Shawn Ryan?

  No shit?

• 1:00:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. And so, in fact, I've I've had some clients that had deaf dogs. And and we use fucking flashlights. You know, so you take a Surefire and and the mark, instead of the ch ch, which a deaf dog is never gonna fucking hear, you 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 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 and mark it that way. But the the principle with how you're gonna 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,

• 1:00:48Speaker 05

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

• 1:01:07Shawn Ryan?

  My, uh, my wife gets migraines and, um, she swears that when she gets migraines, one of the dogs comes up and lays on her head and I assumed it was, uh, 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, uh, I mean, what do you make of that?

• 1:01:29Speaker 05

  Did you smear peanut butter on her forehead before she laid down?

• 1:01:31Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 1:01:32Speaker 05

  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, uh, amped up, uh, 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, 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, to go lay down in bed, you know, brush her teeth, get into a fucking night

• 1:02:16Speaker 05

  game, you know, whatever it is, slap you around, I don't know, put a suction cup dildo on your forehead.

• 1:02:21Shawn Ryan?

  That only happens sometimes.

• 1:02:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, but, uh, 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 going to be that cue to the dog that, well, this is fucking different. 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, uh, you know,

• 1:03:05Speaker 05

  or fucking, you know, grunts and groans and shit like that, that they pick up on, you know, there'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, 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, into the, into the routine. The dog's gonna be like, well, what the fuck is that? So you, 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.

• 1:03:48Speaker 05

  Or if it's, 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.

• 1:03:57Shawn Ryan?

  Well, this is fucking interesting because if you're saying that dogs will react off emotion, off the, the, uh, human emotion and body language, you know, um, getting into, or I wasn't even planning on going here, but, um, service dogs are huge for guys coming home with PTSD. Now, I know that my dog, um, 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, um, he won't come around. You know? So I guess, uh, my question would be for somebody that has severe PTSD and, uh, is

• 1:04:41Shawn Ryan?

  constantly very aggressive and, and, you know, maybe a little short tempered, maybe a lot short tempered, but you know, always on edge. Um, and, and they're giving these dogs out for, you know, as therapy as, um, you know, to help with PTSD. How do those dogs react to that kind of stress that's consistently displayed all fucking day long, all week, all year, you know, for years?

• 1:05:08Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, there's two things. One is, is for sure it's taxing on them. It's, it's no different than putting a working dog to work and that it's, you know, it, it's gonna be work for the dog. Um, the biggest thing is, is in the selection, is in finding a super social dog that, that is, you know, relatively unimpacted by that. Cause there are some, just those happy-go-lucky dogs that, you know, whether it's a combination of not being that, that intuitive as, as to, you know, 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, they're not reactive towards any fucking thing. You know, and so a dog like that is, is a great fit for that. I mean, I get asked all the fucking time, like, hey,

• 1:05:53Speaker 05

  Same thing, like, hey, man, I did fucking nine tours and I got PTSD and I wanna get a service dog. You know, 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, 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, you know, 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.

• 1:06:35Speaker 05

  A dog that's just, again, has a great resting character and is almost unflappable nerve and environmental wise.

• 1:06:42Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. So, if you're saying a service dog maybe isn't as intuitive as a, as a, as a working dog.

• 1:06:49Speaker 05

  Probably not.

• 1:06:50Shawn Ryan?

  How the fuck are they, I mean, they're, the ones I've seen are extremely well-trained.

• 1:06:54Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, so, you know, their 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, in a service dog home. But, you know, training is repetition and reinforcement, you know.

• 1:07:22Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:07:22Speaker 05

  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, 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, you know, social competition, i.e.

• 1:07:52Speaker 05

  This human is showing aggression and dominance and challenge towards me and so I'm gonna rise up and challenge him fucking back. You know, that would obviously be the last dog you would wanna put with somebody who's fucking angry a lot. Uh, you know, so it just needs to be a socially more submissive dog. You know, 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. You know, it's a tough build to find a dog that's truly remarkable and 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.

• 1:08:35Speaker 05

  I mean, I go through several dogs to find the right dog for the family application and I suspect that, uh, you know, most of the service dog trainers out there probably do the same thing, you know? They have the luxury of going to a shelter and maybe finding good candidates there because they're looking for a specific skillset that isn't funneled working drives, it's just amicability and social, um, you know, friendliness and compatibility. So, they're very specific skillsets, uh, they're just very, very different in terms of, you know, they're on polar ends of the spectrum in terms of drive.

• 1:09:14Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, that makes sense. You know, continuing on with psychology of the dogs, um, you've mentioned a lot 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, you know, um, what I wanna say is, I think just saw it and I, my marketing guy picked up on it, uh, when we were filming, uh, me in the bite suit when, uh, Duke ran up the hill and about took my arm off, but when he was, when he came down, uh, I was talking to him because he was barking and I said, "Man, I can't believe, uh, you know..."

• 1:09:57Shawn Ryan?

  A dog like that, you wouldn't expect like a high pitched bark. 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, and then I thought about, you know, all the different things that you had said and, 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,

• 1:10:40Shawn Ryan?

  he was happy. So is that why, do they, do dogs have different barks? Do they have a deep bark and a high pitched bark? Or is a dog's bark pretty much same all the time?

• 1:10:50Speaker 05

  No, it varies significantly. I mean, if you had to pinpoint or, or,

• 1:10:56Speaker 05

  you know, parallel the, the dog's language is, is that's it. You know, their, their bark and, 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, a hundred percent, 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 the, the alpaca movement down at the barn in the dark.

• 1:11:41Speaker 05

  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 buttfucked. I mean, like, it was the deepest, most guttural, fucking intimidating, like shake your goddamn soul bark that, 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.

• 1:12:09Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:12:10Speaker 05

  And many times when you see a dog, what, 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, you know, every dog is gonna 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. It's why most of the time pit bulls, even though they have crazy high prey drive and bite like a motherfuckers, that they're terrible protection and police dogs from an apprehension

• 1:12:53Speaker 05

  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. And again, as an owner, a trainer, a handler, what have you, it's important to log that

• 1:13:38Speaker 05

  mentally of say, well, you know, when we're in this environment, I notice a prey bark out of him. I see the same thing, let me cover the other side, you know, when you're doing certain things and you hear a defensive bark, log that too and realize the different stimuli that elicit a deep defensive fucking defense bark as well and know the difference and know kind of the dog's threshold of what elicits both of those. One of the things that, you know, 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.

• 1:14:19Speaker 05

  If I was gonna 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... You know, 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, as to what they think about the different stimuli that they come in contact with.

• 1:14:55Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you mentioned prey drive, and that's exactly where I want to move into next. You talk about it, and, 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?

• 1:15:20Speaker 05

  So for, 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's running away, that, that incites them, but it's, it's far more manageable.

• 1:15:41Shawn Ryan?

  For a military working dog, or a police dog, scale of 1 to 10?

• 1:15:45Speaker 05

  Fucking 12.

• 1:15:46Shawn Ryan?

  On a prey drive, you want a 12?

• 1:15:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, I want as much as I can fucking get out of them, absolutely. I want it to be bordering on unmanageable.

• 1:15:54Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:15:55Speaker 05

  And here's why, is that when I talk about doing the overlapping of prey and defense, and bite work, and building that stress threshold, so, you know, again, prey relieves stress. So when the dog is in prey drive, they're happy, they're fucking emboldened, they're, they're enjoying it, they're driven, firing on all cylinders. When you start to put them into defense drive, that's when, when now, stress starts to build, and you can see it. Their, their pupils will dilate, their lips move different, their tail may set down a little lower, excuse me, their, 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.

• 1:16:40Speaker 05

  They, they'll do all these different things, and, 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, 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, come back and, and come forward... Then now I go back into prey. And for me to go into prey, 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 predatorially in the animal kingdom across the board. What do predators do? Well, they don't fucking scream. You know, think of a lion stalking something. It's not making any fucking noise.

• 1:17:24Speaker 05

  Fierce fucking eye contact. You know, crouching down, slow, methodical, very fucking calculated movement. Right? So that's going to put a dog in defense because you're doing predatory body language to him. 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, uh, understanding that is really the key concept for, uh, bringing the most out of a bite dog while you're working them in that capacity.

• 1:18:07Speaker 05

  To your question about why I want that kind of prey drive, the higher that is, the more I can use that to, uh, help the dog through stressful situations. Uh, by relying on his ridiculous fucking 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, uh, you know, whether it's grabbing their collar, slapping them on the ribs and making a preparatory command or whatever is that you go through that and now the dog knows whatever's standing in front of me is it.

• 1:18:49Speaker 05

  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 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 a fucking 11. You know, it's really fucking high. That dog, you know, wants to chase absolutely fucking everything. And so- When he's biting you, there's a lot of things you can do to him that he's not even gonna fucking notice. 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

• 1:19:31Speaker 05

  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.

• 1:19:40Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. For the home protection dog, scale on one to 10, what are you looking for prey drive?

• 1:19:50Speaker 05

  Like a five or six.

• 1:19:51Shawn Ryan?

  A five or six?

• 1:19:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, to me, that's a, it's a very nuanced, like, it's kind of a gut feeling or it's, you just, 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 and the bite work, but that's it, you know?

• 1:20:15Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:20:16Speaker 05

  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 you, I mean, it would take a, an absurd amount of conditioning and training that you would have to maintain fucking constantly 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, you know? So it's just like with finding the right dog for military and police application, selection is everything.

• 1:20:56Speaker 05

  One of the things that 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 him to work in. And I keep my standards supremely high because that's gonna make my job easier to train them and it's gonna make the end user's life way fucking easier for the application that they actually have them in.

• 1:21:32Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. When, if you have a dog like Duke with a very, very high prey drive, I'm just curious, once he has his prey, once he's got his bite... Say you don't stop him. How long is it? How long is that gonna go on? You know, I mean, uh, is it gonna?

• 1:21:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's fuck, I mean, really, until you stop him or the dog is so exhausted, he just can't go anymore.

• 1:21:59Shawn Ryan?

  So it's, he will go into physical exhaustion?

• 1:22:02Speaker 05

  Absolutely, he will.

• 1:22:03Shawn Ryan?

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:22:04Speaker 05

  And there's, there's, you know, times where that, that can happen, you know? You know, I, I know people that, uh, you know, their own dogs turned on them, you know, they were really nasty fucking dogs or whatever, and, and the dog reacted, you know, whatever the circumstances were, and, you know, they were, they were battling out for forty-five fucking minutes with their dog, uh, or instances in, in police applications where because of the environment that the dog is in, uh, I'll give you a, and 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 twenty inches, twenty-four inches, you know, big enough to crawl in, but not, not near big enough to turn around.

• 1:22:48Speaker 05

  And he's in this fucking warehouse, they know he's in there, well, they sent the dog in after him. And so the dog came in after him and got him in his fucking hamstring and ass area, 'cause that's, that's what was there, and, and for the better part of an hour, literally ate his fucking ass. I mean, the guy was unconscious, shocky, from the bottom of his ass to the back of his knee was, was just fucking bone.

• 1:23:10Shawn Ryan?

  Do they always stay in one section?

• 1:23:11Speaker 05

  It depends, you know, a lot of it's gonna depend on, you know, in, in a situation like that, yeah, 'cause that's really all that's accessible. Uh, but it, 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, so the, I mean, it almost killed the guy. Uh, high-drive dog, uh, 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, if it was just you out in the woods and the dog got, got a hold of you, and, and for whatever reason, you know, the dog got loose from somebody or, or whatever, just there was nobody to intervene. A lot of it's gonna depend on what you do, what you don't do, how much open terrain there is, you know, how much movement there is, you know, when I was telling you to give him a little bit of movement.

• 1:23:54Speaker 05

  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. You know, if you pass out from shock and are face down, yeah, he's probably gonna, and has just unfettered access, he's gonna 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 gonna kinda dictate. Some of it is the dog, some of it's the environment, some of it's the, the person.

• 1:24:20Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. Well, moving into, you know, the bite. You call it bite force, um, which I can't wait to talk about. Uh, today when I was out there, you know, even with that, with that suit on, uh, I mean, that's fucking intimidating, you know? And, uh, I wasn't as, uh, I wasn't so intimidated about him biting my arm, but I'll tell you, man, I was fucking nervous as shit that he was gonna 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, that,

• 1:25:03Shawn Ryan?

  you've 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 him, or strangle him, or whatever, and, uh, that isn't gonna work. And I figured that out real fast. It's, they're not letting go. It's like a vice, um, with nails in it. And, uh, it's a constant pressure. And that pressure, if he does let up, it's only because it's about to be more pressure. So, he didn't let up, uh, maybe for like a split second, you know? And, uh, we'll roll the tape and you can see it.

• 1:25:46Shawn Ryan?

  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, um, and, and finding, it seemed like he was finding like a sweet spot to where he could get the maximum, um, maximum amount of force on my arm and, uh, and, and until you were there to get him off. But, um, so anyways, I was that asshole that thought, you know, that thought that now you've made me a believer.

• 1:26:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:20Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, and, uh, I've heard you describe it, it's like a fucking chainsaw.

• 1:26:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, you know, the thing to keep in mind is that even with that suit on, the amount of pressure that you feel, uh, gives you a healthy respect for it. But when there, when there's not, you know, 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, of the teeth into your flesh and the disparity in 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, 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

• 1:27:08Speaker 05

  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 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, 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.

• 1:27:51Speaker 05

  The overall bite force is magnified dramatically by the fact that it's not just the pressure with a flat surface, it's 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 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

• 1:28:34Speaker 05

  strong, no different than if you try to grab my wrist like this. Towards the front of my mouth. 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 him. 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, if whether the guy is fucking naked or wearing a North Face puffy jacket and

• 1:29:17Speaker 05

  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? Now, 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

• 1:30:02Speaker 05

  him to get as much of it in his mouth as possible because that's going to give him... The best chance at getting out of that situation alive and ultimately neutralizing that threat, but the bite pressure is, you know, is one of those things that wouldn't say it's controversial, but it's a big ticket item in the, in the dog industry because, you know, everybody wants to know how, how hard the fucking dog bites. But again, the short answer is they all bite hard enough to fuck you up when you don't have a big, big puffy suit on.

• 1:30:32Shawn Ryan?

  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 Ritland and I'm sure he'd be happy to show you.

• 1:30:43Speaker 05

  The short answer is fucking hard.

• 1:30:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. That's interesting though. So the, 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, going to 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?

• 1:31:18Speaker 05

  Well, yeah. So again, I hate to, I hate to say it depends every fucking, every question, but the, the, 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?

• 1:31:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:32Speaker 05

  So, you know, when you, if you stop tugging, what does the dog do?

• 1:31:36Shawn Ryan?

  It gets bored.

• 1:31:39Speaker 05

  But if it's a dog that really wants to play, will they tug harder?

• 1:31:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:44Speaker 05

  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 well, 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 unconscious and you have no fucking suit on, you're going to turn into a human fucking pincushion. That way if, if the dog gets a little bored and is trying to get you to, to squirm and squeal. And so, you know, that, that struggle is more about. The dog, understanding that they're causing pain and inflicting harm and things of that

• 1:32:26Speaker 05

  nature, if you've ever watched a cat with a mouse, you know, they kind of play with it 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, it further incites that prey instinct to capture and possess quarry or prey or whatever. So, you know, 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

• 1:33:08Speaker 05

  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, you know, in his head and ultimately incites further fucking prey drive by doing it. So I'm gonna use that when the dog, you know, finds me in the suit and counters in, or if I put pressure on him and he comes forward, I'm gonna use that, that prey instinct that he has, you know, to my advantage by rewarding him for it so that I get that behavior more and more often or in a, in a greater capacity.

• 1:33:40Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. You know, I see a lot of these pictures on the gram and I've seen a couple of videos and of dogs on target overseas, you know, in the Middle East and these fucking dogs, I mean, look like they just ate an entire man.

• 1:33:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:00Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, blood all over their face, blood all over the jacket, blood, I mean, literally dripping out of their fucking mouth and, um...

• 1:34:13Shawn Ryan?

  Where do you train these dogs to bite?

• 1:34:16Speaker 05

  So it's a great question, and I think a lot of people think that the dog will, you know, go for the throat, or the crotch, or fucking anywhere. What I like to do is two things, is 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. Or if the person puts either of their hands in front of their face, then 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, 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.

• 1:35:02Speaker 05

  Sometimes if it's, you know, a transporter, or a, you know, that's walking, and it's a quick movement, then it may go into the back right knee.

• 1:35:14Speaker 05

  Again, logistically, if it's not, you know, 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 will have them go low, depending on what they can get to or not.

• 1:35:29Shawn Ryan?

  So they're looking for the first thing that's presented?

• 1:35:31Speaker 05

  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, this doesn't compute." So I do like to do, you know, top and bottom. At least give them a few different target areas. Uh, but then also teach them past that, I mean, you know, once that's dialed in, then also put them in positions where,

• 1:36:13Speaker 05

  let's say you brought the dog up here and, and, uh, you know, I'd put, put somebody face down, ass up behind that, that chest right there with both their, their legs sticking out is that 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, and kind of let him, you know, almost fuck with him and, and have the guy move his leg and move it up and down and, 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. Cause you may run into a scenario in a police or military application or even personal protection where, you know, somebody's hanging out of a fucking window or they're under a vehicle or, you know, I showed you that picture of, uh, one of the police dogs I sold that grabbed a guy,

• 1:36:56Speaker 05

  uh, underneath a wheel well of a big fucking cement truck or whatever and, you know, that, that was the first thing that it came to and, and they grabbed it. So you want to do both, you know, teach targeting at first, but then also teach the dog, uh, that in, in situations where it can't get to one of those targeting areas, that it will take whatever the fuck is there.

• 1:37:14Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, those bites are, um,

• 1:37:18Shawn Ryan?

  it's down to the bone.

• 1:37:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:37:20Shawn Ryan?

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

• 1:38:05Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, I've heard from several different guys that.

• 1:38:11Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of times that person 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?

• 1:38:22Speaker 05

  Uh, I mean, it's, it's happened a few times, um, but it, it's really a classic example of what I just talked about in that environmentally, um, the situation terrain wise and, and the environment could combine presented the situation where that's just where the dog happened to, to come in on entry and, you know, the person's throat was there or something of that nature. Um, I've heard of, of instances of, you know, if, 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, in the thigh where, you know, they'll break a femur and sever a femoral artery, uh, you

• 1:39:05Speaker 05

  know, something of, of that nature, but those are very rare instances. Um, you know, the dogs, you know, of, 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, and fluke kind of things, you know, they're, the dogs aren't taught to go after throats or nuts or, or anything like that. They're, they're generally, um, taught to target external limbs.

• 1:39:33Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, good.

• 1:39:34Speaker 05

  You know, so.

• 1:39:35Shawn Ryan?

  Extremities.

• 1:39:36Speaker 05

  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, are very, very rare instances where something like that happens. I, I would, I would kind of equate it to like a taser, you know, they're both non-lethal means of, of apprehension. Uh, have, 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.

• 1:40:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:13Speaker 05

  Uh, but it's still, you know, dogs overwhelmingly are, are considered, and I would consider them non-lethal, uh, means of, of apprehension.

• 1:40:20Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, shit, man, I mean, even just the fact that you said that, oh. You're training dogs to hit in here, you know, on the inner bicep. I mean, fuck, your brachial artery, you know, and, and from what I felt in a fucking bite suit, that dog would have been in my brachial artery, artery in about fucking point two seconds.

• 1:40:44Shawn Ryan?

  But, um,

• 1:40:46Shawn Ryan?

  wow.

• 1:40:49Shawn Ryan?

  Just a second here.

• 1:40:59Shawn Ryan?

  Kind of wrapping up Bite Force.

• 1:41:03Shawn Ryan?

  What would, what is the worst bite you've ever seen from, from, from a dog?

• 1:41:11Speaker 05

  Probably the, the one that Benny talked about, you know, his dog Digo was in, was in Iraq and it was an ambush scenario where they, they were, you know, understanding that they were about to be ambushed and they sent the dog and, 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, and jammed his muzzle right through the fucking air, you know, the port there. And that's just where the dude's face. And so just, you know, cause that's what was there.

• 1:41:56Speaker 05

  He shot in right on his fucking throat. I mean, I was, I was there, 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, and probably dead or almost dead. And, and 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 been pretty, pretty forward in that, in that manner too. So, um, you know, and again, in a situation like that where it's kind of a fluke thing, that's pretty, pretty gnarly, you know, but,

• 1:42:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'd say.

• 1:42:31Speaker 05

  You know, the, the femur, another story of, of a guy, again, it was a thin. A thin, older guy, a dog was a big, hard biting, ninety pound, fucking got a long muzzle and got in on his inner thigh and broke his femur and the guy passed out and it, you know, fucked him up pretty bad, you know. Things like that aren't uncommon. I mean, the dog that showed you that picture of the, I mean, I still have a pretty good sized 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 that had, I don't know, fifteen, sixteen live bites, I think, and they were all fucking gruesome because he was just that hard biting of a dog.

• 1:43:15Speaker 05

  One of them was, 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, behind the knee, upper calf area and peeled his entire fucking calf muscle completely off of his leg. You know, again, just like the, the duct work scenario is that it was just, you know, from the back of his knee to his Achilles tendon was just fucking bone and nothing else there, you know. When you get a dog that's, that's angry, that bites that hard, that is well-trained and has some time to, to work that person over, wherever they grab is, is generally gonna be fucking destroyed, you know, so.

• 1:43:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, that's some pretty gruesome shit.

• 1:44:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:44:02Shawn Ryan?

  Talk shit, get bit, right? But.

• 1:44:05Speaker 05

  I think I saw a shirt with that on it.

• 1:44:06Shawn Ryan?

  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 got a great question, so.

• 1:44:24Shawn Ryan?

  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.

• 1:44:52Shawn Ryan?

  All right, we're back from the break and I kinda wanna get into some of the tactics and stuff that these dogs are doing and, you know, back to your book, I was listening to it and it made me realize that the dogs are, I mean, they're essentially, they're a fucking, they're a part of the team and 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.

• 1:45:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:45:26Shawn Ryan?

  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. And the list goes on, but which is fucking amazing, you know, 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.

• 1:46:10Speaker 05

  I thought it was huge vagina tunnel, that's not it?

• 1:46:12Shawn Ryan?

  Is that what it is?

• 1:46:13Speaker 05

  I thought that's what it was.

• 1:46:14Shawn Ryan?

  I've been fucking misinformed. But, but if a dog makes entry and they are looking for an HVT and there are civilians, you know, that don't, innocents, is there a way the dog actually fucking knows, you know? Do they have any level of target identification?

• 1:46:40Speaker 05

  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 shitbag, 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.

• 1:47:25Speaker 05

  And there were, you know, other grown men in there or whatever. But, long story short, the dog went in, located the baby, sniffed it, and fucking kept moving.

• 1:47:33Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:47:34Speaker 05

  And ended up going and biting the right guy. Now, 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, you know, going after little children, you know, and 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, you know, 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, you know, and so they know what's worth being worried about or not most of the time.

• 1:48:16Speaker 05

  You know, to your question, again, there have been instances where, you know, they did a remarkable job at discerning, you know, women and children and non-combatants and people just kind of fucking milling about and ignoring the dog and whatever and going after somebody that had the intent. I think it's more about that, is that, you know, if there's a room filled with ten 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 them, there's gonna 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, but...

• 1:48:56Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:48:57Speaker 05

  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, but...

• 1:49:11Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Good. You know, may, I don't know, you know, may seem like a 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 does where do the capabilities end? But and I'm still trying to figure that out but but you know kind of for the handlers. You know. When and I'm gonna relate this to a JTAC you know and you know sometimes guys will take

• 1:49:54Shawn Ryan?

  credit for a kill. More times than not, I think it's multiple guys that shoot the target or that you know the threat. And so essentially, it's not one person that takes credit. You know, for a kill. An exception being JTACs, you know, if they call in a fast mover or or you know direct air support and get, I don't know, a hundred fucking kills. 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 I've heard on several of your podcasts.

• 1:50:38Shawn Ryan?

  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 uh. 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 a bite, you know, is a kill, you know, like I killed that person. Does the handlers and you know, he gets credit for the bite and is it um? Is it on the same level?

• 1:51:09Speaker 05

  It absolutely is. I mean, that's that's kind of the the measuring stick of 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 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

• 1:51:54Speaker 05

  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.

• 1:52:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:01Speaker 05

  You know, so there is some of that as well, but to your question, yes, absolutely. The number of bites and fines are a point of pride and bragging rights and a bit of a measuring stick for handlers, absolutely.

• 1:52:14Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. 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?

• 1:52:26Speaker 05

  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, you know, the way that we teach them to do certain things through repetition is that they can, they can learn to be stressed out by certain things, you know, no different than dogs with, you know, 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

• 1:53:10Speaker 05

  when it, when it thunders because they're so scared of it, is that it's that same association. The, the symptoms that, that manifest from PTSD in canines are fairly similar to human beings, shutting down, being reactively aggressive, you know, things of that nature. Where there's a huge disparity is in how you treat them, to a certain extent anyway, is that, you know, 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.

• 1:53:55Speaker 05

  And so you can replace those negative coins with positive ones and essentially 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 22, 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.

• 1:54:38Speaker 05

  And then you're slowly moving it in and you're just desensitizing the dog and rewriting that that negative association with with positive ones very, very carefully and slowly over time. So you can get rid of 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.

• 1:54:58Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:54:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:55:00Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think, 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, you know, I myself deal with that. A lot of guys deal with that. You know, 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, the more bites a dog gets, do they get addicted to that fucking adrenaline, to that action, to that, that feeling that they get?

• 1:55:34Speaker 05

  They do.

• 1:55:35Shawn Ryan?

  They do.

• 1:55:36Speaker 05

  Not only does that take place, I mean, you see it, look at the, you know, Duke when he first came out versus, you know, 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 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. 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, five, six times their size. And they're defeating something that's bigger than them. You know, the more times that happens, the more confident they become.

• 1:56:21Speaker 05

  And in some instances, the harder they are to deal with because they... It's kinda like a dog that's used to growling at people and getting them to fucking back off. And you know, they're punking out people because 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 annihilates somebody for real. Yeah, over time, it absolutely emboldens them even more and makes them more and more confident most of the time.

• 1:56:50Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think they ever developed like a... An addiction to the taste of blood?

• 1:56:58Speaker 05

  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 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 kinda shit. And they're just driven for it. You know, I don't think it has anything to do with that.

• 1:57:18Shawn Ryan?

  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 Rittlin 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?

• 1:57:48Speaker 05

  I have. There was a, 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.

• 1:58:24Speaker 05

  Several years later, the dog ends up coming to the Warrior Dog Foundation after he had been retired from that program. They're the first two handlers that the dog had, or the two handlers that the dog had, and neither one of them could take the dog. One, because of a family situation, the other was still on active duty. So we had the dog for several years with the Warrior Dog Foundation. And then Taylor Canfield is his name, he's a former SEAL race car driver,

• 1:58:54Speaker 05

  came to the ranch and came and adopted him a couple of years ago now. He's had him now for a couple of 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.

• 1:59:08Shawn Ryan?

  No shit, well that answers one of my questions. So 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 wanna call it, can rehab that dog

• 1:59:36Shawn Ryan?

  to be able to, you know, live more of a pet life?

• 1:59:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:59:43Shawn Ryan?

  Was that guy a handler?

• 1:59:44Speaker 05

  He was, I mean, he was-

• 1:59:46Shawn Ryan?

  The NASCAR driver?

• 1:59:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, so he was actually that dog's handler, and that's what was so neat about it.

• 1:59:50Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:59:51Speaker 05

  You know, so he was very comfortable and used to the dog. To your point slash question of, you know, 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, you know, to put up, it'd be impossible to put a percentage on it just off the top of my head, but I would say that it's more dogs, you know, 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 kinda dog.

• 2:00:34Speaker 05

  And have been able to send some of the dogs that we've brought in after, you know, several months of rehab to back out and then they go on and work several more years, which is a pretty neat- Neat thing to be able to repurpose these dogs if they can do it.

• 2:00:48Shawn Ryan?

  What is the, what is the average working timeframe of a dog?

• 2:00:54Speaker 05

  I'd say about 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. Sometimes it may be two to 10. It may be, you know, three and a half to, to six. I mean, a lot like, you know, another parallel with, with humans and, 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, that's it, you know. And so it's kind of that same way. You know, there are, are times where dogs do one deployment and it's a, it's a hard, you know, op tempo driven deployment and they, they went through a lot and it just fucking kind of ruined them and, and they're just never the same and, and they have to retire them after

• 2:01:39Speaker 05

  that. I mean, that, that does happen. I wouldn't say that it's, that it's often, but it, but it, there are instances where that's the case.

• 2:01:46Shawn Ryan?

  What are some of the things you're doing with these guys, with these dogs, you know, at, at the foundation?

• 2:01:52Speaker 05

  So, most of it is, is using food and just playing ball and, and kind of exercise, you know, using good food and, and positive reinforcement with food to kind of unwind their mind, take the pressure of, of having to perform and, and operate off of them entirely. We're, 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, you know, using food and lots of positive reinforcement and, and taking it slow with doing those types of things that historically are 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

• 2:02:37Speaker 05

  certain things with them and he's, and the dog's biting the shit out of the handler or 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, that type of triggering type of behavior that, that has landed them with us. That's our primary goal is. Both act as a resource or a sanctuary so that the dog won't be euthanized and then rehabilitate that dog based on why it's here in the first place and try to balance that out a little bit so that they're a little bit more manageable and ultimately and hopefully get them to a civilian household and have them live more like a pet.

• 2:03:22Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think, I mean, have you, maybe you've already done it, but do you think a dog like that that comes to your foundation who's seen who knows how much fucking combat, a lot, is it possible or has it happened to where they could go and live with a normal family, not somebody that was a handler, not a pro like yourself, like someone like me?

• 2:03:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, we have done that with a number of dogs, yes, which is a great feeling 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. You know, 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 unwind and take the pressure off. And then also, a big component to that is educating 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

• 2:04:34Speaker 05

  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 budge on, won't compromise on because 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... You're responsible 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.

• 2:05:18Speaker 05

  You know, and if there's young kids or other pets and other stimulus in the house that, you know, could potentially trigger that dog, it's just, it would be foolish to put them back in that environment, so.

• 2:05:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I can see that. What is a, if you had to put an average, and I'm asking for an average, not a, what is the, what does 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 mean as fuck, you know, traumatized, wants to fucking bite everything it sees too. It's time, you know, we think he's ready.

• 2:05:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'd say.

• 2:05:59Shawn Ryan?

  To go to a family.

• 2:06:00Speaker 05

  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 recover from that? You know, it's like some of them never do, some of them a couple of weeks.

• 2:06:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:15Speaker 05

  You know, looking back historically on that, I mean, at this point, we've taken in almost 200 dogs in the last, you know, 11, 10 years. You know, I would say generally five, six months. You know, if, it's kind of where, you know, after a few months, you have a good idea like, yeah, I think this dog's going to be able to be turned around. We've seen a ton of progress in that few months. Few more months and they'll probably be where they're at. That's, you know, generally the timeline where I would say, you know, just thinking back of all the dogs that we've done that with is that that's about, you know, what it took. There are some dogs that, you know, within a couple of weeks, I'm like, yeah, that's, this dog for sure is going to be a dog we can do. And maybe it's even a little quicker than that.

• 2:06:58Speaker 05

  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.

• 2:07:05Shawn Ryan?

  You can tell that quick sometimes?

• 2:07:06Speaker 05

  Sometimes, yeah.

• 2:07:08Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, with humans, you know, they say that, you know, with, when it comes to PTSD and shit like that, that it's kind of a lifetime struggle. And you may improve, but chances are it's never going to completely go away.

• 2:07:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:07:28Shawn Ryan?

  Is it the same for dogs? Do you think it will ever completely go away? Or is there always a little edge?

• 2:07:33Speaker 05

  I think that, you know, it's, it's hard to say that, um, that it completely goes away or not, because the, the biggest factor is getting it to subside from a triggering standpoint, and then putting them in a position where you're, you're not gonna have them in the position to trigger it anymore anyway. Um, so, I mean, you, you don't really know. Um, I suspect that it's probably kind of similar that way, and that, um, 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, a time or a couple

• 2:08:15Speaker 05

  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 gonna come back. If it, if it came there in the first place from nothing, for sure it can come back if it's already happened. So, the, the key really is educating the new, the new owners, like, here are the problems that, that he had that landed him with us in the first place. Here's what you need to, to ensure, uh, so that you can kind of do your best to guarantee that, that you'll mitigate any potential instances of, of that recurring issue.

• 2:08:59Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think, um, another thing, uh, and it's fucking crazy how, uh, similar it is to, uh, humans, but, you know, with humans, uh, just like anything, you know, some guys with, uh, with PTSD that come home, uh, it's all about the work you put in. If you wanna fucking get better, then you gotta put the work in to get better. If you're not gonna put the work in, then you're gonna be fucking miserable forever.

• 2:09:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:09:24Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, so, uh, do the dogs go through any kind of, um, decision-making process? Or is, do you see dogs that are more willing to?

• 2:09:35Speaker 05

  I really

• 2:09:36Shawn Ryan?

  What I'm trying to say here, but

• 2:09:37Speaker 05

  No, I know. I know what you mean. I mean, I think that's, that's one of the very big differences between humans and dogs. Is that, you know, on the, it's, it's really not really about the dog so much as it is, you know, the, the human beings that are putting them through those paces. Um, I, I think where, where the, where the factors, um, put in play, whether or not that dog can, can make that kind of recovery is how bad did it get? You know, how many times did it, did it trigger the dog? After, 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?

• 2:10:18Speaker 05

  You know, how much baggage is there is the first factor? Um, and then the second factor is just, uh, you know, the genetic,

• 2:10:27Speaker 05

  plasticity of the dog's brain as it relates to being able to heal in, 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, that they're gonna, they're gonna do it, uh, either way. It's, it's really more up to the human being and, and how bad, uh, it got before they decided to wash them out and, and try to rehab them, I think.

• 2:10:58Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:11:00Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Mike, I could, uh, drag this on all day. Uh, I have questions for days, but, uh, I want to end it. I know you want to hit the road and get home, but, uh, closing this thing out, I just want to say, you know, what, um, I mean, I cannot think of a fucking better person, you know, to, uh, be training dogs to go to these teams, to SEAL teams, to, you know, SF teams, to SWAT teams, um, you know, knowing the tactics and, uh, and being an operator yourself. I'm sure that you've come up with things that, you know, a typical trainer could never, um, think of. And, uh, I just, I mean,

• 2:11:42Shawn Ryan?

  between what you're doing with that and, and, and the Warrior Dog Foundation, I mean,

• 2:11:49Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, man, you're doing animals a fucking solid. No doubt about it. And so if you want to donate to Mike, you know, War 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?

• 2:12:10Speaker 05

  I appreciate the kind words. I mean, to me, I just enjoy working with dogs. I'm fascinated by them. I marvel at 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, you know, they're creatures that I honestly, I think we don't fucking deserve. But, but they're, yeah, they're phenomenal. And I can't imagine not, not being a part of them, you know? So I appreciate the platform and having me on.

• 2:12:55Speaker 05

  And I could talk about them fucking nonstop, too. I usually do, so.

• 2:12:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, nice work, man.

• 2:13:03Speaker 05

  I appreciate it.

• 2:13:05Shawn Ryan?

  Can't wait to make that documentary.

• 2:13:07Speaker 05

  Amen.

• 2:13:14Speaker 06

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