A Freedom Journey
Training guide
Welcome to the A Freedom Journey (AFJ) Training Guide! This is a free resource for Adopters and Fosters who are bringing a new dog into the home. I am not going to go super in-depth into my own accolades or accomplishments. There's an "About" page for that elsewhere on the website. This page is specifically for you and your family to learn how to raise a dog in good structure, how to create biological fulfillment for the breed and age of dog you now care for, and how to use a holistic, balanced approach to training that is clear to the dog and that gives you the connection, control, and compliance you want.
This will be the most comprehensive guide that I have ever put together, and I hope it becomes an asset to you in raising and training your dog. If you would like to talk 1-on-1 with me about about your specific dog, please fill out a training questionnaire on the website, and I will call you the next business day. Allegiant Canine offers a 5% discount to AFJ Adopters and Fosters, and we have special programs for low income families in Maury County through Matty's Misfits. That said, let's dive right in, and please let me know if there is something else you'd like to see here.
The Big picture
Why I dramatically changed my approach
I have worked with thousands of dogs over the last 8 years owning my company, as an employee, volunteer, and training director. I though there were two main "camps" of people who were training dogs: people who used punishment and people who didn't. I have some to find out that this is a much more nuanced profession than I ever could have imagined, that my own emotions, fears, and preferences could potentially be wrong. So I looked for an approach to training that would allow me to mess up, my clients to mess up, the dogs to mess up, in a way that we wouldn't mess up the dog.
It became starkly clear to me that there were a couple of really big missing elements that I wasn't looking into as thoroughly as I should: the dog's belief system and biological fulfillment. It wasn't just about obedience through behavior modification and boundaries and structure. I needed all four of these to be able to rehabilitate a dog all the way, with life-long results. How did I figure this out? I had a lot of really excellent dogs graduate from my program who were excellently well trained, but they had crappy belief systems about themselves, their owners, and the environment, and they weren't getting the two critical ingredients of relationship building: freedom & play.
So I knew that only a mixture of these four things would create a lifetime of fulfillment and freedom:
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Biological Fulfillment: access to off leash freedom, venting off aggression through play, gaining control and compliance through work, and being able to down regulate to rest
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Belief System Extinction: Freedom from Fear, Stress, Suppression, and Aggression
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Behavior Modification: How to earn payment, turn off pressure, accept prevention, and receive punishment
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Boundaries & Structure: How we live in the home, treat other beings, form new protocols, and clean up old habits.
The best advice
4 things that will change everything
If I had 30 seconds to tell someone exactly what to do with their dog every day for the first couple years to completely protect their peace but also raise a stellar dog, no matter their age, I would give the following:
1. Crate Your Dog at night for one year and 100% of the time they're unsupervised for 2 years to allow for rest.
2. Give Your Dog Freedom on a 50 ft long leash for 5 mins a day with no commands or markers.
3. Play with Your Dog using Zoomies, Chase & Catch, and eventually Tug & Fetch for 5 mins a day.
4. Train Your Dog using markers and rewards for free shaping and play as a reinforcement system.
20 things everyone gets wrong
myths & Misconceptions
There are several things that I have heard passed on to me from clients from the internet and other trainers that ultimately hurt the dog in the long run. These myths and misconceptions need to be exposed.
1. Never say No to a dog or punish them.
2. Always use payment to teach everything, never pressure or punishment.
3. Don't play tug with a dog who is sometimes aggressive.
4. Dogs only growl to communicate they are going to bite.
5. You have to be the "alpha."
6. Sometimes you just need to punish harder and louder.
7. Dogs need to be paying obsessive attention to us 24/7.
8. Instead of punishment, use redirection, interruption, or distraction.
9. Dogs who do antisocial things just need more obedience.
10. Dogs only growl, lunge, and bite because they're scared.
11. Pressure is superior to punishment.
12. If I say "No," whatever I do after that is a punishment.
13. Clicker training is superior to other types of training.
14. Negative reinforcement is correction, and it's bad.
15. Crating a dog is unneccessary and abusive.
16. There is never a reason for a dog to look aggressive.
17. When dogs are afraid, we have to calm them down and tell them everything is going to be okay.
18. If you ignore a behavior it will go extinct.
19. Extinction in dog training is a myth.
20. Dogs who express aggression should be isolated from society indefinitely or euthanized.
If your brain works like mine, this list probably has you asking lots of questions, which is precisely my goal. In this coaching handbook, we are going to discuss these issues one step at a time with visual aids to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Once you have read through the basics of behavior modification and biological fulfillment, you will begin to see a path emerge.
Where do I even start
What is a dog, and why it matters
First of all, a dog is a predator, which means that they have inside of them a seed of aggression that is 100% biological that cannot be wished or explained away. When dogs use aggression to communicate today, they are immediately quarantined for a 10 day rabies hold (a procedure that has outlived its use). Trainers will ask you to indefinitely isolate them from your family and other pets. Vets will have you put them on medication. This is an outright denial of what a dog is. Given some light prevention, some consistent venting off of this aggression, and some appropriate punishments, inappropriate aggression just stops, and dogs can be rehabilitated.
Secondly, they are pack animals, which means that socialization is super important throughout their lives. Dogs immediately know where people and dogs fit into the pack dynamic. And they are usually right. I don't believe that I have to be the "alpha" per se, but I do believe that it's important for a dog to perceive me as consistent (I do what I say I'll do), approachable (I can be trusted with all their emotions), and motivative (I'm attuned to these needs and emotions). When you steamroll a dog thinking they just need to stop this in spite of their feelings, you miss out on creating a bond that will outlive any training program.
Thirdly, dogs are our co-species. They have evolved to be more attuned to human beings than any species on the planet. The whites of their eyes have become more visible so that we could tell whether they were making eye contact or not. That's the level of entanglement with which we are involved with dogs. It doesn't mean that everyone should own a dog or that all spaces should be dog spaces. It simply means that they are a sacred part of humanity and have been for close to 30,000 years. They are sovereign agents and should be respected as such.
Dogs are personalities, not people. They have sentience and consciousness, but it does operate at a lower level that ours and we are therefore responsible for their upbringing and behavior. I have seen numerous hats reading "Dogs Are People Too; Dogs Welcome, People Tolerated; My kids are furry with four legs," etc. I believe that there are trainers who anthropomorphize about dogs and make too close a correlation to humans, but I believe there are many who also deny that there are any connections at all. Like everything in the world, it's a messy mixture of these two statements. I don't think that either species would be where they are without the other.
The 4 Drive States
Arousal & Relevance
So, if a dog has the innate need to aggress, manage anxiety, create association, and channel arousal, we are responsible for giving them opportunities to express high drive and create inevitabilities to create acceptance when we are in low drive. This concept is as old as time, and for that reason it will seem familiar. There is a concept that has been popularized by Jay Jack of Next Level Dogs called "The Four Windows," and I am going to adapt it here and make it my own.
The basic idea is that a healthy dog is oscillating between three "natural" states at all times: Freedom, Play, and Rest. So where does training come in? Well a dog does not actually "need" obedience training to survive. But since they are inextricably connected to humanity and society, humans created a fourth "window" called Work that we can modify behavior and teach protocols.
These four drives states - freedom, play, work, and rest - are a continuum of arousal and relevance. How much arousal am I supposed to have right now, and how much relevance should I be expected to put on the handller. Again, a healthy dog who has had boundaries set for them knows how to read the play of what "time it is" right now. They have a sound "transmission" that is able to switch smoothly through all of these drive states. But we need to be the drivers of that vehicle.
We need to be in control, but long term in order to stay in control, we need to be connected, to give that "vehicle" what it needs. We need to create an open-energy system that allows the dog to do dog things in a dog way with no interruption from us (freedom. We need to create opportunities for dogs to then push that energy back into us aggressively through possession games like tug, chase and catch, and retrieval through fetch (play). And we need to be willing to channel arousal through obedience training, showing the dog exactly what our expectations are of their behavior in numerous contexts (work). The rest of the time while they are in the training process, they should be crated at night until they are 1 year, and when unsupervised until they are two. The times when we can do some "place" work with them we can also have them relax on a cot if they are unable to do so themselves (rest).
I am not the trainer who is going to train a robotic dog for you. If you want that, there are 12 trainers in your city who will give you quick results in 2 week board & trains but leave you with a dog who knows his emotions and needs don't matter, who will always be on a leash, in a fence, in his crate, behind a gate, isolated from real life with you. Dogs who train with me know that I will treat them as individuals. Their obedience will be on point because we have built a relationship based on trust and understanding instead of heavy handed tyranny. I am firm, but that makes me consistent. I am calm, so I remain approachable. And I am motivative, which means the dog always knows there is fun in store.
Homework: Make a little t-chart with these drive states to show you exactly where they should fit in so that you can start teaching your dog "What time it is" right now. Here's a YouTube video detailing this concept as well.
1. Freedom - Low Relevance, High Arousal (Upper Left)
2. Play - High Relevance , High Arousal (Upper Right)
3. Work - High Relevance, Low Arousal (Lower Right)
4. Rest - Low Relevance, Low Arousal (Lower Left)
Does this make sense to you now? Are you realizing that you may have potentially understood obedience training as the whole solution when it is really a combination of freedom, play, work, and rest? Maybe you thought that a little obedience, a little more "alpha," a little more treats or love would do the trick? The reality is that treats, tools, toys, and physical touch will all fail alt some point. What the dog will ultimately always work for is a trainer who sees them and accepts them as they are, who loves them and is clear with them, and who realizes that it's not all about control and compliance but about connection through clear communication.
The 4 Conditions
Reinforcement & Punishment
One of the first things that I learned as a dog trainer was the 4 operant conditions: Payment, Pressure, Prevention, and Penalty. The only reason I still always explain them to clients is that they are helpful in building clarity of intention: Am I trying to end a behavior (punishment), or am I trying to build a behavior (reinforcement). The positive and negative language in operant conditioning does not refer to good or bad but to adding and subtracting. For example, If I add something to increase a behavior, that is called positive reinforcement.
What you will realize along the way is that not a single of these conditions can stand on its own. Pressure is dependent on its own subsequent release. Prevention can never go away unless I'm willing to punish. Payment can be faded out if I am willing to use pressure and punishment. It's a balance of these things that achieves the best result: a strong, cooperative, happy dog who knows that it's in their best interest to listen to the words that you say.
Homework: Make a little t-chart with these four conditions so that you can begin to understand why you might be getting more of a behavior that you've been trying to get less of. Here is a quick video to orient you on these 4 conditions for behavior modification.
1. Payment - Positive Reinforcement - Adding to Increase (Upper Right)
2. Pressure - Negative Reinforcement - Removing to Increase (Upper Left)
3. Prevention - Negative Punishment - Removing to Decrease (Lower Left)
4. Punishment - Positive Punishment - Adding to Decrease (Lower Right)
Developing real word power
Markers, Behaviors, and Commands
Let me as you this - Isn't this the goal of our "work" - to be able to say a word and achieve a behavior? Yes! But the building of behavior actually comes before commands. This is why I start all clients off free shaping behaviors using a marker + reward system without a single verbal command. This is the system of words that I use to initially teach the dog where they are going to get paid, so that I can begin building, shaping, perfecting, and proofing behaviors:
Positive Markers
1. Yes - payment on the handler, close by
2. Break / Get it - payment away from handler, something is thrown
3. Good - payment in place, the handler moves to the dog, operates as an implied stay
4. Yeah - handler is the payment
5. Free - nature is the payment
6. Nice - release of pressure is the payment
Negative Markers
1. No - punishment is coming
2. Easy - give me less "gas" on the behavior (slow down, chill)
3. Out - Spit out the thing that is in your mouth or your mind
4. Off - put all four of your feet on the floor or a punishment is coming
5. Uh-uh - you're incorrect, no payment or punishment given
Once a dog is offering me a behavior predictably (50-75 times), that is when I start to word associate with verbal commands. I need to demonstrate that the dog understands they know where each specific kind of marker word is paid before I begin assigning prompts to each behavior. Once I am getting that behavior consistenly, I will start using the command, the marker, and the payment together, and then I will begin using non-reward markers and fading out my payments progressively. The dog eventually realizes that I as the handler am the ultimate payment.