Lianne Shinton (00:01)

Hey everybody and welcome. I'm Leanne Shinton from Automation Dogs. Welcome to my podcast. Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Tyler Muto. Hi Tyler. Hey, hey, hey. Yes, Tyler has joined me before and we've, you know, we both are in the business of training dogs and also helping dog trainers. And we had a bit of a discussion beforehand about what we're going to talk about today so that we could be well prepared.

Tyler Muto (00:09)

Hey, good to be back.

Lianne Shinton (00:29)

And I think we're going to have two podcasts, one on the business side of things, because a lot of dog trainers come to us looking for tools, processes, sales strategies, all sorts of things on the business side. But today we're going to talk about something different. I get to put my dog training cap on and we're going to talk about reactivity in dog behavior. Before we get to that though, ⁓ Tyler has...

two websites that I want you to visit, tylermutto.com and Muto is M-U-T-O and that is his coaching business for dog trainers. And then he has Consider the Dog, which is like the digital platform where you have your classes, courses, more courses like online content.

Tyler Muto (01:14)

Yeah,

yeah, I mean, video based education on dog behavior. It's myself and we have about a dozen instructors total right now that work with us.

Lianne Shinton (01:26)

Awesome. That is awesome. I love that you're surrounding yourself with experts and bringing experts into that world to help other dog trainers.

Tyler Muto (01:35)

Yeah, that was part of the plan from the get go. It's kind of part of my overall ethos, I guess, at this point in my life of I think we all sort of benefit from having differing viewpoints and allowing those viewpoints to sort of balance off each other and continue to shape each other and provide people with options. You know, think not every human and dog are going to respond the same to different styles and to help the most people out there. We need there to be a plurality of different.

ways of doing things.

Lianne Shinton (02:07)

Excellent. Well said, well said. And I think that's going to lean into what we're going to talk about today, which is reactivity. And I, I know that I personally have felt stress and insecurity when I have to go into a lesson with a dog that is reactive and I'm embarrassed, you know, out in public, I don't want my

business to look bad if the dog's like screaming, vocalizing when it sees whatever it sees that causes the reactivity. So I really am excited to talk to you today for like my own information. I know that like some of the videos you've put out in the past, even before dog trainers were putting out videos, but you put it out there of like, I'm dealing with this dog. He's got food possession.

possessive issues. You're here to help. You're here to give visuals. So I'm very excited to learn from you today and talk with you about reactivity. So I'll let you kind of start.

Tyler Muto (03:16)

Yeah. So, ⁓ thank you. I brought this topic up because I would say all of the trainers that come to me who are looking for help with their dog training. So not the business end of things, but they're trying to sharpen their sword, so to speak. Reactivity is one of the top, if not the top things that people are like, I want to get better at this. And I think it's interesting for a number of reasons. mean, for one, I it's like near and dear to my heart.

⁓ Reactivity and socialization were areas that ⁓ I specialized in. It was a huge percentage of the work that I did. And I think part of what I think made me popular, I guess. ⁓ So for that reason, it's interesting to me, but also it's such a common problem. Like I think you could probably run a very profitable dog training business only taking reactivity cases. There's just so many of them out there. It's really, really common.

And then similarly, there are a lot of different thoughts about how to work with it. So there's a lot of different schools of thought from a training standpoint, methodologies and sort of like air quotes, if you will, about this is how this is my method for dealing with reactivity and all of that. That's all easily available today. I mean, that's one of the advantages that dog trainers have today, Tons of knowledge at your fingertips. And so.

Lianne Shinton (04:40)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (04:43)

It's also interesting to me because I'm like, man, if this is so common, which means we're getting a lot of practice on it, and there's all these available schools of thought, all this information about dealing with it, why does everybody feel so insecure? Why does everybody feel like this is the one thing that everybody's trying to get better at? ⁓

And I have my theories about that, of course, that I'm happy to share. But I just kind of want to start there, which is just that I think, well, I think obviously part of the insecurity comes from people look at social media and they compare themselves to what others are doing. But I can tell you firsthand, because like you, like we get to work with a lot of these trainers that are on social media and I don't disclose my clients names, but ⁓ I can tell you that some of them privately are not nearly as confident in.

what they're doing with Reactivity as what they sort of put forward on social media where it's edited and it looks good and it's their best case of the month that they did kind of thing. And I'm not knocking on that. Like we all do that. I did that. That's marketing, right? It's like the whole purpose of it. You put your best foot forward. But when you're just seeing that, it can certainly make you feel insecure about yourself. And especially when you forget that that person also feels insecure about themselves, like that person's also struggling with it. ⁓

But I think before I dive in fully, think I just want to start by sort of defining what we're talking about a little bit here. Cause I've, I hear like terms like reactivity, aggression, ⁓ correction is another term in dog training lingo. That's like people just use it in such wildly different ways. And so what I'm proposing here is not by all, like, I'm not trying to say this is the correct definition. I just want to have a working definition for our discussion so that people who are listening know what we're talking about. ⁓

And it's okay if you, as a listener, use the term differently, that's fine. So for me, what I'm talking about here is sort of like a shortened version of, I would usually say leash reactivity. So these are the dogs that went out on a walk, particularly when on a leash are triggered usually by another dog or person, but it could also be like, you know, specifically skateboards or bicycles, sometimes cars, things like that. And then they become very explosive.

Lianne Shinton (06:41)

Mm.

Tyler Muto (06:59)

So we call that reactive, but that's like dog training lingo, right? But they're lunging, they're barking, they're snapping at the air. Some might even redirect at the owner or other things that are nearby. If it's multiple dogs walking, sometimes it can trigger fights between those two dogs that are being walked together. ⁓ And so that's what we're referring to here. There certainly are going to be parallels to some other things that sometimes can fall into the bucket of reactivity for people. Cause some people would refer to like a dog who

Lianne Shinton (07:08)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (07:27)

barks out the windows when somebody walks by as being reactive as well. And I'm, certainly wouldn't disagree with that. I've just kind of, I'm going to kind of narrow things to specifically like outside on the walk, on the leash, because I think that's where people are like, again, like from the client standpoint, they're the most embarrassed. Like it's the public facing side of their dog's behavior. They can't just hide it. They've got to get their dog outside and the dog's barking and it's a nightmare versus in their house. They can just, you know,

Lianne Shinton (07:51)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (07:55)

pretend it's not happening, I guess, as obnoxious as it is, ⁓ close the blinds or whatnot. But ⁓ yeah, it's a super, super common problem and one that everybody's looking for help with.

Lianne Shinton (08:07)

I think it's really a good time to talk about this because if you're listening to this now, we're end of March, beginning of April, it's spring, people are starting to take their dogs outside again. And yeah.

Tyler Muto (08:20)

and those dogs have been cooped up. You see

an uptick in reactivity in the spring usually. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it comes up a lot. And I think, ⁓ you know, we alluded to this, but I think part of it is that there are so many, like there's so much information out there these days. I think one of the big things that initially get people stuck is they've got, they've learned all these different ideas about reactivity and they don't know.

Lianne Shinton (08:24)

Big time, yes.

Tyler Muto (08:49)

when it comes time to like this dog right now, like which do I deploy and when, or do I try to do bits and pieces from all of these different schools of thought? And they just end up getting like analysis paralysis on this whole thing.

Lianne Shinton (09:02)

Mm.

Tyler Muto (09:05)

So, you know. ⁓

Probably that's like the easiest place to start, guess, for us is like, you know, what to do then, you know, what to do when you're feeling that way, what to do when you're.

You've got all these different thoughts bobbling around in your head and you don't know how to sort through them. I mean, I don't know if that comes up in your work at all, for instance, or even in the competitive world. I'm sure that's got to come up a lot in the competitive world. No.

Lianne Shinton (09:36)

Yeah, yeah. In the competitive world, it's very stressful getting ready for a trial, ⁓ practicing and yeah, definitely insecurities and then getting to like compete in front of people. It's very stressful. ⁓

Tyler Muto (09:59)

But I would imagine like there's a lot of different, so what sport did you compete in? You at least used to compete quite a bit, correct?

Lianne Shinton (10:07)

Mondial Ring, ⁓ other sports, hunt trials and dock diving and things, but Mondial Ring was the biggie.

Tyler Muto (10:10)

Okay, so like as an example, is

there like a retrieve portion in Mondio, I believe, right? Something like that, okay. So there's probably like some pretty vastly different schools of thoughts as to like how to go about the retrieve. And I would imagine like a young trainer in that world ⁓ where again, you're just starting out, you don't have a lot of your own experience to shape this around yet, but.

Lianne Shinton (10:16)

Yes.

Tyler Muto (10:33)

you've got this DVD and that DVD and this online course, and then you went to that seminar and you just learned four different ways of doing the retrieve. And now you've got your young dog and you're sort of like, how do I commit here? How do I commit to one way of doing this? Or am I going to try to like mesh together all of these things, which then ends up often like not working. So for instance, when it comes to reactivity, we see like, okay, I can think of a recent client that I had. I'll use this as an example where, ⁓

She was really into like the like J Jack, Ivan, like play type stuff. ⁓ But then she had also learned like the Grisha Stewart BAT type thing. She'd also learned a counter conditioning approach. ⁓ She had also learned just sort of ⁓ like an E-collar type, like do the recalls away from the, like there's all these different schools of thoughts on doing this stuff. And so it's like lesson one, right, with this dog. And now it's like.

What do I do first? Which one of these things do I start with? ⁓ And so I think the reality, the first thing I want to say is there's no specific right answer clear across the board. So as I kind of said in the beginning of this, different dog training styles are just going to appeal to different people.

you're not gonna do anything well that doesn't make sense to you, that doesn't suit your personality and your own psychology well. We all have different ways of relating to the world and that includes the dogs that we're working with and the people. So my job is never to dictate, this is always what comes first, this is exactly how you should do your reactivity work. Although I'm a complete open book and I'd be happy to share any of that even here as far as how I do go about it. But if I try to force a trainer to do it exactly my way, it's not gonna go that well. ⁓

they might implement bits and pieces of what I do. But the starting point for me is always going to be with any trainer, think like fast forward in time. Okay. So, okay. Very rarely, very rarely, like for you, when you were running your training business, it probably pretty rare that like a client would come and say, Hey, my dog blows up on the walk every time it sees another dog. And so it's lesson one. It's the first 15 minutes of this lesson. I'm going to

Let's go out. I'm going to get another dog. Let's do it. Like let's, I'm going to teach your dog how I want it to walk past other dogs, right? Like that's probably not what you would do right in the beginning. I'm guessing.

Lianne Shinton (13:02)

Yeah, I would want to work the dog away from that and work up to that. Yeah, lay a foundation and.

Tyler Muto (13:06)

There'd be some stuff you want to take place, right? And so,

yeah, yeah. And so this process is gonna be somewhat different whether we're working in a board and train or working in private lessons. So that'll often be if a trainer comes to me and they say, I have this client, this is what the dog's doing, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Often my first question is, what's the format here? Because the guidance I give you for private lessons is gonna be different than the guidance I give you for a board and trainer. Two very different ways of solving the problem.

So for instance, with a private lesson, the process overall is the same, but for the private lesson, it's not just like, what's the foundation I need the dog to have, but if this is like private lesson number one, I'm gonna have to tell the owner to do certain things. And some of those things for the owner, they might also need some like, let's practice some easier stuff first. Let's build you up to this skill level, right? Okay, so what I wanna do is we will say, let's fast forward in time.

Lianne Shinton (13:57)

Yes.

Tyler Muto (14:05)

let's go to whatever stage in your training. Let's say it's a 10 lesson program, right? And I'm just, it's just an easy math kind of number, right? Maybe for you, the first six lessons is like foundation. I don't know. That would be a lot for me, but I'm just like, trainers that I work with tend to do a lot of foundation work. think they often do too much. We'll get to that problem that comes up a lot. ⁓ But, ⁓

So let's say it's like lesson six. we're on with now it's lesson six or lesson seven or whatever it is. And we're ready now. We've done all that stuff with the dog. We've done all that stuff with the person. And now we're ready to like pass by some other dogs. Now we're ready to do this exercise. Okay. So usually at that point in time, you're getting yourself queued up and there's going to be some instructions that we give to the dog and to the owner. Instructions about what to do.

you know, proactively, right? So, okay, as you're approaching the dog, I want you to do X, Y, Z. Instructions about what to do if everything goes awesome. You know, here's how I want you to reinforce the dog. Here's how I want you to sort of complete the exercise. And then what to do if things take a turn for the worse. If the dog does start to fixate or the dog starts to lunge forward or whatever, we're going to have some instructions there. And so the very first thing that I always want a trainer to think about is what would those instructions be for you?

how do you want the client to go about this practice? And what's amazing to me is the number of trainers who don't have an answer to that, like immediately off the top.

with the amount of reactivity work that's being done out there. So they've, they've probably got a hundred or more clients under their belt easily if they've been training dogs for, you know, even just a few years. So after doing this a hundred times, you don't have a quick and easy answer as to like, what are these instructions that you would give? What is your actual plan for dealing with the reactivity itself? What that often tells me is there isn't one.

right? That there's this sort of like, I'm going to do all this foundation and hope that the owner ends up with a level of control and the dog ends up with a level of maybe like security or impulse control or whatever it is where they're like, now this thing is not a thing anymore. I'm going to sort of, that's like, there's like a hope aspect to this, right? Which I think that's where a lot of this insecurity comes from, right? Like,

Lianne Shinton (16:29)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (16:35)

We don't have this well-designed plan. don't, we, we, we just have this cross our fingers and hope that if we did, we gave the dog an outlet with play. We taught the dog impulse control. We did this. We did that. did this that boom, the problem is solved. ⁓ so there's like one source of that insecurity right there is to like, why do I suck at doing this? Even though I've done it so many times. ⁓ but you know, the trainers that can ultimately articulate it, it's interesting then when you look back at like,

If I were to ask them at the outset, you know, what's your plan for dealing with this wreck? And okay, I'm going to do this again, give the dog an outlet with play and nose work and then teach it to heal and how few of those things actually come into play in this final exercise. Right? Like there's this hodgepodge of things they're doing with the dog and somewhere sprinkled in there are the skills that they actually need to execute this thing. This thing of like walking past.

Lianne Shinton (17:23)

Hmm.

Tyler Muto (17:35)

but they're sort of lost in there and they haven't identified those, those exact skillsets. So to me, it's like, if you're lost in this, I've got so many different methods, so many different things I could be doing with this dog. You want to go to that final exercise that I'm going to ask you to approach another dog for the first time. We might not even pass by. Maybe we're just going to like approach and stop and walk away or whatever. ⁓ but I'm going to give you a set of instructions and I need to teach you the baseline skills that you need to execute those instructions.

That should be your North Star throughout your entire training program for that reactivity. And then you can take all these other things, right? So depending on what those instructions are, you're going to have different skills you need the owner to learn. Like for some people, it's all about recall. They're going to recall the dog away. So they need to build a super strong recall. They need to have e-collar layered into that. need to, you for me, I use more spatial pressure. So I need the owner to get really good at that. I want them to learn about that in a different context. I need the dog to get really good about.

how to respond to spatial pressure. ⁓ If you're going to use any form of correction, you want there to be some skill involved there. And also just making sure the dog responds to the correction the way you want it to. How do you want the owner delivering a reward? Is there a marker for that reward that we want the dog to be familiar with? So these things all become the major focus of our training. Everything outside of that, right? Everything outside of that, you will have time to do, especially if you focus yourself really well.

Like instead of it being less than six, when you're finally passing by a dog, it might be less than three because you'd like, knew, can just get you these skills. can maximize the amount of time we have to practice doing this for real. And then you're going to like, can't just nonstop like hammer the dog passing by other dogs. Like you do a few dogs. goes, well, cool. Let's work on your play skills now. You know, let's work on this other outlet that we're giving the dog. Now we can, we can start to fill in. It's like, ⁓

Lianne Shinton (19:22)

you

Tyler Muto (19:29)

You ever seen like the YouTube, I think it's like a YouTube video or an Instagram video. I don't use Instagram. I'm just always on YouTube. Where it's like, they're talking about how to like, ⁓ manage important things in your life. And they use this analogy of a jar and you have rocks and you have sand. And if you fill the jar with sand first, like you can't get the rocks in. The rocks are the important things. The sand is like the extra stuff, right? The rocks are supposed to be like your family, like your faith or whatever, right? Your career.

Lianne Shinton (19:46)

yeah.

Tyler Muto (19:59)

⁓ So for us, the rocks are those core skills that are going to get us to that actual pass by, right? And if you put the rocks in the jar first, you can then pour a lot of sand in and it'll fill around those rocks, but you need to make sure you have enough space for the rocks first. This is sort of how we want to think about when we're trying to juggle all of these different training methodologies. This is the way we want to think about it. So

Yes, there are all these different things you can do, for you, and maybe it's for this specific dog, maybe you're the kind of trainer that that final exercise is gonna look different for you based on the dog's temperament or based on some other aspect of the dog's environment, perhaps, right? Whether they live in an apartment building versus a rural area. ⁓ But you've got that final exercise. Every trainer is gonna be different about what that looks like and what those rocks are.

But if we make sure that we look at our whole, the time we have to train, whether it's a board and train, whether it's private lessons, and we say, I got to make sure that there's the amount of time devoted to these big things to get the person to this, to be able to do this thing. That's my highest priority is like a baseline amount of time for that and that alone. And then once that's moving along at a pace that I'm happy with, then I can start to pour the sand into, then I can start to fill in around the gaps a little bit.

And that will help a lot to alleviate all of that confusion. But also that process in and of itself will also bring to light if you go, well, what is my plan for this talk? Shit, I don't even, I never actually wrote that out. And I actually do recommend like writing it out. ⁓ It can be very instructive to articulate out your thoughts on paper. Does that make sense so far?

Lianne Shinton (21:49)

Yes.

And now I get what you are asking about from a competition standpoint. If I'm looking at a retrieve, I'm going to break down each exercise. And I think, you know, back chaining might be a term is if I'm using the right term where like, you know, if I'm teaching a dog walk, I'm going to maybe teach the stop and the touch at the end of it first. Exactly. If I'm teaching the retriever, I want to teach them to hold different objects. Cause in Mondial Ring, have

Tyler Muto (22:05)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

end of it first.

Yeah.

Lianne Shinton (22:19)

so many different objects they may have to hold and just work on the hold and then there's the, you know, the send out and the pickup and there's all those pieces that, you know, make up the entire exercise and that vision of what the end is going to look like. I need to have all of these pieces in place. So I totally get what you're saying now. Yes.

Tyler Muto (22:19)

Yeah, it could be anything.

Exactly. And you have to like reverse engineer it, right? Like what does the end

need to look like? Okay. What are the components that that end part is made out of? And I need to then sort of prioritize around that. And yeah, there's other fun stuff you might be able to do that also benefits the retrieve, but I got to kind of get these core things first. And I think, by the way, I also said something where I was like, you know, for you as a trainer, it might sort of depend on certain aspects of the dog. And maybe you need to learn a certain amount about the dog first to make that determination.

Lianne Shinton (22:45)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (23:06)

And that's perfectly valid too. And so that would inform, you know, Hey, early on in my program, my, my lesson ones. ⁓ okay. What is the information that I definitely need? Like, how do I make that assessment? I can't just be like, I don't know. I just kind of trust my gut. Okay. Well, what's the timeline for that? I mean, even if you're just going to trust your gut, how much time do you give yourself before you stop and you go, okay, based on what I know, what's my plan for this dog here? Right.

And so it's okay if like your plan for lesson one is to be like, I got to find out, I got to answer some questions. Like what's this dog's play drive like? What's this dog's food motivation like? Cause this dog get really insecure around novel things, right? There might be some sort of evaluations that you need to do. And that's part of that overall process. But at some point you've got to stop and think, okay, what's that? What's that end thing going to look like for this dog? Cause I have to train toward that goal. Otherwise.

A, it's going to take you tremendously longer than you want things to take you. But also, it's just a massive source of insecurity, right? You're going at this thing without a clearly defined plan and without really having thought about how you're going to allocate your time. So of course you're anxious going into each lesson. Of course you are.

Lianne Shinton (24:18)

When you mentioned giving time to figure out that dog and what motivates it, all of that, it makes me think about one technique that I use that I think came from a study where they took like 20 dogs and they taught it something with nose work or something. And they took half of them and after they taught the exercise and it went well, they put them in their crate. You know, that school of thought of like, put him in his crate so he can digest it and think about what he's learned.

Tyler Muto (24:47)

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Lianne Shinton (24:48)

And they took the other half of the dogs and they did the most fun thing emotionally for that dog, whether it be swimming or play frisbee or whatnot. And the dogs, all of them that did the fun thing after they retained the information better. Cause when they went back and so that is something I've personally seen in Mondial ring where I work all the exercises and then we go into the bite work and man, all those exercises we worked there.

Tyler Muto (25:03)

Mm-hmm.

Lianne Shinton (25:15)

retention is so much better, I think because of the emotion of her doing the bite work and she's like, this is amazing. Now I retain this stuff better. So as I say all of that, it's making me think in that first lesson, I need to talk to the owner. Does this dog like to swim? Does it like to play frisbee? What does it really dig so that we can add that like secret sauce in on those exercises that do go really well to emotionally.

Tyler Muto (25:37)

Mm-hmm.

Lianne Shinton (25:43)

stick in the dog's brain and they hopefully retain the information better. that would be ⁓ for me, like digging in a little bit on lesson one or two, like let's get that down and let's make sure we know how to play in that way. So that when it's time to bring it, we can have that to utilize and it'll be perfect.

Tyler Muto (25:46)

Yeah, yeah.

And actually like hearing you say that actually made me think about, I'm just going to give away like a, like a freebie for, for especially like newer trainers who are working on reactivity. So a huge problem, I So I'm just going to say this. It's, it's going to sound worse than, I mean it to be. Okay. I think like, all right. So yes, part of the problem is that people get lost in having too many methodologies for dealing with the reactivity.

I think the other part of the problem is that a lot of the mainstream methodologies for dealing with reactivity aren't that good. They're okay. They work on some dogs or they would work a lot better if you added in this extra thing to it. But on their own, they're just not that good. And this is just somebody who I've dealt with a tremendous amount of reactivity and I had...

for the bulk of my training center, know, four full-time trainers working under me that I was, you know, guiding along. ⁓ So it's like, not, it's like my experience times four more, you know what I mean? As far as like the sample size of dogs that we're working with. ⁓ And so, okay, so a big problem that I see is for the trainers that use any sort of aversive, like,

correction, balanced trainers. Okay. Cause I work with balanced trainers. I work with positive only trainers. Like a lot of the work I do is independent of methodology or a lot of it's about your mentality and also just about your process. Right. I would say process more than anything. ⁓ but of the balance folks, a huge thing that holds people back is they are way too committed to like a specific one or two tools in their toolbox. When it comes to, ⁓

whatever, however they use pressure in their reactivity process. And I'll put it that way because some people would, what they do, they wouldn't consider it to be a correction for instance, like some of the low level E-collar people for instance. Okay. And that's fine. So, but, people get like really married to these one or two things. So like I really, I love my prong collar or I love my E-collar and that's what I'm going to use to try to interrupt this dog before it explodes or, or after it explodes or whatever.

Lianne Shinton (28:12)

Yes.

Tyler Muto (28:24)

Open up that toolbox, like really open up that toolbox because I will tell you, and I've said this before, but one of the biggest, biggest game changers for me as a trainer who works with lot of aggression was when I started to get really experimental with what constitutes like a correction or punishment for any given dog in any given context. And when you find the right thing,

you often end up using significantly less overall like pressure or aversiveness or whatever. And I mean less in both intensity, also frequency. Like when, when punishment works, it, tends to work really fast and well, ⁓ without tons of repetition. So anyhow, all that being said, like when you were like, man, if I was working with a dog like this, I'd need to talk to the owner. That would be part of my process. It's like what

What does your dog love doing? And I think that's extremely valid. would, I would do the same, but I would add to that, that I also like to check in with the owner. What is your dog not like? What is your dog shy away from? What makes your dog retreat away? What makes your dog go from tail up and bold feeling to like tail a bit lower and not feeling so sure about what they're doing? Because if you can get a sense of that, you can get a little window into

Lianne Shinton (29:29)

Mm.

Tyler Muto (29:48)

what type of correction might actually be effective for this dog, especially when it comes to reactivity and like spoiler alert, it's, often not the same thing that we would want for obedience training. So in OB like we love e-collars for instance, for obedience training, because we can use them in a way that like doesn't affect the dogs like arousal and like they're just as enthusiastic as they were before, but we gave this little low level correction, right?

And this sounds really bad, like when it comes to reactivity, like the enthusiasm, the dog has about like lunging to this. don't want the dog to feel as enthusiastic about that anymore. Like I kind of want something that can cut through that and take a little bit of the wind out of the dog's sails. And often that's not a matter of intensity. I think that's the key thing here. So a lot of times people are like really married to that e-collar, really married to that prong collar. And so when it's not getting the result, it's like,

Lianne Shinton (30:29)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (30:48)

I think I need a stronger correction. I think I need to yank on that, least sharper, harder. Let me try dialing up the E-collar. And a lot of times it's not that. A lot of times it's just that particular stimuli, that particular feeling doesn't elicit the response from the dog that we actually need to be constructive in this moment. Right? So that would be part of it for me is I want to sort of dig in. I want to know. And

Yes, I can do a little bit of experimentation, but it's a lot easier if I can also just like ask the owner, like, is there anything that, that sort of like makes your dog feel this way that your dog, your dog wants to go super high arousal and lunge forward. So in effect, what we want to do is counter that. Right? Like that's my whole, my whole thing with reactivity, where I think a lot of the methodologies that are out there are like the gap they miss, not all of them. Right. There are some that that sort of, that sort of get this too, but the gap is like,

You've got to, it's that, it's that arousal that needs to shift. And it's just this like simple pattern, right? High arousal moving forward. What we just want to teach. What does, what has the opposite effect to that? Right? It's counter conditioning. What brings arousal down and makes the dog want to retreat. If you can find something that does that and apply it in the right way with the right foundation, 80 % of the reactivity work is done for you.

like independent of like, just by having the right tool for the job, honestly. ⁓ And so that's a big part for me. Part of that early evaluation is sort of finding that out. then, but I have parts of my training plan that are sort of designed for that. What exercises am I going to try this correction and see if it gives me the response that I'm looking for? I know that, I know exactly where that is in my training plan. And a lot of trainers,

just they haven't thought that part through. And that's what I mean when I say like, it's not always about changing your methodology. I mean, sometimes I do like to give like, hey, trainer, here's, they go, I don't know how to bring a dog's arousal down. And I can say, well, here, let me walk you through how I do it. We'll do some case studies together. You'll send me video. It's not that hard. And usually you can figure it out within a week or so and bam, all of a sudden your reactivity work is way better. ⁓ But a lot of times it's just, they're,

They have this loose idea of a plan in their head, but it's never actually been articulated where they, it, it's amazing when you have something in your head and it feels so solid, how not solid it becomes once you try to actually put pen to paper and like make that plan concrete.

And I think that's why I said earlier, like, writing this stuff down makes a massive difference.

Lianne Shinton (33:46)

I wanted to ask maybe for you to share if you can, ⁓ like some options, because as you're saying like, hey, what does your dog really not like? What makes him retreat? What upsets that dog? And, you know, a big one is taking the owner away, taking the owner out of the equation, pulling the dog away from the owner. And they're like, wait, mommy, wait, wait. And that, that is one.

Tyler Muto (34:05)

then that can work.

Lianne Shinton (34:13)

training technique and reactivity that I've seen and I've seen it work where you have two lines on the dog and it's like you start to zone in, okay? You you lost mommy, you lost mommy. Yeah.

Tyler Muto (34:17)

Mm-hmm.

I'm out. I'm gonna abandon you. Yep. And

so, you know, part of it's also like, as we're thinking about that, as we're thinking about what elicits the feelings that we need in the dog, we also do have to think about also ⁓ environment and sort of context, right? So there might be cases and people where it's like, that's a totally viable approach based on like where they tend to be when they see dogs and how this all presents itself. And then there might be other situations where it's like, that ain't...

that's just not gonna work. It's just not realistic for this client and dog to be able to implement that. And so that's where experience is always gonna come into play. ⁓ But it's also good to just have a variety of options available, a variety of tools in your toolbox. And also again, often owners can provide insights into what might work for their dog. ⁓ So I think you were probably gonna ask about what are a couple of examples perhaps of that. So I think what you just described is a great one. ⁓

Lianne Shinton (34:54)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Tyler Muto (35:21)

I think early on we want to think about like, this dog sensitive to touch, like physical sensations? Is this dog sensitive to sound? So noise related things can be effective. ⁓ Is this dog sensitive to more like psychological type pressure, like emotional type stuff? like spatial pressure might be more effective for instance, for that dog. ⁓ But it might just be something very, very specific. Like here's an example.

I just talking to somebody about this because I was working with a trainer who was trying to So this is like another common thing with trainers that work with reactivity is some of them feel like if they don't Get full circle to the point of sociability that they're like failing somehow Right that if they're take on a reactivity case that the end goal has to be this dog playing with other dogs And I don't think that's necessarily the case But this particular trainer does like to try to get to that point and was struggling with a couple cases

⁓ And I was explaining this idea of like, you know, different corrections and also just being prepared in case things go wrong. But I remember I was working with a dog that was very reactive and also had socialization issues at my training center. And we were doing like, okay, so if we're going to bring a dog into a social group, there's some like preliminary things we want to do, just like we were discussing. And one of those things is I need to know, like if this dog pops off.

What are my options as far as intervening? Or even if this dog is getting stiff and squaring off, have I done enough foundation where I can call the dog away from that, that I can make a noise? Maybe it's snapping my fingers. Maybe it's just moving into that dog's space. Do I have a way of intervening that the dog will respond the way I need to? And so I like to do these kinds of tests between a chain-link fence initially. And depending on the dog, they may also have a muzzle on so they don't hurt their teeth on the fence or each other through the fence. ⁓

And it was just little, I think it was like a French bulldog or something. I remember he was gray. That's all I remember. But I'm out there and I'm in, I'm like, you know, it's like early in the morning and we're like, okay, let's just see how this guy does. He had been in, he'd been there for a week or something and got him on a leash. I'm out there and like my Crocs and my, know, I've got my Yeti cup filled with water cause it's summertime and we bring dogs out on the other side of the yard, other side of the fence. And he starts getting stiff and staring. And I try to like,

kind of snap my fingers, get his attention, see if I can intervene and like nothing. And I just took my Yeti cup with cold water in it and just did a little like, like a little blob of water just splashed down on his head. And he like immediately snapped out of what he was doing. He jumped backwards. He, you know, his tail went down. He was like, ⁓ and then we're like, okay, cool. So like now let's do this again. He went up and then he started getting stiff again. And then this time when I like made a noise and kind of came forward, he's like, all right, like we're good. Just don't do the water thing again. Right.

Lianne Shinton (37:51)

Hmm.

Tyler Muto (38:07)

So that was a perfect example of like, you know, that little glob of water landing on his head. I mean, wasn't like, I mean, the cup had a lid on it. wasn't even like a pouring a cup of water, right? Just like a little splash had a stronger impact than probably like a pretty, pretty decent leash correction would have had in that moment. And not only a stronger impact, but it was exactly the kind of response I wanted. Like it just.

He went from puffed out chest to like, know what? Like, I'm going to keep my, I'm going to just, okay, you set the tone here and I'm going to, I'm going to stay in line. Right. And, ⁓ and like problem solved at that point. Like now we can move forward. Now we can bring them into socialization. We know how we can intervene. ⁓ we know that he's starting to understand that even if he's feeling this way, he still has to like respond when we tell him enough to back off kind of thing. ⁓

Lianne Shinton (38:49)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (39:03)

And so that was just an easy example of like, okay, once we find that out, now we go, okay, maybe squirt bottle is gonna work really good for this dog. If it's a bigger dog, maybe when we're socializing, we need to have the hose ready or a bucket of water ready just in case, you know? ⁓ But it's just, it's not always what you think it's gonna be. ⁓ Sometimes it's just a random household item. My malinois used to be terrified of helium balloons. Like I could have solved.

Lianne Shinton (39:21)

you

Tyler Muto (39:31)

reactivity with him if he were reactive by bringing a helium balloon on a walk. You just need the right thing for the dog. ⁓ So yeah, so I would just start there. Is this dog sensitive to touch? Is it sensitive to sound? Is it sensitive to social, psychological type pressures? And then the owner might know something specific. Like, yeah, he really doesn't like water. Or ⁓ yeah, he gets really jumpy if he hears a loud car door close.

And as long as it's not a problem that's like, for instance, okay, the dog hates water, but it's also a dog that has to be groomed once a month and has a really hard time in the bath because of its hate of water. Well, I'm not going to use water as a correction for that dog because they're probably trying to desensitize the dog to water elsewhere. And I'm going to end up sensitizing the dog to it. Like it's going to be problematic for that dog. So, you know, this all comes into that decision-making as far as the tools that we use.

Lianne Shinton (40:18)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (40:28)

a little bit of time spent finding the right thing for the dog, you know, and, being open to more than just what are normally thought of as training tools here, as long as it's safe, as long as it's kind of controllable, it's not, ⁓ over the top, as far as the dog's response to it, then it can save you a lot of grief throughout your process.

Lianne Shinton (40:52)

That's awesome. The water, don't do that water thing again. That's so effective. you know, as a Mondial ring competitor with Flirty, you know, I didn't want to use a squirt bottle for any of the deterrents because she has to fight the bad guy through a hose or, you know, she has to pick up water balloons that are attached to her retrieve object or something like that. So.

Tyler Muto (41:07)

Yeah.

Lianne Shinton (41:19)

Yeah, you definitely have to be strategic if there's something else you need to consider. yeah, I think what you were saying, like it really hit home, like don't be married to those two or three tools that are in your toolbox. ⁓ I've tried things like the, like it's a horse ⁓ covers the eyes so they can't see as well. Yeah, the blinders thing didn't work, but hey, I got it in my toolbox because if it did, that would have been super cool.

Tyler Muto (41:40)

Like the blinders thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lianne Shinton (41:49)

But I like that just being open and seeing what might work for this dog and this family.

Tyler Muto (41:56)

Yeah. And again, like I'm going to, I sort of like drop it in there. I don't want it to get lost. Cause it's like, ⁓ it's honestly just like a, a gem for any trainer that that's out there that is feeling a little bit lost with reactivity work is like, really think about this statement. The reactivity is a pattern of behavior. The dog gets aroused and launches forward. Teach the opposite. Find a way to teach the opposite. That's the

if you can laser in your training and there's more than one way to do that, right? But that's all to me, like the people that are really successful using, like recalling away, that's why they're moving away from, and they're ideally managing the dog's arousal as well. But you want to find a way to teach the opposite. um,

If you're thinking about that, right? What's the most effective way to get the arousal down and the most efficient and effective way to get the dog to move away from something that it normally finds interesting? What are my fastest and most effective options for those two, like core skill sets? Right? So again, not what's the best way to teach an off leash recall, right? That's a different conversation. What's the best way for me to teach the dog that if there's something they want to move toward, that I need them

go away from it, that they should move away from that thing. You know, ⁓ if you can nail that down and base your training around that sort of concept, that'll narrow a lot of options for you. Like that'll keep you really focused on the things that are going to actually move the needle. And again, it doesn't mean that there aren't all these other auxiliary things that are also beneficial, like building the dog's impulse control through other types of exercises or

Lianne Shinton (43:22)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (43:48)

providing energy or enrichment outlets for the dog elsewhere in its life. But at some point we've got to walk past another dog. What are the exact skills I need you to have in order to successfully walk past that dog? That's all that matters. Like it doesn't matter how well enriched the dog is, if it can't execute what we need it to execute when it's walking past the dog, that is your measure of success. And so if we really simplify that down, right?

Lianne Shinton (44:07)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (44:19)

What do I need you to do? I need you in the face of something that normally would make you go high arousal and forward. I need you to be capable of staying low arousal and away. That's what I need. Teach that skill, apply it to the problem. You're off to the races.

Lianne Shinton (44:39)

Now, you mentioned earlier on the difference between, this is going to be a board and train approach. This is going to be a private lesson approach. The owner is a huge variable, obviously, in this. Could you share a little bit about, like, I'll give you example. I've seen it many times where

Tyler Muto (44:50)

Exactly.

Lianne Shinton (44:57)

I can work with a dog and all of my repetitions that I've ever done with this dog, he's like, yes or no, sir, three bags full, sir, like anything you want, Leanne, you're awesome, I got you, I know what I'm supposed to do. And I don't don't do anything, it's perfect. Give the leash to the owner and it's night and day difference. So we know that there's habits and patterns and things there, but maybe speak on that because it could help.

Tyler Muto (45:15)

It all falls apart.

Lianne Shinton (45:24)

others to kind of explain that to their clients and why they're seeing, he's perfect for Leanne, but I've got some work to do.

Tyler Muto (45:31)

Yeah.

Yeah. So there's a couple of issues here, I think. So one of the things is just like really simple and tangible. again, this is independent of methodology or how you personally choose to deal with reactivity. One of the biggest things that I think limits success is the, the client not getting enough controlled reps in.

in their actual like where they actually walk their dog. So the dog goes to the trainers ⁓ and you know, it learns, Hey, in that environment, this is the way things go. This is what I've practiced it here, but I still have this, obviously this pattern of doing things at home. I still feel insecure about those dogs or when I see dogs on this walk, because this is what it's always been to me my whole life. Maybe the trainer goes to that client's house and they, they've got that one dog they bring and they practice doing their pass buys or whatever.

So what we need to do is we need to get that client out like is but when the trainer's not there, so the dog can have that experience and say like, Hey, your homework is to actually like knock on one of your neighbor's doors that has a dog and get them to help you or get a friend who has a dog to come over. And just the way that we just spent some time, we, we set ourselves up. We did this exercise. Maybe at first we couldn't pass, but after a few reps we did pass and then we passed a bunch of times together. We did it.

20 times where the dog was just successful and got nothing but rewarded. And then we went for a walk together. Like your homework is to find three people with dogs to do that with like on your own block when I'm not there. Regardless of methodology, if they do that, they're, they're going to be like wildly better. Cause I could like, for instance, in a board and train, I mean, you probably know this, you get dogs that are reactive in, you could do almost no training with them. Give it three, four days and they'll barely react to any dog in the training center.

because they're just like, just there's dogs everywhere here. I expect to see it. This is what we do. We get the reps in. It's, but normally what happens is the trainer leaves and when the owner's on their own, they encounter a dog on the walk. They've got basically one shot to get it right. And then that dog is gone. And so usually the dog doesn't get it right on the first shot because they never have, or they've got this old pattern of, when it's just me and you in this environment, this is what I do. haven't had a chance to practice otherwise yet.

Lianne Shinton (47:38)

Hmm.

Tyler Muto (47:53)

All they really need is the opportunity to go, okay, the first shot didn't go good. Let's do it again. still not great. Let's do it again. Okay, that was good. Let's do it again so you can practice doing it good. And then 10 more times practicing doing it good. The dog was okay. Cool. Like this, this was a lot easier. I see there was actually nothing to be afraid of with that dog before I see that you're not going to make me, you're going to bubble out. You're going to go across the street before we get too close. Okay, cool. I wasn't sure if you would do that when the trainer guy's not here. I wasn't sure. Cause you always do it when he's here, but you've never done it. We've never gotten that far before on her.

Right? So they go through that and then they generalize with a few dogs, you're going to get better regardless of your methodology. They're going to improve. that's kind of the first thing of like why it's not going good with the owners is just getting the reps in, in a controlled way. The other thing is, and I know this is like, depending on the circles you run in might be like a little bit taboo, but relationship matters. And the idea of leadership

Really really makes a difference like a massive massive difference as an example Just from my real life. We were talking before we started about this little dog. I have now Abby who is she's five now ⁓ She's a mini Labradoodle Goldendoodle cross. We've had her for just under a year The one thing her previous owner told us was that she had that was a bad habit was she would steal socks

So she lived with an older woman, just her and that woman, adult, senior citizen basically, ⁓ vibrant senior citizen, in case she's listening, young senior citizen. So she'd steal her socks, she'd bring them to her dog bed, she wouldn't chew them up or anything like that, but she'd steal socks. So we bring her home. Now right away, I'm a dog trainer, right? So I behave in a certain way with my dogs. There's certain things that I show right away, like I'm not gonna tolerate, ⁓ I'm gonna...

Lianne Shinton (49:40)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (49:46)

be assertive where appropriate, but I'm also very affectionate with my dogs and I like to snuggle with them and all that kind of stuff too. ⁓ So her perception of who I am is obviously going to be something very distinct. In my house, when we first got her, she stole everybody's socks at least one time, at least not once did she ever take one of my socks. Not a single time.

Okay, that is not coincidental.

Lianne Shinton (50:19)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (50:21)

Okay, that is not coincidental. ⁓ Similarly, right, like because of my relationship with her, like if she's getting overexcited, she loves people, she gets overexcited when people come over.

I'm the most capable of getting her to stop that without any physical anything, right? Like just my voice and my presence. ⁓ I tend to snap my fingers as part of my you know, marker or whatever ⁓ is generally enough for her. No other person in my household is that gonna necessarily work as effectively for.

kind of my wife, but even not as much. My wife's not a dog trainer. Like it's not, you know, it's not what she does. ⁓ So I think there's a huge part of this that I think is also lacking in trainers toolboxes these days. ⁓ Not all trainers, not all schools of thoughts, but I think there are a lot of approaches to the reactivity that it's like solely about the reactivity itself. And

not thinking enough about who the person is to the dog. Like what does this person represent to the dog? How does the dog, because of that, feel when they are with this person, especially out in the world where there is like danger and scary things, how secure do they feel based on the relationship that they have or who they think this person sort of is fundamentally, right? And so for instance, if you have a human that's a little bit of a soft,

person and behaves in such a way to the dog that the dog wouldn't normally associate in their world with like a leader type position. And that's about our behavior and our actions and our interactions. That person is going to really struggle, you know, out there when they're trying to address this reactivity with a lot of the sort of existing methodologies that are out there. Like the dog's response to correction can be

Lianne Shinton (52:09)

Later.

Tyler Muto (52:29)

Completely different based on its social relationship to the person who's delivering the correction Like and that's not that's not different from me and you you know, and I use this analogy all the time if you're walking

Just to say that you're walking down the street, you're training a dog. Maybe you've got a prong collar on the dog, right? And a stranger drives up, rolls down their window, and starts telling you, not that like prong collars are evil, that's a different thing, just that you're using it completely wrong, that you're not doing it right. Your response to that, both like your outward behavioral response, but also emotionally, internally, is gonna be super different than like,

Like who's a trainer that you look up to, for instance, like maybe from your Mondial world, like who's one of your mentors. Okay. Let's say it pulls up. It's Michael Ellis in his Sprinter van. You had no idea he was in town and he's like, Hey Leanne, I think you would do better if you just changed your grip over a little bit. You're actually like holding that leash and properly, you're going have a wildly different response to that. And even if they said the exact same information, like their, their guidance was exactly the same.

Lianne Shinton (53:16)

Like Michael Ellis, yeah, many, many.

Tyler Muto (53:38)

they're gonna have completely different emotional responses based on your relationship to that human being. So it's no different for dogs. think perhaps the one methodology that might be independent of this, but I don't know, would be like a purely counter conditioning approach to reactivity. But in my experience, that's an insanely difficult thing to accomplish in real life because least reactivity happens out in the world and there's just so many uncontrolled variables that's really hard.

Lianne Shinton (53:48)

Hmm.

Tyler Muto (54:09)

to resolve it with counter conditioning like isolated from everything else. So problem is any of the everything else is that you might add to it, whether it's still in alignment with like a reward only approach or you're introducing correction in a lot of those other things are dependent on how much the dog sort of trusts you, how much the dog feels safe with you, how much the dog feels competent of your ability to control things in the environment. And so if that's not built into your training plan.

in a way that actually works, then that's going to be a huge part of it. And I say a way that actually works because I think a lot of dog trainers have things that they

I think they've been told or I don't know, but they'll be like, ⁓ yeah, I need to work on their relationship, so I'm just having the owner do a lot of structure. That's always the word, structure. It's like, okay, well does that mean? What do you mean by structure? What does that mean? It's different to every trainer. well, so I'm gonna have them start applying rules and Okay, what rules and boundaries? How are they being applied? Because all of that matters. Not everything is the same. Even teaching the same rule, like for instance,

Lianne Shinton (55:02)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (55:21)

the how it affects the relationship, for instance, if ⁓ let's say you want to teach a dog to stay, you know, give you a healthy distance when you're handling food, right? As part of your way of saying like, Hey, I'm a, I'm an assertive animal. I don't like you crowding my personal space when I have food, right? This is a very instinctual thing. So how am going to do that? Well, I can, I can set up a treat and train near their dog bed.

And like I can systematically teach like a place command and then eventually add in the distraction of like other food sources nearby and build up the dog's ability with nothing but rewards to like stay on that dog bed with that treat and train. But that's a very different experience versus somebody who, for instance, is going to teach the dog to give them space by using spatial pressure. Like it's a it's a vastly different dialogue, if you will, between the human and the dog.

And what that exercise represents to the dog, why they're staying back, is gonna have different implications into how that exercise may or may not actually impact the relationship between the human and dog. Right? And so a lot of times people say, well, I know there's an imbalance from having the owner do structure, which means they've got their e-collar on and their food and they're making the dog do these things. But if they're not behaving differently,

Lianne Shinton (56:30)

Agreed.

Tyler Muto (56:44)

Right? Because it's not how the dog feels with you is not, it's not about the fact that you can press this button that makes this feeling on the dog's neck, you know, but how are you standing when you press the button? What's your tone of voice? How are you moving in relation to the dog? When the dog does something that you disagree with or that makes you uncomfortable, how do you express that with yourself? Not just with this physical training tool and sort of coaching owners, how they need to behave.

in certain contexts with their dog so the dog sees that they're capable of being a certain kind of being, being a certain kind of being. ⁓ I think it's a gaping hole in dog training education to be honest with you. Like I see trainers come out of school and it's like they don't know how to think, they don't know. They don't really know how to make the dog see the human as a stronger leader other than the human has lots of leverage over them.

Lianne Shinton (57:25)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (57:39)

because they control their food and they control this feeling on their neck. But having leverage over the dog doesn't make the dog see you as a leader in a more like natural kind of way. It just means you have leverage over somebody. Like there can be somebody that you really don't respect that doesn't have a good charisma that can't really command a room well, but they are the only ones that has the key to the padlock on the refrigerator, right? You might ultimately do what they ask. That doesn't mean that they see you as

or that you see them as like a good leader or that you respect them or that independent of that leverage that you would do anything that they ask you to do at all. You know what I mean? Whereas the opposite, a good leader might also have the key to the fridge, but behaves in such a way that even if they didn't, you would still follow them.

Lianne Shinton (58:19)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (58:28)

You see what I mean? So a lot of trainers, their idea of changing the relationship is really just the key to the fridge part of it, right? Or the button to the e-collar part of it, but not the part of it that's like, what happens when those things go away?

Lianne Shinton (58:28)

that.

Tyler Muto (58:44)

And that's about the interaction between the human and the dog. And do we have things built into our training practice that coaches people towards that? That's one of the areas that when, when trainers come to me and they are like, I have this gap in my training, I feel this insecure, I feel like I'm missing something in my training. That's often a huge part of it. And so, ⁓ for the trainers where I am adding tools to their toolboxes for them, cause sometimes it's just process. Sometimes it is like, no, very specifically, there are some things that

Honestly, you haven't been taught that you really need to know how to do and usually it's this kind of stuff. It's not like, here's a snappy little trick to get a dog to do it down faster. Like most trainers have enough of those. They have enough of that. There's enough of that education out there, but they're missing these other things. They're missing the, okay, I hear what you say when you say reactivity is about lowering arousal and getting the dog to naturally move away. I have no idea what that looks like in practice and I need you to fill that hole for me or

Lianne Shinton (59:21)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (59:44)

I do feel like, I say this thing about structure. I say this thing about being a leader, but you're right. Like it's not happening because then the dog goes home and everything falls to pieces, but the dog comes back here and still does fine with me and the owner's doing the things. It's not like they're not, it's not, we're not talking about an owner that's not doing the homework here. Like this was the thing that drove me to start digging deeper in my training because I would have these cases where it's like, I've thrown everything that I know right now at this. I've done all the obedience.

done all the structure, I've done all the counter conditioning, I've done all of it. And the clients doing all the homework, like they're good clients. And they're still struggling. What am I missing? Right. And it was like, yeah, I just remember like, like it took me on a journey, but it really shaped my training quite a bit. and shaped the way I was approaching. was actually telling somebody the other day, I did a thing. It was like an experiment for about a year.

Lianne Shinton (1:00:22)

That's the piece. Yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:00:43)

So ⁓ as you and I were talking before the podcast started, we were talking about like selling our businesses and how a lot of trainers are like, yeah, but I don't ever want to sell my business, but we're like, yeah, but you should still think about it. Because for me, if you operate your business in such a way that it is sellable, you have a business that's not stressing you out every day. Cause it's, it's turnkey. Like everything has a process and an operation for it. Right. Somebody else could take it over and be successful because you've put those things in place. You've thought these things through. So anyhow, ⁓

Where was I going with this? gosh. I lost my own train of thought. ⁓ I know, I know, know, I know. Okay, so I got my business to this point, right? Like my trainers were doing all the private lessons. My trainers were working all the boarded trains. I was floating around the facility, kind of oiling the machine, right? Like making sure everybody sort of knew what they needed to be doing, checking in on the dogs. ⁓

Lianne Shinton (1:01:16)

We're talking about.

Tyler Muto (1:01:41)

The trainers would say, hey, this this case is a little bit tricky. I just want a little bit of guidance on it. So I'd be helping provide guidance or could you sit in on the next private lesson with this client or kind of a difficult case? So that was my job. And because of that, I had some flexibility. So I told my office staff, said, hey, I want to do something here. I'm only going to take on a client that I train personally on Tuesdays, one day a week, one client. And here's the deal. They have to be willing to come in the morning and meet with me.

They have to be willing to stay for as long as I need them to stay. It might be hours. They also have to be willing to leave and come back later. I might want some time with just the dog. I don't know until I have that morning meeting with them, but they basically have to be willing to give me a day, one day, one day only, we'll figure it out. And so I did this for about a year, maybe even more, where every Tuesday I'd take one client.

And I'd have people that would like, remember one woman came from Connecticut just for that one day because it was like, there's again, it was like, I'm doing all the obedience foundation. Like this is when I kind of shifted away from like, cause I used to be where a lot of trainers are, where they get a behavior problem case. And like the first thing they I'm going to do is do the foundational obedience, like all of it, all five commands. That's the before I get that done first to get that foundation of handling skill, that foundation of impulse control.

Then I'll sort of see from there. What do I need to do with the reactivity, but it's like You're not doing that in one day And I was like there's got to be a way to go in more Like you know if somebody has a tumor and you just want to go in with like that Da Vinci machine that surgery machine and just Like just get it out with like no collateral damage like no, right? So what's that approach to behavior where we're going in we're saying here's the behavior itself

Lianne Shinton (1:03:26)

Yep. Yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:03:37)

If I can't do any of the extra stuff around it, I just need to go in and, you know, deal with this behavior by itself. How am going to do that? ⁓ It forced me to be insanely creative with how I was approaching anything that these people, like sometimes they're resource guarding a lot of leash reactivity, because again, it's like a super common problem. ⁓ But it really forced me to think outside the box.

and to just strip away everything that was just extra in the process. Like everything. Everything that was just like, if it's not absolutely necessary to get this person to the point where they need to be, I don't have the time. I've got one day. I was way more successful than you would think with just having this one day. And it was interesting, but it shaped a lot of what I did. ⁓

Lianne Shinton (1:04:11)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (1:04:34)

And then it shaped a lot of how obviously I ran my business and how we worked with dogs moving forward. I don't remember what segued into that story, but ⁓ yeah, mean, it's just, guess, trimming the fat was a huge part of that, a huge outcome of that process.

Lianne Shinton (1:04:51)

Well, one of the most powerful takeaways I've gotten from this entire podcast is that gap that you mentioned. And that is that we don't really teach our clients how to be the leader, how to just shift that, that little bit in their body language, in their tonality. You know, these are all key things that they have to consider. And we just skip right through that. we talk.

Tyler Muto (1:05:16)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

that's what led me into that diatribe. But yes, that was one of the outcomes of that period of time was that piece of the puzzle. Yeah, it was like, I don't have time to hope that your dog sees you as a better leader because you learned, you taught the dog five different obedience commands. You then conditioned an e-collar to those things. You then implemented them for long enough in your house with all this quote unquote structure that the dog now sees you different. Like, I don't have time for that. I've got one day.

Lianne Shinton (1:05:20)

Yeah.

Figuring out that gap, yeah.

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:05:45)

If

I want your dog to see you different today, how do you need to behave to make the dog see you the way I need you to? Like what needs to happen? What event needs to happen in order to make that shift? And it just forced me to like look at the common practices in dog training and really question them of not like, they work? Right? Like it's not that the obedience approach doesn't ever work, but it's, it just felt super, super inefficient to me. And also

So I think when it works it's because there is something away about the way hey when I've taught this person now how to use this tool I've taught them and their natural way of being is that now along with this tool they are able to kind of like be assertive they are acting in that kind of way but it wasn't all the obedience commands right it was that shift in confidence that that owner just got that now they're behaving the way I need them to behave but some people that doesn't happen they

Lianne Shinton (1:06:30)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (1:06:40)

They can say no and press the button, but they're still like, their presence is kind of meek and kind of, kind of soft and weak, but the dog still does the thing because again, they've got the key to the refrigerator, right? They've got the leverage over the dog with the e-collar or the prong collar or the food that they can withhold or whatever it is. So the dog's doing this stuff, but they don't feel any different about that human. And so they don't feel any different when they're out and about in the world with that human. And that's going to affect like how, how,

Lianne Shinton (1:06:44)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:07:09)

how effective any methodology will be is somewhat dependent on the social relationship. And this is one of the areas where there's sort of like a hole in, I think a lot of like the scientific research around the use of punishment in training. And like, I don't even know how you would fill that hole from a scientific standpoint. Like I'm not knocking the science. just like, it's like, like how do you quantify that? And I think that's always been the challenge of behavioral science. And

From its dawning point, behavioral science recognized that. mean, that's why early behaviorists put zero emphasis on emotion. It wasn't because they didn't believe emotions existed. It was because they didn't have a mechanism for quantifying its role in behavior. So they had to exclude it from their field because their field was only about things that can be quantified. So that exclusion was not a belief system of this doesn't exist or isn't real or doesn't matter. It's just, it's outside of our scope.

of what we can do. And I think relationship is very much like that, right? It's really hard to quantify. So how do we study it? How do we study the impact of relationship in a really scientifically rigorous way, as far as how it impacts the dog's response to both reinforcements and punishers. But it is a very, very real thing. And it's a massive gap in the dog training education sphere, you know? ⁓

I think it's what Caesar was kind of tapping into. I think a lot of people recognize with Caesar, like, he's really good about what he does. He's not so great at explaining why it's working or how you can do it too. You know what I mean? So yeah, so I think that's a huge area that will affect the board and train experience, but even the private lesson experience. And then I think also there's other things when we're taking.

Lianne Shinton (1:08:37)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (1:08:58)

talking about like our training plans differing between private lessons and board of trains. Part of it is just with the private lesson, the owner needs to be able to do the teaching part. So I have to teach the owner a broader set of skills that are going to be an evolving set of skills as the dog also progresses. The dog needs me to apply different skills at stage one of its training and needs me to deploy a whole different set of skills at stage 10 of its training.

So I've got to teach the owner the stage one skills, the stage two skills, the stage three skills. In a board and train, I only need to teach the owner the skillset that they need from when the dog's leaving the board and train and beyond that, right? And I say I'm beyond because sometimes the end of the board and train isn't the end of the dog's training either. There's still some follow-ups that are needed and everything else. So it's just a lot less that I have to teach, but in private lessons, I need to be mindful of...

Just like I'm going to break down, these are the skills I've got at these, like these core foundational skills, the rocks before the sand for the dog. have to do that for the human as well. I have to be as thoughtful about the human's learning experience, ⁓ their rate of reinforcement, you know, the stress that they're under throughout this. Like I have to be, I have to be conscious of these things and my training plan has to also be built around those.

And sometimes that's a competing set of values and competing set of motivations from the dog. Right? So sometimes the ideal lesson plan for the human to teach the human and the ideal lesson plan for the dog don't fully align. And then we have to make judgment calls ⁓ as like, where do I make compromises or in what order, you know, at what point do I favor

the dogs learning experience? there other stages of training where it's more important to favor the humans learning experience? ⁓ And that has to be completely built into my private lesson training plan. Again, this is another area that I think, ⁓ and this is not, this is just because it's just a more advanced concept. So any training school that you go to and you spend, you know, even three months at, like, there's just only so much you can learn.

It could be the best school in the world. There's just only so much you can learn. And some of it you have to have certain experiences for. I think this is one of those things. ⁓ And then in board and train, it's just a different set of considerations for the owner, ⁓ especially when it comes to that transfer back home and what does that look like. And for board and trains, that's going to vary a lot because some trainers do interim education for the owner throughout the dog stay, whereas some trainers wait until the dog is done and then the owner's education starts.

Some trainers like myself, when I ran my center, even will have the dog go home for short periods of time ⁓ during the boarding train and start that transfer process and be able to troubleshoot throughout the process, which is something that I did towards the like latter half of running my training center.

Lianne Shinton (1:11:58)

Yeah, I think if I were going to open a training center again, I would for my board and trains lean into like a virtual session, maybe have the dog in the background and he is here. But now we're going to talk about you, the owner. And I think that they're going to retain the information maybe a little bit better because they don't have the stress of like the dogs in the picture. They're just focused on the learning. They can play it back. You know, they can have their family involved.

I think that would be a piece I would add in because like what you just taught, which is filling that gap is like teaching the owner how to be a better leader. And you can do that through a virtual training. You don't need to drive to their house and be doing all this extra travel and stuff. This is stuff that they could learn virtually. If you had a course, a digital course, they could learn it through that. But sometimes it's like you have to identify

where they're maybe a little bit meek and you have to help them to be a bit more bro. So it might be individual.

Tyler Muto (1:12:59)

bit more bro. ⁓ my

gosh. I was just reading an article this morning about the the rise and fall of the manosphere. It's just made me think of it when you said a bit more bro because it's obviously very opinionated article. Yeah, I think, you know, ⁓ I love that you brought up like the idea of doing the virtual thing or the digital chorus thing with the board and train folks especially because I think this is an area ⁓

Especially I think for the trainers that they don't see the owner until the end of the program ⁓

you know, that's a, that becomes a really, really important chunk of time. Right. And so it's common to only have 90 minutes or two hours at most, because at that point it starts to become diminishing returns from the owner and the dog's learning standpoint. ⁓ so again, we need to think like the biggest needle movers as far as, Hey, I want, I want that lesson to go better. I want my owners to have better success after the board and train. So I need that owner education piece.

Lianne Shinton (1:13:38)

It's a big variable. Yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:14:04)

It's like, okay, but then we need to think really, really mindfully about how we're allocating our time that we have with the owner. And so one thing that I'd see a lot working with dog trainers is they've got this two hours and the owner comes in and there's so much just like theory wise that they want the owner to understand. And some of that might have to do with like what it means to be a good leader and what this means and what that means and how to manage your dog and lifestyle stuff. And now they're

40 minutes in to that two hour lesson and they haven't done anything hands on yet. And it's like all that stuff that you're just telling them, a, they're not absorbing probably even close to half of it because it is just like a brain dump. And B, all of that stuff could have been trickled out to them in the two, three, four weeks that the dog was in your board and train program. And for us, we even sent them videos that were like, okay, so here's a dog. It's not your dog, but here's a dog.

Lianne Shinton (1:14:41)

Yeah, it's a brain dump on them.

Tyler Muto (1:15:04)

that's just finished boarding trained. So this is what place command looks like. This is what place command means. If you are holding your dog's leash, this is how you would do place. This is how you would enforce it. Here's what to do if the dog steps off. Here's what it look like if your dog's off leash and you're using the E-collar. And so it's a dog that's had the same learning experience as them. It's basically exactly how I would be like in that lesson. I've got their dog and I'm just explaining and demonstrating place before they do it.

I just put that into a video and we send that to them ahead of time. And so now when they come into that lesson, I've got two hours to go right into hands-on and whatever it is that I need them to be able to do, I want to have as much time so they leave confidently doing it. You take out all that talking and you go, did you, you know, did you read that article I sent you? Did you watch the videos? no. Okay, cool. But when you get home, watch it. I'm going to, I'm going to email you tomorrow and make sure that you want, like that's time better spent than just like.

Repeating yourself with this 20 minute lecture like you're on a pedestal in Athens, right? Like just put it in a video ⁓ but the other thing too and this comes back to that idea of like if my process for solving behavior problems Whether it's reactivity or resource guarding or anything else, but if that process is Sort of predicated on like I have to teach the dog all of its obedience first

I've got to get all that obedience, super solid. I've got to get it all on e-collar. I've got to then use all that obedience to create structure. Okay, cool. I don't think that's the best use of time, honestly, for the dog in its boarding train, but now this owner comes in and we've got two hours to spend. And the first thing I got to do is teach them how to use the e-collar. And then I got to have them, got to show them every single command that the dog learned on the e-collar. And now I did my 40 minute lecture on leadership.

I got through all five commands on E-Caller. Now I've got 20 minutes left in my lesson to finally say, we're going to try, okay, now we're going to try a pass by with another dog because you came to me for reactivity. The most, literally the most important thing that you could possibly be doing in that lesson, you've left yourself like 20 minutes for, and you wonder why the owner goes home and feels insecure. And guess what? If they feel insecure, they're behaving insecure. And the dog knows that.

Lianne Shinton (1:17:18)

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Tyler Muto (1:17:27)

And so now, well, how come when I hold the leash, when the owner brings the dog back in for brush up, it does perfect. When the owner goes home and falls to pieces, well, cause you're, you've done this 10,000 times. You feel very confident about what you're doing. Your whole body language is different. Your breathing is different. Your energy is different. Your facial expression is different. Your tone of voice is different. Your movement is different. You've only given that owner 20 minutes of practice with like one dog and then sent them off on their own. It's like, I remember going home after my son was born, who's my first child. And you're at the hospital for like,

24 hours and they send you home and you're like, I'm not ready. This is like, is, don't even, I barely like, no, there's no instruction manual, right? It's like, that's gotta be how they feel. ⁓ So for me, that was part of my motivation was like, I need to trim, like what is excessive here? Because if I want as early as possible, if I've got two hours, what's the earliest point that I can get that owner practicing a pass by?

Lianne Shinton (1:17:59)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:18:20)

and I can do it with multiple dogs and go to different streets and different, different, okay, let's do it where like the dog's coming around a corner. Let's do this kind of thing. I want to put the owner through all of that so that when they go home, they go like, man, okay, I just did that like a hundred times. feel like, I feel pretty confident that I know what I'm doing. And it's no different in a private lesson. If I've got that same 10 lessons, which is, that would be longer than I would, I would generally take, but I'm kind of using it for easy math.

⁓ Instead of not getting to the pass-bys to lesson 6 because I had so much foundation that I thought I needed to do When I start with that end goal, I realized okay But there's a few pieces of foundation that are most important to get me to that point And only once I'm now okay cool. I'm now at the point where we can start doing pass-bys now It's maybe only lesson 3 That's when I would then start pouring in some sand and saying okay cool. Let's do a few pass-bys Let's do that for half of our lesson, then let's go and work on your play skills

let's go work on some mental enrichment. Let's go work on some other impulse control stuff you can do around the house. But now I've still got seven lessons left of that owner going home and practicing passing by other dogs and us being able to troubleshoot. And they're going to be so much more skilled at that by lesson 10 than if I didn't get to it until lesson six, because I wasn't thinking about all of these things I could do and figuring out what are the big rocks that need to go in the jar first before I start pouring in the sand.

And again, independent, independent of methodology, if you think about it in this way, your results will improve. Like undeniably, your results are going to improve. If you also can get a few new tools in your toolbox, for instance, if you aren't fully confident on your ability to shape owners' relationships with their dogs, if you don't really know beyond just the quote unquote structure that's, you know, hopefully, magically, the dog sees their dog, their owner as leader because the owner has leverage over them.

and is deploying that leverage, ⁓ then yeah, also learning some new tools in your toolbox can be super helpful and I'm happy to provide that. Same thing with arousal. That's another area that some trainers, especially newer trainers, just haven't had enough education on, no fault of their own. It's just a little bit of a more advanced thing that you don't tend to learn to focus on until you've got some experience under your belt. But if you're not really confident with like, okay, I understand there's this arousal piece to the puzzle, I don't.

really know what that looks like as far as like, do I work on arousal? Like I don't, I don't know how to do that. ⁓ then again, yeah, I'm going to want to add some tools to your toolbox that you can then play with on your own. might find completely different variations of those same sort of concepts that you apply in your own unique way. ⁓ and you implement as part of your overall process in your own unique way. ⁓ but these are some of big things. These are the things that I said, like I said, it's, get so many trainers that

Even the ones that, if you looked at their Instagram, you would think that they think they are reactivity God. But then they'll reach out to somebody like me and they'll be like, man, like, I don't know. I just don't, I feel like it's just not coming together the way I want. Or again, it looks really good while I'm there, but these clients, lot of my clients are like, they'll call me up six weeks later and they're still struggling. And that's really eating away at me. You know, that's, that's shaking my confidence or making me feel like there's something I'm not seeing. And I get it because I felt the same way. And that's when I was like,

Lianne Shinton (1:21:14)

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (1:21:38)

Hey, office staff, I'm gonna see one client once a week, I'm gonna spend a day and I'm gonna see what I can get done. And I'm gonna force myself to get super, super creative. And I literally in my own mind was looking at it like I wanna go in with a scalpel and just cut out the cancer. So I felt like, yes, we can deal with the cancer by like eating lots of vegetables and exercising and like taking out inflammatory things from our diet and.

Lianne Shinton (1:21:57)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (1:22:08)

overprocessed foods. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's all the, that's, that stuff is good, but it's also if we can do that, but first we just like, let's just get that big old tumor out of there. You know what I mean? So like, what's that part? And I feel like a lot of trainers have learned the, the, the, like the whole, like looking at the whole picture part, they haven't learned how to wield the scalpel. And that's what I want to help them do is wield the scalpel also add that in, not replace the other stuff, but add that in.

Lianne Shinton (1:22:13)

We gotta deal with it.

So.

Yep.

Tyler Muto (1:22:37)

and understand how to allocate it and give it its proper emphasis that it deserves in that process.

Lianne Shinton (1:22:46)

I can't say enough about how amazing this conversation has been, your teachings. Like I've been doing this for probably 34 years. And like I said at the beginning, I'm insecure about dealing with some reactivity cases if they're not an easy fix. And you really, you taught me something today, which I don't mean to sound cocky, but like,

When I go to a seminar, if I get one takeaway, I'm like, that's pretty impressive because I've already heard all the things before. But for me to hear something today that I'm like, holy crap, give me a dog now. I got this. Like you just boosted my confidence. And again, I don't mean to sound cocky, but like that takeaway is so huge for me. Hopefully others listening, you know, will hear that as well. And I think when you keep saying like,

Tyler Muto (1:23:22)

Yeah, you're like, I'm gonna go try this stuff, right? Yeah.

Lianne Shinton (1:23:39)

the tools in your toolbox, which we've all heard. We think about those tools in using them with the dog, our treats and our e-collar, prong collar, you know, whatever it may be, our leash. But the tools that you talked about today that really like stood out to me are the tools that we're going to use to train the human. And I do a lot of video, like bite-sized videos. can send them, ⁓ bite-sized handouts. I can send them. So when I

brain dump on them. have references. ⁓ But having like a handout and a video and teachings on how to be a better leader. I mean, wow, that that's a huge piece that like that gap that I had not filled in my whole 34 years of frickin training dogs. So thank you.

Tyler Muto (1:24:29)

Yeah, no, you're welcome. And you know, these things do like it, it just these few things like the arousal piece, the leadership piece, when you learn how to do them well, when you learn how to allocate your training time and again, just get rid of all the excessive stuff because then the client is doing more reps of the things that actually matter, right? Their focus, their clients focus becomes on the things that matter as well. I can't tell you the number of trainers I've worked with that after just doing a couple sessions together, breaking down, like usually we'll do a case study. So they'll have a client like,

their own client that's got a reactive dog and we'll do it. We'll go through it together. So if it's private lessons, we'll meet once a week in between their lessons. I'll have them send me video because I don't want anybody to just believe like, Oh, let me just tell you what to do. And then off you go. It's like, no, no, no, let's actually walk through it. I want you to experience the difference it makes when you, when you focus on these things and you put your time here you just, don't need like, trust me, you don't need this other stuff. Like just put it on the shelf for a minute. Um, and then I've had trainers that come back and they're like,

Lianne Shinton (1:25:10)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (1:25:28)

After working with the one dog, go, you know, I had these four clients from the last year that I worked with that it's just like, we just couldn't ever get it to a resolution that I was happy with. I called all of them and I went back and I just asked him if I could do another session and like literally one session after learning the things that you taught me, every single one of these clients that I previously got stuck on made progress. like all, like not, not a little progress, like ridiculous.

Lianne Shinton (1:25:53)

Wow.

Tyler Muto (1:25:57)

progress, like breaking through that thing in just one session spent with them because we spent that one session on the right things, those things that were missing from everything else that we did. ⁓ and I love hearing those stories. I love when, when trainers I work with kind of come back to me with these successes. ⁓ and I think that's part of, man, like I've really loved how my role has shifted because I used to run my training center. And of course at first it was just me and then it was me and like one trainer.

and then two trainers. And before you know it, have four or five trainers at a time and some move on and bring on new ones. And I have to get those new trainers to be able to perform the same standards as quickly as possible. And I get to see the effect like, I want to do this new thing. Well, it's not just me doing it see how goes with my clients, but I can five X that I can see it across five different clients at the same time. So my sample pool goes a lot bigger. And then when I started working with other professionals, it's like even more so.

So now it's like I can, I can share an idea and I'm sharing it with this trainer who has three trainers that work below them and this other trainer and this other trainer. And now I've got at any given point in time, like hundreds of dogs that these ideas are being applied to that. Then I get the feedback on because I'm doing case studies with trainers. And I think it's one of the things that has allowed me to really get to the heart of what are the actual patterns that make a difference for us to focus on with some of these dogs because

Lianne Shinton (1:27:21)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:27:23)

It's not just my little sample size of dogs I work with. mean, we're talking thousands and thousands of dogs throughout my career when it's, when you factor in not just the dogs I've personally worked with, but all of my trainers and then all of the other professional trainers that I've coached over the past 10 plus years, you know.

Lianne Shinton (1:27:42)

Yes, yes, yeah, that's great information. But I don't even need to know the proof because I, you know, I can feel it like what you've just laid out and how you've laid it out. Like this is something that is going to work. So I'm so glad that you shared today and we talked about reactivity because yeah, this is a different approach than and you didn't just give away like, this is an option that you could try with the E-caller with this like

The way you broke it down was just amazing and gives people confidence in their plan and that they have a strategic plan. Just like in business, we need a strategic plan if we want to have a goal that we're reaching. But that was wonderful how you broke it down. So thank you.

Tyler Muto (1:28:30)

Yeah, thank you.

Lianne Shinton (1:28:31)

Awesome well we're we're probably gonna have to break this into two parts I don't know we're at an hour and a half here is there anything else that you'd like to add today.

Tyler Muto (1:28:36)

Hahaha

I think, you know, I could talk about reactivity for hours, honestly. Like I could even talk about like if you're going to use the e-collar, there are ways that I think most people don't think about of layering in the e-collar with reactivity work. It'd be powerful. It's like its own discussion. And honestly, I think the few things that I've tried to share today, I really hope that there are some trainers that are hearing this that are like, are taking it to heart because if I, you know, sharing too much, it's just going to water down.

Lianne Shinton (1:28:46)

There's so much to it, yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:29:11)

again, no different than with the clients, right? It's like the more you try to teach them, you're just going to take attention away from the few things that really do matter. Like, like sometimes less is more. ⁓ So no, think, I think, you know, ⁓ honestly, people probably listen to parts of this podcast twice ⁓ because there really is some stuff here that if you, if you ⁓ really can understand and you can think about it in your own training.

Lianne Shinton (1:29:22)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Muto (1:29:40)

and you can take the time to think about your own training, to think about your processes. ⁓ These aren't just like little difference makers. These are really big difference makers, like not subtle. Yeah.

Lianne Shinton (1:29:53)

Yes.

I think that kind of, it's going to lead us well into like our second podcast where we're going to talk about dog trainers and your businesses where, Tyler and myself have been able to look behind the curtain and maybe Tyler, you, you and I can both share on processes that help dog trainers from a, from running the business from that standpoint. And you're going to be super good at explaining that because you just killed it on this reactivity talk.

Tyler Muto (1:30:25)

Thanks. Yeah. And I look at the business stuff the same way. ⁓ It's for me, it's, I'm looking at like, where can I make a big impact? You know, where, what are the, what are the things we can do that are going to make a really, really big difference? How do we narrow our focus onto those things? And I've just been privileged to be, have worked with professional dog trainers now for so many years and looked at so many businesses. Like I was saying to you before we started today, that ⁓ once you've kind of looked behind the scenes at enough,

dog trainers and how they operate, it's impossible to not start to see patterns and patterns between those that are successful and those that are not. ⁓ And so I do the same thing. I'm all about being efficient and impactful. So I'm looking for those difference makers also when it comes to business. What are the few big things that we can focus on first? Let's do that. Because it's the same struggles that people have, right? All these different things I could do, I don't know where to focus.

Lianne Shinton (1:31:24)

Yeah, I'm really excited about that conversation. So we'll get that on the books. yeah, anybody that got something from today, that's I'm sure you did. This was an amazing talk. Go to TylerMutto.com for his coaching and then consider the dog. Maybe share a little bit about that because you've got your digital content there.

Tyler Muto (1:31:45)

Yeah, so

I think particularly like for this discussion, Consider the Dog would definitely be interesting for people to check out. So my coaching, you know, that's one-on-one. ⁓ I love working with professional dog trainers. It's one of the main reasons I sold my training business was because I just love all the different things I can work on with when I'm working with a professional versus just the dog owner. ⁓ But Consider the Dog is my digital platform that it's all recorded.

So we're not working together one-on-one, although we do have a Facebook group and I'm on there a lot. But, um, I have courses on there. I also have about a dozen total instructors, um, with a variety of different courses, different styles of things. But some of the concepts that I've talked about today, I have courses on consider the dog. You can just see me do something like, and it's super inexpensive. Like our core membership is 20 bucks a month. It's like $200 roughly for the year. Like this is really inexpensive considering we have.

⁓ Like over a hundred hours of recorded content on there. ⁓ And so I have courses on some of the exercises that I use to bring down ⁓ arousal and then even show in that course how I apply those exercises in cases of reactivity. Like we actually case study it right in that course and show it and show it in the training center, show it out on the street with a bunch of different dogs. ⁓ I have a whole course on

sort of the idea of leadership and sort of how a lot of training sort of gets it wrong and what's the right way to be thinking about it. So that was from a presentation that I gave that we turned into a recorded course. ⁓ And ⁓ I have a course all just even just on my like sort of broader bird's eye view vision of dealing with reactivity and how I go about it. And then the individual exercises that I discuss in that course all have their own courses. ⁓ So there's a lot of material there.

And so anytime, even if somebody is going to coach with me one-on-one and they're like, I want to get better at reactivity. I won't even start if they don't have access to consider the dog as part of our coaching, because it's like, why would I spend our zoom time together breaking down something that you could watch for way cheaper than our one-on-one time? You can just watch it first and then we can just troubleshoot in our zoom. Just like we were just talking about when I work with somebody one-on-one, I want to be effective.

Lianne Shinton (1:33:55)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:34:03)

I want to use our time together as effectively as possible. So let me make sure you have access to that recorded content. So that's consider the dog. It's a, it's a really cool website. My other instructors are amazing as well. We also are starting to put more business stuff on there as well, because I think in this current global economic climate, ⁓ I was telling you before we recorded like recently this past year, a much larger portion of trainers coming to me are looking for help with their businesses. I don't think that's, ⁓ random, you know, we're in a tough,

Lianne Shinton (1:34:32)

Yeah.

Tyler Muto (1:34:33)

global time right now. ⁓ And so we have ⁓ business related courses starting to go up as well, both ranging from even like very businessy things like marketing, to also like how to work with your clients better and things like that, both my own material and for my other instructors as well.

Lianne Shinton (1:34:51)

Outstanding, outstanding. So awesome. Thank you for sharing that. again, folks, TylerMutto.com or ConsiderTheDog.com. yeah, thank you so much, Tyler. This has been such a fantastic, I got lots of takeaways and ⁓ such a fantastic conversation.

Tyler Muto (1:35:11)

My pleasure. Thanks for having me on again.

Lianne Shinton (1:35:13)

Yeah, thank you to the listeners. Again, I'm Leanne Shinton from Automation Dogs and my podcast is predominantly about helping dog trainers. So hopefully you got some good takeaways today. Thanks for listening.