Genetics vs. Training: “It’s All In How You Raise Them,” right?

00:00 — Kati Peppe introduces Diamond K9 Dog Training’s e-collar training for off-leash obedience and behavior…

Welcome to Off Leash and Unfiltered. Trigger warning. I'm Kati Peppe, delivering the truth in dog training.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Off Leash and Unfiltered. I'm Kati Peppe, owner of Diamond K9 Dog Training in Biddeford, Maine, and we primarily do e-collar training for off-leash obedience as well as behavior modification. So we're helping people stop unwanted behaviors. Um, everything from simple things like jumping on people and barking to, uh, more serious stuff, reactivity, aggression, you know, resource guarding, separation anxiety issues, um, that sort of stuff. And we do puppy training as well. So that's who we are and what we do. And this podcast is here for us to share everything we know with you.

Um, and I tend to talk about the things that I'm talking about day in and day out with my regular customers. So the people that are bringing their dogs here for training and the conversations that we're having. That's what's inspiring me, um, to share things with you guys.

Um, 'cause I know if that's what they need, it's probably what a lot of other people need too. That that's who we are and what we do. And today, um, I think we have a, a good topic lined up for you. So this is something that applies to everybody, everybody, everybody. And so I think this is a great topic, and that is like, how do you know what you should expect from your dog? How do you know if your standards are too high or too low? Um, you know, what should you expect to get out of a training program?

How should you expect your dog to respond to things? And I mean, really, if we are to be honest, nobody knows <laugh>, nobody knows. So obviously every dog is super, super unique.

And part of the reason I thought this was such a good topic is because back before I was a dog trainer, when I was struggling with my own dog, there was a lot that I didn't understand then that I understand now. So I had a lot, a lot of trouble with this puppy, um, before she was anywhere near grown. I mean, we had these problems from the get-go. 10 minutes after we got in the car, I said, this dog isn't normal. And I was correct <laugh>, and I didn't know that much about dogs then either.

03:00 — A trainer described Kati’s difficult puppy as a blank slate, a characterization she now…

Um, so that's kind of scary looking back on that. Um, but I, anyway, I ended up taking her to a trainer, um, who was supposed to be one of the better trainers in the state and had trained, you know, military dogs and service dogs and, um, just had a lot of experience, police dogs.

Um, and he said something to me, and I've mentioned this before, but he said, you know, I, I'm asking him for his evaluation, his assessment of my puppy and what, what he thinks, 'cause obviously we were struggling. And he said she was a blank slate. Now, at the time, this didn't strike me as odd, and I probably took it as good news, really. Um, but in retrospect, it, it was just a really silly thing to say because there is no dog out there that is a blank slate. There just isn't. There's no person out there that's a blank slate.

When you are born, you are not born blank, right? So here's the problem with that mindset is it implies that everything behavior, every behavior your dog does is the result of learning. And that's just not true. And it doesn't matter what you do, it will never, ever, ever be true.

And it's one of the most difficult things to really explain to people because I think sometimes as dog trainers we're just kind of expected to know the answers, but there's no way for us to know exactly what your dog is capable of. So the longer you've been doing this and the more dogs you've been working with, the easier that kind of comes to you and the better your evaluation is gonna be. Um, but there's no way to know for sure. Uh, there just isn't. And the thing is, all of a dog's abilities are coded in their DNA.

All of their tendencies are coded in their DNA, um, their, literally their ability to learn, how easy or how difficult it is for them to learn and how to learn certain things. That's all coded in their DNA, right? So I'm not trying to make the point that training is pointless, 'cause that certainly isn't true. We definitely can, we can alter behaviors, and obviously we've had a lot of success doing that.

But there are ceilings and there are limits, and the individual dog has their own set of these ceilings and limitations. So when you're wondering what you should expect from your dog, you have to take into account their genetics. Now what you don't wanna do is you don't wanna make excuses for your dog and just never really try, right? So you're gonna say, oh, for, for instance, it's like those people that say huskies can't be off leash. Um, you know, beagles, same thing. Um, what else? What are the other other ones out there? There's a lot of them, but it's like, just because your dog has certain traits or genes, just because they're a certain breed, just because they have a certain personality type doesn't mean that they can't do the thing that you want 'em to do, right?

So the answer isn't just making excuses. Um, but it's just taking into account the big picture, like the dog as a whole, right? So if you have a dog that is completely off the wall all the time, right? They get extremely overaroused, overstimulated, super mouthy whenever anything's moving around their face, that's a different dog than like the dog that just plops down and you pet him and he hardly moves. Maybe he wags his tail a little bit. Those are two very different dogs.

07:00 — Teaching polite greetings or staying on place can require different approaches for excitable dogs…

And when we're talking about teaching them how to greet people or how to stay on place when people come in, that training is probably going to look pretty different for both of those dogs. And it's not fair to think that it's gonna look the same for both of those dogs or even that the result is gonna be the same, although it might be, right? So I'm not sitting here telling you that if you have a dog that gets overexcited, overstimulated, mouthy, that they can't do that thing, that they can't have a polite greeting, that they can't stay on place.

I'm not saying that. That is absolutely not the case, although it could be <laugh>, it could be. It might take a lot more repetition, it might take much more meaningful consequences. It might take a lot of things, right? For, for that one dog versus the other dog I described who's more of like a couch potato and isn't really that aroused by things, doesn't get overstimulated, doesn't get mouthy, doesn't get all energized, right? You can't think that the same exact training, the same exact, um, responses on your end are gonna affect both of those dogs the same way.

That's stupid <laugh>.

Okay? But you also have to understand that even if you adjust to the dogs and you address each dog appropriately and give each dog what they need individually, the results still might look different. We see this especially with really innate, intense behaviors, um, around drive like prey drive, right? Or you get dogs that are just driven to attack and kill other dogs, right? So when we get dogs like that, sometimes it's like we can get them paying attention to their handler and even walking in a nice, tight, proper heel, and they can walk by other dogs and they do it.

But you can tell it's difficult and you can tell there's gonna be at least a period of time where if the owner misses something, it could kind of go off the rails a little bit.

That kind of drive can be a lot more difficult to overcome, right? And then you get a happy-go-lucky dog that's a social butterfly, wants to be friends with everybody, that's gonna look a different way, right? And then you get a dog that's scared of other dogs, who doesn't wanna say hi to people, who's afraid of getting attention, that's gonna look a different way because they're, these are all different dogs. They're different dogs with different problems, different drives, different motivations, different abilities to learn, different abilities to inhibit behaviors. So one of the analogies I often use is paint <laugh>, which sounds kind of stupid, but gi—bear with me for a minute.

So if you have one dog, and we'll say this dog is a can of red paint, and then you have another dog who is a can of pink paint and then maybe even have a third dog, it's like a can of purple paint, right? And then you've got the training, and the training is white paint. Now you can take that training, that white paint, and you can apply it to the red dog and you can apply it to the pink dog, right? And theoretically, if you're doing about the same amount of training, say training, start to finish, complete program, right?

11:00 — Kati’s paint analogy illustrates why the same training can produce different results from different…

Both dogs, they're both getting the same training, but the result is still gonna be different, right? Because they're both gonna get lighter.

Now you might even be able to pour in additional training to the red dog and actually get the result to come out the same as the pink dog maybe, right? But no matter how much you pour into the purple dog, they're never gonna be the same. They're just not. 'Cause the starting point was too different. There's other elements in there that the other dogs don't have. And so that's kind of what you're dealing with, um, when you're training your dog, right? One dog isn't gonna look like the next dog isn't gonna look like the next dog.

Sometimes you can achieve the same results, sometimes you can't. And so what's really important is for you to understand the basics really, of behavior and how to influence it and how to modify it so that, you know, you've just done everything you can do to get there.

And then where you land is where you land. And some dogs are gonna need more management, right? Some dogs, no matter how much you train them, you're still gonna have to be on them all the time, right? So if you are one of those people that just nags instead of providing consequences, you threaten, you bribe, but you don't provide consequences, like that's gonna lead to a lot of management. But that's not what I'm talking about. Some dogs you can train to a very high level of accountability. Um, but you still have to be right there to tell them where to be and what to be doing.

Because if they get a split second to make their own choices, it's gonna be a bad one. <laugh>, right? But most dogs aren't that way, thank God. Um, I had a dog that way. But most dogs aren't that way.

And then we also have, you know, just like I talked about earlier, breed differences and age differences too, right? So you can't expect from a 10-week-old puppy what we would expect from a 2-year-old dog. They're still developing, right? There's a reason that we don't use Chihuahuas to hunt rabbits. They're not, they're not gonna be good at it, guys. It's not, it's not in their gene <laugh>. That doesn't mean there's no Chihuahua out there that can do it 'cause they're all individuals, right? But genetics are, genetics are genetics and there's no training you can do that's going to change those.

Genetics. Training can be very powerful, but it will never change your dog's genetics. Your dog will always be who your dog is. And it's so important to take into account that whole big picture because that's gonna determine what your day looks like, right?

15:00 — Pushy dogs that bite or guard resources require closer attention to daily routines than…

So if you have a really easygoing dog with no serious behavioral issues and, you know, you just want them to like come back when called, right? Then you don't necessarily need to think so much about every moment of every day. But if you have a dog that's really pushy, if you have a dog that is willing to use their teeth on people, who guards space, who guards resources, then you need to think about every moment of every day. 'Cause you have a different dog, right? They're not the same dog. They shouldn't be living the same day.

What I mean by that is they shouldn't be, they shouldn't both be experiencing the same operations every day. So the more forward your dog is and the more confident they are, and the more pushy they are, and the more demanding they are, the more important it is that you pay attention to every moment of every day. How does my dog go through doors? How do they come in and outta the kennel? Do they hold a command when I give it to them? Or do they just get up whenever they want? Because it matters to you because 'cause of the type of dog that you have.

And so this stuff's all tied together, right? 'Cause you are up against your dog's genetics in every single thing you teach them, right? And a lot of times we use that to our advantage.

If you have a prey-driven dog, you might use some sort of play as a reward in some instances, right? So you can harness that too from the other side. But generally speaking, our dogs have these innate drives and and desires. And we're working against that because we're trying to teach our dogs how to resist those impulses in moments where it's not appropriate. So that's why I say you're up against genetics because most of the time when we're talking about training, that is true. 'Cause we're trying to train our dogs to be able to resist impulse.

That really is mostly what we're doing when we're training our dog. At least that's what I'm seeing. But literally everything your dog does and doesn't do comes from within. And that's why I am always really hesitant to just blame owners for everything their dog does because they didn't create that. Most likely they didn't create whatever it is you're seeing. Uh, it comes from within. It's who their dog is. Now that doesn't mean they couldn't have gotten a different result had they responded differently, right? But they didn't code the dog's DNA. Even if you're a breeder, like you, you only have so much control, right?

Nature is bigger than us. Genetics are genetic. You can take two calm dogs and breed them together and get a complete nutcase.

We don't have total control over that. And it's important to remember that. But so you have to understand how to influence behavior, right? And we talked about in the past using markers and consequences, both positive and negative, and really understand and grasp how to do that effectively. And then you'll know like, this is the best I'm gonna get from my dog. Some dogs are so hardwired to bite that even if you can influence their behavior and make them a lot safer, they might still just not be safe enough. Which is always the question, right? Because no dog's a hundred percent safe.

19:00 — Owners must assess whether their trained dog is safe enough for their household, lifestyle,…

The question for every dog is, are they safe enough to live in my house with my lifestyle, with my family members? Is this dog safe enough? And so you might have one dog that is safe enough in one house that isn't in another, but you train them, you do your best with them, you find roughly where that ceiling is and you know, this is about as good as this dog's gonna get.

Yeah, we'll keep working on it. But you get to a point where it's okay, this like, we've done what we can do, this is where we're at. Now I have to decide, is this dog safe enough to stay in my house? Right? And I know not everybody's dealing with stuff that serious, but even if you're not, even if we're just talking about simple stuff, um, you know, less serious stuff, your dog's genetics still play the major role in their behavior. So all behavior that you see from your dog is gonna be a combination of genetics and training.

So who your dog is naturally, how they're coded to be naturally combined with what, what they've learned, right? So you're to paint <laugh> and that's what you end up with. Uh, now of course most of the people that I meet have no idea about effective training and haven't done any. Um, but sometimes we get people that have been through training programs and that have really done a lot of the right stuff. And their dog is just, their dog is just who they are. So I haven't had a lot of dogs that we couldn't help. Um, but there have been a couple, um, that clearly just really, really had some serious wires crossed.

And there just was no, there was no making progress. These dogs, like they, they just, their DNA was their DNA <laugh>. And you know it when you see it, af, you know, you work with enough dogs and you go, well, this one's different.

Um, and it's a very small percentage. Like I said, my career, I think I've seen literally two, maybe two that I can think of. My own dog was pretty bad, but even her, I wouldn't put in this category. So my dog that I had, I would, I would deem as not safe enough to live in almost any family household. Um, somebody would get hurt, but that was just who she was. And the other dogs that I've encountered had problems, like if any new stimuli, if they encountered any new stimuli, whether it's Ben sight, um, probably noises, like it just triggered attack.

And we tried a variety of things, <laugh> to change that. And it just didn't work. It didn't even help. Um, man. And it's rough when that happens, but it's like, it's a good example. It's a great learning experience. And I'm always grateful, um, for those dogs. Although sad and we obviously don't want it to turn out that way, but they are some of the best teachers because it's really important to stay humble and remember that you don't actually have the ability to fix everything. You just don't. And I've met some dogs too that are like happy-go-lucky Labs that are just so, so extraordinarily overstimulated by things like running into people, um, you know, seeing people, they're social, social butterflies, right?

And we, we've had some dogs that usually that stuff's pretty easy, uh, to temper. But every once in a while we'll get one where we st, we struggle, um, because their DNA is just coded such that not only is this stimulated response incredibly strong, but their ability to create inhibitions, especially where arousal is concerned, is just very, very poor <laugh>. It's just, they just have a really, really hard time no matter what you do. Just making that connection in the brain and really changing that roadmap in the brain. Um, so it happens, you know, dogs struggle and you gotta remember, training is only part of the equation.

24:00 — Board-and-train results depend on owners changing their habits and applying the lessons after their…

It is not a fix-all. Just isn't.

Um, you know, and I talk about this a lot when I talk about our board-and-trains, it's like I can train the dog all day long to make different choices, but when they go home, they're gonna be the same old dog. If the owner doesn't take the information that we give them, they don't take the lesson that we share with them and the stuff we teach them and change their own habits and their own patterns, they're gonna get the same old stuff because it's still the same dog <laugh>, it's still the same dog. So your dog's innate nature in their tendencies, in their desires and motivations probably aren't gonna change.

They're not gonna change much. That's not what training does.

Training just creates a new set of patterns and expectations with the association of consequences, positive and negative. And we make things really clear and we're really consistent and we know how to give your dog that feedback in ways that are meaningful and effective. And, uh, we can really modify things. We can really get diff, cultivate different behavior from the dog, but it's never gonna just stick like forever. Just naturally. If you then take the dog and you just send them into a house where no one's doing the stuff we were doing, no one's rewarding the stuff we were rewarding.

No one's punishing the stuff we were punishing. No one's noticing the small moment and giving the dog feedback, then they just go right back to their base state because that is who they are. And that's just normal.

But so the power of genetics cannot be underrated. That's really my point here. I don't like it when people just take genetics and they just throw it out there as an excuse why their dog is a nut job. Um, but sometimes, sometimes that is why, right? Because no matter what your dog's genetics are, 99.9% of the time, you can still get better behavior from your dog, right? Doesn't mean they're gonna be perfect. Doesn't mean you can fix everything, but you can influence your dog's behavior if you know how. Um, however, your end result is absolutely affected by their genetics.

27:00 — Kati challenges claims that harmful behavior always reflects poor treatment or how a dog…

And it's funny because like when people you see in these Facebook groups, the people that talk about, you know, every dog that does anything bad, it's obviously because they had a bad owner and they were treated poorly. It's never because like, that's just who the dog is. And let me tell you something, that's just who the dog is. Pit bulls come to mind, of course, right? It's always like the first one everyone thinks of. Um, every time there's an incident, every time a pit bull bites somebody, mauls somebody, attacks a dog. It's always, it's always that they weren't treated right.

They weren't raised right. You know, it's always, if you raise them right, then they'll, they'll be great. It's all in how you raise them. And no, it isn't. No, it absolutely fricking isn't.

And I don't like that saying for two reasons. Number one, it discounts genetics, which is stupid. And number two, when most people say that, what they mean is if you're nice to the dog and caring and loving, then it will be a good dog, which is also very untrue. It's actually quite the opposite of true. And what I mean by that is most dogs behave poorly and do things we don't like. Well, because it just comes naturally to them against who they are. Um, and no one has provided a negative consequence for any of that.

So there's really no reason not to just keep doing it, right? If something comes naturally, we have a natural drive to do it, we enjoy doing it. Um, unless there is a negative consequence associated with it, obviously we're just gonna keep doing it. Why wouldn't we? It's just normal, right? So "it's all in how you raise them" is a complete bullshit phrase.

It's misleading in a couple of ways. It discounts genetics and it generally encourages people to just be patient and loving and not actually provide meaningful feedback to their dogs about things they shouldn't be doing. <laugh>. Um, so that philosophy, that mindset, that gets people hurt, that gets dogs put down, it gets dogs killed. Hell, it sometimes it gets people killed. I—it's not true. Genetics, guys. They matter. They matter a ton, right? And so, like people talk about, oh, I gotta research the breed. Make sure you get the right breed for your lifestyle. That's true.

I, I totally agree with that because breeds have their tendencies, right? We know from their genetic lineage that they're probably gonna tend to be a certain way, but there's no way to know for sure what the dog is gonna be like. 'Cause again, they're all individuals and genetics are somewhat unpredictable no matter what you do.

Um, but it gives you a pretty good idea of what you could end up with, right? So it is important to make sure you're getting a breed that makes sense. So I always tell people to envision the worst version of that breed. And if you don't feel like you could handle that, then probably don't get it <laugh>, right? So especially when we're talking about power breeds like pitties, like Rotties, like German shepherds, picture one that gets the short end of the stick on the genetic side of things. Who tends to be reactive? Who tends to be overstimulated?

Who tends to get aggressive? Who tends to be pushy, right? And if you couldn't deal with that, then probably don't get that breed <laugh>. That's my advice. Um, but it's not all about breed either. You know, like we said, they're all individuals, but you can't discount genetics, guys. And it doesn't matter how good your training is, there's always gonna be an element of genetics mixed in.

So all dogs have their caps and their ceilings, right? And they might be really good in one area and really poor in another area. That's just normal. But that's it for today, guys. So, um, take into account your dog's genetic makeup and how that's impacting your results. And also think about how that should paint the rest of your day. 'Cause that makes a difference. Who your dog is is going to determine what kind of day they need and what kind of management they need from you, um, in addition to their training. But that's it for today, guys.

Thanks for joining me and I look forward to next time.