Celebrity Dog Trainer Joel Silverman

Joel Silverman, a celebrity dog trainer, joins the RNJ Morning Program to give tips on training dogs. He explains that the ability to train a dog is not breed-specific, but depends on the individual dog's personality. He emphasizes the importance of building a bond and trust with the dog before training, as it makes the training process easier. Joel also discusses the use of positive reinforcement, such as treats, in training dogs, but cautions against relying solely on food rewards. Patience and developing a strong relationship with the dog are key to successful training. I certainly have never in my life have had enough patience to be able to train a dog, and I'm always amazed at people who just have this knack, and they have this way to connect with their pet and with the dog and be able to get them to train them to do cool stuff and just be obedient and well-behaved, and I was always fascinated at people who were able to do that very well. I have a guest who's joining me here at the RNJ Morning Program, and of course, if you're a fan of Animal Planet and you're familiar with the Good Dog U Program, a celebrity dog trainer who's joining me here at the RNJ Morning Program just to maybe give us some tips about how we can train our dogs like a pro. Great to spend a couple minutes with Joel Silverman this morning here at the RNJ Morning Program. Joel, good morning. It's Bert Maron. How are you today? Hey. Good morning, Bert. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thank you. Is it a breed-by-breed thing, maybe, Joel? Maybe certain breeds of dogs take to the training a little easier than others do? Not necessarily. I mean, it's all based upon the individual dog. You can have a breed of labs, and those labs are all going to have different personalities. There are some people who talk about a runt, a dog being a runt or a dog being a little bit smaller, and maybe this dog is more submissive, this dog is more outgoing naturally. So you will have a litter, and a lot of times, you'll have a litter of dogs that are going to show you a lot of different personalities just in that first four to six weeks. You can just look at the way they move around and things like that. It's not to say that's the way they're going to be forever, but that certainly is kind of like an indication of kind of the way they want to go naturally. You have the ability, when you adopt those dogs or purchase those dogs, you have the ability to take that dog and that personality and do different things with that personality. If you have a dog that's a little more shy, you have the ability from day one to say, this dog is a little shy, there are things I can do to change it by exposing this dog from day one, once it's had its shots and things like that, to expose it to different things, train the dog using positive reinforcement, make its life really interesting, because what ends up happening is now by motivating the dog and doing these fun things, and all of a sudden, we bring that dog kind of out of its shell, and maybe you have a dog that's, on the other hand, one of those dogs that are just really, really super rambunctious. Maybe that's a dog that you get that you want to train to do agility work or maybe it's a shepherd or something like that. You want to do narcotics work or narcotics detection, drug detection, or bite work or things like that. It already has that natural personality, so maybe it's a situation where you want to build that up. I wrote my last book that came out two years ago called Rituals. The reason I call it Rituals was because if you look at what a ritual is, it's something that we do over and over again. It's something that happens over and over and over again. It's a habit. It's a thing that we do, and it becomes something we do to become comfortable doing. The reason I wrote that book Rituals is because there are some times that people have a dog that, let's say, is jumping up on people, really, really rambunctious or whatever, and you're like, okay, I want to make this into an agility dog. I'm going to actually encourage this energy and build this energy and build that ritual, but more times than not, when somebody has a dog jumping up on somebody or a dog is pulling in front of you, that is a ritual that you do not want to build on. That's something you want to eliminate, so we want to get rid of that and eliminate that before it actually becomes a ritual, so that's why I wrote that book Rituals. Getting back to your question about my long answer about the puppies, the bottom line is, or breed-specific, in general, you're going to have, if you have a Lab or Golden or Shepherd, they're going to be normally outgoing. They're working dogs. In general, they're going to be that way, but when you have that litter, a lot of times you are going to have difference in personalities. Yeah, very good, and I don't know if you're familiar with this area of New Jersey that we work out of here, Joel. We are renowned, Morris County, New Jersey, as being the home of the seeing eye, and the dogs that come out of that program there that have done so for such a long time. I'm always just amazed and in awe of just the level of discipline and what these pets, these animals mean to people with different issues and different abilities, PTSD, those are visually impaired, and the animals that come out of the seeing eye here in Morris County, New Jersey, just remarkable. You're probably familiar with their work, I'm sure. I am familiar with their work, and I will tell you that I grew up as a Hollywood animal trainer, so I always tell people, we get a second take, and once these dogs are trained and these dogs go to somebody that's a seeing eye dog, this is their eyes, they don't get a second take. They do not get a second take. They don't get a chance for a second take at all, so these dogs have got to have the training and everything, and I've been in the business for 45 years, and I am totally ignorant about it because I've never done this, and I've got a lot of humility, and I tell people from the very beginning, it's like, you know, when I know something, I'll tell you, but if I don't know something, I'll be honest about it, too, and that type of training is just, I'm just absolutely so in awe of these people and what they do. It's just absolutely amazing. Yeah, it really is, and I had spent a couple years before getting into radio, Joel, where I had worked in the pet industry, and I had done some work with some people that were involved in dog training and maybe not quite at the level that you do it, but there was always this very specific little treat that they would hold in their hand, and they would use that positive reinforcement that you had just talked about, and it came in this little, almost like a little milk carton kind of thing, and they would always have like a pocket or something that had these little treats in it, and they would constantly be doing the positive reinforcement thing. That's something that you use, these little treats, these little rewards when you're doing your training? Yeah, absolutely, and those little things that came in the milk carton originally came in the milk carton. It was for Bill Jack treats, which are Bill Jack treats. They only had one type, and I've been using, I met Bob Kelly, the president of Bill Jack. I met him 30 years ago. I did a TV series called Emptiness, and I met him on the set. I met him because I was doing something else. We did something together, and since that time, we've had a relationship. I've been feeding the food and using the treats for, I'd say, well over 30 years now, and yeah, they only had one type back then in those little milk cartons, and of course, now they have a lot of different types. My actually favorite is called Little Jacks. I always encourage people to use Little Jacks, which are kind of about a third the size of those original, the larger ones, because I like using small amounts of small treats, but they have a lot of different types as well, so I'm really, really a huge fan of those as well. I just tell people all the time exactly what you said you get out of it perfectly is positive reinforcement. We use food to train behaviors. If you don't get off the food, it's like a drug. Drugs can be okay for people initially to deal with certain things, but if you don't get off the drug, that's the problem. It's the same thing with training your dog with treats. If you never get off the food, you're just bribing the dog. Train the dog with the food consistently, get the behavior trained, then eventually start feeding out the food, increasing tactile rewards, which is petting the dog, maybe 20% of the time, 80%, 20% of the time tactile rewards, 80% food, then we go to 50% food, 50% tactile reward, then eventually get to 80% tactile reward, 20% food. So eventually, we're conditioning the dog to taking that tactile reward, that petting. Yeah, such an interesting process, the way that works. My guest this morning here at the RNJ Morning Program, a couple minutes with Joel Silverman, celebrity dog trainer from Animal Planet's Good Dog U. Maybe you've seen him do his work there and just a couple tips about training your dog like a pro. I think the golden word here, Joel, is patience. Have some patience and be working, be willing to work with your pet, work with your animal and find some common ground and have a patient approach and it's amazing how far the two of you will get. Patience is really super important. And there's something else, too, that kind of goes with patience as well and that is I talk about this in all my books, in all five books. I talk and I did in my TV shows, too. I talk about the trust and the relationship, developing that bond before you train your dog. When people adopt a dog, if there's one thing, one takeaway that most of the listeners need to really, really hear and that is you need to build a bond and relationship before you train your dog. If you adopt a dog from a shelter or get a dog from a breeder and you start training the dog before you have a relationship, you don't know the animal. When you develop the bond and develop the love with the animal, now that lays the foundation. Any trainer will tell you when your dog wants to please you, wants to make you happy, training is 100% easier. So if you're going to train a dog before the dog even knows you, you're losing, you're lacking one of the most important aspects and that is that bond and relationship. I always tell people there's three steps. Getting to know your dog, just get to know your dog, to understand the things your dog likes and doesn't like. Take three to seven days just to figure it out. Don't apply those things. Learn the first three to seven days what your dog likes, what your dog doesn't like. He likes his treats, he doesn't like older people, he doesn't like kids or whatever. He just seems kind of like, you're just learning. I would say the next step would be the next three to seven days is getting to know your dog. The next step is developing a relationship. Developing a relationship is about applying, now that you've learned everything, apply the things, introduce all the things your dog likes, eliminate the things your dog doesn't like. You've learned the first three to seven days all these things, now you're supplying those. What I always tell people is if you do that for the next three to seven days and you put yourself in a position where you give the dog everything it wants and eliminate everything the dog does not want, now you're really getting to the last phase which is building the trust and that relationship with the dog because now that dog is looking forward to being around you because you haven't done anything negative to this dog whatsoever and you've learned what your dog likes. Learn the treats. He's a little sensitive around his collar so I'm not going to even touch the collar because obviously it looks like somebody grabbed his collar or something at one time. Those are all things you're just going to learn and now you're ready to build the trust and once you have that trust, now you're ready to train your dog. That's the one takeaway too that people really, really need to listen to. Wow, really good information. As we wrap up, a little bit of information where people can go. First about these treats we talked about and then about you and some of your books that are out there. Why don't we wrap up with that? Okay, cool. Yeah. You can go to BillJack.com, B-I-L-J-A-C.com. We've got videos out there. We've got some training videos out there right on the website. There's little two, three minute little videos you can watch, little how-tos. Learn about the food. Learn about the treats as well. You can go to my website which is JoelSilberman.net. We're just actually launching a new free online dog training area on my website too where all my videos and stuff that were on DVD at one time are going to be on my website. All you have to do is register, register for free and you could get access to all the videos and watch it. We'll eventually have all the videos up there. We're starting to add things as we speak. I also tour with two other guys, Larry and Jay. It's the largest dog training tour in America. We tour every other month. We go to big hotels and casinos. We'll be in Boston, up in Boston at Boxborough, outside of Boston in June of this year. We do well over 100, 120, 130 people at these events, big hotel ballrooms and stuff like that. They can learn about this tour that I do as well. Nice, nice. Well, let us know when you're coming to New Jersey. I think you've given hope to dog owners who maybe were ready to give up and walk away on the training aspect of this, Joel. You really provided some inspiration. I always tell people you can always reinvent your relationship. Yeah, good stuff. Joel Silverman, thank you so much for the time today. Great speaking with you. Thank you so much for having me.