Training Without Conflict® Podcast Episode Fifty-One: Jim BradleyToday, I had an insightful conversation with Jim Bradley, who, for the past several years, has been dedicated to rescuing Malinois dogs on the side while maintaining a full-time job. Jim runs a rescue organization and has also gone trough my Training Without Conflict® Certification Program.In our discussion, we delve into the complexities of rehoming dogs, the current state of animal shelters, and explore potential improvements in how they operate. We also touch on the commitment it takes to volunteer in this field. Furthermore, we challenge the Force Free ideology, discussing how sometimes, in the face of real-world challenges, difficult decisions must be made beyond idealistic approaches. Get ready for a thought-provoking episode!Ivan Balabanov is a 2-time World Champion dog trainer, Ot Vitosha Malinois breeder, trainer of Premier Protection Dogs and founder of the revolutionary Training Without Conflict® dog training system.For more information about Ivan Balabanov's Dog Training School and information on how to train your dog using the Training Without Conflict® system, check out: https://trainingwithoutconflict.comhttps://malinois.comhttps://premierprotectiondogs.comPlease like, comment, and share with your dog friends💪🏼
Chapter 1: What led Jim Bradley to start rescuing dogs?
When I talk about that, as we sort of move forward and what's happening in the rescue world, I'm not too far removed from it. So I kind of remember what it's like to be, you know, not the best dog owner. So I began researching how to train dogs. And I did it the way most people, you know, looking through YouTube and, you know, how to teach a dog to sit and down.
And everybody that I saw on YouTube had a Malinois. Now, I'd never heard of a Malinois before at that time. So again, we're going back seven years ago. And I thought, wow, that's interesting. What is this dog? Now, I couldn't handle the two dogs I had. Now, for what it's worth, I did learn a good amount about training through YouTube and through...
you know yeah yeah a little bit social media yeah the same yeah so um so i got so anyway i i trained the two dogs i had as far as i was concerned i had done okay looking back now i'm i'm embarrassed a lot of what i did how i did it But I thought I knew how to train a dog a little bit. And I said, I'm going to get one of these Malinois. So I went out to the American Belgian Malinois rescue.
And I looked back in hindsight. And I, you know, they went to their friends, whatever. And I couldn't get a dog. I kept putting in for a dog, didn't get the dog. I would go to a shelter. I'd say, there's a dog here. Let me get this dog. And they would let the dog and it would go to somebody else. I was a little frustrated at the whole thing.
Now, in hindsight, knowing what I know now, uh, I a hundred percent understand what was going on, but I didn't understand because I decided, okay, instead of going through a risk, let me go find my own Malinois. So I pulled up something called Pet Harbor. It was like Pet Harbor or something, petharbor.com where you can search a breed at any shelter or rescue and pull it up.
So I pulled up a list of Malinois and, uh, There was one within a couple of hours of me. And I went and I saw the dog, fell in love with it, got that dog. Here I had a Malinois, I thought. It wasn't anything like a Malinois, but the dog was perfect. The easiest dog you could ever have. So I had a Malinois. I could train a dog and I was an expert in Malinois's.
And I would later learn how much I wasn't. I just happened to have some sort of a show line, perfect. And she's sitting right here right now. I just like the perfect show line, easiest Malinois you could ever have. And anyway, so that sort of got me involved in the world. And I thought I knew Malinois. You know, I had one.
Uh, anyway, another one shows up at a shelter that, so now I'd already been researching finding one of the shelter, you know, I'm getting one of these dogs, so I'm on every list. And anyway, one shows up at Miami date. So I go down and get the dog. The dog was adopted.
Uh, well really, cause I felt sorry for the dog and I, I had one look just like her, this, uh, Sandy color or whatever it is look just like her. So I went and I, but I'm going to get that dog and help that dog and help it find a home. And then I contacted, I think, Mad Rescue at the Malinois Dutch Shepherd Rescue at the time. And they were just starting.
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Chapter 2: What challenges do Malinois face in shelters?
And now the wheel starts spinning and you getting sucked into that, which is good and bad. And eventually, like, I really feel for the volunteer people, because they're just always really amazing, amazing people, regardless of, you know, if they want to have a prong collar or they are totally against a prong collar, whatever, that's totally irrelevant for the moment.
But just the fact that anyone can... give a little bit of their time to go and take those dog out on a walk which they are just starving to get out like it's like the only good thing that they can ever see and it's a volunteer you you totally like within the first time you take a dog out, you immediately realize how much you're contributing to the life of any dog that it's stuck in there.
And then you're getting hooked. And it's very hard to get off of this. And the hardest part for them is when a dog gets put down. And typically some of the volunteers try to find some back doors, opportunities to save a dog. But again, you can save so many until somebody would have to be euthanized. For no apparent reason,
besides just we really don't have any room, and he's or she's been here for more than 10 months, or whatever their protocol is, and it's heartbreaking.
You know, I'm stuck in this in a way. You know, I think there are plenty of times I'd like to not do this, get off Facebook and, you know, go back to my normal life, go kite surfing and doing the stuff, you know, maybe play with a couple of dogs here and there. But so in a way, I am trapped in this because whatever this thing that I've created followers, it helps these. It's like I know.
I am highly confident if I go into a shelter and meet a dog and play with that dog, takes video, go home. spend a couple of hours on that video, post it, right? Give like an honest assessment of what that dog is. There's a very good chance that dog is going to get out of the shelter. Like, like I would say close to 80% of the time.
And my goal is to get the dog out of the shelter through who follower or to a rescue that I work with over somebody who's going to walk into the shelter. Cause I know that, They're going to end up in a better home if the person at least knows what the breed is. So, you know, every now and again, I'll get a call from a shelter, from a shelter volunteer or worker.
Can you do something about this dog or that dog? Now I take some shortcuts now. Say, okay, get me video of the dog. I want you to play with a dog. Give me different angles, throw some toys. So, you know, you think about stuff. for that, you know, for a Malinois, play tug with the dog. I want to see a lot. Give me a, you know, 15, 20 second flips, a bunch, a lot of them.
And then you put something together with music, something that you can see the dog, see the reaction of the dog, see the eyes, see how he responds. Now you have something that Someone can look at like a foster. Okay. Maybe they're not a current foster for a big Cypress German shepherd rescue or mad rescue.
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Chapter 3: How does ideology affect dog training in rescues?
Those people are such a good-hearted people that ultimately, sooner or later, if they stick doing this for more than three months, they will be heartbroken. There is no question.
They'll be heartbroken and burned out.
What can be done about this is just, as they come to volunteer, to have a simple conversation that kind of, you know, I mean, it's a... psychological level type of, you know, like preparedness of what you're gonna do.
So you have a little bit, it doesn't just hit you one day as hard as it can be, but you have a little bit more of realistic expectations what you're going to do and what sometimes the outcomes will be there. And I think if this happens and it's done,
prior to starting to actually really do heavy duty volunteering, have some really good like intro course, that can have more sustainable number of people that will stay longer in this type of environment because it's just really not easy.
The only problem with that is I think that I don't think people understand the connection that they're going to end up making. I don't think they really get what's, you know, they're going to go, they see these, you know, they're just these random dogs and they're just going to go in there. So, you know, yeah, it's great to help a dog and they're going to walk in.
I don't think they're prepared for how emotion, like when you see the wide range of emotions of a dog, That's when you begin to truly appreciate what we're dealing with, the gift that we have. So, you know, someone has to be prepared to accept the knowledge that you want to give them before they know what's about to happen to them.
Like, when I look at these, like, I'm, I, geez, when I look at these, I love, I've never had a foster I didn't fall in love with and cry when they left. It's, it's really amazing. I only had one. It was a puppy. It was like a five month old puppy. It's the only dog I ran out of the house and threw into the car and ran inside and locked the door. The puppies. I can't stand those.
But give me a two year old dog or three year old dog. And then you see that wide range of emotions from the dog that you bring home from the shelter who's afraid of you and who's shaking. And then to see them make the transition to happy and confident and a jerk and just, you know, when you see that wide range of emotions, I think it makes you fall for the dogs much more than, oh, there's a dog.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of fostering dogs?
So I think what you bring up is actually quite interesting. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. that the dogs are helping them.
Yeah, and that's a lot of times, you know, because of lack of education and the whole forestry ideology, and, you know, there is always this conflict ongoing of, well, we cannot use aversive, we cannot use pain, we cannot, there is the fallout, all these horrible words and so on. And the people that volunteer there,
They fight with everything they can because they're convinced that that is the good thing to do. Not really understanding that sometimes you will save a life if you break through the ideology, but that's a different conversation maybe for later. Yeah.
But no, I think that the people who volunteer are the people who work in the rescues. Absolutely fantastic, wonderful, loving, caring people. But it is infiltrated with the force-free ideology. Because it certainly does sound good. You know, we talk about that there aren't a lot of
people in rescue who were really in it for a very long time the burnout is real this is real so you don't have a lot of like really grizzled veterans in the rescue world because they just get burned out so you have a lot of people who i think you know i think that in the rescue world we could do better about training knowing training understanding training
And but when you constantly have a just new influx of of people, you don't have that turnaround.
It's difficult just because you you eventually just like with anything, you know, you you have different levels. You have dogs that are there. They are not your easy dog to take out on a walk. They need a little bit. at least a little bit above the basic level of understanding how to walk a dog.
And then the more experienced the person is, there is that satisfaction, okay, I'm able to take the more difficult dogs out. But as you're doing that, now the pressure on you starts to be harder because those dogs are not easy to deal with. Then with the tools and what is available or what you can use or not use, that doesn't help to make the walk easy on the dog and on the volunteer.
And here we go in some really crazy loop that then that dog starts to sit more and more in the kennel, starts to go crazier and crazier.
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Chapter 5: How can training impact a dog's adoptability?
I use them all the time.
But... If this is the deal breaker for somebody to be able to take a dog out on a walk in a controlled manner and allow the dog still to enjoy some freedom and shake it off and smell the roses outside and take him back out, why are we making such a big deal? Why are we trying to point this... fell out that are highly questionable.
Nonsense. Nonsense. I have no problem using the prong collar. Call any one of these dogs. Karina, up. Karina, come. Come here, mama. I've used prong collars on every dog here. If I take the prong collar out, you know, no one's running from it. Right. But, uh, No one's running away. Come here, mommy. This one, Freya. Well, you can't see, but.
I think also because of that, because of the, the, the ideology of the all positive training, the criteria and the, like the, when, when they have to accept the dog or they have to try to work a dog in a sheltering environment.
and they evaluate what they can do with the tools they're allowed to use, then a lot of dogs just don't get accepted at the door because they would be considered difficult, dangerous, uncontrollable, and basically not rehabilitatable, simply because it cannot be done with the dog training equipment that they are allowed to use.
Yeah. Well, you know, there's two – one of the things I want to mention is you have a municipal shelter. So you have a municipal shelter that are run by, for example, the county. So you have Miami-Dade Animal Services. They're now care and control, right? They're open admission. They have to take every single dog. No matter what, they have to take the dog.
Well, that's always – but now there's overpopulation. Anyway, that's the theory is the municipal shelter takes every single dog. There are the no-kill shelters, which are often run by rescues, maybe like the Humane Society. Those are limited admission. So they don't euthanize dogs, but they also don't take, they're only going to take good, you know, they're only going to take good dogs.
So you have the municipal shelters. Then you have the sort of the next level down, which are the Humane Societies, which are no-kill shelters. limited admission. And then there's another type of rescue generally, which is the foster-based smaller rescues. So you have Miami-Dade, Palm Beach County. They're supposed to take every single day.
The bad dog that comes in is going to the behavior section. It's never going to show up on the adoption floor. When you're walking through the kennels at Miami-Dade, you're not going to see the bad dogs. because they're in the behavior section. A blast, an email blast goes out to the rescues. Hey, we have this dog. He has a bite history. The dog's getting euthanized and no one's gonna see it.
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Chapter 6: What are the common misconceptions about Malinois?
The average individual who goes and adopts a Malinois from a shelter has absolutely no idea about that. There was a dog, Woogie. Woogie got adopted from Palm Beach. He was going to be euthanized. I don't know if he was going to be euthanized, but a woman adopted him in Orlando. I get a call a week or two later. Woogie's on his way back here. He bit But he bit her, bit the mother.
I said, do you have a picture of it? So they sent me a picture of it. Nothing. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And she's on her way. And somehow I get her number and I call her. I'm like, listen. What just happened to you was you got mouthed. That's it. He just mouthed you. No, he's aggressive. And I'm driving in the car right now. And he is being aggressive right now. He's attacking me.
I'm saying he's biting my arm right now. I said, if a Malinois is attacking you, you would be in the side of the road mouthing you. But it didn't matter. She kept driving. She dropped the dog back off. And the dog was immediately given three days. Three days, and they were going to slice the dog. Now, fortunately, she had sent me videos prior of the dog playing.
And I was able to put a video together of Woogie. And so this is the dog. And this is the bite. She even sent me the, so in the video is the bite, which is a scratch. So that dog is doing fantastic today.
So people don't understand trainers. This is, uh, like, um, um, you know, depending how much somebody is working with dogs with bite history, actually, it's not even that I don't know where I'm going with this, like the criterias, uh, um, for somebody, and I'm not talking somebody that is adopting a dog. I'm talking about a professional trainer.
And when they say, well, this dog is really aggressive. And then I look at the dog being really aggressive and I'm like, what are we talking about? Like this, like I wouldn't even change anything about this dog. And then when I consider something as an aggressive dog, in the eyes of somebody else, this dog is to be euthanized within the next hour, because there is no chance.
So we have a very different levels of what aggressive dog is and what can be rehabilitated and what not. I hate to say it, and I don't hate to say it, the force-free people that work in the shelter environment are, in my opinion, responsible for euthanizing dogs that should not be euthanized at all. Like dogs that are not difficult dogs to put back in the right track.
Yeah. And I don't know, I don't even want to blame, I don't want to blame the individual trainers, but I think that it's the management of these, of these shelters who, who are based it's political, you know, it's all political. It's, it's, you know, the people who run the shelters to political appointment, they have to worry about getting elected. So it comes from the top.
It comes from them, you know, and they'll print out the pamphlets and positive only and the AFs, you know,
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Chapter 7: How can volunteers effectively help in shelters?
then do it and show everybody how to do it, and let's get those dogs out, let's train them, let's allow them to have some quality time, not enrichment, but actual quality time of doing cool things, so they can maintain some sanity. It really comes down to that in a shelter environment.
but to simply say well no these barbaric tools are not allowed so we have the two the two and that's exactly we have the the two things it's like okay well we can use those tools and we can give the quality of life and interaction that i'm talking about or we can take them away which is fine let's take them away but
I would have a problem if taking away those training equipment will take away with the tools the quality of interaction.
Now, you know, I think it comes down in the end to how things look. How does it look? And I think that's what the management of these places are driven by. How will it look? How will it look if I put this on a dog's neck and somebody takes a picture of it? How does that look? Because they're more concerned about their job.
about than anything else and it's so it's such an easy thing to say oh my god look at that it's such an easy thing to criticize this yeah and it's in like like i i i man i i don't want to talk about
the fanatics like like there is the extremists and you know anytime i'm against for free people i i keep emphasizing this i'm not against somebody that trains forcefully actually i admire when they try to find a way to do something in the way they want to do it but when we are compromising welfare and what i mean by compromising welfare is we're gonna euthanize the dog
That is a compromising of welfare based on what we can and what we cannot do to change the dog. So let's say me and Zach George go into a shelter. He's gonna take maybe 80% of the dogs, I mean, at best, I don't think he is at all, I have zero respect as a trainer because I've not seen nothing of substance as a trainer, but anyway, let's say he can take 80% of the dogs out.
The other 20% or the other 10%, he will have to do what is prescribed by the ideology. You're going to, the dog's going to pull a little, you're going to take it back. You're going to do that. And you're going to end up spending a lot of time just to try to put the leash on and perhaps get to the lobby of the shelter.
Yeah. And these, nobody has time.
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Chapter 8: What is the future of dog rescue organizations?
To say, this is... I am the expert in this part. This dog, I'm the expert. You know, I want to help you, but I just, you know... I can do better if I just focus on this one breed. And I would suggest anyone who wants to help dogs, pick a breed. Be the expert in that breed. It's going to help you get dogs adopted.
People will pay attention to you more when they're looking and they'll start to reach out to you. I'm looking for this dog. Then you start to
adopt calling you it's easy to find dogs that need homes but it's really hard to find are people who want to adopt uh what you're what you have being an expert in a particular breed people start to call you hey i've got a buddy i got a call yesterday a message yesterday hey i've got a buddy uh he's he's looking for a malinois got an 11 year old daughter should be stable. Okay, great.
Let me put that in my head.
And then you end up being kind of the person to go to if somebody is looking for, you know, just like if, you know, if somebody wants to get a BMW, it's going to go to the BMW dealership, right? It's not going to go to Ford and vice versa. You know what also bugs me a lot is the, and again, I...
I get more and more impatient with the extreme views of ideology when the ideology stands above a life of a dog. And you will have a professional trainer that perhaps has the knowledge and perhaps can do something, but the ideology is not allowing it to happen. But why can you not stop for a moment and think that if you don't help the dog, chances are it's going to end up in a shelter.
And that's the best case scenario. And even when it ends up in a shelter, chances are it's going to get euthanized. So there is a lot at stake. And it's mind-boggling to me that you can put ideology above dog's life. I don't get that.
I certainly don't get that.
I can't see it.
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