Celebrity dog trainer Brandon McMillan joins Cheddar News to discuss his partnership with Link and offer some advice to pet parents. 

Between Bells

Celebrity Dog Trainer Brandon McMillan Offers Training Tips to Pet Parents

Welcome back to Between Bells. Today is National Pet Day. Our next guest has dedicated his life to perfecting the art of dog training. He's a trainer behind some of the most popular techniques, including the seven common commands and the hybrid system where he takes his experience working with wild animals, including wolves and applies it to domestic dogs around the globe. Joining us. Now to discuss is Brandon Mcmillan, celebrity dog trainer and host of CBS's Lucky Dog Brandon, Welcome to the show in honor of National Pet Day. We have to start with those pet owners. There's so many of them out there who struggle with training. They even deemed their pet as untradeable. I'm sure you've heard that before. So what are some common myths? You can tell our audience when it comes to training their pets? Well, first of all, the word untradeable is the most common word ever here in the shelters especially um, believe it or not. Most of the dogs dumped in. The shelters are are deemed untradeable. And a lot of the dogs that I pull out of the shelter, I turn into service dogs for people in wheelchairs. So I don't believe in that word untradeable. The number one, the number one thing people have to understand with dogs is you have to put an element of control in them. At a young age control comes in a lot of different forms. Number one, the leash is an obvious form of control. If you're trying to train a dog with no leash on. Good luck. Suddenly you put a leash on that dog. You have 90% more control than you have before. Furthermore, you have to have the right treats. You have to have the right to treat to a dog are there? It's their money. You don't have any treats, you don't have. The dog is not gonna work for you. So there's certain things that certain steps you have to take when it comes to the dog training to put the elements of control when it comes down to obedience. All it is is the A. B. CS and 1 to 3 is for a dog, Once you have solid obedience on a dog, the rest will just naturally falls into place. I want to talk about your very popular masterclass where you cover the seven common commands. Can you walk us through those commands? Brandon. Yeah. So I years ago I used to I never had a like a curriculum, I never had a system where I said, okay, what am I going to train on a dog? Because most dog trainers out there, they don't have like a like a curriculum for their dogs. So what I did was I created a system where I said, I'm gonna teach seven things and seven things only sit, stay down, come off heel. No, these I call the seven common commands because if you think about it, these are the most common commands, you're going to tell your dog to do on a daily basis. Everything else tricks tricks are fun, but tricks are for kids. So the seven common commands is my system and its basic obedience, it's A B. CS. And 1 to 3 is for every dog out there. You recently released a new book. Congratulations that the story of your dog, a straightforward guide to a complicated animal. We know training your dog is one thing, but forming that bond with your dog is a whole other. So, what can readers take away from your book? Well, the book is about the it's a chronological history of of dogs as we know it back from 15,000 years ago before they were domestic dogs. So what we know is we domesticated these dogs from wolves about 15,000 years ago and through the generations, through thousands of years, all the empires, the Egyptian empire, the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire. They all bred their own forms of dogs to work for them and thrive as a civilization. And this had this kept going for 15,000 years. And it wasn't until about the last 100 250 years that all these dogs, they went from working animals to pets immediately. This is a great thing for us because we all love our pets. However, genetically speaking, all these dogs are still working animals. And this is where a lot of the problems begin. A lot of the dogs that we have on our couches. We say sit and stay all day long while I go to work for eight hours. The dog genetically is saying, I still need to work. So the book is about the genetics of your dog and explains exactly why your dog is the way it is. That's I love that. That's something I certainly didn't think about. Let's switch gears here. You're partnering with pet tech company link joining links, leadership team, you'll be providing content for links, built in training tools. What can customers expect? Well what what can I I'll tell you right now the links more pet wearable. All I will say is this welcome to the future. Years ago we used to talk about this, we used to say what if there was a device that we had in our dogs that if our dogs ever got out of our house by accident, we could track them in real time. So the link smart pet wearable is a device that you put on your dog. It's just a GPS tracker and you open your phone, there's an app. It's a very user friendly app. And if your dog happens to get out of your property, you simply open the app up and the device is connected to the dog's collar. It says, here I am. You can find your dog right there in real time. There's a there's a there's a navigation, there's a maps on your phone and it literally it guides you to your dog um wherever they are. So it's an incredible device and we finally are at the point of technology where we actually can, We can micro size this technology into a device that fits right on your collar. This wasn't a this wasn't a possibility 20 years ago. But now we finally have the technology where this is a real thing. I know many owners that would love a device like that for their dogs, that just happened to be runners. You also provide insight for ongoing product innovation. What expertise are you offering up here? Brandon, I'm sorry, say it again. What expertise are you offering up here for the ongoing product innovation with link. So what we're doing is we're, well, first of all, we're always staying at the forefront of technology. So as technology grows, we're always gonna, we're always going to upgrade the device. But what I'm, what I'm really excited about is the, the training tools provided with this device. So there's, there's a tone and there's a vibration. And so people always ask, why would you, why would you need this in the device? Let's say you're on the beach and your dog is a quarter mile down the beach, the dog cannot hear you. You can actually train your dog to come back with the tone. All you have to do is hit the tone and it sends a signal on the, on the device, like a little sound, your dog automatically is trained to come back to you furthermore, the vibration is used as a no command. Once you train the dog to the vibration. If your dog is doing something far away, you don't like, you simply hit the vibration feature and the dog will stop it right away. So basically it's like you're talking to your dog from far away through this incredible little piece of technology. I love this technology. Thank you so much for coming on Brandon Mcmillan, celebrity dog trainer and host of CBS's Lucky Dog. Thank you again Brandon.