Imagine walking down the hall in a nice hotel in the middle of a film shoot and finding a note on the door about my "well-trained" husky, while in the middle of shooting a co-starring role in a Disney movie.
Well, that happened to me. And I'm pretty sure if you're reading this, something not as extreme but equally unpleasant has happened, or is currently happening, to you, every single day.
If so, keep reading.
The note incident, as my co-workers and I called it, happened about thirty-three years ago, in a hotel room in Duluth, Minnesota. Brenda was my housekeeper during our extended stay, shooting the movie Iron Will.
I remember clearly, all these years later, walking up to my door, card key in hand, and noticing a white three-by-five card wedged between the door and the jamb. I pulled the card free and stepped inside. Before reading it, I opened the bathroom door to let Beau out. He couldn't have been happier. I, on the other hand, couldn't have been more shocked by what I saw in the bathroom.
Beau was a Siberian Husky rescue, about a year old, with a personality that filled every room he entered.
The first thing I noticed was the shower curtain. The rod had been torn off the wall, a twisted mess on the ground, half in and half out of the tub — the curtain mangled, torn, and shredded. When I walked back into the room, the comforter told the same story. Beau had been busy.
It was at this point that I realized I was still holding the three-by-five card. I finally looked at it.
That note (which, BTW, I still have) told me everything I needed to know. Beau had staged a dog-sized temper tantrum while I was out, and Brenda had walked right into it. She was a genuine, kind human who had nothing to apologize for.
She called him Bozo — my nickname for him, the name I used when he was being ornery. She'd heard me say it and assumed it was his name. An honest mistake built on an honest guess.
And the rest of her note? She was doing exactly what you would do. Ascribing human emotions to my movie dog.
I read the note once more. Beau sat looking up at me, still proud of his work, certain he'd done something worth doing. He would have no way of knowing his behavior was "bad" in any way. Because it wasn't "bad." He hadn't done anything wrong. He was just doing what dogs do. He was just being a dog.
He didn't know what he hadn't been taught. And I didn't know what I still needed to teach him, until he showed me by his behavior. I simply didn't know what I didn't know.
And by showing me what was missing, Beau had given me a chance to see, in real time, the language gap that I had inadvertently created.
A gap that I was able to close in my hotel room in Minnesota, and that you can close in your kitchen, when chaos reigns and your dog runs wild.
From the time you get up to the time you go to bed, it can feel like every interaction with your dog is a struggle. Going out to the bathroom becomes a squirrel-chasing mini-adventure. Standing in the kitchen turns into a covert food-stealing mission. Greeting the kids becomes a choose-your-own-adventure fail that will ultimately end with one of your little humans in tears.
While you make breakfast, your dog is busy patrolling the island like a shark zeroes in on a blood trail. Every morning. The same "failure" from both of you, only…
You're the only one who personalizes it.
You're the only one who sees it that way.
Your dog sees the kitchen as countless opportunities. You see it as an equal number of possible calamities.
Then, once the kids are off to school, the next event on your "things I have (but don't want) to do with my dog" list comes up. The dreaded morning walk. Or the morning drag, or the morning battleground, whichever phrase is the most apt description.
Even though this has been the norm since you brought your dog home, you still dream of the day it could just be a walk, a peaceful, happy non-event.
But that hasn't happened. Ever.
And you know in your heart it won't happen today either. Oh yeah, and it always ends the same way every time: you, raising your voice; your dog, pulling you off balance, or worse, dragging you toward the street, or the squirrel, or the leaf blowing in the wind.
You've come to learn that you can't win a strength contest with your dog. You also can't reason with him or find another way to handle him. You can't bring yourself to use the prong collar, that medieval torture device (as you mistakenly call it) that your last trainer recommended. And you'd rather take your chances with the oncoming traffic than break your dog's spirit.
The stakes are big. Your sanity is on the line. And in the quiet way you speak only to yourself, so is your dog's place in your family. You've tried every suggestion from every YouTube video that came up in your "how to change my dog's bad behavior" Google search.
You've found equal success (none) with every online dog training "guru" or "expert," and you've read parts of every dog training book you could get ahold of. Parts of them. Because once you try one thing that doesn't work, it's hard to continue trying more "expert advice."
And since all of it promised success, but only delivered varying degrees of muted failure, you've lost faith.
That wasting time speaking to your dog instead of communicating with him — in a way that makes sense to him — is a waste of both your time.
Now, you're still sore from the last walk, but it's already time for the next one. The squirrel incident, as the family calls it (like it's funny), is still fresh in your (and everyone else's) mind, and you're still not laughing.
Because it's not funny. You could get hurt. And every road seems to lead back to the same verdict, the one your husband reminds you of without meaning to be cruel. Every time he says, "He doesn't act like that with me."
Here is the part nobody has told you, until now. The reason none of what you've read or researched and dutifully tried, time and time again, has worked is not a flaw in you, and it's definitely not a flaw in your dog.
There's a body of research on exactly what's going wrong in your kitchen, and everywhere else in the house your dog cares to explore. You've just never been introduced to it. So, allow me to do that here, now.
You're just not communicating with your dog in a way he understands. Period.
Behavior is the number one reason dogs lose their homes. Of course it is. You know that without the research. You live it every day. So, while that isn't a surprise, this might be:
In one analysis of thousands of shelter records, behavior issues were consistently the single most common reason dogs were surrendered, ahead of moving, ahead of cost, ahead of everything else.
A few years ago, an Italian biologist named Biagio D'Aniello was running a training class. In a hurry to help a student, he gave his own dog the spoken command for "sit" while his hand, out of habit, signaled "down." The dog lay down. Words said one thing. His body said another. The dog followed the body.
That small accident became a study. D'Aniello and his colleague Anna Scandurra took highly trained water rescue dogs, dogs that respond reliably to both spoken and hand commands, and deliberately gave them contradictory signals. The mouth said one action. The hand said a different one. Over and over, the dogs followed the hand and ignored the mouth.
These were not confused or poorly trained pet dogs. These were highly trained "experts." And when their handler's words and body language disagreed, they didn't even hesitate. They went with the body every time.
You've been leading with your words. Your dog has been reading your body. When the two of you disagree, you're not being defied.
A Texas A&M study, drawing on data from more than fifty thousand dogs, found that over 99 percent of dogs in the United States show at least one behavior their owners would call a problem. Ninety-nine percent.
You didn't get a broken dog. You have a dog who is fluent in dog, and you've been asking him to speak fluent human, from the second you met each other.
You're talking to him in a language he was never built to fully receive.
I can't perform surgery. I don't speak the language of medicine. I don't feel ashamed of that, because no one ever taught me, and I never cared enough to learn.
The difference is this: speaking your dog's language is something you care about. And it is something that you can learn. Pretty easily.
If, as science says, your dog has the cognitive ability of a two-and-a-half-year-old child, you wouldn't give them more responsibility, more choices, more jeopardy, would you?
None of that is insulting. In fact, the information should be liberating. It's a key. One that could unlock a brand-new world for you and your dog.
A toddler doesn't scheme. A toddler doesn't weigh right against wrong and choose wrong just to spite you. A toddler does what makes sense to a toddler, with the understanding they have. So does your dog.
And here's the part that settles the question for good. A border collie named Chaser was patiently taught the names of one thousand and twenty-two objects, the largest dog vocabulary ever formally documented. It took her owner three years of daily training, four to five hours a day, to get her there.
Think about that. Even the most gifted language-learning dog in recorded history needed years of devoted human work to meet us partway.
Your dog can learn some of our words. But the heavy lifting, the real translation work, was always going to be yours to do. So, the honest question is not how to make your dog understand English faster.
We're here for the results. You've probably heard or been told (or read) some version of the following:
"You have to dominate your dog. Be the alpha. Win. Lead by force, because if you don't, he will."
Here's what they didn't tell you. The researcher who put the "alpha wolf" idea into the world spent the rest of his career trying to take it back.
His name is L. David Mech. In 1970, he wrote the book that made the alpha-wolf model famous. Then he spent years actually watching wild wolves, not captive ones, and discovered the model was wrong. Wild wolf packs are not gangs of rivals clawing for the top spot. They're families. The "alpha" is just a parent. Mech has spent decades asking people to stop repeating the idea. He even asked his publisher to stop printing his own book.
So, if you've been carrying the feeling that you're supposed to out-muscle your own dog, or bite his ear, or beat him up, you can put it down. The feeling and the idea… not the dog.
The science that theory was built on was retracted by the man who built it.
You're not failing at dominance. You're practicing something its own author abandoned. And you should abandon it too.
There's also the plain wisdom of the people who taught me. My mentor in exotic animal training was a grizzled old cowboy named Monty Cox. I'll never forget the day he handed me this:
It made sense then. It makes more sense now. We don't knowingly set ourselves up for conflict. It's just not good sense. Not with a tiger, not with a spouse, not with our kids, and not with our dog. That nugget has guided me ever since.
When we speak the language our dog speaks. You're not alone in this confusion over languages. There are seventy-one million dog-owning households in this country. Americans spend a hundred and fifty-eight billion dollars a year on their pets. And the part of all that money that actually goes to professional dog training? Less than three hundred million. About two-tenths of one percent.
Read that again. The whole country is pouring money into food, gear, and vet visits, hoping the dog will sort himself out. Almost none of it is going to the one thing that would make the rest of it work. You're not the only one in the dark. You're standing in a very crowded room.
Most dog owners are quietly facing the same struggle you are, wearing the costume of a hundred different "problem behaviors," and almost all of it traces back to the same lost art. The art of communication, across two species, in your own kitchen.
So that's the proof. Now, here's what it actually means for you. When you stand in your kitchen and throw a bright, animated, clear stream of words at your dog, fully expecting him to understand and adjust, and he doesn't, there's a reason.
And no, it's not stubbornness or spite. Your dog simply doesn't understand. Let me show you what he's reading. What he's "listening" to, while you're talking…
Human language isn't one of them. The disconnect is not malicious. It is not even intentional. It's confusion, a lack of context, and a lack of awareness. And here's the thing about confusion: when a dog is confused, the easiest thing for him to do is to keep doing what has worked before.
If it worked, even once, he'll try it again. And again. A baseball player batting a thousand doesn't rethink his swing. Your dog isn't going to rethink a behavior that keeps paying off. Not as long as it keeps paying off.
It's a question your dog doesn't know how else to ask. What, to us, looks like hyperactivity is very often confusion wearing a faster costume. He's asking, with the only tools he has, what it is you actually want from him. And this goes the other way, too.
Dogs and the people they live with tend to settle into the same stress level over time. Researchers measured it in the hair of fifty-eight dogs and their owners and found the two moving together, season over season. A high-stress household tends to produce a high-stress dog.
Your dog isn't misbehaving. He can only act like a dog. That is the whole of what he has. But make no mistake, he is cunning. Expert-level cunning. He'll try to outplay you, not out of malice, but because, from where he stands, you control everything that matters to him, and he can't ask you for any of it.
He believes you're ignoring him, in exactly the way you believe he's ignoring you. You're both wrong. You've just never been introduced to the misunderstanding.
You don't have to win. You do have to lead. When you fight your dog for authority, you rarely get it. Not the real kind. You can demand it, force it, will it into being, and what you get back is a dog who complies until the pressure lets up. But it's really hard to make a partner out of an opponent.
There's a quieter, stronger way in, and it's the one my whole approach is built on. You don't take authority from your dog. You show him you're worthy of it. That you're worth following. Worth partnering with.
You become the one who makes his life make sense, the clear one, the one he can count on. A war of words is a losing game. Leave the tantrums to the toddler and the dog. Be the senior partner your dog has been waiting for, and the morning stops being a battle to win and starts being a conversation of clarity, consistency, compliance, and cooperation.
But you can build it. I've been training dogs for decades. I learned from some of the best movie dog trainers in the history of the movie industry. Movie training is its own strange and specific discipline.
In my field, I'm standing ten, twenty, sometimes thirty feet away from my dog partner. No leash. No collar. No way to "make" him do anything. And on cue, on the director's word, that dog has to act, has to hit a mark, has to do the thing, and look like a dog just being a dog while he does it. You can't force that. Not from thirty feet away, or from thirty inches away.
I've spent over thirty years doing just that. Building relationships with my dog partners. On sets for films and television shows you've probably seen. And here's the part that matters: every decade, every set, every scene, comes down to something you can use tomorrow morning in your own house. The work was the same. I'm just handing it to you without the cameras, actors, and tyrannical directors.
And if you don't know who he is, Google him. I'll save you the trouble: he was the Super Bowl-winning center for the Dallas Cowboys.
Think about what could arguably be called the most vital partnership in football: a quarterback and his center. The quarterback calls the play. The center doesn't need to invent anything, or read the whole field, or out-think anyone. He needs to do one clear job and do it well, every time. Snap the ball. Hold the line. Run the play that was called.
When he does, the quarterback is free to do everything else. That is what authority and partnership look like. Not force. Not manipulation, not begging or bribing. You call a clear play, and your partner runs his part of it because he knows exactly what his part is and that cooperation and compliance are the only way for both parties to be successful.
The Four C's is built on exactly this type of partnership. And it's not a methodology. It's a relationship agreement. Be a good senior partner, and your dog will feel it and rise to it. Sign a clear, honest agreement with your dog, and he will hold up his end, as long as you hold up yours. It's important to remember that partnership implies a two-way street.
There are four active verbs on the cover of my book. Two of them are my obligation to the partnership, and two are the dog's. Clarity and consistency are mine. Compliance and cooperation, my dog's. Those Four C's aren't training principles. They're a mutually agreed-upon partnership equally beneficial to both sides.
I've spent the vast majority of my life on Hollywood film and television sets around the world. I've been lucky beyond measure, and I've been gifted some incredible teachers. The chance to study under some of the greatest movie dog trainers in the history of the business has been one of my life's greatest joys.
This book is my way of passing down a tiny bit of that knowledge.
So, when I say Hollywood-tested, that's exactly what I mean. I've worked for directors like Richard Donner, Tim Burton, and Steven Spielberg. I've worked alongside actors like Michelle Pfeiffer, Jack Nicholson, and Adrien Brody. I've lived this.
And my book, an "on purpose" field guide, has been designed with you, my reader, in mind. And when I say, "on purpose," I mean every detail.
The size is small, intentionally. Built to carry. Made to be stuffed in a back pocket, its pages dog-eared, its margins scribbled in. It's not a manual to admire on a shelf. It's a working tool, designed for and around you and your dog. This is real dog training. Something useful, day to day, every day. It's not at all precious.
This stuff works on set. A high-jeopardy and incredibly stressful environment for both dog and human. I also know it'll work in your kitchen.
Don't take my word for it. Here's what a few clients have said:
And it certainly worked at Nu Boyana Studio in the snow-capped mountains of Sofia, Bulgaria. Adrien Brody, John Malkovich, and Rory Culkin lead the cast. But the real star of the movie was my giant dog partner. His name? Han Solo.
That was the location we shot the film called Bullethead. That's where I came to know Paul Solet. He started out as a director I was familiar with. I'd seen his debut horror film, Grace, and knew he was talented. But once we started working together, he quickly became my trusted collaborator as we battled our way through making his movie. Paul knows dogs, and he knows directing, and he knows writing. He is someone the people in the movie industry listen to.
A film set can be an intense, landmine-scattered field that needs planning and proper execution to get through unscathed. That's what this book is. It's your action plan to get through your landmine-filled day with your dog with as many successes as possible. The end goal being that those landmines become nothing more than tiny blips on the radar of your life.
Let me show you what it actually looks like when the book knowledge becomes tangible and starts working in your house.
To a calm leader. You wake up, and the first thing you feel isn't dread. It's something closer to grateful. Knowing you've got a partner waiting, excited but patient, who is glad you're up. Only all that once-chaotic energy and enthusiasm is now pointed at the day and properly managed.
When the kids come down for breakfast, your dog greets them, happy but controlled. Not a collision with an unknown outcome. While you make breakfast and pack lunches, your dog is in his spot, happily watching, looking at you and the kids, waiting, respectful and eager to execute his part of whatever play you call.
The warm bacon sits on the counter where you left it. Only now your dog knows it's not his, and he's at peace with that, because peace is what the morning is now. Then the kids are out the door, and the walk, well, it's just a walk. With pleasant company. A bit of exercise with a dog partner who chooses to move with you instead of against you.
Back at home, the doorbell rings, and it's not a crisis. The Amazon driver, the mail carrier, the gardener — none of them set off a meltdown anymore, not for your dog and not for you. A knock at the door is just a thing that happens, a situation your dog understands and knows his place in. That's what context does. Excitement is not the enemy. Excitement in the wrong moment, out of context, can be. Nobody runs up and down the aisles at church (at least we're not supposed to), not because running is wrong, but because they know where they are. Context. Your dog can learn where he is, too. And once he knows, the doorbell stops being an alarm and becomes ordinary.
And everything else easier. This is true for all of us, and it is especially true for our dog.
Of course, the kids notice first. Then your husband. And one day, he says it out loud. The change is not just in the dog; it's in the whole house. On the walk, a neighbor waves. The mail carrier becomes a person your dog is glad to see, not an intruder to repel. When peace finally arrives, it doesn't creep in. It arrives like a winning lottery ticket, and everyone feels it.
Family dinners are the proof. The ones that used to come with a soundtrack of constant barking, people yelling, and a very predictable ending. Something like the dog locked in a crate or a back bedroom, so you could eat in peace and enjoy some conversation while doing so.
Those days are over. Now, he's in the room. Settled in his corner, content to simply be included, waiting for nothing, happy just being in the company of his people. The changes aren't subtle; they're the difference between a house you manage and tolerate, excited for any excuse to leave, and a home you hate being away from.
And here's the part that matters most. Someone with credentials telling you that you can have the dog you pictured the day you signed the rescue papers. Not selling you a pipe dream, giving you a clear road map.
Your dog shouldn't be a regret you manage. He should be an addition to the family you're glad you made. The dog you wanted for your kids, the one a childhood is built around.
Ask anyone whose childhood had a dog like that in it. The dog isn't an unfortunate footnote. He's a part of their life, woven throughout the entire memory. The partner who was always there, waiting, thrilled to see you, even if you only just left the room to use the bathroom.
That's what you're giving your children. Our dogs aren't just our "pets." They're building blocks that help shape who we become.
It's not magic, and your dog isn't stupid. You have to be a good quarterback. But if you consistently call good plays, you'll reap rewards you might not have even dared to dream of.
This material is real, teachable, and fun. We get dogs for companionship and enjoyment. That is the point. My book helps bring that back into focus.
The only question remaining is when you'll experience it. In your home with your dog.
If your days are stress-filled, complicated events you "just have to survive," and you know in your heart they don't have to be, then it's time to act. You've lived long enough with the dread, the apologizing, and the emotional fallout from your perceived "failure."
Your kids have lived alongside the chaos and unpredictability of life with your dog for too long. And while there is no specific timeline, there is a cost to every day you live like a butler constantly rushing to meet your dog's every whim and desire for fear of what he'll do if you don't. The cost isn't quiet; it compounds. Daily.
The patterns you're both living inside right now are not fixed in stone, but they are building something powerful inside your dog's brain.
A Predictor is what helps your dog navigate our more complicated world than his. It's like a rut or channel in his brain that tells him a sequence or pattern is reliable or not. If this, then that. Always. If something is reliable, if it's consistent, if it's clear, then your dog relies on that pattern, habit, or ritual. And if it is predictable, your dog isn't looking to change it. If it's reliable, then the question has been answered. If it has been answered consistently and clearly, he isn't going to keep asking indefinitely.
Every week this goes unaddressed is a week that the predictor rut cuts deeper, and the pattern locks in harder. If that pattern isn't one you agree with or signed off on, well, that's the problem. And it's the reason it's not wise to let your dog choose what everything means. Not because he won't. Because he will. Only, you just might hate the decision he makes without your input.
Without these, your dog will grow, but the growth will be deeper into the habits that confusion built. Six months from now, the same morning routine that you dread. A year from now, the same walk you don't want to take. Not because anything else went wrong. Just because nothing changed.
You already know this is different. You can feel that I'm not handing you the same treat-tossing party, or the same out-muscle-him promise, that everyone else has. This book is simple, it's clear, and uncomplicated in the best possible way. It can change your life. It will definitely change your dog's life.
Remember —
So, here's the real question. And it's not a hard one for you, because deciding is what you do. You run the house. You make the calls that keep not only your life, but your entire family's lives, running.
Would you spend nine dollars and ninety-nine cents to get some peace back? To learn how to speak to your dog in his native language. To become the best partner your dog could ever imagine, and watch him hand that same gift back to you, and to your whole family?
You and your dog have been trying to run a partnership, but no one told either of you to read the instructions that explained the game you're both trying to play.
Inside this book are those instructions. Four action verbs. Two for you. Two for your dog. When all four are in play, your relationship sings. When they aren't, well, you know the answer. You're probably living it right this minute.
Like me back in that Minnesota hotel room, you don't know what you don't know.
Beau — the dog who destroyed the bathroom, and plenty else besides — went on to not only star in Iron Will but also a television series later in his career. He worked on a Disney film set, off leash, thirty feet from me, in front of cameras and crew, and delivered in every scene. The language gap closed. The partnership held. That's what this system built, and this is what it can build for you, with your dog, in your house or on a walk or in the car.
That's why I wrote this book, for you to know, to learn, and to teach. I know it works, because I've watched it work. On movie sets and in living rooms, for decades.
If, after forty-five days, you don't feel like you and your dog are running a partnership instead of fighting a battle to be seen and heard, keep the book, and I'll send you a full refund. No questions asked.
Access to my "for your eyes only" director training progression videos from a few of my Hollywood film projects. You'll see how I create and construct scripted "gags" — the videos produced for the movie's director and producers. See my movie dogs preparing for their roles in Bullet Head, Think Like A Dog, and Star Trek: Picard.
No one, to my knowledge, has ever shown these types of internal "production eyes only" videos publicly.
A $175 value — yours free.A 45-minute Zoom call with me, a working Hollywood dog trainer. We'll discuss your dog, your house, your particular situation and challenges, and I'll provide as much real-time and direct feedback as possible. Together, we'll make the Four C's the most beneficial thing you and your dog will ever do together.
I'm only offering 50 of these calls. First-come, first-served. My training sessions start at $225 an hour.
A $225 value — yours free.A second field guide centered around travel and adventure with your now trained dog partner. Once you have the Four C's working in your house, your imagination (and travel laws, of course) will be the only thing limiting where you and your dog can go together.
A $29.95 value — yours free.