Welcome to the Absolute Dog Sex and a Squirrel podcast. I'm Lauren Langman. I'm one of the world's leading dog trainers and it's my mission to help owners become their dog's top priority. In each episode, you'll discover how to gain trust and

communicate with your dog like never before, creating unbreakable bonds that make you the most

exciting part of their world. Okay, so today we are talking environments, environmental training,

and where you should and maybe shouldn't go with your dog. Now, I'm joined by the wonderful Dave.

Dave, I know you've worked dogs in the forces effectively operational dogs. So environment is probably

more important to you than anyone because you're going to need your dogs to search at some pretty

difficult spaces. Now, I know that your dog searched at the Queen's funeral. What kind of

environment is that that you're going into? Because it's a

pretty big environment when you think about it for a dog that maybe has never seen anything

like that. Yeah. I mean, environments like that are huge and extremely challenging because you've

not just got the environment to deal with, but you've got all of the other things that are going on.

So like I say, at the Queen's funeral, for example, we were searching Westminster Abbey prior to the funeral, and you've got the TV crews setting up, you've got scaffolding going up, you've got loads of different people coming and going, you've got trolleys coming, Laurie's coming, you name it. It was it's, it can be really challenging if you haven't

got the right dog who's gone through the right training to make sure they are robust in those

environments. So absolutely, the key for any good dog, whether it's a working dog or a pet dog,

for me, is all about those environmental. Now, I know the genetics certainly play a part

and as do you, but ultimately we've got the genetics we've got and we're working with the dog

that we've got. And so personally, if I was going to have a new dog, I want to know the genetics

and the parents. I look really carefully at my parents and what I'm going to do in terms of, like, I want a strong dog and a comfortable dog. But I also know that you can do a lot with your environmental training. And I know that you're doing that right now with a youngster. I've certainly done so much of that right through. If you look back over our recordings, pup to perfection was maybe 17 years ago, 16 years ago, many years ago that we filmed Pupp to Affection.

And we were doing exactly that. We were doing environmental training. And we were out and about

doing environments. Now, I think there's a difference between doing environmental training and

socialising. And I know there's this massive, massive thing about having a dog that's social.

And I think for you and me, we'd turn that on its head and we'd say, we probably want the opposite. We don't want a social dog. We actively want dogs who are not going to rush up to people or go over and say hi to stuff or see another dog and be like wagging across the street and really distracted by them. But we do want a dog that's environmentally robust. So maybe talk through a couple of

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