Dr Ian Dunbar - the dog world’s David Attenborough

Remember those dogs in the animated film Up! ? Weren't they brilliantly observed? I loved the way they would all suddenly stop for squirrels. That was Dr Ian Dunbar’s idea. If you get the Pixar DVD with the extra disk included you’ll see him on stage teaching the animators all about dog behaviour and facial expressions.

He's done so much already, but he's eager to do more.

I hope you will discover in this video why I say that Ian is our doggie David Attenborough. I would just love us to have him on the TV all the time curating the way we see the dog world.

In this interview we discover how the young farm boy became a vet, moved to London in the 1960s and then off to California in the 70s to do a Phd in animal behaviour. He reveals he also lectured in human sex… which I hadn’t heard before, but it was apparently very popular!

Ian loved teaching and soon some of the human psychologists where attending his puppy classes to watch how the people learned!

He says he used all he learned on the farm to go backwards in dog training, to start early and make everything rewarding.

His grandfather won a ploughing competition with a horse that worked remotely without reigns. He trained the horse to plough in a straight line without any compulsion. And as a child Ian was regularly recalling 50 cows.

Ian wants everyone to stop obsessing with theory and get back to actually training dogs.

His son Jamie is gradually digitising Ian’s brain and you can now find much of it in the Dunbar Academy archives.

In this in depth interview we talk about the revolutionary Open Paw. The brilliant scheme that changes rescues into universities for dogs. And we talk about dog breeders training their puppies before they sell them, dramatically reducing the number of dogs in rescue and increasing the price they can charge.

Here’s a link to access Ian’s brain - and the amazing Dunbar Academy. A huge resource where you can find the solution to every problem as well as some classic seminars. It would literally take you decades to binge watch everything!
https://bit.ly/TheDunbarAcademy