Ask Luke is a 24/7 AI dog training assistant, and it only knows what we have taught it. It is Luke's digital mind, not Luke in person, and it tells you so the first time you contact it. It reads The Toe Beans Co's own training material and our own client work. It has not read the open internet, and that is the whole point.

Plenty of Sydney dog owners are already asking an AI about their dog at 11pm. They just do not mention it at the next session. I would rather you asked one that gives you our answer than one that averages out every dog training opinion ever posted online.

Luke Buchanan, Owner of The Toe Beans Co and Sydney's Puppy Trainer, is Red Cross Australia Pet First Aid certified and AFP background checked. Ask Luke is built on his material, so it answers the way he does. Or as close to it as a machine gets.

What Ask Luke is (and what it isn't)

Ask Luke is an AI training assistant, built only on The Toe Beans Co's own training content, that answers dog and puppy training questions at any hour of the day or night.

Ask it why your five month old Kelpie has started ignoring a recall that worked fine a fortnight ago, and it'll take you through the same thing I would: what changed in the environment, where the dog's threshold sits now, and what to interrupt before you add anything new. Threshold, if that's a new word, is the point at which a dog's arousal level makes a calm response impossible. Past it, nothing you say lands.

Here's what it can't do. It can't see your dog. It doesn't diagnose. And anything involving aggression, genuine fear or resource guarding goes to a person, because those need eyes on the dog and a plan that gets adjusted week by week.

Ask Luke. Dog training, and nothing else. Ask it about your mortgage and it'll tell you it doesn't know.

Why "trained on our own methods and real client work, and nothing else" matters

A general AI model gives you the average of everything ever written about dog training, and a great deal of what has been written about dog training is correction based.

So you get answers that sound confident and contradict each other. One says ignore the barking. The next says correct it. A model with no house position will hand you both inside a week, and you end up switching approach every few days, which is the fastest way there is to teach a puppy that nothing you do means anything. That's the longer argument in the ChatGPT dog post.

Ask Luke doesn't have that problem, because it was never given the option. It reads our guides, our course material and anonymised patterns from real client work in Sydney homes. It will not suggest you pin your dog to the floor or roll it onto its back, because there is nothing in its material that says to. The one time I tested a general model on a mouthing question, the third suggestion back was to hold the puppy down until it stopped struggling. That advice is thirty years old, it costs you trust you then have to rebuild, and it's still sitting in the training data.

The practical version: you get the same answer I would give you, minus the spelling mistakes.

Public and Insider, the two access levels

Ask Luke has two access levels, Public and Insider. The difference is in what it can read. How often you ask is not limited at either level, and there is no message cap on any tier.

Public covers everything we publish openly, which is the blogs and the guides on this site. Anyone can set up a free account and get it. Insider reads all of that plus your own course material and the community, so when you ask about settling at night, it answers on the week you're on rather than the average week.

That works the same way on all three programs, puppy school, the 17 to 32 week program and adult behaviour training. Bronze sits on Public, and Silver, Gold and Platinum sit on Insider. A one off standalone session is not a program level, so it comes with Public access on a free account rather than Insider.

The three channels, call, text and WhatsApp

You can reach Ask Luke three ways: a phone call, a text message, or WhatsApp. It's the same assistant behind all three, so it doesn't matter which one you pick.

The call option matters more than it sounds like it should. It's 10pm, the puppy is screaming in the crate, you've got one hand on the crate door and no hands free for typing. Being able to ring something and get a spoken answer is the difference between holding your nerve and giving up and letting the puppy out, which is the one move that guarantees tomorrow night is worse.

Text works better when you want the answer written down to read again in the morning. WhatsApp is there because half of Sydney already runs on it.

The honest disclosure at first contact

The first time you contact Ask Luke, it tells you what it is. It is Luke's digital mind, not Luke in person, and you hear that before you ask your first question.

I've seen how parts of this industry handle that and I'm not doing it their way. There are businesses running an AI that answers in the owner's name with no disclosure anywhere, and the client only works it out when they mention the conversation face to face and get a blank look back. You don't fully recover from that. The dog training industry is roughly twenty years behind human behavioural science as it is.

So the disclosure is built in, at the front, every time. And if you'd rather talk to me instead, you can. Ask Luke will tell you how.

Where Ask Luke fits alongside the group class, the 1:1 and the course

Ask Luke covers the gap between sessions, which is where most training actually falls apart.

Puppy school runs four weeks, four sessions of fifty to sixty minutes, six to ten puppies, plus a one to one in your own home. Call it four hours of contact across a month. The other seven hundred odd hours are you, on your own at 6am and at 11pm, deciding whether to pick the puppy up or leave it. That's the part that decides how the dog turns out, and until now the only help in those hours was a search engine.

The online course inside the Complete Puppy Program runs week by week from Week 8 through to Week 24, which takes you past the close of the socialisation window at six months, and there's a standing Problem Library you can dip into whenever something new shows up. The early weeks are front-loaded with The Big 8. Ask Luke reads all of it. So when you're on Week 11 and the toilet training has gone backwards, it answers from Week 11.

Signing up to the Complete Puppy Program at Silver or above is what opens Insider access. If you want the background on why we build our own tools rather than buying something off a shelf, the About page covers it.

Want help putting this into practice?

The Toe Beans Co runs a free SKOOL community where Sydney dog owners get access to training guides, Q&As, and direct support from Luke. It's free to join.

Join the free community

Upcoming puppy schools in Sydney

Luke runs regular puppy schools across Sydney, with venues in Paddington, Edgecliff, Zetland, Alexandria, Marrickville and Neutral Bay. Anyone in Sydney can attend any location.

Check upcoming dates and book your spot

Frequently asked questions

Is Ask Luke actually Luke?

No. Ask Luke is an AI training assistant trained on Luke Buchanan's own material, and it tells you so the first time you contact it. It's his digital mind rather than the man himself. Anything that needs eyes on your dog still goes to a real session with Luke.

Do I have to be a client to use Ask Luke?

No. Public access is free with an account and covers everything The Toe Beans Co publishes openly. Insider access, which also reads your own course material and answers on the week you're actually on, comes with the Complete Puppy Program at Silver, Gold or Platinum.

Can I use Ask Luke if I'm not in Sydney?

Yes. Ask Luke works wherever you are and Public access is free anywhere. The group puppy schools are Sydney only, running in Paddington, Edgecliff, Zetland, Alexandria, Marrickville and Neutral Bay, and the in home one to one work covers Sydney within about a forty five minute drive of the Harbour Bridge.