#dog trainer problems

[behaviornerdwithahat]

Let your dog skip a meal. By golly, your dog is 20 lbs overweight, it’s okay if they don’t want to eat once in a while. Trust me, I understand the worry, but it’s not like it’s a lab with a perfect body score who has never missed a meal in their life and if they turn their head up at a treat they are probably dying. The reason your dog is “picky” isn’t a personality trait you need to overcome with tastier food options, it’s because they’ve actually reached satiation.

[kat-n-dog]

One of those days at work where I really don't want to train any dog except my own

[notesondogagility]

Every time I start a new agility class

Person: hi! I want to go to your agility class!

Me: that's awesome! Tell me a bit about your dog.

Person: well it's a *working breed* who's about *1,5-5* years old with too much energy! I hoped that it would be a couch potato despite it being breed through generations to work in a high drive literally the entire day, and I realized too late, that it needs more stimulation than the daily 2x 30 minutes walks we go on. I have never ever gone to an obedience class ever, but it loves jumping on things and running! It gets overexcited when it sees other dogs and there's no way I could take the leash off, without him ruining the training for every other dog in the class. Also I will probably not do any training outside of the class.

Me:...

Person: did I say that he has a lot of energy?

Me: you did

Person: it wants to be the Alpha™

Me: ....

Person: ...

Me: that's a no

[behaviornerdwithahat]

Client’s Dog:

Me: What a lovely herding dog exhibiting herding dog behaviors

Client: Actually, I did a genetic test and he’s actually a 43% pit bull, 26% husky, and 56% shih tzu

Me: . . .

[behaviornerdwithahat]

Client: I let my dog get into cat poop for the 46th time, what’s wrong with my dog

At which point they get mad at me because they didn’t want the truth. Then why don’t you ask for encouragement outright? Don’t ask me to read through three levels of subtext and blame your dog for being a dog. I won’t.

[behaviornerdwithahat]

I get so incredibly irritated when people criticize other trainers (or organizations) who are gradually improving their skills and becoming more positive with their methods. They say things like "Ugh, finally." and "Well, they aren't 100% positive [and therefore are terrible people]."

It indicates to me that these trainers who call themselves "force free" or "purely positive" only believe that is necessary with dealing with dogs, not humans. Because what are we really doing when we criticize people for improving. We are punishing them for heading in what we perceive to be the correct direction. Is that make them more or less likely to continue their path? Do they want to become like all these people that hate them?

These trainers conveniently forget that they also had to learn these skills at some point. That it didn't happen overnight. Trainers and especially organizations (such as service dog schools) cannot just take 2 years off to become positive and come back perfect trainers. Improving is a life long journey. Even trainers who started out 100% positive did not start out as good at training as they are today. Hopefully, they will continue to seek improvement rather than being content with how they are.

Crossover trainers need time, encouragement and good mentors to become positive reinforcement based trainers. It is a skill that must be shaped and reinforced, just like any other. We need to continually examine not only how we train our dogs but how we teach our clients and interact with our fellow trainers. If we refuse to also improve those skills, we will fail to become a better trainer tomorrow than we are today.

[behaviornerdwithahat]

Re: your tags on dog trainers yes! I won’t even pursue my CPDT right now because you have to have hours training other peoples dogs and since I’ve only done that for friends and family, I’m not comfortable marketing myself as a “trainer” yet to get more hours. Despite years of dog experience and great success with the dogs I’ve worked with, I want more or something I can show people.

Then I’ll meet someone who’s owned one or two rowdy dogs that they taught to do a cute trick and they’re calling themselves a dog trainer and giving people bad advice. It’s infuriating. It’s hard to have ethics sometimes.

Right! I see it all the time! I’ve spent years becoming the best trainer I can be and still have massive imposter syndrome about calling myself a SD trainer yet every day someone else hangs up a shingle when they’ve trained one dog and know squat about disability and ughhhhh!

[b0gglish]

So I may have called this guy at work because I missed his dog and wanted to know how she was doing.... And I'm probably more in love with his dog than I am towards most people in my life