Hi yes pls know that I feel greatly vindicated by ur thoughts on certain "balanced" trainers coughsolidk9tr*iningcough bc they keep popping up on IG. They make me so deeply uncomfortable and I have no Dog People friends to complain about it to. There's a Tumblr post floating around about people lacking empathy for their dogs? That's the primary thing that makes me itchy there's no attempt to even find the source it's just This Behavior Is "Bad" How Can I End It w/o regard for the dog itself
I keep meaning to reply to you anon, but the time is never right. I’m just gonna go for it because there’s a petition right now to stop this guy spreading his literal abuse in scotland I am going to boost.
TLDR This guy makes Cesar Milan look like a positive reinforcement hippy.
On insta, I wholescale blocked 8 people I had been following because they were posting stories supporting this fuckwit’s most recent asshole move. I had no idea these people were like this, I thought they were positive reinforcement leaning “””balanced””” trainers and I was so wrong. They were just fuckwits. Konmari them the fuck off my feed.
(The most recent reveal: He snuck up behind an unaware dog and belt it over the head. )
(Hint, this is NOT how you train a dog. This is teaching you how to fuck up a perfectly fine dog. This is animal abuse)
I both struggle to understand this mindset and I live in concern that I could be talked into this mindset by the “balanced” trainers I am surrounded by. There’s a reason I’m backing away from them and seeking more positive reinforcement types - even if I’m not the best at positive reinforcement, I never ever want to be the kind of person who trains themselves to ignore their dog’s feelings/health/communication/capabilities in favour of....whateverthefuck that is. And if someone is encouraging me to ignore my dog out of the desire to have them split second obedient RIGHT NOW with all kinds of wishywashy stories about how dangerous it is that my dog didn’t sit in 0.5 seconds - bail.
Like those people there with their dogs, they care about their dogs, and people like Jeff twist and violate that concern into becoming willing abusers of their dogs. He teaches them how to fuck up their dog and get stuck in a perpetual abuser loop where they rely on him to terrify their dog into submission. They’re not lost causes, but they are trapped, and I wholly put the blame on the “trainer”. They’re being surrounded by people telling them this is okay and I feel super bad for them.
Trigger warning on this, it is super heavy watching with videos demonstrating actual dog abuse disguised as training.
This is an interview confession with a dog trainer who used to train like Jeff, before realising he’d fucked up. He talks about how he got into it and how he got out of it. He goes into how the lack of regulation and fucked up culture in places like solidk9training are exploiting people to abuse their own dogs. It is heavy watching, but enlightening. I really feel for the clients of solidk9training.
Sorry to share such a depressing post to my followers, but the dog training industry seriously needs regulations to stop fuckwits like solidk9training going around claiming they’re keeping dogs out of pounds and euthanasia by beating them comatose.
