By Shelley Doan CPDT-KA CCBT-KA
In today's information age, if I can’t figure out how to do something, Google often has the answer. Just yesterday, I asked Google how to fix the camera on my phone, and before that, it was to find a recipe to make cabbage soup. But dogs are more complicated than the few steps to reset the picture quality or following a recipe. They are unique in personality, temperament, and early life experiences, and what works well for one dog may not work so well for another.
When looking for information on training, it's good to recognize that the internet is not the place to search for information on how to fix serious behavioral issues such as aggression or separation anxiety. What it can provide are simple recipes or steps for basic training that can be generalized to most dogs. Still, the information can be extremely varied and contradictory about what you should or should not do.
For example, one trainer wrote that “you should ONLY use a harness, and it MUST be a harness that gives the dog freedom of movement, and you should ONLY use the back clip, never the front.” This is the opposite of what another trainer said, which was “you should NEVER use a harness unless they had already been trained on a collar.” The “collar” we learn about in another video by the same trainer looked a lot like a prong collar.
So, who is right? Both seem credible; one has written a book on walking your dog, the other is a dog breeder who has raised several litters of puppies.
First, good training is not dependent on the equipment to do the work. The real skill in teaching dogs is to aim for the dog moving with you with the barest of equipment and good verbal control. Now, that impresses me more than someone who puts a choker chain on the dog, hikes it up behind the dog's ears, and moves the dog around with the leash like it's a steering wheel. This is how one TV trainer appeared to be a superhero in his training skills when, it was the equipment that made him look so good.
Second, check their background, credentials, and experience. The breeder who insisted on collar training before harnesses had extensive knowledge of one breed of dog, which is great if you are raising the same breed. However, they lived in the country, so she had no day-to-day experience of walking her dogs around busy city neighborhoods.
The writer of the book had taken the time and effort to break down what she considered the most relevant points in her success at teaching her dog to walk on a loose leash. But teaching one dog does not make an expert. The insistence on using a harness of only a certain kind and style tells me she has never encountered the 150-pound Great Dane owned by a 65-year-old woman. I don't judge owners' preferred dogs, but I do need to find ways to keep that owner safe, and her dog safe, while we work on teaching the dog and the handler good leash skills. Still, I'd far rather have the insistence of a harness than a prong or shock collar.
Third, look for the least aversive methods. If you walk into a doctor’s office and tell them you have a sore throat, you would be shocked if the first thing they said was, “Well, let's get you into surgery.” You'd hope the doctor begins with the simplest, least invasive solutions and works up to surgery. The same is true for dog training. Food rewards training is the kindest and one of the most effective ways to teach your dog the skills that most owners want their dog to learn. The negative fallout effects from food rewards might be a fat dog or maybe a dog that sniffs your hands for food before coming into the house. Meanwhile, if you start by using the harshest methods first, such as a shock collar, the fallout can be a dog that is aggressive toward people and other dogs, including dogs that live in the same household. Most often, it creates a generalized anxiety that trickles into every aspect of that dog's life. This is because the dog often has no idea why it happens. They lack environmental cues from which to predict the shock. Satellite electric fences change locations, so even if your dog marks the trees as the boundary, the boundary can shift based on the location of the satellite. One of the saddest fallout effects I have seen was from an invisible fence that the owners had put around their flower beds to prevent the dogs from going in them. They put it on their young dog and sent the dog out into the yard. Fast forward five months, and now she is so fearful of the randomized shock that she peed anytime she got excited; playing with the other dog—peed; humans coming to get her out of the crate—peed; being let out of the house—peed; owner touching the dog—peed. Food rewards would never have that kind of fallout.
Watch for trainers who blame the dog.
Blaming the dog happens way too often. I watched one video of a trainer getting distracted
and forgetting he was holding the dog on the leash. The dog suddenly pulled to the grass, and this man got mad. His Trainer Ego (TE) had taken a hit, and the poor dog paid the price. If you listened to his words, he went on to say, “How dangerous this dog was, how you need to show who's in control because this dog was trying to take control.” The fact of the matter is the trainer was caught not paying attention, and he misjudged his hold on the dog, then he wrapped his mistake in trainer speak, blaming the dog. How can you tell? You hear it in words like dominant, alpha, good energy, or bad energy. What he didn't mention was that he had, at the end of the leash, a young teenage dog, and this dog had smelled something and wanted to check it out. You can see in the video, the dog lifts his nose up briefly, sniffing left and then right, looking like the cartoon bear Yogi who smelled a picnic basket. Then the teenage dog suddenly swings towards the long grass as he pinpoints the source and lunges. This trainer, if he had been paying attention, would have been able to prepare for the lunge by gently and insistently asking the dog to sit. Instead, the dog got a whole lot of leash corrections.
Watch out for videos that describe the so-called thoughts and ideas of the dog. Just as I cannot with 100% certainty tell you what my husband is thinking, and I am often surprised by what he is thinking—the same is true for dogs. This is not to say we can't make educated guesses. For example, if the dog is sniffing a gopher hole, I could guess that images of a small, fast, exciting little rodent is running through his mind… but if he has never actually seen one, it may just be a curiosity: “What is THIS smell?” Often, in these videos, you see things like, “He is trying to be alpha,” or “Teach another dog manners.” We can watch intently for signs of an escalation of arousal in dogs, but we cannot know the intention in other minds unless we have more information. A video is just a moment in time. What often is not clearly seen is a dog that might be in pain, overtired, or what that dog’s learning history is. On top of all of that is the fact that dogs are very contextual learners, and what is going on around them can trigger certain behaviors.
Then you have the clickbait headlines and videos meant to grab your attention. How to walk your dog in three easy steps? Really? What about the videos showing dogs walking beside their handlers, the dog's head turning upwards like a baby bird reaching for a worm, and the handler marching forward like a military cadet? Or the trainer who, in less than a minute, has the reactive dog marching past llamas and donkeys? Then we get out there walking our dogs trying to replicate this stuff, and we feel like Frankenstein trying to be a ballerina—awkward, uncoordinated, and now frustrated. The reality of those videos is they are meant to get your attention, admire them or not, but don't trust them for training information.
Read the reviews or comment section. When watching videos, I often research the trainer or company to learn more. I am watching for clues that will help me to understand where they are coming from in their training. How do they view dogs? Is the dog something to control and dominate. Do they like dogs? Its strange to say but in some videos if you saw anyone behaving that way to their best friend, you’d wonder if they were really friends at all. Check the age of the videos—looking at a YouTube video from 14 years ago versus one that is 1 year old—will help you to see more current learning as your trainer has evolved and learned how to be better at their craft.
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