Not a dog trainer’s take on the ‘Trainer Wars’

If you are in any way involved in or exposed to the world of dog training, you are no doubt aware of the current escalation in the ‘Trainer Wars’. I can’t escape these discussions at the moment, so I decided to dust off the old blog and share my thoughts, for whatever they are worth.

The Wars (as I will henceforth call them) have always existed in this space. So much so that the joke ‘the only thing you will ever get two dog trainers to agree on is that the third one is wrong’ has almost morphed into an accepted truth over the decades. I wish I could credit whoever came up with that one, but I don’t know who they are so I apologise – I love your work and feel that we may have gotten along well!

It should be no surprise to those who know me that I staunchly avoid The Wars. Younger me (a lot younger) joined in plenty of discussions with colleagues on training approaches back in the day. I still remember watching Bob Bailey deftly (figuratively) kick trainers of all persuasions off the top of Mount Stupid in the old clicker email lists, with a mix of horror, fascination, and a touch of motivation to learn remotely close to that much about training animals.
I’ve long since stopped referring to myself as a dog trainer though (despite regularly teaching dogs and owners the training game) and more to the point, I’m increasingly convinced that everyone passionately involved in The Wars is thoroughly missing the point!

Somewhere between 6-12 times every week, I do a deep dive into the world of individual owners and dogs that are struggling. Usually, they are at a crisis point and despite their best efforts to get help and implement changes under the advice and guidance of trainers, vets, friends, colleagues, and whatever they can find on the good old internet, they haven’t found a solution. They are out of spoons and have reached a crunch point where something must give.

After thousands of these conversations over the years, I’ve learned a few things about how people and dogs live together that I feel are pretty relevant to The Wars, given that War-related conversations so often devolve into heated discussions about pets losing their lives and homes because someone used the “wrong quadrant”.

So, here they are:

• There are always unmet needs at the heart of broken relationships. Often, it’s the dog’s needs that are going unmet (or completely unrecognised) but almost equally as commonly, the proposed solutions that owners have been given to try are equally off the mark in meeting *their* needs. Often, the biggest mistake made up until that point by everyone who has tried to help, is simply a failure to listen with the intent of understanding. Humans don’t listen to dogs, humans don’t listen to humans, and the dogs are, for the most part, working really bloody hard to try and keep up.
• Dogs and owners must be genuinely seen for who they are, what they need, what their limitations are (whether they are ‘real’ to you or part of their perception), and most of all they must be believed. I am often reminded of the phenomena of people raising their voices when communicating with someone who speaks a different language or misunderstands them – as if the volume of the communication was somehow the issue.
  When a dog or a human tells me that something is wrong for them, I believe them and get curious.
• Managing relationships with dogs is fundamentally not particularly different to any other healthy relationship. Sure, as individuals, what dogs need and how they move through the world are inherently ‘DOG’. Afterall, they don’t know how to be anything other than dogs. That said, great relationships between dogs and their people are supportive, loving, respectful and full of boundaries that are lovingly but consistently enforced – just like great relationships between people.One of the greatest lessons I ever relearned from more than one great trainer (and I have learned this multiple times throughout my life, because I forget easily) is that gently and respectfully communicating that a boundary has been crossed is not just acceptable, but often desirable. Equally, respecting the boundaries of others is 100% necessary as a social being and especially so for those you love.Dogs are social beings and they understand boundaries just fine – it’s we humans that struggle with them in just about every way possible, and The Wars are yet another example of this among a long list.Some old horse wisdom that a good friend once taught me sums this up well: “Own your ground without taking over the paddock“.
• The quadrants are far, far (far) less important than I was led to believe as a VCE psychology student or was taught as a baby dog trainer. When a relationship (between any species, but we’re going with dogs) is failing, I don’t ask about what quadrant the parties are using to try and effect change on each other. I find out how they got there and try to help them work out where their path diverged from ‘healthy, fulfilling relationship’ to whatever is going on that led this person to having a conversation with me.When one party is a dog, I assess three things in a very specific order during that conversation (and any training student of mine from the last decade should know these by heart!)1) Is everyone safe?
  
  2) Does everyone have good welfare?
  
  3) Is everyone happy?
  
  If the answer to any of those questions is a ‘no’ then there is work to do, and if my proposed solutions change one of those answers from a ‘yes’ to a ‘no’ then I need to reassess my plan because it is creating problems, not solving them.
• The solutions to relationship problems rarely revolve around learning theory in isolation, or even as the foundation of the solution.
  While I absolutely recommend and teach skill building through rewards-based training to most clients to help them get back to where they want to be with their dog/s, this is rarely the whole answer. In fact, it’s almost never the majority of the answer because often, simply addressing the unmet needs of the parties involved makes the problem disappear or reduces it significantly.Far more common solutions to pet-people problems are having the pet’s medical needs addressed (especially implementing effective pain management), changing day-to-day management to better meet the pet’s and owner’s needs in a feasible way, and simply translating for the pet so that their human has a better understanding of what is going wrong – many people can fix their own problems  pretty effectively once the communication problems are solved and they understand what is going wrong.And sometimes, it is just a terrible match between two otherwise fantastic individuals and what they need from life, so yes, with some frequency I recommend finding both the pet and the person a better match in life!
• Our cultural hang ups about dog-human relationships cause an awful lot of trouble in society.
  
  ‘You must walk your dog every day for your dog to be happy’ (except if those walks are terrifying, painful, overwhelming or just plain unenjoyable…)‘Pets are lifelong commitments’ (except when the pet would happily up and find themselves a better fitting life if given the opportunity)‘Dogs must comply with your cue the first time, every time’  (yeah… no. Ask my partner how often that works for him while I am concentrating on something else!)I long ago lost count of how often an owner did not action a perfectly reasonable, beneficial, and logical solution to a problem they were facing with their pet because of shame, or because someone in a position of authority told them they were wrong. That absolutely extends to behavioural euthanasia decisions (and I have written on that before so won’t go into it here), but sometimes following an emotionally rough day, I just sit and wonder how much better the world would be for our animal companions if we all, as professionals, just better understood and taught the fundamentals of healthy communication and relationships, instead of using the weight of societal shame and outrage to try and force compliance on each other.

Dogs (and cats, parrots, pocket pets, horses, and all the other animals we choose to share our lives with) do not exist in a vacuum. They are our companions.

They aren’t captive animals in a zoo that we lock away when we have finished our shift (although I would argue that we should also have as healthy relationships with these animals as is possible in that scenario), nor are they warm bodied human servants that exist purely to keep us entertained in whatever way we see fit (regardless of how positive we try and make that experience for them).

They are our companions and their whole existence in our lives revolves around the quality of our relationships with them.

So here is ‘not a dog trainer’s’ take on The Wars and how to navigate them yourself:

Know that a person’s ability to effectively listen and observe, respectfully communicate, and truly collaborate with other humans speaks volumes about their ability (and willingness!) to do the same with animals.

If you are having trouble identifying where someone sits on this spectrum, listen to them and mentally swap out a human in place of the pet when they are talking about how to ‘solve’ problems. If you see anything other than a respectful, healthy approach to communication and relationships, then regardless of what education or labels they have, how charismatic they are, or which side of The Wars they choose to live on, walk away.