By Sarah Whitehead
You wouldn’t hire a plumber to come and talk you through how to
fi x your own boiler, so why do we baulk at the thought of paying a
qualifi ed, experienced trainer to train our dogs? Following on from
last month’s article, professional trainer Alison Mercer explains
why, when it comes to training, she loves to do it herself…
thought about the ‘trained for you’ idea. We were thinking about our ‘niches’ – what specific services we were going to
offer – and I realised that what I actually enjoy most is… training dogs! Don’t we all? But here’s the thing: dog trainers spend most of their time training owners who don’t know how to train a dog who doesn’t know how to do what its owner wants. No wonder it can be a frustrating job! But for some reason, we shy away from the alternative, which is to do the
training ourselves.
I’m not talking about board and train, but about getting hands-on and doing all, or at least the majority, of the training
the dog needs during sessions at the dog’s home or appropriate places. I can almost hear you thinking, “That’s not going to work,” but let’s look at it and I’ll offer my experiences to date.
The most common objection is probably that the dog will listen to the trainer but won’t transfer that ‘obedience’ to
the owner. Well, there may be an element of truth to this,
especially if the owner does not modify their interactions with the dog in any way. The trick is to do the training with the dog and explain to the owner what they need to do in order to maintain or improve upon it. In my experience, this has been a very successful tactic, leading to quick improvements with less stress for the dog and the
owner. There are many reasons why this works.
Dog trainers are most often called in to ‘fix’ a problem, when the relationship between
owner and dog is at a low point.
Sometimes we are told we are the ‘last chance’. What is best in this situation? To try to teach
a possibly clueless owner from scratch to train the dog, with which they may have a really dysfunctional relationship with
by now? Or to teach the dog yourself and then coach the owner on what changes to make
in their life, which will give the dog chances to display and be reinforced for the improved behaviour? The choice seems
simple to me.
Professional skills Trainers spend a lot of time becoming good at training dogs.
It requires a level of knowledge, practice and skill that most owners have no wish to even try to achieve. From the dog’s
point of view, being trained by a professional who has the skill to train cleanly, clearly, flexibly and positively is far
more desirable than trying to learn from a beginner, who may be stressed or frustrated and probably lacks the ability to train without mistakes and confusion.
Of course, there are some very competent owners, but they are not usually the ones who call a trainer for help.
Let me give you an example:
training a dog to walk on a loose lead without barking or lunging at passing cars.
Owners complain the dog ‘just doesn’t listen’ and ‘won’t take food’. The dog treats the owner as nothing more than a
weight at the other end of the lead, which occasionally gets a yank. There’s no effective communication going on, let
alone real training. Up steps the trainer, who has an initial advantage: novelty! The dog doesn’t know you and if you
get the dog working quickly, you can usually establish a relationship that allows the dog to learn new habits.
I have never successfully taught an owner to handle a dog like this straight off: I find they lack the confidence and skill to help the dog, even with close coaching, and the dog just gets frustrated. However, I have successfully worked
with several dogs one to one and then coached the owner once the dog has started to cope better. This has led
to happier dogs and owners in quite a short time frame, usually best done with several lessons in quick succession
to maximise the learning.
Sometimes, just the simple act of showing an owner what their dog can do is enough to rekindle the relationship. I’ve
heard owners who have really struggled with their dogs say things like, “I’ve never seen him do that before,”
and “I never thought she’d understand what I wanted.” Sometimes you get the feeling that the dog would say
the same! Getting a shutdown dog to open up, or a‘nutty’ dog to concentrate enough to learn can be the
key to the door the owner has been looking for.
the pleasure of working with a six-month-old Boerboel for a couple of months, including teaching her lead work, polite
play, leave it, not to jump up, recall and taking her out to new places to learn how to stay calm around distractions.
The owners soon reported a general improvement in her behaviour with them:
she stopped jumping at the kids, stopped grabbing the lead, walked nicely beside them and came back when
called. This was just through reporting back what I’d practised with her each time,
along with a bit of advice on managing the jumping. Balancing act It should seem obvious by now that getting hands on
and doing the work directly with the dog can be the best course of action, certainly for the dog and often for the
owner. It avoids mistakes and frustration and gets quick
results: what more could a client want? Well, there may be owners who don’t like this approach.
They may feel they are being sidelined; that the dog is theirs, not yours, and maybe they do want to learn how to
train their own dog. There can be a fine line to tread between doing enough but not too much. Of course, this will vary
with each relationship you step into and will depend on the severity of the problem, the
extent of the breakdown in the relationship, the abilities and willingness of the owner, and much more. It may be that you
start by doing a lot of handson work, but very quickly pass the process over to the owner.
This will vary and needs to be assessed from individual to individual.
In my experience, though, when I’ve suggested to clients that I do more of the training, I’ve always been met
with relief and gratitude. The ‘average’ owner calls for help when they are in need and
turning up to tell them all the things they need to learn and do can be intimidating and sometimes a little
disappointing: after all, they called an expert to come and fix something, not to sign up
for lessons. I appreciate that saying, “I don’t call a plumber to hand me the tools and tell
me how to use them” may be a little simplistic (last time I checked, my boiler didn’t have a mind of its own), but the
same expectations of service apply to dog trainers and we should bear that in mind.
For my money, ‘trained for you’ has many advantages, which, used with good judgement, outweigh any disadvantages. I think it’s time more trainers did the work they’ve trained to do.
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