Tag Archives: dog trainer

04/14/12

Messages for Dog Trainers from Ian Dunbar

This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.

There were a few gems of advice throughout the seminar on things dog trainers should acknowledge and do when working with clients.  They can be summarized as:

 

  • When you’re working with an owner, don’t get slugged down with data transfer, explaining things, and ‘telling’.  Don’t waste good dog training time talking about dog training, instead: Do some dog training!
     
  • Use and promote the resources on DogStarDaily (especially Before You Get Your Puppy and After You Get Your Puppy).
     
  • The ‘best’ method for dog training is normally the quickest, easiest, and most effective for a pet owner.  (Explaining learning theory is normally not quick, easy, or effective.)
     
  • The 6 Es of dog training: Easy, Efficient, Effective, Enjoyable, Efficacious (do its job but not produce side effects), Expedient (techniques should be suitable for pet owners).
     
  • Use games.  Games are fun, they motivate everyone (the dog, the owner, spectators, and the trainer).  They allow a way for you to quantify a dog’s performance without the ‘pressure’ of performing, and owners often comply more with games than standard instructions.  (Owners will do almost anything for a ribbon!)
     
  • Remember that the dog owner has zero years of experience and none of your dog training skills.
     
  • To be successful in dog training, you need to be a people person – especially in order to motivate people to do what you ask.
     
  • Start taking stats on dog training – and use your stats in marketing and use them to motivate clients (it shows that their dogs are doing better!).
     
  • Use ‘the Bozo Game’ to help you practice correct responses.  The Bozo Game entails getting your dog training buddies together, and your goal is to create appropriate responses that keep the owner on side, despite the ‘bozo-y’ things they are saying.  For example, “I rub my dog’s nose in it’s mess when it poos inside.” or “I can’t walk my dog unless I put it on a prong collar”.  Your job is to respond in a way that means you don’t lose your client!  (And the implications of that is, potentially, they’ll use a trainer that is less refined as you, and the dog won’t improve, and the dog may end up being euthanised.)  Answers to these statements could be, “It must makes heaps of mess when you rub the dog poo into the carpet! I’ve got a cleaner way for you to housetrain your dog.” or “After attending my classes, you might be able to find other ways to walk your dog.”  If you come up with an inappropriate response (e.g. “You’re so cruel to your dog!” and “You’re an idiot!”) then you have ‘lost the dog’ and lost the game.
     

 

12/21/11

McGreevy: General Dog Training Thoughts

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.

 

McGreevy described animal training as “a bit of an art and a bit of a science”. ‘Training’ animals means changing the frequency to which animals show certain behaviours. Learning theory is a universal language that clarifies the nature of training, explaining what will work and will not work, and its general principles apply regardless of the species being trained.

Training often seeks to establish connections between two or more events, and does so by using operant conditioning (i.e. rewards and punishments) and classical conditioning, and often these two work together.  ‘Conditioning’ is any relatively permanent response that occurs as a result of exercise (that is, any responses formed by maturation or debility are not from conditioning).

Trainers often have exquisite timing, and have the ability to self reflect on their progress.

 

 

Photos © Ruthless Photos

“Life coaches”

McGreevy prefers to use the term ‘life coach’ to describe the relationship between a dog and a person.  Life coaches have opportunities for the dog to have success, but also rules.  (The concept of ‘alpha’ asks for people to adopt an unrealistic, pseudo dog role that is not very useful for dog training.)  How dogs and people interact is relevant to the dog’s success.  The handler of a dog needs to be relevant to the dog – a boring or passive life coach is irrelevant for the dog, and the dog will not work.  Dogs will form a bond with their owners, and a trust, but this trust is not generalisable to all situations or to different people.

‘Trust’, itself, is an interesting concept.  It is difficult to measure, and is built on consistency.  During training, trust is built be trainers being caregivers and companions rather than ‘leaders’ or ‘dominant’.

Generally in dog training, we seek dogs that will respond to cues (e.g. the word ‘sit’) with appropriate behaviours.  It is an ongoing process that requires maintenance in many contexts and environments.

 

Dog social order

Dogs with one another have a social order, but it’s not so much a hierarchy. Dog social order is built on difference, not dominance.  This ‘difference’ is a different desire for different resources, meaning some dogs are more inclined to seek some resources than others.  The ideas of social order shouldn’t be ‘thrown out’ with dominance theory.  In short, dogs have evolved to compete with one another.  Excellent coaches tap into the resources that dogs compete over, and use them in training (as rewards).

 

This concludes our section on training dogs, but we will continue to investigate more McGreevy topics in posts to come.

 

In the meantime, I wonder:

What do you think are the ‘art’ and the ‘science’ bits of dog training?

How does your self-reflection as a trainer go?

How would you measure trust with your dogs?

 

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.