Tags
Classes, Dog Training, Dominance, Halti, Obedience, Positive Reinforcement, Prong Collar, Trainers
Recently I shared a blog about dog training, Dog Training What Methods Are Best? Since writing that blog our pup was spayed and we missed the last class of basic obedience training.
One of the trainers called me to say I was signed up for the advanced class. This class costs $150. I hadn’t signed up for anything and had expressed that we’d need to go back through the basic class again, as our dog really wasn’t able to successfully participate in the last 2 or 3 classes we’d attended. Each time we’d taken her to the church basement where classes were held she’d escalated, jumping on us, biting us, vocalizing loudly. The trainers had taken her from us to work with her, she bit them and acted out.
I suggested that we knew we didn’t pass basic class, but the trainer said we had passed, she had our certificate. I asked her how that was possible. She didn’t really have an answer other than everyone pretty much passes. (She’d previously told us one of her dogs had to go through twice to pass.)
The fact that our dog couldn’t participate with us because she was so overstimulated and acting out, but had passed the class really damaged their credibility for me. There had been other things that had damaged the credibility of individual trainers, as I outlined in the above mentioned blog, ex: trainers telling us our dogs should NEVER be allowed on our beds with us, but a trainer sharing pics with me of her dogs on her bed with her.
During class one evening, when they were explaining “structured walks” to us, I had a discussion with one of the trainers, asking if the organization didn’t support canine enrichment at all. She told me there was no need to allow a dog to put their nose on the ground and sniff while walking, that they could sniff scents without doing that, that they shouldn’t be allowed to stop and evacuate their bladder or bowels whenever they wanted, that the walker should build into their walks times and locations for potty breaks. I told her that goes against everything I’ve ever been taught about walking a dog. She told me it’s all about being in charge, dominating the dog by controlling literally everything they do and can have.
Just recently that same trainer posted on her facebook page an article, Allowing Dogs to Sniff Helps Them Think Positively and even posted a personal message saying “I know I have had the most success with Abby once I stopped caring about a perfect heel and focused on letting her do what she loves- sniffing. It allowed her to make actual dog friends and be less reactive to others.”
These trainers were aggressive about what a perfect heel should look like, would take our dog from us and tell us we were doing it wrong, jerk her around by her neck to make her heel. One of them went so far as to jerk on her collar (they referred to it as “giving the leash a pop”) so hard it straightened out the key ring we used to secure our pup’s tags to her collar and threw the tags all over the floor.
Needless to say we will not be going back, we do not care to have the certificate. I decided to see if my Kodi’s Halti would fit our girl and it does. I started working with her, with a leash on the Halti, one on her prong collar, introducing her to the Halti slowly, communicating with her through the prong until she was accustomed to the Halti. After 3 days of slowly loosening up on the one leash and transferring communication to the Halti leash, she’s been walking on the Halti exclusively. I put the prong collar away. She’d begun to pull on the prong, stand up on her hind feet again, had seemingly become desensitized to it. I hated that thing and didn’t like the idea of having to cause discomfort to get her to comply. I was still struggling to get her to not pull and walk with a loose leash, but since using the Halti… she is walking on loose leash about 85% of the time, only keeping the leash taut when she sees squirrels, sometimes other dogs or people.
Dominance based training has been debunked for some time, positive reinforcement training is what is supported by canine behaviorists. I don’t want my dog to fear me, to comply only because I inflict some sort of discomfort, I want her to want to comply because it’s pleasant for us to be together, because she wants to please.