There is one thing I have been seeing a lot online recently – people being defensive of the way that they handle their dogs, train their dogs and any decisions that they make for them. To an extent, I can understand the feeling. Nobody ever likes to find out that they may have been wrong about something, made the wrong decision or handled something the wrong way.
Understanding it does not mean that I accept it.
I regret many things about the way that I handled or trained my dogs in the past. In the beginning of my dog handling life, science was a long way behind where it is now when it comes to canine psychology. I grew up in the era of the Barbara Woodhouse methods. For those of us in the UK above a certain age, we will all remember standing there in front of our dogs, clearly enunciating the word ‘Sit!’ accompanied by a rapid hand movement upwards. Followed of course by a ‘correction’ on a choke chain if the command was not obeyed quickly enough. I have never been a cruel person by nature, and many have treated dogs far, far worse than I would ever dream of, even back then, but this was a nationally recognised and respected trainer on the television regularly, so she must be doing it right, it must be the right way to train dogs. (I know, believe me I know!)
Over time, science moved on but, to my shame, I did not for some time. Cognitive dissonance began to set in as I could not deny that things were not as they should be, that jarring feeling of mental discord as two opposing ideas war in the mind and there is a fight to avoid letting go of the way that things have always been. Deep down I knew better, but this was the way things had always been done and why should that change? After all, why should I bribe my dogs to do things? I put the roof over their heads; they should obey me through respect for me. I am happy to say that I never subscribed to the dominance theory, and there has always been an element of positive reinforcement in my training, so there is that at least that I can look back on with slightly less shame.
Then along came Finn. Scared of everything outside of a very small, safe bubble of space, even I realised that the methods I had always used would not work with him. Lacking so much confidence as he was and then developing reactivity meant that any kind of authoritative approach would only make things worse. The act of researching reactivity, and how to tackle the problem brought me to the concept of counter conditioning. At this point, I viewed Finn’s ‘aggression’ as a problem because I had yet to realise that Finn was not being difficult for the sake of it, but rather that he was finding aspects of his life difficult to cope with. I knew nothing about conditioning, save for a faint recognition of the concept of Pavlov’s dogs. I started reading about using high value food rewards as a way to change emotional connections to things. Despite thinking that I could tell without doubt if my dogs were happy or unhappy, I had never really thought about dogs having emotions to quite the extent that I now know they do. (And I also know that I could not tell how my dogs were feeling anywhere near as much as I thought I could!)
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| This is his 'you have treats hidden!' face |
Seeing how Finn started to react to counter conditioning prompted me to start trying the (for me) novel idea of using treats for training along with the fuss and attention that had always played a part in my training methodology. Then I started wanting to know more about how I could help my scaredy-cat boy so I started studying. Then I discovered how to use a clicker. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. I have moved to a positive outlook. Do I have days when I get really annoyed because things are not going the way I want them to when working with my dog? Of course I do, I am human. On those days, we put the training plan away, hang out, and have fun instead. I am not perfect, by definition as a human being I cannot be. Neither is my dog. To be honest, I would not want him to be ‘perfect’ – there are things I would love to be easier about him, but then if they were, I would not be doing what I do now, and I really love the path my life is taking.
So no, I will not accept defensiveness when it comes to any decisions people have made when it comes to their dogs. If they are in the past, decisions cannot be changed and were hopefully made for the best of reasons. Keep up with the science, read the latest developments when it comes to anything to do with your dogs. Make sure you are as educated as you can possibly be, and then make each decision based on science, knowledge and good common sense, not because it is the way you have always done things. If that means that decisions made in the past have proved to be wrong, learn from it and do not make those mistakes again. There is honestly no shame from having done the wrong thing for what at the time were thought to be the right reasons. We can all only ever do the very best that we are capable of. We are beholden however to make sure we are capable of making the best decisions possible.
The title of this blog sums up my attitude to the subject of dogs now. There is so much more to educate myself about and develop my skills in. Learn to develop and change as the scope of human knowledge regarding canine psychology, health, coaching and all-round well-being continues to grow. Your dogs deserve nothing less.
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