Chris Fraize's K-911

Taking advantage of the warm, early spring temperatures, I decided to take one of my apprentices off-site to do some “Street Steady” obedience. Street Steady obedience simply means taking classroom lessons and applying them in real time in the real world. It’s an extremely fun and useful class. Street steady is one of my favorites.

So we decided to head to a local bowling alley. Lots of strange and distracting noises, smells, sights, object, and people! And, of course, the noisy bowling games: balls rolling and then pins falling while people scream in joy (or more often frustration). Pizza, hot dogs, fries, and ice cream all held and then dropped onto the carpet by young disobedient children. You get the picture.

Mandy did very well. She learned a lot and accomplished a great deal with her dog Mabel . After finishing at the bowling alley, we were driving back to Canine Solutions when I noticed a giant pet store. I can’t say the name but they are a PET COmpany and apparently it’s where the pets go.

As we drove by the giant pet store I suddenly remembered Mandy mentioning to me that she had avoided the PET COmpany because of the difficult time she had controlling her dogs when she’d visited the PET COmpany in the past. If you have spent any time with me at all, you know I’m a big fan of studying and then dealing with training issues straight on as opposed to avoiding them. Soooooo…. I decided to park the car and help Mandy and Mabel address their issues straight on. Boldly, we entered the problem itself…THE PET COmpany!

I had Mandy perform stays, sits, downs, heels, recalls, and a ton of environmental work with Mabel. Mabel and Mandy then gathered more and more confidence with each opportunity to learn, teach, and experience canine training and behavior. Bottom line, Mandy and Mabel did very well in the PET COmpany. They have come a long way in a very short time. They still have a long way to go, and I enjoy that both dog and handler are enjoying the training process. Cool stuff!

While we were enjoying our real life canine problem solving and training, A PET COmpany dog training class started right in the center of the store. The very young and very nice lady who was instructing the class had her job title posted in capital letters across her back. It said “DOG TRAINER,” which is how customers knew she was the dog trainer. There were a few very out of control dogs in the class. However, there were many more unruly dogs being walked around the store by well-intentioned but oblivious dog owners. There was absolutely no control throughout the entire class, and while the trainer would instruct her eager and desperate students to command their dogs to obey commands that the dogs didn’t know. Meanwhile the dogs in the class were barking, pulling, sniffing, jumping and completely ignoring their owners. When the owners asked for help, the PROFESSIONAL dog trainer simply told them to release their dogs from the obedience command that the dogs weren’t obeying in the first place and give their disobedient dogs a treat because they need a reward at the release.

As I watched as this chaotic class being taught by a well-meaning, nonetheless sub novice trainer attempting to employ canine training methods and behavioral theory that she clearly did not understand, the desperate customer asked the professional dog trainer legitimate training questions that the owner PAID to have answered and addressed. This “professional” trainer could not answer her questions. Yikes! The customer came looking for answers and PAID for knowledge and the answers. I thought to myself… This is sad. The customer came to the trainers with a thirst for knowledge and left with a dry mouth. When the average dog owner seeks professional assistance with their family companion, they rely on the professional dog trainer for answers to their very real and often very scary training and behavior issues. Simply put, they need results.

EVERY dog trainer can get results and I do mean EVERY dog trainer. So is every dog trainer doing the same things? No. Once the owner begins training with a trainer, ANYTHING is a result. So when trainers say they get results they aren’t kidding. ANYTHING is a result. If the dog does better, that’s a result. If the dog does worse, that’s a result too. The client needs results that take them towards their goal that bring them closer to the solution. Why are forward results so important? Well, who wants backwards results in anything? A backward result is called deterioration. I don’t want to hire a professional to make this worse.

To be fair, I don’t believe that the PET COmpany dog trainer is personally out to screw people out of money. I believe she is just teaching what she was taught or read in the stores weeks’ long “fast food” dog trainers program. She simply wanted to be a dog trainer and decided the easy route is to start her career was the PET COmpany. Just like anything in the super chain world the bottom line is how much money they can make in the shortest amount of time and usually with the lowest quality product. This manner of “super store” training is the “fast food” of the dog training industry. It takes many years to be a good dog trainer. It takes years more to be a great dog trainer. Professional dog trainer should not be a title you can earn online. It should not be a title you can get after just a few weeks or months and it should not be awarded by schools that give the title “certified master trainer” in just 6 weeks. I don’t know of ANY profession that can be MASTERED in just 6 weeks!

Sadly, we are in a society of instant gratification. Dog training is no exception. In fact, dog training and canine behavior has become big business. For instance fast food drive thrus have become a cheap and quick choice for the modern human to get a meal. The fast food drive thru menu is full of low quality ingredients with hollow calories that only benefit the customer with short term and instant gratification with long term problems. Nowadays quick and cheap is the new trend in the dog training and canine behavior industry. Dog training is now offered with fast results at a cheap price and are eagerly promised by many big business PET COmpanies and even by pretenders trying to make a quick buck on what you don’t know about dog training and behavior.

Most folks that need help with their dog training and canine behavior are looking for help because they can’t fix the problems without guidance. In fact many people have beliefs and extremely strong opinions about dogs and dog behavior. Most of those opinions are just regurgitated opinions from other people or from misunderstood interpretations of web pages. Some professional trainers just “love dogs” and have little more than that and a business card as their “qualifications”.

So what’s my point? Paying a canine professional your hard earned money for training that is at best going to leave you in the same place you started in and at worst leave you thinking that your dog can’t be trained with problem behaviors getting worse is simply frustrating for you, the dog and the only beneficiary is the dreaded… PET COmpany! Dog training is interspecies communication not fast food.

Safe training,

Chris Fraize

Canine Solutions Training Services

http://www.k9sts.com