11/04/2025
I’m posting this photo again because the comments we got when I posted it last time were really interesting. So, the folded arms and power stance copies the classic ‘It’s Me or the Dog’ pose - we’re having fun, but also celebrating our inner strength, which we don’t ever feel we need to project to the world like this because we are, each of us, very strong and successful women and business owners, and our work speaks for itself. It was a bit of a laugh.
Most positive male and female trainers got that this was a bit of fun. But the comments from some female but mostly male balanced trainers show how provoked they were into making (yet again) derogatory comments and repeating the same tired old rhetoric that they would love to see us work with dogs in the ‘real world’ or implying we don’t train ‘big dogs’ with serious problems - like that’s some kind of badge of honor. One went so far as to assert that ‘there are plenty of female K9 handlers and trainers but, they, uh, work with the kinds of dogs Victoria gets bitten by (refering to, I presume, when I wasn’t training and was behind the camera filming a police K9 training exercise that went wrong) and they’re balanced trainers not positive-only.’
You see, we’re all used to ignorant comments like this and they make us roll our eyes because it’s a pathetic attempt to throw out a barb and patronize, as these kind of male balanced trainers often do.
But this person and people like him have no idea what they’re talking about when they write ‘positive-only.’ If you ask any of them to define what positive training is, they can’t or have no idea what we do. They just think it’s giving treats. The bigger and badder the dog, the less likely we ‘positive female trainers’ can deal with them, they comment. It’s something I’ve heard balanced trainers say for years in an attempt to discredit what positive training is and what we male and female positive trainers do.
Not a surprise at all, and of course, couldn’t be further from the truth. All of us specialize in aggression cases, all of us deal with dogs that have fears, phobias and anxiety, whether those dogs are big or small, and all of us work with puppies, helping our clients guide them into navigating the ‘real’ world successfully. All of us have trained working dogs including German Shepherds and Malinois (some of these trainers live or have lived with these kinds of dogs too) and all of us work with small dogs!
Regardless of this debate, a photo of unsmiling women in a power stance, provoked a response. If the photo was of a group of men standing like this, I’m sure most of the comments from other males, especially those in the balanced training world, would celebrate how powerful and strong they were!
