10/28/2020
LISTEN TO YOUR TRAINER!
I will be the first one to admit I am not the end all be all of Dog Trainers. I am good at what I do but there is always room to improve. I will admit that not all trainers are created equal. I will always do my best to never bad mouth another dog trainer and what they have done. Be that here or in my classes. I will always try to find the positive in what another trainer was teaching or tried to teach, no matter how hard that maybe. I will always do my best to help you find the training solutions you need. For me, if I can’t fix what’s wrong or if I can’t help you, I will help you find someone who will and can help you. I do my best to always be upfront with my students about what I can and cannot do.
I have had more than one of my students tell me about how their other trainers did something or how much time and money they paid, and they felt that they did not really learn anything from them after they have taken a few of my classes. Sure, this makes me feel good and everything, but it also makes me wonder about the whole of the situation. Did they listen?
You chose your trainer for a reason, you are paying the trainer a lot of money to help you. So why take classes and pay a lot of money if you are not going to listen?
I had one student who had a super smart dog. I found mom questioning what and how I was teaching her dog every week. Each week I felt the questioning was getting more and more aggressive in tone. The dog would “Forget” behaviors from one week to the next and as I watched mom, I could tell she was confused on what she was doing. She would do something that I did not teach or say something to her dog that was not terms I would use. One afternoon I finally asked what was wrong? She told me she was taking my class, a class later in the week with another trainer who only wanted them to do what he said AND she was following a trainer on YouTube! DO NOT DO THIS! It’s confusing for everyone and most of all your dog.
I asked her how long she had left in the other class, which was about halfway through. I then asked her to not come to my class until she was done with the other one. I even offered to do a refund if she wanted. She was shocked that I was asking her not to come back to class. She felt like I was kicking her out of my class. I chuckled and explained I was not tossing her out of my class, but I felt her, and her dog were not really learning anything but how to be frustrated. She needed to pick one trainer and stay with them until their class was finished. I explained that she had too many training voices in her head and her dog was getting frustrated in her inability to be consistent in what and how she was asking him.
When she calmed down and thought about what it was I was asking her, she realized I was right. She did come back and finish my class after her other one. We ended up changing a few things on what she was doing but she and her dog were so much more relaxed. She is still a student and comes back into classes from time to time. Her dog is a great therapy dog these days.
LISTEN to your trainer. You are paying them for a reason. If you are not going to listen to your trainer you are wasting your money, your time, frustrating yourself your dog and most of all wasting the trainers time.
