The Balanced Dog Trainer

A local dog K9 trainer recently posted the following:

First things first. Pure Positive trainers end dog’s lives. At … we are balanced trainers and our results are undeniable. You cant fix bad dogs with cookies. You fix them by understanding dog behavior. Come join us … and see for yourself what a balanced approach can attain. All crazy and bad dogs welcome. Come learn from some of the best trainers in the country.

And they also referred to another trainer who claims to be a Behaviorist and Dog Whisperer, who said the following:

Here she starts with a false premise and tries using that to prove something else. When social dogs (or cats, kids, etc.) are playing they form and adjust the rules of the games by each simply saying yes or no to different things. If one prompts for some action and the other does not respond, that’s a simple answer. Not only is there no reason to inflict pain, who the heck would want to play with somebody who keeps hurting them? And just this one item about a dog’s social interactions is so fundamental, that her distorted description pretty much discredits any other advice she may have.

The local trainer claimed to be something called a Balanced Trainer. If we were to consider force-free trainers at one extreme and punishment trainers at the other, then Balanced would be the entire world between those two extremes, and conveniently something that they never really define. Surely, that entire range cannot all be equally good!

The tipsy balance

And, why on earth would one think that some kind of balance would be good? My job could pay me a lot of money, or just a little, but I’d really-really like to get a middle balanced amount?? About the only use for balanced here is to find some sound bite that avoids the need to think and learn about things.

As for how dogs set boundaries while playing, modern ethology says they use a deference system that specifically avoids that mentioned pain threshold. Watching my dogs teaching hundreds of other dogs social skills you can easily see several levels of signals they use, long before you hear any growls. As for actually inflicting pain on purpose, not only have I never seen that done but when it accidentally happens during play, any social dog will immediately back away.

I’ve helped introduce many people to dog parks, pointing out how that teaching is done. I’ve run playgroups teaching other people how dogs communicate. Any dog seen deliberately inflicting pain at that level would be immediately pulled out, yet that is what those trainers are calling normal.

So, about the only place that I agree with them is their last comment:

I feel the dogs probably know better!

Now, some pics that were taken from that balanced dog trainer:

The history from her blog

And, lest you think this is just a difference of opinion here, if we look at the history we can find a few other notable statements from this profound expert in 2018 on her Facebook blog:

Shelter dogs who were labeled as dangerous make the best service dogs. Your dog can be trained to be a service dog.

I can’t even think of any way to explain this one.

4-Day Detox and foundational treatment program: $595.00
The dog detoxes from adrenalin, learns perception modification and is introduced into a stable social pack and becomes foundationally balanced. Now you dog can think clearer and make better choices. Your dog is assigned to a K9 Guardian who works with your dog and lives with your dog for those four days.

Intensive treatment program for difficult dogs: $1495.00.
This unique program combines detox treatment, foundational work, our staff Veterinarian rules out problems that could be affecting behavior.

So all our problems are due to toxins! Who would have ever thunk that?

Our unique large scale group therapy sessions allow dogs to do what they were intended to do…be pack animals.

I can only speculate as to what her group therapy actually looks like in practice. Just wish I had a video to show.

Dog parks are inherently dangerous simply because there is too much energy going on among unstable dogs. The owners are not paying attention to important body language signals and fights happen often and owners are ill equipped to break up a fight. This doesn’t happen in our sessions because we mimic nature…Nature moves and humans do not interact with canines.

Ah, yes! Too much energy! I actually saw one of her sessions, where she had dogs running around in a circle in a room, and several people walking around and breaking up all the dog fights. In a dog park there’s enough room and they do what they want so that dogs can stay alone or visit their friends. If you take unsocialized dogs and force them to rapidly run next to and into strange dogs, you will surely have fights.

We have grown to be a national force in the dog rehabilitation business and have joined forces with 27 law enforcement and 22 animal control shelters across the country. With increased visibility comes a huge responsibility to educate the public on safe ownership of their furry loved ones. It also comes with it a huge respect for those we work with. We have been called upon dozens of times in the past few months to assist law enforcement and AC in rescuing dogs in abandoned back yards and taking in dogs with questionable behaviors from Animal Controls who do not have the resources to deal with this population.

Now a National Force, but which nobody knows about. The local animal control will not deal with her, and she could never identify even a single law enforcement group that worked with her.

And she spent months accusing the local animal control of murder, identifying individual people there by name, and asking that their home addresses be shared, including a person well known in the community for helping to save the lives of many dogs.

This bumper sticker is our biggest seller. Order yours today and express your first ammendment rights and share your support for a NO KILL …. 5.00 will go to CHEC Enterprises legal defense fund to kick animal controls ass once again in court in ” dangerous dog cases” …

That statement came out about the bumper sticker, being followed in a few months by the next one.

When their attempt to discredit … didn’t work, they again tried to attack the business by using a bumper sticker designed by one of their own officers. When … was cleared by a federal investigation and found to not have anything to do with the bumper sticker, Animal Control got desperate.

Subsequent to that statement, she denied it and claimed somebody else came out with those bumper stickers. But, those were her words, on her blog, as reported by KQRE on 8/2018. By the way, nobody ever found that alleged federal investigation, nor any reason for any federal involvement.

Her sad legacy

Many more examples could be given, but the point is that once you see something that is really outrageous or has amazing guarantees, it’s very likely that it is only the tip of an iceberg. There are many good textbooks in the last 50 years on ethology (animal behavior) and applied animal behavioral psychology. And none of them agree with most of what she says.

But, can some dogs be helped there? Well, the majority of dogs and issues are typically pretty easy. Even if what you do is half-way wrong, the dog may often just work it out on his own, so you’ll find that even the worst dog trainer does have some successes. But, many people who love their dogs will be left with a mistaken impression of how the dog should be treated and what makes them happy, and the lives of those dogs will suffer from that. A fairly common issue, which had been written about elsewhere, as in Your dog training may not work for the reason you think it does.

Leaving a Heritage Behind

It appears that the original dog trainer mentioned here is now gone. However, she spent several years training others, and one of them seems to have taken over. I happened to catch the end of one of her classes at a local dog park. She was walking around and adjusting shock collars, with a bunch of the controllers sitting on the table. All the dogs seem to walk around aimlessly, and any who responded to my dogs were corrected.

The Road Now Continues

The new trainer now has a new name, but it all continues.

I know hundreds of dog park regulars who never bother with weapons, and never have any issues with other dogs. Alternately, we have people suggesting you carry baseball bats or firearms. And, please note that she’s not just speaking about dogs, but also people.

For many years now, I’ve taught dogs how to manage sometimes awkward approaches by people. Instead, she seems to say all people must be trained before approaching your dog. Just consider the practicality of doing that.

I walked three dogs this morning down a busy trail, meeting several people. Two of them have less interest in people, and know how to calmly duck away, but won’t panic if a person walks right up to them. The third loves meeting people and kids, and knows how to handle situations on his own.

That’s what is called a restricted fact, which is only true under certain conditions. If you are working with feral or backyard dogs, they have no idea what you might be saying to them. Instead, they react far more to your body language. Which is not simply how you appear, but very much includes how you react to their actions.

Over time, dogs learn that humans have a very rich verbal language, and begin to pick out both words and intonations. At that point, as people generally have more control over the words they say than their body language, many dogs will then preferentially cue on the less confusing verbal information.

Well, I guess that we could start here with just throwing away the last 70 years of developments in behavioral psychology and their application to dog training. Moving instead to all the research and science based on using feelings and needs in dog training. Something which doesn’t really exist other than in articles such as Elite K9 presented..

Behavior is something that we can directly teach, while their feelings are just a result that you can’t directly change. And adaptive behavior will change their view of the world, satisfying a need, and allowing them to have far more pleasant feelings.

I have worked with many very fearful dogs. I’ve seen people just focus on their feelings, with a combination of medication and always leaving them a place to hide from the world, and just sheltering them from it. The results have often been either a horrible life for the dog, or a process which required many years to complete. Instead, I taught them knowledge of what is in the world, and behavior which permits them to cope with this in a manner that allows them to feel secure, and often enjoy. The majority of those dogs completely changed in under three months.