Dog Trainers That Can Do The Job

These dogs were trained by Lauren Henry and Roland Sonnenburg and their team of trainers from Talented Animals.

So what do these trainers say in their excellent post, entitled Animal Training 101? They note that:

Refining social relationships means that you are constantly aware of the relationship you have with your animal and use your training time to polish this dynamic. You use training to make sure your animal respects and enjoys your leadership. That he trusts your decisions. That he wants to please you. Each time he performs as requested and the outcome is positive he becomes more confident in your leadership.

Leadership?

We're supposed to be leading the dog? Whaaaaaat???

I thought the dog was supposed to be an equal? Leadership suggests hierarchy. Hierarchy means someone is in charge. You mean the human is in charge? The human is the pack leader??!!

Oh. My. God.

Lauren Henry and Roland Sonnenburg continue:

You must constantly be aware of your animal’s attitude, energy, and focus: you need to induce the state that you want, and only train while you are able to maintain your animal in that state.

What? You have to be aware of the animals attitude, energy, and focus?

This is starting to sound like that "calm, assertive energy" mumbo-jumbo you hear from You Know Who.

Oh. My. God.

Lauren Henry and Roland Sonnenburg continue:

[I]n training we rehearse mindfulness: we present a stimulus and facilitate our animal’s thoughtful response.

What? Animals might get reflexively reactive, and might need to get "snapped out of it"?

Oh. My. God.

Lauren Henry and Roland Sonnenburg continue:

You must also remain aware of the character you want to develop in your animal. What you rehearse regularly in training you will see blossom in his daily demeanor. You may spend time developing patience, independent problems solving skills, confidence, and attention span. You may work to get him more focused on you, or less. Balance is essential here.

Balance? Oh. My. God. That word!!

Be the leader. Calm and assertive. Balance.

These people simply can't be able to train dogs! They can't!

These people don't sound at all like that Lady Who Took a Correspondence School Dog Training Course!

In fact, these folks are so RADICAL they are actually stooping to describing what operant conditioning is all about!

No fair!

Operant conditioning, commonly associated with B.F. Skinner (American psychologist 1904-1990): an animal will repeat with increasing frequency and intensity those behaviors which result in positive consequences, and will repeat with decreasing frequency those behaviors which result in negative or neutral consequences. Almost all of animal training derives from that simple notion.

Ha!

Of course, I am kidding.

These folks are great trainers, and they are great human instructors too judging by this excellent article which details the danger of turning to coercion too quickly, and the benefits of giving a dog "time out" while it watches another dog perform for reward.

Read the whole thing -- all of it -- where the authors talk about the importance of exercise, putting pressure on a dog and and taking it off, bridging, chaining, and other basic concepts.

These are real animal trainers. And it shows!
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