When I was younger, and my knowledge of dog behaviour was the same as every other dog owner, I found myself in need of a dog trainer. My young dogs (around 6 months old) had caused my neighbour to complain about barking. Being probably a little young and quite naive – I like most other dog owners who have received a neighbours complaint – panicked and went and got myself a dog trainer.
At the time the local council was all in support of a particular Dog Training Franchise Company, so that was the company we picked. This company is not really upfront about their training technique – though to be fair I did not know there were things as different techniques in training.
Anyway, the trainer come over, we paid a large sum of money for a 2-3 hour training session, which guaranteed results. Just what we needed – a quick fix for our puppy barking problem. And what is more if we had any further problems, as long as we were following their advice – we would get a lifetime of free training.
The guy sat down and told us all about pack leadership and how our dogs were misbehaving because they were running the house. Reflecting now I find it a little ironic that the problem was when we weren’t at home and it is very difficult to seek status over someone when they weren’t there, but I digress. Then, and I remember this moment very clearly, in a nice sweet voice the trainer coaxed my dogs to him – very sweetly and very gently – then all at once he shouted “BAAH” at the top of his voice, threw a metal chain to the ground in a mighty “crash”. The dogs bolted away from the trainer and hid – we then moved into the lounge room of my house that looks on to the street and the trainer paraded his dog up and down the curb in front of my house – my dogs – like a miracle not reacting to the man and his dog – and if they dared to look to long a “Baah” and “crash” was all it needed to correct their behaviour – our problems were solved. Or so we thought. The trainer then left us to our own devices with nothing but a few pieces of chain and a new word to throw at our “naughty” dogs.
This is the allure of the quick fix – as if 2 hours could solve the problems of the world – the reality is if we could find a quick fix for dog behaviour problems, then we would apply it to people – no more psychologists, justice system, or welfare system required thank-you very much. The truth is not what happens in that 2 hour session, but what happens after that…
