Saying "I'm Just a Dog Trainer" Doesn't Cut It

I recently ran across a video on social media entitled "How to pick a dog trainer". There was nothing particularly unique about it. I see this sort of post pretty regularly, and I normally scroll past, but for some reason I lingered long enough to find out what this person was saying. There was some stuff about certifications, and professional organizations, and then "If they are a balanced trainer, don't hire them."

It wasn't a message about competence, compassion, or experience. It was an ideological litmus test masquerading as a way to comprehensively evaluate the a professional without asking single question that speaks to experience or ability.

They didn't suggest checking references, watching them interact with your dog, asking them how they would approach the training, or how much experience they had with whatever problem you're having.

Her take didn't surprise me. I kind of figured it was going to end up there when I started watching.

You see, sometime in the past, the dog training community became fractured.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't pretend there was ever a time when dog trainers didn't fight. I'm sure there have always been disagreements, and even bad blood between rival trainers. That's just how humans work. But at some point, there was a line drawn in the sand and everyone was put on a side. This was long before I became a trainer. My "side" was chosen for me the day I started training. The person who got me to training was on that side, so by default, I was too.

The sides have gone by many names over the years. Currently, we refer to them as "balanced" and "force free." And what separates them is whether or not they use "aversive control."

If "aversive control" sounds like a stuffy word for a simple idea, you're right. It is.

It might be easier to say "punishment" but dog nerds will get all uppity about that because in the dog world, "punishment" doesn't mean the same thing to us as it means when normal people use it. While all punishment counts as "aversive control" not all aversive control is punishment. What it basically means is using unpleasantness to change the dog's behavior. In any case, I was formed in the balanced camp, and by the current standard, I'm still in that camp. But that doesn't mean what it used to, at least not to most of us.

Early on, I was taught "real dog trainers" only use food for puppies, and for dogs who have been abused. One of the first books is owned suggested that any self-respecting dog would be offended by the offer of a bribe. But we've evolved.

One of my mentors, Dick Russell, used to quip to his group classes, "When I started, you'd be sooner caught swearing in church than to be a professional trainer and use food to train a dog!" He would then produce a huge metal bowl filled with sliced up hot dogs he had prepared for his students to use.

These days, most folks who would be considered "balanced" lean pretty heavily on food, toys, and affection. They've have learned to minimize their use of unpleasantness and are producing lots of enthusiastic dogs who are both reliable and happy. In fact, there is now a movement to separate "balanced" trainers from what they are calling "compulsion" trainers. And to be fair, what I did when I started would probably be more fairly called compulsion training. There wasn't really anything balanced about it.

What was normal for a "balanced trainer" 30 years ago, would shock a whole lot of people who call themselves balanced these days.

These days, most of the trainers who aren't on the extreme ends of the spectrum, do a lot of the same things in a lot of the same ways. Our work doesn't look as vastly different from each other as it once did.

Regardless of those similarities, anyone who uses any form of punishment, regardless of how innocuous, thoughtful, humane or effective it is, is still considered to be of the same class as trainers who rarely use food, rarely consider the dog's experience, and rarely try to make things easier for the dog.

It doesn't matter that in almost every way, our from training looks completely different from those trainers, or that we use different techniques, and strategies, and have vastly different outcomes. We are still on the same team because an imaginary line was drawn before I ever picked up a leash to train a dog, (maybe before I was even born!) Every trainer who, under any circumstances uses any sort of unpleasantness as a strategy is treated as if they are the same as trainers who rely mostly on imposing their will onto the dog. This is the world I live in, and it frustrates me to no end.

That line is drawn in a stupid place, and it causes unnecessary conflict amongst dog trainers. I think most of us near the middle ground sees the problem with this set up, but we don't seem to be able to come up with a way to address it.

A lot of people try to wash their hands of the problem by stepping away, "I don't need those labels! I'm just a dog trainer!" as if that settles the matter. It's not that I'm unsympathetic to their view. I wish it was possible to bow out of the whole thing. No one wants to be judged according to a standard they think is arbitrary and unhelpful. The problem is, the division will still exist regardless of what we call ourselves. People are tribal, and are hard-wired to form in-groups and out-groups. It's not a matter of choice really.

It's just what people do.

Saying "I'm just a dog trainer" doesn't change that tendency. It doesn't change it for yourself and it certainly doesn't change it for anyone else. Young trainers will still be taught to trust those in their "camp" and "distrust" those who aren't. It won't stop harmful marketing that misleads dog owners. There are a whole bunch of us, (maybe most of us), occupying a middle ground where we see kindred spirits on both sides of the imaginary line. A middle ground "force free trainer" will find little to object to in my day to day work. I know because I've shared videos with a few of the big names on that side of the line. But to the zealots, that doesn't matter. I'm on this side of the line, and that makes me a bad trainer and presumably a bad person as well. Any dog trainer who doesn't see that as a problem, is part of the problem.

Take away the labels, and you still have these cliques that end up dividing people who have a lot in common while lumping together people who have little in common.

Some trainers believe that by declaring themselves above those labels they can somehow change these cliques. But that's not going to work.

We can't merely say "I don't agree with your tribalism," and bow out. Tribalism is hard-wired into us. Dr. Robert Saposlsky of Stanford University says "... what becomes clear when you look closely is that it is virtually inevitable that we divide the world into us's and thems and we don't like thems very much and don't treat them well." There's tons and tons of data supporting this. And Sapolsky points out that it can seem very bleak. It's easy to feel like we are doomed to petty divisions over things like race, or religion etc.

Thankfully, he offers us some hope. He gives the example of someone wearing baseball cap for a team you like and how they suddenly become an us, and the thems are now Yankees fans. Even though we don't seem to be able to prevent ourselves from dividing the world along these tribal lines, we don't have to accept the lines we inherit from the culture around us. We can create new lines, and in the process (hopefully) change the culture. As a person, I did this a long time ago.

I see many people in the force free community as us's and I see most of the people on the extreme ends of both camps as thems.

In my head there are people who care about dogs, care about people, and try to treat all them with kindness and respect, and those people are my tribe. The people who don't are my thems. Don't get me wrong, I don't treat my thems poorly. I tend to just avoid interacting with them. I'm much more about supporting my team than hurting the other one. Unfortunately, there aren't enough of us (yet) to change the culture. Ideally, I would love to see us move to a world where most people in the dog world are seeing the world this way. I believe dogs, dog owners, and dog trainers will be better off if we can make this happen. Unfortunately, a lot of people (too many) who understand the destructiveness of the current dividing line, are happy to simply bow out by saying, "I'm just a dog trainer."

The problem is, the labels are symptoms of division, not cause of it. First we divide the world into us's and thems, then we create the labels. So avoiding labels, doesn't make the problem go away. The division is the real problem, not what we call ourselves or each other. Until the culture of dog training overwhelmingly embraces a new, more sensible, way to decide who we are aligned with, the industry will suffer from the same unnecessary divisions we've been struggling with for as long as I can remember. The old groups can't go away until enough of us embrace a new group. We need a new world view to replace the old one. I don't care what you call that view. If we can create a world where people who truly care about the dogs, and prioritize how they experience the training aren't artificially pushed into opposition based on an arbitrary standard, dogs will be better off, so will dog owners and dog trainers. So instead of trying to step out of the conversation, I want to urge every trainer who sees the problem for what it is, to start to think, and talk about, what ideals make for a good trainer. Let's rewrite the paradigm into an approach that encourages camaraderie with trainers who think similarly instead of relying on an imaginary litmus test.