I haven’t been involved in the dog training field as long as some, but it’s been long enough to observe that we are as prone as the next person to hitch rides on bandwagons as they go through town.
Our interest in the latest new thing is at once a good thing, possibly benign or potentially dangerous. If someone wants to spend weeks seeing if they can teach their dog to ring the doorbell by demonstrating the behavior and hoping their dog will imitate it, unless being able to ring the doorbell is an important skill the dog needs to have, I figure they can knock themselves out and see what happens. But if someone has a new dog in their home and housetraining is an issue, I’d suggest that not only is time of the essence (pooping and peeing in the house is a surefire way to get a dog returned to the shelter), I’m not so thrilled with the prospect of having to explain to an owner how they will implement an imitation-based protocol for this one.
Sometimes we behave less like the general population in regard to jumping on bandwagons than we do like someone heading to the Bahamas in 3 weeks who wants to lose 30lbs. Eating only tuna fish and grapefruit juice may “work” but we know that it’s not healthy and not likely to lead to long-term weight loss. There is no end to the diets one can try and apparently are working for some. Some of those diets may even claim to offer behind the scenes kinds of benefits, increased metabolism, happier brain chemistry, you name it. They may even offer all kinds of “evidence” supporting their claim. But the bottom-line remains that when it comes to losing weight the formula is simple (though not easy to follow) it’s about calories, eat fewer, burn more. Any diet based on this formula is likely to be successful.
Learning to be discriminating and thoughtful when it comes to how we train dogs, especially those with life-threatening behavior challenges (i.e., the dog will be relinquished to a shelter or euthanized) is important. Sometimes by the time we find which sh*t is going to stick to the wall the owner’s patience and the dog’s time is up. Or we subject a dog to a life of chronic suffering.
Jean Donaldson will be featured in this upcoming webinar on the importance of standard operating procedures in the dog training industry. Creativity and innovation can be wonderful things, but it’s helpful to be able to know how to kick the tires on that bandwagon before you climb onboard.
