There are some big leaps that must be accomplished to take a concept and turn it into a real-world application for your dog. Here are the basic steps.
First Leap: it helps to have a dog to work with. In fact, it helps that you have worked with a lot of dogs first. I get inquiries from people who are looking to be a dog trainer. The first question I ask is if they have a dog. Many have never had a dog. So, that’s the first step. When I got my first dog in 1986, I had no clue what to do. So, I signed up for some classes. Back then group classes were the thing, that is what almost all pet owners did; I got to see many dogs of various breeds and ages do the same exercises. There were also differences between handlers, from age to skill level to motivation. I picked up as much from working my own dog as from osmosis as I gained knowledge as I watched others.
At this stage, it is going to be best to follow what a good instructor teaches, even if you don’t know what or why it works. You also must be prepared that a lot of trainers, unfortunately, speak Dog Nonsense and Dog Gibberish. Not to be political, but it reminds me of Ronald Reagan’s famous quote: ‘The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” Well in the dog world, especially with famous social media dog training gurus, they know so much that isn’t true. And that false information is going to hold you back, even for years. Because you are going to have to unlearn all that trash.
You also need experience taking your dog into nature and into human habitations (rural to densely urban). Take some road trips. Go hiking, swimming, camping, housesit for others, do hotels and restaurants, visit people, do church picnics, maybe hunt, volunteer with your dog for charity, take walks in the bad part of town at night… yeah, all that kind of stuff and more.
Those experiences are going to help you understand the theories. There are many scientists and even some specialty dog trainers that have no clue about dog behavior in the real world: Dog Nonsense and Dog Gibberish is almost a disease in these arenas.
Second Leap: you need to study the theory. To be good, you must study, and that takes years. A 500 page science book is no cakewalk. There is no shortcut. Lots of names of lots of scientists are going to come up, and you are going to have to master their work to the level that you can teach it to others. An easy place to start is reading books on the different breeds. That helped me a lot at the beginning. It wasn’t science, per se, but it was fascinating to see how genetics are expressed in the different breeds and their crosses. I used to have a book by Leon Whitney which showed various breed crosses and their results, like the Cocker Spaniel X Basenji, crosses and back crosses. I found that very useful when seeking to understand various traits, especially in mixed breed dogs. A similar path is reading other breed crossing books and literature, showing coat, ear, and body inheritance patterns in dogs. Before there were genetic tests, you had to be able to look at a dog and come up with a reasonable guess as to what made that dog tick, what went into that dog, even if it was supposedly a purebred dog.
The reading gets harder and more obscure the more you read. At some point, it helps to have others to discuss the same things you are reading. For some, that means either going to college or corresponding with different experts (veterinarians, professors, master dog trainers, etc… Warning: Dog Nonsense and Dog Gibberish). I remember sitting down with a well-known professor at ASU a few years ago, discussing Scott and Fuller’s experiments. At first, I think he was surprised that I knew their work. That doesn’t bode well for what first impressions you are going to evoke when you want to correspond. They are going to start out thinking you are an uneducated idiot. Fortunately, if you study long enough, you are going to eventually realize that some of these professors are uneducated idiots. But, for now, don’t get ahead of yourself. You are an uneducated idiot.
Third Leap: can you put it all together? Can you combine all of that and devise your own solutions to problems? Until you can take all of that and plan out a specific and effective solution for whatever dog specialty you are into, you will still need to copy what others are doing and your studies are not complete. You’re not a Jedi, yet.
The difference between the laboratory, which is what a lot of the science books draw upon, and the real world, is miles apart. This is the last and hardest leap. You are going to read something, or hear something, by a scientist and say, that makes no sense whatsoever. I remember during the end of my third year in college, I started questioning my professors. By then, I knew they didn’t know what they were talking about. I then went my own way in my studies. I took the required core classes, but I also took the classes I believed would help me in the future, and I focused on what was relevant to the real world. Some of my professors weren’t so happy when I questioned their teaching. Whatever. I wasn’t there to please them, or even to get a good grade. I realized I was there to become educated and that became my goal.
The natural world is unpredictable, and when you add in humans, it is more so. The laboratory, and the controlled atmosphere of the dog show ring, agility ring, sporting competition, group class, or board and train, doesn’t reflect what is going to happen when your dog is off leash, scared and running around traffic or in the forest as prey temptingly runs or flies away.
I wrote all of this for this main purpose: there is so much gaslighting in the dog training world (Dog Nonsense and Dog Gibberish). People puffing up their resumes (“I’m a 30 year old dog guru and I train thousands of dogs every year”). I saw a video the other day of two early 20ish young people claiming they were “master dog trainers”. I had to roll my eyes. No way they have paid their dues to use that description, and there is no way dog owners should believe that phony marketing. It takes a lot to be good at real world dog training, and the above sketch shows you why. Now, if you are young, that isn’t bad, just don’t pretend to be something that you are not. It is OK to be where you are, just don’t get ahead of yourself. All it takes is one very aggressive encounter with the wrong dog, and your career will be over, permanently. Instead of puffing up your resume, be honest about where you are, and let others, unsolicited, tell the world about you, good or bad. You’ll be able to live with that, otherwise, you’ll become so defensive that you won’t be able to learn and grow.