When evaluating a dog, a lot depends upon what the owner and trainer can’t perceive about the situation as well as what they can’t predict. No dog trainer is a mystical guru, regardless of their marketing.
The problem of perception has been studied for a long time by scientists, and even they haven’t figured it all out. They lack the perception to fully understand and predict the perceptions of animals and people! It is very interesting to read these studies. One major block is that humans aren’t dogs, and vice versa. We can’t see, smell, hear, touch, behave, vocalize or feel as a dog. Take smell. Dogs smell a world we will never understand. Who knows what they pick up? They can detect cancer; which way someone walked along a trail; status of other dogs; probably the emotional state of other animals and people; threats; prey changes in behavior; sexual readiness; age of others; chemicals; food types that are biologically significant to them; some types of prey but not others; weather; and who knows what else. We are never going to pick up on all of that, and that will cloud our predictions. Any number of unknown factors can intensify a dog at one moment that weren’t present a few moments before, and a human will never know that conditions have changed. The dynamics of life constantly create permutations.
When someone evaluates your dog, they are developing a perception of what has happened (since they typically haven’t known the dog all its life) and then will make predictions based upon the information available at the time. Early evaluations depend upon the testimony of the witnesses, too: the owners. What they perceived might not be accurate or predictive. Thus, no evaluation can ever predict what a dog will do in the future. The purpose of the evaluation is to attempt some kind of prediction, but that is all. That is true for dog owners, trainers and even veterinarians.
A human example: let’s say you are interviewing a potential employee. You get their resume, references, do a few tests, and several interviews. But we all know even with all of that, not all employees work out. And even existing employees can often surprise you and engage in infractions that you never saw coming. That is why there are HR departments to evaluate what is going on, and they make mistakes, too.
So, evaluations are for the purpose of making predictions about what kind of dog training should be applied to address whatever problems have been going on, or to attempt to prevent future problems. Each lesson is partially an evaluation.
Any experienced dog trainer will tell you that it takes time to get to know a dog and to puzzle it out. Some dogs are quite easy if the problem is easy. Some can take months, or even longer, to figure out. I can tell you I’ve had numerous students with dogs which took months to puzzle out. Part of that is the dog. Part of that is the humans involved. The trainer can’t always tell what goes on behind closed doors when they are not there. Some problems have underlying medical causes that even veterinarians have trouble diagnosing. Some problems reveal themselves the more you work with a dog… you work to fix one thing only to find out that you have only partially solved the issue. This is particularly vexing when significant behavioral disturbances are underlying the surface manifestations of the problems. Some problems are revealed only as the dog matures from puppy to adult, or from adult to “parent”, or when their status changes in the group, or when they become elderly, or they develop some kind of medical issue. Changes in the home also can create unpredictable response. For example, I’ve seen dogs change when some people are home and then when that person or people are not home. I’ve seen a lot of problems when a couple works opposite work shifts, one working daytime hours and the other working a night shift. I’ve seen problems in homes where one spouse has a traveling job and is gone for days or weeks, comes back, and then leaves again. That can upset a lot of dogs. I’ve seen dogs that are very upset if they are on the road too much. Some dogs are homebodies, and any kind of departure goes against their nature, such as with flock guarding or territorial dogs. I’ve seen numerous dogs that had problems because the people in the home weren’t happy or were arguing. Much of this can’t be revealed in the initial evaluation, and sometimes doesn’t manifest for months until something “breaks”. Good dog trainers know that predictions are just that: estimates, guesses, conjecture.
I tell students we need to “look under the hood” to see what kind of engine their dog has, what kind of chassis, any rust or leaks, or past car wrecks that have been patched up. Evaluations require working with a dog over time. The more you work with a dog, the better handle you’ll have on that dog. If you get discouraged or outraged that the trainer hasn’t figured your dog out after a couple of weeks of training, you are being unrealistic. I wish these online dog training gurus and TV dog training celebrities didn’t post these “just so” stories that appear to have happy endings in a 30-minute video. That gives the public unrealistic expectations.
Even a new puppy needs puzzling out. No one has worked that dog yet. The dog isn’t mature, and a lot will be unfolding over the next 3 years.
Adding a new dog to the home is always a puzzle. Adding a lot of dogs together can be a very difficult puzzle. If the dogs are fighting, then the puzzle is like a 4-dimensional Star Trek chess game. You must get to know each dog, working each one individually. Each early lesson is a test, not a solution. Since you can’t put dogs on the proverbial psychiatrist’s couch and ask them about their troubled childhood and family problems, you must do various tests and set ups along the way to try and find some of that out.
Animals are not inanimate objects that can be machined, filed, sanded, painted, weighed, polished, drilled and lubricated. Instead, they have a say regarding what they are going to do. All animals do random behaviors and actions. That variability is a fundamental aspect of all life which ensures survival of that species. Animals that could never change would quickly go extinct if they couldn’t adapt, change, react, take initiative, relate, seek, defend, and such. No one can predict what individual animals will do from moment to moment.
Take the experiments of B. F. Skinner. He and his assistants performed numerous experiments on populations of animals and put all that data into graphs. But, if you looked at the response graphs of the individuals in the experiments, there were innumerable variations from moment to moment that could not be explained by the experiments. That is why they aggregated the data to “smooth” the graphs to see the overall patterns. When you are training a dog, there will always be innumerable variations that cannot ever be predicted. Skinner couldn’t predict individual variations and your dog trainer, and you, cannot ever predict all the behaviors and actions your dog will do. Pavlov, likewise, never did understand all that he and his laboratory researched, and he was open and clear about that.
Even competition dogs are not 100% consistent in their actions. If that was so, then every dog could be made to get predictable, a known score before the event every time. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Not every trainer / handler gets first place every time. Even at the world championship level.
Therefore, perceptions are just probability estimates. What you “see” might not be what you get. The more you work a dog, the better the perception, the better the predictions will be as you get to know them, but evaluations will never be infallible. Life happens. Add in the people part, and there will always be a chaos effect.
I enjoy working with dogs and puzzling them out. One size does not fit all. Our goal should be to try and make their lives better, not to turn them into robots or expect them to respond like a Swiss watch. It is valuable to hone your perceptions of your dog over time, but you will never perceive it all or predict the future.
What can you expect from an evaluation? At most, an educated guess but not a guarantee, with the proviso that opinions are subject to change without notice!
Plan accordingly.