One of the many lessons I’ve learned over the years is that dogs will always do something unexpected. And you need to have a good dose of humility to accept and tell the truth that you’re never going to be able to see the future perfectly and not every dog situation is going to turn out like a happy cartoon ending.
Trainers who are tops in a variety of dog occupations are partly there because of the unexpected things that can happen when you are around a dog, and how they pick up the pieces and try again to be better next time. Pick the “top” trainer, and they can recount many instances of failures and mishaps, some minor and maybe some major.
This is also why I think it is robustly stupid to start proclaiming you are one of the best dog trainers in the country, world or whatever. You probably aren’t. That lack of humility will come back on you one day. “Pride comes before the fall.”
Dog trainers should be honest about what they can and can’t do. To themselves. To others. Be honest that they aren’t gurus. No one is. Everything you do as a trainer will be hard earned along the way, and newbies especially, those with under 10 years of experience, should especially not puff themselves up or let others do it.
Every day, dogs remind me that they have a say in how things are going to go. I can either listen to them or I can go on my merry way and end up doing something stupid. Some errors are small and forgivable. For example, you come in with a lesson plan for the day, and it doesn’t work with that dog even though it worked with the previous 20 dogs doing the exact same thing. Or have you ever stepped in puppy poop in the middle of the night? I have. Some errors are large. Have you ever seen the stories of animal shelter paid professional employees that mixed the wrong dogs together in a kennel only to find one of them torn to pieces the next day? Or the volunteer that was attacked going down a hallway past one of the dogs? Or the volunteer that shouldn’t have been alone in a pen with a misdiagnosed dog and the worst outcome happened? These are professionally run facilities and even then, their best trained staff end up either harming a dog or get harmed themselves. Same things happen to veterinarians. Why do you think the suicide rate is so high for veterinarians? Do you think they never get bitten by a dog? Or never misdiagnose a dog? There is no checklist, no waiver, go guarantee that can ever prevent or anticipate what a dog might do. Either accept that or don’t get a dog, and don’t hire a dog trainer expecting that no errors could ever happen along the way.
I can show examples of some very experienced, long time dog experts that have made serious errors along the way. Some of the more visible trainers have videos online that demonstrate this fact. I have read a lot of dog training books, many of them semi-autobiographical, with chapters on things that went wrong during or after training. You know these words were included to pass on that knowledge to the next trainer or owner. Talk to some of the more experienced trainers, the honest ones, and you’ll hear their war stories and take the blame.
While I’m not a big fan of The Dog Whisperer, you will see videos of dog fights right in front of him, or cases where he is bitten. So, a big celebrity dog guy couldn’t see it coming? I saw a video of Ivan Balabanov, a world class competitive dog trainer and handler, running his dogs in a play area, with all of them wearing e-collars to prevent fights. And I could name other names, from the “all positive,” “fear free” to the mostly compulsive trainers.
I was speaking with a friend about this humility concept recently. She bred very big dogs years ago and ran over 1,000 dogs through her dog rescue, some of which I helped evaluate and train. She has seen a lot of dog fights over the years. Having intact male and female dogs around is always a risk. Running a lot of rescue dogs with unknown backgrounds through your kennels is always a risk. She was talking about how you hone your “Spidey sense” over the years as you encounter tough situations, and how you learn from experience. Sometimes the smallest detail is a clue that something bad is about to break out but is missed. Then in a flash, the fight is on. Now imagine trying to break up a fight between a couple of 200 lb. dogs. No one wants that to happen. And even running over a thousand dogs through a rescue isn’t enough experience to eliminate all risks and problems.
Humility is a bitter meal that no one wants to eat. It is like when I was a kid and mom made us fried liver for dinner. I didn’t want liver. But you either ate it or you were going to be hungry. Eat your liver.
I think all dog trainers, and owners, need to exercise some humility when working with dogs. You’ll never know it all. You can never prepare for it all. And dogs will keep showing you that you aren’t omniscient or omnipresent. They can’t talk but they can surely act of their own will and in their own way.
What is “humility”? Merriam-Webster says it is “freedom from pride or arrogance.” What is “pride”? In this case it would refer to “exaggerated self-esteem.” What is arrogance? Same source says it is “an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions.” Thus, humility is not exaggerating your skills or the promised outcomes. It is not promoting yourself as somehow superior to others in an overbearing manner or making claims that can’t be backed up with experience or results. I also think it involves not thinking you can claim you can do special things with dogs that no one else ever can, that everyone else is beneath you, and you will never misread a dog or make any kind of mistake. That you are always going to be able to outsmart a dog situation.
I think a good attitude is to keep trying to do an honest, good job and put continuing efforts into improving your knowledge and wisdom and skills and methods and being able to take input from others (including the dogs you work with) even when the feedback hurts.
Don’t be so hard and defensive that you can’t bend but only crack under pressure. Your trainer will make mistakes. So will you. Have humility and grant others the ability to honestly display it, too. The sharing of knowledge and wisdom is more valuable than anyone’s ego.
Plan accordingly.