I work with a lot of pet dogs which are afraid of humans and animals. In addition, I work with their owners to attempt to turn these dogs around. But a handful of owners have it in their heads to skip over the necessary steps and put their dogs in threatening situations to see what might happen. I must tell them “No. We are not doing that. Your dog is not an experiment.” Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don’t.
I was hired to work with a man who had adopted a 5-year-old Yellow Lab that flipped out whenever the dog saw another dog within 100 yards. To complicate matters, this dog was very strong and robust, and the owner could barely hold his dog back when his dog saw another dog.
As we were working with his dog, the owner was getting advice from his friends that contradicted what I was doing with him and his dog. I was seeing him 3 times a week. On a Monday, the dog was reactive. By Friday, the dog was much better. But by the next Monday, it was like we hadn’t done anything. Strange, huh? I eventually found out that he was trying out the stuff his friends said to do, and he was undoing all the work we were doing. He then said he wanted to try taking his dog to an off-leash park, letting his dog go. I had to put my foot down on this. It was not a moral thing to risk other innocent dogs, and it was behaviorally incorrect to do this to his dog. I had to tell him, “No. We are not doing that. Your dog is not an experiment.” This man was a retired top executive and pharmaceutical scientist, so he was used to doing experiments on animals. To get through to him, I printed out numerous articles and papers detailing the concepts of what we were doing and finally convinced him to stop messing around. Once that happened, his dog finally started making continual progress and we eventually were able to let his dog run free in an off-leash park and attend a doggie daycare.
There was another dog I worked with that was fearful of strangers. When I met the owners, the dog came to the door, saw me, and ran away and hid in another room. After we sat down, I got a full background on the dog… or so I thought. Once I started the first lesson with the dog, at first, the dog would hide behind furniture. I showed the owners how to introduce the dog to strangers and the proper steps to take at this stage. After about 30 minutes, the husband got frustrated, went and grabbed the dog and tried to shove the dog over to me. That terrified the dog and when he let the dog loose, it ran away. We had made some small improvements over the first 30 minutes, but after that, we lost all that progress. I asked him if that is what he did whenever his dog showed fear, and he said, “Yes.”. I explained that wouldn’t work. He got offended. He wanted to try it again. I had to tell him, “No. We are not doing that. Your dog is not an experiment.” He then stormed out of the lesson and left me with the wife and dog. I eventually got the dog to voluntarily come to me and allow me to touch him. But that was the end of that. They contacted me after the lesson, telling me in so many words they were offended. And we didn’t do any more sessions. This man caused this dog to be afraid and was experimenting on his dog to make his dog do something that his dog clearly and repeatedly had shown he was not comfortable with. My way worked, and it was obvious it worked. But his ego and impatience were causing his dog harm. I had tried to patiently explain what was necessary, but he had already developed an anger with his dog, and that blinded him to using a softer approach to fix the fearfulness. I can’t fix ‘em all.
I can give you more examples, but they are just variations of the same thing. When a certain kind of student has it in their mind that they want this ideal picture of their dog, they will try every foolish thing to try and get that, regardless of how their dogs are taking that treatment. They also can’t hear new information or new approaches. They are wanting you to do what they have been doing, somehow hoping to validate the mistakes they’ve made all along. It’s not about the welfare of the dog, or getting good results, it is about stroking their egos.
My approach? “No. We are not doing that. Your dog is not an experiment.”
And that is that.