Sometimes it is Better For Dog Trainers to "Just Say No"
By Karen L. Duet
Dog Trainers usually get into the business of training dogs in order to help dogs and owners live healthier and happier lives together. I know that when I got into the business of training dogs 30 years ago I was very idealistic. My goal was to make every dog and owner relationship the best that it could be. Although this goal has not changed, it has become a lot more realistic over the years.
- One thing I learned pretty early on is that I didn't have any control over the situations that were going to be presented to me. It was the owners that truly cared about their dogs and truly wanted to learn how to improve their relationships that kept me going. If it was not for these positive and motivated souls I probably would have given up early on. The rewards in the business of dog training has very little to do with money. Sure, everyone who runs a business wants to make money at it, but believe me, there are easier ways to make money. I currently work over 12 hour days because with a kennel on our property and a full time staff I wake up in the morning working and don't totally relax until the dogs are put away at night and the staff leaves at 9:00 pm. This is 365 days per year because dogs need care constantly just like children.
When you can actually make a difference in the lives of people and dogs this is the greatest reward possible. Having people say things like "we love you guys" or "this is the best money we ever spent and it has made such a difference in our lives" is music to our ears. It is this kind of response to our services that keeps us going. Likewise, our staff of trainers have the same response to this type of praise. Since we are dealing with the public there are many times that frustrations arise. People can be rude, entitled, chronically late for appointments, demanding, and sometimes just downright unreasonable. Like most businesses we try to take this in stride as much as possible. Over the years however, we have learned that there is a line we have to draw in the sand at a certain point and say "this far and no further."
- At times it isn't really the dog or the owner that is the problem, it is simply the situation. A couple of situations we see on a fairly regular basis is a mismatch of dog and owner or a mismatch of dog to environment. In this case, training may help the overall situation but cannot totally rectify the problem.Take for instance a client who is in her 70's who is given a Malamute puppy. The woman weighs in at 100 pounds and has fragile bones. She lives alone without much help from the grandchildren that presented her with this puppy. Or the couple who decided to purchase an adult Great Dane and a Saint Bernard puppy even though they lived in a small apartment without a patio or balcony. Although a trainer can be of assistance in these situations, to some degree the situations themselves create the problem.
The focus of this article however, is not the typical difficulties that trainers encounter with the public and their dogs, but rather what I call the "red flag" clients and dogs. These are clients and/or dogs that can get a trainer into various kinds of trouble and conflict. This trouble could range from verbal arguments, to lawsuits, workers compensation cases due to injuries inflicted by the dog, or even in worst case scenarios physical violence towards the trainer because the client turns out to be unstable or even a convicted felon. All of these situations can and will happen to the trainer at some time in their career through absolutely no fault of their own. The last point should be understood, these things can happen to even the most experienced and the most diligent trainer with the best intentions in the world. Why? Because we have no control over who comes through our doors. The only thing we as trainers can do is to learn where to draw the line.
"Red Flag" clients or dogs usually fall into one of 3 categories:
- 1) Dangerous dog with well intentioned owner: This situation is the best of the three scenarios because you at least have a reasonable person to deal with. The typical situation we encounter here is that the dog is the potential threat to the staff. To a certain degree a dog who is dominant or fear aggressive may be worth the risk to rehabilitate because you have good and well intentioned owners in this case. There are however, the cases where the dog is dangerously aggressive and may have already had bites on record. You can predict that the dog will bite a staff member or trainer. This is a difficult decision but the experienced trainer knows where to draw the line at protecting the staff. Looking at the worst case scenario here, a badly bitten trainer could be out of commission for quite awhile. There is also the possibility of complications from a bite due to infection or severity of a wound that could put the trainer in to a state of permanent disability. This client is not difficult to turn down for training because they are reasonable enough to understand that you cannot put your staff at risk. They understand that it is the dog and not them personally that you must refuse. They will often be appreciative of your honesty and advice and return later with another dog.
2) Unreasonable owner with a difficult dog: The typical owner in this situation is one who is either in denial about their dog and/or expects you to magically change their dog into something that it is not and never will be. Take for instance the owner who brings in a dog that is genetically high strung. When a trainer explains that some of the things the client is complaining about are due to breed characteristics or perhaps just bad breeding, the client may disregard this information and insist that the training must solve this problem altogether. This client may demand guarantees on results and show little interest in being involved in the training themselves. The overwhelming feeling one gets with talking to an owner like this is that the impression they have of training is that if they pay enough they will get back the perfect dog with a remote control and they will not have to do anything themselves to help train the dog.
In addition to having an unhappy client as an end result (which is bad enough if you are a trainer who cares about a job well done) you also have to be worried about being taken to court by this client when the training is completed. In addition, the client could be mentally or emotionally unstable which can add to the difficulty of working with them and having a successful result. This is another area where our rule of thumb is when you start getting the "red flag" just don't go there.
We have been accused of being "picky" about who we work with in the past. I would rather be called "picky" than have to deal with this type of person in the long run. The difficulty in this situation is being honest and telling this person that you cannot work with them because you don't believe they will be happy in the long run. It is difficult to be that honest but it is necessary. Don't worry too much about this client as they will go down the road and find another trainer that will gladly take their money and worry about the end result later.
- 3) Unreasonable owner with perfectly trainable dog: This is without a doubt the hardest person to turn down for training. The dog may be a great training prospect and you could be very excited about what you could accomplish with the dog, and then there is the owner. One example of this was a client who purchased a puppy from us. All of the puppies in the litter had turned out great and excelled in training. His puppy was no exception and we were very excited about training her. The problem was that every time he called us he found something to argue about on the phone. During one conversation he explained that he was being checked by the doctor for something that was wrong with his brain. We noticed that his behavior was very erratic. I thought that maybe he and I were just not clicking and if I took myself out of the equation that he would be okay with other staff members. What I found was that he did the same thing to the office manager, and the training director. We finally had to deny training to him because nobody wanted to deal with him. This was better than having him as a client and being forced to deal with him for the foreseeable future.
In another case we had a client who was in drug rehab. He wanted us to provide him with a Service Dog Certification for his dog even though it hadn't been trained for this. We declined to do so of course, and he went away for awhile. He then brought his original dog plus a new one in for further obedience training. Not a problem. He was a difficult guy to deal with for a variety of reasons but thus far had been tolerable. Suddenly, in the midst of signing his dogs up, he declares that he wants a guarantee that his new dog's neck will be the same when it comes back. When asked what he was talking about he stated that his male dog now had folds of skin on the back of his neck that weren't there before the training. What? When he showed us what he was talking about it, was folds of extra skin and fat on the back of his neck. He was a male Pit Bull with a short neck and this is quite normal for his genetic makeup and had nothing whatsoever to do with training. When we explained this he seemed to accept it but still insisted that we guarantee that this would not happen to his female. We explained that this was a matter of genetics and conformation and had nothing to do with training and therefore we could not guarantee that his females neck would not change in the timing she was with us as she was a growing pup. He still kept insisting on such a guarantee which made us question his thinking processes. In addition, he stated that his goals for both dogs was protection training. Okay "red flag" between the disconnect about the neck structure issue and the fact that he was in rehab and wanted protection trained Pit Bulls, we had to say "no" sorry we just don't want to go there with you.
When it comes to protection training a trainer must be careful about deciding who to work with and who not to. In the state of California a person can be charged with a felony if their dog bites someone by accident and it can be proven that they trained their dog to bite. In addition, the dog trainer can be dragged into the lawsuit for purposes of deep pockets. There is not any current criteria for how a protection dog is trained or by who. Therefore, every trainer has their own criteria for training that is self imposed. For some this means no criteria at all. Anyone who can pay who possesses a dog who can do the work will get trained. Not to worry the aforementioned client already has an out of state trainer lined up to train his Pit Bulls.
- For us personally beyond the ability for the dog to do the work and enjoy it, we have a very strict criteria. The dog must first have been trained through on and off leash obedience and the owner must be able to demonstrate (themselves) that the dog will work through these paces for them personally. The trainers must have been to the clients home and seen that the dog is being properly housed, cared for, and trained, and that there is no apparent illegal activity. The owner must have a reputation with the staff as being un-upstanding citizen without signs of questionable judgement. Our filter involves allowing people who pass this initial phase onto Level 1 protection training which is Threat Training and still does not teach the dog to bite. There is then a second filter based on what we see in that phase to take a client on to the Level 2 Training where the bite work begins. Because of this most of our clients with protection dogs are law enforcement, security, current or former military, and professionals such as doctors, lawyers and judges.
In the business of Pet Dog Training dog trainers are left to set rules and guidelines for their own individual businesses. This leaves those moral and ethical judgments up to individuals that are as diverse as their business practices. In our business we have a series of checks and balances to assess our client satisfaction rate. Each client is called and their satisfaction recorded at the end of their contracted training. We train approximately 1000 dogs per year with a 99% success rate. The handful of clients each year that we cannot satisfy each year are generally due to circumstances beyond our control. We still agonize over these few clients and vow to try to do better. Sometimes doing better turns out to be just not doing it at all in the first place! "Lessons learned in combat" as my husband would say.
- Karen Duet is co-owner with her husband George of K-9 Companions Dog Training in Riverside California. Having trained dogs for 30 years and authored 4 books on dog training subjects she now promotes education to promote the understanding of dog behavior to the public utilizing print and media.Her latest book: Dog Training 101 is designed for this purpose. Other titles she has authored include:
The Home & Family Protection Dog, The Business Security K-9, and Advanced Schutzhund which was nominated for a Maxwell Award in 2000.
For more information on books and training courses offered by the author please go to:
http://www.K-9Companions.com
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