The best dog trainer for your situation might be different from someone else’s situation. So let’s help you determine which ‘dog trainer is best for me.’
Types of Training:
- Train the Human – Out of all the styles of training I have tried, I have found the biggest success for people is to ensure the human gets trained as quickly as possible. Training a dog is all about leading the dog. When the human knows how to lead, the dog quickly follows. You learn how to assess problems and solve them on the fly. Training dogs was easier to learn than training people. You can give someone a fully trained dog and they can unwind that training if they do not know how to lead. So I have spent years perfecting how to convey to people why things are important to do. Essentially, you try and teach a human and then you see what mistakes they make. Then you see how many humans make the same mistakes. Then you try to assess why they are making this mistake and what is the missing piece of information that helps to overcome that issue.
As one example we found certain puppies were a lot more common to develop aggression later in life. Looking back at the notes I keep on clients, it was always the puppies that learned patterns extremely fast. Not just fast, extremely fast. About 8 to 12 months later we would have clients say their dog was becoming aggressive to other dogs or people. So we learned to tell clients about the “evil genius” category. When a pup would learn a certain command like laying down to a standing hand signal in under 10 minutes we would tell them their pup is falling into the “evil genius” category. Doesn’t mean they will become aggressive later in life, but the odds do go up a lot. Then we would instruct them on what to watch for and how to deal with it. Ever since then, the emails about aggression later in life have dropped to nearly zero. There have been many things like that where we have learned to better help the human understand what to watch for and how to solve the issues. - Board and Train – People love this idea. Send the dog off and someone else does all the work. Then they get this fully trained dog and can just enjoy the dog with no issues. The biggest issue we found here is that you send the dog to someone that knows how to lead. But then goes back to someone that doesn’t know how to lead as well or at all. Even when you teach the humans what they need to do, most would not do what they needed to. It would be like getting a brand new house but thinking you never need to maintain it. Or how about a special machine where a personal trainer could take over your body, eat healthy, exercise and get you into shape. Then hand your body back over. But then the person thinks they can eat junk food and not exercise anymore. The human hasn’t learned the core skills and why they are important.
The smarter the dog, the more likely you would still encounter issues later on after the dog went back home. If the dog was slower to catch onto commands, they were less likely to challenge when going back to their human.
We found it was better for the human to go through dog training and work towards their goal. Then they could hit the same wall the professional dog trainer would hit. Then we could tell the client again what they needed to do and why they needed to do it. Once they did that, they would overcome that wall. It just seems to ‘stick’ so much better for the human when they see why something is so important to do.
One of the most interesting stories I heard of a dog being trained by someone else was a guy that bought two professionally trained German Shepherd guard dogs. Took his private jet to Germany and paid $100,000 for the two dogs and brought them home. Later on the dogs attacked a Fed Ex employee so he sent them out to a farm he had. The dogs went and killed all the neighbor’s livestock. The human needs to know how to lead. - Group Class – This was the first thing I did when I started. You can learn the basics. But essentially you could learn this on YouTube real fast. Two main issues here. One is that you cannot focus on each person’s issues. You kind of have to stick to the program to get through it. Secondly, the trainer usually has to focus the most on the person that does the least amount of work when they go home. If you are doing your work, you get the least value. This is also why I like the clients that do the work. Then I can teach them everything they need to know right away, and then they can achieve their goals exponentially faster.
It is common to have a 6 week basic obedience class. I find you can teach a puppy that is 10 weeks old their basic obedience in 3 days tops. They usually learn their basic obedience on day one at 10 weeks old. Usually you get the pup around 8 weeks, so by 10 weeks they already know their basic obedience. I tell people putting a dog through a 6 week basic obedience class is like keeping a kid in Kindergarten for 6 years.
Or to put it another way. When I go to help a client with a 10 week old puppy, the pup learns the basics in minutes. We immediately move onto advanced obedience where the pup is learning how to do commands to a distance, how to hold the command and how to do it around distractions. You can have a puppy trained to a higher level than most people have seen a dog trained to, before the pup is even old enough to enter most basic obedience classes. - In-Home Training – The thing that is nice about in-home training is that you have the trainer focusing on just you. In the house is what we consider Kindergarten level of training. Which most dogs will master in minutes. Then you need to go look for distractions. The reason why I like having clients come to our place now for training is that we have distractions on hand. Chickens, horse, cats, etc. We can immediately go there and start running the pup through distraction training. Otherwise, in the clients neighbourhood you might waste a lot of time trying to find distractions to train around. Then those distractions also need to be under control for safety. Where in the city can you find small animals to train within 1 foot of? Or where can you find a large animal like a horse to train within 1 foot of?
If you want a dog to be trained at a distraction level, you need to train them at that level. I tell clients that hardest part of training a dog is finding or setting up distractions to train around. - Training in-home with the human at work – I also did this and it was like board and train. However we found clients could unwind the work you did during the day. So keeping the dog for longer during board and train worked better as you could give 100% consistency. But as you already read above, the human still needs to follow through to maintain the dog.
Overall you can see the theme here. It isn’t really dog training, it is human training. Every time I train a client to assess problems and solve them, you can see the lightbulb go off in their head. They get it. It is way more human training than dog training.
So this is why I think if you are looking for the “Best Dog Trainer in Calgary” or Best Dog Trainer in Red Deer, Edmonton, Alberta, BC, etc. I help people from all over. I’ve had clients drive out from Vancouver Island, Nothern Alberta from 12 hours away. Saskatchewan from 9 hours away.
The training is setup as a half day session. Train the human first. Then we start training the dog. We can see how quickly the dog learns and what problems we encounter. It gives us a pretty clear picture of what to expect moving forward. If the human has any issues, I tell them to email me and I will run them through what needs to be done. It isn’t a dog training problem. It is a human understanding what to do problem.
So then I figured if it really is a human training issue. Why not train the human as fast as possible? Would taking 6 weeks to train the human be best? I found that answer to be no. Of course there are all the issues and questions they will have along the way. So why not just give them a clear picture right from Day 1. Does the human need to remember everything? No. I send a detailed notes email after the session to give them a clear picture of what needs to be done for specific problems. There is also access to the members area that goes over all of the videos and notes in detail for certain obedience and problems. I also tell the client to email absolutely any question. Let’s get you understanding immediately what needs to be done. Then I also tell clients to send a progress report every 7 days or sooner if they want. Then I can see what the human remembered and what problems they hit in specific so we can address those issues.
I will reiterate and explain things differently as many times as needed until the human understands. One key technique is not just to tell a client how to do it right, but you also tell them how to do it wrong. Then the lightbulb goes off for a lot of people. It is called ‘teaching in contrast’. That is essentially how many children’s books teach children.
If you want your dream dog as quickly as possible, I can help you achieve that. I absolutely love seeing clients achieve that high level success. Where random strangers come up and tell them they have never seen a dog so well trained. Or I love getting clients where they say they saw this dog that was so well trained and they ran up to the person outside to ask where they went for training and they say they went to see Tyson at Dog Squad.
To get your dream dog, contact Tyson
403-877-3006
Tyson@DogSquad.ca