Moving Past Compliance to Confidence, Comfort, and Joy: A Dog Trainer's Manifesto

When some future-dwelling and vaunted social historian (being paid quality cryptocurrency I assume) looks back upon our era to comb through the archives of our work and lives as early 21st century dog trainers, they’ll likely take note of a wonderful if somewhat quaint, to them, trend: dog training is clearly moving away from the idea that a dog should do what we want and when we want it and instead, dog training should increase a dog’s access to the things they love, while helping the dog live peaceably with the humans in their lives. I am delighted to be a part of this trend, and I’m delighted to help my clients—both canine and human—to build, via training and education, new and useful behaviours…and maybe even a whole new way to approach being a family across species.

Although I don’t have the ability to hop into the future to gaze back in time, here are a few points that I suspect will make it into our future historian’s dissertation.

Out with the old: Dogs should be trained to focus on their human above all else.

In with the new: Dogs are sentient beings who live with us, but not for us. Training should enable them to experience their environments broadly, and in ways that they enjoy and have evolved to find compelling.

Out with the old: Training should be about compliance first, then human comfort: the dog should be seen (in a down-stay) and not heard.

In with the new: Training is enriching and fun for dogs, and can be about anything at all. Training that supports a dog’s comfort and freedom is at the top of my list, but after that, the world is everyone’s oyster: scent training, trick training, dancing, competition obedience, sports…Bring. It. On.

Out with the old: Dogs do not experience emotions in the same way humans do, so our training should focus on things we can observe dogs doing.

In with the new: The parsimonious view is that dogs do experience emotions, even if they aren’t the same as ours (go ahead and call fear a “threatened motivational state” if that floats your boat…I actually think that’s a useful, but unwieldy, framing). Training can and should focus on the whole dog, especially if the dog is…you know, experiencing a threatened motivational state.

Out with the old: Dogs should behave because we want them to, because it’s their duty, or because we have spent the effort training them.

In with the new: Dogs do stuff to get what they want out of the world, and accepting this truth allows for a great new relationship based on reinforcement with the things we have that dogs like.

Out with the old: Dogs are continually trying to gain status through their behaviour, and only a firm approach can prevent terrible outcomes.

In with the new: Dogs are, by and large, careful and sociable animals who are simply trying to make their way through a world that can range from confusing to downright unjust. Most of the behaviours we catalogue as “status seeking” are simply dogs being dogs, and doing behaviours that have worked in the past to get them what they love, or doing things that come naturally.

I wonder what else our future historian will report? Perhaps, just on the horizon, just there, is a way to magically remove all that dog hair that flavours my soup and speckles my floors. One can hope, right? One can dream.