Spend any time on social media and you will sometimes come across a trainer’s post, such as “I am working with a client and you would not believe … ,” followed by harsh comments regarding the client’s behaviour. From an unwillingness to use tools or techniques recommended, to escalating unpleasant claims about the client’s integrity, it is all laid out almost like a sport in the world of dog trainers. How outrageous is YOUR client?
As dog trainers and behavior consultants, we are in the business of changing behavior. In fact, we are changing more than just the behavior of the dogs we work with. We are changing the behavior of our human clients too! There is much written about how we should treat our canine training partners gently and kindly and ultimately with respect, but we often forget the needs of our human learners.
Respect in Dog Training Comes From Within
When we think about professionals, we think about veterinarians, doctors, lawyers and dentists. For a moment, think about how these folks speak to their colleagues about their patients and clients. When you go to the doctor to talk about something uncomfortable, embarrassing or difficult, do you imagine that your doctor will turn around and say something unpleasant to his or her office staff about you? Would you be okay if the doctor posted to social media about some unknown patient who had a health problem and the patient did or didn’t do something that the doctor felt was critical to their health? Imagine how you might feel if you read a post by your doctor and recognized yourself in the description.
Exploring this issue further, imagine if the doctor asked the patient to do something that was difficult, unusual or unfamiliar to them. Sometimes doctors ask us to do things that we are not comfortable with and that maybe painful or include side effects we don’t want. When we work with a doctor to protect our health, sometimes, we get asked to do things that we may not want to do, and we may take some time to come to terms with carrying out the doctor’s instructions. This is not so different in the work we do with our clients.
If a doctor were to behave as dog trainers often do, they would face serious sanctions. One of the reasons that doctors don’t engage in this kind of “banter” is that there are rules that prevent them from doing so. The other reason is simply that their education includes a great deal of practice in being respectful of their patients and this translates to being respectful of themselves. When we show respect to others, we learn to respect ourselves.
Expressing Respect for Both Our Dog Training Learners
When you FIRST meet a client, introducing yourself and what your role is will always help to set the scene for the rest of everything you do together. At my school, we have a variety of trainers and behaviour consultants as well as assistants and students who may be helping out. Starting the first appointment by saying to the human, “Hi, I’m Sue Alexander, and I am the head trainer here at Dogs in the Park,” my clients know who I am and what I do.
I like to start all my subsequent meetings with my students by greeting the dog as an individual before I speak to the person. This does not mean that I bend down and and run my hands all over them; it means that I say, “Hello, Fluffy,” and then I respond to whatever the dog tells me would be welcome. By slowing down and greeting the dog like the individual they are, I can learn about them and how their day is going. This models to my clients that I see their dogs as unique, special beings who will have preferences about how they are treated. Then I greet the clients similarly. On a day when a client is feeling low and unhappy, the last thing they want or need is to have their dog trainer greet them like a busker at the fair. Treating dogs and people as individuals is the foundation for building a mutually respectful and supportive relationship.
I had a riding instructor who would always start her lessons with the advice to “begin as you mean to go along.” What she was telling me was that if I started out by not acknowledging my horse and not moving softly and gently, I could expect that my horse would not move softly and gently for me either. This applies to the dogs we work with, and especially to our human students. Start thinking about respect from the point of view of how we start our interactions.
Our human students are almost always adults, and we need to understand that, although we are the expert in dog behaviour in general, they are experts in their dog’s behaviour. It is not helpful to tell clients that they are wrong about their dog. I remember learning this many years ago when a client told me that her dog was afraid of the moon, after having been spooked in the backyard by a very large, white hot air balloon. I told her all of the reasons I thought she was wrong but she insisted.
Years later at a conference another behaviour professional was talking about a case he had. He said, “You would never imagine that this could happen, but we had a very large hot air balloon land in our training field, and my dog has begun showing some pretty significant fear of the moon!”
I was actually quite upset with myself on a number of fronts. To begin with, I questioned why I did not believe my client! That lead me to ask why I did believe my colleague. The more I turned this over in my mind, the more I realized it was because I had more respect for my colleague. By examining this disparity, I was able to gain some insight into how I viewed my clients and myself. It led me to understand that when we don’t really, completely and honestly, listen to our clients, we are not exercising our best professional behaviour. We are disrespecting ourselves as much as we are disrespecting our clients.
The Phrase That Changes My Dog Training Career
Over the years, I learned a number of things about being respectful of myself and my clients. The first thing I learned was that my clients would not always make choices that I would agree with and that this would be okay. I might set some piece of training homework to be done every morning for instance, and my client might come back the following week only to tell me that they had only managed to complete the task once or perhaps twice. Early in my career, I would get frustrated with these clients. I was lamenting this to a psychiatrist friend one day and she said something that changed my life. She said to me, “there is no such thing as non-compliance in your patient.”
It took me quite a while to think that one through. When a patient does not do what the doctor wants them to do, they are often labeled in their files as non-compliant. My friend, the psychiatrist, made the point that when one of her patients did not do as she suggested, it was her job to find out why. Furthermore, once she knew what the issue was, she needed to figure out how to deal with the problem. We have a choice when working with a client. We can see them as an adversary or we can see them as an ally, and the choice we make reflects our respect for ourselves and for our clients.
Perhaps the most powerful thing we can learn to say to a client is, “I believe you will do the exact right thing for your dog and your family.” These 15 words changed history for me. When a client would tell me that they had chosen to use a piece of equipment that I did not permit in my classroom, I might say, “I’m sorry, but I cannot allow you to bring that piece of equipment into the building, but I believe you will do the exact right thing for your dog and your family.” If a client said they were going to stop working with me and go work with a trainer whose methods were counter to what I would recommend, I was able to tell them, “I am certain that you will do the exact right thing for your dog and your family.” When my clients would tell me that they didn’t agree with me in any way, I had the words I needed.
Using these words achieved so many things for me and my clients. When they chose equipment I disagreed with, my faith in their ability to make a good choice meant that they were more open to consider different points of view. When I said this about their inability to complete homework, it allowed me to work with them to figure out homework that they could complete. If they chose to leave me and work with someone else, it kept the door open, so they could return if they wanted.
Respect Goes Beyond the Dog Training Consult
When we learn to express respect towards our clients during the consult, we may still be left frustrated when we don’t feel that we are making any progress in our work with a client, and we need to talk to someone about it. Sometimes, we don’t have a colleague to talk to, and this means that social media may be an attractive place to share our thoughts. There is a big difference between discussing a situation respectfully and being disrespectful of our clients. When speaking about a client communication difficulty online, it’s helpful to reflect on how you would prefer your doctor share a similar situation that involves you.
Consider the situation in which a client comes to you for help with a dog who is leash reactive, and who has progressed to redirecting his frustration from leash grabbing to grabbing your client’s feet when touring the neighborhood. After three lessons, you find out that although you counseled the client to use a head halter, they have chosen to use a prong on the advice of a neighbor. You recognize that the dog is fearful and you know that adding pain to fear risks cementing this reactivity and turning it into something worse.
It is tempting to go to social media and, without identifying the client, say something about the situation. You can visit any social media platform you like and see posts like this everyday. Such posts get many hits and lots of advice and often the initial frustration can trigger an avalanche of other trainers who take your statement as an invitation to share their own frustrations. The language goes from unkind to downright hurtful. These threads often devolve to many trainers who say things like, “people suck,” and, “these people are nothing more than animal abusers.” None of this actually helps you to resolve your frustration, and all of it contributes to the divide between our clients and ourselves.
Instead, review the situation carefully in your own mind and gain insight into the problem. In the case outlined, you might consider asking yourself if you gave the client sufficient support on how to walk their dog until the next appointment. Did you suggest walking in areas other than the home neighborhood? Did you walk them through the process of walking around their own neighborhood? Did you suggest walking very early in the morning or late at night? Have you considered the family’s physical skills and ability to walk the dog on the recommended equipment? Asking yourself these questions and challenging yourself to genuinely believe that clients will do their best at all times can often uncover opportunities to fill in the gaps and help your clients.
After you have reviewed the situation to your satisfaction you may still find yourself frustrated by your client. The challenge now becomes how to resolve that frustration while still being respectful of yourself, your client and the dog you are helping. Doing this on social media is tricky. I have been very successful by writing the situation out in a post and asking for insight. Consider these two posts, both about the case of the fearful, leash reactive dog above.
- Post One: My clients are SUCH IDIOTS! I left them with instructions on how to use their head halter to avoid reactive outbursts and I arrived at the appointment today to find that they have begun using a prong collar they got from their neighbor! I am soooooo angry! These people just don’t care about their dog.
- Post Two: I am feeling really defeated. I have a client who has been working with me for three weeks, and I thought we were making progress by using a head halter, but when I arrived today, their dog was wearing a prong. I know they are making the best choices they can with what they understand to protect themselves and their dog, but I also know that I know more than they do. I am really sure that this is not as good a choice as they think it is, but I don’t think I am getting my message across. Can anyone help me with words of wisdom to help my clients understand the importance of using the equipment I have recommended?
The first post is likely going to get a high quantity of low-quality responses and ultimately, it leaves the responsibility on the client to fit into your mold. The second post is going to generate a much different conversation; one that reflects our responsibility as behaviour consultants and trainers to make our lessons accessible to our clients.
The allure of social media is that we can feed our emotions with a firehose force of support, or when we express more negative emotions, enable conflict. There is nothing that will fuel frustration or anger more than dissent and disagreement, and there is nowhere that you will get more of that than on social media. Choosing to use social media in a different and more constructive way requires that we use it more thoughtfully. The payoff is both self-respect and respect for our clients, which in turn contributes to the professionalism of the entire field.
Sue Alexander, CPDT-KSA, CBCC-KA
Sue Alexander has been teaching and consulting about dog training and behaviour since 1993. Sue has an extensive speaking portfolio including speaking at the Canadian Association of Professional Pet Dog Trainers National Conference in 2009, presenting at the Dogs in the Park Service Dog Conference for 6 years, and being interviewed on countless podcasts, television shows and radio programs. Sue is devoting her energies for the past two years to consulting to the dog training industry, helping other trainers to learn, grow and optimize their dog training professionalism.
Before becoming a dog trainer, Sarah completed her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 2015. Though she has long since left the laboratory behind, she still enjoys keeping up with the literature and applying her skills of critical analysis to dog training scenarios.
Sarah is a frequent guest on the live call-in radio show CBC BC Today, answering Vancouver’s dog behaviour questions. She has also been featured on Jimmy Fallon, The Daily Mail UK, NHK Japan, Good Morning America, The New York Post & others.
Besides training tricks, Sarah teaches group classes and private lessons for city dog owners across Vancouver through When Hounds Fly. She can be found on Instagram and TikTok @prancingpoodles.
