It is customary to brag about victories and successful stories. Those showcase the best outcomes and promote a positive professional image, obviously.
However, there is something to be said about telling unsuccessful stories. These stories are skeletons in any dog trainer’s closet, and it is good from time to time to showcase them, too. The reason is quite simple: we are not perfect, but recognizing our faults improves our professional abilities.
Many, many years ago I had a sweet couple who brought in their 2-year-old Rottweiler for training.
Their story was as old as this world. They got a puppy for their son who was finishing up high school. He wanted a tough dog, and they got the toughest they could think of.
The kid, busy with exams and college applications, did next to nothing with the puppy, and his mother - a petite woman, maybe 110lbs or less - had to overtake the care for the dog. This woman wanted nothing to do with the dog in the first place, and things got really bad when the son left for college.
The dog was big, powerful, and very smart. He figured out how to bully this woman real quick. He would paw at her for treats, and if she would not give him anything, he would grab her by the elbow. If that didn’t help, he would bite harder, to the point of leaving significant bruises.
Once he got her under control, he established a few places which he would resource-guard. First, it was the couch, then this woman’s bed, and eventually, the stairs. Of course, because this woman was not dog-savvy, she came up with the most natural solution - bribing.
She literally had to carry pieces of raw meat with her everywhere she went in the house to bribe him into letting her pass him in the hallway, down the stairs into the laundry room, and upstairs to her own bedroom.
The husband could deal with the dog, but he travelled for work, and when they came to me, things were really bad. The dog knew no boundaries, and was severely overweight; the woman was terrified and questioned every single life choice; and the man was there pretty much to just support her in her training efforts.
I recommended a board-and-train at first, but they said they did not want it and would instead try to fix the issues themselves, following my advice. Hesitant to push them further, I agreed.
They showed up to two classes, and they started making quite a bit of progress. However, they did not show up to their third class, or to the fourth. They stopped responding to my messages and went completely off-grid.
One month later, the woman called me and said that they were ready for board-and-train and needed it as soon as possible. I was busy with other dogs at that time, so I said they would have to wait.
The next day, the woman called me again and said that they put the dog down because she did not want to deal with it anymore, and everyone else in the household did not care.
This case has been haunting me since that day.
I should have been clearer with them about the difficulties they were going to face, and I should have explained that there are no quick fixes. This dog needed consistency, boundaries, and rules. I should have insisted on board-and-train. I could have even recommended a re-home for them since they were clearly not cut out to deal with this dog. Instead, I chose to be polite. I chose to not hurt their feelings and to agree with what the clients wanted, even though it didn’t feel right.
I cannot change the past, but I learned my lesson, which is the point of this post.
The lesson is: be brutally honest. Politeness, sugar-coating, and elusive and indirect language caused this dog’s death. Therefore, I now choose to be direct and straight. I would rather be perceived as rude than as polite but inefficient.
Another lesson is for anyone seeking training help. Do not be spooked by frankness. Eloquent prefaces and elaborate but insubstantial responses might sound smart and fancy, but they are just verbal decorations, and these decorations are not why you decided to find a trainer.
Instead, seek clarity, substance, and honesty, even if this honesty sounds hurtful. These are good things; these are the things that mean that your trainer cares about you.
This also means that such a trainer knows exactly what they are talking about because, like myself, they probably have a few skeletons of their own that taught them a thing or two.