How the Right Dog Trainer Makes Everyday Life Easier

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Dog training should make everyday life easier—not more complicated.

In this episode of the K.I.S.S. Dog Training Podcast, I talk about what dog owners should really expect from a good trainer. It is not always the trainer who can get a dog to do the coolest things who is going to help you the most. The real goal is to create a simple, realistic routine that fits the dog, the owner, the household, and the problem you are trying to solve.

A good trainer should be able to break training into manageable steps, help you practice when things are easy before making them harder, and adjust the plan when something is not working.

A few of the biggest takeaways:

• Training has to fit into the owner’s real life or it will not get practiced.
• Start simple, build success, and then add distractions.
• The real training happens between sessions.
• A good trainer should be available to help troubleshoot problems along the way.
• Small successes build routines, and routines create progress.

The goal is not to dump more exercises on the owner. It is to help the owner understand what to do, why they are doing it, and how to adjust when things do not go as planned.

K.I.S.S. Dog Training
Dog Training Ain’t Cheap... Experience Counts.

https://kissdogtraining.com/

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to another Kiss Dog Training Podcast with certified dog trainer. Mike Dee. Dog training isn't complicated. You just need a little more information. Mike's coming up with all that.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

The topic today is a little convoluted. And the original title was Why Dog Training Should Make Everyday Life Easier. Well, as I wrote it and I started adding little SEO things, you know, it really became obvious. It really is a blog that's more about what can dog trainers do to make dog training easier, everyday life easier for the client. And it's the things that I think are important for a dog trainer to work on with a client. Okay. So this will be kind of maybe a wish list for clients to look for in dog trainers, things that you want to search out, ask people about the dog trainers, and um, and just look for when you're picking a dog trainer. Um ironically, it's not always the person who can get the dog to do the coolest things that are gonna help you get to where you want to be with your dog. Okay, so like the first thing, people are not chasing profession, they're just looking for a way to get their dog, oh, not to bark, to jump, to chew on things, uh, learn to pee in the right spot. And it's it's it's not any kind of magic from the dog trainer that's gonna fix that. Okay, what it's gonna be is the dog trainer who can help set a routine, give you an easy-to-follow step-by-step process with that routine, and then gives you an ample amount of time to work so you can see success. And that dog trainer has to have that card in the back pocket of where do we head next. So I think it's really important that there needs to be a step-by-step process that's easy to follow. That's really what I think our job is for you. That's why for years I always said, I think, you know, I don't train owners, I train dogs. And it's why the you know, tagline of the business is is changed in the last you know, several months to a year of dog training ain't cheap. Experience counts. You're gonna find that people who've been in this business longer probably have more tricks not to get what they want out of the dog, but what to get out of the people. I think the most important thing to realize right out of the shoot is dogs do what works. So if you got a dog who's barking at the window, or you have a dog who is pulling on leash, or you have a dog who runs from you whenever they get loose, those behaviors work to get the dog what they want. It may not be what you want, but it's definitely fulfilling anything and everything the dog needs moving around. Okay. And as long as it's fulfilling the dog's needs, your needs don't even equal into their brain. Okay. So what we gotta do is come up with, again, I'm gonna say that routine word of where can we start just to gain some traction? And I think a lot of that for me as a dog trainer is that hand feeding aspect. Me saying, okay, first 30 or 60 days, I want you to put the food bowl away, or I want you to carry it around the house and I want you to work the dog. We might be working the dog in the living room, we might be working the dog in the backyard, we might be working the dog on a long line in the front yard, but we are utilizing those two times a day that I'm gonna feed the dog so that we can train. That's a routine any of my clients can pull off. Now, if I give them 22 exercises to work on three times a day for exactly 22 minutes, it's probably not gonna be something that they're gonna be able to do. So, again, it's it's taking the same principle and dumbing it down to where somebody who has to work and has a family and only has a finite period of time can spend that 15 to 20 minutes a couple of times a day while they're feeding their dog just working on some of the things we've done. And then we have to add different layers, okay? But again, it comes down to that word routine, and for me, that first step has always been hand feeding because it's my way of tricking you into not only feeding your dog twice a day, which I know you're already doing, but utilizing that two times a day to get some training done. Now we're killing two birds with one stuff. I think the other thing we have to keep in mind is it's knowing which technique fits the owner, the dog, the household, the problem specifically. Um, I think with time and experience in the industry, you start to coming up with okay, so potty training. Okay, tell me how you do it. Well, we do this and we do that. Okay, have you ever thought about using bells? No, you have to tell people there's a dark side to bells. The dog may very well ring the bell throughout. You may even hear it right here as you see my dogs walking through here. When I'm shooting these videos, a lot of times they get um all pushy and they'll start ringing the bells in the kitchen because they want to go outside. In fact, there's one that just left. You know, but is it that? Is it setting some alarms in your phone that say take the damn dog out? You know, to remind you, if you get stuck checking emails in your home office, are you capable of here seeing the alarm? Oh, I do need to take the dog outside. Um, if it's pulling on leash, um, is it going to be starting simple enough for the client to get what they need? Is it going to be starting inside the house, then working in the backyard to add a layer of distraction, then working in the front yard in the driveway with a long line, then starting to go from your driveway to the next one. You know, a lot of people will look at me and go, no, I want to work on the walk right here and right now. And I'm like, you're not ready to work on the walk. You aren't doing the walk yet. What we need to do is get the dog accustomed to the leash and coming back to you and paying attention. Um, it's one of those that we have to get people to understand. You have to start simple so you stand a chance when it's hard. If you're practicing when it's hard, you're not succeeding. If you're practicing when it's simple, you're gonna get some reward, and then we can start adding layers of distraction so the dog can handle it. Okay, this kind of ties in with the last idea, but we gotta make it easier first. So I'm gonna use a math example. How many people were taught, please excuse my zero sally in math or pedmos, you know, and if I think about it, uh parentheses, exponent, division, multiplication, addition, subtraction is the order of operation. Okay, you don't even stand a chance in algebra unless you understand that. And if you think about it, we we learn in little bitty chunks, and then we start putting it together with that what's that fancy word, you know, acronym. Um, and if we don't, you know, you take a third grader who understands two plus two is four, and you hand them a math equation that says two plus x equals four, the kid's head explodes. It's like, why is there a letter in my math? What am I supposed to do with that? Well, we haven't taught them that yet. So I might take a dog, I'll use pulling on leash again, and I'll throw a leash on the dog in the house. And I say, walk three steps and stop. Let's see what the dog does. And the dog comes around front and sits. I'm like, oh, okay, well, that's because we taught the turnaround game in the week before. Okay, so this is turnaround game part two. All we're gonna do is put the leash on and start walking around the house and stopping so that the dog is learning this wonderful routine of every time I stop, I should come forward, pay attention to my owner, and sit. How many people, if they had a dog that would do a front-facing sit every single time you stopped on a walk, how many people would be happy with that? You know, what's what's another way to work on that? We take it to part three. Now we're gonna go for walks, but you have to stop at every driveway and get a sit. Then we go every two driveways, then every three driveways. But you can see we're going, pay attention to me in the house. Pay attention to me on the driveway, go out, come back, go out, come back. Then we're gonna walk around a little bit here and stop. Then it's gonna be every driveway, and it may have to be that there's two or three steps inside the house. We might even have to add the backyard before we can add the front yard, and that's where I think maybe it's our job as a dog trainer to make it easier on you is to have all these tools in the toolkit. Because here's the funny part: some people are gonna go really fast, and you're gonna have to run to catch up with them because they're just routine-oriented the minute you start showing them and they start starting to see they want to go. And these are the people who can have a problem solved a month tops, and you're gonna have other clients who have a real hard time with routine because of their work schedule, their lifestyle, how many kids they've got, the kids are all in sports, uh, Boy Scouts, camping, this, that, the other thing. And it's really hard for them to pigeonhole some training time in. So it may be your job to step back in everything, you know, and get it to go at a pace they can handle. You know, with a fearful dog, I'm always yelling at the client about you have to work at the dog's pace, not yours. Well, as a trainer, I need to be constantly looking in the mirror, yelling at myself, going, you can't move at your pace, Mike. You have to move at the person's pace. So everybody's gonna be a little bit different. And that was one of the main reasons I shifted my I don't train, I train owners, not dogs, to dog training ain't cheap, experience counts, because this is the stuff that we can do to make dog training easier for the client.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

If you love the podcast topics, Mike has books on dog training. Just search the name Mike Deeth, D-E-A-T-H-E. Books are available in audiobooks, ebooks, and in break. In the notes of the podcast, you'll find the link where you can donate as little as $3 a month to help support us on our journey to bring more good, solid, scientific, positive dog training information to the world. We appreciate that help. Remember, dog training isn't complicated. You just need a little more information. Here's Mike.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Here's another little truth bomb. And this would be for clients and for trainers out there. The training doesn't happen when we are there training the owner and the dog. The training happens in between the sessions. One of my pet peeves is finding out that somebody came to me from a trainer who we're gonna meet three times a week. Okay, you're the the client's head's gonna explode. They can't barely handle what's going on in their life anyway. And you're gonna show up on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and then give them the weekend to work. I'm totally different. It's like, okay, we're meeting today. I'm gonna give you two weeks to practice. I'm gonna send you videos of me working with it. I'll probably send you a couple of books. You know, I'm gonna send you a progress report. I want you to maybe two or three times a week tell me how things are going. The biggest pet peeve I have is when I walk into somebody's house and they go, Well, we didn't want to bother you. So we just waited until you came to ask the question. Well, we just wasted part of that two weeks. If you're having problems, I want you to call me. I want you to be direct and go, this ain't working. And usually what I'll say is, okay, do me a favor, shoot me just a little 10, 15, maybe 20 seconds tops because I don't want to clog up the email servers. Send me a video, have your, you know, your better half, you know, your partner, neighbor, whoever, shoot that video, and let me see it. And 90% of the time, it's like, look, you're moving too fast, your hand's moving too fast. You're holding your hand here instead of bringing it up into a set or going all the way down to you know, a down or come, you're keeping it right here in this dead man's land where it really knows like I don't know what that means. We haven't worked on that yet. Um, but I can usually get somebody back on track pretty quick. Um, I can shoot a quick video with one of my dogs. Um, that's the kind of response and uh help you as a trainer are going to give the client so that they don't lose motivation. They keep working, they keep going from station to station. Okay. In a sense, it's your job to go alphabetically for them: A to B, B to C, C to D. But the owner wants to go A to F. Well, you have to point out when they send you that email, hey, quit working on F, back up, let's get back to B, let's get to C, let's get to D. Show me those. When you're there, call me, email me, then we'll get to what you want to work on, okay? I also think experience from the side of the trainer helps with adjustments. We've just done it longer, you know. I've owned KISS Dog Training over 16 years now. Got my first certification in dog training at Pestmart in 2008. I have seen a lot of different kinds of people and different kinds of dogs and seen the successes and failures. And being in the business as long as I have, I don't mind sparring with a client every once in a while. Of, hey, look, let's be honest, how much are you really practicing? You know, the dog won't go to the crate. Okay, how many times a day do you practice? Go in the crate, get a cookie, come out of the crate, get a cookie. How often do you feed the dog in the crate? How many congs per day are we giving the dog? I mean, how much time are we spending making this a wonderful spot? By the way, that's a crate right here. Um, and you know, once you have an honest, open relationship with your client, they're gonna give you an honest answer and you're gonna go, okay, big deal. You made a mistake, you didn't get anything done. Let's reset, let's take it, let's do it, let's get this stuff done, and then we'll head forward. But it wouldn't be fair to me or to you or the dog for me to add new stuff or more stuff to your plate and expect you to catch up and do all this new stuff I want to do. So let's just stop, pause. You also gotta know when to say, hey, look, you're just not ready. Let's go ahead and cancel this appointment. Yeah, there might be a little bit of a rescheduling fee, you know, so that you're not wasting your time. But you gotta have the kindness to go, this ain't gonna do any good, just beating our head against a you know a hard object. You know, let's let's take a break, let's back up, let's take two steps back to take three steps forward. Because most of our clients have gotten into the habit of taking three steps back, two steps forward, and never making any progress. Where really what I want is just tiny little increments of success because success builds on success. So it's it's it's knowing how to handle a client, knowing how to shut down a session if they're not ready, telling them they need to practice more to be honest. But being honest doesn't mean being mean, it means being, you know, kind. Um, and making sure that the owner can see their frustration, but also see their dog's frustration. Because you're mad because the dog's not doing what you did in practice. I mean, it becomes this tornado, and sometimes the best thing in the world is let's take a couple of days. You already do doggy daycare, take a couple of days off, send the dog off to doggy daycare, rebound, relax, but I want to work. And I'm like, Yeah, your dog is getting work at doggy daycare. It's not the work you want to work on, but it is something functional, okay? Um, you might suggest hiring somebody to help you walk the dog. Somebody um who's a professional dog walker. Um, you know, and trust me, somebody who's a professional dog walker is probably better at walking dogs than I am as a dog trainer because it's what they do every day. Again, it's that nothing's expensive, you know, it's expensive, but it's the experience that you're paying for. So, okay. This is kind of goofy, but once you get things going and a routine gets started, the owner of the dog becomes the trainer. He becomes the teacher. They start teaching me the trainer. I walk in and they're like, okay, these are the three things that work, these are the three things that didn't work. Now it's my job to go, but they're connected. If you can do this, you can do this. You just got to come in through the back door here and show them. Here's a trick. Um, the dog won't lay down on community. You know, this has to be a dog who's allowed on furniture, um, or get an elevated platform to work. But a lot of times just getting a dog up on an elevated platform where I can bring my hand down below the level of the platform to get one or two downs will help the dog go, oh, that's all you wanted? Um, some people will sit with their knee up and lure the dog under the knee because the dog has to lay down as they go under your knee. Um, there's all sorts of little tricks. Um, a lot of people automatically assume it's sit down and pull the treat back towards you and their butt keeps popping up. And I just go, have you ever thought about just going down and push in? And we gotta make sure we're on a hardwood floor and not a rug. But a lot of times, if you're on a hardwood floor, they just slide right back into it down. Um, they will tell you what's working, what's not working. And when that happens, instead of you having to force information on them, they're dragging information out of you. That's when training becomes really successful, is when they start pulling information out of you because they they want it to work versus you having to throw stuff at them. And sometimes the more you throw, the more frustrated they get. So it's just getting a couple of little successes, and then we can move on and make it work. If every day you've had your dog has gotten more and more difficult, you need to stop and really think about what you've been doing. Is it the kind of trainer you picked? Is it the fact that you haven't been consistent and frequent? Is it that your life's a little out of control and things are kind of out of whack and we just need to find our center again and you know, kind of start from square one? Um we really, really need to get to calm communication and a routine people can handle. And sometimes trainers get more um stuck in the rut of I gotta teach a sit, then I gotta teach it down, then I gotta teach it this, then I gotta teach it that. Really, if you think about it, the only thing you need to teach a dog is to pay attention. You gotta bond with the dog. You guys gotta like each other. You gotta get the dog to want to pay attention because it's rewarding to pay attention. Then we start teaching the things that keep attention, you know. I I I'm a firm believer that, you know, it's all recall. If I say stay and I count to 10 and I drop my hand and say all done. Okay, keep in mind where my hand went. If I turn my back and I lure the dog around front and I have them focus on me, kind of recall again. They're at the front window and they're barking, and I drop my hand to my side, leave it, different commands, same hand signal. You know. For me, recall is kind of that foundational thing. But before you can teach recall, you gotta have a dog who's paying attention. Before you have a dog who's paying attention, I gotta hand feed them so they learn to pay attention. And by hand feeding them, I am bonding with the dog. These are all the little tricks over years that trainers learn. So I'm not gonna say anything bad about new trainers. I was a new trainer, you know, and I survived, but I survived by realizing I wasn't near as good as I thought I was. And all these years later, I'm still not as good as I want to be, but I'm a lot better than I was when I started. So um make sure you jive with the trainer you pick, ask lots of questions up front. If they don't want to answer those questions up front, that's a good signal that you're probably not gonna be taught by that person, you're gonna be told by that person. So um, hopefully some of this all makes sense. Um, if you've got any questions, uh email, call, um, reach out to us through any number of you know ways, and uh, we would love to help. Okay. Um, this is Mike with Kiss Dog Training. Come back next time and we'll talk more stuff about dogs, hopefully, and learn something today. See you next time.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

And that's a wrap on the Kiss Dog Podcast. Mike's back next month with more information.