04 MarEpisode 124 | Dog Training Q and A! 3/4/2021: How SFTD hires trainer, dealing with a suddenly fearful dog + teaching a recall without treats
This is a bonus episode: A recording of a live Q and A.
Join Annie Grossman for a live Q and A most Thursdays on Instagram @schoolforthedogs. Get alerted about the next one or ask a question in advance at schoolforthedogs.com/qanda. She also sometimes goes live to answer questions on Clubhouse. Find her there: @anniegrossman.
Here, Annie answers three questions:
@gussiethehussie asks: "How do you vet the trainers you hire? What sort of continuing ed do they get?"
@artielepup asks: "Why is my dog suddenly so reactive"
@roxyriddler asks: "My pup is no longer interested in recall unless she sees a treat! Help!"
Subscribe: iTunes
Mentioned in this episode:
School For The Dogs' Professional Courses
Association For Professional Dog Trainers
Certification Council For Professional Dog Trainers
Tawzer – netflix for dog training nerds
Born to Behave – our free, open-source dog training course
Transcript:
Annie:
Hi. This is a bonus Q and A episode. I try and go live every Thursday afternoon on the School for the Dog's Instagram account, which is simply @SchoolfortheDogs. If you would like to ask a question in advance or be notified when I am going to go live, you can go to SchoolfortheDogs.com/qanda. I also periodically answer questions on Clubhouse. You can find me there @AnnieGrossman.
GussietheHussie says: how do you get the trainers you hire? What sort of continued education do they get?
Very good questions. So, a few years ago, we started our professional program training people up to become professional dog trainers. And I think that's Sophie. Hey, Sophie. And part of the reason we did that was because we had trouble finding trainers that we felt like we wanted to work with. It's really hard to find good dog trainers out there. And I'm happy to share some tips on how to find some good dog trainers.
But before I do, I should plug that we are putting our professional program largely online. And what's extra exciting about that is a lot of the content is actually totally free because we want there to be more educated good dog trainers out there. We wanted to take away as many of the barriers as possible. So we are just on the brink of launching the full suite of courses, but the first two first two are up and you can get them schoolforthedogs.com/courses.
The completely free open-source one which contains most of our professional course online content written content is called Born to Behave. You can find it there, you can sign up there. And there's like a tier one professional course which is the same content as Born to Behave. But you do get a certificate at the end, if you do all the parts and do the quizzes.
And then we’re about to put up the second tier, which is going to have real time interactions with trainers, several hours of lectures, the ability to sit in with our trainers on sessions, et cetera, et cetera.
So make sure to sign up for our newsletter, think you can get their schoolforthedogs.com/newsletter, make sure to follow us on Instagram so that you're up to date on all of that stuff. But again, just go to SchoolfortheDogs.com/courses, and you can see those first two things.
So yeah, let's see. I think , have to look at our staff to remind myself right now, but let's let me see. We have two trainers who came to us from Hunter which is a college or university. I think it's a Hunter College, but they do have advanced degree programs. So Sasha and Maddie right now are getting their master's at Hunter. We found them and also our trainer, Jenny, who hasn't been working with us sadly for the last year because of quarantine, but Jenny also came to us through Hunter.
They have a fabulous master's degree there called, it's an animal behavior and conservation program that I've actually thought about doing, but three of my employees have done it. And so that's where they came from.
Who else? Then we have Claire Cario. I interviewed her on the podcast recently about her background and training. She and also our trainer, Adam, who I also interviewed recently on the podcast. It was kind of word of mouth through a really great email list of some of the best trainers in New York City that were on.
I think we found both of them through that very small email list that was started by Dr. Elise Christiansen of Behavior Vets in New York City. If you're looking for a good trainer in your area, if you can find if they're a good veterinary behaviorist that you know of, they should be able to recommend a good one. Behavior Vets actually has its own team now of excellent trainers.
Who else is on our staff? Mike, Erin, Em and Anna, all four of them did our professional program actually. Anna was in the very first class that we did. I think we've done six classes now of like between two and three people each. So yeah, we've been working hard at training up trainers.
If you're trying to find a good trainer in your area, clickertraining.com is the Karen Pryor website. I think, maybe I'm going to be wrong, I think there's something like 1500 Karen Pryor Academy certified trainers in the country, or actually throughout the world at this point. I might have that number wrong, but it's something like that. And I did the KPA program. I am a KPA certified training partner. I think anyone who has gone through their program is going to be quite decent.
There is also the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers, which now might be the only accredited certifying body for dog trainers. And certainly the most respected one. You get CPDT KA or KSA certification by going through their tests. And then you also have to show that you've done a certain number of hours, get a certain number of recommendations, I think, and you have to do continuing ed, which I think was part of your question. So you have to show that you have CEUs, which you also have to do with with Karen Pryor.
And CEUs, there are so many wonderful continuing education opportunities out there for dog training. A lot of dog trainers I know didn't really do a formal program, even Kate, who is my partner, and certainly one of the best dog trainers I know. She didn't do one specific program, but she, I guess you'd say has cobbled together quite an education doing a lot of continuing ed style programs.
Off the top of my head there are, clicker expo, which was run also by the Karen Pryor Academy organization. They run conferences I think twice a year in the States and once a year abroad that are chock-full of so much good information, amazing lecturers. They also have tons of resources online. The Association for Professional Dog Trainers also has an annual conference that has often blown my mind, and I love going to that one. The IAABC also has an annual conference that we've been to.
And you know, a great resource that a lot of people don't know about for continuing ed is a tawzer.com. It’s like Netflix for dog nerds. I believe it's $50 a month and you get unlimited access, used to be like DVD's that they would mail out. But I think now it's all online. Unlimited access to a huge, huge number of videos. Most of them are like recorded lectures. So it's another really good place to look.
All right. Thank you for that question. Gussy the hussy, I love your name.
Artielepup on Instagram said, why is my dog suddenly so reactive?
As I often say, when I do these Q and A's it's almost like a not that funny dog training improv. You know, I'm not getting a lot of information from you guys usually with your questions and certainly you know, a seven word question, like why is my dog suddenly so reactive? There could be any number of reasons.
So I have to say, make sure to get in touch with a good dog trainer. You can check out some of those references. I just mentioned, if you've missed what I've said, I will put this up on School for the Dogs podcast so that you can check it out there. I mean, there's any number of reasons why your dog is suddenly so reactive. I don't know how old your dog is. I don't know the situation.
Young dogs do go through what's called fear periods which can be times when they're suddenly especially fearful. And I kind of equate this to, well, one way to think about it is like, as an animal is growing older and evolving and getting farther away from the protective world of their parents, they kind of need to be a little bit more fearful about things in order to survive. But sometimes that fear is misplaced. So they might suddenly become fearful of something that seemed normal yesterday. But fear is generally a good thing in that it can keep us safe.
If you're noticing your dog is suddenly fearful and you have a young puppy, it could be one of these fear periods. Fear in dogs can lead to a lot of behaviors we don't like, which is one reason why I think it is so important to use dog training methods that are rooted in positive reinforcement. Because we do not want to create more fear in our dogs.
But my quick tip solution would be to try and start to keep a log of two things. One, the situations where your dog seems fearful. Note everything that's going on. Like, are you in a specific room, who's in the room? What sounds are in the room? Everything you can think of, because there might be things that your dog is perceiving that you're not perceiving.
And you might find as you do this over time, that you come up with some specific things that it seems like your dog may be fearful of. And I can tell you, you never know. I had a puppy kindergarten class once that I was running, and in our puppy kindergarten classes, cause the focus of socialization, we do stuff like play noises. Like we'll play crazy noises and then give a dog a treat. You know, trying to use classical conditioning to teach a dog that the sound of a siren is an okay thing. And the sound of a baby crying is an okay thing.
Or sometimes in class we'll bring out like weird objects or things that are weird to walk on. Tinfoil or children's toys, windup toys, vacuums. And again, it's about teaching the dog, in the presence of this weird object you get treats. And one time I remember, we were in a class, I think it was with weird objects. And a feather wafted through the room and this one golden retriever puppy went bananas. Fearful of this feather.
Which to me was just a good reminder that you never know. So try and keep a log.
Also try and keep a log of what your dog is doing that's letting you know that he's fearful. I mean, I commend you for even noticing he's fearful at all. That takes more observation skills than some people have. But what is he doing? Is he barking? Are his ears going back? Is he cowering? Is he hiding?
And try and notice in the sequence of whatever he's doing, what the first indication is of that fear. Because that's where you can intervene. And that's where you want to be in order to try and keep your dog from being fearful. Most aggression can stem from fear and most dogs don't go from happy go lucky to biting. There is a sequence of events between those two things. So if you can start noticing as early as possible that your dog is uncomfortable, you can start intervening and rescuing your dog, let's put it, early on.
Oh, Hey Leah, Hey Gilby. Hey Stephanie. So that is my long and rather vague, but necessarily vague answer to this question, Why is my dog suddenly so reactive. Artie, I don't know where you are located, but if you do need help finding a good trainer, please let me know.
Last question comes from RoxyRiddler on Instagram: My pup is no longer interested in recall unless she sees a treat. Help!
Okay. Well, one reason why we really drive home the point to our clients that you can't have the treat visible when you're training until after after the behavior happens, ideally after you've used some sort of marker in most situations, be it a clicker or marker word or hand signal or whatever, is because you don't want to get in the habit of the dog who's like, show me the money. Right?
And actually, I get on my husband's back about this because my old dog Amos was really impeccably trained to do all kinds of both fun and useful things until my husband came into the picture. At which point, I guess you could say, I did a crappy job of teaching my husband how to train my dog because he is the king of having the cheese in his hand while asking the dog to do something.
And yeah, it got to the point where my dog was like, well, why should I do it unless you have cheese in your hand? Which is not where you want to be. We call it like getting lost in treat land. So make sure your goodies, if you're using yummy edible goodies, are tucked away in a treat pouch out of sight and do not show themselves until after the behavior happens.
That said, I would also suggest that if you're already having this problem while you try to separate the treat from the cue, I would also start incorporating other kinds of rewards in your training. Especially for something like recall, which is an active behavior. Your dog is on his feet or her feet, probably coming towards you. Use that energy, that running energy to your advantage.
So the second that your dog comes to you, sometimes with the recall, part of the reward can be you running away! Giving your dog the opportunity to chase you. That can actually reinforce the behavior of coming to you. And at the same time, encourage your dog to then be coming to you for the next recall with great alacrity, right?
Getting your dog, building the behavior of not only coming to you, but coming to you with a lot of excitement. Running away from your dog is one way to do that. Presenting a toy, a squeaky toy, tossing a toy rather than giving a treat when they come to you can also be an option.
Anyway, that is a really good question. You can also, like any other behavior, you're going to be shaping a recall from a short distance to a long distance. If you're at a long distance, you know, your dog might not even be able to see or smell that you have a treat on you. But I would suggest starting really from the beginning, if you're trying to retrain this.
And that can be as simple as working doing a hand touch. Teaching a dog every time you touch my outstretched fingers, you get something good, with the good thing not presented until after they touch your fingers. And then build it from there, but you can always start from scratch. Karen Pryor calls it going back to kindergarten. So if you're having this issue with your dog you know, just start from the beginning.
All right. Thank you. These were some very good questions. I will be posting this on the podcast. If you have a question that you would like to ask — oh Hey, nugs happy birthday. I think I saw. If you have a question you’d like to ask or you'd like to be notified when I'm going live here or elsewhere you can sign up or submit a question at Schoolforthedogs.com/ask. All right. Thanks a lot. Take care.
