10 SepEpisode 169 | The mainstream media is confused about dog training: Two journalists-turned-trainers discuss a misguided WSJ op-ed & more (featuring Kiki Yablon)
Last month, the Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece about how positive-reinforcement dog training is too much trouble, concluding that punishment-based training is faster and, overall, underrated. Quite a few dog trainers wrote to the Wall Street Journal, angry that such a major publication would run something with such spurious facts and no sources. Annie called up her long time friend Kiki Yablon to talk about why so much "journalism" about dog training goes wrong. Kiki, who is a Karen Pryor Academy faculty member and trains dogs in Chicago, was an editor for many years, and turned to a career in dog training around the same time as Annie quit the field of journalism as well. In this casual chat, the two discuss the errors reporters frequently make when writing about dogs, the traditional media's dismissiveness of pets as a serious subject, the general public's misunderstandings about behavior as a science, and the flubs they both made themselves when attempting to write about dog training before they set out to become trainers.
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Mentioned in this episode:
I’m Disciplining My Dog, Not Torturing Her, Wall Street Journal 8/2/21
Letters to the editor about the article
More about Laura Monaco Torelli – www.lauramonacotorelli.com/
Roald Dahl's The Sound Machine (1949)
Annie's 2007 article about people becoming dog trainers
Chicago Reader article Kiki edited about pitbulls
Don't Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor
Related Episodes:
Episode 161 | Behavior, Misunderstood: Crying It Out and Pandemic Pets In The New Yorker Magazine
Episode 163 | Terrible dog training, sugarcoated with New Age woo: Cesar Millan is back on TV
Transcript:
[music]
Kiki Yablon:
There's this Roald Dahl story that ran in The New Yorker that I think about all the time. And basically it's a man who invents a box that makes sounds audible to him that other people can't hear. And then he takes it out in the garden and the neighbor is pruning her roses and all he can hear are screams. That's the level I think that we all get to when we're working with animals and their people, and you see all these little moments of misery. Or like sometimes I wake up thinking about, God, dogs have to ask every time they need to go to the bathroom for their entire life. Like…!
[music and intro]
Annie:
Last month an article was published in Wall Street Journal, an opinion piece by a guy named Mark Naida. The title was I'm Disciplining My Dog, Not Torturing Her. The subtitle was “Exhausted, I gave in and tried a prong collar. I'm glad I did.” A lot of trainers I know wrote to The Wall Street Journal complaining about this piece and about how it really wasn't reported at all and contained a lot of misinformation. They did publish some letters to the editor about the piece.
I wanted to talk to my friend Kiki Yablon about it. Like me, Kiki used to be a full-time journalist. She was an editor at The Chicago Reader, and now she's a full-time dog trainer. So what I'm sharing with you today is that a pretty just candid chat that she and I had. I started with her talking about that Roald Dahl story cause I really liked that quote. Anyway, hope you enjoy this conversation with this very interesting person. Someone I am very glad to know.
Kiki Yablon:
My name is Kiki Yablon. I am a dog trainer based in Chicago, Illinois, and my certifications include, or are Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner. I'm also a new KPA faculty member. I have my first group going right now. And CPDT-KA.
I also, other things that I do that are related are that I work for Dr. Susan Friedman, helping as a co-instructor or TA for the Living and Learning with Animals course. And I helped with the inaugural How Research Works course this year, and do a little bit of work for the IAABC’s Principles and Practices, and probably getting the name a little bit wrong. Their sort of flagship course, there's a functional assessment and intervention design section of that, that some of the TA's help review the work.
Annie:
Can you explain what the Living and Learning with Animals course is for anyone listening who's not familiar with it?
Kiki:
Sure. It's Susan's flagship course. It's an eight week online course for animal professionals and some other people, interested parties, that kind of teaches behavior analysis 101, or applied behavior analysis with animals 101. So we're in the middle of a session now. It runs twice a year usually, in January and July. And there's eight weeks of lectures and six weeks of homework and a final exam. Teaching assistants engage in soft Socratic dialogue with the students on their homework questions. There's one homework question a week.
Annie:
So, I think you and I first met about maybe 10 years ago, but before I even met you, I heard about you through the wonderful writer and my friend, Liz Armstrong, who said to me, “You know, you're going from journalism to dog training, and I actually had an editor who's doing the same thing. You got to connect with Kiki.” And I was like, “No way! Here, I thought I was so original.” [laughs] So maybe talk a little bit about your journey from writing to dog training.
Kiki:
Yeah. So I went to school for journalism. I sort of decided at age 16 that that's what I wanted to do. I specifically wanted to be a music journalist or write for Rolling Stone or something like that in high school. I went to Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. I graduated, I went through the Radcliffe publishing course, and then I went right into journalism.
So I was an editor for about 15 years before I got a dog. So I worked at Outside Magazine and I worked at Chicago Magazine and I worked at the Chicago Reader for a long time.
Annie:
Were you the editor in chief there?
Kiki:
Briefly, just very briefly at the end, but for most of the time there, I was either the music editor or the managing editor.
Annie:
So what was the point where you were like, Okay, I want to do this other thing?
Kiki:
Well, in 2005 I got a dog and I thought that I was, like many people, I thought I was gonna take my dog everywhere with me. And it would be my best friend and, you know, the whole Disney fantas. And pretty quickly became apparent that she was not comfortable with a lot of different situations.
She wasn't comfortable being left home alone. She wasn't super comfortable with other dogs. We think something sort of happened at the daycare that I took her to and my husband went on tour, but we don't know that for sure.
But anyway, she had a lot of struggles, and I got interested in dog training by trying to help her. So I happen to live next door at the time to Jessica Whiten. She's now a curator at Marine Mammal Sanctuary in Iceland, but she was a senior trainer at the Shedd aquarium. And she introduced me to clicker training pretty much right when I got my dog.
And I didn't have any idea what she had just showed me, but I, it looked like magic and I wanted to learn how to do it. So I went and sought out somebody who did clicker training, and that's how I found Laura Monaco Torelli. And we took a couple classes with her, and like a lot of people after two classes, she was like a superstar in class. And then we were like, yay, she's trained!
And then she started to have issues with other dogs and people. And basically she hit social maturity, and some things that we hadn't noticed as fear kind of probably turned into aggressive responses. So I started sort of wandering around trying to find help for her. And I really didn't understand how positive reinforcement could fix behavior that you wanted to get rid of.
So I dabbled a little bit with other kinds of training. Didn't really love what I was asked to do. Went back to Laura. And I just didn't have a lot of money either for training at that time. And so I just started to read books.
And then I think after about three years where I hadn't read a book outside of work that wasn't about dog training, I thought, you know, maybe this is something I'm interested in as a gig, you know? And then I started to look at how do you become a dog trainer?
And that's how I found, learned more about the Karen Pryor Academy, because I had asked Laura if I could intern with her and she was busy for a year, cause she was going through the first iteration of KPA. So she did take me on eventually as an intern, and I started volunteering at a couple of shelters, or a shelter and the city pound. Then I went through KPA and the rest of the…you kind of know!
Annie:
Did, at any point you think you wanted to become someone who writes about dogs and behavior, as opposed to someone working with clients?
Kiki:
You know, when I first left journalism, the other half of the story is that journalism was starting to struggle. So around 2007, the paper I worked for got sold by its original owners to a small chain of alternative weekly's based in Atlanta. And they lost us in bankruptcy court within a year. And then we were owned by a hedge fund.
And that's actually how I ended up becoming the editor in chief, was the hedge fund folks fired my beloved boss at a half Starbucks in the Marriott around the corner from the offices. [laughs] And then I was late to work that day. And I got a call saying, Are you here yet? And said, No, I'll be there in a second. And then I came into that news. So it wasn't, it wasn't how I imagined becoming the editor in chief of something.
And they offered me the job and I took it because I thought I'm going to be doing it anyway, if they're offering it to me and they don't have anybody else lined up, I'm going to be doing it anyway, and I might as well get paid for it. But I was just starting KPA. I had just started KPA when that happened. So about halfway through KPA, I felt confident that I was going to be okay at it. And so I quit.
Annie:
It took me by surprise. I mean, you're, I think you were in journalism longer than I am. You're a little older than I am. I figured that that's what I would be doing for the rest of my life. And when I decided actually I think I want to become a dog trainer, it was partially because it was interesting to me.
But partially because I think I smelled that things were not going to get better. I saw the direction things were going and I saw that to make things work I was probably going to have to take a job where I was going to be writing 10 blog posts a day or something like that, that I didn't think I would be happy doing, going from like a weekly paper or whatever to that.
But I remember thinking like, Oh, all my successful journalism friends are gonna look down on me kind of, or, you know, I'm gonna watch all these people I know go have these glorious careers.
And to some extent that has happened. But in another way, I certainly feel like I have plenty of journalist friends who are like, Oh my God, I wish I had become a dog trainer when you did!
Kiki:
I know I have a lot of journalism friends who have really never — like, they're still in it somewhat, or they left the reader, but it took them a long time or they never really went back to working at a full time place. And they, it was a pretty traumatic experience. I don't mean to speak for them, but —
Annie:
Yeah, I know some people who've gone on to be successful, but the majority of journalists I know, I feel like are doing something sort of journalism adjacent at this point. And not with much vigor, I guess. So we're the lucky ones.
Kiki:
To go back to your original question, which was, did I want to go at it from a writing standpoint? No. I really wanted to do something completely different where I moved around physically and didn't do that.
And actually when I first started, I was still actually doing a lot of sort of freelance editing to kind of fill in the gaps. And I also took a retail job. I took a job at a pet store, which was a big switch.
Annie:
Yeah. Well, I did something similar. I worked at a dog daycare and did some dog walking for a while.
Kiki:
Yeah. And I just remember like, you know, like I'd wake up on a Tuesday or something and be like, What have I done? But, then I would go get a taco and see some dogs.
Annie:
[laughs] And feel pretty good about life.
Kiki:
Yeah.
Annie:
When I was writing — and I never had like a beat that I was particularly passionate about. I mean, I guess what I did was, generally speaking, like lifestyle reporting, but I always felt like I was just kind of writing for hire.
And I remember at some point my mom said something like you should write about pets. You know, you love dogs. And she handed me, I remember, an article. It was maybe in the New York Post or USA Today, or something about how to clean your dog's ears or something along those lines.
And I remember thinking like, Never. That will never be me. I will never be the person writing about how to clean your dog's ears.
Now though, I mean, talk about a change of life plan. I can't imagine writing anything pet related without having a really strong opinion about it. And in that way, like the kind of journalism I think my mother imagined for me feels impossible.
I actually wrote something a few years ago for Real Simple. It was something about like classifying dogs as if they were like in a yearbook. So like, you know, most popular or whatever, it was really silly. But like, I did everything I could to like approach it as seriously as possible.
And they ended up sort of tinkering with it till it was saying things like, you know, “It's a good idea if you have a Labrador to take him for two walks a day” or something like, and I was just like, I was like, could you not put my name on this? Because I have too many thoughts and feelings about all of this to put my name on this kind of like dribble at this point.
Which brings me to the article that had us chatting the other day. Can you summarize this Wall Street Journal article for anyone listening who hasn't read it?
Kiki:
Yeah, the author's name was, I don't know how to pronounce it correctly. Martin Naida, Naida. And it was just a short kind of light piece about how he had decided to use a prong and a shock collar on his Irish Setter because the problems that the dog was having with being left alone and walking were inconvenient. And he then recommended that other people do the same.
And this caused a pretty big stir in our community. A lot of people were posting about it and sort of dissecting it. And when I was reading it, I was trying to figure out why I felt so mad about it. Because I don't — normally at this point, you know, there's an article every other week lately about dogs and pandemic puppies. And there's a fair bit of misinformation around them. Or they interview sort of a range of trainers who are actually giving very different advice and the writer can't tell.
And I don't usually get up in arms about those things or post anything about them, but this one made me mad, I think more on an editorial level than a dog training level. Because I have a lot of empathy for owners who don't know what to do when their dog is struggling and making their life difficult.
Annie:
Sure.
Kiki:
And which we'll talk about more later, I think, it's hard to find the right information or know how to find the right information or where to look for the right information. So it didn't as much make me mad that he used those tools, although I feel potentially bad for the dog.
But what bothered me is that it was an opinion piece without any thing to back up the opinion. Which is the kind of thing that used to make me mad as an editor. You know, just because it's your opinion doesn't mean that you don't do any reporting, don't try to find out what's right. It was just a completely uncurious piece.
The only sources cited was PETA, which I don't think he spoke to anybody at PETA. He just talked about PETA's stance on those tools, stated facts like, you know, he didn't say what issue it was, but you know, it takes like an average of 18 months to address this problem with the positive reinforcement.
So that bothered me on a bunch of levels. Like, one, this is the worst kind of opinion piece. Two, it had to have gone through somebody else who didn't question that. It got written and it got published without anybody saying, Hey, how come you didn't ask anybody if this is true?
Annie:
The tone of it was, I mean, the fact that PETA is like the only place that he mentioned speaks to this is that there's this movement of nicey nicey ness in dog training,
Kiki:
Right. He called his dog a sissy.
Annie:
As supposed to doing what really works. And he talks about positive reinforcement training as like, “this is what most trainers do.” He referred to positive reinforcement training in a way that made me think like, Oh, I didn't realize that this was the mainstream kind of dog training. I mean, I'd like to think so. And maybe it is.
But the fact that like Cesar Milan has a new show out that's being watched by millions of people every week doesn't make me feel like our science-based, reward-based, however you want to call it, approach to dog training is the go-to for most people. And kind of underscored the — it made me feel like, oh, you know, those are just a bunch of cookie pushers [laughs].
Kiki:
Yeah, that tone was very striking, too. Especially in — you know, for some reason, our side of the dog training profession is pretty female. The language used really made it sound like you're a pansy if you use positive reinforcement with your dog. “My dog is a sissy.” Like the language was really reminiscent of other areas of life where that sort of language happens that I don't like.
Annie:
I think that it's a pet peeve for me, that positive reinforcement dog training gets equated with like being heart stars and flowers, flower girl, you know, hippy dippy kind of. Like, that's the way it's characterized a lot, where I feel like it doesn't appeal to me because it's about being nice to dogs. I do like being nice to dogs. Certainly that's a major reason why I like it. But to me, that's —
Kiki:
I wouldn’t want to hear this kind of talk about children. You know, I did post something about the article, and I had real mixed feelings and sort of bad feelings after doing it because it wasn't a very positive approach to take, but —
Annie:
Well, but Kiki, I feel like that's part of the struggle of all of this, is that it's hard to speak out in an honest way about people who are doing things differently, because it sounds like sour grapes, and it sounds like anti positive. And here we have the word positive in our job description.
Kiki:
Yeah. But I mean, I have empathy for people who use prong collars. I have clients who I haven't asked to take off their prong collar yet because they don't feel safe. You know, it's sort of not about the technique. My irritation was mostly editorial. [laughs]
Annie:
Well, I have the same similar feeling about Cesar Millan, that actually only in the last few weeks have I really realized is like — and then I posted a podcast the other day that was a conversation I had with Kate. And I think that was the first time that I realized that my beef with him is not every other dog trainer's beef with him. Yes, like I wish he were not using the methods he uses for sure. And I think most dog trainers I know I think feel the same way.
But what gets me is a denial of science. Is the snake oil. Is that, it's like, I often feel like when, as an expert who is going into someone's home and getting paid to help solve their problems, people are so wanting the quick and easy solution that they're willing to accept things that don't necessarily make sense simply because there's an expert in the living room or, you know, who may or may not be certified.
And, you know, I could say jump up and down on one foot three times and yell the word strawberry. And like probably someone would do it. And I feel like that's what happens with Cesar Millan. And he's working with people all the time.
Kiki:
I mean, I bought a book when I first started that told me to like always eat before my dog. So to try to solve her aggression issues, I would like get out some saltine crackers and kind of eat them and look at her and then put her food down. I mean, how nuts is that?
Annie:
[laughs] Exactly. But I know that when I started doing KPA, I mean, before that, if you had said to me, oh, you know, dog training is basically a technology and application of what we know about behavioral science, I think I would have been completely dumbfounded that dog training had anything to do with any kind of science. Would you say that you were in the same boat?
Kiki:
I think because before I started doing it, I had read some books that gave me a clue about that. Like, Don't Shoot the Dog. I had a sense of it. But I didn't have a sense of how broad that science was.
I feel like when you're a new dog trainer, you go through a bunch of stages where you're pretty sure that you know everything now. And then you give people unsolicited advice, you speak like you're really sure of everything. And then I think that the more experience you get, the more you hedge everything. The more the answer is, it depends.
And I think that is in part because that's a more sophisticated application of the science and that's really what science is like. It's not definitive. It's always open to new information. So. I forgot to mention at the top of the thing that I'm in a grad program taking a bit longer than I hoped to get a master's in applied behavior analysis.
Like, learning that there was a science behind it was life-changing. Because, also as a new dog trainer, like a lot of my questions for Laura early on when I was an intern with her were, Well, what do I do if the dog does this? Or what do you do about barking? You know, what do you do about this issue? And her answers were always Well, you know, and then asking for more information.
And so when I took LLA for the first time in 2012, I think I described it at the time as I sort of felt like the heavens had opened up and the angels were singing or something, and it was like, oh, there is order to this. There is a framework that you can kind of, you can go back to the edges and there's a place to touch. You're not just swimming around — totally mixing metaphors, but you're not just swimming around, loose in the pool. Right? You can go back to this framework and you're probably going to be able to figure out what to do based on the individual situation.
And sometimes you can't change the environment enough to make the changes that would make a difference for the person or the dog, but you got a much better chance if you have that framework around you to refer to.
Annie:
Well, you know, I'm working on a book right now, off and on for a long time, but I think it's finally coming together. And I've been trying to think about what differentiates it from a million other books. And I think there's so many dog training books that organize things by problem or by breed.
What I hope to do is sort of give a broader picture of how you can address this issue or that issue kind of by understanding conditioning and antecedent arrangements and all the things that I've learned about behavior from dog training that are not starting at the specific problem.
Kiki:
Yup.
Annie:
When I was first thinking like, Hmm, maybe I'd like to do dog training, I pitched an article to the New York Times, this was in 2007, about people wanting to become dog trainers because of the success of The Dog Whisperer. I think actually a few years before that I had been assigned a story on people wanting to become yoga instructors, like a boom and people becoming a yoga instructors. So I thought like, well, maybe I could pitch a similar story but about dog training.
And when I was doing — I mean, I feel really embarrassed that when I go back and read it, because I can see how I had no clue and how I was lumping together trainers who knew something with ones who didn't. And I too was working with an editor, like I wasn't working totally alone, but at no point did anybody say, Hold on, are these people certified by a reputable body?
And at the time, I saw no difference between what they were doing at Bark Busters and what Ian Dunbar was doing. To me, it was all just dog training. And now I feel like I have so much more of a nuanced view.
There was a dog trainer that you guys featured in the Chicago Reader a few times who was using pretty harsh methods. Can you maybe just talk about editing those stories?
Kiki:
Yeah. So, we've talked about the Wall Street Journal thing and how that was irritating because they didn't do what you're supposed to do. They didn't didn't do any reporting. Maybe didn't do any fact checking. And nobody questioned it because it seemed like a light topic.
And one of the things that I always felt like you needed to do no matter what you were covering — and I was, you know, the music editor for a while. And I didn't like stuff that treated music as light. Like if you're gonna cover it, go deep.
Annie:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Kiki:
So I worked with a really fantastic young reporter who pitched a story about dog training. And I was excited about it because this was after I got my dog and had some interest and thought I had some knowledge about dog training. And the article was actually about — it sort of interwove whether pit bulls can be reformed — I just cringed thinking about it now — with anecdotes from this trainer who had been hired by a shelter to rehabilitate a pit bull.
And we really tried to — this is the thing that, I think this separate from the Wall Street Journal thing, because they didn't try. But even when you try, like in your case, you try to find experts, especially using kind of the old journalism model of like the facade of objectivity, right? These people say one thing, these people say another thing, it has equal weight, which I think has completely fallen apart in the past four years in journalism.
But, maybe that was always problematic because we interviewed, I think, the wrong people now. And I think we face the same — journalists are people, and I think we face the same problem that the average consumer faced, which is dog training is an unregulated industry. So how do you tell who is an expert?
You know, there are certifications from all over the place. How do you tell which of those certifications are better than others? It's really hard to tell. I think it's probably gotten easier since the early 2000s, because there's better information and more information on the internet.
Annie:
Can you explain her approach?
Kiki:
She used a shock caller. I don't remember too much more about what she did, but a lot of her talk was about dominance and she referred to herself as the Chicago dog whisperer. But we heard from a lot of local dog trainers who were mad about that story.
To her credit, the writer actually followed up on the story, because at some point somebody was driving by a park and they saw this trainer working and she had a shock collar around both the dog's neck and around its waist, near the genital area and reported her. And she was, I don't know if it was tried, or went to court, at least, for animal cruelty, and was not convicted. And part of that I think is also because that's one of the accepted ways that people train dogs.
So it sort of all feeds back into itself. Who is right about how to do this and who gets to decide who is right? Which I think is the issue with regulation. That's why some people are really worried about regulation coming, is because what if it goes like that court case? What if somebody comes on and says, well, Cesar Millan is on TV. So that must be an okay way to do it.
Annie:
You know, something about shock collars that I think is nuts that I haven't heard a lot of people bring up in the against shock collar argument, is people have them in the same homes as they have children. And I think a lot of children end up playing with a shock collar, either putting it on themselves or playing with shocking the dog.
I mean, you can go on YouTube and find countless videos of kids putting shock collars on themselves as like a joke. Which makes me wonder how many kids are putting it on their dogs and sort of experimenting, or how many parents are putting it on their kids. Just the fact that it's perfectly legal to sell that to anybody is shocking — ha-ha — to me.
But yeah, you know, you also brought up the point of it being considered like a light topic. Going back to my mom saying, maybe you should write about dogs. That's what I thought at the time. I mean, not that I was doing any kind of real serious journalism. I mean, I really wasn't, but it seemed to me like extra fluffy.
Whereas I now I think it's such a rich topic. There's so much to talk about. And it's a shame that dog training is not taken seriously in the same way that, for instance, maybe horseback riding is as a hobby. Right? But just also, I mean, you have a section on cars in the newspapers and on houses and on food.
Kiki:
On women.
Annie:
On women [laughs]. But a section on these animals that we spend our lives with and that we can learn so much about is — I mean, why is that, do you think?
Kiki:
I don’t know. The tone of a lot of the articles, like there's always some bad puns in there.
Annie:
Ugh, yes!
Kiki:
There's always sort of a little snide remark about dogs who are quote unquote spoiled, eating better than their people. Or wearing clothes or…you know, I think rub a lot of us the wrong way because we spend a lot of time thinking about like the depth of these animals’ feelings, and see how miserable they are in a way that other people can't.
There's this Roald Dahl story that ran in The New Yorker in the forties that I think about all the time.
Annie:
Oh, I have to read it. Tell me more.
Kiki:
I think it's called The Sound Machine. And basically, it's a man who invents a box that makes sounds audible to him that other people can't hear. And then he takes it out in the garden and the neighbor is like pruning her roses and all he can hear are screams.
Annie:
Oh! [laughs]
Kiki:
So I think, you know, sometimes I'm sure I'm a bit oversensitive to things, just like how people wipe their dogs feet off when they bring them inside by pulling their feet up out from under them. Or, you know, putting a dog's harness on it instead of having the dog walk into a harness. And these are really minor things compared of lots of stuff that people do to animals, but.
Annie:
But you can't unsee it.
Kiki:
But that's kind of the depth, that's the level I think that we all get to when we're working with animals and their people, and you see all these little moments of misery. Or like sometimes I wake up thinking about like, God, dogs have to ask every time they need to go to the bathroom for their entire life! Like, and it makes me like never wanna own a dog again, you know?
I mean, I think we're probably on the far left end of things there. But yeah, I don't think stories, we don't think stories about dogs are funny. Like there's a lot of videos about dogs that we don't think are funny. Like you kind of lose your sense of humor and lightness a little bit when you're out helping people with —
Annie:
That Roald Dahl story… you know, my dad, for whatever reason that I still don't quite understand, was obsessed with whether or not vegetables had feelings. And at one point he even made a logo. He wanted to start the, it was called something like the society against cruelty to vegetables. And the logo was like a potato looking very sad at a big mound of mashed potatoes with butter on them.
Kiki:
Aww. [laughs]
Annie:
Oh yeah. Well, I feel that way about behavior in a larger way. I mean, just yesterday I was with a friend who was telling me about putting her son in timeouts because he hit her, but then what do you do when you're outside in public and your kid does something bad and how do you put the kid in a timeout? And I was like, I'm just gonna not say anything. [laughs]
Cause I feel like I think about all of these things now from the perspective of dog training and animal behavior and it's certainly not always appreciated. But I know what you're saying about just the little things people do with dogs that start to wrench at your heart.
Kiki:
I mean, I think that the tone that you see in a lot of those articles is part of the reason that people get really up in arms if you start to talk about training or teaching children like you would teach a dog. Cause it feels like a light thing to them or a crude sort of carrot and stick thing to them instead of sort of the nuanced compassionate thing that we think we're doing with animals.
So like to become a board certified behavior analyst, you have to have a certain number of supervision hours, and they cannot be with animals.
Annie:
They have to be with human animals.
Kiki:
You can't get the same certification as folks who work with humans. And I do think that's probably part of that, is a sensitivity to the idea that you might be training children like dogs. Or I keep saying training, but Susan always says we should call it teaching for everybody. So.
I wish that we taught kids, like maybe as part of biology class, how behavior works. Because it's basically another system of natural selection. And so many people still think — like somebody asked me the other day, what's one of the more surprising things that you hear? I can't remember if this was the question — more surprising things that you hear from clients or what are about what they think is going on or whatever.
But the thing that always strikes me as how much people think that what comes before the behavior is causing it. And not what happens after. That would be a huge realization for people to have.
Annie:
I feel like it's a huge realization that you could cover in like 30 minutes of fifth grade.
Kiki:
Yeah. Right. On the other hand, it's not always that black and white, like there are some behaviors that are released by antecedents. Like that's one of the things I feel like that came out of school with is a little bit more nuanced understanding of what influence antecedents might actually have.
But yeah, just generally speaking for like getting through life, or getting through teaching your dog some stuff that makes your life with your dog easier…
Annie:
I feel like, I mean, what I learned about in math in school a few years ago — maybe it was like an episode of Freakonomics or something, where they were talking about how our generation, like the math that we learned was so much more complex than the math that our parents learned, because they were basically trying to make people who could build bombs. Like post cold war education was very different than the science and math that our parents got.
And I thought, you know, the math that I really use, I honestly probably could have learned in like a week of middle school. Like percentages, fractions.
Kiki:
Little bit of solving for X maybe.
Annie:
Yeah. Right. Like pretty basic stuff. I mean, I don't necessarily regret having learned more advanced stuff, but I certainly don't remember most of it and don't use very much of it. And I feel like that's kind of the degree of information about behavior that I wish had been injected into my mind as a kid. Cause I feel like it would've would really helped me just like navigate the world a little bit better. Certainly certainly helped me help my dogs more.
And tell me about being a KPA instructor. I mean, you've come full circle in that way. What kind of people are you seeing wanting to become dog trainers?
Kiki:
I think it's a — I mean my, my sample is really small. So maybe talk to me again in a year. I'm just on my first group. But there's a range, from people who do training as a hobby, to folks who have been working in a shelter, to people who are already sort of doing dog trainer stuff. And actually a vet tech nurse, so the real range.
Which is, that was the case when I went to KPA too, like I was sort of on the junior trainer side. And there were people there who had been training for decades.
Annie:
Oh yeah. I mean, having now met lots of people who've gone through it, I kind of can't believe I started knowing as little as I did when I see people going in.
Kiki:
Right. I think there's a mix. Like, I think it's become, you know, as any program like that expands, probably you get more folks who don't have experience — I think a lot of the early KPA grads were people who were already dog trainers but wanted this sort of solidified understanding of clicker training and also the certification and support that go with it.
And I think now they have a foundations course. So if you don't have sort of the prior experience that would have help you be successful in the professional course, you can take foundations course first. And they also offer other versions, like there's the dog trainer comprehensive course, which is sort of like KPA, but without certification. I have some friends who took KPA and never planned to take clients, but they just wanted that sort of level of depth.
Annie:
Well, one question I like to ask every dog trainer I talk to is, if somebody's listening and is interested in themselves maybe changing careers and becoming a dog trainer, what would be your number one piece of advice?
Kiki:
I mean, I think the advice I got back then was to, like before you bother trying to apply to the academy or KPA, you should — I think I read this on the, it was the San Francisco SF SPCA academy at the time. It’s now Jean Donaldson’s academy. I think they actually had a page that was like, here's what you should be doing before you apply.
And one was getting some experience like at a shelter or as an intern with a trainer or something like that. And another was, they had a short list of books to read. I think now there's probably more opportunity to do things like take the KPA foundations course, and stuff like that. And I almost think it might be a good idea to do that sort of thing, or read some of those books before you go to work at the shelter. Because some places you're gonna go and you're gonna learn stuff that doesn't jibe with…
Annie:
Yeah, absolutely. You don't know what you don't know, right? Yeah.
Kiki:
And then, you know, interning with trainers, not as easy as it sounds a lot of times. Cause trainers are busy, often one person businesses. But probably like finding a good trainer and being willing to just observe and mop and stuff like that.
I mean, you guys have a great program for that. And I've sent another journalist your way.
Annie:
Yeah. Well, you know, that part of that is because I know when I was starting out, and Kate, too, both of us did not find that New York City was full of dog trainers who were welcoming newbies with open arms. We both sort of felt like it was hard to find anybody who wanted to share, nurture, whatever you want, however you want to put it.
Kiki:
I mean, I think it's just a time thing. Like, you kind of can only charge so much and there's only so many hours in a day.
Annie:
Yeah. So well, that's why I've suggested to people, you know, like contact a trainer and offer to pay. Yeah. I mean our program is pay —
Kiki:
Yeah. Take some classes. That's a simple answer.
Annie:
Yeah. Take some classes, but also say, you know, can I shadow you and I will pay you per hour or whatever. Because that's gonna incentivize someone to pay more attention to you. And, yeah, there are so many hours in the day, and it is effort to try and — I mean, and also if you are nurturing more novice trainers, ideally you wanna be doing it right.
Kiki:
Yeah. That's been sort of a hold up for me. It's like, I don't, I don't wanna do a bad job with somebody.
Annie:
Well, I am excited that you are KPA instructor.
Kiki:
Do you feel like we talked enough about how hard it is to get to report on…
Annie:
Well, I mean, if someone's listening to this and they're a reporter, I think the takeaway is look for someone who's certified by the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers. Right?
Kiki:
I think that the thing that they need to know is that it is an unregulated industry. Yeah. And so there's no standard body of knowledge that all of the organizations or trainers that you could find operating, making money, certifying people are going to agree on.
And that there is a science of behavior that underlies the type of dog training that tends to be recommended by people with formal education in either animal behavior or behavior science there. I mean, there are a number of sciences that underlie it, but in terms of the science that we use to kind of change behavior by changing the environment, that's largely the science of behavior analysis.
And that looking for people who have some education in that, looking for experts in that field. Like, I remember when I worked at newspapers, sometimes you would have a book from the local university with a list of all the professors and what they were experts in. Like maybe there needs to be a handbook like that for a resource book for the media, how to get good information about dog training.
Also I think there are a lot of people studying dogs now in a more serious way. Like that was not an academic pursuit back when I was involved in editing the story that we tried really hard on and still managed to not do a great job on.
Annie:
Is there any analogous fields you think? That are so unregulated and misunderstood.
Kiki:
Probably. But I mean I always think about like, when I was at Chicago magazine, like every year there was this best doctor's package and I just thought like, how the hell do we know who the best doctors are? I feel like you have to be a doctor to —
Annie:
[laughs] They have good publicists.
Kiki:
Right? You know, so that's the thing too about like… like Yelp and why I don't participate in Yelp. Like how does the average person know how to even review a dog trainer? It's gonna be based on effectiveness, which is one consideration for sure, but…
Annie:
New York Magazine, which I generally like and read, has for years or whenever they did their last “Best of” where they mentioned a dog trainer, they mentioned this dog trainer who is a dog trainer who uses shock collars. And we've had several people who have come to us with dogs who have been damaged basically from working with this person. And he is the New York Magazine best dog trainer in New York City and has gotten probably tons of business from that title.
And whenever they do round ups, I'm one of the trainers, I guess, that they talk to when they do round ups of like products, you know, this leash, that treat. And inevitably this other trainer is in those roundups too. And each time, I write and I say, I really wish you guys, you know, you don't have to pick us as the best dog trainers in New York, but I could give you a list of people who are actually certified certification council, who aren't using aversive methods.
But I don't know how to say this stuff. Like, I mean, this is what we're talking about. I don't know how to say this stuff without sounding like holier than thou, or like, Ugh, this person takes it too seriously. I feel like it all ends up sounding like that to people who aren't in it.
Kiki:
Yeah. But I mean, in, in terms of, I mean, how, how do you think —
Annie?
I mean, how are they picked —
Kiki:
Oh, I know how they're picked. I mean, probably we’ve both been on the other side of a “Best of” issue. Yeah. It's, they're horrific. The Reader never did them until we got bought. And then we were forced to to do “Best ofs”. Part of why I left, to be honest, like that was part of what I hated about what it was becoming.
Annie:
Either someone has a good publicist or the guy two desks down from you knows someone who had a good experience.
Kiki:
Right. It's his favorite restaurant, or the best dog trainer. Or they have readers vote and then people drum up, I mean, how many times do you see that on Facebook? Like people asking people from all over the country that they're friends with on Facebook to vote for them as the best dog trainer of whatever town they're in. In order to try to squeeze out the local shock collar trainer. And it's meaningless. And so that's not a good way for journalists to find information about dog training.
And I do think some of the organizations that we probably participate in are doing sort of more outreach that way. I think IAABC in particular has kind of done a good job of kind of getting into the lay press.
So journalists are humans. So I think we can expect that they will know about as much as any other human about how to find a dog trainer.
One thing I do a lot, is if I can't help someone cause I'm too far booked out or whatever, in addition to sending recommendations, which, you know, my recommendations might also be busy. Right now everybody I like is busy. I send them position statements on how to find a trainer so that I can kind of try to inoculate them against damaging —
Annie:
Yeah. Well, I'm actually, I'm doing a presentation for the Animal Medical Center this week and it's about going back to work and making sure you're setting up your dog for success as you go back to work. But I decided to start it out with like, this is how to find a good trainer. You know, here are some certifications to look for, because I figure, I'm gonna take this opportunity to talk to a wide group of people who maybe never think about dog training, about how to find..
Kiki:
Yeah. You might hit a journalist in there somewhere.
Annie:
Well, I have to say that, I mean, I should say, I feel like my goal for myself, at this point in my life is to just get more people excited about dog training and behavior. And I hope that I can use my former career in journalism to that end. And while I know it's not what you're doing right now exactly, I hope and think that you are going to inspire people too, whether that's teaching future trainers, or through writing or editing.
Kiki:
That's part of what I think has changed since both of us were in journalism, is that everybody has some degree of access to the same audience that previously only journalists did.
Annie:
That's true.
Kiki:
So like when I did start writing about dogs and behavior, again, I wrote for a local rescue that has a wide reach, you know? So I mean, to some degree, we're kind of going around instead of through the press. You know, you're doing a podcast that anyone anywhere could listen to.
Annie:
Yeah. I mean, for me, the heartbreaking thing is that the person I think that still the number one dog trainer anybody thinks of or knows is Cesar Millan. And it's heartbreaking to me that that hasn't changed, I don't think, in 15 years.
But you, you seem a little bit more positive, or more optimistic.
Kiki:
I know. Well, part of it, I mean, I kind of doubt he's gonna have the same audience at this point.
Annie:
No, well, not the same audience as he had, you mean?
Kiki:
Yeah. Like I feel, wasn't his second show was sort of diminishing returns? And I think that the media market is also a lot more, like the TV market is a lot more segregated. Like, I don't flip through channels.
Annie:
That's true. But we do have a lot of clients, you know, we have a survey people fill out saying, what kind of dog training or information have, if they're signing up for something, you know, what have you done in dog training before? What sort of resources have you checked out? And a lot of people reference Brandon McMillan's masterclass. Are you familiar with him at all? Or the masterclass?
Kiki:
Only in that I get that ad every single time I try to watch a Kikopup video.
Annie:
[laughs] Yeah. And he's big on, I mean, he even sells a product that's basically like coins in a can, but you can buy his coins in a can. Or I think he has one episode of his show where he like ties a shoe to a dog's collar because the dog —
Kiki:
Chews shoes.
Annie:
Chews shoes. And you know, this is what people are consuming. But maybe things are changing, and we're reach more and more people.
Kiki:
Yeah. And even strictly regulated industries are not free from this kind of stuff. You know, there's Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz and like, you know —
Annie:
Gwyneth Paltrow.
Kiki:
Right. You know, and well, I don't wanna get too far into it. A lot of non-evidence based health information. They fight that on the veterinary side of things with animals too. It just kinda, like mostly I wanna spend my energy. Like I got plenty of people who are asking me what I think , I'm not saying like, oh, everyone's asking me what I think. I mean, just like I have enough that I'm booked out a couple months and you know, just gonna start there.
And when I get a little bit less busy, I'd like to get back to blogging, which I haven't done in a while. So it turned into Instagram posts and things like that.
Annie:
Well, thank you so much for talking, Kiki. And I hope to get to Chicago sometime soon.
Kiki:
I hope so too. We can go to your cousin's pie shop.
Annie:
Have you ever been?
Kiki:
Oh yeah. We have a Spinning J Pie downstairs right now.
Annie:
Oh, super jealous. Well, I do hope we'll get out there sometime soon and we'll get the hangout.
Kiki:
That would be nice.
[music and outro]
