16 AprEpisode 56 | How do you become a dog trainer?
One of the many interesting things about dog training? Every professional has taken a different path. We are in a moment where many people are considering new careers. If you've ever thought about becoming a dog trainer, you will want to listen to this interview featuring two women who went from success in completely different fields to success in working with dogs. Annie interviews Marie Poliseno, a former Wall Street Trader turned dog trainer turned CPA. Her company, Dollars & Scents, specializes in working with professional dog trainers who need help with the financial side of things.
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Learn more about Marie at Dog-Pro-CPA.com
Special thanks to Nikki Acton for sharing her lovely Yelp review in this episode. You can follow her dog, Mookie, on Instagram: @mookietheoriginal
The audio in this episode is an abridged version of a webinar interview between Annie and Marie. You can watch it here.
Mentioned in this episode:
The Certification Council of Professional Dog Trainers
Culture Clash by Jean Donaldson
Dana Crevling's Instructor Training Course
School For The Dogs' Professional Dog Training Course
Don't Shoot The Dog by Karen Pryor
Reaching The Animal Mind by Karen Pryor
The Association of Professional Dog Trainers
Full Transcript:
Annie:
I am here with Marie Poliseno who is basically School For The Dogs’ CFO. I've known her for many years. She is our bookkeeper, accountant and a both a cheerleader and a shoulder to cry on. Her company is called Dollars and Scents. That “scents” S-C-E-N-T-S. She specializes in helping dog-related businesses. She is based in Montana. I've been wanting to interview Marie for a long time, but it usually occurs to me right around this time of year, around tax time. And I never want to bother her by asking to take her time to do an interview when she's preparing people's taxes. But this year, tax day got moved and I saw an opportunity! So I wanted to specifically have her here to talk about becoming a dog trainer and things to think about when making a choice to move to this new kind of career. I think she has an interesting perspective. Marie, why don't you start out by telling us a little bit about how you first got into dog training.
Marie:
Absolutely. First, Annie, I'd like to thank you for having me join you today. That's quite an honor. So thank you for that. Well my journey to being a dog trainer. So Annie introduced me as School For The Dogs’ COO, accountant, bookkeeper, CPA. But I didn't always start out that way. So I started off my career actually working on Wall Street. I worked on Wall Street for some of the most prominent investment banks for almost 30 years. And while I was there, I got my first dog other than my childhood dog, which was a Portuguese Water Dog. And we started competing in agility and we started doing some obedience and rally and people started to compliment me on my dog handling skills and they said, you know, you ought to be a dog trainer. I said, a dog trainer? I said, I can, I can train my own dog, but I don't know about anybody else.
Marie:
And they said, no, you really have some handling skills that are extraordinary and we, we think that you'd be a great dog trainer. So as I thought about it I was working incredible hours on wall street and I was training my own dog and I said, you know, what, if I were to become a dog trainer, how would I go about it? I am one who thinks that gaining knowledge and experience is sort of one of the prerequisites to becoming anything along with having a passion for it. So I enrolled in the Academy for Dog Trainers out in San Francisco with Jean Donaldson and I went out there. I took a short leave of absence from work and I worked with Jean. And then I started to apprentice at Saint Hubert's in New Jersey.
Annie:
I just want to interject for those of you who might not be familiar with Jean Donaldson. Jean Donaldson is an incredibly well-respected trainer, a trainer of trainers besides being a, a dog trainer. She is the author of the book Culture Clash, which is an excellent book really about how to think about dogs and dog training in a way that makes sense and is behavior based. And yeah, and she started this incredibly well respected program in San Francisco.
Marie:
It is operating, but it is now entirely an online school and it is, it is not just for counseling certificates, which is what I got as a graduate. Having spent three weeks out there, it is now full time. It's known as the Harvard for dog training. And it is a grueling experience but quite, quite remarkable in that you would never get this kind of training. And I do believe now that it's probably a two year course as opposed to either the three month course that she used to offer through the SPCA. So she's, she does this on her own now.
Marie:
And that's sort of how I developed some of the skills that I did to start with. And then after I attended the Academy you know, it's nice to say you want to be a dog trainer, but one you don't have clients, you know, knocking at your door to say, “Hey, could you come over here and do this for me?” So I apprenticed for a couple of years at St. Hubert's working primarily under Adrian Carson, who is a magnificent, magnificent trainer and now has the SPCA over there for their training as well as their adoption centers. So I started doing that.
Marie:
And then in 2003 I attended the Instructor Training Course that's owned by Dana Crevling. Do you know Dana Crevling? She's in upstate New York. And what they do is they bring people in. It was the first time I was able to get to work with Sue Sternberg. And other notable trainers in the area and what you do is you actually train shelter dogs during this week long course up there. So I got Joey who was brought up from a large kill shelter in Arkansas along with a bunch of other dogs. And I taught Joey to do an agility course in less than a week. He was an incredible dog and I had so much fun and I actually won. That's why I had to turn around and look at my thing.
Marie:
I won the “Most Inspired Award” award for having done that and said, I said, you know, maybe, maybe now is the time. I have some experience, I have knowledge, I have some confidence. What I don't have is a whole lot of time, but maybe I'll start my own business as a dog trainer and see what happens from there. And at the time I was thinking of it as a long-term exit strategy from my, from my work on Goldman's at Goldman Sachs. And so in 2003, I opened up my dog training business and I had the most incredible success. Almost immediately I was working not only my day job, but every night, every weekend with probably a six to eight week waiting list for dogs to train and my passion for it just grew and grew and grew. And so New Jersey, this was in New Jersey. And then in 2006 my husband, who had been ill, got very ill and we found quite by accident that the climate in Montana was one that was going to improve his life a million fold because of the lack of humidity. He has rheumatoid arthritis. So we found a place out here. We found some land, we built a house — something we had never done before. And I thought, okay, here's my exit strategy. I'll leave and I'll open up my dog training business in Montana. Well, little did I know… Dog training in different parts of the country is not the same. And so we live in a very rural area in Montana, and a lot of the dogs are viewed as sort of instruments of work. There's a lot of ranches out here that, so there are a lot of ranch dogs. And unfortunately the attitude towards training a dog is very, very different. People are not willing to spend the time or the money to train their dogs to what I would consider a happy pet. Most of them are not kept inside. They are outside dogs and if they fail to perform their function they're euthanized. And in a not so humane way. And I know that's a big generalization, but in a ranch rural community, that is generally what, what I have found. And so opening up my dog training business was not going to happen here. I did open it. That was in 2007, we moved out here. And I think in the past 13 years I've had five clients. Yeah. So that wasn't gonna work. So, how did I become the CPA for dog businesses?
Marie:
Well, it was just because of happenstance, the way that that dog training wasn't going to be an option for me to earn a living. I said, you know, a lot of dog trainers have the passion, have the knowledge, have the experience, but they don't certainly know how to run a business. And so what I thought might be sort of a shot in the arm to the community if I married my financial skills, my dog training skills and work with people that in general– I really like. People who love dogs and are dog trainers or dog pros in any sense of the word. And so that's what I did. And in 2013, I opened Dollars & Scents and I have many clients all of whom have become personal friends as well as clients. And so that's what I do. Boy, that was a long story.
Marie:
I had the luxury of working with some of the worlds and, and like foremost dog trainers to get some experience. But before I actually started to work with them, I had an idea that dog training was going to be mostly working with dogs. And boy is that a misnomer. And that I think is probably the one biggest aha moment that people who want to get into the industry, learn that dog training is so much about people training. It is less about training a dog than it is about training and working and being able to communicate with people because you can be the world's best dog trainer in the world. And quite frankly, if the dog doesn't work out in its environment with its owners, it's, it's not going to have a happy ending. And that I think is one of the things that people who want to get into the business really need to understand. A lot of people say, Oh gosh, I can't stand working with people anymore. They drive me crazy. I can't, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just want to work with animals. And unfortunately, if you want to have a business of being a dog trainer, it is so much of working with people, of course with animals and having some skills and experience to do that. But that's the biggest, I think, “aha” moment that dog trainers or potential dog trainers have.
Annie:
There is such a myth that, you know, if you're good with dogs that means you're not going to be good with people. But I don't agree with that at all because people who are good with dogs, you know, it's all about behavior and animal behavior certainly relates to human behavior as well. So if you understand one, ideally you should be understanding…
Marie:
Yes, you're so right Annie, because so much of dog training is influence training, right? So it's, you know, it's not only conditioning training and operant conditioning, but a lot of that classical conditioning is how do you influence any species to be able to do what you are wanting as a desired outcome?
Annie:
Yeah, I mean for me, I think part of the reason why I like developing content and I like doing marketing. I mean, partially it's because it's my background. I started out as a journalist, but I also see it as a kind of animal training. You know, it's a game in the same way that dog training is a game. Like how, how can I get these animals to do what I want them to do, whether it's training a dog to sit or getting someone to to hire us. You know, advertising is, is really a kind of a way of manipulating behavior as is, as is dog training. For those of you who might be here, who, who don't know about me and the origins of School For The Dogs…. Well, Marie shared her, her how I became a dog trainer story.
Annie:
The short version of my story is I was a journalist until around 2008, 2009 full time and decided I wanted to do something else with my life needed to, needed to do something else with my life. Thanks to the market crash, et cetera, et cetera. And I found myself sitting at the dog park a lot. Thinking, you know, I love spending time with dogs. I love talking to people about their dogs. How can I basically do this full time? And ended up going to the Karen Pryor Academy where I learned a lot. But yeah, for me it was definitely a big mystery when I got out of the Karen Pryor Academy. Like, okay, I know how to train a dog, but how can I parlay this into some kind of viable career? Like I knew I was more passionate about it than I'd ever been about anything else…
Marie:
Absolutely. You know, as I, as I mentor in, in both of my careers as I've mentored people, I said what is it that you want out of this career? And when I worked in an investment bank, obviously the people that came in, they said “money.” And I said, okay, and how long has that passion going to last? Because if you're not doing this because you're passionate about it, go find something else to do because you will not succeed. And I believe that it to be true of any, any profession. And the first thing, you know, as I was, I was thinking about today and the talk we are going to have and what is the primary quality that one I think needs to possess in order to be a dog trainer. And passion comes to mind is one of the, one of the top, but I don't think it's the top it, it's one of three.
Marie:
But I think the primary notion that people should have when they're thinking about do I want to be a dog trainer as my career is do I have the knowledge and the expertise to be able to hold myself out as a professional in that industry? And I believe that to be true of, of, of anything but particularly dog trainers because you know, the girl who does your nails and I don't mean to be sexist about it, needs to have a license, but dog trainers don't. And there are so many people out there who hold themselves out as dog trainers who are not really good dog trainers. They may have trained their own dog, but they certainly aren't what we would call pillars of our community who use, you know, positive reinforcement and know what they're doing and know how to communicate it.
Marie:
So I think education and, and that can come in a variety of ways. It can be in a formalized school like you and I had gone to, it could be working as an apprentice for somebody who is a qualified professional trainer. You know, when I became a CPDT-KA and I'll explain what that means. It's the certification for professional dog trainers that came about. I was one of 100 people in the world at that time in 2003 to seek that professional designation. Since then, it has grown you know, a thousand, 10,000 fold. But it was, it was sort of the idea that if you wanted to be looked at as a professional, then you needed to take the steps to, in fact obtain the credentials that make you a professional dog trainer. You don't just walk out and say, “Hey, I'm a dog trainer.” When you go to the dog park because I know what I'm doing because then you give everybody a bad name. And so passion is important, but knowledge and of course skill after that, you can have all the book knowledge in the world. But if you can't wrangle dogs and you don't know how to read body language you shouldn't be holding yourself out there to collect money from people as an expert in that field.
Annie:
When I was first starting out, you know, I had this certification from the Karen Pryor Academy, but I, you know, I, I was desperate to find someone to apprentice with. I never was able to find anyone to apprentice with. And I was very hesitant to say things like, “Hey, I'm a professional dog trainer.” Now, you know, give me your money. I'm wondering if that's something that you've encountered before with other people who are just starting out as dog trainers.
Marie:
I wasn't as hesitant. But, I think that's because of my financial background. And sort of the, the way that I approached it. In terms of the certification, Annie, what I have found, I have been asked zero times what my certification is, why it's important, who cares about it. The only time it's actually made a difference is in my accounting business. As I am exclusively right now servicing dog professionals, people recognize, Oh, this woman knows my industry. She knows what dog training is about, it's the only time it's actually pretty relevant. And the only time it only matters to other dog trainers. And the only other time that I've actually encouraged people to use that is when people are looking for a dog trainer in a certain geographic area. If I don't have a recommendation and they want to go look on the APDT website or wherever they're looking to search for a trainer, I tell them, make sure that they have some sort of certification because you can just join some organizations by paying 75 bucks and you're listed on their, you know, their list of trainers available.
Annie:
And you may have, you know, get somebody who has zero criteria for being, it's like saying like, you have a Triple A card or something. It's just, that's exactly right.
Marie:
That's exactly right. But the client does not know that. And so, you know, they look for these training websites and they come across, Oh, this person's a qualified trainer. I did have one client in New Jersey who had looked up the APD website after I moved. And they found somebody who came equipped with her shock collars and a whole bunch of other aversive stimuli as well as tools when they showed up in his apartment. And he said, Oh, Maria didn't use any of these words, what are these for? And they went on to say, you know, had this whole discussion about, you know, a verse of training versus positive training. And he ended up not letting her into the apartment, which I'm thankful for.
Annie:
Do you ever take on clients who have a different training philosophy than you have?
Marie:
I actually don't. And it's only because of my, it's because of my personal aversion to it. They may contact me, we can, we talk about what kind of business they have. If they, and it's only happened in one case actually where an aversive trainer has come to me and I said, I'm sorry, I can't work with you. We philosophically have a difference in terms of our approach. I certainly have, you know, my own feelings about how that works. And so I actually don't work with people who are aversive trainers.
Annie:
Yeah. I mean, rare is the CPA who asks their clients if they use shock collars.
Marie:
No, but I at least have the luxury of being able to pick and choose the kinds of clients that I want to work with. You know, before I was exclusive to two dog professionals had in order to start my business, I had other types of clients. You know, I had lawyers in real estate developers and airline pilots and you know airplane manufacturers and that sort of thing. And over time I've released them to qualified professionals that, you know, I, I didn't just drop them off at the, but I released them to other professionals because I did only want to specialize and work with dog pro clients.
Annie:
So here's a question for you. I mean, one thing I really value about working with you, I should say, is of course that, you know, how to train a dog. I mean, I appreciate that. And I know you train horses too. And but to be honest, that doesn't matter to me as much as the fact that you like, you know, you work with other businesses who offer similar services to ours. And so I appreciate that you can say like, Oh, why are you offering this? Or that's great that you're offering that. Or why are you charging this and not charging that like these other clients are at. I mean, I know you're not going to name names, but anyway, so I do wonder what people charge and other places. You know, obviously we're in New York city. Our prices are on the higher side. I'm guessing, I'm wondering if you can help put that maybe in perspective, at least for our listeners if not also for me, but like, you know, down to the brass tacks, like what do, what do dog trainers charge and what do dog trainers make? In America today? I mean maybe not today, but under, under more normal circumstances.
Marie:
So I think it is geographic specific. You know, I have a lot of clients in the San Francisco Bay area. I also have clients on the East Coast. You included. And I think for the most part geographically speaking, I think that pricing is consistent. I think, I think what happens Annie, is that trainers because of the service that they're providing tend to discount it more because they're more, because they're, there are people who want to help service the animal as much as they can. And a lot of people have that sort of ilk, if you will, a mentality are embarrassed to charge what they're worth. And I think that is across almost every trainer except for very few of mine that they're reluctant to charge the real price for what they, they provide. And so I see a lot of discounting of that service in the form of packages in the form of, you know, multi series sort of that don't really charge the right hourly rate for the service being provided.
Marie:
I will share this with you and it's dated information because it goes back to when I had my business in New Jersey, but I started out and I can't talk specific about any of my, my current clients because that would be sort of against the law for pricing. But I'll tell you, back in 2003, when I started working with people in charging, I charged $525 for eight weeks of lessons, private in-home lessons. And I did all the travel and I did not charge for travel. And I thought, Oh my God, people are going to pay me $525. This is great. I love doing this work, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I said, geez, this is eight weeks of my time on an hourly basis. This is not sustainable. I'm doing it, I'm having fun, I enjoy it, but Hmm, let me try something. So I raised the price to $650 for eight sessions and my waiting list grew longer and longer. And I said, Hmm, let me try something else. How about $750? Not only was I keeping more clients and retaining more clients for add on services, but my waiting list was still as long as it was. So I said, well, what if I did this for $825 for six weeks? Same result. So what I'm sharing with you is an economics lesson. Dog training is a price inelastic market, sorry, price, elastic market. People are willing to pay for a good service if you provide a good service, if you provide, you know, mediocre service, then question, how much am I charging? But what I found is that people who are willing to pay or willing to pay for really good service.
Marie:
So don't discount it now. And a lot of places as you're starting a business, you say, you know what? I can't charge as much as you know this person because I'm, I need to get a client base first. So you work towards that. But what I'm suggesting is that over time, as you build your reputation in your business, you can actually test your market. And that's what I'm suggesting you do. If you raised your price to, let's just say for example, $1,500 for five for five sessions, you might not get any clients just that's sort of at that end of the spectrum. But if you're charging, for example, in this example here, $500 now, and you've built your client base, you've built your reputation, test the market, raise your price and see what happens. That's where, you know, that's where the marketplace determines what's the right price for the service, not what your competitor's charging. Although that's a guideline and it's a, it's a guidepost, but it doesn't mean that you have to match them or that you have to undercut them in order to get that, unless what your objective is. I'm trying to build market share and my reputation right now, nobody knows me. I have to get out there. I can't compete with the guy who is already established. So it did in that, in that evolution of your business building,
Annie:
What are the biggest challenges that you think your clients face as they start to, as they try to start their own dog training businesses or run their own dog training businesses?
Marie:
One is how to, how to address the prices and the other is internal costs. So rent, once you've established yourself, I would say that most dog trainers start out running their business out of their homes. Okay. Where they're going to clients on their own and, and sort of building up their business that way when they start to grow and they start to look at a brick and mortar location now you've made a huge commitment, right? So looking at rent and rent space and what's available and where you want to be is a huge leap from. But we also have to keep an eye on how fast we grow our staff compared to what our revenue generation capabilities are.
Annie:
I think the two hardest things for me, I mean I, I know the two hardest things for me… one has been just managing staff… Because on the one hand, like I don't, I don't think I'm bad with people. Like I said, I, I think you can be good with people and good with dogs, but I have, I have grown to see that human-human relations… in any job I had before this human, like the HR department was like who I called when, you know, there was something wrong with my paycheck, you know? But now I understand what HR is. When people would go to school for HR, I remember thinking like, what are you, what are you learning? How to sign a check? But now, now I understand that like there is so much skill involved in managing groups of people and you know, while there's so many things that apply from dog training to dealing with people, in my opinion, because it all has to do with behavior, there's so many more inputs and the environment is so wildly large and varied when you're dealing with people and everybody has their own, everybody has what's rewarding to them. Everybody has what's aversive to them. Everybody has their own history that you don't know about coming into it. And it's just incredibly complicated. And for me, it's difficult. And the other part of managing stuff that's hard, which relates to like the payroll thing, like you were saying is I've, I've come to realize like there is the, and I've said this to you before, like there's the boss, I want to be in the boss. I can be right, right. I want everybody to like make a lot of money and, and you know, not have to not have to work a lot and feel good about what they're doing every day. Like, I want the boss who's like, you know, you know, take as much vacation as you need. Like I wanna reward people and I want people to feel good about being part of this, you know, thing that I'm certainly passionate about and I want them to be passionate about it. But on the other hand and, and money is like, you know, the main thing we have to motivate people in other hands. Like I got to keep the business going and like if there's no business, there's no one, there's no jobs. And that has been difficult for me to like have to basically curb my instincts. I mean, I don't know. You're, you're always accusing me of being too generous…
Marie:
Too generous. But I will tell you this, Annie, in my entire career I've managed large groups of people and I would tell you that managing people is probably the hardest job that anyone has. You know, at one stage in my career, I was one of three women only that worked on a trading floor responsible for funding the firm. And this was back in 1993 when the first World Trade Center incident occurred and all the guys left the trading floor and left me and my boss who was a woman to fund the firm, we had to come up with $21 billion dollars to fund the firm while everybody else left and left the two of us sitting there.
So I've had really hard jobs before. And after that I was actually given the head trainer position and responsible for funding billions of dollars on a daily basis because we were the only two left. But of all the hard things that I've done in my career, managing people is the hardest because everybody is motivated by something else. You can always read their minds. Little things to some people are huge things to others and it's just really, it's the hardest part of the job. And that's why when I said in your cycle of growth, once you decide to expand beyond, you are the only dog trainer in your business to hiring, you know, an assistant to hiring more people as, as you grow. That's the hardest part of it is managing the people.
Annie:
Yeah. Well two things. I was going to say. One, one thing I've learned about managing people, and it's funny because like I have friends who I've, I've you know, vented to about like being a boss is really hard. And I've had friends who've been like, Oh, cause I have a lot of, I have a lot of friends who are like freelance journalists and professors. Like my husband's a professor, I was a freelance journalist and like, and several of them have said to me, Oh gosh, you know, the, the only time I've ever had to manage anyone is like with my babies, my kids babysitter. And it occurred to me like, Oh, this isn't something everybody does. Like this is a path I'm on right now in my life. Like I didn't really have, I mean I had to deal with people before, of course, but it's absolutely different kind of ball of wax. The other thing I've learned in the past two years as our staff has grown is like the way people interact with their superiors Abbas or whatever is so much of it is about like what they're projecting on you. Like it doesn't, it's their, their feelings about me as a boss have to do with their feelings about their parents or about their boyfriend or whatever. Like it's not necessarily anything…
Marie:
You have to learn how not to take it personally, but managing people is the hardest job in the world. It really is. Yeah.
Annie:
The other thing I think that's been a hard thing for me and for Kate is just managing growth because, yeah, like it started out with, it was just me and Kate. We were like in my living room when we first met you. Actually, I started out in my living room and then there was this huge fire and Kate and I were working the dog daycare for a little while while we tried to figure out where we were going to be teaching and then we ended up opening our space. And then at some point after we ended up, we ended up at our first place space. Somebody asked if they could like volunteer with us and then we ended up hiring that woman as like an, as like a part time assistant and, and a couple other people came on kind of in that same like, “Hey, I want to learn about dog training,” sort of like casual way until maybe like 2014. I think maybe we had four people, in 2015 we had four people. Anyway never did I imagine I would have a staff of like whatever we have now, like 16 or 17 or that we'd have, you know, like the large two-story East Village location that we have now. And that it's, it's just been, while it's been really exciting to have that kind of like huge growth and like, I mean, you've seen like, we've doubled, you know, like our gross revenue has like, doubled like one year to the next, like several times. And like, that's exciting. But keeping on top of it. It's really hard to keep on top of managing a business that has grown at that speed. I'm like, Oh, I wasn't, I wasn't prepared for this.
Annie:
You know, I was like, I believe I could manage something like that's happening in my living room where like, I'm in charge of like maybe one other person or two other people, but like, like nowhere did I sign up for like the, the level of organization that's required to to be dealing with the, the business that we have now. And, and you know, that's, at this point like, you know, part of the reason that we're trying to do more and more stuff online, it's cause I realized, you know, like we're constantly like getting, we've expanded to new locations over and over and we've hired so many trainers over and over and over, but there's like, there needs to be a way to simplify things and like bring in more revenue without the the craziness of constant expansion. That's a long way of saying that like, I think growth is like equal parts exciting and like terrifying. And I know that other businesses deal with that too. That's not like a dog training thing, but I dunno, I need like a support group for successful, successful small business owners who, I don't know how to manage growth well. You're like don't flatter yourself Annie! You're not doing that well!
Marie:
No you are, and you're lucky that you have the opportunity to explode. Let's say you're lucky that you have a sense of humor about it. Yeah, you do too. But you know, you're lucky you have an opportunity to to grow your business. If you were to plan it, you wouldn't probably not have expanded as exponentially as you did as quickly as you did that you would, you know, go through a stair-step perhaps approach. But, you know, sometimes opportunity presents itself and you just, you know, rise to the challenge which you have.
Annie:
Yeah. I mean, I think that it's really what's happened is like, you know, like at every step of the way. And I, I think I'm a, I'm a risk taker and mostly it's worked out, but I think that you also have some, have to have some tolerance for it sometimes.
Marie:
Yeah, you do have to have the stomach for it. I can't see any of the questions, so if you want to read it,
Annie:
We have some questions here. Jamie says, does CPD TK indicate the trainer is only positive reinforcement based on their training? You want to take that one?
Marie:
CPDT-KA is a positive reinforcement training certification if you will. That does not mean that every professional trainer would not use punishment in the right circumstances and applied appropriately. So there are, I'll, I'll get technical just for a second. There are four quadrants basically of training, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment. And each one of those quadrants has a use time and plan.
Annie:
LIMA is something interesting to look at, Jamie. Least Invasive Most Appropriate I think it stands for. Susan Friedman has some nice graphics on LIMA about, you know, which approach you should use. Because there might be, there might be times when punishment is the GoTo or negative reinforcement, which is often even worse than punishment. Negative reinforcement is like where they shock a dog until the dog sits and then they stop shocking the dog when the dog sits. That would be an example of negative reinforcement. But I should mention though that if a trainer go-to method is punishment, especially something like using a shock collar. They should not really be CPDT certified. Of course, they don't have like CPDT police out there. There was the one example of a dog trainer in New York city who we were getting client after client going to this trainer and then coming to us and saying he brought my dog to the park and shocked him you know, for three hours and then charged us $700.
Marie:
Yeah. I'm just going to interject one thing just before the thought passes me. So CPDT-KA is actually an exam that you take. Okay. So you could have gone through all of the book learning, taken the exam, gotten certified, and in fact be an aversive trainer. So I think that more directly answers this person's question. Jamie's question,
Annie:
You also have to show, I think you need like a letter of recommendation, but you also need 300 or something. I called the CPDT and I said, look, there's a trainer who's in New York city that dah, dah, dah, dah. He's calling himself a CPDT-KA, and he is regularly using shock collars on dogs and here is the evidence that we have of this. And they ended up rescinding the certification which really means nothing to anyone in the world except maybe to us and him and you know, the, the couple of other dog trainers who had like a bee in their bonnets about this guy. But I have known a lot of trainers who are obsessed with the idea of getting a CPDT-KA certification. Like it's like a real, like, like a carrot that they're like going after and it. Like some people really want their dog to be a therapy dog. Maybe they don't actually want to go work in hospitals with their dogs. But it's like there's something about having that CPDT-KA or whatever after their name. And I don't think it's a bad thing. I mean, I have it. I pay whatever it is, $200 every other year. Okay. we've got a couple more questions. “Floria says hi, I'm Floria Karbala from Costa Rica. The whole exchange has been incredibly interesting. I'm 37 and I've been training dogs all my life. Originally trained as a kid in aversives. As an 18 year old, I found clicker training as a grassroots movement. I am constantly wondering about the business aspect of setting up a large wrapper operation beyond mere assessment, which is what I feel I do. I have been following School For The Dogs for a couple of years and really admire the ways you got the way you guys operate. Thank you very much. So it's interesting that someone like Marie comes into the mix because I wouldn't have thought about it. I don't, I don't have any specific questions, but I'm very motivated by both of you.” Oh, well thank you.
Valerie, thanks for being here. Valerie says “What can you do with the shelters local to you are not forced free. What is another option? I want to gain hours. I don't have my own dog right now, so I want to gain training hours volunteering but most are not force free.”
Annie:
I'm not sure if you're talking specifically at the New York ACC, that's the Animal Care and Control, which is like the city-run shelter. I think they are force free? But I guess I would try some smaller places, private places. You can also just offer your services for free to anyone who needs some help. I mean, here I am saying like don't undervalue your yourself, but at the same time, I mean, if, if you are just looking to gain some experience you could certainly, you know, tell people that you're, you're willing to to work for free and just be ready to step away if you feel like you encounter a case that you can't handle.
Annie:
Certainly fostering a dog is a great way to gain experience. This might sound like a silly suggestion, but you know, you, if you don't want to get a dog, you could get a hamster, a cat or you could get some other animal that you could at least practice like your, your clicker training skills with. Even if you're not perhaps dealing with your dog handling skills. Part of the Karen Pryor Academy program requires that you work with a non-canine animal. And I think that's really useful and really, really valuable. Do you have any, anything to add there, Marie?
Marie:
I'll make another suggestion just because I've been there twice. I just think it's unbelievable. But you could also go to chicken camp where you click our chain, click our train chickens. And Terry Ryan and her husband Bill run the organization out of Sequim, Washington, which is just off Vancouver. And so it's a week-long camp if you will. And it is the most fun I think you will ever have.
Annie:
So I did, I did a week of chicken training with Parvene Farhoudy, who is a disciple of Bob Bailey. Who was, was a famous trainer, chicken trainer among other things. I did a week of that in 2016. It was a five week program. I just did the first week of it I think. I think that was the last year she ran it. I think she's not running it anymore, although I know Terry Ryan's is still going. I would have, I did one week and I, it was so hard and so wonderful and I loved it and I would totally have done five weeks!
But either one, I think I would highly, highly recommend you can't force a chicken to do things. You can't manipulate, you know, physically manipulate a chicken. They do not want to be touched by you. And it's certainly rewarding to realize that you can teach a chicken — the course I did with about differentiation. So we were teaching chickens to differentiate like, you know, blue from red or a square and a star or something. I think it was three things actually. Blue, yellow, green, and a square, a star and a circle or something. It's, it's pretty incredible.
Marie:
So, you know, I'm an agility. Not the first week we did, the first time I went, we did discrimination as well. The second week we actually train them to do an entire agility course. We just had a ball. And you know what, if you're looking for some way to hone your skills as a dog trainer with a clicker, there is no one that's going to teach you more than a chicken.
Annie:
Yeah, yeah. Beyond that I think, I think it's like I keep saying it's so about, it's so invaluable to apprentice and I, I, if I could go back and do it all again, I mean I still would go back and do KPA because I really went from knowing zero to knowing so much in six months. I mean I think there were some things I wish the program had had, but it still was like invaluable for me. But I think it's not a bad idea to research trainers who are near you and then offer to pay them something to apprentice with them. And I say, pay them something because you know, people are just super busy and the idea of taking on like a new challenge of having to mentor someone can feel overwhelming.
Annie:
So I think if you approach it as like I want what you have and I'm willing to pay for it, it might be a better way to get their attention. All right. Any other questions? Marie, anything else that you feel like we didn't touch on? Any advice for how I can make our business more successful?
Marie:
Keep talking to me!
Annie:
I will keep looking to you for advice. It certainly is a crazy moment though to be alive let alone to have a small business. So I appreciate you and, I mean, how are you, with everything that's going on, how are you feeling about the businesses that you work with? Do you think they're going to get through this? Do you think we're going to see an influx of new people who are gonna go decide they want to become dog trainers as like their plan B?
Marie:
Well, it all depends. You know, with 16 million people being out of work. I think everybody's imagination is going wild. For the most part, I think those of my clients that I don't think there, I'm being honest here, I don't think there's anybody that isn't going to come through the other side. They may come through it differently. They may start to think about how to live on less money and put more money towards savings so that they have, you know, something more in their back pocket than they do today. So when the water, you know, faucet turns off again God forbid that it ever does, they're more prepared for it. So I think everyone is going to come through. I think they'll come through for the most part intact. But thinking about things differently I do think the federal assistance that's going to come through because I haven't seen anybody get any money yet.
Marie:
I think that will be helpful. It just depends what happens and how they reopen society in the next couple months that will determine the, you know, the, the fate of a lot of businesses. But I think the dog pro industry is nimble enough that it will be able to zig and zag through this. And it is a commodity that people need and people want, you know, in some States I know Rhode Island yesterday declared dog training and essential service which I'm hoping is going to start becoming much more widespread because it really is, it's a valuable service that we provide to people and people are experiencing now what it's like to be home with their pet who may have started training or was about to start writing and they're pulling their hair out saying, Oh my gosh, what are these people gonna open? So I think the demand is going to be pent up and that it will, it will create opportunities for people. As long as we can get through financially the next, I'd say, I'd say next eight weeks before, before things have to, you know, people have to make really hard decisions.
Annie:
One last question for you, Marie. If somebody came to you from maybe sure that call college, let's say saying said, you know, Hey, I want to become a dog trainer, what would be your, your, would you suggest that they do first you broke up the program or they came from where if somebody was just starting out and wanted to become a dog trainer, whether they're, you know, just out of school or out of like non-professional school or they are switching careers and are thinking about becoming a dog trainer, what would you, what would you suggest they do? What would be the first step?
Marie:
I think the first step would be to work with someone that is a dog trainer. I think without experiencing what it's like because there are ups and downs as a dog trainer. There are certainly… I'll just share a quick experience. I have Portuguese water dogs now and a rescue Shih Tzu but we had Porties and Weimaraners were basically our two breeds. And one of my Weimaraners became dog aggressive after being attacked. And it's one of the reasons that I have a special certification from Jean's Academy for aggression in dogs was because of my Clint. So it's not always a happy ending or what you, what you wish for this dog. And you know, Clint could never be around nonfamilial dogs for the rest of his life and it had to be managed.
Marie:
And so there are heartbreaks associated with being a dog trainer. It's not all fun and games and there’s not always an answer. I've only had to recommend euthanization twice for dogs that were just, they just weren't wired right. They just weren't made for this world and they were a danger to the community and the family they lived in. So go work with a trainer is my first recommendation. Go live with them day in, day out for, you know, a period of time. See what it's like to be a dog trainer. See easily, you might get burnt out from it. Because it's not for everyone. And that doesn't mean that you're any less of a person, but it is very intense. It is very emotional, much like our veterinary caregivers, you know, people think, Oh great, I get to work with all these and I save all these animals. Well, there's also, you know, cases that don't work out. And it takes an emotional toll on you. And so you need to experience those things before you decide, yup, this is what I'm going to do because it's all fun and games.
Annie:
All right. Yup. Good point. And but, but, but then somebody is gonna be like, well, how do I, like, what do I do? I mean, I guess like what I said is like if you find someone in your community who maybe you can shadow and offer them, offer them some kind of pay or service and trade.
Marie:
I think that's the first step that I would take, you know, after that, if you want to invest the money and go do some other things, fine. But I think your first step is to find somebody local. There's somebody local that is a dog trainer that you can, you can work with.
Annie:
I, I agree. I think for me that was hard to find. I should mention at School For The Dogs, we do have a professional program where we usually have two, although right now we think we have three people doing it. Shadowing our trainers in addition to doing hands on exercises and an online component and a lecture component and we're trying to actually build that out. So there could be like a standalone component that's online that will actually at least partially be completely free just to like, you know, try and mint as many dog trainers as possible. But yeah. Well, anyway, Marie, thank you so much. And one more question, Valerie saying, what are some of your favorite dog training authors? Books. I mean I can go on and on, but I think based on this conversation, I would say Culture Clash is a great place to start.
Marie:
You know what great minds think alike. It was my Bible when I got my first dog and it's still the book that I recommend to every new dog owner culture.
Annie:
I mean there's probably half a dozen that I recommend a lot and culture clash is one of them. Don’t Shoot The Dog, also. Which is actually not really about dog training but is about behavior. It is by Karen Pryor and I went into the Karen Pryor Academy and she has a newer book, Reaching The Animal Mind, which is also very, very good. So based on people we already discussed in this conversation, I would suggest those two. All right. Thanks everyone. Take care.
