Own your journey - including the tools that helped you get there.
🌟 If a training tool has helped you and your dog, please be transparent about it. 🌟
If you look online, you could easily be convinced that many high level people never use training tools. That they’ve achieved all they have using purely rewards - treats, toys and praise.
However I know for a fact that many of those trainers and owners also quietly use training tools such as ecollars, training collars and others to support their reward based training. And there’s nothing wrong with that when used in a kind and educated way, appropriate to the dog and situation. In many cases it’s that next step up that gets them over the line to where the dog can live the big life they deserve to experience. If it’s working for you and your dog and everyone is happy, we should be celebrating it not shying away from the topic.
The issue comes when we pretend that that isn’t the case. That we haven’t had a huge leg up from the help of these tools, and that without them we wouldn’t have achieved what we have. And this is out of fear of judgement, not realising that many of the people they expect to judge have also used these tools at some stage - just not publicised it for the same fear of judgement! I see this everywhere from television personalities, top trainers, sports people, rescue people through to your average owner with a pet dog. It’s SO much more common than you think.
I also see many reward based trainers who might not use tools themselves, but recognise their place, say as much to select groups of their peers and will also refer clients beyond their skill set to trainers who do use tools - while also publicly and privately shaming them for doing so. You can’t have it both ways!
Why is this an issue? 🤔
Many organisations are keen to see training tools banned, to the extent of some well known NZ organisations drafting some pretty gnarly restrictions which will likely go through a public consultation process as they try get it through. Within this draft includes bans on pretty much anything but treats and a harness - the combination 90% of my clients come to me with because it’s not working.
This sort of restriction counts on people being complacent about it. Though a large proportion of dog owners will use a tool at some stage, so few will actually discuss it openly. Hiding in the shadows means restrictions on life saving, life changing tools can more easily get footing as people assume it only affects a small group - greatly limiting the ways we can help some dogs, especially when it comes to predation and related behaviours.
Positive reinforcement training can do some amazing things and is where we nearly always start, but is not going to be enough to fully resolve some challenges or for dogs to reach their full potential. For many, restricting ourselves to that means injuries for the humans and others in the dogs life, immense frustration build up and often harsher handling as a result of not having the appropriate tools to support them. It means longer term restrictions for the dogs, not being able to experience the freedom they need for optimal behavioural health. For some dogs it means a lifetime being suppressed with unnecessary & costly medication, or even death because god forbid they get appropriately corrected instead, opening the door to other behaviours we can reinforce.
So here’s one of my own dogs, Needle. She has a tremendous foundation of positive reinforcement training, loves tricks, hiking and living her best feral herdy life. She gets more training in a week than most pet dogs get in a year. But she also has a whole lot more of the world available to her thanks to the support of her ecollar. And if you are considering using an ecollar or any other training tool, I will happily discuss that option with you (along with the appropriate foundation work before and around that).
So all that said - if you use tools, don’t hide them away in the shadows or apologise for it. And don’t lead people down the garden path of believing you did it all with just treats and love, when in many cases you have not. Own it, show how they’ve helped your dog as well as the bigger picture of foundation work outside of that (because we all know it’s not just slapping a collar on the dog and calling it done).
The future of dogs in this country will thank you. And the other owners and trainers doing the same thing who aren’t quite brave enough to say it yet might just thank you too.
