How to Find a Dog Trainer

tl;dr: Scroll to the list. Read from there. 😉

I was chatting with a friend this morning on how back in the day, when we first started our various careers, we had to walk UPHILL, through the snow, both ways… No, okay, I’m kidding, but I had to laugh at myself about my “back in the day” story.

Which isn’t going to stop me from telling it! BACK IN THE DAY, when he and I were babies in our careers, there was no way to get a degree in what we were doing. He was a theater major who ended up working in graphic design and user interface — the guy who decides where the buttons will go on the computer program to make it user friendly. I was a dog trainer.

I was a teenager when I started training dogs. I grew up with little dogs and was fascinated by big dogs, and I was learning to train horses. I started walking my neighbor’s Rhodesian Ridgeback, and then started training him (they’d done most of the work, which left me to do polishing and trick training and, eventually, some recall training which he’d failed due to being deaf), and then another neighbor mentioned in passing that her kids couldn’t walk their dog, because every time a car drove by the dog bit the kids.

I’ve always loved a challenge.

So I talked about it with my horse coach, who was also getting into dog training, and then went and re-trained the neighbor’s dog with some advice from another newbie (my horse coach), what I knew of horses, and a layman’s knowledge.

I got those dogs REALLY well trained, and the biting went away.

I kept doing stuff like this for several years until, finally, I decided I’d be a dog trainer. At the time, Cesar Milan (The Dog Whisperer) was just getting started with his TV show, and was gaining popularity but was nowhere near a household name. I think there were ways to become a veterinary behaviorist, but it was very new and those programs were way out of my league for a variety of reasons. Positive reinforcement was a catch phrase also starting to take hold, but I couldn’t tell you if there were certifications you could get in it at the time. If there were, there were none I knew of. They certainly weren’t common.

At the time, you learned to train dogs through training with a mentor, reading tecniques, and doing it. And boy, did I do it.

“What does any of this have to do with finding a dog trainer?” I hear you cry. I’m getting there, I’m getting there.

This was all, oh, over 25 years ago. Let’s see, I was 16 when I trained my neighbor’s biting dog, and 23, I think, when I graduated college. Somewhere in there I started getting paid to re-train aggressive dogs. Anyway, I’m 44 now, almost 45, so that’s somewhere between 21-29 years ago. Over that time I’ve learned a lot (one should hope so!) and my styles have changed as I’ve learned more. I didn’t have a single mentor, but several people I worked under at various times, and a lot of it I learned doing it myself and reading about it. (I would have learned faster under a mentor, I’m sure, but every time I found one I quickly lost respect for them. There would be a dog or dogs who were struggling, and the trainer would blame the owner. I always figured the owners were doing the best they could, so the problem was with the technique. I’ve never held with blaming the owners.) Because I didn’t work under one person, I wasn’t indoctrinated with the “this is the one true style and anything else is abusive/traumatic/less than/harmful” attitude that is so prevalent now.

Sometimes I did things that were past the line. I studied the dogs’ body language, and when I realized I’d crossed a line I felt horrible and changed things. I won’t say I never made mistakes, because I certainly did, but I used the dogs as a guide. I quickly learned that what was harmful to one dog wasn’t to another, which pretty much ensured I was never going to fall into “this entire style of teaching is HORRIBLE” mindset.

Wait, what was the topic? Yes, okay, I’m getting there.

When I moved to the Eugene/Salem/Portland area, I went to local pet stores to introduce myself. Most people were perfectly friendly and didn’t ask many questions. One place stood out, though: they were certain I would never succeed up here without the letters behind my name.

See, over the last 20-30 years, the certification programs and various degrees have gotten much more prevalent. They aren’t bad; they tell you that someone has a basic amount of learning before they start training, and that’s a good thing. (They also heavily indoctrinate, but that’s a rant for another time.) Today, if you want to be a dog trainer, it’s easy to get certified in one method or another, and to get a lot of letters behind your name.

None of which means the person is a good dog trainer.

I’m an excellent dog trainer, but I don’t have any letters behind my name, and I look relatively young. Other trainers who look my age often started training a decade later than I did, when the letters were becoming easier to get. But they’re like any other letters: just because someone has an MD behind their name doesn’t mean they’re a good doctor.

So, now that I’ve gone on this long, nostalgic, rambling tale… How do you find a good dog trainer?

Here are some questions I always recommend:

1. Do you train dogs full time?
2. How long have you been training dogs?
3. What is your success rate with my problem (assuming you’re coming with a problem)?
4. Can you give me referrals? (Sometimes a Yelp or Google review page will take care of this and the next question.)
5. Can I talk to someone who was unhappy with your services?
6. What techniques do you use? Why?

There is no specific answer key, but here’s why I ask these questions:

1. Do you train dogs full time? If the answer is no, then why not? It might be for a perfectly good reason.
2. How long have you been training dogs? The longer the better.
3. What is your success rate with my problem (assuming you’re coming with a problem)? A lot of trainers don’t want to answer this, or start owner-blaming. But if the number is below 75%, I’m definitely not interested.
4. Can you give me referrals? (Sometimes a Yelp or Google review page will take care of this and the next question.) I like to talk to a person who used them so I can ask questions.
5. Can I talk to someone who was unhappy with your services? WHY they were unhappy will say a lot. It might be for a reason I don’t care about, or I might even agree with the trainer, or it might be a deal breaker for me.
6. What techniques do you use? Why? I’m not going to say one technique is better than another. Obviously I think holistic or balanced training is best, or I wouldn’t do it, but you need to go with what you’re comfortable with. It’s important to know up front what to expect.

Always, always, always make sure you understand and/or feel comfortable with what the trainer is doing. From an ethical standpoint, if you feel like something isn’t right, then it probably isn’t. From a practical standpoint, if you’re uncomfortable with something, then you aren’t going to do it, and training won’t succeed. It’s okay to be uncomfortable with things. I have a client who’s uncomfortable with anything negative, including using a squirt bottle, so we adapt and do things with a lot of positive reinforcement and passive consequences: cold shoulder, time outs, that sort of thing. Sometimes a trainer might refer you to someone else. I’ve done that, too, when I can see that either our styles or personalities really aren’t going to match.

Which is another thing: make sure you get along with your trainer. If they annoy or frustrate you, if they have a tic you can’t stand, it’s going to be a lot harder to train with them. Personality matters.

What did all these questions have to do with the letters behind my name? Well, it turns out those letters aren’t that important after all. We’re still in a changing industry without any standards, and the more important question is: are you good at what you do? Now you can find out.

Jenna