Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Puppy Kindergarten

How Dog Training Changed How I Relate to People 

Like most dog trainers, I became one because of my love of dogs.The short version is that I adopted a dog that was a handful (to say the least) and during the process of learning how to address her behavior problems I discovered a love of dogs and of learning how to communicate with them.

As I spent more and more time as an apprentice trainer I came to realize something: just loving dogs isn’t enough to get the job done. One has to care about people too. Being a dog trainer means helping people relate to their dogs, and if you can’t relate to the people, you can’t help them.

Working with dog owners is not always easy: dog training can be just as contentious a subject as politics or child-rearing. Many people have prior experience with dogs and they are convinced that they already know everything. Convincing them that there is a better way or even a different way can be very difficult, even though they have come to you for help.

Emotional Investment Trumps Logic

Which brings me to my first lesson: the more emotionally invested someone is in a situation, the greater the likelihood that they won’t approach it logically. What would make someone call a professional for help and then ignore their advice? Often it’s an emotional attachment to something: a belief, a tool, a process, or a desired outcome.

I came to dog training from a career as a computer programmer. Computers are deterministic. Given a set of circumstances, the behavior of these devices can be successfuly predicted. If you don’t get the results you expect, you either don’t understand the system or the circumstances well enough.

People (and dogs, by the way) are not so predictable. Given the same data, two people will not always make the same choice. We are taught that “the truth” can be found via reason and logic – but this is only possible if we actually apply reason and logic to the situation at hand, something easier said than done.

We like to think that we are logical creatures and that we make decisions based on facts, but ask any successful marketer – we’re emotional creatures and we will almost always choose short-term comfort in preference to a longer term solution that involves any amount of pain. There’s a reason why TV commercials for cars, deodorant, and allergy medicine, are about beautful weather and happy families instead of crowded roads, stinky armpits, and sneezing fits: emotions drive decisions, not facts and features.

Check out the multi-billion dollar diet industry if you don’t believe me.

People Don’t Like Being Told That They Are Wrong.

Shocking, huh?

And of course, the more emotionally invested they are in the situation, the more telling them they are wrong is going to push them away.

This doesn’t mean you should never disagree with someone. It means picking your battles and when to wage them. It means prioritizing: what can be changed now and what needs to wait?

The best way to tell someone they are wrong is to let them figure out the right thing themselves.

I once had a client that was “all leash.” Every communication with her dog was preceded by, and often followed with, a tug on the leash. I tried repeatedly to point this out to her and to explain that it was not helping. Fortunately this was a pretty big dog and a rather small women, so I knew that the dog was in no danger of being hurt and that chances are the leash tugging was having no effect at all.

(Let me let you in on a little dog trainer’s secret: it is painful to watch people jerking and popping leashes, regardless of the effect on the dog.)

So finally one week I took her leash, tied it to a hook on the wall, and asked her to complete the class without touching the leash. At the end of class she said “He listens to me. I don’t really need the leash at all.”

Problem solved.

You Can Empathize Without Agreeing

When we disagree with someone it’s hard to appreciate their point of view. We tend to actively resist doing so, since acknowledging a different point of view often feels like validating it.

I heard a quote on the radio once. Unfortunately I can’t track it down but it went sort of like this:

“The problem with liberal thought is that it assumes that given the same set of facts everyone will inevitably come to the same correct conclusion.” (Emphasis his.)

I was so struck by this I almost wrecked my car.

When it comes to activites like dog training (and child rearing, wallpapering, cooking, buying a car, sorting a CD collection, etc.) we tend to weigh our own experiences very heavily. This makes sense. What could possibly be more relevant than our own experience?

The problem, of course, is what actually made us successful (or not) is not always clear. If I put on a loincloth and dance in circles long enough it will eventually rain, but I wouldn’t deserve the credit.

And then of course, there’s what our personal definition of success actually is. One man’s ill-trained mutt is another’s perfect companion. One man’s CD collection sorted alphabetically by album title is another’s abomination from Hades.

Working with people and their dogs I have encountered a wide variety of crazy ideas. Some are common, others a probably stuff of future blog posts. But if I wanted to help the dog, I needed to reach the person.

I learned that, regardless of how difficult it was, that taking the time to understand and empathize with someone’s viewpoint helped me communicate better with them. This was difficult at first because when an encounter is framed as “right and wrong” or “win or lose” empathizing is easily confused with agreeing.

It’s Teaching, Not War

Boy do we love our conflicts! Just about everything can and is pitched as war. War on Poverty. War on Drugs. War on Terror. War on Christmas. War is one of our favorite metaphors, and it tends to color our work and our relationships.

Teaching is not a win/lose zero sum game. In teaching, “victory” is defined as successfully transferring knowledge or skills.

This doesn’t happen when you successfully flog your student into agreeing with your point of view. You can win the debate or you can successfully teach your student. Pick one.

People Love Having Their Beliefs Validated

Confirmation bias may be the strongest force in the universe. It’s a corollary to people not wanting to being told they are wrong and it ties in very strongly with the emotions people invest in their beliefs.

When working with students I try to find opportunities to tell them when they are right. Any chance to do this, regardless of how small or how off topic it may seem, goes far in making the student feel comfortable.

Personally, I try to be vigilant about my own biases. Trainers, like many other professionals, tend to hang out in groups that use the same methods and share the same beliefs.An opposing viewpoint is often met with anger and/or derision.

This is not a good thing. Not every new idea deserves to be welcomed with open arms and many ideas do deserve to be discarded. But greeting all opposing viewpoints with an emotionally charged response is never good.

The Golden Rule

At the end of the day, it comes down to what we learned in people kindergarten: treat people as you would like to be treated. That doesn’t begin and end with “please” and “thank you,” it extends to respecting their views and opinions too.