I wish everybody knew this about Dog Trainers

Hayley Rees
Jun 23
3 min read

When you get a new puppy or adult dog, and you need help with their behaviour, you may decide to look up a local dog trainer.

But you need to know this - not all dog trainers are created equal!

Dog Trainer Vale of Glamorgan — Would you recognise the stress signals in this dog?

Most Dog Trainers will be able to get your dog to do things, sometimes it looks like magic or voodoo, or you may feel like they are a ‘dog whisperer’ (just so you know; this is a term that dog trainers like me never want to be called; more on this later).

But it’s HOW they get your dog to do things, that is what you need to look at, amongst other things, of course.

Just like us, dogs need to be motivated in order to do a certain behaviour; some things are self-motivating and they just seem to do them (think Collie herding another dog or labrador fetching a ball). However, many of the things we want a dog to do are not natural dog behaviours, you would never see them doing them in their natural habitat! And for this, they need motivation.

Dog Trainers need to motivate dogs to get them to behave in certain ways, because there is no magic. What you need to know is that there are different ways to provide this motivation.

In simple terms, they either use FUN or FEAR

Dog Trainers like myself use FUN - food, play, praise or access to something they want, like the garden, or the opportunity to do something they love, like chasing.

So we set up a situation where the dog can perform a behaviour we want, and as soon as they do it, the fun starts - and this behaviour is likely to be repeated.

Dog Trainers like me, don’t punish dogs for doing behaviour we don’t want or like. We just don’t reward them with anything. The caveat to this is that we also teach them the behaviours that we do want, and we make these fun and rewarding, we don't just go around ignoring dogs and never teaching them what we actually want.

It’s not long before a dog works out which behaviours are worth doing, and which are just a complete waste of their time and energy.

But take a different type of dog trainer, one that doesn’t use fun or food to motivate, what they use is FEAR

They set up situations where a dog is likely to perform an unwanted behaviour and they use what they probably call a 'correction'. A correction is another word for punishment. Punishment is when something is added that the dog finds unpleasant, painful or scary enough, that they will work to avoid that happening again. An example would be a dog pulling on lead and getting a yank around the neck, or a dog barking at another dog and having a loud noise or air spray blasted in their face.

Sure, a dog may quickly fall into line and start avoiding those behaviours, for fear of encountering the ‘correction’. However, underneath all of that is a dog that has feelings and emotions and very possibly is now becoming anxious - not sure where the next jolt of pain or scary noise is coming from, not sure who to trust, and possibly starting to make negative associations with multiple things around them.

You absolutely may see this type of trainer rewarding your dog with food or praise, for doing the behaviour that they have forced them into.

Imagine being slapped around the face for walking too fast, and then given a piece of cake when you slow down….the damage is already done.

What a lot of people don’t understand, are the subtle body language signals that dogs give when they are scared and stressed. When I watch episodes of the dog whisperer (Ceaser Milan), the poor dogs with their silent cries for help, break my heart.

Even if you don’t notice these signs, do you really want your dog to be trained through fear? Don't work with a dog trainer that focuses on force, and disregards the dog's welfare.