Maybe It’s Not The Dog, It’s You

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150 – March, 2022

By Chris Robinson

Virtually anyone who has ever trained a dog has, at some time, thrown up their hands in exasperation and said, “I can’t figure out what’s with this stupid/lazy/obstinate (take your pick) dog” except in a lot of cases, that statement is probably way more profane. If you don’t recall ever experiencing at least one of those frustrating moments with at least one of your dogs, you’ve been blessed with “superdogs,” incredible luck or a very short, selective memory.

In all the years I’ve owned dogs and all the generations of the same breed that I’ve trained, I can’t think of one that didn’t, at some point, drive me to distraction. Something I was doing or not doing was causing the dog to shut down in whatever sport I was training. For some reason the activity for which we were training was no longer fun for the dog and when he or she started balking, definitely not fun for me. Looking back and being totally objective about those bad times, more often than I care to admit, the problem wasn’t the dog, it was the dog’s trainer.

It would be great when these training hiccups occur, if you could say to the dog, “Hey, what’s the problem?” and get an answer even if it was only, “Listen, you nitwit, I’m not going to do what you are asking because doing it makes absolutely no sense to me, and what’s more, I don’t think I’m going to enjoy doing it.” Their body language tells you something is wrong, but it doesn’t tell you exactly what is wrong. Sadly, unless dogs somehow learn to talk, the answer to the “What’s the problem” question usually means a lot of trial and error.

A Rhodesian Ridgeback owner I recently interviewed recounted how she almost messed up her dog’s ability to finish his tracking championship. Her dog had finished both his TD and his TDX titles and they were working on his variable surface tracker (VST) title, the last one needed for the dog’s TC title when he suddenly, in the vernacular of racehorse trainers, spit the bit. She had been following the usual protocol for training a dog for his VST of tracking him several times a week which proved to be too much for her dog. He lost not only his enthusiasm for tracking but also his work ethic.

Click here to read the complete article
150 – March, 2022

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