H42EL

It wasn’t until I had been working as a professional trainer for several years that I began slowly ditching training tools. Not just “aversives” but basically anything other than a plain old collar and leash. Let me first say, I have nothing against training tool use. It’s just the more I grew my skill set, the more I realized that I’m yet to meet a dog who truly NEEDS a training tool for any reason…. and I quite literally have the “worst of the worst” flown to me from all over the country. 

Today I was working with an incredibly high drive dog who has been driving his owners absolutely up a wall with his adolescent antics. You give this dog any hint that we’ll be working and he starts shaking and chattering his teeth in excitement. He gets himself so worked up that his brain just flips into complete hooligan mode and he’s incapable of following any cues no matter the environment. His owners had completely reached their breaking point with him and considered sending him to another working home with more experience. I did an evaluation and said “There’s a really good dog under here. Don’t give up yet.”

The old me would have put a prong on this asshole of a dog to make my life easier. Well, we’re three weeks in on nothing but a flat collar and he’s doing fantastic. Tight high step heel, fantastic finish, great stay/wait/recall, and today we had probably the most successful impulse control session I’ve had in a long time– all off-leash in nothing but a flat collar. His owners also reported that he’s really coming into himself, settling down at home, and he is turning into quite a calm and focused worker (he’s in training for detection if anyone was curious lol). I was so proud.

I used to hate the quote “the amount of force a trainer needs to use is directly proportional to their skill level” but now it’s starting to make sense.