How to Dress a Dog Trainer

What do you see in your mind's eye when you hear the term "dog trainer?" 

I see this. It makes me want to hit someone.

If you see a professionally but appropriately dressed, well-presented, emphasis-with-repeated-word-here, professional individual (and you live in Ohio), know that I'm laughing at you. Most of the dog trainers I see look like the guy above and trust me when I say I wouldn't buy a word he said, no matter how right he was.

Because of how he's dressed.

Scratch that. 

Dog trainer, yes. Check mark and all that beside the term. 

Professional dog trainer, no. No check marks, no stars, nothing.

And I certainly would not call you a pet professional.

Every time I check out a new dog training faci--- You know what. Let me rephrase. 

Every single POSITIVE dog training facility I have ever toured has been presented to me by a dog trainer who is, for lack of a better term and because I can think of nothing more insulting than this - sloppy. 

No offense, but I've worked with the traditional and military boys, and they dress nice. 

It may be because they're pushy jerks and they HAVE to have some redeeming quality....

What's the problem, here, ladies?

Hair?

Never done. Or if it is, you should sue your hairstylist. There is a hairspray limit, just like there's a drinking limit. Find it.

Makeup. 

If it's there, it's caked on using the incorrect color for your complexion, way too much blush, eyeshadow, mascara, or eyeliner... or it's just not there.

Most of you .... should go without.

I don't care how much makeup you wear so long as all I think when I see it is, "I wish I had that complexion! Her skin glows!" 

Can't pull that off?

Avoid the damn makeup. 

Please.

(These girls are just barely overdressed. Nix the heels, the white, and the sports coats, and you might be on to something.)

Clothes.

Here's my pet peeve.

LADIES, if I can see your panty line, either you're wearing the wrong pants or the wrong underwear and one of them has GOT to go.

I've never been so annoyed or unwilling to listen to someone's advice as I am when someone is marketing to me that they are a professional anything and don't look like they know what the word entails.

Don't worry; your clients think that, too.

You should, 100% of the time, be dressed better than your clients. 

Especially if you're a woman.

That means: You probably shouldn't be jeans and a t-shirt.

It also means that your clothes should not be baggy or tight enough that I'm giggling because you have a muffin top and should really consider buying the next size up in your so-called pants size.

Really, it's really hard to take a person seriously if she looks like she doesn't take proper care of herself.

So, take the damn time to make your hair look half-way decent. Ponytails are amazing....as long as I can see more than just frizz... and don't require a lot of effort. 

Skip the makeup unless you plan on making it look like you don't have any on. Really. Really, really. Even if you're good at wearing makeup, you should probably opt to look like you're about to teach a dog training class, not out with your friends.

And the clothes. Oh, the clothes. My recommendation: Go with something earthy and professional. And go with top-of-the-line. Cheap dress clothes look like shit.

Repeat: If you're wearing cheap dress clothes YOU LOOK CHEAP.

And top of the line here means that if you're going with earthy, I-am-a-dog-trainer type of clothes, go with Carhartt. If, like me, you work with a very conservative crowd, you may consider Express or Gap or some other annoying name-brand hoo-hah.

(These are Dockers. Dockers are freaking amazing.)

Also, take the goddamn time of day to match appropriate undergarments with the appropriate professional outfits. I don't want to see your bra straps. Or your bra. And while I really, really don't want to see your underwear or panty line, I especially don't want to see your pants riding up your.... 

I'll stop there.

Personally, I recommend Victoria's Secret. They have everything for everyone - size, style, etc - and it's cute to boot. Your husband will thank you.

(You don't want him thanking me. I'm her size.)

Professional is professional, and there isn't some fine line or broad spectrum. If you call yourself professional, dress the damn part.

(Like the irony of having that line right below a Victoria's Secret model? I did!)

Make all the excuses you want. 

Rationalize.

Rant.

Yell at me and tell me why I'm wrong and it's okay for professional dog trainers not to look professional.

Or yell at me and tell me why you think jeans and a t-shirt or the wrong sized clothes and too much make up IS professional.

Point is, this is a professional career, and for people to treat it as such, you really do have to dress better than your clients.

And here's the kicker.

You have to act professional, too.

Embarrassment in the New Year

I'm doing it. The year in review.

Enter a man named Leo, who - for the longest time - was known to me only as @Kenzo_HW. (And I couldn't spell Hovawart right. Sue me. Hovowart. Hovawart. It's...mostly kinda sorta somewhat close...)

Anyway, since ringing in the new year is all about honest---- Okay, honestly, I think I'm making the honesty part up, BUT since I've always wanted to tell someone this...

....

...Okay, here goes....

....I don't know if I can write it. 

Deep breath.

Deep breath #2.

Deep breath #3.

And it's coming out.

I uh

thought.

Leo.

Was.

Ithoughthewasagirl.

Well, you know... There was this tweet about making sure dad didn't forget the leash, and I thought, Oh, well she must be a teenage girl.

I am so sorry.

I am SOOOO so sorry.

Now, hold please while I find a table to hide under in case Leo feels like throwing things.

*Ahem* 

Moving along. 

Next came Dino Dogan of Dog Trainer 2.0 fame, of Dogan Dogs Video Blogs, and of DIY Blogger NET

I know. You're waiting for me to tell you something embarrassing about me in regards to Dino.

Well, there was this one time when I tried to go to his website and I typed Dogs and Dogs dot com.... And couldn't figure out WHY IT WOULDN'T WORK! 

It took twenty - count them 2   0   - minutes to figure out that it was his last name, Dogan, and then the word Dogs, and then dot com.

No, I don't want to talk about it, if you please.

It will only upset me.

Also, as he has that awful syndrome we call a pe-- *cough* Let me keep this PG. Since Dino is male, I just wasn't sure we'd get along. I'd gotten a lot of obnoxious boy followers saying the damndest things, and had taken to blocking them all.

Why not Dino?

Well, kids. 

I checked out his website.

And thought.

Well, this guy is interesting, intelligent and ...

I waited for the other shoe to drop.

But no.

No flirting.

So, with a sigh of relief, I'm glad to say I <3 DINO! because although he is quite definitely male and I can't change that, he's also pretty damned cool.

I mean it.

(Anyone else notice they're using the wrong form of "your" in this picture? Should be you're, as in YOU ARE, not as in "belongs to you.")

Of course, I can't forget Jana Rade, @Dawgblogger, who runs Dawg Business - a site dedicated to doggie health and a facebook group called Dog Health Issues.

Embarrassing stuff about us?

Well, sometimes I tell her embarrassing stuff, but for the most part, Jana's a rock.

Everything could be headed to hell in a handcart - in a hurry - for her, and she's still got time to listen to your doggy problems, give advice, and direct you to the right website to get you informed.

All while she's trying to sort out her own problems, much harder than everyone else's.

She takes it all in stride.

I am proud to know this woman.

Oh! 

By the way, Please help Jasmine, Jana's dog - she's in trouble, and she could use your help. So, since she's nice to all of us and helps us out all the time, don't forget to help her out, too!

Well, something slightly embarrassing (on my behalf) was back when I thought Leo was a girl (what? stop looking at me like that! it was an honest mistake...) and reading in on a conversation he was having with Jana.

I felt a twinge of jealousy that my new friend was talking to someone of obviously higher twitter and blogging rank than myself, and so it took me a moment to figure out that

1.) I could easily join in on the conversation

2.) I could follow her on twitter

and 

3.) I could be friends with her too.

Whoever said I'm not a ninny is a liar.

But that's all I've got for now.

The three people, who - sadly - are all online friends (what? don't look at me like that. i'm not that big of a loser. no, really. i'm....oh, forget it) but they're all seriously awesome people.

Snowed In

First thing in the morning, and I don't know what the heck to do...

Sure, I'm supposed to write this awesome post with the help of a friend who would be much more suited to pulling it off than I would, but I'm just not feeling it.

I would succeed in offending EVERYONE.

Which...believe it or not... isn't the point. 

...But is probably the only point I'll manage to pull off.

I want the world to change the way it looks at stuff. 

It sounds nice. 

Really, it does.

And so does world peace, financial stability, and a flat screen tv. 

Do I have any of those things?

No.

Do I see any of those things in my future?

No.

And who am I to run around preaching change when I am the epitome of OCD, big S on the personality test that needs a hand to hold and a schedule to attend to?

Yeah, I'm the girl who doesn't know what to do when she has a spare moment. 

In fact, I mostly just zone out, confused, because I can't fathom not having to work.

Yet I want you guys to change something intrinsic to yourself.

What am I? 

Other than a freaking nut job....

I think the first step in having a blog or trying to reach out to the world is to know what you want, and to know what you want to do with it, to know what message you are trying to send. 

Yeah. I have a small idea.

Unfortunately, it keeps changing. 

I'll write my post anyway. It's about Social Media in the dog training world. It's about change. It's about where we can go if we achieve niche peace, stability, and fuck...let's throw in the flat screen TV.

On Strike.

Some days, I really hate dog blogs. So, Koda and I are officially on dog blogging strike. For at least one month. Next real article to be due on or around or after Christmas. Or never. We'll see.

As a dog trainer who loves reading about dogs, I've always found it absolutely irritating to read about "How To Train this..." or "Why you should (or should not) do this..." 

Thank you kindly, but if I wanted to know how to train something, I'd simply ask my own trainer/behaviorist. That is, of course, assuming that you've actually come up with something I don't know and really wowed me with it. If he couldn't answer, I'd research and ask my twitter friends (who, by the way, have some amazing dog blogs, most of which don't concentrate on telling me what to do.) What I wouldn't do is look up dog blogs to see if someone has written something about it.

What do you want from a dog blog?

I want stories.

And I want pictures.

I want the author to capture and captivate my mind, steal my heart, and make me laugh.

Do you have any idea how many publishers groan at the mere thought of... not ANOTHER dog training book!

So, I'm begging the readers, the authors, the bloggers.

Please don't turn our niche into another NOT ANOTHER DOG BLOG! world. We have too much to offer, too wide a range of topics, to weigh ourselves down with boring things, with boring information that anyone can find anywhere, or in any book. 

Color it. Walk me through the story of how you trained something if you wanna talk about how to do it. Tell me how silly your dog looked or that he started to chase his tail in the middle of the training session because he suddenly realized that it looked like someone stuck the tip of it into a bucket of white paint.

Quadratic Confusion... and Morning Coffee

Mass confusion usually follows anytime I am permitted to make up the questions to test the mettle of our class on their knowledge of operant conditioning. 

I will admit, I'm seriously obnoxious. I come up with statements that intentionally force our students to think critically, using the method that my brother and I made up to analyze and figure out in which of the four quadrants the answer lies. 

Here's my most annoying example to date: 

A very cute dog walks up to his owner and paws her in the leg. The owner smiles and tells her dog to sit, a treat hidden in her palm. When the dog puts his butt on the floor, the owner smiles wider and gives the dog the treat. The dog never sits again.

WHAT?! usually follows this statement. 

Surely I screwed that up, saying that a dog that is given a treat for sitting would never sit again. That isn't possible; it's not even probable! 

Don't worry; I'm just being a jerk. I'll admit it.

I also threw in a lot of meaningless babble, such as "very cute dog," the pawing of the owner's leg, the smiling, the fact that the dog was given a treat, etc. 

Well, how do you figure out where this falls on the grid? Let's analyze and check it out!

(*Note that nowhere do I say "desired" or "undesired" behavior; I simply note that a behavior is performed. Whether or not we like it has little to do with the science.)

Forgetting anything about our preconceptions about what dogs like or should do in accordance to blahblahblah, let's take the sciency way!

(A very cute dog walks up to his owner and paws her in the leg. The owner smiles and tells her dog to sit, a treat hidden in her palm. When the dog puts his butt on the floor, the owner smiles wider and gives the dog the treat. The dog never sits again.)

1.) Identify the behavior. 

In this case, the behavior is sitting. 

2.) Identify the consequence.

The dog is given a treat.

3.) What happened to the behavior as a result of the consequence?

The behavior decreased.

So, something was applied that made a behavior decrease. So, if you go back up and check out the section of the grid where behaviors are decreased and then check out in which of those two something is applied, you should come up with Positive Punishment or P+.

If you're anything like the people who take my class, you're probably all but ready to jump through the computer and argue with me that a treat cannot be a form of positive punishment. 

(Funny note: That's uncritical anthropomorphism you're using; because you believe that giving a dog a treat is positive, therefore the dog must think that getting a treat is positive. This is not so, and this kind of thought process will bite you in the butt... If a dog doesn't get there first!)

So, with that note: 

Can you critically and scientifically analyze these statements and tell me which of the four quadrants they fall under?

1.) A dog barks while running agility. His handler takes him off the field and plays fetch. The dog learns not to bark on the agility field.

2.) A dog barks while running agility. The owner takes him off the field and puts him in a crate. The dog learns to bark on the agility field.

3.) A dog steps out of heel position and is collar corrected. The dog learns not to step out of heel position.

4.) The leg bands on a front pull harness loosen when a dog chooses to walk closer to his handler.

The Obnoxiously Objective Interpretation

I am a trouble maker.

And so is my dog.

There, I said it, admitted it, and got it out of my system. Sort of.

I have a bit of a problem, and it goes like this: Most people aren't programmed to think the way I do. (Curious as to what I mean when I say programming? Click HERE! to find out!)

Because of that, I have a hard time communicating with other people.

See this picture? What do you see when you look at it?

Most people would see something along the lines of a submissively postured border collie, right?

I - and obnoxiously so - refuse to make any conclusion about what the dog is doing or trying to communicate.  

As a funny example, one day when I was in high school and deigned to grace the place with my presence, I was happy to find out that I'd come on a day when we were doing a rather interesting experiment in physics class. 

Physics happened to be the only class I liked, never mind the fact that I slept through it, never did my homework, and doodled on my tests.

There was a visiting professor who took half of the first class to tell us that we were entirely too stupid to make it in college physics. 

He talked about how we wouldn't know objectivity if it bit us in the ass and then proceeded to have us do an experiment that would prove just that. 

We were sent into the lab room with orders to observe an individual and report back with scientific observations. 

My lab partner and I went first. He came back and noted that the guy in the room was worried and on a time budget.

The professor nodded approvingly and I wanted to hide under a desk. What my lab partner had said didn't even come close to my observations and I no longer wanted to answer.

Nervously, I shuffled my feet and refused to look up when the professor cleared his throat - a noise most likely aimed at me and my lack of answer.

He asked me three times to state my conclusions and finally, in a very meek voice, I said, "I am sorry; I am not prepared to make any conclusions based on the data I've collected."

His eyes widened for a moment, as though astonished, and then he furrowed his brows thoughtfully. After a momentary pause, he said, "All right, then; tell me about the data you've collected."

Terrified and thinking that I must have messed the entire experiment up and also thinking that he must be right and I was stupid, I nervously told him of my observations. I'd collected data about the subject of the experiment. A LOT of data.

I took almost twenty minutes to explain something that happened in less than five.

The professor laughed and sent us back to our desks with orders for me to see him after class.

He grilled me for fifteen minutes about why I'd chosen to report back the way I had. Confused - and nearly in tears - I told him that that was simply the way I'd been taught to think and that it made no sense to assume I knew what was going on in another person's head. What may have appeared as nervousness to me could have very well turned out to be excitement, too much caffeine, or the side-effect of long term use of anti-psychotics. Yes, I did say that. 

Yes, you are more than welcome to roll your eyes.

So, with that: 

Dear Doggy Dog World,

I have no idea about what is going on in another person's head, let alone a dog's.

I can't claim to know the why of any individual dog's behavior, although I can speculate based on the research of my peers and based on the research of those who are much smarter than I am.

PS: Please forgive my annoying objectivity when it comes to talking about or explaining any dog-related behavior. I am aware of the fact that I tend to offend people by not giving credit where credit is due to those in our field who are actively doing research, writing up studies, and making conclusions about those studies. I just hate conclusions; it's a personal problem.

The Work Always Pays Off

It's been a long day.

Of awesome doggy-dog-ness.

Today was agility trail day.

A day of course maps, bitter cold, weird negotiations with four legged companions, and - best of all - fun.

For now, check out the adventurous nervous dog taking a leap at life.

By the way, have I ever mentioned that Kittie took three years to get to a point where she could not only perform with other people (she's afraid of people) and dogs, but to actually let go of the fact that they were there and just have some fun? 

Yeah. 

Check her out.

This is fun. 

All the way.
(You may want to turn down the volume.... a lot)

And yes, I did literally jump for joy at the end.

I know I got first place and everything, but I could have shaved off at least a second or two if I'd set her up to slice some of those jumps -_-;; Stupid handler.

Yay for LVL 1 CPE 

Ahem.

KITTIE GOT FIRSTEST PLACE!!!!!!

And I am so proud of her. ^-^;;


Oh! Since I have the privilege of running alongside one of the best agility coaches/handlers in the nation (<--I gave him that title, but if you worked with him, you'd give it to him too) here's his video.
PS: I  TOLD YOU NOT TO FRONT CROSS THERE.
I almost want to add nananananana TOLD YOU SO!
But I'll be mature about this.
*cough*