Legislating the Tool

This year, we received an email from a dog owner who lived in Sweden.

She was looking for help from a balanced dog trainer. You see, there are no balanced dog trainers in Sweden – only All Positive trainers. She wanted a trainer that would do Zoom lessons with her reactive dog.

She had worked with several trainers in Sweden who did help, but only to a point and she was still having issues with her dog lunging and barking at other dogs. This is one of the issues with All Positive trainers. With All Positive trainers, they only use two quadrants of learning when there are actually four.

Balanced trainers use the four quadrants of learning.

There is a slippery slope when stores like Petco announce they will no longer sell E-Collars. Petco CEO Ron Coughlin told CNN Business in an interview, “Shock Collars are not consistent with our mission of improving lives.”

This is a publicity stunt because – guess what they still sell? Electronic Fence systems.

Honestly, I am not sure what the difference is. They both give the dog an electronic stimulation to teach it something, and, for those not in the know, training collars are used at a much lower stimulation setting than the fence systems.

There are also celebrities like Victoria Stilwell who despise choke, prong and E-collars. The only equipment she recommends for leash pulling are harnesses and gentle leaders.

I would like a quarter every time someone came in my training facility dragged by their dog in a harness or gentle leader. If they work for your dog, then great! However, we see a fair amount of people asking for help because their dog still leash pulls or is reactive on lead.

Our Swedish dog owner stated that the public is permitted to purchase E-collars and prong collars in her country, but if you are caught with these collars on your dog, you are charged with animal abuse.

Meaning, the military and police services are allowed to use prong and E-collars, but the general public is not. That is like saying the military and police are allowed to abuse their dogs but the public is not.

What a crock…

In reality, police and military dogs are expected to be under control and your pet is not. In addition, if you cannot control your pet and it injures a dog or human, it’s going to be euthanized.

A lot of dogs in the United States would be euthanized if it were not for balanced trainers.

In 2019, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) took in 1,066 dogs and 1,355 cats. It euthanized 609 of the dogs and 969 of the cats. In other words, PETA euthanized 57% of the dogs it took in and 72% of the cats.

It adopted out 19 dogs and 10 cats. I don’t know about you, but that seems to be a real high kill rate for an organization that claims to be for the ethical treatment of animals.

In our current day, we are surrounded by extremes and I believe the answers are somewhere in the middle.

Social Media’s main mission is to keep people online so they can advertise to them. They do not keep people online by constantly offering them feel-good videos. They keep people online by pushing their buttons, using algorithms to stimulate the brain and to keep you interacting with your device.

I have had so many people come to us for help and say, I don’t know what to believe; feed your dog this, don’t feed your dog that; use this training tool, never use that training tool. It goes on and on.

I once had a client tell me they rub their dog’s nose in its urine to teach it not to pee in the house. Honestly, I was stunned. That was like something my parents did in the 60’s everyone knows that is counterproductive and abusive, right?

It’s all about education. I told the client that this was an extremely outdated training idea and one that doesn’t work, so please don’t do that anymore. I also provided the client with an educational outline on potty training so he could get on the right track.

If you need help training your dog, here is what I recommend.

Ask around to friends that have well-behaved dogs. Ask your veterinarian for a referral. Go online and look for dog trainers in your area, and if you don’t find any that you are comfortable with, look outside of your area.

When you find a trainer you might want to work with, look at their Google and Facebook reviews. Call and talk to them.

Find someone you are comfortable with. If they cannot help, perhaps they can recommend someone who can.

Adams K-9 is not a one size fits all training center. We do refer dog owners to behaviorists or other dog trainers.

Don’t make decisions based on your emotions, but with facts and feedback. Don’t just follow the social media crowd – take the time to look for a trainer you like and believe in and you’ll get the results you’re looking for.

If you would like more information about our programs here at Adams K-9, please reach out to our team or stop by for a visit and see why we say – love your dog, love your dog’s behavior!

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Adams K-9

6363 56th Ave.
Hudsonville, MI 49426

Email: admin@Adamsk-9.com
Phone: (616) 209-5501

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