Vocabulary Among Dog Trainers: A Nearly Un-navigable Terrain

It is often that I travel and work with handlers in law enforcement and even in civilian training arenas. One thing is evident as I talk with working dog practitioners and enthusiasts. The vocabulary of working dog sports and industry is an eclectic mix of science, pseudo-science, colloquialisms, jargon, and self-promotion by coining new terminology.

There have been attempts to try to standardize the vocabulary. These attempts have seen little success. The largest attempt in the US has been SWGDOG.

Prior to the SWGDOG attempt to define terminology in working dog training, there was a collaboration among Ethologists and the Police in Northrine-Westfalia at the School for Police Dog Handlers in Stukenbrock. Therein about 1950, scientists and police dog instructors set out to put together a curriculum for handlers attending the school. Over the years the program has changed as all programs do. But from this, the vocabulary used to describe and communicate about the behavior of police dogs has remained. It is a result of the science of ethology (the study of animal behaviors). To be more specific, we are talking about cynology (the study of the domestic dog). Vocabulary can be very useful in communicating about the desirable and undesirable traits and intrinsic behaviors we call drives and character traits for application in police dog training.

I hear people talk about drives frequently and some "do not believe in drive theory" which is like saying I don't believe it is intrinsic for me to breath. I also hear people talk about "ball drive" which also makes no sense. The intrinsic behavior is evolutionary and relates to natural behaviors, even if they have been altered by selective breeding and rearing practices. There have been no selective pressures for a dog to want to chase and possess a ball. But, a ball could represent an artificial prey item for which a dog's intrinsic behavior to chase prey and possess it has been associated and selected for!

One thing about ethology that the dog trainer must understand is that it has as its viewpoint how the organism interacts with its environment. In the case of cynology (that is the study of the domestic dog) and in the work we do in training dogs, it is the trial field or training field or in the case of the police dog or search and rescue dog, the operational environment. When one understands the context, the use of terminology including drives and character traits makes total sense to help us communicate dog behaviors. Communication among handlers and instructors for selection testing and training dogs for the work becomes more cohesive. Where it makes little sense is in the laboratory where we must quantify the behaviors being observed by a researcher. Here, the term 'drive' is of little use.

Among dog training enthusiasts, the naming of behaviors tends to be a selling point among trainers. Terms have been developed (with good intentions, I am sure) that have become associated with a popular trainers who coined a new phrase or defined a behavior in a certain way. Within the police dog community, vocabularies have sprung up from what I will call "camps". These may have arisen from various terms put into use among different generations of military handlers, regional training groups, and influential persons within these "camps" to include publications/books on canine training.