I know what you mean about finding a good trainer. Last year when I decided to consult a trainer about my own dog's dog-to-dog aggression, I had an extremely difficult time.
When she saw another dog, her hackles would raise, and she would stand very tall and 'posture' towards the other dog to tell him or her that she was in charge around here. If the dog approached her, and she was off-leash, she would put her front paws on its shoulders and snap at it if it tried to resist. If she was on-leash, she would lunge and snarl. Though she never actually bit another dog or got into a fight with another dog, I worried that someday she might, so I began to try to nip her behavior in the bud. I was unsuccessful by myself, though I tried everything I new to do - from offering her a distraction like a toy or treat when she saw another dog, to running in the opposite direction when she saw another dog, to using leash corrections. Nothing seemed to help, so I decided to elicit the help of a professional trainer. This was in July of 2004, when she was about 2.5 years old.
I opened the phone book and began calling. I started with "A Good Dog's Life." I went to a private, one-on-one session with them, so they could evaluate her. They adhered more to the 'purely positive' training methods, which is something I had never used before - I've always used some form of negative reinforcement or correction. They said that perhaps her behavior was more fear-based than dominance, and suggested I train her to the clicker and start using a head collar (like the Halti or Gentle Leader - similar to a horse halter). I already knew that wouldn't work, because I had tried for months when she was a puppy to get her to accept one because I wanted to do therapy work with her. She never accepted a head halter. So, they suggested I try the SENSE-ation harness instead. They fitted one to her, and showed me how to use it and how to train her to the clicker. They brought out one of their dogs and demonstrated what to do when we encountered another dog. I agreed to try it. Two weeks later, we were out for a walk and she saw a rabbit and took off after it. Not only did she rip the leash from my hands (something she'd NEVER done before), but the SENSE-ation harness broke and she went running across the road and intoa briar thicket after the rabbit. I was in a state of shock, and my husband had to go and get her out of the thicket, where she had become tangled in her quest to get the rabbit. I immediately decided no more harnesses, ever. If she had been on her regular prong collar, she never would have broken loose from me.
After this incident, I consulted the phone book again. I couldn't ever get ahold of anyone at All About Dogs, Asheville Animal House, or Attaboy Dog Training, so I called Bark Busters. I explained my problem in detail, and again, scheduled an 'evaluation meeting' with the head trainer for him to come to my home and see her for himself. He came alone, went through his entire spiel about Bark Busters and how their training method worked, etc. It intrigued me, to say the least. We went through the behavior quiz, (which can be found at
http://www.barkbusters.com/Site/BehavioralQuiz.aspx) and all the answers were 'no' for me and my dog. He asked if we could go outside and show him what she could do already. We did, and he was impressed. She obeyed every command given to her precisely and correctly, the first time I issued the command. He did not get to actually see how she reacted to other dogs, however. We went back inside, and he said he really did not think Bark Busters could help me, since she already knew all the basic (and some advanced) obedience commands and was so well behaved otherwise. He said she already understood that I was the alpha, or leader, so there really wasn't anything that he could show me to do with her in that respect either. He said he was sorry, and would charge the $60 'evaluation fee' to my credit card, which I had provided prior to the visit as a 'security deposit'. I asked him why he was going to charge me if he couldn't help me? He said that was the fee for an evaluation, not for the actual training, and left. He did call a day or two later and told me he had decided not to charge me. He also encouraged me to fill out the survey questionnaire that was included in the brochure he had given me, and mail it in. I answered all the questions truthfully, and mailed it in. I got another phone call from him a couple of days later, but this time he was not so nice. He said he was surprised at what I had written, and he did not expect such a nasty response from me. I told him that nothing I had said was nasty; I simply stated that he said Bark Busters could not help me, and that I would only consider recommending Bark Busters to people just starting out in training their dog. I would not reccomend Bark Busters to someone whose dog already had some training under its belt. He was very short with me, and said that he thought I would have said something a little nicer than that and hung up. He was true to his word and did not charge me, but after speaking to him that last time, I DEFINATELY wouldn't recommend Bark Busters to
anyone, not even people just starting out.
Bark Buster's claim of being able to train any breed, any age, with any problem is false. And as for the training being "non-physical," that's false as well, because they still allow you to use a choke chain (which is one of the most inhumane training collars out there - it can cause severe long-term injuries because of it's unlimited slip).
I ended up going with Dog Training In Your Home, the last entry in the phone book, naturally. My dog is now perfectly fine with other dogs, and can even be trusted inside the dog park with dozens of other dogs. We don't go there now, but during training that's where we did most of our work, only outside the fence. The last two sessions were the only two times that we actually let her off-leash and allowed her to do her thing (always wearing the remote collar, of course, in case a correction was necessary).
So do your homework on all the trainers in your area first. Go to
Yahoo! or
Google and do a search on "schutzhund (your town's name)," or "dog trainer (your town's name)," without the quotation marks. You may come up with one or two that aren't listed in the yellow pages.
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