Kyle Warren Dogs

A small group today in class as we went on our working hike. All did well and had a blast.

After Thanksgiving here in the northeast, is the time of year that I see which of my current students are really committed to getting there dogs up and running at maximum potential and which ones are more concerned about not being cold for 45 minutes.  The psychology of the loving dog owner has always fascinated me— many of these same people will go for a 30 minute to 2 hour hike or walk with their dog because they view it as fun, exercise and non-restrictive.  I train dogs for almost everything and every one of my students goes through my standard course regardless of what higher learning they may want to do.  Training is only as fun as the attitude the handler decides to accompany it with! I happen to love winter training and so do the dogs.  Even I will cancel if it’s below 10 degrees and I have no inside training to do with the dog. But moving around most often the dog is totally fine and happy.  The dog and I will take 10 degrees over 95 degrees. I cancel more summer lessons than winter lessons based on health hazards. So my statement to us dog owners who have dogs that need training— don’t wait until April… button up! tough’n up! and I’ll meet up outside!

Over the past decade I have been continually frustrated, not in the growth of the dog training industry (largely sparked by Ceasar Milan) but the fact that anyone that has been around dogs a long time and goes to a puppy mill training school is now a “trainer.” They still need to earn their status in a community but unfortunately the general public, despite caring so much for their four legged kids just do not know what they are looking at.

The past few months I have written an outline for my next book.  This is the book that truly everyone dog owner will need to read.  All my life I have been instructing people one on one everyday for the entire spectrum of issues that arise between a human and their dog.  The true secret is in the communication between the owner and their trainer.  A truly fabulous trainer can communicate, identify and process each person they work with on a cellular level.  Most of these traits cannot be taught in my experience and most trainers do not have it.

I have witnessed many poor trainers and a few good ones along the way.  As much as experience is super helpful and I always fall back on my 3,000 plus dog education— The gifted trainers are born as understanding strong compassionate individuals.  I have seen a 17 year old girl that has never handle a dog before, out handle an experienced trainer of 30 years… why? Because she has the gift.  That trainer had the experience but not the innate intelligence to globally communicate. This happens all the time.

People think just because your dog does a crowd-pleasing command with you as the pez dispenser or you can yell at the dog and it will obey out of intimidation that the trainer is a superstar.  Sadly, owners often only have this person to compare themselves to and they want to believe in this person, so they do for awhile. Most households do not hold big demands on their dogs but the standard of responsiveness should be the same no matter what.  Otherwise the dog will view the handler as inadequate and responsiveness will deteriorate.

The trainer needs to not just win the owners trust but make them realize their limitations as a handler and change what they can.  I certainly have my core methods and beliefs but have no foolish pride when it comes to the elderly, mentally ill or the utmost desperate times; further experimentation is key for the individual situation.  Every owner and trainer needs to know when those times exist.  Getting the dog to do the required tasks for me, only helps you if you can do what I do.  15 years ago I never thought I’d use a prong collar or give a dog a treat for responding….. but when the owner’s agility, strength, and or mental capacity is limited, one may need to bring themself to such experiments. Still there are proper ways of doing such and by utilizing these methods you create the potential to harm the relationship you ideally should have with your dog. Thankfully I can say that more than ~95% of the time we can avoid these tools and keep “us,” the handler as the main tool.  The best trainer will customize a lot in their explanations and implementations of working with you and your dog.

So to give credit where due, to us trainers who get the maximum results out of our humans and dogs with whatever methods used.  The hard combination to obtain at the end game— maximum responsiveness and happiness in your dog.  Most trainers seem to accomplish one or the other but not both.  Remember we always want training to be fun and a good instructor can most often make it such but we train first and foremost for— safety and sanity.

I was privileged enough to be invited onto a very popular radio show, “The Dog Doctor” to discuss some of my training perspectives and certain aspects of the movie that I was in.  If you are interested in listening to the conversation with Dr. Robert Forto please click here.  This was a great experience and it’s nice to know that there are people around the country that believe in quality dog handling and hard work, not miracles or only training a dog while it’s in drive.

This is a 12 year old sweety named Chelsea sitting to Xila’s left.  I always say, “that the only one to say that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks is the old dog.”  Well this dog was in need of some boundary training on her beautiful 8 acres and the owners preferred not to use an invisible fence so we put the old girl through her paces with all the commands and she has proven to be happy and pliable throughout the process.  I was very reluctant to train this sweet, well mannered senior dog simply out of respect for her age and naturally wonderful personality, I would of just modified her physical freedom a bit and let her live out her days as is— but she has shown that if she was a human, she’d be a very educated, progressive old lady that shops online and uses email!  It’s a pleasure to see an old gal like this so healthy and happy.

I have a saying…. “there’s dog people and then there’s bad people.”  For those of us that have had the companionship of a dog, we know how deeply we love, we give, we sacrifice — and when they pass, how much we lose.  There’s nothing that can make the feeling of this kind of loss any better.  Another dog — at the right time — can move us forward into the future, but our special friend touches us in away that truly makes them an extension of ourselves.  So when our tail-wagg’n pal starts on another journey we lose a part of ourselves for awhile.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.  Absolutely nothing.  Take the time to reflect on all the good, all the happiness, all the memories.  It gets better. And some day you’ll be vacuuming up another dog’s hair off the couch, and you’ll know that the hole that was in your heart wasn’t replaced by another dog, but certainly mended.  That day will come.

I work with many people, many dogs.  There’s a community of people and dogs are in my life that I am thankful for.  They stay close, and feel a sense of belonging.  These people —students— I truly consider my pack members.  This past year I lost three valued pack members: Jett, a black lab; Ella, a collie mix; and Tucker, a flat-coat retriever.  All will be sorely missed, but never forgotten.

We are a household of big, tough genetically superior dogs but our egos are healthy enough that we are still able to hang with uptown pocket dogs.

Xila and Lilly on a stay together

Xila and Lilly having a conversation

Rogue on point

Events are always happening in our lives on a daily basis that make us question what we do, what we love and why?  For those dog owners out there that feel for your dogs the way that I do— the answer is pretty simple.  It’s about that in the moment pleasure of seeing that happy tail wag because— you came home from work, you knelt down onto the dog bed for some TLC, you winged the tennis ball across the yard, your dog just leaped into the swimming hole after a stick or crawls up into your lap while at your laptop in your home office at night….. these are moments that go on and on.  The companionship, faithfulness and pureness attracts us humans to this species because our faults are so abundant and there’s are so few.  We live much joy through our dogs.  Our dogs remind us how to love, live, and feel about life.