Stay. Come. Don’t bark. Those basic dog commands sound simple enough, and in the lead-up to getting a pooch, it’s easy to imagine your new pet obeying each one soon after training. “Of course lil’ Fido will listen to me,” dog owners imagine. “If I just train him when he’s a pup, he’ll never turn into one of those ill-behaved yappers,” they tell themselves while scrolling through precious pictures of puppies ready for adoption.
Sometime around Fido’s first chewed-up Nike, or that angry note from a neighbor fed up with the incessant barking, or when Fido ignores you and bolts after a squirrel or a car or — in the worst-case scenario — a person, the unfortunate truth of dog ownership smacks you like a rolled-up newspaper: Dog training is hard.
Seconds after the harsh reality of dog training settles in, you realize an equally difficult truth: You have to ask for help, and that means admitting you don’t, actually, know how to train your dog. That same confident shopper who was convinced their dog would be an angel now has to grapple with being a bad pet parent.
Here’s where people like Pat Blocker come in. In her 18 years as a certified dog trainer, the bulk of Blocker’s customers have been dog owners who are at their wit’s end with their unruly pooch. Granted, there are plenty of customers who just got a new puppy and want to train it before any trouble starts, but most people who dial up a trainer are owners who thought they could handle training their dog, and realized they didn’t know how or their hectic schedule made it impossible.
Those pet owners are sometimes embarrassed to need Blocker’s help. And they’re quick to lay the blame on themselves. Blocker said plenty of customers call her and say they screwed up, they didn’t work hard enough with their pet, or they did it wrong. Blocker’s first lesson? Cut that out.
“I try to steer them away from blaming themselves for it,” she said.
The not-so secret truth about dog training is that the dog isn’t the only pupil, or even the main one. Sure, the end goal is to train your pooch to come when called or walk on a leash without yanking your arm out of the socket. But if a trainer works exclusively with the dog, the lessons learned will be forgotten quickly after the sessions stop. In reality, the whole process is about training the dog and the owner. Only if the owner is trained to train the dog and understand their pet will the training work.
It starts with communication. That obviously can’t mean having a lengthy discussion with your dog about what they want. But a dog’s inability to speak isn’t an inability to communicate. When the dog looks away, they’re trying to tell you something. Or when they jump up when a visitor comes in, or even if they scarf down a sneaker. All of it is a dog’s goofy way of trying to tell you something. Picking up those cues — Blocker calls it “speaking dog” — is central to effective training.
“I speak dog,” Blocker said. “I think I have a pretty heavy accent, but I speak dog.”
Alice Bucher’s dogs Woody and Bob were often trying to talk to her, she just didn’t speak their language until Blocker translated. When Woody would walk past other dogs, he’d snarl and lunge, making it tough for Bucher to control the 65-pound mutt. And her nine-pound poodle Bob regularly bossed the bigger dog around to the point that Bucher worried Woody might one day snap. “He could kill the little one in one chomp,” she said.
After a few visits, Blocker picked up on what the dogs were saying. Woody acted like a beast toward other dogs because he was scared, and he knew his growls and tugs would make his owner get him away from the other dogs. And little Bob changed his attitude toward his big housemate once Bucher made it clear to the poodle that good things happened when the big fella came around — it just took a few treats.
“Pat taught me how to read dog,” she said.
Still, Blocker said it’s important to remember that all dogs are different. Owners don’t always know what their pet experienced before they met. And they often might never know exactly why a dog has the quirks it has. In the end, it all depends on the dog.
“‘It depends’ is the most common phrase in dog training,” she said.