Sean O’Shea recently posted his idea of what should be accepted as evidence that it is worth the time of balanced trainers to engage with force free trainers.
The requirements are you have two months to find 20 dogs with serious behavior problems and rehab them. Record evidence of the problem behavior, steps taken to resolve the problem, the family replicating what the trainer did. And for some reason personal dogs are excluded.
From the wall of text that usually accompanies his posts:
“And while it’s not perfect—yes, someone could attempt to fudge video evidence and results—this template has shown to be the one consistent reality check where the PP/FF folks are simply caught out with no rhetorical place to hide. It’s a “put up or shut up”, “show me don’t tell me” argument frame. And it’s one they’ve never been able to counter.”
Here is my counter. Here is my Truth and Accountability as someone that provides relationship support to families and their dogs without the use of forceful punishing methods. Without telling families they need to do something that makes them feel uncomfortable. Without calling them weak.
I’m also emailing this to Sean/The Good Dog. So Sean, if you are reading this, and you find some useful information, you can buy me a coffee.
The first goal is finding 20 dogs with serious behavior problems whose family will consent to having all their sessions recorded and shared. I have a few clients who flat out told me they are embarrassed by their dogs behavior and don’t want me to take any videos to share. This is 100% a legitimate request from the family that should be respected by all trainers.
Just a side note that once we saw progress most clients relaxed their views on video and allowed me to record sessions for us to watch during our follow up. I still have one hold out but that is fine with me.
Now let’s say I find those 20 people. Great! Next step is scheduling 20 vet appointments. Anyone that contacts me with any significant behavior issue is required to get a complete checkup from their vet before we can meet in person. No exceptions.
The one client that refused the checkup (and I bent my own rules allowing it) ended up having a dog with a severe gastrointestinal issue that had gone undiagnosed until the dog had to be rushed to the ER. The dog had been sick for months.
Scheduling, then attending, then waiting for the results of 20 vet appointments could take at least 4-8 weeks. So I already failed but we are going to keep going.
While we are waiting for appointments and test results we’ll have our initial consultation where we go in depth about everything going on in the dog’s life. Even before a client can schedule their consultation they have to complete a detailed intake form. Using that form I put together a “script” for our consultation and a behavior modification/training plan.
Consults last a minimum of 90 minutes and can go up to two hours. These are held virtually. The consultation is time for the humans to talk and the dog is not required to be there. Virtual appointments are helpful for any dogs that don’t like new people coming into the home. I know what that behavior looks like. I don’t need to put the dog into a position to be anxious, fearful, or aggressive while I’m there.
I also know what reactivity, resource guarding, lunging, barking, jumping, mouthing, barking out the window, barking at people approaching the home/car, etc etc etc etc etc looks like and at no point during our time together do I purposely put the dog into a situation where they’ll go over threshold and practice those behaviors to either record or teach the dog a lesson. Another reason I hold initial consultations virtually. Too many clients want to show me what something looks like. I don’t need to see your dog lunging and barking at me. We have to decide how to manage the environment, meet their needs, identify the underlying cause, and decide what type of alternative behaviors we want to see depending on the situation. Not necessarily in that order.
That probably immediately disqualifies me as I won’t have any “before” video.
Preparing for these consults takes anywhere from one to two hours. This all depends on the case and if I have to research the breed or research any pre-existing conditions. My limit for behavior consultations is two per day. No exceptions as they can be exhausting.
To fit all those in, along with the research & prep, working with my current clients because I’m not just going to abandon them while I gather evidence to prove my worth … and you know, having a life … would take me a minimum of four weeks. That’s pushing it. But, adhd can have its advantages and there is thing this called hyperfocus which is pretty much how I wrote this post.
During those four weeks we are having consultations some dogs have had their vet appointments. Some come back with a referral to a specialist – like a board-certified veterinary behaviorist or certified applied animal behaviorist. Maybe the dog requires surgery, a diet change, or behavior medication. Surgery can take weeks to recover from. And changes to diet or medication can also take many weeks before you start seeing a difference.
This all probably puts me over the two month time limit but whatever I was already disqualified by not getting the before video.
Something else that may disqualify me is that even before we have a consultation I may decide this is a case that is outside of my skill set. If that is the case I always offer to assist in finding the right person.
Just recently I spoke with someone who has a dog with true separation anxiety. This isn’t something I work with. I sent them over some CSAT recommendations along with some reading material. I also told them whoever they work with is most likely going to ask you to take your dog to the vet for a complete checkup and to make that appointment asap as most vets are extremely busy. I also spoke with them about some things they can do in general that might make things easier while they wait for their specialist appointment.
Now I might have enough dogs. What if I went through all this to only have 19? Am I still not worthy?
At this point do I even need to continue? Are we not yet convinced at how ridiculous these rules are? Do I even need to talk about the logistics of scheduling lessons with all 20 families?
And how many lessons should I be having? For how long?
Or is this a board and train situation? You weren’t clear, Sean!
Who decides if we were successful? What is success, to you? A fully trained dog? A dog that sits calmly like a robot until you are ready to acknowledge them? A dog that doesn’t react to any triggers in any way?
How exactly does the time limit work? Does the timer start on May 1st? Do we have to formally accept your terms of truth and accountability first and then the countdown begins?
You can’t rush or force change for it to be truly effective. You can’t put a time limit on when a dog needs to be able to act a certain way. The closest way to achieve that is through punishment. Punishing the behavior will only suppress it. I grew up in a toxic environment and I see many similarities in the balanced training world. It wasn’t until I removed myself from that environment and identified the underlying cause that I started to see change happen. It almost 40 years for that to happen.
To close – keeping it related to dogs – and nothing to do with Sean or his ridiculous rules of engagement, here is a short story of changing from a toxic relationship (even though it may have not sounded toxic, it was) to a more positive. It’s from the Instagram account oldgemini and the post was on February 16th 2022.
“Jōnsi was the dog I used “balanced”/aversive methods with. I knew how to train effectively with balanced methods a la Miller, Dokken, Balabanov, Kroyer, any name you want. I grew up using those methodologies and was gentler than most of the bird dog trainers I was around. Jōnsi isn’t a very sensitive dog, she’s fairly unflappable, and to me always seemed unbothered by “fair corrections.” She’s not a sad, miserable dog that crumbled with punishment. I was happy with what I was seeing and doing, she seemed happy and unbothered. She was obedient.
Regardless of everything going well, I changed my methodologies. I feel like I’ve described that paradigm shift enough times (if you’re new and missed it, I am always happy to explain again!). I worked to use force free, R+ methods. It was challenging in some ways, but I didn’t see huge fallout like many other folks. I’d taught her decently well, so there wasn’t an enormous knowledge/behavior gap that manifested itself after I removed aversives.
This isn’t to say she didn’t change, or that our relationship didn’t change. She changed enormously: in a word, she became eclectic. She became herself. She became a dog who would suddenly sprint for the joy of loose dirt, who would paw at my face for attention if I was on the floor, who would wiggle excitedly and tap her toes at the happy sight of young children. These were never things I punished, and yet a part of her was still suppressed. A part of her, a large part, was afraid to be, was smothered by the mild applications of punishment she received. She was never unhappy, but now, she was ecstatic to be her strange, confident, demanding, delightful little self.“