{"id":2223,"date":"2012-01-27T18:11:15","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T18:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.undermybed.co.uk\/?p=2223"},"modified":"2012-01-27T18:11:15","modified_gmt":"2012-01-27T18:11:15","slug":"tell-me-thursday-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thosenoisydogs.co.uk\/?p=2223","title":{"rendered":"Tell Me Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. How do you search for and then choose a trainer?<\/strong>
\nWord of mouth is the big one. People who know my dogs have recommended certain people (or not recommended, in some cases!), or if someone I know with a similar training standpoint to me says they liked working with a certain trainer, I’d try them. I would ideally like to watch a trainer do their stuff on a training day or session before I took my own dogs to them, but it’s not always possible (audit slots don’t really come up).<\/p>\n

Having said that, I can usually<\/em> watch a potential trainer compete with their dogs. That can tell me a lot about a person; how they handle, and particularly how they treat their dogs before\/during\/after the run (or, even better, how they treat their students). On a slightly related note, I’m not concerned about a trainer being a World Champ handler. I prefer to look for consistency; one Ag.Ch and seven G3 dogs suggests someone got lucky and can’t reapply the training to different dogs. Someone who has four dogs spread over G5-7 is more appealing, it says to me that they are consistent but adaptable to the different individual dogs. Having worked with different breeds and heights is also a plus.<\/p>\n

I prefer trainers who explain why. I find it difficult to change the way I’m doing something or to apply a new technique if the trainer can’t justify why I should. Having me change something because that is how the trainer handles their dog isn’t good enough, I need to know why it will work for me and my dog.<\/p>\n

Finally, if I feel intimidated or uncomfortable, I won’t go back to that trainer. I have a low threshold for being shouted at. If I’m on a training day or private lesson and I’m made to feel me or my dog isn’t good enough, that’s not on. It seems like such a simple thing to say but I have actually been on training days where that has happened.<\/p>\n

Having read all that I’m obviously a bit picky and probably a horribly awkward student!<\/p>\n

2. The dog world is small and… uh… talkative. After choosing a trainer how do you handle those people in your life who don’t believe in that trainer\/trainers methods and criticize them to you?<\/strong>
\nNod and ignore. If it’s a close friend then I’d probably ask why they don’t like that trainer\/training methods, in case they know something I don’t.<\/p>\n

3. Do you believe that a person’s personal life should influence your choice of a trainer? (i.e do you believe a person’s choice to be a party animal outside of work would affect your choice?)<\/strong>
\nAs long as their personal life isn’t negatively influencing their training methods and teaching ability, I can’t see it being a problem. I wouldn’t choose to train with someone who had stressed or unhappy dogs as a result of their lifestyle, so assuming that they meet all my criteria for a good trainer, I don’t really care.<\/p>\n

4. When you have a break through moment with your dog, do you feel that moment makes your connection stronger with that dog and makes the next step in training easier?<\/strong>
\nHeh, yes and no. I love the lightbulb moment and we celebrate as a team, but it doesn’t always make the next step easier!<\/p>\n

5. Do you stick with just one trainer, or do you go to multiple sources for help? <\/strong>
\nMultiple. I like having different inputs, different ways of seeing things, but only because I feel confident enough in my own training that I can discard what I don’t like and to apply new things to what we already have.<\/p>\n

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1. How do you search for and then choose a trainer? Word of mouth is the big one. People who know my dogs have recommended certain people (or not recommended, in some cases!), or if someone I know with a similar training standpoint to me says they liked working with a certain trainer, I’d try […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tell-me-thursday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5mHz0-zR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thosenoisydogs.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thosenoisydogs.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thosenoisydogs.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thosenoisydogs.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thosenoisydogs.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thosenoisydogs.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thosenoisydogs.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thosenoisydogs.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thosenoisydogs.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}