I received a message last night from a friend. Lisa is not only a friend, but she is also one of the best employees that I have ever had! Lisa was the last trainer my dad mentored before he passed. They spent countless hours training together in the hot South Florida sunshine. He taught her so much. Anyway, her text asked: “How are you going to train in the new world. How can you train when you wear a mask? Aren’t facial expressions important? I am baffled.” Now mind you, Lisa is a damn good trainer, smart cookie, and oft my go-to on breeding and any Golden Retriever questions that I have. She is a fantastic breeder.
I heard my dad’s voice come through, “Aren’t you a dog trainer?” To me, it isn’t even a difficulty. For many reasons, I feel that this “new normal” will force us to become even better trainers and help us create even better dogs.
First, think about it. How many countries already wear facial coverings? Asian countries, such as Japan, have been wearing face masks for years. They LOVE their dogs. They often take them out with them in public, let them come into their homes, buy expensive clothes for them. They are very pampered.
Dogs in Muslim countries don’t live inside the home but outside where they guard their property and livestock. In those countries, women wear hijabs, also known as facial coverings.
How will wearing face masks make us better trainers? Well, before I answer that, let’s face it(pun intended), we need to train dogs to get used to people wearing masks, and some say, need to teach the dogs to get used to wearing masks themselves, at least that is what some say we need to do.
Dogs will now encounter people wearing gloves and face masks a lot more often than they have in the past. Every puppy class should teach dogs to wear masks as well as handled by someone wearing gloves.
I remembered many years ago. I visited another trainer’s school. He is a bit of a mentor to me and suggested that I take off my sunglasses when working with the dogs. While I agreed, he was right, I lived in South Florida at the time and taking off the sunglasses made life uncomfortable for this blue-eyed light-sensitive dog trainer. For years, I worked with dogs while wearing sunglasses. I had to communicate with them in ways differently than when I had my eyes to express myself. I had to become more conscious of utilizing my body language and my voice tones. A great example, when I trained golfing legend, Jack “Golden Bear” Nicklaus’ Golden Retriever Cali, to answer the question, “Cali, how many times has Daddy won the Masters,” by barking the correct number of times. She and I had a great relationship, and she knew to either watch my hand or my eyes for the signal to stop barking. We performed this most famous trick, along with others, countless times indoors and outdoors. When I had sunglasses on, she knew the subtle finger signal, and she knew the change in my eyes when I didn’t. However, when I didn’t, I used both my eyes and my finger to signal when to stop barking.
Working with Cali, sometimes hiding my eyes, forced me to use other tools to communicate what I want. The mask will make us better trainers, even though we have one less tool to communicate with dogs. We will become more aware of our body language, eyes, hand signals, and voice. Our voice is now not as clear as it was before we put on the mask. We may need to use our body more to convey signals to the dog. The opportunities we will have to become better communicators are only as limited as we allow ourselves to be.
I also believe this will make dogs even smarter and force them to use their brains even more as they will have to work harder as they will be reading our bodies and eyes more than the entire face.
I often hear a young trainer wanting to learn about body language; they look at the ears, say, “look at the tail”. They do not see the forest through the trees. Look at the whole dog; the entire dog tells the picture, you lose when you watch the tail – probably the most misread of all; the eyes, the stance. Don’t look at the details; you will find the devil there. Look at the whole dog. It will tell you more, much more and much more efficiently.
While my conversation with Lisa didn’t’ include Zoom, I think that Zoom is going to make us even better trainers. I was recently sucked into a lousy youtube commercial. I had no idea what the point was, and I went ahead and skipped it. While writing this post, I went back to look for the ad to illustrate my next point. One minute and 31 seconds into this commercial, they started to get to their point. (There is another lesson here if you can see it.) It was a riding instructor selling her training program. The example they were using was a riding instructor losing patience with their student because the instructor was telling the rider what to do, but was not giving the rider instructions. She was yelling at the rider, “Half halt, half halt,”; “Through, no more through. Don’t do that with your feet”. The rider lamented to herself, “I have no idea what I am supposed to do with my hands. Should I move them here, there? I don’t know what she wants. I will just keep moving the reins until she stops yelling.” It was almost like the “hot and cold” game. The teacher continued to yell, “no, don’t do that. What are you doing?” Instead of telling her to “pulse the reins faster, bring the reins gently to the right” or “zip up your core,” “the instructor in the commercial just kept telling her “more forward, half halt” There was no instruction, no teaching of technical skills. We will need to be more detailed in our direction if we are teaching at a distance and, in some cases, training over the internet.
My employees will often look at me and smile when I am working with a dog and owner because they hear me say the same things repeatedly, “breathe, exhale,” and then “right arm straight down”. When an owner is walking, and I say, “Right arm straight down,” they understand what I mean. In comparison to the commercial’s teacher, who would just say, “No, not that, heel the dog, correct the dog, ” my direction to the owner is specific. Now that we can’t touch the owner and move their arm for them in some areas, we will have descriptive words because we will find ourselves unable to reach through the zoom lens and place the dog or move the owner’s body for them.
I have found that the owners that had trouble with zoom training were the same kinds of people who would have had difficulty in person. Just naturally, not natural handlers, so I had the opportunity to become a better instructor. The owners that caught on quickly would have caught on just as quickly with in-person training. Zoom training is about 90% as effective and, in some cases, is 100%.
When this began, a dog trainer friend of mine and I had a friendly chat one evening. Johannes said to me, ” I don’t have to work aggressive dogs anymore. I have Zoom. I don’t have to worry about the dog going after me, and it is the owner that needs to learn how to handle their dog.” So true, I agreed. I reflected on a dog that I worked with several months back, the nastiest dog I had worked with for quite some time. He nailed me reasonably well. However, when I thought about what JOahnnes said, I realized that I would not have gotten hurt from the dog, and since the owners would have had to work with him more in the sessions, they would have had more practice in handling him.
Another advantage to owners and trainers is that if you are not handling a genuinely aggressive dog and are doing the sessions via zoom, you don’t have to charge as much. While it is still my time, I do charge accordingly and charge an additional fee for aggressive dogs. If I am sitting in my school on a zoom conference and the owners are in their home, I don’t have to charge more to handle an aggressive dog, as I am not going to get bitten.
Another bonus to zoom sessions is that you don’t have to cancel due to bad weather. You can now stay in the comfort of your center or home. If you do lessons in the house, you have fewer miles and wear and tear on the car. It is better for the environment; it is easier for the owners. It costs owners and trainers less time and money. Less time in travel to the training, less money in gas, and consequently, that lower cost can be passed on to the owner if it is an in-home. If a trainer has a facility, perhaps when that lease is up, the trainer wouldn’t need so much space and can scale down.
When this first began, I told my 19-year-old son, who, like most 19-year-olds, has no idea what he wants to do with his life; “Look at the world now, picture what was not needed last week, but the world will demand when this is over. We are at the beginning of a new frontier. Think of those who packed their wagons two hundred years ago and headed west. We are at that same moment. There will be plenty of opportunities; you just have to find them.”
Better trainers, better dogs. It is there; you just have to make it happen.
Dog Parenting By Babette Haggerty 