Nala's Story

Last night I had my third training session with a couple who have two American Pit Bull Terriers. This breed is known to become very excited and aroused by different types of stimuli, and with this couple's two dogs, Nala and Shady, one of the things that would get them uncontrollably excited was when company would come to the house. When the company would be somebody they knew, this excitement would be magnified tremendously. They would whine, jump up on their guests, bark and be impossible to calm down, despite their people's efforts which would often include yelling, grabbing, etc. It would be a completely chaotic scene.

Oh... these dogs had been through dog training. The advise they were given was to ignore the dogs (All 150 jumping, barking, whining, excited pounds of them) when they were in this state, until they calmed down.

One day one of the couple's mother's came over to visit. She considers herself the dog's "grandma" and would always bring them treats, and would make a huge deal over them when she saw them. When she came to the door, the normal chaos ensued, only this time while Nala was jumping up, in her excited state, she bit at the woman's arm, pinching it severely, though not breaking the skin. The bite area formed an enormous bruise which eventually turned into a blood clot, and while as I write this, it has mostly healed, it was a pretty bad incident.

Just prior to that, the couple had decided that when most people come over, they would put the dogs in back, because they just couldn't handle them when company came over, and even folks that liked dogs, could not endure the chaos that would commence when they came through the door.

They had a small gathering of friends, and one of their friends had two small children. They were told not to go into the backyard because the dogs would be too excited, but of course one of the children eventually ran outside to get a ball, and the dogs engaged in their typical excited behavior, jumping and trying to engage the small child in play. When the mother saw this she flipped out and ran outside screaming and grabbed the child, holding her up high, causing the dogs to become more excited and they would jump up to try to get to the child. Luckily nothing bad happened, during this incident.

As I mentioned, these dogs had been through some training, and their owners had also read a lot of information available on the internet, but unfortunately nothing was working and despite their best efforts, they found themselves making phone calls to trainers in order to put themselves, and their friends and families at ease about their dog's behavior.

Anybody can be a dog trainer in California, as there is no accreditation or certification process for this. You'll often find a trainer's bio that says they "left the corporate world to pursue their love of animals", which mean that maybe they were good with a few dogs and thought they'd take a crack at doing it for a living, or maybe they even took one of the courses that are available that teaches them some theory. (Usually these courses are one-sided and teach one type of training theory)

This couple began to call trainers, and eventually found an email of a trainer based in the Walnut Creek, CA. They explained the situation to this trainer on the telephone and after this person gave a dissertation about her background, her education and her experience, she flatly told these people that they should have their dog destroyed, because it could never be trained.

This was devastating news to everyone, even the woman's mother who the dog bit.

When I heard of this, I couldn't believe that a professional would make such an assessment over the telephone, simply based on an owners description of an incident, without at least offering to meet the dogs, and assess their general temperaments. While I say I couldn't believe it, I should also say that I wasn't completely surprised, because I had heard this a few times before in my career, once from this person in fact, when some folks contacted her about a Cocker Spaniel that began to growl at them when they try to move him off their couch.

Dogs with aggression issues, or in these dogs's case, tremendous anxiety issues, aren't the easiest dogs to train. The process requires strong commitment from the dog's owners and complete consistency, and I could easily earn a pretty nice living training dogs, even if I decided to never work with an aggressive or overly anxious dog. I think that in some of these cases, the trainers just choose not to work with these types of dogs, however to offer a professional opinion that the dog be put down, rather than recommend that the family find a different trainer is a completely irresponsible abuse of position and authority.

Other trainers employ a method of training that is completely inappropriate and ineffective with dogs that get themselves highly aroused or aggressive. While many of these trainers will take a clients money, and deliver a completely flawed, inappropriate program and product before fading into the woodwork often leaving the client's dog worse off than before, others after failing miserably in the past, will simply tell the client that the dog can't be trained and should be destroyed.

I have successfully worked with many of these doomed, untrainable dogs in my career, and ironically, Nala, the APBT that the trainer condemned without offering to meet her, has been one of the easiest, previously declared hopeless, dogs I've had the pleasure to work with.

By my second session, when I came to the door, the dogs stayed in their places, and while they were interested in me, they did not charge me, jump on me, and the process of letting a guest into the house was anything but chaotic. During that session we were able to take Nala out on a leash without pulling, and when we saw other dogs, something that would set her into a frenzy of uncontrollable excitement, Nala reacted calmly.

The third session, the woman who had been bitten came over to the house, which would always spark extra excitement. This was an extra stressful situation because now she was wary of the dogs, however both dogs reacted calmly and she was even able to take Nala out on a leash and walk with her.

The training isn't over yet, and there's quite a bit of consistent follow-through that will need to happen on the owner's part, but they are well on the way to being reliable dogs. We plan to work with them around the local dog park next, to increase the level of distractions, which will give the owner's more tools and confidence when handling them, but the overall situation with them has improved.

When guests come to their house now, they are not greeted with chaos, jumping dogs and yelling owners, and Nala gets to live.

This person continues to posture herself as an expert in the field, publish articles on the web, and take advantage of the lack of regulation in this industry to position herself as an authority on canine behavior and training. I wonder how many dogs she's responsible, directly or indirectly, for killing?