EuroDogs

I just returned from a visit to my family in Holland. It was a whirlwind trip with every day filled with family visits, food, pubs, festivals and lots of fun! I miss everyone already..., my family and my friends, both old and new.

Holland is an extremely dog-friendly country, like most of Europe is, and every time I visit I can't help but be struck first by how many dogs are in the restaurants, pubs, train stations and just out on the street. And second, as a dog trainer, of course the next thing I notice is how well behaved all of these dogs are. In Amsterdam, an incredibly densely populated city where it seems you have to grow eyes in the back of your head to avoid being run over by either a car, tram or one of the thousands of speeding bicycles, I saw many dogs walking calmly with their people, sitting at café's or waiting on islands in the middle of the road for trams.

On my last visit I thought to myself, "wow, they must really have great dog trainers here to have such well-behaved dogs" and I looked in the phone book and online to find and talk to some of them, and amazingly I was only able to find a few. The most experienced one I located on that trip met me for coffee one afternoon and we shared stories about some of the dogs we work with. As we spoke on that trip a few years back, it became apparent to me rather quickly that the typical dog trainer in Holland didn't work with anywhere near the number or severity of behavior problems I work with here in the United States.

I shared with him a bit about my work here in the US and how most of my clients have worked with other trainers, and I talked about the specific training methods that I see used with these dogs before I meet them and it became apparent that the concept of "purely positive" dog training was one that hadn't caught on in Holland up to that point. Granted, this trainer employed a watered-down style of training similar to what I used to use in the military, similar to what you see "The Dog Whisperer" using on television, and one that I outgrew more than a decade ago, the approach the Dutch take with their dogs seems to work. Both on my last trip and this recent one, short of seeing a few dogs pulling on their leashes, I didn't see one aggressive dog, not one dog barking in the window at all the noise outside, not one dog barking at another, and not one dog in a café or in elsewhere in public misbehaving in any way.

Considering the fact that there are hardly any professional dog trainers in a city like Amsterdam, with a population of over 700,000, more than 25% less than San Francisco, where there are several dozen "professional" dog trainers, I think that the behavior of the dogs I observed speaks volumes to my developing theory that one of the issues we are having with our dogs here in this country is the massive amount of conflicting and often bad information that is widely available to dog owners. Most of my clients, when they come to me, have tried so many different approaches, and have been given so much conflicting advice, that both they and their dogs are completely confused. For a human being, this confusion and the resulting frustration is processed using tools developed since childhood, but for a dog, this confusion and the subsequent (though not intentional) inconsistency that it causes, creates incredible anxiety issues that often result in severe behavioral problems.

I've always maintained that while it's easiest for me to call myself a "dog trainer" when asked what I have been doing for a living for the past 20+ years, and while I do think it's necessary to teach a dog basic commands like "sit", "stay", "heel", and "come", what I really do is try to teach people a different way to relate to their dogs. Again, I differ from some of the personalities you see on television who often imply that you can't spoil your dog, and who advocate affection as the least important thing to show your dog. (In fact, I believe that it's the MOST important. What's the point of having a dog if you have to administer discipline and exercise before you can show them affection???) What I do is first help people digest the massive amount of information and misinformation they have been given about their animals, then teach them a consistent way to communicate with their animal in a way that their dog can understand, while also helping them correct their dogs behavior issues so that they can live more peaceful and calm lives together.

Each time I visit Holland and look into the culture of dog training in that country (or lack of it) I'm reminded of the importance of consistency, and the reward to both dog and human.