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On a Short Leash: Where Much of Today’s Training Fails

Genuine training is about freedom: freedom for both ourselves and our dogs to enjoy each other, enhancing our relationships by allowing their potential to blossom.

—Bless the Dogs

If we repeatedly emphasize the pack nature of the dog, it is because we believe that it is the most natural starting point for understanding your dog and its needs. If you can appreciate your dog’s social nature and learn to allow it to work in your favor, you will be well on your way to realizing the dream you had when you first acquired your dog. But realizing that dream also involves concepts such as leadership and pack hierarchy, which, if misunderstood, can lead to owners being too heavy-handed in their treatment of their dogs. The opposite extreme can be equally problematic: If you don’t take into account the dog’s pack nature and the importance of leadership, you will almost surely find yourself with no effective way of dealing with serious misbehavior. Extremes in dog training ultimately take us into dead ends that fail to serve the overall relationship between you and your dog. What we are advocating here is a middle road that integrates the dog’s basic nature into an approach that is positive, respectful, and aware of boundaries. It is your responsibility to your dog to be a trustworthy guide, much like good parents are to their children. At times, you will need to affirm and encourage; at other times, you will need to provide appropriate discipline that teaches your dog limits and the importance of paying attention to you. But in all of this, let us be clear: Our training approach is never an excuse for insensitive treatment, which only creates fear and diminishes the quality of your relationship with your dog.

BROTHER CHRISTOPHER We’ve always tried to speak from the fruit of our experience, experience that has not only helped us immeasurably as trainers, but has helped to deepen the relationships we’ve shared with our dogs. While many people were (and continue to be) appreciative of the guidance and honesty provided in the pages of our books, we are deeply conscious of the fact that ours is a profession in which we continually learn and grow in our understanding of the dog and how to help it live successfully with both humans and other dogs. Over the years, we’ve refined and deepened our approach, and in the process we’ve come to see both the advantages and the limitations of a variety of training methods. For example, we’ve learned from the traditionalist Bill Koehler as well as from the animal behaviorist and trainer Pamela Reid. We’ve seen what happens when there is too much emphasis placed on physical correction, and we’ve also seen what happens when bad behavior is ignored in the name of “being humane”: The dog learns that it is in control. In both instances, the relationship gets frustrated. What has been of value to so many of our readers is a clear presentation of how reasonable rules and boundaries can be established with a dog, acknowledging that contexts vary. Obviously, setting limits with a ten-week-old puppy is going to be different from doing it with a three-year-old rescue. And over the years, the feedback we’ve received from ordinary dog owners has been gratifying. Our methods work, and they do so in a way that builds up the relationship.

This is why we’re confident in our approach. For more than forty years we’ve been living in a laboratory where every day we see the effects of our training process. We know what works and what doesn’t. We see both the success and frustration of our labor in the dogs themselves. Dogs, as we’re fond of saying, don’t lie. God kept that ability from them. When we send a client’s dog home from the monastery’s training program, we send the best dog we can. At the final training demonstration, we can’t bribe the dog to act the way we want it to. The training has to have changed the dog fundamentally; otherwise he will quickly revert to the behavior he had when he first came to us. When it comes to dog training, there’s talk and then there’s results. We deal in the latter. We’ve accumulated a body of evidence that is grounded in real life. Through the years, we have based our approach on training a single dog at a time. Each dog is unique, and it’s from this experience that we’ve continued to grow and learn from our dogs. The process never gets old. For myself, what’s been so enriching, especially about the past fifteen years, has been the opportunity to explore the spiritual dimension present in the human-dog relationship. In a way I wouldn’t have anticipated when I first came to the monastery, working with dogs has put me in deeper touch with the mystery that my heart longs for. I feel this especially when I see a concrete transformation take place in both dog and owner, and how their lives are so much better for it. Dogs want to be in close connection with us: We simply have to trust in the principles that allow the relationship to flourish.

Division in the Ranks

The training of dogs has a tumultuous history that affects the dog-owning public to this day. Unfortunately, there is so much dissension among trainers that the industry has a pointed joke, one that has a dark humor to it: The only thing two dog trainers can agree on is that the third doesn’t know anything. Like so many jokes, this one has a kernel of truth to it. Not that the third dog trainer doesn’t know anything, but that you can barely find three trainers who can agree on a coherent approach to creating a harmonious bond between dog and owner.

The divisiveness among dog trainers stems from deep-rooted philosophical differences in approaches. For the moment, let’s say that there are three main branches of the dog-training tree. Let’s call the first branch compulsion training. The second is treat training, commonly known as “purely positive.” And the third is what we would call balanced training because it lies somewhere in the middle, between the other two.

At its worst, compulsion training is harsh, even abusive. The concept involves giving a dog two choices: Perform the exercise in question, such as heel or stay, or suffer the consequences. If you read very old dog-training books, some published in the 1800s to teach owners of hunting dogs, you quickly realize that standard equipment in the trainer’s bag was the quirt, a short whip used to punish the recalcitrant dog.

Fortunately, over time, the dog began to be seen more as a family pet than a utilitarian tool. Consequently, training methods softened. Maybe the most famous trainer of the Greatest Generation of the mid-twentieth century was William “Bill” Koehler. His career began by training dogs for the US Army. Later, Koehler became the top dog handler at Disney Studios and was responsible for the performances of the dogs in movies such as Swiss Family Robinson and The Incredible Journey, among others.

Koehler’s book on training dogs became a classic; however, many in the dog world today label his techniques as compulsion. We believe this criticism is shortsighted. Koehler’s method is from another era, but its foundation is sound. Rather than quickly jumping to compulsion, he first helps the dog understand and perform the skill he’s requiring. He carefully divides each exercise into multiple layers, teaching only one layer at a time. Then as the dog progresses in understanding, Koehler begins to hold the dog accountable for performing successive layers, only increasing the level of difficulty and distraction over time. Ultimately, this is fair to the dog and teaches him to perform a skill set regardless of what’s going on around him. In other words, the dog is able to bring the skill set into real-life situations.

Yes, Koehler was a proponent of physical correction, but only when the dog consciously decided to ignore what it had been taught and, moreover, what it understood. The movement that labels itself purely positive decries the physical correction part of Koehler’s sequence. However, Koehler’s approach should be seen in the context of his era. His training was much more thoroughly considered and far kinder to dogs than the methods that preceded it. His love of dogs was unquestioned. He worked with them successfully for fifty years, training dogs to perform sophisticated sequences for film in which they appeared totally natural and relaxed. Seasoned trainers know you can’t get such results by punishing a dog into submission.

Partly, what earns Koehler the scorn of modern critics is the terse style in which he wrote The Koehler Method of Dog Training. Our friend Mary Mazzeri knew and studied with Bill. She asked him why he wrote his book in such a forceful manner, when in fact she observed him to be a very subtle trainer who was not unduly forceful with dogs. “I expect them to do only ten percent of what I recommend,” Bill answered. Further complicating his reputation is the fact that in the ensuing decades, legions of trainers claimed to be using the Koehler system. But analysis of their work shows they either never read his book or chose to employ shortcuts Koehler himself would not have approved of. They lacked the patience Koehler used in his training method. Yes, Koehler corrected dogs, but not before he carefully and sequentially taught them how to perform. Lesser trainers leapt right to hard physical correction without following the obligatory teaching steps. Too often these hacks labeled their training Koehler-based in an attempt to legitimize themselves.

Brother Marc and two New Skete shepherds, who thrive in the relationship with their pack leader.

Koehler may have been a bit controversial, but factor in widespread corruption of his method, and eventually the pendulum would naturally swing away from old-school punishment training. It was in that dawning age of enlightenment, 1978 to be exact, when we first published How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend. Seeking a balance of authority and compassion, we tried to present in that first book a holistic view of the dog that emphasized the primacy of the relationship. This has come to be known as balanced training. Good training always serves the friendship, creating a level of trust and dedication that is shared by both dog and owner.

Our first book spoke realistically and candidly about the overall relationship between owner and dog. In any healthy relationship with a dog there has to be an appropriate amount of discipline. Such discipline requires a reliable, clear set of instructions. How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend offered guidance on choosing training tools and showed the reader how to use those tools wisely and effectively. It informed owners where to get training if they felt they needed help and gave practical encouragement on how to apply the training lessons in everyday life. It was the book’s conviction that every aspect of a dog’s life needs to be considered conscientiously.

The golden years of the middle ground lasted into the 1980s. Books like How Dogs Learn by Mary R. Burch and Jon S. Bailey (Howell Book House) did an admirable job in delivering a moderate, if technical, middle ground, where positive techniques such as food reinforcement are counterbalanced by mild discipline such as leash correction.

Unfortunately, pendulums rarely stop in the middle ground—that is, at the equilibrium position. Instead, the arm continues its trajectory until it reaches the farthest end of the spectrum. By the 1990s, a new breed of self-labeled purely positive dog trainers began to emerge. The change in dog training was revolutionary.

Rather than correcting for refusal to perform a known command, such as sit, the purely positive, or treat training, philosophy suggests that the dog should be further encouraged with treats to comply. The dog that refuses to sit simply will not receive the treat or will be crated for a time-out until the trainer decides to try again. Time and time again we’ve met dog owners whose dogs jump on them, their children, and their guests. The owners tell us that after Internet research, i.e., a simple Google search, they find that the recommended solution is to ignore the behavior until it extinguishes itself. Or, worse, the owners are advised to turn their back to the dog to make it clear that they’re not responding to the dog’s attention-seeking behavior. But anyone with a persistent jumper discovers quickly that some dogs are quite happy to play this game and will repeatedly climb right up your back.

The owner who reads that ignoring bad behavior is the definitive solution, upon finding that it doesn’t work for his dog, decides that the dog is somehow “broken” or “untrainable.” The dog gets locked away whenever he gets excited or when guests arrive. Some dogs even lose their homes because they’re deemed unmanageable. That’s a real shame because the solution to this problem, like so many, is actually quite simple. Teach a dog to sit, hold it accountable for the sit even under distracting conditions, and it will get much more attention and family time than a dog that jumps wildly.

By the 1990s and early 2000s, the culture wanted easier and softer ways of training the family pet. Innovators borrowed clickers, markers, and food rewards from the trainers of sea mammals at amusement parks. And, by the way, all of these can be a useful part of a balanced training plan—as long as they are only part of the plan. But purely positive training relies solely on these elements. The flaw is that it provides no way to address your dog’s bad behavior, especially when he knowingly decides to reward himself by chasing the squirrel rather than focusing on the cookie you’re offering him. Ironically, a well-trained dog, one that is used to responding to his owner, can easily learn new tricks with a clicker. So many positive techniques can be usefully employed once a dog understands that obedience is not optional and can be fun as well as rewarding.

We have zero tolerance for people who treat dogs badly. Bullying dogs into submission is not artful dog training. But we believe that once the pendulum started swinging away from hard corrections, it inevitably went too far in the opposite direction. Many positive trainers, certainly not all but many, stipulate that teaching a dog to sit by pulling up on a collar and pushing down on the dog’s butt is unacceptable and harsh. And you may not believe this—we nearly didn’t—but there are those who argue that denying a dog a treat is punishment-based training. Therefore, they give the treat even if the dog doesn’t comply with the desired behavior.

MARC My client was an elegant woman who lived on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue in a swanky apartment situated within one of the city’s finest hotels. She very much wanted to walk her French bulldog, Lucy, so they could enjoy the exercise and companionship. The problem was that her little dog attacked the horses that drew carriages giving tours. It almost sounds funny, but Lucy was hard to control and threw all twenty muscular pounds into a screaming frenzy every time she saw a horse, which was often. My client was fearful that Lucy would slip out of her grasp one day and get stomped by a horse or hit by a car on the busy avenue. I was the sixth dog trainer this desperate owner had hired to solve the problem.

I taught Lucy to walk on a loose leash and to ignore distractions. I used all manner of distractions in my work with her. I taught her to choose reward rather than humane correction, and we made good progress. One day the client, Lucy, and I headed out for a walk down Michigan Avenue. All went well until we encountered a horse. When Lucy started her shenanigans, I simply executed a rapid about-turn—which, had Lucy been paying attention to me as she had been taught, would have involved her turning with me in a sort of dog and human ballet. But because Lucy was so fixated on the horse, she didn’t notice my abrupt 180-degree turn and her screaming lunge toward the horse was suddenly interrupted as Lucy found herself facing a new direction with what seemed to her like no warning.

Rather than be worried about that correction, Lucy knew exactly how to respond because I had taught her loose-leash walking—first with no distractions, then with distractions of increasing intensity. When I turned right back toward the horse, Lucy did just as I expected this time: She looked up at me, made eye contact, and if she were a person, she would have said something like, “The heck with that horse. It’s just a trick to take my attention away from you, right?”

The client was not only pleased but also flabbergasted, and although this happened many years ago, I have never forgotten what she said to me.

“I can’t believe I paid five dog trainers before you, each of whom did the exact same thing, which didn’t work. And you just… well, you showed her she’s not allowed to do that!”

“What did those other trainers do?” I asked.

“Every one of them told me to carry food with me and to distract Lucy with treats as we passed horses. And when it didn’t work, they yelled at me that I needed to use better food that she would like more.

“It got to where I was using provolone cheese and imported prosciutto. Lucy was eating so much that she’d puke it back up… while she was attacking the horses!”

Sometimes it really is kinder to teach a dog, in a compassionate but authoritative way, You’re just not allowed. To be fair to the dog, however, we always want to start with the easy stuff and work our way slowly up to the big-deal distractions. Life itself is not purely positive. What human doesn’t have behavioral limits? It’s when you work within these limits that you realize the opportunity to live a full, rich life. The same goes for your dog.

Fortunately, as pendulums tend to swing too far, they also have a way of eventually returning to the middle of their arc. And so it has been with dog training. What we advocate is called balanced training because it includes the careful sequencing of successive behavioral layers, dividing any job into multiple steps, much like Koehler did so many years ago. We do not move on to the second step until the dog understands the first one thoroughly, and demonstrates the ability to comply even with distractions. And those distractions are not added to the mix until the first layer of teaching has been successful. And, yes, without apology we can say that we hold the dog accountable to perform what he has been taught—provided we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he understands what is being asked of him. If at any point the dog is confused, we help him by showing him again what we’re asking. If he refuses, then we correct him in a manner that helps him comply, just like with Lucy and the horse.

But balanced training goes farther in that it also incorporates the best concepts from purely positive training. One of those concepts involves marking a behavior, or giving the dog instant feedback when he’s done the right thing. In our case, we do this with verbal praise rather than with a clicker, but the concept is much the same. Also, food is a very powerful motivator for many dogs. Therefore, we use it in multiple ways. An example of food luring is putting food to a dog’s nose without releasing it, and then using it like a “nose magnet” to lead the dog where you want him. So, for example, when beginning to teach the come command, we may walk with the dog at our left side, put food to its nose, and say, “Come,” then suddenly reverse our direction by walking backward. The dog will invariably turn on a dime, following the food, executing the first steps of the recall exercise. We then stop with the dog now in front of us. We lift the food up slightly, causing the dog to elevate his head, and with little further prompting, the average dog will sit. At that instant we verbally praise—marking the “turn toward me,” “come,” “sit in front of me” sequence—and we give the food while the dog is in the sitting position.