As the new year approaches, we will be entering into our 5th year at some point.
What we would like to share with any new aspiring Dog Trainers or any future business owners is to not give up on your dream, goals, or any unrealistic ideas you believe you can make happen.
Other people may not have the foresight, potential, or drive to make it happen but if you have a vision that others haven’t been able to accomplish yet; don’t let it go!
When I started dog training, I actively shared that a person should be able to take their dog across a busy street with moving cars completely off-the-leash if it meant that’s where the dog owner needed to go. My statements were usually met with silence and I’m sure some personal unsaid thoughts of this guy is new to the off leash dog training world and doesn’t know what he’s talking about yet.
But guess what?
Going into year 5. Here we are. Year after year, we have successfully trained dog after dog to walk across a busy intersection off-the-leash. And we have countless videos to show our results posted all over social media.
Going into year 5, we have made some amendments to our original statement. It changed from a person should be able to enjoy that aspect to simply “us” doing it to show the owners dog is highly well trained. The change was realized early on. There is a high level of mental resilience that a person must have and demonstrate to take a dog across a busy intersection. It requires having a dog that’s trained to accomplish this. The handler must feel comfortable in this leadership role. And the handler is responsible for leading the dog across a busy intersection while being aware of their dog’s presence, the ability to make subtle voice and/or ecollar corrections if they see their dog is becoming uneasy, the ability to continuously look up and take a surrounding view picture of on-coming cars that may present a concern, the ability to check their left or right blind side where a car would be turning into your direction if they have the green turn signal light, the ability to scan the ground quickly for any items that could injure or hurt a dog, the mental preparation to make quick changes in the opposite direction should a car not see you and continue driving your way, the awareness to actively listen for sounds that may pose as a trigger or simply catch your dog off guard so that you can make a subtle or hard voice or e-collar correction, the boldness to trust in your well trained dog that they know what to do, plus the conviction in your working relationship you’ve built with your dog that both of you are a well tuned trained machine. Yes, there are a lot of layers involved which helped us transition our original statement to training results to show that a dog is well trained. And it is real. Not a 15 second video clip highlight.
The road hasn’t always been easy. We have struggled with numerous challenges over the years such as having our front yard filled with rusty nails, blue nails, screws, large amounts of sticker burrs dumped in clumps, cat liter, extra poop our trainees didn’t produce, white paint splattered at different parts at the front of the house, a couple of break in attempts, and the same vehicles watching us from select areas across a street or passing by our house repeatedly. Yes, police reports have been done. And during these early-on negative experiences, there were moments we questioned what we were doing and almost hung it up.
But then…
The reality that a group of people would band together to create these negative events really solidified for us, that they couldn’t do what we did. And they didn’t believe they could get any better in their field. They were afraid. And more importantly, they were defeated because this was all they knew what to do in order to help themselves.
That’s when we started pushing harder.
The road hasn’t been easy but it has been an amazing journey.
Truth be told. If we didn’t absolutely believe we could make large changes to the ecollar world, we would have stayed in our previous role that paid very well and had great benefits.
If our role meant accomplishing everything we have done at the expense of leaving our trainees afraid, broken, or looking sad all the time like we have seen with a lot of e-collar dog outfits, then we would have stopped and went back to the corporate world to make our living.
For our dog owners, their reality is simple. Most of the dogs we train go home happier, more confident, extremely well trained, head held high, and tail wagging. We say most because dogs have a lot of similarities to humans. Some people in this world will never be happy no matter how good life is to them. Some dogs exhibit this same trait. Our dogs definitely go home well trained. And we are the ones that people call when they have those big issues others can’t fix or we are repairing a dog’s mental state plus training because they were broken at another dog training outfit. We are in the business of saving dogs.
If you evaluate our dogs during the early stages of training, they don’t always look happy and they probably are not that excited to be here. It’s like our clients. Most come from professional or high paying stressful backgrounds. They all understand sacrifice, pushing through, life isn’t fair, blame doesn’t get you far, and more knowledge increases personal value. And they all have experienced business defeats, lessons learned the hard way, and what winning feels like. Their time is the most valuable asset they have.
Fun fact: If you can help your clients with their family dog so they can enjoy them when they get home as opposed to feeling defeated and not wanting to spend time with their crazy dog anymore, you will have that client for life.
Our dogs are a representation of our clients. They may have moments within a day they would like to get back or change but like we shared early on in this article; when we are done training a dog, their tails wag, their heads are upright, and they are happy!
At the end of the day. If we couldn’t accomplish the positive happy emotional aspect part of the training for our dogs, we wouldn’t have wasted your time showing how well trained they are.
Dr. Ian Dunbar has said; To change a dog’s behavior, these things must apply.
You must be objective.
Must have proof of change.
Proof of training.
Change must be happening in the intended direction.
Here at CoreDTS, we believe these things too and have added to Dr. Dunbar’s list.
We believe the change must be substantial and quantifiable.
CoreDTS… It’s what we do. It’s who we are.
