Choosing a Trainer

The dog training industry in Australia is unregulated. Anyone can call themselves a trainer, a behaviourist, a coach, a “whisperer.” The result is that owners — especially owners of difficult dogs — often pay good money two or three times before they find someone whose method actually works for their dog and doesn’t make the case worse.

These articles are the questions I wish every owner asked before booking. What accreditation actually means. What “balanced” training really translates to in practice. Why a trainer who promises results in one session is usually selling something. What red flags to watch for, especially with aggression and reactivity cases. And how to evaluate a trainer’s method from their website before you spend a cent.

The first distinction worth understanding is between a trainer and a behaviourist. A trainer teaches behaviours — sit, drop, recall, loose-lead walking. A behaviourist works with the underlying state — anxiety, aggression, reactivity, arousal. The two jobs are related but they are not the same, and a lot of cases that look like training problems on the surface are actually behaviour problems underneath. Articles in this category walk through how to tell which one you actually need before you start spending money on the wrong one.

The second distinction is between methods that resolve the state and methods that suppress the behaviour. Suppressing the behaviour is faster in the first session and worse in the long run, because the underlying state still drives the dog — it just shows up in a different form. Resolving the state is slower in the first session and holds for the life of the dog. Almost every article in this category turns on that distinction in some form, because almost every misfire in the industry comes from confusing the two.

The third honest piece is about online programs and board-and-train. There is a place for both, and I cover where that place is in detail. Online coaching, run properly by an accredited practitioner, produces equivalent outcomes for most cases — particularly anything where the household environment is the main driver and the work is mostly coaching the human. Board-and-train, on the other hand, almost always produces a dog that listens to the trainer and a household that has not changed — so the dog reverts inside a fortnight of coming home. Knowing which format genuinely suits your case is the difference between getting your money’s worth and starting over.

You don’t have to pick me. But please pick carefully. Your dog only gets one childhood, and a bad trainer can set you back a year.