What do you look for in a dog trainer?

I travel for two and a half hours each way for Arffas sheepdog lessons each week. I have also dog sat for the trainers dogs (up to 15 dogs) whilst they went away to a trial. There dogs are kenneled and the kennels are immaculate. The dogs are exercised 3 times a day, and have a run to go out in. The trainer has a gentle rapour with all his dogs, even though he sometimes comes over as a bit old school. He is patience personified, and never looses his temper. He also looks at each dog that arrives as an individual. He once said about Arffa "I need to get into this little dogs head". Thats when I decided he was the trainer for us.

In a word: compassion. I would love to find a certified clicker trainer in my area, (I would love to be that person someday) but the closest is hours away. So I look for a trainer who uses positive reinforcement methods, allows me to use my clicker and is compassionate to animals and humans, too. I think it is important to observe the trainer in class. Someone may have great creditials and years of experience and even good client testimonals but still use punishment and correction methods. I look for someone with knowledge and openess to really creating an environment that is condusive to learning for both the the dog and the person training the dog. No chokes or prongs please...a littler Red Toller dog taught me that! 12 years ago in a very traditonal choke and holler class my sweet pup refused to move once the prong collar was put on him. I promptly threw it out and used a flat buckle collar even though the trainer was appalled by my decision. I also used a soft voice most of the time and loads of positive reinforcement [I'd read Karen's book 'Don't Shoot the Dog' as a parenting book years before]. Those deep belowing "nos" startle me although I've been known to get loud if my little pug starts heading for the road when we are off lead on a country trail. Red, my Toller, was the happiest and the best in a class of 8 really smart working breeds and he loved to learn. The instructor was impressed, especially by how well he focused his attention on me and tried to anticipate what I might want; but she gave credit to his breed and not my style which she thought was corny and too soft. I'll admit that Tollers are easy to train but they really do not like 'jerk and pull' or ear pinches or some of those techniques used to train gun dogs, so positive training methoods are a must. Red was a good teacher and 'Don't Shoot the Dog' served me well, first as the mother of four boys and then with the dogs that have been part of our family. Hmmm, having said all that I think I would want to know if the trainer I'm considering has read the book!

yes, i want a trainer who uses positive re-inforcement, but there are times when a clicker is not appropriate. For example, when i'm working with dogs and sheep, i don't always have a clicker with me (for example, while taking blood samples from the sheep), and 'training' is something that happens every day, all the time. so i need to use a substitute. i use the word "good" because it's faster to get out of my mouth than 'yes'.

i look for a trainer that can be flexible. who understands the principles being clicker training, rather than simply the mechanics of it, and can apply those principles to all sorts of situations.

Plain and simple, I want to see dogs AND people that have been trained under this person. Even when I was heavy into compulsion training I always worked to get happy results.
No matter how correct a dog may be, if it's attitude sucks, the trainer does too!

I am a strong proponent of clicker training. However, just because a trainer uses a clicker in trainer does not mean the individual has the requisite knowledge to train by the clicker method. I want someone who can teach me how to use the clicker with my dog. I am not interested in some one training my dogs.

Some trainers advertise "guaranteed results" on their websites. They also guarantee that they can fix any problem or issue. Some even go so far as to give a time frame in which they will do this. (e.g. "total off leash control in 3 weeks!")

As a pet owner, I have checked out such trainers myself. I found that such trainers are not clicker trainers, and their methods are not primarily based on positive-reinforcement. Or if they did use positive reinforcement, they did also use negative reinforcement in equal measure further down the road because they believe this is the only way to 'get reliable results quickly'. When I asked them about their methods, they would criticize clicker- or positive-reinforcement-based training as producing unreliable dogs, or taking too long to be realistic for a pet owner. They claimed that they were a cut above the rest in terms of professionalism. After all, would you take your car to a mechanic who coudn't gaurantee that your car would be able to run again? As a service-provider you owe it to your clients to give them the best results, in as little time as possible. Or so their stance is.

I find this to be in stark contrast to the concept of "dog friendly" training. This type of trainer seems geared toward being "human friendly" but at the expense of the dog. It is a tricky issue because as a professional trainer, your customer is not the dog, but the dog's owner. So that is who you need to cater to, so to speak. Such trainers freuqnetly argue that if a class or training method doesn't give rapid results that the customer can see and be impressed with, then the owner is likely to surrender the dog to the shelter. Thus they contend that using harsher methods during training is the lesser of two evils, the shelter supposedly being the inevitable outcome if results are not guaranteed or if they don't come quickly enough.

While this raises the age old ethical issue of what is justifiable in the name of training, I have come to beware of such trainers who offer "guaranteed results", much less those who propose to put a timeframe on it. Dogs, unlike cars, are living beings and as such you can't gurantee things they way you would with inanimate objects. Just as a doctor cannot always guarantee that you will be cured, so I think the same should be said of dog trainers, and that any trainer who guarantees results in a certain time frame, is probably doing so at the expense of the dog somewhere down the line...

So anyway, my point is that there ARE pet owners out there who are looking for "guaranteed quick results" , especially if they have had a bad experience at a class taught in a big-box petstore. Or perhaps there are pet owners who may not have been specifically looking for a guarantee but are nonetheless wowed when they see it and assume that this must be the way to go.

Are clicker trainers (or positive-reinforcement based trainers) prepared or able to deal with this "business competition"? How do or would you go about doing that?

I look for a trainer who demonstrates good skills and knowledge while working with the dogs. I always watch a trainer before enrolling in a class. I found the trainer I am working with now by auditing one of her seminars. I was so impressed that I sought her out and now travel one and a half hours one way to take lessons from her.
Chris

i want someone that works will with my animals and loves animals because if they love animals they are less likely to hurt my animal.

(Oh, no -- I succumbed to the catch-phrase!)

Seriously, though, I want to know *why* training works. If a trainer can't give me a scientifically or logically valid rationale of why he wants me to do a particular thing, I won't do it. Yes, I'm quite stubborn about this, and I know I've driven others in my club crazy! but they're accepting of my eccentricities and even occasionally admit that it forces us all to be more critical of what we're doing and therefore better trainers.

So when I'm looking for someone to help us, I look for proficiency in the skill I want to learn (or one related) and an ability to explain that proficiency. If I find someone who's fantastic but merely instinctive, I spend a lot of time analyzing to determine why what he's doing really works. And I ask questions, a lot of questions, until I perhaps annoy people. ;-)

Laura &

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• Inky (couch dog!)
  

Patience, consistency, kindness, gentleness, knowledge of the canine (such as communication skills, breeds, equipment etc.), communication skills with people, gentle, motivational training, no negative equipment, and of course up to date knowledge in their field

In my opinion, none of the 5 mentioned characteristics is enough for a good trainer. I know excellent trainer who have never used clickers. Also I knew not so excellent trainers who had all certifications from well-known canine organizations. I guess, it's hard to find a reaaly good trainer whose prices are low, and in order to have a possibility to attend classes of a real professional I can bear with unconvenient locations.
I think if one sees a good trainer it's a matter of a few minutes to discover that. Such people are real naturals in communication with dogs, so attending their classes is pleasure for both a dog and his owner.