Transcript
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Is traditional dog training failing our pets?
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What if there was a better way, one that taps into the emotional connection we have with our dogs?
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In this episode, I'm joined by Angie Winters, author of Don't Train your Dog, as we explore why typical training methods might be causing more harm than good and how we can become better dog parents instead of just trainers.
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Tune in to discover the keys to raising a happier, well-behaved dog by meeting their emotional needs and teaching them the right way without tricks.
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Stay tuned.
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You're listening to Starlight Pet Talk, a podcast for pet parents who want the best pet care advice from cat experts, dog trainers, veterinarians and other top pet professionals who will help you live your very best life with your pets.
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Welcome to Starlight Pet Talk.
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I'm your host, amy Castro.
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My guest today is Angie Winters, author of Don't Train your Dog.
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For Angie, helping dogs is more than just a job.
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It's a calling.
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As a dog parenting coach and social entrepreneur.
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For more than 20 years, angie has obsessively studied, raised and rehabilitated over a thousand dogs and helped their parents.
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Her record for fixing broken dogs who were deemed unfixable by typical dog trainers, vets, medications, behavior experts and even their own parents, and sometimes rescues is unparalleled.
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Using a careful understanding of dog emotion and effective communication.
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Angie's cutting-edge dog parenting philosophy helps dog parents, rescues and prison dog training programs nationwide.
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Angie has had dog parents drive from as far as California to seek out coaching at her Ohio home.
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Her mission is to create a world where dogs are understood and valued for their incredible gifts, leading to happier and healthier lives for both dogs and their parents.
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So, angie, welcome to the show.
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Thank you for having me.
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I appreciate it.
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So it's interesting that we're doing this topic because I just recently did an episode with Jennifer Holland who wrote a book called Dog Smart Life-Changing Lessons in Canine Intelligence and it really got me to thinking about the many ways that our dogs are intelligent but how many of those ways are very different in how humans measure intelligence and I think that kind of tied over into certainly some of the things that you talked about in your book and the way that we quote unquote train dogs versus what I see it more as creating a relationship, establishing boundaries.
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So you had said in the book that you feel like society kind of misunderstands or basically underestimates the emotional complexity of dogs.
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So what do you think are some of the misconceptions that people have?
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Yeah, I think they vastly underestimate the intelligence and the emotional entanglement that they are born with with humans.
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So when people have a dog and anybody who's had a relationship with a dog, they know how close they are.
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They know that their dog, you know, already knows what they're going to do and can establish these routines and sometimes learns a routine in one repetition, depending on the outcome.
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You know, or what they get any kind of positive result, they learn that immediately, right, but it's a positive result from the interaction between the human and the dog.
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So dogs are born reading our facial features and they're able to understand them.
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They're born with it.
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They don't learn this, you know, studies show they're born with it, which means they've kind of accepted us into their life, into their DNA.
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If they're born that way, to look to humans and to pair with humans, basically I say they're born to be family members with us because of this entanglement that they're born with and this dependency on us to be able to read our eye movements and finger pointing and to locate objects and to navigate the modern world.
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So the problem is people are focused on this dog training mentality that we've all been raised with and taught and you know.
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It's just on and on and on.
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I think people see constantly where that falls short, but yet we always just default back to that type of thinking of training a wild or domesticated animal and you're trying to put this on a super, highly emotional, intellectual being that's a family member, and then you're just trying to use these, bring it all the way down to the simpleton, you know, food in equals reaction out, or fear in equals reaction out, when really the effective communication is already there.
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It's just that dogs know how to use it, but people don't know how to use that in order to guide their dogs into learning the proper family skills and safety rules and to fulfill them.
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Yeah, I loved it in the book when you were talking about the fact that many of the things that we consider training are basically just like teaching them tricks, and one of the examples you gave was you know, you tell them to sit, you give them a treat and it's like it got.
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It just got me to thinking like that, you're right, that's really no different than telling them to sit up and beg or telling them to twirl in a circle or play dead.
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You're, you're giving a verbal, you're giving a reward, and they're doing.
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You know, and they're reacting.
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But you know how does that translate into them not getting run over in the street when you want them to listen to you?
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And I and one of the hangups I always had with treat training is if, if it's so dependent on and I know that there is a place to use treats, but it's like if that's the only way that you can get your dog to do anything, then what happens when you don't have treats on you when you're out and about?
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I mean, it's just like that's always been a question in my mind for people who rely on those.
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You're going to carry around a pocket full of treats everywhere you go for the rest you know for 14 years, just doesn't make sense.
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Yeah, I mean, and treats for me are, they're just the enrichment of the things that I'm already teaching them.
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It's the icing on the cake of things.
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And you know a way to go out of my way catch them already making good choices and having good behaviors and to reward for that and encourage those states of mind and those actions and those feelings.
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But they do not do anything.
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I don't care.
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I don't care how anybody paints it.
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Everybody knows that you can help a dog that's a little bit unsure of an object or something that's just unsure of.
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Treats can help make them feel better about that.
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But they cannot undo fears, they cannot absolutely prevent fears.
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That's done by the relationship between the dog and the parent, and that trust and respect has to be there.
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But the dog training mentality in the dog training world because it doesn't work has tied parents hands and parents are just like immobilized.
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They can't figure out what to do.
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So half the time they don't do anything, or then they just lash out in anger because their hands have been tied and they're just left with this.
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Well, it should work.
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Well then there's something wrong with your dog.
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Well then, you didn't do enough repetitions, you didn't give the right treats at the right time, at the what and the reason why, and then everything goes off the rails.
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And then parents truly believe there's something is wrong with the dog or something's wrong with them and they're just not up to it.
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So and I'm saying that these are parents who have given an effort I mean they give the effort, they want to do it, but if you have the wrong information it's not going to ever work anyway.
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But it's made it seem like it's so hard to concentrate with or to communicate with a dog, it's so hard to teach them not to bite kids and not to run out the door, and it's really not that hard at all.
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Right.
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Well, and I think a lot of.
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It seems like you're kind of working with the natural, like some of the things that you talk about in the book the example of training a puppy to only play with its own toys and the process.
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You know I don't want to give away the farm by sharing too much, but it's a process that you establish from the beginning.
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It's not something that you wait until there's a problem, that they've eaten the legs off your furniture and they've been chewing all your stuff up for whatever months that now you're going to fix that with training.
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It's establishing parameters, just like you would with your own children.
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I mean, you don't train your children per se and I think the example that you give in the book is great.
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It really got my mind changed about the idea of pet parenting because, to be perfectly honest, I have a little bit of a hang up with how far sometimes people take this concept of pet parenting and I want to get into talking about the humanization of dogs and how that kind of does them a disservice.
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I do want to talk with you about that, but I do like where you talked about like what is your definition of parenting?
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Can you explain that a little bit and how that translates not only to your children, but how that translates to your other family members, including your pets.
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Right.
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So I think that the reason why I had the same feelings of you as you years ago but, like as it explains my book, I've been doing this for 28 years, so it's been an evolution, right, but it's.
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You know, the first main learning phases happened in like the first five years, seven years, and then it was just refining to try to come up with these simple ways to use recipes and simple ways to guide dogs.
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So that became more solidified for me and I felt perfectly fine calling it parenting, because I realized that parenting was a more accurate description of what I was doing with these dogs.
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When I was just bringing in dog after dog and, as we've talked about, I was just, you know, getting only taking dogs into my house and and over and over and over of the ones that nobody else was able to fix Right, and in this, just this attempt to find solutions, that I was just watching all these dogs suffer and lose their home and and, and I could see the, the lack of common sense and this dog training mentality of treats, treats, treats, sit or fear, you know, in neither one of those works, and so, just a desperate attempt to find answers, I started bringing him in and then, as this process went on of me bringing him in and raising two kids at the same time, I realized wait a minute.
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The only problem I have with calling parenting is when you use the word this is my, this is my child was first of all.
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They don't need to be a child in order to deserve parenting right.
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Just the fact that they're born entangled with us and they're dependent on us in our modern society means they deserve they are a family member in my mind and they do deserve to be parented.
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They don't need to be a child in order to deserve that.
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But what people mistake that with is when they say this dog training doesn't work and so they just kind of give up and say I'm just going to, he's my child, I'm just going to let him do whatever he wants because he's my baby.
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It's like, well, we don't, we don't let our child do everything we want anyway because they're our baby either.
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You know, they deserve to learn and dogs deserve to learn the family rules and safety rules and to be able to function and not be anxiety ridden just as much as children do, because they're family members.
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But so I am parenting these dogs, I realized, because my definition of parenting is providing love, support and guidance to vulnerable family members.
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Now, children are vulnerable and they're two and three and they grow up and they're, you know, no longer that vulnerable anymore, so they don't need that kind of parenting that dogs in our modern society remain perpetually two-year-olds.
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They're going to always need the guidance.
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So that's why I call it parenting and why I feel comfortable with calling it parenting and in fact it's actually more accurate.
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And also I realized, if you get out of that dog training mentality, that's how you start realizing, oh, and they're like, oh, this just seems like magic, that just worked too easy.
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It can't be that easy.
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It's like well, it is.
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When you have certain skills with children, you know this kind of thing.
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We know that this generally works with kids, this generally works with dogs.
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There is that commonality.
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So there's room for temperament, there's room for breed, there's room for all that, but there's still a common amount of guidance that works that dogs understand right.
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So it's got to be black and white, which is different.
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The timing of it's different.
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How you parent and give that guidance to dogs is very different than you give it to kids Agreed, agreed, but I think there's also, you know, there's some of the things that you were talking about, like providing calm, consistent leadership and, you know, not going to extremes of emotions one way or the other.
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I think that's the same with kids.
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I mean, I think kids can become immune to well, you know well, first of all, negatively impacted, but also very immune to extremes in emotion or inconsistency, extremes in emotion or inconsistency, and then, the next thing, you know, they're running their own agenda, cause, I mean, I was like that even, you know, as a going into my teenage years, because my mom would say, well, you're not going to leave this house.
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And I'm thinking to myself, yeah, what are you going to do about?
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it and I would leave and nothing ever happened.
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So don't, don't throw down that gauntlet.
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But it's the same thing.
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I see this a lot with people parenting their pets and their children.
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I mean, you see it in the grocery store, you see it in the restaurants the threatening over and over and over again we're going to get up and leave this restaurant if you don't do this.
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And we say it 50,000 times, like how about we say it once and then we make it happen Right, and therefore ta-da.
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You know, the kid will quickly learn, and it's the same.
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You gave the same or similar examples with dogs as well.
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I mean, do you see that as a huge issue with people working with their dogs is the inconsistency?
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I do.
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There's too many human words.
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I had to learn to not use so many words with dogs in my attempts to figure out what works with them, and then they taught me that that works.
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You know facial expressions which we talk about in the book as a just a parenting across the board for kids and dogs.
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Say it once and then make it happen.
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And so the where people trip up on that is they don't have a clear plan of actually how they're going to give that guidance right.
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So human parents, if they have the knowledge you know, say here's what I'm going to do.
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I already think out the scenario.
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Here's what's going to happen.
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It's going to be natural consequences.
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You remain emotionally neutral when you do it.
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Not that I mean parenting is parenting.
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Sometimes we're going to lose our temper a little or whatever.
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But if you have a plan and you have the actual tools in your toolbox that actually work and that you can do and you're confident about, then you can remain emotionally neutral.
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When you're doing that, you have no chance of remaining emotionally neutral, which renders all your words and your everything ineffective, if you cannot remain emotionally neutral.
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And so that's why my book goes into even all the way into see the picture of this.
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Look on this person's face.
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I love the pictures in the infographics.
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Yeah, because it's got to be easy.
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It doesn't matter if you or I can do it.
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If parents can't do it, then dogs are going to continue to lose their homes, dogs are going to continue to be in and the resources it takes to rescue one dog and then when people don't have the ability to rehabilitate that dog, then they place it in.
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And when adoptions happen, many times they're unsuccessful and then they come back and the dog has more problems Now, has more separation anxiety, now it's labeled a biter.
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All that stuff is the reason why I wrote the book, because all that can be easily prevented and the behavior problems can be fixed.
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Yeah, I think it's surprising to me.
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Well, maybe it shouldn't be the things that people do that create the issues that they've got.
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You give examples of the play biting with your puppy and roughhousing with their face and encouraging them to do that, and it's like it's all fun and games when they well, it's maybe not so much fun and games because those baby teeth are pretty sharp, but you know, when they're little and they don't have the bite power, but then when they're bigger and they still want to play the same way, now you've got a problem with it and it's like it's.
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I think it's completely unfair to the animal.
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That and we've talked about this in several episodes we talked about it in an episode where we talked with somebody who worked with people that were going to have a baby and how do we get the dog ready for the baby?
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And the way you get the dog ready for the baby is you decide how your life is going to be, and you mentioned it many times.
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You just mentioned it now and many times in the book it's.
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You don't just go into it, whatever it might be, the exercise or the practice or the scenario, you plan for it.
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And so it's like, if I know I'm going to not allow my dog to go into my baby's room before the baby's even here, why do we even let the dog go into the room or to go upstairs Like?
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Create those boundaries early.
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We don't want the dog jumping on the baby on the couch or grandma when she comes to visit.
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Well, why do we let them do it all the other times, like it's, it's.
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You know.
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There's only so much anybody can handle switching of the rules at a whim that they can't comprehend, you know.
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No, no, I mean for dogs.
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You know there does need to be consistency, but the great thing about dogs is you know they're capable of such dramatic change.
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Given a trusted, respected parental figure and this guidance they're, they're capable of incredible change, way faster than a human being can change.
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You know, because they live in the moment and as long as that trust there and as long as their environment makes sense to them, according to the natural wiring that they're born with, which you know it's the way mother nature works, as long as you can replicate that in your house and in your parenting, dogs learn fast, but further, even beyond what you're saying.
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My goal is to empower parents with every recipe and every prescription that they need and the perspective that they need and all the tools they need to be able to have the dog be present with family members and have good behavior, have easy behavior, know when to be easy, know when to be calm, because they're born wanting to be included so badly right.
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And so so much of this typical dog training has failed and it's really, it's really so sad because then the dog gets chaotically removed from the room or when people come over or whatever you know, and then they're, they're shoved into the crate which makes the crate horrible, you know they're just and they become heartbroken and anxiety ridden and they completely don't understand.
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They deserve to be able to be taught in a way they understand, proper behavior that's safe and effective so that they can be included.
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I mean they deserve to be taught in a way that they understand, and the way that they understand is not typical dog training made up by humans.
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These words put on the dogs.
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Yeah, I love in the book when you talk about the three different ways that dogs tend to see people and I think that's another thing that kind of correlates with human children too.
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Right, so they either fear you, they basically blow you off, or they respect you and I see that, you know, you see that all the time.
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So you can be the aggressor and create that fear, or you can be, which I see, probably even well.
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It's interesting because you don't see the aggressor as much, because I don't think people are as bad about that in public, but you do see that permissive side of things of letting you know, basically letting them get away with murder, and it's rare that you see that, see that respect, I guess, because it has to be earned.
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Can you talk a little more?
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about that, yeah, and say dogs are like I said, it's so much simpler with dogs and the dog training world typical dog training world has made it made it seem like it's hard to earn the dog's trust and respect.
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So they do need to respect you, but they also need to trust you.
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So those things are equally important.
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So you can only get that by providing dogs firm guidance, but it's supportive guidance at the same time.
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So you know, I draw the analogy between the three different types of parenting that psychologists have determined for many years.
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So it's like a way to explain you've got to hit that firm but supportive parenting so that you're not to be feared and you're not to be dismissed.
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You know you are respected, but because you give respect back and you're treated in a way that you know honors, you know what they're born with and you educate yourself in a way that communicate with them in a way that they understand, and then it's like almost everybody I know, until they do this firm but supportive parenting and they approach it in the way that my book Don't Train your Dog talks about, is that your relationship becomes so close and involved with this dog that you see its full personality that most people are never seeing their dog's full personality.
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They're just seeing all these actions and reactions and fears and the love is there.
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You know, the love is we're.
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We're just.
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We're just entangled with dogs.
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I mean, dogs are our family, we're entangled with them.
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I don't see how that can be disputed at this point, based on what we know about them.
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And they're capable of learning extremely high level thinking because of that attachment to us, right so, and because they're partners with us.
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So that has enabled them to function at a much higher level than they probably would if they're just as their self as an animal, you know.
00:20:09.036 --> 00:20:12.972
So I don't think they're simply domesticated animals, because they're born entangled with us.
00:20:12.972 --> 00:20:16.486
So I think they deserve to be treated as family members.
00:20:16.486 --> 00:20:25.238
But for people to learn the guidance that they need to function in our modern society and be fulfilled and happy, and so that every family member is safe.
00:20:25.238 --> 00:20:35.993
You know we teach children to how to interact with each other so that they can be safe and we can walk out of the room without, you know, the child hitting the other child over the head with a steel truck.
00:20:35.993 --> 00:20:37.548
You know it's like we do.
00:20:37.989 --> 00:20:41.642
We approach that we give the proper guidance, consequences.
00:20:41.642 --> 00:20:42.905
If needed, what will happen?
00:20:42.905 --> 00:20:43.887
We know we don't allow this.
00:20:43.887 --> 00:20:44.528
We can't do this.
00:20:44.528 --> 00:20:45.330
Here's a better way.
00:20:45.330 --> 00:20:47.114
You know that's supportive guidance.
00:20:47.114 --> 00:20:50.347
Still firm, I'm never going to allow the hitting right.
00:20:50.347 --> 00:20:51.170
That's the firm part.
00:20:51.170 --> 00:20:53.375
But the supportive part is here's what we can do different.
00:20:53.375 --> 00:20:54.730
Here's what's going to happen if we don't.
00:20:54.730 --> 00:20:55.796
Here's what we do with different.
00:20:55.796 --> 00:20:57.846
So it's providing a teaching moment.
00:20:57.846 --> 00:20:59.229
It's not providing punishment.
00:20:59.229 --> 00:21:00.932
Punishment is not learning.
00:21:00.932 --> 00:21:03.877
It's not a learning moment providing punishment.
00:21:03.877 --> 00:21:13.342
Punishment is something that's done to kids or dogs after something has occurred, in the hopes that that will be so harsh or negative that they will never want to repeat it.
00:21:13.342 --> 00:21:18.646
It doesn't truly teach them why we're doing this and why it can't be and what the alternatives are.
00:21:19.588 --> 00:22:07.353
You know, it's interesting because, as you're saying that, so my real job I shouldn't say real job, but the thing I actually get paid for, to pay to do in life is I, uh, I do communication training and one of the things that I really focus on and I'm actually starting a second podcast called unapologetically assertive, because people confuse assertive with aggression, like you know that it's, that it's something to be feared, right, and to me, assertiveness is, you know, finding that balance of getting along and getting things done, finding that balance of getting your message across, getting your needs met, but also respecting and you've used that, you know that language as well respecting the needs of the other being, and I think it's the same thing with our pets.
00:22:07.353 --> 00:22:17.786
You know, if we think about it, that we are treating them with respect by creating those boundaries, by being consistent, by staying calm, and everybody's going to be better off in the long run.
00:22:17.786 --> 00:22:24.138
The other two extremes just set everybody up for failure, yeah, and it's like I love my cat.
00:22:24.224 --> 00:22:41.991
I mean I treat my cat with you know respect and you know I can do some training with her and you know she wants to be with me and you know she's in the room with me like a dog all the time, follows me around but she's not so emotionally entangled with me.
00:22:41.991 --> 00:22:42.291
There's still.
00:22:42.291 --> 00:22:44.134
It's easy to see that wild nature still exists there.
00:22:44.134 --> 00:22:45.075
You know there's only.
00:22:45.075 --> 00:22:48.097
So're trying to teach her to do something With dogs.
00:22:48.097 --> 00:22:50.840
It's different because that emotional entanglement's there.
00:22:50.840 --> 00:22:53.470
The cat wants to be with me but when I leave she doesn't look out.
00:22:53.490 --> 00:22:56.056
The window she doesn't cry and mourn your loss.
00:22:57.224 --> 00:22:59.771
I don't have to prepare her to learn that it's okay.
00:22:59.771 --> 00:23:02.807
When I leave, she's already like don't let the door hit you, lady.
00:23:02.807 --> 00:23:05.132
But then when I come back, she's all over me To me, you know.
00:23:05.132 --> 00:23:05.813
So to me.
00:23:05.853 --> 00:23:13.247
That's the difference in why I'm saying dogs need this firm but supportive guidance, more similar to children.
00:23:13.247 --> 00:23:13.488
They don't.
00:23:13.488 --> 00:23:16.961
They're not children, I don't think they're human children, but they still are a family member that deserves support and guidance and love.
00:23:16.961 --> 00:23:17.945
Love's already there.
00:23:17.945 --> 00:23:20.788
It's not like we have that much shortage of love for dogs.
00:23:20.788 --> 00:23:22.509
It's just that I don't know.
00:23:22.509 --> 00:23:24.050
Dogs learn things with typical training.
00:23:24.050 --> 00:23:30.777
Despite us and we love them, despite even the chaotic and sometimes dangerous behavior that they have, we still love them.
00:23:30.777 --> 00:23:42.527
We're failing them by keeping up this dog training, typical dog training mentality and, like I've said, I am very direct about it.
00:23:42.527 --> 00:23:43.990
I've been doing this for 28 years and there's no time.
00:23:43.990 --> 00:23:44.631
There's no time.
00:23:44.631 --> 00:23:45.152
I mean dogs need help.
00:23:45.152 --> 00:23:46.474
There's no time to beat around the bush about this.
00:23:46.474 --> 00:23:53.652
I was talking to a dog trainer and they saw my book and then they said you're very aggressive, your language in the book is very aggressive about dog training.
00:23:54.153 --> 00:23:55.276
I think it's just assertive.
00:23:56.806 --> 00:24:00.201
No, I said actually I disagree, it's not aggressive at all.
00:24:00.201 --> 00:24:01.606
I don't feel aggressive towards you.
00:24:01.606 --> 00:24:08.426
I mean there's some aggression here, but it's not coming from my side, but it's just direct.
00:24:08.426 --> 00:24:08.909
It's direct.
00:24:08.909 --> 00:24:12.436
Why even say anything or write anything if it's not going to be real or direct?
00:24:12.436 --> 00:24:14.750
It's not aggressive, it's just real.
00:24:14.750 --> 00:24:20.250
And so you know, I'm here for a dog, so I'm not here to get typical dog training world's approval.
00:24:20.791 --> 00:24:39.402
Yeah Well, I will say I think and you can tell me if you think I'm wrong on this but having worked with terrible dog trainers and very well-intentioned and caring dog trainers, I also think that there's probably a certain element like especially focusing on those who really do care and really do believe in what they're doing.
00:24:39.402 --> 00:24:50.034
Parent hired a trainer and they taught me some techniques that seemed like they were working, and then they weren't working.
