Competence before Creativity
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Note: This one is mainly for dog trainers. If you aren’t a trainer but are a dog owner, you might want to scroll to the bottom to find a message for you.
I recently started cooking. For the past 25 years, I ate nearly every meal in a restaurant or at a friend’s house. For a variety of reasons, I recently decided to start cooking. I was never much of a cook - but now I’m really lost. I’ve had to look up many of the basics. I’ve turned to friends for advice. I’ve decided to use one of many meal delivery plans to get going (they send you all the ingredients and careful instructions). My hope is that I’ll learn which recipes we like and which are easy enough for me to make on my own.
I was joking on Facebook about not really knowing why I was zesting a lemon to make a hamburger. Friends gave me various advise including “don’t bother,” and “use Worcester sauce,” “get a tin of anchovies.” Those are probably all good pieces of advice for someone who’s ready. But I’m not. I’m going to carefully follow the recipes right now. I’ll learn how to mince garlic, how to make frico (after Googling the word frico to learn what that is), how much oil to use to make baked potato wedges that aren’t soggy like they were the first time. Once I’ve gotten better, I’ll learn some shortcuts. And maybe I’ll learn how to swap ingredients that are listed in the recipe for those I have on hand. I might get good enough to make up my own recipes and to be creative.
But not yet. First, I’m going to become competent.
Why? Because competence matters. If I start getting creative right now and a recipe fails, I wouldn’t have a clue right now if it’s because of an arbitrary creative decision I’ve made or because I missed something basic that a good cook wouldn’t have. And it would slow down my learning. And I’ll ruin meals unnecessarily (which certainly wouldn’t be horrible - we’ll just find yet another restaurant).
It struck me that in this regard, dog training is like cooking but with higher stakes. Messing up a recipe is no big deal. Messing up a dog can get the dog relegated to the back yard, relinquished at a shelter, cause injury to humans or other dogs - or worse.
I frequently see professional dog trainers who are taking money from clients looking for creative ways to address a training need their client has requested. They fumble from one approach to another or go online and ask strangers they don’t know (with unknown and varying degrees of education, experience, and skills) for creative solutions to basic problems. A deeper understanding of classical and operant conditioning basics is what’s needed - not creativity.
Want to teach a dog to do something - operant conditioning. If a dog is afraid of something, we should be looking at classical conditioning (desensitization and counter-conditioning) techniques or considering a DRI which will have a classical side-effect. We know how to do this. If methods based on solid science aren’t working - don’t get creative. Instead, dog trainers should consider the following:
Compliance - is the client doing what they’ve been asked to do?
Execution - is the training being done correctly? Are you confident of the method and have confirmed that the client is performing the training correctly (or, if you’re doing the training yourself, have you video-taped yourself and reviewed your mechanics or asked a qualified associate to give you an objective look)?
Diagnosis - only after doing those first two things should we consider whether or not our diagnosis (including our solution to the problem) is correct. It shouldn’t be the first step we take - it should be one of the last.
Referrals - there’s no shame in admitting when you’re in over your head. It’s far more ethical to refer to a more qualified trainer than to take money for something we’re not qualified to handle. I’ve done it frequently and I suspect I’ll do it many more times in the future (or I’ll limit myself to a specialty so people come to me only for things I’m truly prepared to address).
A note to dog owners:
The dog training industry is totally unregulated. Anyone, with any education (or none at all) can call themselves a trainer and take money for training your dog. Your doctor and lawyer have to be licensed. Your plumber has to be a licensed. Your hairstylist has to be licensed. But not the person who is handling behavior modification for the dog you care so much about. I certainly hope that will change one day. I’ve met too many dog trainers who would never pass a licensing test about basic animal behavior - they’d never get a license with their current level of knowledge - and yet they are getting paid by unsuspecting dog owners. There are some great programs out there to educate dog trainers. But until there’s regulation, it’s “buyer beware.” For information about finding a good trainer, check out this good article.