Stupid Trainers...

Stupid Trainers... in China...You know what really pi**** me off... the continuous multitude of Chinese dog training businesses (not all of them).  I mean, there are SOME good trainers out there in China, but there are a whole lot more that have learnt and are still using 'old school methods of dog training'. (I rant a bit now, so if you want to skip to the dog training bit, scroll down)...The fact is, dog trainers are just dog trainers to them. Pay them a few buck, and get a dog trained. Who cares how they do it..?To be fair, it's not really THEIR fault - because that is what they know, and all they know, and they just train the dogs. Techniques are techniques, and they work - that's why ppl use them. The old skool ways works, and some of the methods are passed down that I do use. But teach a dog to sit, and they'll lift the collar up to 'cause discomfort' so the dog sits and/or by pushing his butt down at the same time. Simply FORCING THE DOG.What I'm annoyed about are the companies or the guys behind it who make it seem like its all 'HAPPY and crappy'. Like, 'train your dog, it will be happy in our school and leave it here for 2 months and it will be super happy but of course, you won't be able to see him or we won't tell you HOW we train your dog'. Let me say again, there ARE good trainers out there, so to avoid embarrassing anyone, I'm not going to mention any names.This comes because I just came back from a client who left their dog in a boarding kennel (that doubles as training too) in Shanghai for 2 weeks. NOTE: JUST FOR BOARDING. She then asked upon me to train with her and her dog. After about 5 minutes, I told her that her dog was 'trained' - in the sense that someone used her dog for training. She didn't ask for it, but they did it. The dog now does the 'standing' motion because the trainers were dumb enough to engrave it into the dogs mind.Now, it would be ok if they used 'positive methods' but they didn't.  So, 70% of the time, the dog offers this behaviour when we stopped walking.  I'll stop ranting now and, as promised: the second step to MY dog training methods.Which I personally believe to be the best that I know of.  LEARNING A NEW BEHAVIOUR (SIT/DOWN/PICK SOMETHING UP/GET A BEER FOR ME/ANYTHING)So once my dog understands 'Yes!' meaning that he'll get a reward, I can begin to reward him for the things that I want him to do.Now, I want my dog to know that 'it is time to learn something' so in order to teach this, we would 'cue him' e.g. say 'Are you ready?' and bring out some food. My dog will quickly learn that when I say 'Are you ready?' I'm going to feed him.This is something of an 'attention' command, just like you would rustle a bag of treats or let the dog smell the treats to 'get them excited'.  Most dogs can pick up the scent of treats even before you decide to start training them anyway, so for the average dog owner, we say 'you wanna treat?' anyway...So, if you've prepared the foundation correctly, you'll have a dog that is fully focused on you. Being in a place with no distractions would be helpful, because if the dog is not 100% WITH YOU, EYES ON YOU, he's not going to learn anything. He'll just eat the food.The food should be small, and eaten quickly. So. When teaching my dog ANYTHING new, I say nothing, EXCEPT for YES!.That's right, i SAY nothing. If I'm teaching sit, I would 'lure' him into a sit with food, (no sound) - and say YES! as soon as he sits. He can then get his reward and I don't care whether or not he sits or gets up.I'll continue the 'Sit training' in my next post, as it's getting late, and this entry is the longest ever.