Читать книгу Careers with Dogs - Kim Campbell Thornton - Страница 43

What kind of people become trainers? What personality traits must they have? No matter what kind of training you do, an understanding of dogs is essential. Good trainers have insight into canine behavior and the ability to bring out the best in each dog they work with. A good trainer is patient. Training a dog means working with the dog and building or modifying behaviors in small steps over a period of days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years. Training is much more complicated than “showing the dog who’s boss.”

Trainer Joel Silverman works with a dog rescued by the Mission Viejo Animal Services Center in California. Silverman wrote Take 2: Training Solutions for Rescued Dogs (Kennel Club Books, 2010).

LEARN, LISTEN, AND RESPOND

The late Job Michael Evans, author of Training and Explaining: How to Be the Dog Trainer You Want to Be (Howell Book House, 1995) and many other dog training books, gave journalist Gina Spadafori some training advice. “He said two things helped him the most with his dog training: dancing lessons and acting lessons,” Spadafori says. “He told me that timing and drama are everything in giving a correction and that learning to dance and act helped him with timing and putting on a show that let a dog know he was gosh-darn serious without having to pull out the big guns of serious consequences.” In the same vein, actor Alan Alda leads improvisational acting workshops for scientists to help them express themselves more clearly. Take a cue from Evans and Alda—learn how to communicate verbally and physically, listen better, be more responsive, and take changes in stride.

Good people skills are important, too. A trainer must be able to work with, teach, and motivate people of all ages and skill levels. That entails good listening skills as well as the aforementioned patience. Other characteristics of good trainers are time-management skills and problem-solving abilities. When the usual methods just don’t work with a particular dog (or person), a trainer must be able to come up with alternative ways of reaching the training goal.

Dog trainers should be physically fit. They spend a lot of time on their feet, walking around at classes, helping individual clients. Taking a dog through an agility course involves jogging or running. Teaching big dogs not to pull or jump up on people requires physical strength. That said, training is more about brain power than brute force, so being small is not a disadvantage.

A career as a dog trainer has many challenges. It’s satisfying to help people live long, trouble-free lives with their dogs, but it can be frustrating not to be able to succeed in every case. “The worst is not being able to reach a dog owner and knowing that the dog will continue to suffer as a result,” says Pennsylvania dog trainer and behavior consultant Susan Bulanda.