Dog Training is Kung Fu

I passed up an opportunity today.

I had been asked to teach dog training at a homeschooling co-op and was quite excited to have the chance to go through a full program with the students - I had nine months to get through the Koehler Novice obedience material, which meant I could take the teenagers through at half speed.

Well, it turned out that the class, designed to go through the material at half the pace it was created for, was still too much work for the students and I accumulated complaints about the course's difficulty.

Unfortunately, the nature of dog training is that it isn't easy. If it was, I wouldn't have a business.

I often say that that dog training is a lot like kung fu - which translates roughly to hard work.

It requires developing an entirely new physical skillset, rigorous discipline in executing the steps required, and humility in understanding that you will make mistakes and it will take months of effort to get through to reliable success.

There are dozens of outfits out there that will soothingly assure you that you won't have to work hard, it will be easy, and selling the easy road is extremely profitable. Unfortunately the assumption and slick marketing that training your dog is easy has led to a lot of failure, and sometimes people get hurt, terribly.

Being principled is also hard - it means that I have to walk away from those who want me to make things easy, because trying to take shortcuts when you are handling large carnivores is dangerous.

If you're ready to take the hard road, and learn things properly, and really open up your world and your dog's world through the deliberate, disciplined acquisition of a new skillset, give me a call. We can even go at half pace and be done in nine months.