02/10/2025
We are seeing a lot of 'successful' dog training videos online at the moment.
Often men and often forcing a dog into being quiet and moving quietly around other dogs or through busy areas.
To the untrained eye this can look impressive, especially if you are desperate for change with a highly aroused dog.
Comments like, "my dog behaves better than ever after being trained by beardy bloke"
"Baldy bloke is the only person who could stop my dog doing this and that"
"Muscly man is the best dog trainer in the world ever"
To the trained eye though, it's not impressive, it's horrible.
Training without considering how the dog feels is dismissive of the dog as a sentient being, of their emotional state and their needs.
Training without empathy is dismissive of a dog's need to feel safe, heard and considered. And we all need that don't we?
It's evidence of a dog being pushed around and not listened to by a stranger.
It's someone fuelling their own ego by bullying a helpless animal.
Being pushed around causes stress, trauma, anxiety and depression, in people it's classed as abuse.
To the trained eye we see a worried and suppressed dog who is being forced into submission by a bully who calls themself a dog trainer.
I can't bear it.
I can't bear this influx of silly, uneducated men calling themselves dog trainers (I'm sure there are women too but all I'm seeing is the men at the moment)
Forcing their will on poor dogs who simply can't escape them.
Dogs who look scared, stressed, cowed and suppressed.
I can see how a dog feels in a split second. That's what education does, it teaches you to see reality. The facts.
I wonder, can these people see what they are doing to dogs they claim to be training?
There are one of two possibilities:
They recognise the looks, the licks, the head dips and carry on anyway because they don't care how the dog feels.
They don't recognise the creeping, the half moon eye, the dropped tail because they don't educate themself because they don't care how the dog feels.
If you don't care about how the dog feels - why do you call yourself a dog trainer?
That's fraud.
