Client-Centred Dog Training

22/04/2022

THE SECRET TO DEALING WITH CRITICISM...

One of the hardest aspects of social media that dog trainers have to navigate is the difficulty of finding support.

In a heartbeat, colleagues who you thought were your new best allies turn out to be undermining you... you might be struggling to deal with a barrage of criticism or even downright thievery. It sensitises us to criticism, leaving us feeling vulnerable from time to time.

A colleague yesterday told me how dog trainers comment on her PAID adverts, hoping to drum up business! I mean what's that all about?

One thing that always serves me well when thinking about criticism is whether it's warranted or not. Often, it isn't. Writing off criticism can be tough, especially if you're raw from a round with your supposedly supportive colleagues.

The golden rule for me is that if you're not on my cheer squad, you don't get to be my critic.

I'm not the kind of person who only expects feedback when I ask for it. At the same time, when you can easily be derailed by bitchy, mean or thoughtless comments, it's easy to think that there may be some element of truth in them. I can't simply say that feedback isn't warranted unless it's solicited. No one would ask for feedback in that case!

However, I think it's important to filter out negativity before it drives you mad.

Ask yourself: 'Is this person regularly cheering for me?'

Do they share your stuff, celebrate your achievements, drop you notes to tell you they are loving your work? Do they genuinely and sincerely support you in your journey? Do they do so in public as well as in private?

If they don't, then they haven't earned the privilege of being your critic.

It's that simple.

Critics are valuable. Critics tell you when you're about to make a big mistake. Critics tell you when you're acting crazy. Critics tell you that your hair is on fire. They might well even help you avert disaster.

Being in the position where you can do that as a friend without damaging your relationship is a privileged and trusted position. It's a more privileged position than that of being a cheerleader.

But it's a position that is earned.

Not just some random Bob from Bolton who feels like he needs to tell you that you're rubbish at your job.

It's easy to dismiss the unwarranted and unmerited criticism of Bob from Bolton, or any of his friends.

It's not so easy to dismiss criticism from those who are pretending to be on your team and secretly doing everything they can to undermine you.

Watch out for word like 'surprised'. Your cheerleaders are NEVER surprised by your success. They know that you've got it and they're also pretty proud of being part of the support mechanism that got you where you are.

Watch out for private cheer squads. If they can't celebrate you in public, at least from time to time, why not? Private messages are great but those who reserve their positive comments for you for private messages are not your cheerleaders. Your cheer squad don't care how ridiculous their pompoms look.

When your cheer squad share your stuff, they're proud to know you. They're making a commitment to you. When they invest in your stuff as you invest in theirs, they're well on their way to earning the right to tell you when you're about to walk out and make a fool of yourself.

I'm totally in love with those people who go out to cheer for me. I value their support in unmeasurable ways. They're the voices that count, not random Bob from Bolton or Snidey Cilla who tells you she's amazed by your great stuff in private and then acts as if they don't know you in public.

Life's too short to internalise the negativity of people who haven't earned that right.

28/01/2022

❔ WHAT TO DO WITH THE OCCASIONAL IRRATIONAL AND RANTY CRITICS ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

A lovely friend faced a problem today with an irrational person who'd type-vomited old-fashioned nonsense all over a post she'd shared on social media.

Reading the response through, the grammar was poor, the comments illogical and the arguments so weak that they'd fall over with the slightest teasing out. It was easy to see that the response was mired in blinkered visions. Faced with having to change her views or justify them, like many, the person had chosen to justify her irrational ways of thinking rather than scrolling on. Sadly, it is often the case that we defend things strongly even though they would not stand up to even the slightest argument, it is often to save face. Our beliefs and our worldview have been challenged and we feel uncomfortable.

Behind many uncomfortable or indignant posts, there are often people struggling to cope as their views begin to show the cracks. It's hard to admit that we need to change our ways, and many people simply can't back down. It takes a lot of bravery to admit that you were wrong. Crabby posts on social media are a sign that we're not brave enough yet.

Even so, this left my friend with a dilemma. She could have left the post there, garnering attention. Perhaps someone else would have come forward to add their two-bit thoughts as well. Other people may have joined in to pour fuel on a fire. It could have fizzled out or it could have ended as a huge bonfire.

Knowing what to do with those vented spleens is tough when you care.

We sometimes think that the compassionate approach is to listen. It's to hear. We're supposed to respond with kindness. We're supposed to be gentle. When people aren't brave enough to change their views in face of reasonable challenge, we should help them, right?

When we do that, however, we need to be mindful that our boundaries can easily be eroded. Other things will happen too; you can't fight beliefs with logic or reason. You don't win hearts and minds with science. Nobody ever walked away from a social media showdown feeling MORE reasonable than they did before.

When we engage with such responses, we need to do so knowingly and purposefully, knowing we may contribute to further anger and disbelief. We need to understand our own reasons for responding. Sometimes we're angry too. Sometimes we're driven by our own need to be right. We may justify this as helping or supporting when in fact, it's just our own need for validation.

Sometimes the kindest thing to do is accept that this is not the moment and to walk away. On social media, that might mean deleting comments. They've said their bit. They got what they needed. We may think that we're being close-minded or we should be more open. Our social media timelines are our virtual world. We create it in our image. Sometimes we feel it does us no good to live in an echo chamber. Yet social media also needs boundaries, and that includes having boundaries ourselves.

I make no apologies for deleting things from pages I curate. They're my pages. I work with clients every day who have asked me in one way or another to coach them differently from the ways they've behaved. When I face confrontation or challenge, I know that what I'm really hearing is a person in conflict, a person whose world view is ripe to crumble. Simply by asking for my help, they're having to admit that whatever they did in the past is not working. That's different from incoherent and ranting posts on Facebook.

We simply don't know what people's agenda is for wrongful or misplaced challenges on social media, especially those that run on for minutes. Maybe they're having the mother of all bad days. Maybe they're struggling with their life. Maybe they're having to face up to awkward truths about the fallout of things they've been doing. One of the most important boundaries I think we need to set is the one that says: 'I don't have to justify myself to you. You don't get to be my critic if you are not my cheerleader.'

I do justify myself to my cheerleaders. Sometimes, they even help me change my own erroneous thinking. But I never justify myself to random people on social media.

The easiest way to remember that boundary is to remember that if people aren't also your supporters, they don't get to be your critics. That's especially true when we can see they are struggling. Knowing the signs of that struggle and letting that battle go is one of the best ways I've found to manage my boundaries without losing my patience, my peace, my own battles and my compassion. Ask yourself if this person is generally your cheerleader. If they're not your cheerleader, they haven't earned the privilege of being your critic.

When random critics appear, also ask yourself what their agenda is and whether it's worth your time. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it opens honest discussion. But if their only agenda is to redirect irrational and misplaced anger onto you and vent a spleen because they feel challenged, then you need strong boundaries. You are not their punching bag. They don't get to vent on to you just because they're not yet brave enough to realise that what you said challenged deep-seated beliefs they haven't yet realised they're no longer comfortable with.

Sometimes the kindest thing is to put out the fire, delete the comment, move on and say, 'oh well.'

And if their only agenda is to tell me I'm wrong when I know I'm right, there will be nothing to gain in discussion. Engaging with them will also leave me questioning humanity and ready to vent my own spleen. That interferes with my agenda of supporting, of shining, of helping, of spreading a little joy. There is nothing wrong either with genuinely asking if they are okay. A sarcastic 'U OK, Hun?' isn't that. If you really want to leave the response up in the name of egalitarianism and equality, don't challenge irrational views with the rational. Confront them with a statement. Explain that you can see this really challenges them and finish with a heart-felt 'Take Care' if you must. A 'Thanks for commenting' or a 'Thanks for sharing your view' may well be the kindest option when you are sure that the comment in itself will neither rattle the cages of all your real cheerleaders, nor ring the bell of all your critics who were waiting in the wings like Pavlov's dogs waiting for a sign.

Boundaries matter. Don't feel bad for having them. Don't feel like you have to justify yourself to your critics if they aren't also your cheerleaders. Ask yourself if your own agenda will be hijacked by theirs, and take the option your feel you need to.

06/01/2022

This Saturday!

WANT THE SECRETS TO GREAT CLIENTS AND GREAT CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS?

❓ Sick of explaining to people that there are no quick fixes?

❓ Wondering why your clients aren't as excited about their dogs as you are?

❓ Wish you didn't have to navigate people's unrealistic expectations about what their dogs could achieve?

❓ Wish you had word of mouth advertising that means you're booked up for months in advance?

* * * * * *

We all dream of those clients who are an absolute gift to work with. They bring us the kind of dogs we love working with... on the behaviours we love working on. These clients bring their A game, determined to succeed. Whatever we suggest is not only taken on board but we get photos and videos throughout the week as well.

They're the clients that have us jumping out of bed on a Monday morning, slapping on our training belts and pulling out our best stuff. They energise us and we energise them.

It's a partnership.

You click right from the beginning. You're thinking a thing and they're already there. They have ownership of their own goals and they're resourceful, mindful, reflective, empowered individuals who are an absolute dream to be around.

We'd all like more clients like this, right?

How we find clients like this is not a secret. It's not a marketing gimmick. It's not having the right funnel to w**d out the vast majority of people who, let's face it, sometimes lack a little oomph, can lack commitment or capacity. You know... real people, living in the real world.

Finding your dream clients is easy: you make them.

When you know the secrets of getting the best out of people, all your clients have the potential to become your dream clients.

No gimmicks. No hand-picking the cream of the crop. No wading through weeks where you seem like you're trying to herd cats rather than train dogs.

I'm hugely excited to announce an exclusive course for dog trainers and behaviour consultants looking at how to build exceptional client relationships, and, in turn, build exceptional clients.

This course has been six months in the making, coming off the back of 'Client-Centred Dog Training: 30 Lessons to Get Maximum Engagement From Your Clients'.

When I wrote the book, I had no idea how popular it would be. I'm amazed (and very glad!) because it tells me how many dog trainers are truly invested in their clients and in building better working alliances. I don't know why that stunned me.

I know many of you have wanted more, and this course is designed to take the principles explored in the book and help you put them into action.

Reading is a one-way information stream, on the whole. You read and you process it, but it's not a conversation. You don't get to say, 'Hey, what about ... ?' or 'But what if... ?' or 'Well, that wouldn't work!'

Books don't offer that kind of rich conversation that lies beneath real learning and development.

They're great. I love books. But they are a wall of knowledge, not a discussion.

This course IS that discussion!

Part-workshop, part-support and part-preview into my next book aimed at helping you with all kinds of challenging client situations, the sessions will take place over 8 hours. The sessions are deliberately split in two so you get time to put things into practice.

The sessions are also capped at ten participants.

There's a reason for that. Conversations don't happen in lecture theatres with 200 participants. Nor do they truly happen in webinars with 1000 people you don't know. Even if you get the chance to ask a question, you might never want to ask the kind of questions you would in a smaller, more intimate group.

We'll be covering aspects of contracting, information gathering, interviewing, engaging with clients and helping them build realistic plans that are both challenging and achievable. We'll also cover the difficulties of change and look at exciting new insights into human habit forming, so that when you end your contract and disengage, you know that your clients will stick to their plans.

What else?

✔️ Helping clients understand their needs better
✔️ Helping clients change mindsets and beliefs that are holding them back
✔️ Engaging with clients who've literally seen every other trainer in the Yellow Pages before they got to you
✔️ Helping clients stick it out
✔️ Dealing with desperation
✔️ Keeping a positive mindset about your clients

When we truly engage with our human clients, we open up the potential to change their dogs' lives forever. We can't work through our clients if they're not 100% committed to the journey, and if we don't get that commitment, then we risk lives remaining impoverished for good.

So if you're ready to make all your clients into your dream clients, if you're ready to build relationships and change habits, if you're excited about doing something new in 2022 to hugely improve your success rates and re-locate the passion that brought you into dog training and behaviour consultations in the first place, send me an email and tell me you're ready!

The course includes:
📣 4 hours of recorded webinars that you can watch again as many times as you like
📣 The most up-to-date science of human behaviour, social psychology, coaching and change leadership
📣 Small group size limited to a maximum of ten participants
📣 4 hours of workshops and discussion time to develop plans to suit YOUR needs and improve your client relationships
📣 A free e-copy of my upcoming book: 'Client-Centred Dog Training: 30 Conversations Dog Trainers Hate Having (and how to win them)'

All for £100 all in!

Saturday 8th January 2022
Saturday 15th January 2022
1pm - 5pm
via Zoom

If you're ready - and only if you're truly ready - to really and truly rock 2022, send an email to [email protected] or send me a message via Facebook and I'll send you joining instructions or click the link to eventbrite:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/193116154617

17/10/2021

WANT THE SECRETS TO GREAT CLIENTS AND GREAT CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS?

❓ Sick of explaining to people that there are no quick fixes?

❓ Wondering why your clients aren't as excited about their dogs as you are?

❓ Wish you didn't have to navigate people's unrealistic expectations about what their dogs could achieve?

❓ Wish you had word of mouth advertising that means you're booked up for months in advance?

* * * * * *

We all dream of those clients who are an absolute gift to work with. They bring us the kind of dogs we love working with... on the behaviours we love working on. These clients bring their A game, determined to succeed. Whatever we suggest is not only taken on board but we get photos and videos throughout the week as well.

They're the clients that have us jumping out of bed on a Monday morning, slapping on our training belts and pulling out our best stuff. They energise us and we energise them.

It's a partnership.

You click right from the beginning. You're thinking a thing and they're already there. They have ownership of their own goals and they're resourceful, mindful, reflective, empowered individuals who are an absolute dream to be around.

We'd all like more clients like this, right?

How we find clients like this is not a secret. It's not a marketing gimmick. It's not having the right funnel to w**d out the vast majority of people who, let's face it, sometimes lack a little oomph, can lack commitment or capacity. You know... real people, living in the real world.

Finding your dream clients is easy: you make them.

When you know the secrets of getting the best out of people, all your clients have the potential to become your dream clients.

No gimmicks. No hand-picking the cream of the crop. No wading through weeks where you seem like you're trying to herd cats rather than train dogs.

I'm hugely excited to announce an exclusive course for dog trainers and behaviour consultants looking at how to build exceptional client relationships, and, in turn, build exceptional clients.

This course has been six months in the making, coming off the back of 'Client-Centred Dog Training: 30 Lessons to Get Maximum Engagement From Your Clients'.

When I wrote the book, I had no idea how popular it would be. I'm amazed (and very glad!) because it tells me how many dog trainers are truly invested in their clients and in building better working alliances. I don't know why that stunned me.

I know many of you have wanted more, and this course is designed to take the principles explored in the book and help you put them into action.

Reading is a one-way information stream, on the whole. You read and you process it, but it's not a conversation. You don't get to say, 'Hey, what about ... ?' or 'But what if... ?' or 'Well, that wouldn't work!'

Books don't offer that kind of rich conversation that lies beneath real learning and development.

They're great. I love books. But they are a wall of knowledge, not a discussion.

This course IS that discussion!

Part-workshop, part-support and part-preview into my next book aimed at helping you with all kinds of challenging client situations, the sessions will take place over 8 hours. The sessions are deliberately split in two so you get time to put things into practice.

The sessions are also capped at ten participants.

There's a reason for that. Conversations don't happen in lecture theatres with 200 participants. Nor do they truly happen in webinars with 1000 people you don't know. Even if you get the chance to ask a question, you might never want to ask the kind of questions you would in a smaller, more intimate group.

We'll be covering aspects of contracting, information gathering, interviewing, engaging with clients and helping them build realistic plans that are both challenging and achievable. We'll also cover the difficulties of change and look at exciting new insights into human habit forming, so that when you end your contract and disengage, you know that your clients will stick to their plans.

What else?

✔️ Helping clients understand their needs better
✔️ Helping clients change mindsets and beliefs that are holding them back
✔️ Engaging with clients who've literally seen every other trainer in the Yellow Pages before they got to you
✔️ Helping clients stick it out
✔️ Dealing with desperation
✔️ Keeping a positive mindset about your clients

When we truly engage with our human clients, we open up the potential to change their dogs' lives forever. We can't work through our clients if they're not 100% committed to the journey, and if we don't get that commitment, then we risk lives remaining impoverished for good.

So if you're ready to make all your clients into your dream clients, if you're ready to build relationships and change habits, if you're excited about doing something new in 2022 to hugely improve your success rates and re-locate the passion that brought you into dog training and behaviour consultations in the first place, send me an email and tell me you're ready!

The course includes:
📣 4 hours of recorded webinars that you can watch again as many times as you like
📣 The most up-to-date science of human behaviour, social psychology, coaching and change leadership
📣 Small group size limited to a maximum of ten participants
📣 4 hours of workshops and discussion time to develop plans to suit YOUR needs and improve your client relationships
📣 A free e-copy of my upcoming book: 'Client-Centred Dog Training: 30 Conversations Dog Trainers Hate Having (and how to win them)'

All for £100 all in!

Saturday 8th January 2022
Saturday 15th January 2022
1pm - 5pm
via Zoom

If you're ready - and only if you're truly ready - to really and truly rock 2022, send an email to [email protected] or send me a message via Facebook and I'll send you joining instructions or click the link to eventbrite:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/193116154617

08/10/2021

It's coming up on three months since I released "Client-Centred Dog Training" and I'm blown away by how many copies have sold. I'm really thrilled to have had loads of informal feedback on it as well, but I'm here to ask you a favour!

If you've read it, would you pop over to Amazon and leave me a rating, maybe a comment? It's really helpful for anyone who's thinking about buying it and it also helps me with my next one which will hopefully be out in Spring 2022.

I'm absolutely not looking for token feedback - it's really fabulous to get good reviews of course, but don't hold back if you think it's a load of trash!

In other news, I'm also setting up a short course for dog trainers. It'll be a 12-hour online seminar group running early in 2022. I'm going to keep numbers absolutely capped to ten so that there can be plenty of hands-on practical support for your challenging cases, to help you with your workflow and systems and to help you work out how to be more efficient, more effective and to work in collaboration with your clients. Details will also follow soon!

Link to the book: https://tinyurl.com/zxfpnyfa

Client-centred dog training FB page: https://www.facebook.com/ClientCentredDogTraining

03/10/2021

Logically, we all know that there is no such thing as perfect timing. On a macro level when working with animals, perfect timing with either punishments or reinforcers is really, really challenging. I always say that one of your best chances of getting good timing (if not great timing) is to use a camera. Photographers often have amazing timing, especially if they trained in the time of film. You had to know your moments then. You couldn't take a reel of thousands of takes because it wasn't at all cost-efficient. Even landscape photography teaches to you to strive for that moment when the light is most perfect. You get really good at capturing the moment.

For the rest of us, timing in training is often poor. It's one reason I like marker words or bridges. It's a very powerful reason I don't use punishers. As Denise Fenzi said earlier in the week, most of us are just average, ordinary trainers. Because we're human and our brains can be slowed by many things, our timing can be off. When I decided to overtake a parked caravan and then realised I couldn't get through, I'd started to reverse. A very large and intimidating man yelling at me to get back when I was already going back was not just lousy timing: it actually stopped me reversing. In other words, it's very easy to kill a behaviour you're trying to nurture simply by poor timing.

This isn't just true of short-term behaviour, it's also true of long-term behaviour.

How many of us are thinking, well, it's Sunday... no point doing anything today! How many of us are leaving things until Monday, until next week, until November, until 2022? That could be something small: I've got a bunch of things I'm putting off until tomorrow and half of my brain is telling the other half that there's really no point starting an exercise regime in October. I mean, it's practically winter. Why not wait until after the winter solstice when the days are getting longer and winter is something we can see the end of?

When we're working with clients, we may know now is not their right time. The odds are not in their favour. The winds are against them. They've too much on their plate. They may be overwhelmed and stressed.

We all know how stress affects the likelihood of carrying out behaviour change, don't we?

I mean I've abandoned healthy eating programmes on the back of one stressful day.

Popular psychology would have us start - just start. Just do it, as the popular slogan goes. Seize the moment! We know the odds are never truly in our favour. Why not start now anyway? As writer Tommy Baker says in 'The 1% rule', there are no perfect moments. Waiting for one is just a form of procrastination that stops us from taking action.

He's right, isn't he?

When I decided three years ago to put my house up for sale, I kept procrastinating. It would be stressful for the dogs. It wasn't the right time. Then there was Covid...

I'd had enough of my procrastination. I decided last December that first thing in the new year, I'd do it. Not January 1st, as it was a bank holiday. Not the 2nd or 3rd because that was a weekend. Not the 4th because that was Monday and nothing in France functions on a Monday. In the end, the 5th January was my D-Day to call the estate agent. As it was, it was perfect timing. We managed to get everything sorted and the house on the market in the week before lockdown in February, and the day before lockdown, I had the first two viewers. The first one bought the house. In the end, it was perfect timing. Or luck. Or both.

In any case, all it needed was for me to get off my arse and make the phone call.

Why did it take me three years to make that decision?

The reality was that I was procrastinating and using the search for perfect timing as a reason not to act.

Applied psychology unpicks this a little more. There may not be perfect times in our life to act, but there are optimal times. There are times that we're more likely to take action, and, when we do, that those actions will stick.

I'm sure I was not the only person who waited until January 1st. What makes January 1st more optimal than any other time at all? After all, it was still winter, it was still the middle of Covid, it was no better or worse a day than September 4th or November 7th... or at least 360 other days on the calendar.

What made it more optimal was human nature. We're more likely to stick at something where there's a fresh start.

What human behaviour tells us is that there ARE good times to start training plans with clients. There ARE optimal days of the week, dates on the calendar, months, even events where changes are likely to stick. Knowing this can mean that you're working with the wind in your favour. Tommy Baker's entire book is about how even the slightest difference can make a big difference. He unpicks what those differences are. For instance, for the medal-winning British cycle team, he writes about how a 1% change in every single aspect of their equipment, preparation and performance led to all their gold medals.

Picking out these optimal times for your first client appointments is one thing that tips the odds just a little in your favour. Whilst perfect timing IS an illusion, optimal timing is human nature.

Understanding when those times are can be just one of those tiny things that means clients are more likely to bring their best game, to be enthusiastic about change and to stick it out. When we know what makes humans tick, we know how to help them change in ways that will most benefit their companions.

We're a weird little species. But when we understand that weirdness, it all makes our lives a lot easier. Tomorrow, I'll take you through some of those optimal times and how you can use them in your client plans.

Emma
Client-Centred Dog Training

23/09/2021

We're all striving to use the least coercive methods with animals these days, trying to focus on collaborative care and give companion animals as much choice as possible in their lives.

But are we paying the same attention to our relationships with humans?

If your clients are difficult to get hold of, if they're giving you the run-around, if your calls are going to voicemail, even if your clients are late for class, it could be because you're working more coercively than you think you are.

When we think of coercion with humans, what we mean is that we may use our power to force them to comply. In the 1940s, psychologists began studying the mechanisms of control and complaince, desperate to understand why so many people had blindly followed orders during the Second World War. By the tail end of the 1960s, psychologists Bertram Raven and John French had developed a theory about five bases of power. Raven went on over the next thirty years to extend the theory to include six bases of power.

Two of these will be very familiar as methods of coercion - methods we try to avoid with our client. The first is the threat of punishment or coercive power, something we definitely would steer away from with our clients. The second is legitimate power or legal power - again, one that we can happily avoid with our dog training clients.

But four of French and Raven's bases of power are probably ones we don't even consider as being coercive when working with humans.

The first is the power of reward. I know I use this all the time when I'm promising clients how much better their life would be if only they did X, Y and Z... how much better their life will be if they add enrichment, if they teach a hand touch, if they teach their dog cooperative care protocols. This can be, in itself, a way of convincing people to do things that they're not entirely sure about.

Another is the power of influence. If we're sharing social media influencer comments, if we're sharing the thoughts of the great and the good, then we're using that power to try and convince people to tag along too. 'Look, this amazing person is teaching like this - and you can too!'

The third is the power that comes from information. We know more. We hold all the cards. That's a power that we can also end up accidentally wielding as a weapon to convince clients to make choices that they perhaps wouldn't be comfortable with otherwise.

Finally, there's the power of the expert. I think we can often fall into the trap of using our skills and know how as a way of ensuring compliance at the outset - a compliance that then starts to make our clients feel a little uncomfortable.

Like it or not, there are power dynamics in how we work with our clients and we can be using several of these power bases to be more controlling than we thought we were being.

So how do we work more cooperatively with clients, without using these hidden bases of power to control the direction of our work with them? How can we ensure that we're being truly helpful?

And how can we avoid those dreaded moments where we're chasing clients up for appointments that always end in us feeling annoyed and slightly sanctimonious that we seem to care more about their companion animal than they do?

The first step is to recognise these power dynamics.

We can't escape these dynamics unless we own them and we recognise them. Then we can use them with intentionality. Knowing that we're using them also prepares us for the fallout of using coercive methods.

Beyond that, we can focus on learning, rather than helping. Instead of going into a client's situation and trying to immediately offer aid and assistance, we can see it as an opportunity to learn. They're the experts in their situations, in their lives, with their companions. We can learn what they think will work in their lives, what techniques might be a best fit and what solutions they've already tried. Going in to the dog-training one-to-one with the aim of learning about the client instead of trying to help can make a huge difference in that power inequity.

If we hand some of that power base back to the client, we'll find it a much smoother journey to success. Less disengagement, less frustration, and, most importantly, less coercion.

What a breath of fresh air that is!

Emma - Client-Centred Dog Training.