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Quotes from Gail
Burnham One of my favorite dog training books is called
“Playtraining Your Dog” by Patricia Gail Burnham.
It has nothing to do with field training, yet it has everything to do
with field training. The obedience
training contained within has some good suggestions, but has been superseded by
all the new obedience books and videos out there now.
I love it because of the philosophy Gail has and how she expresses her
relationship with her dogs. This
book was published in 1980 and may be hard to get, although you could try your
local library. The ISBN number is
0-312-61689-9. I knew Gail when she
lived in The following are some quotes from her book. I love them! “You will receive back from the dog only what you put into him. Dogs that are loved love in return. Dogs that are educated develop their minds. Dogs that are communicated with learn to communicate with their owners. Dogs that are respected achieve self-respect and confidence. A dog in close contact with a person will become what the person wishes, if the owner knows enough about dogs to create the dog he wants.” “If a class trainer insists that only a particular method will work, he is displaying his own ignorance. Resist the suggestion and find a method that will work for you and your dog. Reject any methods that do not work and keep thinking of new ones to try. The secret here is to keep thinking. Observe the dog’s reaction to a technique. If it was a failure, why did the dog not respond to it? If it succeeded, what were its positive qualities? What did the dog think of it? The ability to see the procedure from a dog’s-eye view is one of the most valuable abilities a trainer can have.” “The better a worker the dog is, the more observant he is. The better the trainer is, the more observant he becomes of both the dog and of himself. The ultimate goal is a team, each half of which is under alert conscious control, responding to clear clues, and totally in contact with each other.” “If the dog and trainer are friends to begin with, there is no need to sacrifice that friendship just because the trainer thinks that the dog is working poorly on a given day. Many trainers have unrealistically high expectations, not for the final degree of perfection, but for the time it will take to reach that point. As long as the dog is working happily and making progress, even if it seems to be leisurely progress, the trainer should be pleased instead of impatient. Dogs do have off days. They also go through cycles where they regress and then improve again on a given exercise completely independent of the trainer’s efforts. In fact, the best thing the trainer can do in such a situation is relax and take a short vacation.” “There is a tendency to try to make a correction so
unforgettable that the dog will never make the same mistake again.
If a correction is so strong that the dog never forgets it, there is a
good chance that he also will not forget the exercise that led up to the
correction, and he will try to avoid that exercise.
The dog is not wrong when you correct him.
Wrongness is only your value judgment.
The dog is just not doing what you want him to, and the correction is one
way of bringing about the response you desire.
Correction is guidance. It should not be
punishment.” “No dog works spectacularly all the time. To all dogs there eventually comes an off day. When this happens in the ring, the owner is often affected strangely. It is not at all uncommon to see an owner showing disappointment in the ring. The owner’s rejection of the dog can reach a point where it seems that they are a pair of strangers that somehow ended up in the ring together by accident. The owner is salvaging his own pride by playing to the sympathy of the audience and the judge, and is punishing the dog for working poorly by rejecting him. The problem here is that the more the dog is rejected, the worse he is going to work, both for the rest of the day and very likely in the future. A dog that is having problems needs help, not rejection. He needs additional cues. He needs intensified praise and encouragement at the very time when it is the hardest to give. At this point we find out if the owner is worthy of the dog. It is easy to love a dog that is performing well. To feel virtuous, most people can bring themselves to say that they love their dog even though it is not working well just now. But this is still conditional love, dependent on the dog’s performance or the owner’s forgiveness. The ultimate goal is to make love unconditional, to be able to give two separate, unrelated statements of fact and not to have one dependent on the other. Thus: “I love the dog.” “The dog is working poorly (or well) today.” The two statements have nothing to do with each other, and once the owner truly believes it he will never be disappointed again in ring performance. The resulting sense of optimism and freedom it gives is amazing. If you love the dog before you take him into the ring, you can love him as much when you leave the ring. The choice is yours, but I recommend it.” “The winners and losers at a trial are both losers when they allow competition to interfere with their feelings about the dog. Each trial day, indeed each day of life, is unique. It is the only twenty-four hours available to the dog and owner that day. It is this give of time that is ultimately the most precious of all. If the owner allows considerations of losing to spoil that day, then he is, indeed, the final loser.” “Violence is violence. It feeds on itself and multiplies. Ethical considerations aside, the problem with violence or anger in a training program is that it is nonproductive. An angry trainer is no more capable of rational thought than is a frightened dog. The best possible training progress is made when both the dog and trainer are thinking just as hard as they can. The dog has to think actively through a new series of actions before he can commit them to memory and gradually convert them to a habit.” “The qualities of a good dog are adaptability, resourcefulness, observation, concentration, a spirit of fun, a will to play, curiosity, love for the owner and respect for the owner. The qualities of a good trainer are adaptability, resourcefulness, observation, concentration, a spirit of fun, a will to play, curiosity, love for the dog and respect for the dog. |
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