개 훈련사가 되기: 카나인 디바, 로리 C. 윌리엄스와의 훈련 팁 토크 #212

and hung around and they allowed me to hang around. And here I was, I was 21 years old with a infant and toddler at home, leaving my husband and my babies at home. And I would, after the kennel club class, I would go with them. They'd let me go to this little like diner. And sometimes I would stay there to like midnight, one in the morning, just talking dogs. So there's, that's not the way things are done anymore. So it's a whole different route now. Today, I think still, you need to start with your own dog. I'm very adamant about that. You need to, because I get a lot of people who actually want to be dog trainers and don't have a dog. I'm like, you have, get a dog, start taking classes. Yeah. As many as you can. Become like a gym rat, but with dog training. Is that where that came from? Were you a gym rat? Yeah, it is. I used to be in fitness. I, before I had dog training was my primary occupation. I was a fitness director, managed gyms. And I said to everybody in the gym, I vowed that I am going to have a dog gym one day. And they laughed. I said, I'm going to call it an iron. I'm telling you. And they laughed, but I got the last laugh. So yes, that is the reference for sure. But yeah, you got to hang around. You got to learn as much as you can. You got to train your own dog and maybe train your second dog and hang around as much as you can. Find a mentor. What do you think, Lori, their personal characteristics? Oh, okay. Good. Yeah. That's very important because also a lot of people come to me and say, well, I want to be a dog trainer. I love dogs. They express their love of dogs. They're like people, not so much, but I love dogs. I said, guess what? You need to like people. You need to be able to build a rapport with people and it needs to be authentic and you need to be sincere. So actually dog training, unless you happen to find a job that you have no contact with people, that you're only training hands-on with dogs, this might not be for you because we are training people by and large, or at least that's what I feel we should be doing. Yeah. Because if we can't train the other end of the leash, if we can't show them how to build a relationship with their own dog, how to execute with their own dog the skills and learn the techniques and the dog is not going to be okay because we have to eventually, even if you do board and trains, eventually you have to give that dog back to them and they need to be prepared. So I tell them you have to be a people person or at least figure out a way to fake it as authentically as you can.

And I don't really know that you can fake it. I think the, um, one of the reasons we might still be in this is because we probably, we like people and we like teaching people. And for me, that was an, I liked, I liked people, but I only liked my people. And I, and when I would see somebody, when I would be, I know there is another problem with me in that I was teaching people as a world champion. So I was given instant authority and instant respect. And I think respect really should be earned, but I, you're given this instant respect. So of course you're, it's your ego. I get a pad, your ego. So I knew I could help anybody train their dog. But if I saw somebody being mean to their dog, like correcting them or one girl stomping on her dog's foot when it wouldn't go into a down when she asked, like I would go all spider monkey on their ass and I would make them feel bad about themselves. And then they'd get in their back brain and they couldn't learn a thing from me. And so that was my big evolution is you want to love people. And if you love people, then you're going to recognize they're doing the best they can. So there's stomping on the dog's foot. Somebody taught them that. Right. Right. Breaking old habits is probably one of the biggest challenges. I think we talked about this before where some of our, like some of our best students have been novices, complete novices. I have so many people who it is their first dog. And I'm like, ah, thank you. Because they are, they are a clean slate. They're like a sponge. They're going to accept the program that you're telling them. They're going to accept it right from the beginning and follow it step by step. They're going to trust the process as opposed to, well, I used to do it this way. And then also some people just have knee jerk reaction, the pop, the pop of the leash. They've been doing that their whole lives. So coming to me where I'm saying to them, now listen. So I, I definitely have a way to finesse that. I can't necessarily, I mean, definitely it improved through time, but actually when I was in college, I actually majored in communication. So I took a lot of interpersonal communication classes. Oh, you got a leg up girl. Come on. Yeah, I did. I did. And so, I mean, being able to build a rapport with people and- I went to the University of Hard Knocks to learn my rapport. I gotta tell you that much. You know what, you know what, here's a, this is something that's very interesting. And I'll ask you this question. Now, dog sport people, you can do that too. Like me, when I started learning

through the kennel club system, I said, well, I want to compete because I stayed after and watched them doing their dog, they were, a show was coming, a trial was coming, an obedience trial. And I watched them doing utility. And I was like, oh my God, I need to do this. So what they were the most, they browbeat the heck out of me, but I didn't care because I wanted it. I was, I was enabled and do it. The clients that I have today, the clients that I have, they cannot be browbeaten. Like regular everyday average pet owners, which is the majority of what I teach. Um, that- And me too now, for sure. Yeah. But no, you're, you're, you're right. Like, I think when I look at how I taught back in the early nineties, it was, and, and through most of the nineties, because I was tired and overworked because I was on the road 200 days a year, either teacher competing and, and I didn't, and literally I was, I had to be shaped by the response of the people. And when I knew I'd lost them, I knew I couldn't help them with their dog and that broke my heart. And so, yeah, it was, it was an, an evolution for me. And, and it was true training dogs and shaping behavior that I learned. I actually like working with people. I actually like people. And so, no, the sport people, they'll put up with your bullshit because they want to know what you know, but the pet people say, I go down the road. Absolutely. They're not going to put up with it. I had to be as focused on becoming a good educator as I had become focused on being a good dog trainer. That was my, my education for sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's the key. And I do think that's the key to longevity because if you, I mean, if you really like have a disdain for people, first of all, it shows like you can't hide it. Like I see, I see it on social media. I see a lot of trainers on like TikTok, especially. Yeah. I'm like, do you even like people? Like, I think not, but it shows. Yeah. Yeah. And, and yeah, and people think it's funny when they wear these shirts, like the more people I meet, the more I'm a dog. But, but you're rehearsing for your subconscious. If you really want to be with, you know, teaching people, then you've got to help them. You've got to help them understand what you understand. And sometimes, so let's talk about the, the young trainers on social media then. And there's more and more of them. And I think it's great because it's tough because you're in, you're in a goldfish bowl, but if you could, you know, get them all in a room and,

and give them like a couple of pieces of advice, what would you like to say to the young people that are on social media, trying to train in front of the world and, you know, share? All right. So the, the Broadway musical Hamilton, there's a line in it where Alexander Hamilton was telling Aaron Burr. No, Aaron Burr was telling Alexander Hamilton, talk less, smile more. And I don't like that. But what I do like is talk less, train more. And I think there should be a lot less talking about things that you may not know as much as you think you do. You might know a little, okay. You know, that saying a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, you know, a little, but train more, improve your skills more, train more, learn more before you speak. Get better with your skills. Yeah. And, and. Especially before you get on soapboxes about it. Yes. Because I see, I do see a lot of people and they mean well, that are speaking about things and they're being asked questions that I know they really don't have an answer to. And if they hadn't started the fight to begin with, they wouldn't have been backed in a corner. So I do see, unfortunately, quite a few people looking a little foolish and walking right into it because they spoke on things that they may not know. I really don't think that the answer is us necessarily always saying, well, this person's doing it wrong. And here's why this person's doing it wrong. And here's why show what you're doing. That's right. Yeah. And talk about what is correct and talk about what worked for you and talk about what worked for your clients. And I just think that is more the way that I would love to see the face of positive reinforcement on social media, but unfortunately, quite a bit of it is trainers coming on and, you know, tagging people that are doing it wrong, showing clips that are the wrong or in their mind the wrong way. And yeah, it's just, I don't. Yeah. Especially if you're trying to be, or if you're saying you're force-free trainer, like I always say that I want people to be able to see who the reinforcement-based trainers are by the way they treat other people, by the way they talk to them in a chat or comment on their video that clear, you know, who they are because it's clear what their beliefs are about learning. And I think though, it also, your line about train, speak less and train more is also for those people teaching in person, because I see that with a lot of young people who are teaching classes, they talk forever. And these poor dogs are sitting against the wall and not doing anything. And they

get out and then the dogs start biting on their leash or rolling on their back. And yeah, give, you know, give instruction at first in social, we're, we're in the era of computers. So give them their, you know, this is what we're going to work on for the first five minutes and get the dogs out there doing stuff. So I think that that comment could be used for people on social media and for people in real life. You have like 500 students a year go through your school. So what is the biggest stumbling block for getting the information from their heads down to the leash? What do you think that is? Huh? That's a good question. So here's the thing. This is another thing. And I think we should, could maybe talk about this a little bit. The average student will stay for eight weeks. Wow. On the average. Absolutely. And I would say, so you will, so say if you get a hundred people that are all starting at a certain time, they'll like maybe 80% will do eight weeks. That's really all the average everyday dog owners willing to give. I know it's yeah. It's eight weeks. That's about it. So you got to make those eight weeks. So packed full of information. Now I have something called, I do a levels program. So dogs all start in level one and then there's a puppy level one. They're younger than in six months, but they start in level one and then they progress through the levels, but each level's offered three times a week. So if you sign up for classes at my facility, you can come three times a week. It's all for the same price. You can come three, yeah, three times a week. So they can get their training in in a classroom. They can get their training in. I changed to this levels program, I think about 10 years ago, because one summer I said, you know, I'm going to try something. I did a program. It was called Total Dog and I offered it three times a week. One day, the first day we did, one of the days we did obedience and manners. One day we did intro to dog sports. And then the last day we did probably just mostly impulse control exercises, one after the other. Okay. So we did three different things. I did that just for summer and I had people sign up for it. The progress those dogs made was incredible. It was night and day. And it was because they paid a certain price. So they were going to make sure they came all three days and it was only for the summer. So these people trained so much and not hard. They just trained smart and they kept coming. It's kind of the same concept with when you send your child to

school. They don't go to school. Well, like what if kids just went once a week to school? I mean- They would love that. They would love it. Absolutely. They would for sure. I like that. That's outside the box thinking about education, Lori. That's a great idea. Well, and I'm not the creator of the levels. There were other places that were doing it before me around the country and I was reading about it and I was kind of like, but, but, and here's the thing too with the levels is it's open enrollment. So people are coming, going all the time. So you might have one person in that came in that night and is starting. You'll have another person that's on their third week. Another. So you had to become a multitasking instructor like nobody's business. So boy, did that, um, that made me a better trainer and everybody who works with me a better trainer. And I had some trainers who could not do it. Their brain couldn't work in that way. And I get it. When you get like a lot of people on one day and a not so many people on another day. It kind of is, but it kind of, um, evens out, which is weird because I had so many fears before I started. Um, I thought that, that that was going to happen. Like we're going to have like 25 people on Monday and nobody on Wednesday. Believe it or not, that did not happen. Um, there were times when we just got, uh, extra, I like the class just got big and I had to add more, more time slots, but it never got to where I couldn't handle it. Let me tell you what, this is really kind of funny. When I first switched, people actually called and said, cause I was in a panic before I switched. I was like, people don't know. I don't know if people are going to want this. Right. I had people call and they said, you know, they asked questions, you know? And so, um, how much does it cost and blah, blah, blah. And then I said, yeah, and you can come three times a week. And I actually had probably about a good many people that said three times a week. Oh no, I don't want to do that. Like they did not, the prospect of having to come three times a week made them completely retreat. I can't do that. Isn't that my body? But, but listen, Susan, I, yeah, I was scared then. I was like, uh, I don't know if people are going to, and, and it did drop momentarily. The registrations kind of dipped for a second. And I said, I'm going to hold steadfast because you know what? Maybe those people that are, are intimidated by coming three times a week or don't want that. Yeah. Maybe that's not the person I want. Maybe I need to

hold on. Cause the people who want more training are out there. Yeah. And I, yeah. So now this is what, now I get people calling and say three times a week. What? And I don't have to pay more. I get all that. Yeah. So that's the person I, I got finally reached the person that I wanted anyway. And, um, and now it's just going so fabulous. And that's what you, that's what you want. You know, when we started our online classes in 2008 and I said, there's like millions of people around the world that have dogs that could afford our class, but we don't want them all. We want the people who are our people. Right. Right. So there will be people that are listening to this conversation. A lot of people just want free stuff and they're happy, like going around and taking little bits and bits and pieces and, and, and never really getting that kind of relationship with their dog that they could, if they would invest in themselves. Right. So, you know, it's, it's okay as a dog trainer to, I think it's fabulous that you stuck with it. No way. The value in getting a chance to get mentored training three times a week. Those are the people that I want because they think more, they, they expect more of themselves and they don't, they have lower expectations of their dog. Absolutely. If they come more often, they're going to see the progress. They're going to. It's, it's. Absolutely. Lori, this has been fantastic. Thank you. Um, I love your, the insight of what you're doing in the in-person classes. Please keep on sharing your positivity and your outlooks on social media. You're a blessing to everybody that's training dogs and everybody that owns a dog. So if you haven't followed Lori, jump over to canine diva and, um, thank you for being with us tonight. All right. Thank you, Susan. Congratulations. Thank you.