(no subject)
There is a particular kind of pain that comes with being accused of cruelty, in the case of training dogs for whom you are their last stop before euthanasia.
I write this with the dog in question gazing at me, I say "You're a good dog" and she wags her stump tail furiously, rolls over on her back for pets, and when they are not forthcoming, rolls around rubbing her back on the floor.
A man yells something at me about yanking on my dog's neck, about putting the collar on me, about "there are other ways to do it, bitch!" before nobly driving out of the Wal-Mart parking lot. I ignore him and calmly re-stand my dog, who is trying to walk away from her stand-stay because there is a man six feet away at an electrical box. I am shaking with adrenaline (how else can my body respond to a man stronger than me yelling with such anger?), with anger, with despair.
There is absolutely no way for me to convey to you the complexity of what this dog and I are doing right now. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what she was like when I first got her. You simply cannot imagine it, as I barely can, having been there. All you see is a mostly obedient dog, who gets a correction when she is not obedient. And you fuss at me over that, over why are you picking on that dog when they are such a good dog, having no idea that the only reason this dog is not lunging at the man six feet away is because of four months of training - not treat training, balanced training. You are not capable of understanding why it is important that she follows my hand signals. You don't care to know. You imply that I am using excessive force without understanding the tremendous volume of her fear, without knowing that no amount of cookies can speak more loudly to her than the fear does, and that only holding her accountable to her obedience can pull her out of her fear to focus on something more compelling.
You can't say "there are other ways to do it" when you don't even know what we're doing. Because if you knew that, if you'd ever tried to train a problem dog, you'd know that there simply is not another way to do it. Because other ways of training do not produce the same results. Because with a purely positive trainer, this dog would never get to leave the house, would never meet any new people, any new dogs. Or at least, not without being terrified out of her wits, not without lunging and barking and growling, and biting if her handler let their attention falter. Certainly would never, ever be safe to walk through the stream of people coming and going out of a store front, with the random children that reach their hands into dog's faces without asking if it's alright to do so.
As a person with anxiety, I understand a piece of where this dog is, on a personal level. I understand the tremendous value of giving her something else to think about other than her fear, giving her freedom from her compulsion to nervously, incessantly scan her environment. Freedom from the constant desire to bolt and hide, from fear so strong that it leads her to lunge at people to drive them away.
I am willing to bet that you have not sat with the dogs slated for euthanasia, petting them and crying in their kindness and ignorance, knowing how absurd it is that they are going to be killed in 12 hours for their intolerance of strange dogs. You don't know how many trainers would have told you to euthanize this dog, too, for her fear of strange people. I think that if you asked her, she'd rather be trained than dead.
But you don't care to know any of that. You just want to "give me a piece of your mind", to feel self-righteous. You don't want to try to help this dog, you don't want to train her, you don't want to give her a home. You just want to soothe your ego with the certainty that even if you're wrong about everything else, at least for SURE you are right about that awful woman yanking on that dog's collar, and you made damn sure she knew it.
My friend pointed out the irony of how extremely aggressive such people are about letting you know that they don't approve of your training methods because of how "harsh" they are. I've never in my life heard a balanced trainer assault a purely positive trainer for the fact that the results of their ineffective training methods are killing dogs as "incorrugibles". My methods aren't killing dogs, they're helping the dogs that the purely positive people have failed.
This is the world I live in, and this will keep happening, and I will keep ignoring them, while my heart cries out in the tremendous grief of how much damage those beliefs cause, and how perversely unjust it is.
I write this with the dog in question gazing at me, I say "You're a good dog" and she wags her stump tail furiously, rolls over on her back for pets, and when they are not forthcoming, rolls around rubbing her back on the floor.
A man yells something at me about yanking on my dog's neck, about putting the collar on me, about "there are other ways to do it, bitch!" before nobly driving out of the Wal-Mart parking lot. I ignore him and calmly re-stand my dog, who is trying to walk away from her stand-stay because there is a man six feet away at an electrical box. I am shaking with adrenaline (how else can my body respond to a man stronger than me yelling with such anger?), with anger, with despair.
There is absolutely no way for me to convey to you the complexity of what this dog and I are doing right now. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what she was like when I first got her. You simply cannot imagine it, as I barely can, having been there. All you see is a mostly obedient dog, who gets a correction when she is not obedient. And you fuss at me over that, over why are you picking on that dog when they are such a good dog, having no idea that the only reason this dog is not lunging at the man six feet away is because of four months of training - not treat training, balanced training. You are not capable of understanding why it is important that she follows my hand signals. You don't care to know. You imply that I am using excessive force without understanding the tremendous volume of her fear, without knowing that no amount of cookies can speak more loudly to her than the fear does, and that only holding her accountable to her obedience can pull her out of her fear to focus on something more compelling.
You can't say "there are other ways to do it" when you don't even know what we're doing. Because if you knew that, if you'd ever tried to train a problem dog, you'd know that there simply is not another way to do it. Because other ways of training do not produce the same results. Because with a purely positive trainer, this dog would never get to leave the house, would never meet any new people, any new dogs. Or at least, not without being terrified out of her wits, not without lunging and barking and growling, and biting if her handler let their attention falter. Certainly would never, ever be safe to walk through the stream of people coming and going out of a store front, with the random children that reach their hands into dog's faces without asking if it's alright to do so.
As a person with anxiety, I understand a piece of where this dog is, on a personal level. I understand the tremendous value of giving her something else to think about other than her fear, giving her freedom from her compulsion to nervously, incessantly scan her environment. Freedom from the constant desire to bolt and hide, from fear so strong that it leads her to lunge at people to drive them away.
I am willing to bet that you have not sat with the dogs slated for euthanasia, petting them and crying in their kindness and ignorance, knowing how absurd it is that they are going to be killed in 12 hours for their intolerance of strange dogs. You don't know how many trainers would have told you to euthanize this dog, too, for her fear of strange people. I think that if you asked her, she'd rather be trained than dead.
But you don't care to know any of that. You just want to "give me a piece of your mind", to feel self-righteous. You don't want to try to help this dog, you don't want to train her, you don't want to give her a home. You just want to soothe your ego with the certainty that even if you're wrong about everything else, at least for SURE you are right about that awful woman yanking on that dog's collar, and you made damn sure she knew it.
My friend pointed out the irony of how extremely aggressive such people are about letting you know that they don't approve of your training methods because of how "harsh" they are. I've never in my life heard a balanced trainer assault a purely positive trainer for the fact that the results of their ineffective training methods are killing dogs as "incorrugibles". My methods aren't killing dogs, they're helping the dogs that the purely positive people have failed.
This is the world I live in, and this will keep happening, and I will keep ignoring them, while my heart cries out in the tremendous grief of how much damage those beliefs cause, and how perversely unjust it is.