The Most Important Lesson I’ve Learned about Dog Training

Michael Baugh CDBC

I have been in the dog training business since 1999. My first client lived in a high-rise on Lake Erie in Cleveland. Her Bichon would steal bits of paper, socks, and underwear, then race around the apartment with his prize. I’d learned enough to help, not bad for a beginner. But I had no clue about the powerful lessons that were still to come.

For years, I read nothing but books about dog behavior. I lost count of the courses, workshops, and seminars, both online and in person. I pursued graduate studies, going deeper and deeper. Learning thrills me.

There were mistakes. Painful losses. Tears. Early on, a large dog sent me to the ER. I sometimes rub my fingers over the scars without thinking. My body remembers.

From all of that — the study, the money spent, the hours invested, and the decades of experience — one lesson stands above the rest. Dog training is about dogs, yes. Teaching dog training is about people.

Prizing the Client

I love the awkward truth of that phrase. Psychologist Carl Rogers coined it as part of his work on unconditional positive regard. As teachers of dog behavior and behavior change, we must care for our human clients as much as their dogs. Rogers suggests that to teach well and to be of real help, we must love our clients.

We do not have to agree with them. But we have to find meaningful common ground. A genuine human connection is not optional. It is the foundation.

Paying Attention Comes First

Dog training should not be a list of problems to solve. We show up with knowledge and experience. We often arrive with solutions ready. But we are not there to teach our agenda.

Listen deeply. Pay attention. Let us discover what our client truly needs and how it fits into their real life with their dog.

Caring for the Relationship That Matters

Teaching dog training is about relationships. It begins with the relationship between trainer and human learner. We prize the client.

More importantly, it is about our client’s relationship with their dog. This is why we teach with intelligence and compassion. It’s why we teach positive reinforcement methods. They protect and grow the relationship between people and their dogs.

Positive reinforcement works. It is love in action.

Love your fellow human, your prized client. Pay attention to them and to what they need. Care for their relationship with their dog.

From the kind woman with her small, fluffy white dog to now, this work continues to nurture me. I can think of no more meaningful way to spend my mental, emotional, and creative energy. I turn sixty this year, nearly half of it spent helping people live better lives with their dogs. When I think about that, I smile.

What a gift. What a joy it is to begin again each day.

Michael teaches dog training in Sedona, AZ. He specializes in helping people with aggressive dog training.

What is Person Centered Dog Training?

Michael Baugh CDBC

Person-centered dog training begins with an idea from psychologist Carl Rogers, one of the founders of humanistic psychology. Rogers believed people have a natural capacity for growth and change, and that the right relationship can bring it out. He first called his approach client-centered therapy and later referred to it as person-centered therapy. Instead of the expert “fixing” the client, Rogers taught that clients themselves can guide their own progress when met with empathy, acceptance, and authenticity.

I’ve studied Carl Rogers for over thirty years. His contributions are more than a series of techniques. In fact, he referred to the person-centered approach as a “way of being.” And his influence extended far beyond the therapist-client relationship. Rogers taught his person-centered way of being to health care providers, parents, educators, and even world leaders. Today, person-centered techniques are the norm in all forms of therapy, and we see their impact in business leadership, ministry, and coaching.

What is most important about the person-centered way of being?

Relationship is everything. Whether it’s a therapist and a client, a teacher and a student, a father and a son, a doctor and a patient, or a dog behavior consultant and a dog guardian, their relationship is the intervention. That’s a bold statement. But if we remember the foundational idea that humans have an innate capacity for growth and change, it’s easy to see how the right learning relationship and environment can make that happen.

What makes a person-centered relationship work?

Empathy — deeply understanding another’s internal world and communicating that understanding. Empathy is an early twentieth-century translation of the German word Einfühlung, which literally means “in-feeling.” We could say we are feeling into our client’s experience.
Unconditional Positive Regard — accepting the other person without judgment or conditions, affirming their worth regardless of behavior. This can be hard.
Congruence (authenticity) — in our discussion, this is the dog behavior consultant being genuine and transparent, rather than hiding behind a professional or social façade. We trainers sometimes struggle with this. Let’s own our expertise. Let’s also show up with a healthy dose of humor and humility. Be you. It’s enough.

What are the challenges of person-centered dog training?

In psychotherapy, clients find their own way to solutions with the help of the person-centered relationship. Remember, the relationship is the thing.

In education, teachers create an environment with resources, but the learners guide their own experience. This was revolutionary in the mid-twentieth century, and the ideas live on today.

Dog training is rarely this self-directed. We’re used to giving clients a list of tasks, with a right and wrong way to do each one. Too often, we:

Dismiss clients’ training ideas.
Criticize their past attempts (even when some were successful).
Insist on rigid “trainer-approved” methods.

That kind of teaching wrecks the trainer–client relationship. It’s also the opposite of a person-centered approach.

How does a person-centered dog trainer make room for client self-direction?

We show up with empathy, authenticity, and unconditional positive regard. We’re not perfect, but we are ourselves. From that place, we help clients gain the skills and knowledge they need to work with their dogs, and to solve problems on their own.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Let clients set their own goals. It’s their dog, not yours.
Honor their skills and experience. Ask what has worked and what hasn’t. Build on the good, set aside the rest.
Share new dog training skills as options. Explain why you think they may help, then let clients choose which to learn.
Offer resources. Point clients to videos, articles, or handouts so they can learn independently.
Encourage creativity. Ask what the client has tried, reinforce smart solutions, and integrate them into the plan. (One client showed me how mat training diffused an object-guarding problem. It was brilliant.)
Celebrate wins. Clients will want to give you credit, but keep the focus on them. They did the work. You provided the relationship and environment for learning to happen.

Carl Rogers’ person-centered approach reminds us that people learn and grow best in relationships built on empathy, acceptance, and authenticity. When we apply this to dog training, we empower our clients to take ownership of their learning, to make choices, to become fully involved. If all this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve been teaching dogs like this for years, some of us for decades.

“I feel enriched when I can truly prize or care for or love another person and when I can let that feeling flow out to that person.” (Rogers, A Way of Being, 1980). My dear prized trainer friends, this is why we get up each morning. We change dogs’ lives; we save them sometimes. And we are doing the same for our fellow humans. Let that sink in. Smile on it. This is who we are.

Michael Baugh teaches dog training and dog trainers in Sedona, Arizona. He specializes in aggressive dog training.

Are Dogs in a New Phase of Evolution?

Michael Baugh CDBC

You may have seen the headline: “Dogs are Entering a New Phase of Evolution.” The hoopla is over the discovery that some dogs have a genetic variant that makes their oxytocin receptors more sensitive. Linköping University in Sweden did the study. Dogs given a nasal spray of the hormone oxytocin were more likely to seek help from their owners in solving a puzzle. Oxytocin facilitates social bonding, among other things. It’s often misnamed “the love hormone.” The implication: dogs with enhanced oxytocin receptors seek help from their humans, suggesting an evolutionary shift towards dog-human bonding. I can see how folks might make that connection. But it’s a small, preliminary study. Calling this a new phase of evolution might be a stretch. We will see.

One thing we know for sure. Human expectations of dogs have changed. We changed the playing field for dogs a lot.

As recently as the 1990s, most dogs in America lived outside. They caught rats and scared off potential intruders (and neighbor kids and postal carriers). Rural dogs guarded and herded livestock. If a dog slept in your bed, you’d likely wake up with fleas and ticks on you.

When Dr. Ian Dunbar founded the Association of Pet Dog Trainers in 1993, he called pet dog training a specialty. (APDT later re-named itself The Association of Professional Dog Trainers). Dunbar was ahead of the curve. So was John Katz when he wrote his prescient book, The New Work of Dogs, in 2004. “Dog training was little known and little needed, since most dogs merely wandered their neighborhoods and were seldom walked on leashes.” Katz predicted the shift in how dogs would soon fit into the human condition. It had already begun, in fact. Leave the rats and the sheep outside. Invite the dogs in. They were family. Emotional surrogates. Our friends, counselors and confidants.

Katz’s worst predictions also came true. The world changed quickly, and it’s still changing. Human psychology researchers suspect (I think rightly) that we’ve changed technology and social pressures faster than we can keep up. Humans have outpaced our own evolution. We’ve become divisive and isolated. The resulting pressure on our dogs was inevitable. Our powerful hunters and herders now wear clothes. Dogs who retrieved fowl and repelled interlopers are our emotional caregivers. They used to be in the background, outside. Now they are the center of our worlds. It might be too much for them. The evolutionary shift isn’t coming fast enough – for them or us.

An old mentor once said dog breeders could put aggressive dog trainers like me out of business if they started selecting for temperament instead of looks. It’s true. After all, we bred dogs for hunting and herding and guarding. Plus fear, the fuel of aggressive behavior, is heritable in dogs. Why not breed for nicer dogs who can fit into our families better? Fair enough. Breeders have been doing their part. We may not be in a new era of dog evolution. It’s likely we are seeing the results of selective breeding for calmer, more biddable dogs. That is good news, no matter what you call it.

But breeding is not enough.

I started my dog training career in 1999. For well over two decades, my work has been about helping dogs and people understand each other better. It’s been less about militaristic obedience and more about cooperation. Let’s be honest. We are living in a stressful time. The human condition is beautiful but also hard. Teaching a dog how to thrive in our complicated human world can be equally beautiful, and also hard.

We have a long history, we humans and dogs. Fossil records show we have co-evolved for the past 14,000 years. We’ve been in this together. We still are. Oxytocin plays a role and probably has for a long time. If you and your dog spent a few minutes looking lovingly at each other (I recommend it), you would both have increased levels of oxytocin in your bloodstream compared to the baseline levels before you started ogling. And if some dogs are developing better receptors, so be it.

But more oxytocin alone may not be the magic formula. Oxytocin does many things in human bodies. It assists with uterine contractions (the childbirth kind and the monthly kind). It’s also responsible for lactation in new mothers. Oxytocin shows up in men too, enhancing connections with mates and offspring. Like most good things, though, there are side effects. Oxytocin apparently causes in-group bias and increased agitation and aggression toward out-group members. What does that mean? People (and presumably dogs) juiced up on oxytocin may groove on their family and friends, but may also be more likely to shun or attack those who are outside their primary group. Trust me, your dog trainer who specializes in aggression is not excited about that part.

What do we do with all this information? My Latin teacher in high school would say, “jot it down in your gee whiz notebook.” It’s fun stuff, but it won’t show up on any test. Hormones and other neurochemicals are a fascinating, ever-changing soup. We know a little about it. And there is so much more to learn. They definitely play a role in behavior change and a good board certified veterinary behaviorist can help. Genetics plays a role too. Genes are not written in indelible ink. We are learning more about that every day. The environment activates many genes and leaves others quiet. There’s so much more to learn about the genetics of behavior. We’ll uncover that information in time, I’m sure.

Evolution is the slow and steady work of genes. The really good variations get passed on when the organism reproduces. Adaptation results from trial and success. So does learning. It’s the result of trial and success. And, oh my, are our dogs exceptionally developed learners. Learning: dogs have that one nailed.

That’s the true work of dogs. Isn’t it? Learning new skills, new variations on a theme, new ways to live with us. (Oh, we are so unpredicable, we humans). And what about us? What’s the new work of humans? Breathe. Stay present. Be kind to ourselves and others. Those come to mind. Then, ogle at your dog and show him how to be a champ at life with you and the crazy world around him.

Michael Baugh specializes in Aggressive Dog Training in Sedona, Arizona