Why I Will Regret Our Session With 'Balanced' Dog Trainers For the Rest of My Life

An anonymous account of the damage so-called 'balanced' trainers cause brought to you by Alicia's House of Paws...

In March 2018, we adopted a gorgeous eight-month old rescue dog who, at best guess, is a lab/collie cross. We called her Daisy.

She was a skinny, nervous little thing who had been found on the streets at 10 weeks old, then lived in a communal compound with other dogs, then a foster home before finally coming to us. She was full of energy and fit into our family straight away.

We worked hard to help her decompress and find her feet, and enjoyed wonderful countryside walks and playtimes in the local park. She was clearly nervous of strange people, preferring to keep her distance, but she played beautifully with other dogs and our world began to expand.

Daisy shows her herding instinct

Then, in July 2018, Daisy was lapping water from a tree stump when a female jogger came through the trees a metre or so away from us. The jogger screamed when she saw us, saying that she was terrified of dogs and to keep Daisy away.

As she ran off, Daisy – who had been visibly worried by the scream – noticed that the jogger had flashing lights on her trainers. She took off in hot pursuit, jumping at the lights in over-aroused leaps and attempting to herd the woman. The jogger was furious and threatened to call the police.

As the jogger shouted at me, Daisy’s recall failed for the first time. She ran away and barked from a distance, clearly scared but not presenting any physical threat.

A training gift?

Worried about what had happened, I went home feeling upset. Later that day, I mentioned the event to my boyfriend’s mum. That evening, she called me to say that she’d been on Google and found a female ex-police dog trainer locally with loads of Google reviews and a £60 call-out fee for a two-hour “behavioural” home visit. She told me she’d booked her to come out the following evening as a present.

I checked the reviews and saw that they were positive, so my partner and I decided we had nothing to lose (if only we’d known). The next evening, the trainer arrived with her husband, introducing him as an experienced police dog trainer too.

Daisy barked from her bed, worried about two strangers entering her space, especially this huge, unsmiling man. She immediately jumped up on to the sofa and hid behind me, shaking.

I remember the trainers looking at one another and the man asking, “Do you normally let her on the sofa like that?”

Confused, I replied, “Yes, although she wouldn’t usually be trying to hide like this”.

“She’s actually trying to dominate you. She thinks she’s the pack leader and you need to show her otherwise. Make her get down on the floor.”

I remember asking how a dog sitting on the sofa was trying to dominate us. The man cautioned, “She’s trying to be physically higher than you. Make her get down”.

This was how the training session opened. Within seconds, I felt thrown off-balance and intimidated (the trainer’s website hadn’t mentioned the husband) but also so inexperienced that I convinced myself that my instincts didn’t count.

Over the next 20 minutes, the husband and wife team waxed lyrical about the “Alpha theory”. We must never let Daisy through a door first; she must never eat before us; she shouldn’t enter a room without being given permission; and she must never, in any circumstances, be allowed on the sofa or into our bedroom.

Every time we asked why, they said she needed to know her place.

I was cynical. I grew up around dogs and have loads of friends with dogs. None of them observe such prescriptive rules.

Naming our worst fears

As the conversation went on, the tone became more ominous. The trainers said they were always seeing women who were scared to treat dogs like animals, wanting to baby them instead.

Both of the trainers started talking about how “a nervous dog is a dangerous dog”. They said that, by chasing the jogger, Daisy should – in their opinion - have already received a strike under the Dangerous Dog’s Act. “Let her do that again,” they warned, “and our police friends may have to take her away”.

“You’re on a fast track to getting that dog put to sleep,” they kept saying.

I felt sick.

Yes, I know Daisy had chased a jogger, but it had been a very unusual situation. The flashing shoes, the jogger screaming while Daisy was drinking – it hadn’t been an average walk in the park.

The male trainer stood up. “Right, we’d like you to meet us at the local park so we can show you some training tips up there”.

Daisy barked frantically at the man as he stood before running and hiding under our dining table. She continued to bark from her hiding place.

I remember the trainer telling us to get her out. As I called her to me, he pinned her to the floor, rolling her on her side with force. “This is the Alpha roll,” he said. “This is how you show a dog that you’re in charge”. I was shaking, horrified but also frightened into silence. Maybe I didn’t know anything about dogs, after all.

He then wanted to know what we did if Daisy barked at the door when the postman came. He told us that from now on, we should tap her hard on the nose every time she barked. “It’s only what her mother would do to train her. You wouldn’t be hurting her as dog’s have thicker skin and bone”.

I told the trainer that I would never hit her, to which he replied, “And that’s why you have a dangerous dog that terrifies joggers.”

From bad to worse

The rest of the “training” session went from bad to worse. With Daisy cowering in the corner, the trainers told us that she should be muzzled whenever we left the house and that our harness and lead combo was just encouraging her to pull and control the walks.

The man popped out to their van and returned with a choke chain and a cloth muzzle, which he wrestled on to Daisy. “This is the kit you need to use every day,” he warned. “Right, I want you both to follow us”.

Crying, I realised that the trainers intended to put Daisy in their van rather than our car. They both lifted her into a crate and said they would meet us at the local park.

The trainer told me to calm down, there was no need to cry. We just obviously didn’t have a clue about dogs and they were trying to help before she ended up doing something that got her put to sleep.

Flooding Daisy

When we arrived at the park, a football match was taking place. The trainers said that they wanted to show us a technique called “flooding”, which they wanted us to do on a daily basis to cure Daisy’s anxieties around strange people.

“We need her to learn that men don’t present a threat to her but the only way we can do that is to force her to interact with them but with this muzzle on so she can’t react to anyone.”

Daisy was trembling and I realised that she wasn’t able to pant as the muzzle was forcing her mouth closed. It was a hot July evening; I just wanted to take it off and go home but the trainers kept asking if I wanted her to be taken away and destroyed?

I was paralysed with fear as I watched them drag Daisy into the middle of the football match where they asked every man on the pitch to come and stroke her. Diarrhoea was falling out of her but the trainers just told me to clean it up.

The trainers told us that we should bring Daisy to the park or a local supermarket car park every day and ask strangers to touch her. “It’s the only way to cure her,” they said.

With the flooding session over, the trainers led Daisy to a field at the back of the park where they said they wanted to teach us how to train a reliable recall. They attached a 10 metre training lead to the choke collar and then said you have to call the dog’s name, shout “come” and then drag the dog to you, regardless of whether they want to come or not.

“Do that multiple times a day,” they said as they demonstrated, “and she’ll soon learn to come when she’s told”.

A dire warning

Before the trainers left the session, they insisted that we buy a choke chain, training lead, cloth muzzle and Halti lead from them. They said they couldn’t leave without knowing that we had the proper kit. They charged us an extra £60 for these items, essentially doubling their callout fee. Goodness knows why we paid it – I just know I wanted them to go.

Their final warning was, “We’ll be watching you. If we see you out without a muzzle or with Daisy off-lead, we might have to mention that there’s a dangerous dog in the area to our police friends”.

They then said we should make sure to leave a positive Google review.

Finally, they left.

As my other half closed the front door and we heard them walk away, I sat on the kitchen floor and cried.

Daisy was cowering under the dining table, utterly traumatised.

I remember sobbing, “I’m not doing any of it. I’m never going to treat her that way. I don’t care what they say”.

An awful ripple effect

I believe that the consequences of that one appointment are still being felt three years later. It created what I can only describe as a ripple effect that has turned our lives upside down.

You see, it was weeks before Daisy trusted us enough to let us near her again. She became shut down and remote but also terrified of being left alone for even a moment.

When we did see strangers, she started to bark and lunge at them, trying to make them go away. As she became more and more fearful, we changed our walks to places where she’d see fewer people. It was the only way she could relax outside.

We would see the trainers driving around in their van and they would point at their eyes and then at us to let me know that they were watching. They texted me every day for two weeks asking why I hadn’t left a Google review yet.

I started to feel more and more anxious on every walk. All my joy and excitement had gone. Would Daisy bark or growl at a person? Would I make a mistake with her that could cost her life? It really did feel that bleak.

And, of course, the more anxious I felt, the more she started looking for danger around every corner. We were trapped in a vicious cycle.

Daisy’s fear of humans is cemented

In June 2019, I was walking Daisy in a dog-friendly space when a man came through the entrance shouting and swearing about all the “f***ing dogs”. I happened to be the person nearest the entrance so he ran at me, jabbing his finger and shouting in my face. Scared, Daisy barked at the man. Before I knew it, he had grabbed her by the neck, pinned her to the floor and was hitting her with a rucksack. Tin cans rolled out all over the floor.

When I tried to pull him off, he grabbed me by the throat.

Daisy’s fear and distrust of men was cemented. She would bark, lunge and growl whenever she saw a man.

Over the next few months, she was bitten by a friend’s dog and then pinned by a large pack of dogs at our local woods. She started to become fearful of dogs too. In November 2019, she lunged at a dog and accidentally pulled me over, breaking my arm in two places.

We are now at the point where Daisy can only be walked in remote places or in secure fields that I pay for several times a week. She has extreme anxiety and needs a world that’s very small and safe.

We’re working on proper muzzle training (with a muzzle she can pant in) but it’s slow going to build positive associations.

I would give anything for a do over. I often wonder how things might have been without the damage caused by that “training” session. I still feel sick and physically shake when those trainers drive past us.

Training the dog in front of us with positive-reinforcement only

All I can do is focus on where we go from here.

For the past year, we’ve had the support of an amazing force-free behaviourist. I’ve taken numerous courses in dog behaviour and communication and read every book about positive reinforcement that I can get my hands on.

We’ve incorporated freework into Daisy’s days, parkour, sniffing, and enrichment activities around our home. We use secure fields where Daisy can run off-lead with her few doggy friends. I use games-based training and the CARE protocol to help Daisy cope with the outside world.

Our bond is incredible. She will turn out to be my greatest teacher.

But I am still so disappointed in myself. I should have fought harder for her. I should have listened to my instincts.

I know the trainers we encountered are – hopefully - an extreme example of so-called “balanced trainers” but I find it incredible how many people still believe in the Alpha myth. When I phoned a national animal welfare charity about these trainers, they said they hadn’t strictly done anything wrong or illegal and that we should have researched their methods more carefully.

I know that’s right.

And that would be my warning to anyone who has been kind enough to read this article. Do your due diligence. Listen to your gut if it tells you to walk away.

Advocate for your dog

Anyone who is still promoting the Alpha theory or tells you that you need to be the pack leader hasn’t updated their knowledge in a long time. It’s been long debunked.

The use of aversive training methods can appear to work, until it doesn’t. It’s about quick fixes and more for the human’s convenience than humanely supporting the dog.

With a technique like flooding, the dog simply learns that there’s no point reacting. No one is coming to help them. They may supress their desire to create distance but there’s a very real risk that, when they’re next scared, they may escalate their behaviour. And who can blame them?

Imagine feeling frightened of something or someone and then having the person you trust most in the world either refuse to help you or, worse still, punish you for being frightened. That’s what aversives (choke-collars, shock collars, alpha rolls etc) teach us to do.

Daisy is our first dog. We trusted what turned out to be the wrong professionals for seasoned advice.

I will always regret what I didn’t know. But now I know better, I promise to do better. Our precious girl deserves it.