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Dog trainers – ever wonder if you could be serving your clients better? 

In this episode I wanted to zoom out and look at dog training from the lens of the services we are providing for our clients, and how we can get better outcomes. I bring in Jeff Silverman from Training Tracks in Cincinnati, Ohio to unpack:

• How to build rapport with clients from the beginning
• Why having a variety of services is necessary to meet your client’s needs more effectively
• Creating clarity around the role of the client, and the role of the trainer in changing the dog’s behavior
• How holding clients accountable is not about compliance, but cooperation
• And more!

If you’re a trainer and you’re feeling stuck on this very issue, I invite you to join my private mastermind, The Case Collaborative, starting January 4th. 

About Jeff:

Jeff Silverman and his wife Mel own Training Tracks in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. They have two facilities where they offer pet dog training, behavior consulting, boarding, and daycare with an emphasis on providing practical client-focused training for family pets.

Jeff started training in 1996 as a shelter volunteer looking to help keep dogs in their homes and remains focused on helping average pet owners get the most out of life with their dogs.

While Training Tracks primarily teaches family pet manners, Jeff focuses on aggression and fear in his personal caseload. Jeff has volunteered for all the R+ focused professional organizations including stints as Chair of the APDT board, on the IAABC certification review committee, and much more.

Transcript

Jessica: [00:00:00] I am Jessica Wheatcraft, and this is Rethinking Reactivity, A podcast designed to educate, empower, and equip the modern handler of reactive dogs. Whether you have a reactive dog or you help people with their reactive dogs, you’re in the right place.

In today’s episode, I wanted to talk about something that I don’t think gets talked about enough in the dog training world, and that is how to create more successful outcomes with our clients by focusing on the services we’re providing them and the type of relationship we build with them throughout this process.

Leash reactivity is a complex behavior challenge to work through, and our clients are often coming to us needing a lot of help. And I have to be honest here, I think there are dog trainers who are holding their clients and [00:01:00] therefore their dogs back from reaching their fullest potential by not setting realistic goals from the beginning, not developing effective communication skills with their clients, and also by not providing the services and support that clients with reactive dogs really need.

Dog training is not just showing up and training the dog. We also need to consider the structure in which we execute these services and the time that we’re spending with our clients. I wanted to bring in Jeff Silverman to help us take an objective look at our roles as dog trainers. Jeff and his wife Mel, operate training tracks in Cincinnati, Ohio, where they run two dog training facilities that provide a wide range of services, including board and trains day school, group classes, daycare and boarding.

I have always appreciated Jeff’s perspective on dog training services in [00:02:00] general and the ways that we interact with our clients, and I was excited when he agreed to come on the show and talk to us about it. While today’s episode is going to lean a little bit more towards dog trainers, if you’re a pet parent, I think you’ll find it insightful in regards to what we as dog trainers need to consider as part of our profession.

Let’s dive in.

Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the show. I have been looking forward to this conversation for a long time because I have not talked about this topic on my podcast yet, which is this whole interplay of the trainer and client relationship and the services that we provide, and what we need to make that relationship as successful as possible.

And so I’m really thrilled to have you here ’cause you have so much experience in this area and I can’t wait to dive in.

Jeff: Oh, awesome. Well, I’m really [00:03:00] excited to be here as well.

Jessica: Cool. So I know that you train outta Cincinnati, and right before I hit record, you were telling me that you actually have two training facilities.

Do you wanna share just a little bit more about how that came about?

Jeff: Yeah. We, we’ve actually evolved a lot over the years. So this really started as a sideline for me. Originally it was a hobby and I volunteered at a shelter. My first business was born when I was complaining to a mentor about people I helped for the shelter and he asked what I was charging them and I said, nothing.

I’m doing it for the shelter. And he said, well, that’s why they’re not listening to you. So it was a hobby for a while, but we rented a couple of small facilities where we did group classes and occasional privates, did a lot of in-homes. I quit my day job in 2009 to do this full time. My wife Mel, quit hers about a year later and we started.

Doing [00:04:00] mostly behavior board and trains in our home. So it was just one or two dogs, and we still did the group classes and everything else. But as it evolved over time, we started hiring employees and we started taking more and more board and trains. Eventually we moved out of our old home, but we still, we increased our board and trains and added a very small daycare.

And then last January we moved into a 5,500 square foot facility on an acre and a half. Um, it’s set up very much like a home. We have 12 different rooms. We call ’em real life rooms. So with like the room I’m in now has a coffee table, a tv, a couch, a chair.

We have two other rooms like that as well as playroom. So we really try to make the dogs who are staying with us have as close to a homelike experience as they can. So we’ve got five full-time trainers, and then we’ve got six or seven care techs. But our, our care techs do a lot of training as well. So, [00:05:00] you know, e everybody in the facility is pretty behaviorally savvy.

We do board and train. We do a drop off day school. We do group classes, private lessons. We have a small daycare that’s just dogs that we’ve trained and we board dogs that we’ve trained.

Jessica: That’s amazing. And I really love how you’re describing this facility that you have that has so much space, an acre or acre and a half that you said.

And then you also have these real life rooms I can’t really think of a better way to be boarding and training dogs than to have that kind of setup.

Jeff: We did it in our house. After 12 years, we were ready to go home at night, but we wanted to keep the experience for the dogs as much like it was in our house as we possibly could.

Jessica: Yeah. That makes sense. And, and you do need that separation, right? From work and personal. I have some really close colleagues who do the board and trains inside of their own home. And that can be tough because the dog’s of course, always there. And so you don’t [00:06:00] really get that separation.

You don’t really get that downtime that we often need to separate ourselves from our work. So I can see why you opted to do this kind of facility. Yeah.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty rough towards the end there, but, but it was always the goal and, and yeah the whole team is just so happy to be in this big new facility.

Jessica: So one of the things that I know that you do really well, which is why I wanted you to come on the podcast, is the way that you set up your training programs with your clients and the whole communication around this whole process.

And I wanna dive into this, but I think maybe a way that I might preface this is that I think this podcast episode will be a little bit more geared towards dog trainers because we’re really gonna be diving into the types of services that we’re offering to our clients to help them with their dogs who have leash reactivity.

Why this is relevant the way that we work with our clients, why that is relevant. And [00:07:00] at the same time, I think it’s also gonna be helpful for any pet parents who are listening. ’cause then they can get a little bit of insight of what it’s like for us as dog trainers is trying to help people with their dogs and what are the things that we really need to consider.

And so I think the first area that I wanna start with is when a client first contacts you, how you’re building rapport, how you are starting to determine what’s gonna be the right service for them. And I know there’s a lot to unpack there, but I’m wondering if you could talk just a little bit more about your processes in terms of when somebody first contacts you and how you’re first getting that rapport and that information from the client.

Jeff: Okay. And the biggest part of our process is gonna terrify a lot of dog trainers, but we get inquiries both through a contact form on our website. We get phone calls, we get contacted through the Google Ads app and on Facebook. And I really like to [00:08:00] speak to people in real time. So I’m fortunate that I do have a team to do a lot of the training and the other work.

So I take that time in the process. But I feel when we’re real time back and forth and I can ask people questions, I can get a really good idea of what’s going on. Sometimes with the dog, sometimes not so much with the dog. But even that’s really important information. If my prospective client can.

Paint me a picture of what’s going on with the dog, then that gives me an idea of what they’re gonna be capable of as a client. If they clearly have done some training and know some techniques, I’m gonna have a different conversation than with some, you know, some people are really frustrated and they’re just thinking about what their dog is feeling and they’re giving me a narrative of their dog’s internal life, and I know, okay, I’m gonna have to approach how I explain how this works with them a little bit differently.

So the phone call is about me trying to get as much of a sense of what’s going on with the [00:09:00] dog as I can, but I also wanna get a sense of, does the owner have a minor problem? That would just be nice if it’s better. Is this something that’s a huge problem for them? And I want to get an idea of. Their values.

What role does the dog play in their life, their experience? Have they done training before? Do they talk about things in a way that shows some knowledge? Or are they just somebody who’s, you know, never had a dog or always had easy dogs and now you know, they’re overwhelmed by something. But I really, I wanna know where they are emotionally.

I wanna know what their priorities are. And then, you know, it depends what they’re calling about. Sometimes there’s a specific service that I’m gonna strongly recommend. Sometimes they’re interested in something. A lot of times I can sketch out and say, okay, there’s three different ways we could approach this and talk ’em through it that way.

But. I’m very much looking to know who they are. I [00:10:00] listened to your podcast episode with one of your clients and one of the, the questions I really loved was when you asked her what she was expecting when she started calling trainers and she said she really didn’t know what to expect. She didn’t know anything about it.

She’d never done that before. For most of my career, that was the overwhelming majority of my clients. I do get more these days who are more dog savvy, but I still think for a lot of people, they don’t know anything about our world and they’re calling in and they don’t know what to expect. So on that phone call, I’m trying to gauge what they’re expecting and educate them on what we do.

Jessica: Yes, I. I already knew that you did phone calls because there was a conversation on social media that I had seen, and that was also why you were on my radar because I also do phone calls and I will not work with a client unless I have had an opportunity to speak with them on the phone first. And [00:11:00] so I really love that you and I both really like doing the phone calls and that there’s also.

Some thing, I don’t really know where it came from in the industry of doing away with phone calls for some reason. And I find that there’s so much value in them for the exact reasons that you’re describing, because you’re able to get an overall sense of the client that you’re not gonna get through a form.

And I also don’t want to walk into a situation, meaning literally show up at somebody’s house and not really know what I’m walking into. Or if I was having the client meet me somewhere, if, you know, if I had a facility, I wouldn’t want that person to show up without really having an idea of, again, what are they bringing with them.

And some of that is because I like to be prepared. But a bigger part of that is because I really want to be able to make sure that [00:12:00] I am well matched with this client and that I. Am going to be able to, to actually help them, to provide them with what they are looking for. And I think that sometimes that can get lost in translation if we don’t do these phone calls.

And so I have said in the past, I think maybe might have been a newsletter in my mentorship or something where I said that doing phone calls with clients is gonna be the hill that I’m gonna die on. Like just am, I’m just gonna die on that hill. I just think it’s important. And I also think we need to think from the client’s perspective that having somebody come into your home or you bring your dog, you know, to their facility and you know that this trainer is going to be looking at both you and your dog, you know, because there’s a very popular narrative out in the, in the dog world that says the reason why your dog is misbehaving, it’s because it’s your fault.

And so I think our clients [00:13:00] already are coming to us with probably feelings of, of worrying about being judged or feeling like it’s their fault that their dog is behaving this way when it might not be the case at all. And so I think that they’re coming to us with a certain sense of vulnerability and I think for that reason it makes sense for us to want to build rapport with somebody like this because I think that it can be a, a more intimate relationship than, for example, a plumber that comes over that’s there just to fix the sink or something.

Yes, they’re coming in your house. Yes, there’s a little bit of this person’s in your personal space, but I think a dog trainer, I think we have a very special role and that we often go into people’s homes. We have this really big. Peek into their lives and their relationship with their dog and everything, it touches on so many different areas of this person’s life.

And so I think for that reason, it’s not something that I just think like, [00:14:00] oh, I’m just showing up and doing this. I think it’s, it’s a big deal for a lot of people.

Jeff: Absolutely and it, that’s something I always say when I’m training my team is that we are there to ask people to change how they relate to a member of their family and our clients.

The kind of people who spend this kind of money on dog training, at least one person in that house usually very much sees that dog as a cherished member of the family. And hopefully they all do. And when you’re going in to tell someone, look. I know you love your dog and you relate to your dog this way, but now we want you to do this.

That is a very intimate thing and it does require a lot of trust. So, yeah, that, I like to build a rapport for that reason. I also, I refer out a lot . there are people I talk to, I think really need an intensive day trainer who’s gonna go to their home four days a week. I used to offer that service, but we don’t do that anymore.

So if I think that’s the best fit for someone, when I’ve been talking to [00:15:00] them, we’ve got several fantastic trainers in the area that do that. So I refer out for that for, you know, there’s some separation anxiety for a lot of resource guarding. I’ve got a couple of amazing virtual trainers that I can hook people up with.

Especially right now, I’m the only one doing one-on-one behavior cases. So like, I’m not taking new clients now till January, so I do a lot, it’s okay, is this the person that I can best help? Is this where I feel this person really needs us or can I get them to somebody sooner? Who’s gonna be able to do a good job and often even a better job.

Jessica: Yeah, exactly. We need to be able to. Have the skill to be able to see that from the very beginning of whether or not we’re gonna be a good match, and then whether or not we have a service that’s going to be able to best fit that client’s needs. And that leads me into this other topic that I wanna dive into, which is having services that [00:16:00] actually meet the client’s needs.

Because when I. Work with other trainers and they’re having difficulty with their cases. A really common thing that pops up is that the service that they’re offering, their client isn’t really meeting the client’s needs. So then therefore there’s already some friction involved because the client is probably feeling overwhelmed or they are having a difficult time trying to manage all of these things.

And then the trainer over here is probably wondering, well, why is it that when I show up, you know, the client hasn’t done, you know, their homework or this and this has not changed yet. And so there’s this friction that can occur between this relationship between the client and the dog trainer, and some of that friction.

Actually, I wouldn’t say even say some, I would say a lot of that can come down to. How you guys are actually working with one another. And [00:17:00] I don’t think that’s something that gets talked about enough is like, well what are you doing with this client as a trainer, right? Like, what service are you actually providing and is that actually what’s most beneficial for this client?

And so that’s what I wanted to talk about is, first I’m curious, how do you determine what’s going to be the best service for a particular client? And then I kind of wanna dive into the different services and like why somebody might choose one or over the other.

Jeff: Yeah. And that’s what I love so much about the phone calls and a lot of this, my thinking on this is informed from past careers I’ve had. So I worked in software development for about 13 years, and the role I gravitated towards is being the person who translated between the customers who needed software developed and the people who actually wrote the code.

In the nineties, during the.com boom, there was this huge problem that. [00:18:00] Business customers would come in and go tell the IT guys what they wanted and they wouldn’t have technologies they knew and they’d spend all this money and they’d get out to rolling out screens and the client would be like, well, that’s not what I wanted.

And it was because there wasn’t enough upfront communication. The later in the process you figure out something isn’t working, the more it costs you, the harder it is, the more damaging it’s gonna be to your relationship with your client.

So I want to know as much about where they’re coming from and where their dog is from the beginning, as I can possibly know. So it, in software, they call it requirements gathering. You go in and you sit down with the client, you find out exactly what business problem they’re trying to solve, what they’re doing today, how you can do it, and then.

You have to talk to them about their budget too. Uh, I think a lot of dog trainers are really uncomfortable with sales. I look at my sales process very much as education. So if they want their completely [00:19:00] out of control, you know, maniac of a dog to be able to be off leash on trails, I’ll tell them whether I think that’s even a realistic goal.

And if I do think it’s a realistic goal, I’m gonna say, okay, I can’t say for sure, but here’s what that training package would likely look like and how much time it’s gonna take us. And then we can pick our priorities. So I wanna know everything the client wants but I wanna know that golden path.

But then we’re gonna talk about what’s your schedule, what’s your family schedule? How on board is your family gonna be with this? Um, I wanna learn about their environment, where they take their dog, who’s in the dog’s life, because I can then get a picture of what it’s likely to take and the more of that I can get early to determine what program’s gonna be best for them, or even if I’m the best trainer for them, um, it’s gonna save everybody a lot of frustration down the road if we get ’em with the right program and the right service right from the beginning.

Jessica: Yeah, I think people underestimate how [00:20:00] much time it’s gonna take them to work with their dog. It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of changes to their routine and so forth. And I think that’s why certain programs like board and trains, where clients will feel like, oh, I don’t have to do any of this.

I can just send my dog away and it’s gonna come back perfectly trained, which we’ll talk about because I know you do board and trains at your facility as well. And so I really wanna talk about the owner role in training in general. But I’ll stick with just this this concept of, you know, why certain services like that are so appealing to people.

But I think you bring up a great point in that you’re asking these clients what sort of room, right in your daily life do you have here to be able to dedicate to the dog? And I think if you’re getting a sense that this is a really busy family, maybe they’ve got young kids, they are both working full [00:21:00] time, but then their goals are very lofty, and then the dog’s skillset is on the lower end, meaning the dog doesn’t really know a whole lot then.

All of those things don’t really add up to, in three private lessons, your dog is gonna be reliably off leash on a trail. It doesn’t work like that. Right. So that’s why us as trainers, it’s so important for us to be able to look at some of the different factors and determine, Hmm, okay, the likelihood of these clients being able to put the time in is maybe not as likely or, or is not as realistic as what it needs to be in order for them to reach their goals.

And so that conversation around what their goals are and then where their dog is at, and then what their budget is, I think is really important because it does help us have a starting point in terms of determining, okay. Maybe their budget isn’t as [00:22:00] big, so then maybe we need to readjust something about their training program or like, which priorities they have.

Maybe we might need to narrow the scope of their priorities in terms of picking only a few, if they only have a budget for a smaller training program. And I think that’s something that needs to be talked about from the very beginning, rather than what a lot of trainers do is. Well, let’s just see how this goes.

And then you’re running into problems later with your clients. So I’m curious what your thoughts are on that.

Jeff: Yeah and I agree with everything you said, and I think it gets down to a fundamental question about what our role is and the nature of our relationship with the clients. Because I think, and this isn’t just a dog training thing, I’ve seen this in two other industries I worked in, but when people are the experts on something, especially when they are experts who are very passionate about what they do, it tends to be.

The [00:23:00] communication tends to be more one-sided. It’s the people come and they say, here’s what is wrong with my dog. And we say, well, here’s my protocol for fixing it. I really try to see myself more as kind of a translator between the dog or the family, or like, I know Kim Brophy’s, a family mediation. I love that concept as well because I don’t see myself as the person who’s here with all the answers.

I always say that my clients are the experts on what they need. I am the expert on what’s possible. So I really wanna know what the problems are. I wanna know what the goals are. Our basic obedience board and train for a happy adolescent dog is fairly straightforward.

There’s customization, but there are goals and they’re concrete and we’re gonna meet ’em. And we have a good idea how long it’s gonna take for most dogs to meet them. And reactivity, it’s much more fluid. Our goals setting is an iterative process. We’re always [00:24:00] chasing a larger goal, but there’s a lot more adjustment along the way.

But I really don’t feel like my job is to say, this is what we’re gonna do. I look at our training plans as something that we’re all signed onto. And that’s why I like, I like giving clients choices. We could do it this way or we could do it that way. And here’s what’s involved in each one. Here’s the pros and cons of each one.

And I also, very seldom do I just. Sell people packages of time. I, I really look at what I’m doing as we’re setting a plan for what we wanna do here. If somebody tells me, you know, they have these lofty goals for their dog, but they just wanna start and do two private lessons. I will do that on occasion where I’m like, okay, we really need to meet your dog and see what’s going on and assess.

But mostly I am talking to people and I want to us to agree on what the plan is [00:25:00] gonna be. A complaint I hear a lot from trainers and something I ran into a lot early in my careers, I’d sell somebody four lessons and they’d be doing their homework and they’d be making progress. But four lessons wasn’t enough and four lessons was never going to be enough.

But there would be people who wouldn’t book more lessons and it wasn’t that they were unhappy. It’s, we’re all busy. We all have things going on, we all have money worries. And sometimes, you know, it’s better, you know, we’ll see. I’ll call you if I need you later, but I want us to really sit down together and decide what we’re gonna do and approaching the process that way.

I think it’s a lot more client buy-in as well.

Jessica: I agree. I think it’s hard for trainers. To suggest some of those larger packages, even if they know that is what the dog really needs. Because like you shared, you know, dog trainers, we’re not salespeople. Like we get into this by working with dogs, right? The whole business end of dog training [00:26:00] is something that I think most dog trainers struggle with the most.

I think trainers know how to train dogs. A lot of ’em can be really good with people and really good with dogs. But the business end, I think is one part where trainers tend to struggle the most. And along with that is this issue of them not suggesting. Programs that are comprehensive, that are actually going to meet that client’s goals.

And so I love how you like to have these conversations early on, that the client knows they have to be a part of the process, that they understand what their role is going to be in this process and that it sounds like you also give them what I would call a little bit of a roadmap. Which is where you’re kind of outlining a little bit of, okay, hey, this is in general what we’re gonna be doing here.

We’re not gonna give an entire training plan because we don’t know what the whole training plan is because we have to be flexible because things might come up or things might change or adjust. But in general, we can give clients a roadmap of what they can look forward [00:27:00] to during their time with us, and then have a better idea of what their role is gonna be.

But then, like you said, that also helps with that buy-in if they know what they’re signing up for. But then also if you have enough time with them to. Get them to more real life results because that’s what our clients want. And I think especially when it comes to leash reactivity, they want to be able to have those real life results.

They don’t want to have a couple of skills on board that mostly revolve around management, which is avoid other dogs. And, you know, just distract your dog the entire time you’re out on a walk with them. Like they want to be able to walk down the street and go past another dog. Maybe not right on the same sidewalk, but certainly on the other side of the street.

A very reasonable goal for most clients who have leash reactive dogs. And for certain dogs, that’s just gonna take longer than others. And I think that’s why it’s really important that we as trainers are not offering clients or suggesting something [00:28:00] to them that’s not gonna give them what they need.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. And, and the roadmap concept is so important and it’s important to really refer back to it as well. You know, one thing that I’ve really learned over the years is that for an awful lot of clients, whatever you have them doing today, they’re gonna imagine doing that forever. So, you know, there’s some things, even just in our basic obedience training, where in the early phases we’re using what can seem like a ridiculous amount of food rewards to the owner. And so they’re not generous enough early on.

Um, so you’ve gotta make them really understand, yet we gotta get this behavior. So what we’re doing now seems really silly, or you know, your dog is reactive to other dogs, so now we’re looking at one 30 yards away and then having to run behind a building where you can’t see ’em again. And they’re like, well, this is never gonna work.

So I, I find that, I’m always referring back to [00:29:00] this stuff. not only do I want to draw out a really clear roadmap from early, I’m always referring back to it in sessions.

Often talking about our end goals and having assessments of them. So I might wrap up an appointment of, okay, here’s what we’re shooting for. I feel like we’re on track for this, or I’m concerned about this part.

You know, maybe we’re a little behind. But I like to have those regular check-ins so that the owner understands everything that we’re going through as well.

Jessica: I love that you bring that up, which is always giving them the bigger picture of why we are teaching these skills and why we’re doing it in this way, and how that relates to their end goal and what that’s eventually going to look like.

I do that as well with my clients, is helping them understand, you know, the reason why we have to do this is because of this and we can’t get to this next step until we have this piece first. And so we need to make sure that your dog can be responsive under these conditions and then we can move on [00:30:00] to this.

And I think that’s really important to do rather than just drilling. The client and the dog and the session and then, okay, this is great, and then you leave. I think it’s really important that they understand the why, like, what’s the relevance of this? Why am I spending so much time doing this? Because you’re right, some of these things can seem a little bit silly to our clients, or as you also mentioned, the amount of food rewards that we often start with.

We don’t always end with those, but we often start with a lot of food. And so then they might be thinking, oh my gosh, I’m gonna have to be doing this forever. And that’s also not the case in terms of using that much food rewards towards the end of a training program once those behaviors have been more established.

I love that you brought that up because I think that’s important for trainers to remember to do, and then also for our clients to hear that, hey, this is part of the process, right? I’m wondering, as. Somebody who offers a wide variety of services. You mentioned you do group [00:31:00] classes, you’ve got this facility day, school and board, and trains.

You offer a variety of services to your clients and that makes it easier for clients to have something to choose from, right? You’re able to give them different options depending on their situation. And that is something that I run into a lot with my dog training students, is that they might only offer private lessons and they might only do a few lessons at a time, and I am always having a conversation with them about getting and doing different services.

Even if you don’t have a facility like you do, you can still do these homeschool programs where the trainers going into the home and working with the dogs several days a week on their own. You can still do group classes. There’s still a lot of things that trainers can do, even if they don’t have a facility themselves, and by giving clients these options it does make the [00:32:00] whole process easier for everybody involved than if you only have one way of doing something. And I’m wondering if you could speak more to that of like how you are able to better serve your clients simply because you have this whole variety of services that you can choose from.

Jeff: Yeah, it does make a really huge difference because we can even do hybrid programs.

Our basic obedience stuff, if somebody does a board and train, there’s a lot of support involved in it, but it’s one package. But if I’m dealing with somebody who’s got, you know, a very leash reactive dog or with an aggression case or serious fears it may be we start with the board and train to do some foundations, but we know that we’re gonna have to price in additional stuff.

’cause it’s not just gonna be training the humans on what the dog can already do. We have dogs who. Board and train may be their best way to get past things, but when I first meet with them, [00:33:00] they’re not ready. They need coping skills. They need to get out into the environment. Maybe they need meds. Um, so often I’ll start seeing somebody weekly or even virtually or refer out to a virtual trainer to say, okay, I think your dog could do a board and train, but.

Here’s how comfortable he has to get around other dogs, or here’s how comfortable he has to get around other people. Or your vet has decided that meds are a good option. Um, so we’re gonna work on some foundation skills for six weeks and start you on the board and train when we’ve gotten up to a therapeutic dose on the meds.

So there’s lots of ways to mix and match things. We have people who will do a hybrid of the drop off day school and the board and train. And the choices are huge. It, the idea of you could do A or B and having the client think it through and decide sometimes even when I have an opinion.

Strongly, one way or the [00:34:00] other. I do still lay out the things I don’t recommend and I ask the client to make the choice. ‘Cause I, I think for them that there’s something about, okay, this is your decision. That really vests people in the process as well, and it gets them to really think through what they need maybe in a little more depth instead of, Hey, you professional, tell me what I need.

Jessica: Yeah. It, it does. And it’s the same way when we talk about giving dogs choice, you know, and how important that is and how they feel like they have more agency because we give them that choice. I think it’s the same thing with our human clients, that by giving them options, we get more of the buy-in because they’re the ones who decided they wanted to do that option.

Along with those lines in terms of giving clients these different sorts of options and how that often does lead into a better buy-in with our clients. It kind of leads me down to wanting to talk about this term that we call client [00:35:00] compliance. Which, uh, over email you, you called it a dirty word, right?

And I would say so too. I started using client cooperation, like how do we get the client to wanna cooperate with some of the things that we’re asking them to do, because sometimes we’re asking them to make some really big changes to their lives and their routines.

And that’s a really big ask. And so of course it’s gonna be hard for somebody to, to do all of it, and then to do it all flawlessly. I think sometimes there’s this expectation that trainers might put on the human client that I think is a bit unfair in terms of expecting them to make all of these changes within one or two weeks.

I don’t even know anybody who, if you think about signing up for any other sort of like big life change truly follows through with every single recommendation from the get go. You know, that’s human nature. Nobody does that. And so I’m wondering if we could talk more about that. Like, [00:36:00] when trainers are having difficulty with clients and they’re saying, well, they’re not cooperating with what I’m asking them to do.

What are some of the things that you find to be most common as like, culprits to why that’s coming up?

Jeff: Oh, there’s so much. Sometimes it’s just people are busy. You know, I, I think our profession. Attracts a lot of super organized type A go-getters who really just go out and get things done. And so I think a lot of the times we have a little less patience with people who struggle.

But I think I have clients who have really good intentions and life just gets in the way. And it is something, as trainers, you were talking earlier about they come to us and they’re worried about getting judged and i’ve always tried to be aware of it, but one thing I’ve learned is to give [00:37:00] people a lot of that positive feedback.

My training director for my board and trained facility, Lindsay, is just so wonder, she’s just got incredible emotional intelligence and I’ve actually learned a lot working with them because people are always fearing this judgment. In all our support documents, everything we send, you know, we say explicitly, you know what, if life gets busy and your dogs come home from board and train and now you haven’t practiced this stuff for two weeks, you know, ’cause our, our support process is talking about their part and how it’s just as important for them to be trained.

But we’re like, we’re not gonna be mad at you. You’re not gonna have messed up your dog training. But what we need from you is to understand this is something we’re in together and training you is important and your part is important and it’s okay if you’re too busy. If you didn’t get it done, tell us.

And we’re very explicit when that happens to, you know, we, we will thank people for [00:38:00] telling us they didn’t do their homework. And I think a lot of trainers, and I don’t even think trainers are necessarily judgy. I think it’s an uncomfortable conversation. You’ve given this person stuff to do, you want ’em to get done now, they haven’t done it.

So you’re frustrated and you don’t know how to address it head on. And that discomfort can come off as cold. So when people tell me they haven’t done stuff, I’ll be, thank you for telling me. That’s okay. Life gets in the way. I understand we may have had a little setback, but here’s how we’re gonna address it.

And it goes back to what I said earlier about how I see my role. I’m not the expert in parting wisdom. I see myself as a translator, a coach, a guide, but I want the client and I to be on the same level. I don’t want them to be afraid to tell me what’s going on.

If somebody’s just not able to do something, I’ll ask, I, is this technique something that you think is gonna work? Is this just whether it’s ’cause you’re too busy or ’cause you’re too [00:39:00] scared? You know, I, I’ve had clients who are great at doing their homework and read everything, but when they get out in public and is their dog gonna lose it?

They just freeze and it’s too much for them. So, you know, if we’re working on coaching, we may step back. Or maybe that’s a client where I say, Hey, you know what, why don’t we do a board and train where I can get your dog passed some of these skills and they’re gonna be a lot stronger before we ever have you out here.

 Uh, I love that you brought all these things up. I think especially in regards to clients being worried about their ability to handle their own dog, or especially if they have a dog who’s reactive on leash, because as you were sharing that, one of the things that popped in my head was I had this client who was a little bit older and they had a very, very large dog, and I was coming in and I was doing a homeschool program and it was a German Shepherd mix, and so they were very in tune to their owner, right? Mm-hmm. [00:40:00] You know, certainly the dogs were responding to me, but I could tell, oh, this dog’s completely different with its owner. So I knew this is really important that I can get these two working together more effectively.

Jessica: And I gave them homework that just involved being right out front of their homes. So not really going out to the neighborhood or anything, and. As the lessons went on I’m like, I’m just not seeing the dogs respond. And so I just had a really open conversation with this client just asked like, tell me a little bit more about the work that you’re doing with your dog when I’m not here.

And then he admitted to me, he was like to be totally honest, we’re not going up front. He’s like, I’m too worried about, you know, the neighbor dogs because he was getting a lot of pressure from his neighbors about his dog’s behavior and.

Sometimes there would be off leash dogs in this neighborhood. And he was too worried. And so I ended up switching gears completely and we just changed where we trained. We found a really quiet industrial park that was nearby.

Why don’t we do a few lessons there? Make sure you feel safe. And he did. He [00:41:00] thought, this is fantastic. I can do this. And the training and the progress completely took off from there because I love that. Yeah. He had a space, he felt safe enough to work with his dogs in. And I think that’s important because I think sometimes when there’s this whole assumption that, well, the client’s just not listening or they don’t care, or they are, uh, they’re just not wanting to do what we want them to do, there’s almost always a reason below that of like, what’s the real reason why this client isn’t doing what we ask them to do?

And sometimes those reasons can really surprise us.

Jeff: Yeah. And, and, and I think if we have that supportive relationship. A big aha moment for me years ago was I had a frozen shoulder and I was getting physical therapy and I went in and I had a week where I just didn’t do any of my exercises. And I told my therapist that right from the beginning and she’s like, oh, [00:42:00] you told me.

And I said, people don’t. And she’s, oh yeah, people lie to me all the time. And my thought was like, why would you do that? ’cause this person needs to know what she needs to know to help you. But shame is powerful and people don’t wanna look you in the eye and tell you they didn’t do what they were supposed to do.

So by having that supportive attitude and really explicitly. I tend to be very focused on problems, so when I started having a staff, I had to have this, ’cause if something was wrong, I would just start asking questions and blah, blah, blah, and what are we gonna do? And people would be intimidated.

So I’ve learned. Mostly from our team here to be much more explicit. It’s not just that, that I’m not overtly judging you. I’m constantly trying to make it clear we’re in this together. I’m on your side. I’m trying to be a cheerleader and that that’s not my natural personality. I tend to be much [00:43:00] blunter and to the point, but I’ve learned that as a coach of people going into this kind of area where they’re nervous, I have to pump them up.

I have to make them feel safe, and I do. I always try to imagine the best possible reason and motivation. My default is always that people wouldn’t have brought me in and spent all this money if they weren’t really trying to solve things. So my job as their guide or their coach is first to create a relationship where they can talk to me about why it’s not working for them, and then we can work towards something that will work.

Jessica: Yeah, that level of trust and open communication’s really important and the lack of judgment, you know, that you’re going into it and. Clients can tell you things and you’re not gonna judge them. And same thing like that relationship that you had with your physical therapist where you were just really open and honest and said, no, I didn’t do any of the things.

And I think that’s such a great example. Because you have a need, right? So you had this, this physical issue. [00:44:00] So you sought out professional help, you paid good money for it. You knew you had to put in some work yourself, right? You are like, oh, now I gotta do these physical therapy exercises. And you knew that you probably would feel a lot better if you did do all the things.

But it’s just life, right? And it’s just humans. It’s just so typical human behavior to not do all of it all the time. And I think all of us can relate to that. Whether it is you sign up for physical therapy, which I have done, and I have worked with some really great physical therapists who give me access to this portal where it’s videos.

So they’re making it like real foolproof to not not be able to do the physical therapy at home. And what do I do? Did I go and watch every video and was I diligent do it two times a day? No, I did not. Right. I just showed up when I could, you know? And so I think that as trainers, sometimes we need to think about ourselves and when we might try to sign up for something like this, whether it’s physical therapy or at the gym or something, where it’s gonna [00:45:00] take something that’s gonna involve a change to our routine.

We’re not always gonna be flawless in our execution of everything and life is gonna get in the way. And I think that the more open that we can be with our clients and understanding, I think is really important in terms of helping them feel supported.

Jeff: Yeah. And, and I love that you bring up thinking about ourselves in that context. ’cause something. I try to do as often as possible is go out and take classes or learn new knowledge and mechanical skills because it’s hard when you’ve been training for a long time to think back to when you were first learning to train and how foreign some of the concepts were and the mind shifts that they take in.

If you’re a clumsy, middle-aged guy who doesn’t move like he used to and you go take a dance class that really can put you in that place of the learner who [00:46:00] doesn’t have the aptitude and things like that. So I always find putting myself in the role of the student makes me a better coach.

Jessica: I couldn’t agree more. Uh. It is so important for us to do that because we get so proficient at our own skillset that it’s so easy for us. And then when we’re coaching our clients and they’re having difficulty keeping their hand outta their treat pouch and we’ve, you know, coached them, okay, place your hand at your thigh and we’re giving ’em all this feedback, but then the client is still doing it. I think sometimes it’s easy for trainers to, I dunno, sometimes take it personally. I’ve seen that sometimes as my students, they take it personally and it’s not personal. And also it’s probably nothing to do with how effective you are at coaching this person.

It’s just habit because it’s difficult. To learn and retain new skills. And I’m sure like you gave the example of the dance class same thing. I have done different dance classes and I’ll learn something and then I’ll do really well [00:47:00] in the class itself. But then if I try to go home and replicate it on my own without the instructor there, oh, forget about it.

And then I show up the next week and then have about half of what we did, but then I still forgot the other half. And that’s just what learning is. Nobody absorbs a hundred percent of what we’re trying to give them. I think we’re lucky if we even get 50% across.

So I think it would be

Jeff: great if we get 50% across, right?

Jessica: Yeah. So I think that when we think of the, both the human and the dog, right? In terms of every, everybody’s just trying to learn here. So we just have to give people and dogs more grace with these types of things. ’cause that’s absolutely, yeah.

That’s just what happens.

Jeff: And I think some of our professional culture kind of buys into some of that frustration because I, there’s so much ego and competition in dog training, uh, even before social media, that was the case. But with social media, I mean, I don’t, I I don’t think we [00:48:00] talk enough about our failures.

I think particularly the people who are training trainers often can be image conscious and they don’t wanna look like there’s problems and a few years back I was so grateful to Patricia McConnell. She was working through with a difficult puppy and took in another dog who needed a home and issues and knowing that it might not go well.

And she wound up working through and having to rehome this puppy. And she wrote on her blog about hearing from other people in the industry who were on the lecture circuit and wrote books, what are you doing? Why are you writing about your failures on your blog? And she’s like, nothing always works.

If you learn about dog training exclusively online, I think you come away with the impression that there are all of these people with these perfect protocols and they go in and they have excellent client buy-in and everything works out and they don’t have problems.

[00:49:00] And I, I would love to meet these trainers because I’ve been doing this for 30 years and I fail all the time. And I, I think our industry has so much of that ego and bragging that people do get frustrated and take it personally when the client’s not doing well. Because, well, I’m doing this method and this method is the best, so you should get it.

Whereas I, I think we could all do with a lot more humility.

Jessica: Oh dang, Jeff you are so right about that. I, us as dog trainers understand the industry and the insanity that our industry is like. I don’t know any other industry that’s like the dog training industry personally. It is very special.

And I don’t know that most dog owners really know what this industry, I think they’re completely oblivious to it. You are right. It is full of ego. Oh my goodness. Uh, it’s full of ego. It’s very divided. [00:50:00] Just constant fighting, constant bashing other trainers. And so I think there is, yeah, there is such a fear of judgment and especially if something is supposed to go a certain way.

Right? We mentioned, well, this method is supposed to work this way, and then when it doesn’t, I mean, there’s always a reason why, but it’s. Not always a reflection of that person’s skillset. It’s often a reflection of something else, you know, of, with that particular case. So yeah, I appreciate that you bring that up because we’re not we don’t have magic powers as dog trainers and you might see videos online or little clips online of the dogs just doing really well or doing so fantastic with an individual trainer, but you’re only seeing a tiny slice of that dog’s behavior.

You’re seeing a little snippet of it under very specific conditions, and in other conditions you might see that dog behaving completely differently. And so I think that’s where it’s [00:51:00] important to keep that sort of stuff in mind, both as trainers, but then also from the general public because there’s no such thing as a perfect dog.

There’s no such thing as a perfect trainer that can solve all problems that it just does not exist. One of the things that I kind of wanna circle back to is when you’re doing your board and trains or the services where you as the trainer are doing the bulk of the work, how you are explaining to your clients, or at least getting them on board with this idea that even though you are doing most of the work, they still have to be a part of this process.

Because that is one of the things that I get a lot of questions from my students when I talk about. Doing homeschool programs or if they were going to offer some sort of board and train is, I think they have a difficult time knowing well what do I say to the client? Like, how do I tell them that even though the dog is gonna live at my house, they still need to do this [00:52:00] and , how do I execute this whole process?

What is the way that you communicate this to your clients and also hold them accountable because they do need to be a part of the process regardless of what sort of training program they sign up for.

Jeff: Yeah. And, and I think particularly with board and trains, you get a lot of people who think you’re gonna wave a magic wand. And when you tell them that’s not the case, they don’t want to hear it. So they don’t. So that is something that has really evolved over the years. So when we started doing board and train, I was still doing a lot of the homeschool programs where I just went to clients several times a week.

As things have evolved and we’ve stopped doing as many in-home, uh, then particularly when COVID hit and we couldn’t go into people’s homes, we started working on a lot more virtual options.

We started doing a lot of filming, not just, Hey, here’s how your dog [00:53:00] is doing, but instructional videos that we purposefully kept really short. We have a whole playlist of them now. They’re two to four minutes. And what we liked about.

Working virtually is the sooner we can correct a problem, the better. So in the first year of COVID, we actually switched our model. So you watch the videos, you come and get an in-person lesson, but we’ve really encouraged more use of video from the beginning. So we send everybody home with a custom schedule of what to work on for their first five days.

And what we tell them is anything you struggle with first, watch the videos, see if they answer your question. If not, send us a video of what you’re doing. And an enormous amount of the time, it’s some small mistake they’re making. And in a quick text we can get ’em back on track. If that doesn’t work within one business day, we can jump on like a Zoom or a FaceTime and try to coach them in real time.

That is cut down on how [00:54:00] many in-person lessons we do tremendously. So we don’t actually put a limit on it. Now we have some clients who struggle and we see ’em weekly for two months and occasionally after that. But most clients, after two weeks, everything is going pretty smoothly. But when we went to that, we did have a few big problems we had.

’cause the one thing we did with that was we said, okay, we’re gonna give you the schedule and it’s on you to come back to us. And for the most part, we had a huge improvement in outcomes, but we had those people who went home and expected the magic wand and didn’t do anything. And then three weeks later instead of, Hey, I’m struggling with this, it’s fluffy, doesn’t do this.

So we found that hard when we didn’t have the set lessons we did have some complaints. So our support document got kind of more and more vehement. It actually says in there, Hey, if you go [00:55:00] home and you’re struggling with something and the first time we hear from you is two weeks later, what we’re gonna remind you of is it’s not your dog that didn’t get trained, it’s you.

Um, and so now we’re gonna get back to training, but we did it when people pay their deposit to hold their spot, they have to check a box that they’ve read the support document, and it straight up says, is this the right program for you? I use an analogy and then the thing that actually originally did convince Mel and I to do board and train was taking a dance class before we got married.

Um, we wanted to do a fancy first dance at the reception. So we took a class. We had a huge eureka moment. Then when they taught us a new step. If we got it right the first time, we were fine. If we didn’t get it right the first time, we never figured it out. But the teacher would come over and either place themselves strategically or grab whoever made the mistake and like.

It wouldn’t even let you make it. It would just be [00:56:00] like you’d be about to do the wrong thing and they’d little touch on your elbow and you’d do it right. And that’s the analogy I use to explain board and train to people is your dog is gonna go live with the teacher and learn to be a good dancer that way.

But you still need to learn all the steps. You still need to know how to lead, you still need to practice, but you are gonna learn a lot faster because you’re gonna learn with a partner who’s good at it. And that, that’s the big thing. But we do find we have to remind them regularly and also give them lots of options, phone calls, videos, zooms in person.

So like what you were talking about with your physical therapist, giving you a lot of options and yeah, some people still don’t do it, but with having it laid out the way that it is, it’s been a very, very long time since anybody who has come with us an attitude like it’s our fault when they haven’t reached out for help.

So.

Jessica: That makes perfect sense, especially because you are doing the videos. And I just wanna clarify one piece. There are these [00:57:00] videos of their own dog doing the exercises, so that way it’s easy for them to see their own dog doing it. Or is it maybe a combination of a little bit of their own dog and then maybe some other tutorials of like other,

Jeff: it’s a combination and we do the whole time they’re here, we also make them YouTube playlist of their dog.

But we have some generic instructional things. So some of it depends what they’re doing for basic obedience, they’re mostly working off the generic lists. But if we’re working on reactivity or resource guarding or you know, more complicated things, then there’s gonna be a lot more instructional videos about their doc.

Jessica: I like that. I have found that the clients find it helpful too, because they have the videos that they can refer back to, they can watch them. A lot of times I do voiceovers on the videos when my clients will send me like some longer videos of their dog and there’s a couple things that I wanna point out.

I’ll just take the volume out of their own video and I do a voiceover and I give them little pointers. Okay. So at this moment, one of the things that you could do [00:58:00] differently would be this. And then here you could do this. Or here’s what I’m seeing with your dog.

Do you notice how your dog did that when they saw that other dog? That way they can hear my voice and kind of narrating what’s happening with them and their dog and what they could be doing differently or whatever it could be to help them have a better understanding of their dog.

Jeff: Oh, we are so gonna do that. I love that.

Jessica: It’s been super helpful and my clients like it. Nice. So yeah. So as we wrap up here, is there anything that we haven’t covered that you think is really important for trainers to walk away with?

Jeff: Ooh, good question.

We’ve ranged over so much.

Jessica: We have, um.

Jeff: I guess one thing we kind of brushed on but didn’t really go in depth on is I think that a lot of trainers, especially, in the positive reinforcement force free kind of world, are really uncomfortable with setting goals and goals are central to [00:59:00] everything that I do. And I think because you, you’ve had some of these old school high pressure programs that sell these board and trains that are gonna transform your dug in two weeks and you’ll never have to do anything again.

I, I think that has kind of poisoned the very idea of setting goals with clients. But we are a service industry, and I’ve also heard people say they consider the dog, the client. Uh, the dog doesn’t have a credit card. The dog is not the client. And people do come to us because there are problems they wanna solve.

I mean, I love the clients who are like, nah, I just want to have more fun with my dog. But it’s hard to make a living from that. Clients call us because they wanna solve problems. And rather than running away from the idea of. Goals. You can use their goals as a touchstone for education.

Yeah, we could do that. Here’s what it would take. And that’s the other thing is be comfortable with [01:00:00] uncertainty. I’ll say. I think that’s a realistic goal. I can’t promise you that we’ll get here. We’re gonna be adjusting our goals all along the way, but the clients have those goals whether we want them to or not.

So for me, they’re very, very central to the whole process. Where do you want to be with your dog and what is our map for getting there? For some clients, it’s pretty simple and straightforward, but with reactivity, aggression, fear, those goals are a moving target. You know, I think people are afraid if we set goals and we’re behind in six weeks, clients are gonna be angry.

But if we see our role as the guide, if we have clients make choices and define what they want and spell out trade offs where they really have to think about what’s most important to them, the goals become the thing that really helps them understand the process.

And I think you wind up with much more successful clients and much happier clients when you realize that it is the humans who are driving the agenda [01:01:00] and they’re thinking about the end goals they want, whether we are or not. So we might as well be talking about them explicitly and using them as the focal point to teach them about what’s possible.

Jessica: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, and I think that’s such a great way to tie all of this together because it really does. Sum up so much of what we have discussed in terms of, you know, the client has this problem, they’re coming to us for help, we’re helping them identify goals. Us as a professional is giving them feedback of whether those goals are realistic and also here’s your options of how we can attain those goals.

And then as you’re working together, you know, it’s a working relationship. Things come up, right? We talked about people get busy, life happens. So then sometimes then that means you just need to still have that open communication with your client that if you are five weeks into your six week program and you know they’ve been super busy, then they might also really understand that, okay, well we might not [01:02:00] quite get to where we thought we were gonna get.

Right? If this was gonna be what it is, maybe we need to extend this a little bit more. Whatever, however you wanna compromise on that. But I think that. Is in general what dog training is, um, in terms of when people are signing up for specific services, is that there is a goal in mind, right?

They, they do want to have something to strive for, and I think that it does lead to better outcomes when both the trainer and the client are on the same page and they’re both actively working towards that same goal. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom and, you know, you’ve got so much experience over all the decades that you have been doing this with people and their dogs.

So I think this is going to be really helpful for people to listen to. So thank you.

Jeff: Thanks. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Jessica: Yeah, same here.

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