The concept of dog training in our society is at an inflection point, and the role of the dog trainer is evolving as a result.
Yes, dog trainers still have clients who need and want them to help their dogs do a certain thing or stop a certain behavior. But what it really means to share your life with a dog is changing.
We’ve spent the past few decades entering the modern era of understanding animal behavior, and that has led to the embrace of positive training instead of traditional compulsion-based methods relying on force, pain and fear.
And that move towards positive training is obviously fantastic. It’s what Positively and the Victoria Stilwell Academy were originally founded to help promote.
But now we’re moving beyond that. More and more, dog guardians are beginning to recognize the importance of truly understanding and accounting for the dog’s life experience, and the role of ‘training’ has taken a critical step forward as a result.
As our modern world gets ever busier and more complicated, it is more important than ever to help guardians rethink why they want a dog to do something or not behave in a certain way. Whose interests are really being served? Where do our responsibilities begin and end when it comes to our relationship with this species that we’ve domesticated over millennia?
To be clear, none of this is froofy ‘out there’ stuff. We still obviously recognize that dogs are dogs and that we are the part of the equation charged with being sure they fit appropriately into what is deemed acceptable in our modern human life. But there is a way to still celebrate dogs being dogs within the boundaries we set while being guided by an evolved understanding of how dogs think, feel and learn.
So the role of the dog trainer has moved past just the obvious ‘sit’, ‘stay’ and ‘come when called’. We are now serving as relationship counselors helping dog/human teams reach their fullest potential together, and that requires an innate understanding and appreciation of what it means to share your life with a dog.
And this is where the Victoria Stilwell Academy thrives. It’s what sets VSA apart from other dog trainer schools.
Sure, we still teach trainers how to help dogs and humans learn cues and manage behavior problems, but being a great modern professional dog trainer is about so much more than that.
Like all good dog trainers, VSA’s curriculum itself is constantly evolving in order to better serve its students, and a central component of that education relies on an ever-growing emphasis on the skills, knowledge, confidence and intuition required of the modern positive dog trainer.
We’re passionate about meeting current and aspiring elite dog trainers where they are and giving them the tools to truly change lives.
That sounds straightforward, but it’s actually an incredibly complex and revolutionary task that requires a nuanced commitment to celebrating and truly understanding what dogs really are, what they need, and how to build the communication skills required to unleash the power and beauty of the dog/human relationship.
Our commitment to this approach is what we feel sets VSA apart from what other results-only oriented schools and academies can provide.
Whether you’re already a dog trainer, you run a pet business, or are just beginning your professional journey as a pet professional, if this approach to helping people live their best lives with their dogs resonates, join Victoria for a free live webinar to learn more: An Evolutionary Leap Forward In Dog Training.
