Are you experienced?

OK, the title only chimes with people of a certain age (it's a Jimmy Hendrix album), but a couple of things have happened over that past few days that gave me reason to consider this.

My Good Lady went to see a couple last week with a cross-breed, multi-pedigree, mutt, call it what you like (my mum used to say, "we don't know what breeds he is, his mother wasn't looking at the time"). Fortunately he's not prone to aggression, but he was "highly strung" and was restless at the start of the consultation, chewing, throwing toys and pacing around. He was a very stressed boy.

During the course of the evening the owners said that he had been taken to training classes for 6 weeks and had been reasonably well behaved, but as soon as he left the class he was back to being uptight and stressed and had subsequently been getting worse.

Now, it doesn't always happen straight away, but by the end of the consultation the lad was a whole lot more relaxed and having a bit of a kip in the middle of the lounge. The lady owner was much happier and her partner made the remark that made me think: "The man at the training class seemed more interested in telling us stories about him and what he had done than doing much training".

This came back to mind when we heard this week from another client who my partner had helped last year. Their Boxer had been to training classes with disastrous results and they had engaged the trainer to come over for a one on one consultation. The dog had been really aggressive and the consultation ended with the trainer "hanging him up by the lead". Thanks to my partners help, he's now a whole lot calmer and the owners are very happy with his progress. It turns out that it was the same trainer.

Now my Good Lady, being the honest soul that she is, would be the first to say that she doesn't have extensive experience, especially compared to the trainer who proudly advertises his previous employment handling dogs and that he's asked to advise on dog matters all over the world. Nevertheless it seems to me that, even though she hasn't been a Dog Listener for a long time her experience is much more relevant to the needs of the dogs. Time after time she comes across dogs who have been subjected to "conventional" training and has been able to remedy problems, sometimes within minutes. (See "Why Dog Training Classes don't work).

"Experience" by itself seems to be a dangerous thing to rely on, it's relevant experience that matters. I well remember reading that "There are those that claim to have 10 years experience - make sure that it's not not just one years experience that's 10 years old".