Kirsten has a way of describing how modern dog training grew up, and it comes in three phases. First the scientific one, when the Brelands' and Baileys' work came through the chicken workshops and the field found out there was a science underneath it. Then the professional one, when it turned out that loving animals is not a business plan. And now the ethical one. Don Hanson has lived all three of them, and because he is a prolific writer, he wrote them down while they were happening. Thirty years of this field's history exists in his archive whether the field asked for it or not.
Don met Bob at his first APDT conference in Valley Forge, signed up for a week in Arkansas before he left the building, and went back the following year for the intermediate course. He joins Kirsten Kraljevic and Dr. Bob Bailey to talk about what actually changed and what stubbornly has not. Along the way: the Orlando conference where sixty-odd famous dog trainers chased chickens up and down the tables and Bob describes it as the greatest thing since the Keystone Cops, the afternoon Bob stood at the podium with what Don calls an elven and satanic grin and told the class to extinguish everything they had just built, the chicken named Fang that Carolyn Clark tamed and one of Don's staff later requested on purpose, and Keller Breland in a bar in 1962, half inebriated and discouraged, because he had won field championships with this method and all anybody wanted to know was where he bought the dog.
3 Key Takeaways
1. Do not reinforce what you do not want. Bob's company ran a five year study on mechanical skills in the 1960s and found that trainer error was the single biggest thing slowing a trainer down. Reinforcing too early, too late, or reinforcing the wrong thing entirely. His mantra came out of that: if you miss a behavior you wanted, fine, it will come around again. Just do not mess up.
2. Prevention beats extinction, and it is not close. This is why Don would rather teach a puppy class than a class full of older dogs. Nobody reinforces the jumping and the biting and the stealing on purpose, but they have usually been doing it for months by the time they call. Extinguishing that costs far more time and energy than never building it. Worse if the behavior you accidentally reinforced is natural for the species.
3. Knowing it and being able to do it are different things, and the field keeps confusing them. Don changed his credentials in 2022 specifically to a body that tests skills as well as knowledge, after being told by other organizations that testing skills is either too hard or not important. His evidence is a cup. Bob spent a morning teaching him how to move one, Don thought it was beneath him, and by lunch it had sunk in.
Quick Lessons
1. Curiosity is the trait that separates the people who keep getting better. Bob found it at five years old drawing his finger across a column of ants in Michigan. Don found it in his thirties with a first puppy and no idea what he was doing.
2. If you do not evolve you become obsolete. Don's pet peeve is trainers who resist continuing education. You can get credits online now. He used to drive six hours.
3. Mechanical skills still have to be learned in person, with your hands, ideally with a chicken. Everything else has moved online. That has not.
4. This field moves slowly because people attach their ego to their method. Question how somebody trains and they hear it as an insult to them personally. The Brelands waited twenty years and died waiting.
5. Reach the client before they get the dog. Don offers a free consultation to families who are only thinking about it, and some of them walk out having decided not to yet. That is a good outcome.
6. The dog is teaching you too. Don stopped saying training and started saying teaching. His last dog had his entire staff trained to rub her belly the moment they walked in, and none of them noticed it happening.
Resources mentioned
Don Hanson's writing, classes and his chronological history of modern animal training: forcefreepets.com
Pet Professional Guild
Pet Professional Accreditation Board
One more thing
October is Bob's birthday month and this one is his 90th. Kirsten is celebrating all month. If you have a story, a message, or something you want played on the show, send it to kirsten@mychickenworkshops.com.
Learn about the Chicken Workshops and join the waitlist at kirstenschickenworkshops.com
