How to Get a Handle on Your Training

• A sweet sharpei who, in order to have his nails trimmed, has to be anesthetized by his veterinarian
• A cairn terrier who was “diagnosed” as having a serious aggression problem by a groomer who insisted on completing a trim despite the dog’s obvious anxiety and distress
• A man who was chastised by his veterinarian for being too soft on his dysplastic 7-year-old rottweiler because this man didn’t “discipline” the dog when she growled in response to a forceful examination
• A chow-chow who is so terrified of the veterinarian’s office that he now refuses to ever get in the family car to go anywhere
• A woman who was honestly surprised when I told her that she could bath and trim her lab puppy’s nails at home rather than paying a groomer to do this
• And, most recently, a woman whose veterinarian advised her (in the presence of her 5-year-old son) to immediately euthanize the family’s young springer spaniel -- because he barks fiercely when visitors come to the door! (Note: I had previously evaluated this dog and found him pushy, spoiled and, most important, completely redeemable.)

These are all actual cases. And my intent here is not to indict veterinarians or groomers in general (a couple in particular maybe…). No, what I want to do is scream “enough already”! Dogs are suffering needlessly from fear and discomfort because a) we don’t adequately prepare them for a life punctuated with physical exams, medical treatments and grooming, and b) we abdicate our role as our animals’ primary caretaker.

Like all of us, I too have been guilty of training neglect. I can easily recall when one of my dogs, a dachshund mix named Gnat, attempted to swan-dive off our vet’s 3-foot-high exam table to avoid an injection.

I could have never gotten away with such inadequate training at my previous job as a zookeeper. In that setting, the most important “tricks” we trained the whales, elephants and walruses to perform were husbandry behaviors; that is, behaviors useful for an animal’s future veterinary care or routine grooming.