I hear this very often:
"I want to be a dog trainer because I love dogs. I can't deal with my job anymore because of the people. I just want to work with dogs."
I hate to break it to you, but working with dogs means you're primarily working with people. Unless you're working on a movie set training a dog to perform specific behaviors, you're going to be working with people. People are the ones who bring the dogs to you!
It's beneficial then, that I like working with people. And especially when I get great owners who really understand (or want to understand) the basic tenets of my cooperative style of dog training and who want to be on the same team as their dog (as opposed to being the pack leader).
I got a great surprise in my email in-box last night. A client I met with earlier this week sent me a little 10-second video clip of the progress they are making with their dog, recently adopted (cute as a bug!) from a local shelter. That's my version of positive reinforcement! It's clients like that -- eager learners and proud of their dog's success -- that make my job so cool!
