Tools

Tools are what connect us to an animal we are training. A collar, a leash, a halter and a bridle are all tools. Treats are tools. All tools communicate. How harshly they communicate depends on the tool and the handler. The discussion of tools is often tinged with the queasy whiff of religion. People 'believe' or 'don't believe' in this or that type of tool.

Tools can be largely neutral, a flat collar or a halter on a horse are perfect examples. Yes, we can use them to guide an animal, and to correct errors, but they don't have a lot of teeth, and a determined dog or horse will easily brush these tools aside to do what they please.

The harsher the tool the more vehement becomes the rhetoric concerning it.

From my horsey past I can say that I developed a strict set of rules about the use of tools, and always used the least aggressive method to produce my results. I was an excellent trainer who usually had plenty of time, so I had no issues living in my judgmental bubble of superiority.

Then a client bought a beast of a horse. This thing was a tank. Big, bullish and with just enough training to be dangerous. She bought it for her husband who had a bad back. This horse could not pull on him lest he end up in the hospital. They did not have infinite resources of time and money and I had to make this thing somehow safe for this man in less than 30 days.

I started him like I started thoroughbreds off the track and quickly learned that this method was doomed to failure. He wanted to run through me. He was a moose and a buffoon, and remedial work to put the kind of equipment on him that I wanted was certainly going to take far longer than 30 days!

So, do I tell the new owners to get a more appropriate horse? Yes. Does it work? No. Do I tell them it will certainly take more than 30 days? Yes. They spent all their money on the horse.

Do I throw in the towel and break all of my rules and put this horse in a harsher bit than I would like? Yes. Absolutely. Because otherwise he will injure his owner. I chose what I considered the lesser of evils. I could have refused to train the horse, but who does that help? The horse would either sit in a barn until sent down the road, or the owner would have been injured, or they would have found a different trainer who perhaps would have used even harsher equipment.  In what way would the horse have benefitted from my stand for purity?

I think that it is wonderful that there are skilled trainers able to get amazing results with the most neutral tools available. I am glad that there are owners willing to provide these trainers with the time to use these skills to help their animals.

I am not such a purist (though in retrospect I may have once been) as to believe that any trainer lacking these skills should not be training. I do believe that we all owe it to our pets to use kindest tools necessary to achieve the desired results in the time allotted.

Lastly, I want to point out that in the story above, the main point was that had I not resorted to tougher equipment than I felt strictly comfortable using, the animal would have injured someone. In no way am I implying that I would have used harsher equipment in the face of training failures on my part, on a fearful animal, or to speed along training for any other reason. Also, when all is said and done, I still trained the horse using far less bit (kinder mouthpiece) than most people use on their everyday horses, and with less equipment than many professionals slap onto horses willy nilly and daily.

I hope that this helps to illustrate a point. In the right hands, most tools are just that. They form a line of communication. A well-trained dog will no more fear a prong collar than a flat collar if the uses of both are clear to the dog. In a perfect world, perhaps no dog would ever wear a prong collar. In a perfect world no trainer would reach for one first. But until we live in such a world, we need to understand that the religion of tool usage can be as laced with arrogance, judgement, fanaticism, and superiority as any other religion, and as such we should divest ourselves as much as possible from such emotion.  A tool is always neutral; it is the user who turns it into something else.

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