Although APDT does not yet have provisions in place to sanction or remove trainers who violate best-practices rules (part of the problem is that there is not currently a universal standard of care in the field of applied dog behavior), there is a straightforward way to increase one’s odds of hiring an educated, competent, humane dog trainer. Go to the APDT site to peform a Trainer Search and click the box that restricts search results to certified trainers. This will yield only trainers in a designated geographic area that have been vetted by a legitimate independent (independent of any school and independent of APDT) certifying body.
It’s not a perfect system and it will make errors both ways: there will be excellent trainers on their way to certification who won’t be listed, and there are will be trainers listed who squeaked through the certification process or got themselves certified and proceeded to hang dogs, but it’s way ahead of trying to select a trainer based on their self-proclamations vis a vis ethics and ability.
And here are two well-written articles by Lisa Mullinax, one a measured deconstruction of The Dog Whisperer’s philosophy, and the other a series of replies to frequently asked questions by his fans.
Thank you for this article. I may actually need a trainer in the Erie, Colorado (near Denver) area. The trainer would need to use positive reinforcement. If any readers of this blog know of, or are, such a trainer, I would appreciate contact information.
We did find a trainer. Her name is Lindsay Wood and she is the Director of Animal Training and Behavior at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley, in Boulder, Colorado. We are extremely fortunate to have her on our side. I cannot recommend her highly enough.