The Road to Training

Hi! I’m starting this blog because I’m really excited about sharing positive, reward-based dog training with you, and hopefully make you and your dog’s life so much better. In this first post, I share where I come from and what has brought me here. It's been a trip with many detours, and I'm still learning.

Prefer a shorter version? Head over to my training manifesto.

The Beginning

I’m Sofía Brenes, born in San José, Costa Rica. I grew up around dogs, and we always had one in our house. First there was Champagne (Champi), then Odie, and later Otto. Back in the 80s in Costa Rica, it was very common for the dog to just be the pet that lived outside. Strictly forbidden from coming inside. Why would you take the dog out for a walk? He's got a backyard. No dog toys either, let alone any socialization or training. The dog just existed in the backyard.

Me and my sisters, growing up with Champi

Although they had shelter, were fed and healthy, I cringe to think of the lonely life they must've had. Unsurprisingly, our first dog Champi was incredibly aggressive. He only tolerated immediate family members (everyone else would get a bite), and even then, the scar that I still have in my hand speaks to what would happen if he got mad at us.

When I started high school Odie came into the picture. This wasn’t a particularly great time in my life, so I’d come home in the afternoon and spend lots of time sitting outside with him, petting him, playing silly games with his food trying to see if he could guess which hand I had his kibble on, or having him fetch a ball in exchange for food. We built a really strong connection, and he was more relaxed around people. Still, he’d go into full on aggressive mode if he saw another dog.

Odie with his favorite (er, only) toy.

My life changed when I started my undergrad degree. In the Computer Science department, I felt I had found my people, some of whom are still my best friends today. When I was finishing my degree, two things happened at the same time: Odie left us and I was offered an internship in a research institute in Pensacola, Florida. The offer was for one year.

But, um, plans changed. The one year job turned into two years. Followed by a chance to go to grad school in Bloomington, Indiana. A master's degree turned into a PhD program. And now summers are a great time to try to get a temp job, why not do an internship? Ooh, how about Google? Wait, that could lead to a full time job offer? Before you know it, it's 2019 and I'm still here.

One Flawed Training Attempt

Those first years in the US I had an intense school schedule, so it was impossible for me to have a dog. But back in Costa Rica, Otto came to live in my Mom’s house. Otto was the sweetest dog when he was relaxed. But he wasn't socialized either, and he had a tendency to get upset when things didn’t go his way, quickly escalating to aggression. I started thinking there had to be a way to have a dog and to train him well enough so that he could live inside the house. I looked, but information on dog training was scarce. But like so many people, I thought I'd found the solution: you just have to be dominant and show your dog who's boss!

So whenever I would go back home to visit I'd try to apply my newly found knowledge on Otto. But if I tried to make him “submit” to my wishes by showing him I was in charge, I would end up with a very angry dog, growling, lunging, barking, bared teeth. I thought I could not let him win, so I also escalated. The end result: a dog that lived under a constant state of stress, and would quickly resort to biting when pushed. I could not understand why my methods had not worked.

Otto, aka Otto Potto, Otilio, Motillo

When Everything Changed

A few more years went by, and I was then neck deep into my PhD dissertation, and had just completed my second internship at Google. It had also been seven years since I'd had a dog of my own, and my persistent campaign where I tried to convince my husband that we should get one had been unsuccessful. His argument: we can't get a dog because we live in an apartment and don't have a backyard, and surely the dog must live there, not inside the house.

At the end of that internship I was trying to get a full time offer. I was extremely nervous the night before the interview, so I turned on the TV. While flipping channels I found a show on Animal Planet with a cute dog in it, so I kept watching. A nice British lady showed people how to get their dog to stop growling and biting, everything that Otto would do and I'd failed to stop, and there was no yelling, no quest for domination. The show was "It's Me or the Dog" with Victoria Stilwell. I was hooked. Oh, and I did not get the job.

Soon my husband was also fascinated by the show. There was this one episode where Victoria got upset with the owners because the food and water bowls were in the backyard. She explained all the reasons why dogs, being the social animals that they are, need to be part of a family. As I saw my husband slowly starting to change his mind, I wanted to reach into the TV and hug her. She kept on showing how simple it was to train them, and actually explaining the reasons they were behaving like that in the first place. Watching "It's Me or the Dog" became a weekly ritual at our house.

First Steps in Training

Well, for two engineers, the next step was logical. Gather data and test this! My husband and I started volunteering with the dog trainer at our local shelter. She talked us through the steps to teach a dog how to sit, and handed me a bag of yummy treats and a big, beautiful, pitbull. This dog was over excited, and moving all over the place. I grabbed a handful of hot dog bits and placed it near his nose. As he started to try to get to the food that I would not give him until his butt touched the ground, I had what I can only describe (cheesy as it may be) as a magic moment.

He kept nibbling at my hand trying to get to the hot dog. As I moved my hand up above his nose, he followed it with his eyes and naturally sat down. I said “Yes!” and gave him a bit of hot dog. After a couple of repetitions, I didn't move my hand up. He cocked his head sideways, as if to say, “What are you doing?” His ears perked up. He looked at me, he looked at my hand. His eyes moved from my hand to my face, and I realized I'm actually looking at this dog thinking and trying to figure this out.

He frowned for a second, and then he sat down. Victory! After feeding him hot dogs again, his face relaxed, and his tongue was now out, he was happy. He immediately sat down again, and looked at me: “oh I get this game now, cool. I'll sit, you feed me”. I had never done training before, I had never seen this dog before, and in five minutes I taught him how to sit down, because he figured out that's how he would get food. No forcing, no yelling.

That was a life changing moment. I knew right then and there that if I had known about this when I was 17 years old, I would have immediately chosen this field as my line of work. I wanted to learn everything I could about this training method, how many things can I teach a dog this way? I realized, not only is a dog a social animal that needs a family, they're intelligent, and trying to problem solve and figure out how to communicate with us.

My Very Own Trainee

At this point we were ready for our own dog. We got Victoria's book, and a few months later, we adopted Nacho. No, not after the food (please don't call him taco). It's short for Ignacio in Spanish. We applied all the positive reinforcement techniques we found in her book. We were not dog trainers, and we were able to indeed get a perfect dog. The bond between us is so strong, I know he understands what we want of him, and I sure as hell know when he is trying to tell me something. And my husband, the one that needed a backyard for his dog? He's the one that asked if we could let him sleep with us in our bed.

Nacho. Most definitely not a backyard dog.

From that point on, I read what I could on positive reinforcement, but life got busy again. I finished my PhD and gave the Google interviews another go (successfully this time). Work got super busy, but all the while, in the back of my mind I always thought, hmm I wonder if I could actually become a dog trainer? Study this formally? Yeah, I should really do that. I'll look into it next month. Or next year. The idea of me becoming a dog trainer became like a daydream, something that in the back of your mind you know it's probably just not going to happen.

Woot, Science!

Then I saw Victoria opened up her own dog training academy. How awesome would it be to actually learn how to be a dog trainer with the very person that opened my eyes to the right way to do this? And really, why not do this if I love it so much? I just didn’t think about it and filled out the application.

Coming full circle, with Victoria Stilwell in the Academy.

To say I was blown away by the course is the understatement of the century. Imagine how I felt, when given the background I have I was told in no uncertain terms “you are going to be science based trainers”. Everything just clicked perfectly: this is what happens when you take animal cognition and behavior research, combine it with learning theory, apply it on the most incredible animal on Earth, and spread the message through education.

I made so many mistakes with my own dogs. I just didn't know this was the way. I always had the best intentions in my heart, but I just didn't know. Now I want to help people go through this same journey. I want people to have that magic moment when they realize their dog is thinking, when they see their dog trying to communicate with them, and how their dog will feel when they understand what their people are trying to tell them.

I take them all with me. I look at the scar Champi gave me very fondly, as a reminder of how much I’ve learned. I’d like to tell Odie we almost got it right based on instinct alone, and we were in fact doing reward-based training together. I’d love to ask Otto to forgive me for listening to bad advice, and hope that in his later years I was able to correct my mistakes. And now I get to see it with Nacho every day, how different life with a dog can be when you know what’s the best way to communicate with them, to understand them.

I do this because of the dogs of my life. Because I want to tell you there’s a better way to train them. ⁣Safely. Kindly. With trust and empathy. With science!