There has never been a better time to learn about animal behaviour.
We have access to extraordinary research, excellent books, online courses, webinars, lectures and video libraries. You can sit at your kitchen table and learn about reinforcement schedules, classical conditioning, emotional systems, stress, body language, developmental stages and behaviour modification from experts anywhere in the world.
And I think that is wonderful.
But there is a potential problem.
Knowing about animal behaviour and being able to work skilfully with the animal standing in front of you are not the same thing.
If you are carving out a career as a dog trainer, cat behaviourist, clinical animal behaviourist or any other professional working directly with animals and their people, you need both. Theory gives you the map. Practical experience teaches you how to navigate when the road turns out to be muddy, the signpost has fallen over and the dog has just spotted a squirrel.
That balance between academic knowledge and practical skill has always been enormously important to me, and it is one of the reasons I created ThinkDog! Practical.
You can know the theory and still struggle with the dog
There are things we can learn beautifully from books and online education.
We can understand the principles of reinforcement. We can study antecedents and consequences. We can learn about thresholds, trigger stacking, arousal, motivation and emotional states. We can watch video clips and become increasingly skilled at recognising canine body language.
All of that knowledge matters enormously.
But then someone hands you a lead.
Suddenly there is a real dog at the other end of it, and the beautifully neat theoretical world becomes considerably messier.
The dog may not want your food. He may be distracted by a smell on the floor. He may be worried about you. He may become wildly excited the moment you move. The behaviour you intended to reinforce may disappear completely when you reach for the treat. Your timing may be half a second too late. Your body position may inadvertently block the dog. The environment may be competing with you so successfully that your carefully prepared training plan becomes irrelevant within thirty seconds.
This isn’t a failure of theory.
It is simply the point at which knowledge has to become skill.
And skill requires practice.
Why working with unfamiliar dogs matters
One of the things I particularly value about running ThinkDog! Practical at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home in Old Windsor is that participants work with rescue dogs they haven’t met before.
I think this is incredibly important.
When we train our own dogs, we already possess a vast amount of information about them, whether we realise it or not. We know what food they like, what makes them nervous, how quickly they learn, what they are likely to do next and whether that particular expression means I’m confused, I’m worried or I’ve just seen something fascinating behind you.
With an unfamiliar dog, you don’t have that luxury.
You have to observe first.
Before deciding what you are going to teach, you need to assess the individual in front of you. What is this dog telling you? How comfortable are they? What motivates them? How easily can they disengage from the environment? How quickly do they become frustrated? What happens when they don’t immediately understand what you want?
You have to make decisions in real time, and then change those decisions as the dog gives you more information.
That is behaviour work.
The dog doesn’t know what your lesson plan says
Over the years at ThinkDog! Practical, we have worked with a huge variety of dogs, all bringing their own histories, personalities, abilities and quirks into the training space.
One dog might need to learn something apparently straightforward such as walking on a loose lead. Another might benefit from a completely different behaviour that helps them interact with people more successfully.
We have worked with dogs such as Tyson, a Mastiff-cross, on loose-lead walking, and Scooby the Beagle, teaching him a lovely alternative greeting behaviour we called “be a bear.” Rigby, a Lurcher, learned a down and then a wriggle.
On paper, you could write a training plan for each of those behaviours quite easily.
In practice, the interesting bit is everything that happens between the bullet points.
How do you introduce the task to this dog? How quickly can you progress? What tells you that you need to slow down? Is the dog actually learning what you think they are learning? Can you spot the tiny accidental cue you’ve introduced? Can you change your approach without becoming flustered when something isn’t working?
And perhaps most importantly: can you recognise when the dog needs you to stop trying to teach and start listening?
Those skills are extraordinarily difficult to acquire purely through theoretical learning.
Timing has to get into your muscle
Dog training is physical.
That sounds obvious, but it is something we don’t talk about nearly enough when discussing professional education.
Good trainers develop an almost automatic ability to observe, move, mark, reinforce and adjust. Their eyes are on the animal rather than the treat pot. They learn where to stand, when to move and when not to move. They notice the tiny behaviour that precedes the behaviour everyone else sees.
Their timing becomes increasingly precise.
I sometimes describe a well-learned behaviour as being “in the muscle”, and I think something similar happens to us as trainers.
You cannot learn timing simply by reading about timing.
You can understand intellectually that reinforcement needs to be delivered accurately, but actually coordinating your eyes, brain, hands and body while simultaneously watching the dog is a practical skill. And like any practical skill, it improves through repetition, feedback and experience.
The same applies to handling leads, arranging the environment, delivering reinforcement, shaping behaviour and reading changes in an animal’s emotional state while you are working.
Behaviour work needs practical experience too
This distinction becomes even more important when we move beyond training into behaviour work.
A behaviour professional isn’t simply applying a protocol to a diagnosis.
Two dogs displaying apparently similar behaviour may be doing so for completely different reasons. Their emotional states may be different, their learning histories may be different and their ability to cope with the environment may be different.
You need the theoretical knowledge to understand the possible mechanisms underlying behaviour, but you also need the observational and practical experience to recognise what the individual animal in front of you is communicating.
And there is another layer.
You have a human at the other end of the lead too.
Being able to perform a training technique yourself is one skill. Being able to demonstrate it clearly, break it into achievable pieces and then coach somebody else to do it — while simultaneously observing the animal — is another skill entirely.
For anyone intending to work professionally with clients, that matters enormously.
Online learning is valuable – but it is part of the education
I deliver a great deal of education online, so I certainly wouldn’t argue that online learning isn’t valuable. Quite the opposite.
It allows us to teach theory in depth, examine video repeatedly, explore research and give people access to specialist knowledge they might otherwise never encounter.
But I don’t believe that theory-only learning should be regarded as the whole preparation for a hands-on profession.
Think about almost any other practical career.
We wouldn’t expect someone to become a physiotherapist having never physically worked with a patient. We wouldn’t expect a hairdresser to qualify having only watched videos of haircuts. Nobody wants their first driving instructor to have learned entirely from a PowerPoint presentation.
Animal training and behaviour should be no different.
There is a very good reason why practical experience, supervision, mentoring and opportunities to work with a variety of animals are so valuable.
Your own dog isn’t enough
This can be uncomfortable to hear because many people begin their professional journey precisely because they have trained their own dogs very successfully.
That’s a fantastic starting point.
But it is only a starting point.
Your dog knows you. You know your dog. You have developed a shared language and thousands of tiny routines that make communication easier.
Working with an unfamiliar rescue dog strips much of that away.
Now you have to rely on your ability to observe, assess and adapt.
And the more animals you work with, the bigger your practical database becomes.
You discover that the technique that worked beautifully with Dog A leaves Dog B utterly baffled. You learn that some dogs require far smaller approximations than others. You become better at spotting frustration before it escalates. You learn when to persist, when to change tack and when to abandon your clever idea altogether.
That last one can be particularly educational.
Dogs are excellent at puncturing professional egos.
Build your education in layers
If you are serious about creating a career in dog or cat training or behaviour, I would encourage you not to think in terms of finding the course that will qualify you.
Think instead about building layers of competence.
You need scientific understanding. You need knowledge of learning theory, ethology, development, welfare, emotion and body language. You need to read research and keep that knowledge up to date.
But alongside it, seek opportunities for supervised practical experience.
Work with animals other than your own. Observe experienced professionals. Shadow good trainers and behaviourists. Volunteer appropriately in rescue environments. Attend practical courses. Film yourself training and look critically at your timing and mechanics. Ask experienced people to watch you work and give you feedback.
And don’t rush this stage.
There is no substitute for accumulating experience with individual animals who haven’t read the textbook and have absolutely no intention of behaving like the example in Chapter Six.
Theory tells you what might happen. Experience teaches you what to do next.
The best animal professionals I know haven’t stopped learning theory simply because they have decades of practical experience. Nor do they dismiss practical skill because they have academic qualifications.
They keep developing both.
That is the balance I would encourage anyone entering this profession to pursue.
Learn the science. Understand the theory. Study behaviour closely. Become curious about why animals do what they do.
And then get out there — with appropriate supervision, good welfare standards and excellent professional guidance — and practise.
Because eventually somebody is going to hand you the lead of a dog you’ve never met before.
And at that moment, the animal doesn’t care how many books you’ve read.
They need you to know what you’re doing.
Further learning and practical training
If you are developing a career in dog training or behaviour, ThinkDog! Practical was created specifically to help bridge the gap between knowing the theory and being able to apply it confidently with real dogs.
The two-day immersive course is taught by Sarah Whitehead MSc, CCAB and Jo Smith at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, Old Windsor, and gives participants the opportunity to assess, handle and train rescue dogs they have never met before.
Rather than practising predetermined exercises with familiar dogs, participants need to observe the individual in front of them, assess what is happening, decide how best to proceed and then adapt their approach according to the dog’s responses.
It is this process of observe, think, do, reassess that begins to turn theoretical knowledge into genuine practical competence.
Find out more and book a place on ThinkDog! Practical.
For professionals and students who want to continue developing their theoretical knowledge alongside their practical experience, Sarah also provides specialist online education in canine and feline behaviour, training, body language and professional development through her PRO-Level Membership.
