There are a few newer trainers in this program. What I mean by that is they have only had 1 or 2 dogs so far.

This specific trainer I am talking about is one of them. This is his second session in FreedomTails.

He has had one prior dog so far. However his celly was the primary trainer on it. For lack of better words they didn’t and still don’t agree on what to do or how to train the dog.

Each session a dog is given to a cell with two people in it. One person is considered the primary and the one responsible for all training.

However in our cell, Steve and I work as a team. Regardless who is designated as the primary, we both take responsibility in getting the dog where he should be. We take pride in knowing we did the best we can together.

So this last session he sat back and let his celly do it all. He let his celly either train or not train the dog. He just hung out with the dog when he was home from work and in the unit.

Needless to say the dog was a mess and didn’t do much. Didn’t come when called or stay when told. Didn’t heel very well at all and generally had bad dog mannors. Jumping up on people when the dog greeted them, was always under foot and always was begging for food or a treat.

This guy received his dog 3 days ago. This will be his first primary for training a dog. He was excited.

His dog is young and beautiful. She is pretty active and looks to be hyper. I think he will have a great time with her.

The first day he had her, he asked a few of us experienced dog handlers if they would help him.

Normally we would be all over helping him. But watching how he was with the last dog, some of us were sceptical of helping him. I know I was. We weren’t excited to help him if its going to be a repeat of last session.

One dog handler took to his request but put a stipulation on it. He has to do the work. Meaning the senior trainer will show him how and what to do with his dog but will not touch the other guys dog. Its a watch and learn process only.

This was said because some people in this program want other people to train their dogs for them so they can just hang out and have a pet. And or take all the reward for the training. Or even worse, after we do the work for them, they don’t keep it up and then the dog regresses and forgets it all. Then it has to be retaught again.

So this guy that asked for help from us in a way that made us all kinda laugh.
He said he wanted help because he didn’t want this dog to turn out like the last one did.

That is totally understandable. But you have to put in work. The dog will be as good at doing things as you are at teaching it.

Within the last 3 days he has been able to teach his dog to sit, down, heel and stay.

His celly is hating all of it. He is such a sour person. All I have heard him say is negative things about the dog and his celly. “The dog came in and knew all of those things.” “Its pree trained.” “You got it easy.” “They are doing all the work for you.”

Its all him. he’s done it all. Its so much fun to see him succeed at this. The dog might not do it great like willy yet. But in a few weeks I believe the dog will be awesome.

It funny to hear him talk about himself and say things like. ” I feel like I cheated some how.” “It can’t be this easy.” “I haven’t even used any treats to teach her anything. Just this ball.”

Its funny to think I do this every time with my dogs and people are always talk smack about it. Its really just not that hard. Just takes a little effort to do it and then keep following through with it and keeping up the training.

The word consistency is something people don’t really understand when it comes to training a dog. That’s really the trick. Consistency.

I so cool seeing this guy teach his dog all sorts of stuff. To see him get so happy when the dog listens is cool. I wish more people here were like that. To bad there aren’t more moments like this.

I see good things in this new guys future with this dog!

Jesse Bailey
DOC #879476