BUILDING THE TRUST

Years ago, as I started to build my training system, the one idea that always remained a key factor was getting animals to want to work with me. But in order for that to happen what I found was that I first needed to develop the trust. The valuable lesson that I learned was that the way this was established was by simply getting to know the animal, developing a relationship, and becoming his friend. These two things created something awesome.......a desire for the animal to want to learn.

One of the best ways to understand building trust is to understand what trust really means. In the animal world, this means the trainer has gone through STEP ONE and gotten to know and understand the animal he is working with. Once this has happened, he can now continue to STEP TWO which deals with beginning to build the relationship. He can do this because he has learned many of the animal’s idiosyncrasies. Once he has completed these two steps, he can then continue to STEP THREE and begin to build the trust.

In STEP THREE, as we build the trust, we learn that the animal now trusts us to feed him, to give him water, to love him, to play with him, to keep him sheltered, and be his friend. Most importantly, this lays the groundwork to make the training process much easier and much more efficient.

One of the things that I have always expressed to new dog owners is that the whole idea in training a dog is to understand that a dog is the one animal that wants to please you and wants to be your best friend. Unfortunately, what I have found is that most new dog owners never really got this or understood it. My desire to correct this was my primary motive for wanting to share my knowledge of dog training.

Through focusing on this training module and particularly STEP THREE, what I’ve found is that once the trust is established, it actually lays a foundation for training the animal. It’s important because the animal is working for you, the trainer, rather than just getting the treat or whatever the reward is.

Most importantly, when you have followed these three steps, you have now laid the groundwork to make training a whole lot easier!