#JAS LEVERETTE DOG TRAINER HOW TO#
#JAS LEVERETTE DOG TRAINER TV#

Um, okay… What, exactly, should an owner do to make their dog trust them? How will we know when a dog trusts us? And how will “trust” make him understand what I want when I cue a behavior? It’s just fuzzy language that sounds good, but can’t actually be described in concrete or useful terms. “Dogs need to trust their pack leader,” Leverette says in the first episode. Families are described as “packs” and owners are encouraged to be “pack leaders.” Though this sounds kind of cool, exactly how this is accomplished is never well articulated. He issues “commands” instead of talking about “cues” for behavior. Second, Leverette uses a lot of language that more educated trainers eschew as outdated, meaningless, and immaterial to the science of behavior modification. This doesn’t mean they are learning anything, however. Look carefully and you can see that with these collars, resistance is futile for all but the most defensive dogs they have to submit. This allows the dogs to be controlled with a lot less overt force it’s too painful and choking to pull or “act like a fool” (as one owner describes his dog’s problematic behavior) with a narrow cord on your throat. When Leverette begins work with them, they are wearing very thin cord-like slip collars. Instead, the dogs simply learn to give up and give in to the force being used.īy the way, it’s never called out or shown explicitly, but when you first see each “problem dog,” they are generally wearing wide collars. It’s just that his methods call for making the dog do what he wants, when he wants – even if the dog is “flooded” and completely “over threshold,” physiologically aroused past a state of being able to learn. Leverette is not shown flagrantly inflicting pain on the dogs he’s a much more skilled trainer than that. And in cases of aggression, it’s well-established that the use of pain, force, and fear in training often worsens aggression.ĭon’t get me wrong. If an owner is motivated, there are always more ways to train a dog in order to “save” them, without having to resort to pain-inducing tools and methods. This sort of language triggers educated dog trainers. “This is life or death, pretty much, for her.” She won’t have a second chance….” The owner agrees. Leverette says, “If we don’t fix this, this dog is not gonna have a long future…. In the first episode, a guy described as a tech-business owner has adopted a pit bull-mix who displays aggression with strangers and visitors to the tech-guy’s home.

Most significantly, poorly timed or inappropriate corrections are nearly guaranteed to worsen the dog’s behavior and increase his frustration, triggering defensive aggression.īut the usual justifications for the use of force are trotted out.

Not everyone wants to use force with their dogs.Not everyone can make appropriate corrections with the timing required to make them effective.Though Leverette also describes his training as “modern,” up-to-date training professionals understand that while force-based training can be effective, there are MANY reasons it’s best avoided: There are three major issues: The first is that Leverette is a self-described “balanced trainer.” This has come to mean someone who uses food treats, toys, and praise to reinforce behaviors that they want from a dog – and physical “corrections” to punish unwanted behaviors.

#JAS LEVERETTE DOG TRAINER HOW TO#

That’s a good thing, right? We all want people to enjoy their dogs more, and to learn how to train them! So why are so many trainers upset about the show? Within each hour-long episode, the dog’s problems are improved or resolved. He’s shown dispensing pithy pearls of dog-training wisdom, with other brief animal-behavior “facts” appearing in type on screen.

#JAS LEVERETTE DOG TRAINER TV#

The show is scripted and filmed like any reality TV show: Fairly ordinary situations are filmed in a way that dramatizes the problems people are having with their dogs, making the dogs seem incredibly dangerous and destructive, and the trainer is engaged in such a way as to appear near-heroic. I watched the first three (of six) episodes that currently appear on Netflix, and my first thought was, “Here we go again.” A few weeks ago, I started seeing posts on social media from dog trainers I know and admire, warning people about a new show on Netflix called “Canine Intervention.” The show features a dog trainer named Jas Leverette, who says, “I help the dogs that no one else will.”

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