pet connection

I spoke with trainer Victoria Stilwell about her experiences as a judge on CBS’ reality competition program, “Greatest American Dog.” My article based on this and other interviews is here.

Christie Keith: Hi, Victoria.

Victoria Stilwell: Hey, hi. How are you?

Christie Keith: I’m good. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I really like things I’ve seen you say in your writing and in your other interviews about the concept of “thinking dog.” Can you tell our readers a little bit of what that’s about?

Victoria Stilwell: Well, as a trainer I always like to get my clients, before they start training, to try and think what the world is like from a dog’s point of view.

I find so many people don’t even think about that. How is the environment that you have created around your dog affecting your dog both psychologically and physically?

I think when people take time to start thinking what must this be like from the point of view of the dog, I think they begin to understand their dogs. That’s the first key to understanding why your dog does things, why it responds to certain stimuli in certain way and what it’s thinking. We know so much more about our dogs now than we used to, from study and scientific research.

That’s why I always say it’s important to think dog. I think it makes you a better dog owner.

Christie Keith: One of the things that I enjoyed on the show particularly was in the most recent episode, which was the individual dancing routines.

What I responded to the most was the joyfulness of the interaction between the three best teams. The happiness that was shown; Bill and Star, JD and Galaxy who were just like two little boys playing around on the floor and Lori and Andrew, that little Maltese just so happily bouncing along next to her.

I love that quality of happy cooperation between them. How do you think that comes across to the average dog owner who is really looking just to get a good family companion, not a competitive obedience dog, and who would settle for the dog not pulling on the leash instead of doing a dance routine? What do you think that gives to those owners?

Victoria Stilwell: Well, the whole dancing with your dog idea is actually a sport now that a lot of people are doing. In England we call it “heel to music.” It’s actually just a more advanced kind of obedience, an advanced series of moves. Obviously it’s easier to teach your dog to sit and lie down, and a little harder to teach him to do complex moves like you do with heel to music, but it’s an extension of that.

When you teach a dog to do the heel to music, at the same time you’re also teaching that dog control. You’re teaching it communication and you’re teaching it to focus on you, and that helps with problems like walking on a leash and other behavior problems.

That’s why I see all of these activities and all these thoughts as just an extension of what can help your dog. So if you’ve got a dog that can do heel to music, chances are your dog is going to be pretty good at walking on the leash.

That’s what I like about the show, because a lot of these people haven’t done anything like that with their dog before. It just shows how a few simple moves are quite impressive.

But again, it’s all about focus and working together and working well on the leash. It’s about working together.

CK;I particularly like that some of the best teams – Bill and Star in particular, at least through the episodes that have aired so far — have demonstrated such a nice working relationship. They seem so happy. That’s something else I’ve seen in your writing and in your interviews, that you talk about the word happiness as it relates to how dogs and people work together.

Victoria Stilwell: You bet. I think that’s what this program is all about, because it’s not show dogs. Most of those dogs, those people, they haven’t done anything with their dogs. This is regular people with regular dogs. I think it’s highly acceptable to dog owners and non-dog owners alike, because even if you don’t have dogs, or you’re not really interested in them, it’s the relationships between people I think are just as fascinating.

Because, yeah, getting a whole load of people living in a house together, that interests me anyway. I’m fascinated by human behavior. But I do think it’s good on so many levels.

Christie Keith: Now I want to just turn to the other side of this. There was one incident, when Elvis slipped off the teeter-totter while he was on the leash with the collar.

I really liked how that was handled. You all commented on it, noticed it. I thought that was helpful, because I often see people stringing their dogs up in the dog park, and I think that’s something people need a little education on.

But the second incident that was a little troubling was one that the judges weren’t present for, which was in the photography episode.

Victoria Stilwell: The photo shoot.

Christie Keith: Yes. I was wondering two things. You clearly said that the snarl bands were inhumane, but didn’t say anything about the earlier incidents with citrus juice and a dryer hose that resulted in Teresa being bitten. Did you know about those at the time of judging?

Victoria Stilwell: No. I knew nothing, and I think that was really difficult. In one way, the judging is fair because we don’t have any preconceived ideas. We don’t have people that we like because they’re a certain way, or dislike for a certain way that might harm our judgment.

So in one way I think it’s a good idea that we only see what’s presented in front of us. But then another way, what I think I found a little troubling was that I think some of the challenges, the elimination challenges, we should have seen more of. It’s very difficult to judge just the photograph and what people say, because you have to take people at their word.

I said that I’ve never heard of snarl bands, and snarl bands don’t sound too humane to me, but I had to take Teresa on her word that Leroy was fine with it and happy throughout the photo shoot.

Now the first time that I saw any of the photo shoot was on television with everybody else. That was very troubling to me. It was very, very upsetting, because obviously I think it was important that we, as judges, saw how the photo shoot was done as well.

We should have seen that because of course, it would have been a no-brainer. If we’d have seen somebody doing what Teresa had done to her dog, using the spray bottle in the photo shoot as well, that would have been a no-brainer about who would have gone home that week.

Hey, I’m the biggest advocate against abuse that there is, and so I was shocked by that, and was appalled. Nobody should treat their dogs like that at all, ever, even for $250,000. I was very upset by it.

Christie Keith: I agree with you. It does seem to me, based on the episodes I’ve watched so far, that the positive outweighs any negative things that were shown to the viewers, as far as human/dog relationships.

Victoria Stilwell: Yeah. I’m a very positive reward based trainer. I believe that you can train all kinds of dogs, even [unclear] dogs, even a really aggressive dogs, in a positive manner. You don’t need to hit. You don’t need to shout. You don’t need to jerk a collar. You don’t need to use choke collars.

I’m filming my program for Animal Planet at the moment, “It’s Me or the Dog.” I’ve just had a severely, severely aggressive dog, and we’ve turned this dog around through making this dog more confident.

It wasn’t done punitively at all. It was done with consideration and psychology, and we got this dog to feel a different way. Now the dog, was terribly afraid of other dogs, and aggressive, and would have killed another dog.

Now it’s to the point where it now likes the approach of other dogs, because good things happened to it. So, the dog is changing the way it feels. That’s the difference between the old style training and the new style training, even though it’s not new. It’s been around for many, many years, but that’s the difference between the two paths.

There are traditional trainers out there that believe in leash jerks and physically touching the dog in a reprimand and alpha rolling the dog. That has shown to be psychologically damaging and quite frankly dangerous. So there is another way.

The positive reward based training, it might not be as quick a fix as a punitive measure because your dog’s not fearing you, but I’d rather have my dog work for me because it wants to, not because it fears me. But it has to be a long-term solution. It has a long-term consequences. The dog is happier and that’s the most important thing. And the owners are.

So for example, Lori and Andrew are very much the positive reward based trainers. Lori is spot on with her comments, she is spot on. She’s not kooky or weird. She studies. She understands dog behavior very well.

Some other people, like Elan and Kenji, Elan was very harsh to Kenji and that dog was becoming aggressive. Aggression begets aggression.

Christie Keith: I was actually kind of troubled by them, especially when I read that Kenji was only a year old. To see that much aggression in a large dog at that young of an age was worrying to me.

But you talked about it and in fact that was why she was sent home was harshness — and that noise she kept making, as a correction, the ah-ah noise.

Victoria Stilwell: Yeah. I make the ah-ah noise, where I use a vocal aversive. The ah-ah is one of those aversives. When you say “ah-ah,” you stop a dog from doing the behavior you don’t like.

It’s not designed to scare the dog. It’s designed to interrupt her. When you’ve interrupted the dog’s behavior, then you can refocus the dog onto a more positive behavior. But you only use the ah-ah once, and the thing with Elan, she used it about 20-30 times throughout the elimination challenge, stressing Kenji out.

She was even telling ah-ah for good behavior. It was insanity. She was jerking Kenji’s collar around all the time, and I thought this is a recipe for disaster.

There was a lot of stuff you didn’t see me saying, but I said to her, “You’d better be very careful, Elan, because the way you’re treating this dog, you’re going to exacerbate aggressive response, and make Kenji worse.” Well I hope she’s taken some of that advice on.

Christie Keith: I think that your view came across really clearly, and that was actually another example of how I liked the opportunity to educate in an entertaining way. You can hold up behavior that doesn’t work, and people can learn from that as well as looking at a positive interaction, like Lori and Andrew, or Bill and Star.

That’s why I’m glad that I’ve had the chance to hear what you thought about the incident to which there was no commentary. Is that ever revisited in any way? That there’s any discussion? I know you can’t talk about the future episodes, and if you can’t say anything, that’s fine, but I’m just wondering if there’s any chance to educate the viewers about the incident that you didn’t get a chance to comment on with that spray bottle.

Victoria Stilwell: Unfortunately not, because we judge what we see at that time. So, no. But obviously I had to put it on my web site and hope that people come there, and on the CBS forums as well, that I don’t condone that behavior at all, and had I known about it, things might have been very different.

Christie Keith: Okay; that’s good to know.

Victoria Stilwell: Yeah; I think that was important and that was no way dissing CBS, because I have to say that I was so impressed with the producers. There are going to be people that comment on the negative or say the dog shouldn’t have done that, and maybe some of the challenges might have been a little suspect, but those dogs and those owners were certainly – the dogs were treated so well.

I think CBS and the producers did extremely well in keeping the dogs safe, keeping them happy, making sure there’s a 24-hour veterinarian on call and on set. The American Human Association was there during the challenges. I think CBS did themselves proud with that regard.

Christie Keith: Did American Humane have anything to say about the spray bottle? I actually didn’t realize they were on set and I’m going to double check on if they had any comment on this.

Victoria Stilwell: Yeah; now, they were for a lot of the challenges, especially the more major challenges. They were on set, yes. Now I don’t know whether they were there for the photo shoot because I wasn’t there. [Note: While AHA confirmed their Film and Television Unit monitored some of the GAD challenges, they were not there for any part of the episode in question.]

Certainly they’re not there during regular days just where people are in the house. They’re not there all the time. But I’m sure they were just as appalled to see that. Everybody was. Everybody was, including myself.

I think when you’re in these kind of shows – for instance, with my show I have a chance to make sure that the information is right out there, and that people don’t get the wrong idea.

I think it’s different with a show like this where you don’t have any edit control or anything, and then you suddenly find yourself oh, well maybe that was portrayed. It made it look like the judges knew about it, but we we sent home the wrong person.

But I also think they’ve been very good with the editing process and getting good information out. Part of my reason for being on the program is that so many people still practice the old punitive measures, and we know so much more now. You can have a great relationship with your dog without your dog fearing you. I think that’s a major, major step forward.

So for me to be able to be on a program like this, it goes way beyond any kind of notoriety or liking to get my face in front of a camera. It’s an ability to spread my message which I’m passionate about.

Christie Keith: Do you have any last comments you’d like to make about the show, your participation in it, anything else that I haven’t asked you about?

Victoria Stilwell: Because my background is in rescue, I think the most important message that I like to get out to people is that if you have a behavior problem with your dog and you feel like you can’t do anything about it, there are people out there that will help you.

There are many fantastic trainers out there. So before you give your dog up or you abandon your dog or you say there’s no hope, find a trainer, because they can come and help you and sort the problem out.

A lot of people own dogs, but the science of behavior is a complicated science and it takes a long time to study. So get a specialist in to help you. That’s what I would say. And do everything you can before you decide to give that dog up.

Christie Keith: I actually wanted to just ask you one last question. You said you’re going to be doing a show on Animal Planet.

Victoria Stilwell: Yes.

Christie Keith: Is this like “It’s Me or the Dog,” or is this a different show?

Victoria Stilwell: No; this is “It’s Me or the Dog,” but it’s filmed in America. I’m filming at this moment, and we’re doing 20 episodes around the United States and it’s going to start, I believe, September the 27th. It’s an hour long.

We have been with some amazing families and some very, very difficult dogs. So, it’s been a real pressure, but great for me as well because I’m really having to pull out all the stops and get thinking and get my thinking brain up. Its been tough, but its been really good.

So I think it’s going to be a fantastic program for all dog people.

Christie Keith: Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Victoria Stilwell: Great; thank you so much.