Dog Training in a Bad Economy

By Robert Forto, PhD

I am not an economist but I do not think it takes one to notice the skinnier pocketbook after bills are paid and purchases are made. It does not take an economist to notice the news about increasing foreclosures or the pets that are dropped off at shelters by owners claiming they "cannot afford him anymore" or the news of possible recession. I have even heard of a few people who have had an ingenious change of plans for the summer vacation this year. Maybe they will decide against driving to Walley World in the Family Truckster and visit Aunt Edna instead. The following article is meant to be satirical but has a severe element of truth attached. I encourage you to read my ramblings and comment on what you think.

I still feel the bite in grocery, gasoline, and utility prices. It is hard to say what one would do in another's situation but I do know that I regard my dogs as family and that not many things in this world would separate me from them. In that vein, I have a few, hopefully helpful, tips for homeowners who have lost their homes to foreclosure and are faced with landlords who are not friendly to the idea of pets on their property. There are also ways to ease the cost of keeping a dog by learning how to do some things yourself and by discussing alternatives with your veterinarian or local shelter or low cost community clinic. Most of them are sympathetic and want to help you find ways to keep your pet. But that is not the topic of this article. I would be happy to speak with you about these tips and alternatives, just give me a call.

To introduce myself: My name is Robert Forto and I am a certified canine behaviorist and the training director for Denver Dog Works in Colorado. I have been in business for eighteen years and the status of our economy is said to be the worst in my lifetime. I remember the gas shortages in the seventies and having to ration food until my parents got paid again but I also remember that our little mixed breed, Sugar, always had what she needed.

Dog training is not a luxury item for most people, like an evening on the town or a weekend vacation to Vail. Dog training is a necessity. With 77.1 million dogs in this country that equals a lot of bad mannered pooches. Dogs need basic manners. If they don't have these it leads to bigger problems and often lands them in a shelter.

The way I look at the economy is that the glass is either half full or half empty. I tend to err on the side of realist, but that is just my point of view. It appears to me that people are in a near panic because gas prices have gone up a couple dollars in the past few months, the stock market is in a deep slide and people are losing their homes because they were greedy and materialistic, and bought a house with nothing down and then decided to blow their equity on boats, plasma TV's and ATV's. Now they are forced to move out of their homes because of foreclosure and they are leaving their beloved pet behind to starve to death. How is that for going from bad to worse?

But really what has changed? True, when President Bush came into office gas was $1.60 a gallon, we were not at war based on false pretenses, and the stock market was in the middle of an Internet explosion. We still had dogs, just not as many dog parks with dog owners on cell-phones and yelling "leave it". We didn't have much in the way of big-box, corporate America-pet store-six dollar an hour earning cashiers/shelf stocker/can-I-help-you-find-something please.../dog trainers. It was a different world then. Now we have a presidential candidate pushing "change that we can believe in" rhetoric, and we still have dogs and they still need training right? They are still pulling on the leash, tearing up our couches that we got on a loan that we could not afford from a big furniture warehouse. They still need grooming and vet care and they still require our attention. Rightly so, we should be devoting this attention to our family and kids (and dogs) instead of working two, or maybe three, jobs because we are so worried about the price of gas. I vaguely remember when I was a kid some obscure quote about the price of tea in China. What was it?

Now China is the second largest economy in the World and we are hardly a threat to them anymore. Hey, they do have the Olympics starting on 08/08/08. Do you remember what was supposed to happen on 01/01/00? What a dud that turned out to be. I am a huge fan of the Olympics and will probably stay up all night watching ambiguous sporting events that don't exist except in the Olympics. True, I could just log on to the Internet and find out who won--but why? I won't be able to sleep because I will be too worried about the status of the Dow Jones Industrial Average that really doesn't mean anything to anybody anyway. Maybe I will work on the long-down exercise with my dog.

When I was writing my dissertation for my doctorate I had grand plans of researching getting the sport of dog sledding into the Winter Olympics. Maybe I need to rethink that idea and concentrate my research to using a dog team as a mode of transportation. When I lived in Duluth, Minnesota I did just that. I would hook up my 12-dog team in the middle of a blizzard and mush to the local convenience store for "staples", or at least what I thought were staples, for a recent 20-something college grad. But even a dog team is not cheap and I would venture to guess, more expensive than gas if all is tallied right-it averages about three dollars a day to keep a dog for a dog team. That is a lot more than four dollars for a gallon of gas. I digress.

Yes, dog training is a necessity. Maybe not for the dog. They do not read the Journal, even though they think in black and white. I admit I read the Journal, not for those cool stipulated (and pixilated) pictures but for the articles of course. Dog training is for us. Dog training is a necessity to save our sanity, to save us from our self-destructive selves. The thought dog training brings me to paraphrase a line from a movie, A Christmas Story: to make "all is right in the world". Dog training brings us back in line with a simpler time. Even if that was just the 1990's when 'Generation X' was making millions on the Internet and Homeward Bound, Air Bud, Iron Will, Fluke, and the cute little dog, "Eddie", from Fraiser won our hearts and we aspired to have our dogs trained just like them. When a Doberman named "Raisin" won the Westminster dog show and we found out that he flew on a private jet. We all had grandiose dreams and inspirations for our four-legged mans-best-friend. This is when I chose to became a dog trainer and why I still love what I do. True it is trying at times. Dog training is difficult work. It is the ultimate customer service job. I have been criticized countless times for standing up for my training philosophies, my staff, why I would want to offer an agility class outside in the middle of winter, and of course people having unrealistic expectations. I learn from every client and I am passionate about what I do. I realized a long time ago I don't just train dogs, I change lives.

Training your dog can change your life too. It will bring you closer to humanity and to your dog. It will allow you to think outside the box and stop the incessant worrying about the economy. Orthodoxy is not the norm in dog training. It is not mundane and relentless. Like the agility class in the middle of winter that people were so critical of at Denver Dog Works. Sure it was cold and there was snow on the ground but no other dog training school would even think of such a thing. People thought Sir Edmund Hillary was crazy for climbing Mt. Everest and why people still try to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. People thought they were avant-garde, but didn't they change people's perception? Dog training will bring you a new perspective on life and the simplest of experiences that we love so much about our dogs. Such as: why we can sit and wonder why they turn their head a certain way when we talk to them, or why even old dogs, like my 11-year old Siberian Husky, Ineka, can still run and frolic and wake me up every morning with those intense ice-blue eyes. Dog training can bring you happiness, joy, and understanding to an otherwise out-of-control world. Now that is change we can believe in.

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Dr. Robert Forto is the training director of Denver Dog Works in Colorado. He welcomes your comments, both positive and negative. Dr. Forto encourages you to give Denver Dog works a call so we can see this through together. Dr. Forto can be contacted through his website at www.denverdogworks.com or by phone at 303-522-1727 anytime.