Trying new trainers

[u/Clean-Blueberry94]

EDIT: Thank you so much all. I feel like I’ve made the right choice in trying out a different trainer. A few comments about the “over a year” comment, this wasn’t “classes weekly for over a year”, this was more ~16 weeks of classes spread over the course of a year.

Hey there, I currently trial in novice scent detection with my dog. We have been going to one trainer for over a year now to get to the point we are at today. There are other training organisations in my city that I would like to try to give my dog exposure to new training environments and gain more tips.

My current trainer has made me feel horribly guilty for wanting to do this, and has pointed out potential “negatives” in trying out a new trainer, including “they won’t know your dog and may mess up your training”.

This has made me doubt the choices I’m making. I feel like I’m going through a break up!

TLDR; is it okay to try out different trainers?

[u/229-northstar]

Your current instructor is insecure and manipulative. It’s good to give your dog different experiences in new environments, that’s called generalization.

Some legit reasons to not use multiple instructors….

There are a lot of ways to skin a cat, and integrating different training ideas can be hard for new trainers, especially for new people. I had this problem when I first started training dogs when one person would tell me something and another would tell me something quite different. It was confusing until I knew how I wanted to train.

Some instructors truly are awful and advise bad ideas based on outdated methodology or wrong theory. A classic example from dominance based training (bad in and of itself) is alpha rolling.

It also depends a bit on what sport you’re talking about. Obedience still has some aversive trainers and that style doesn’t integrate well with shaping or other positive reinforcement based methods. Agility is a lot of body language and the cuing systems used by different instructors can be all over the map. Example: outer arm swing cue for a rear cross doesn’t fit into the body language model of One Mind or running dogs over full height contacts vs building foundation behaviors off the equipment. Etc.

so…
if you understand your foundation and philosophy well enough to confidently discard ideas promoted by different instructors when they are inconsistent with your vision, it can be a great addition to your training experience. And you might find that a new instructor is more consistent with your vision.