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Mary Mazzeri

Carpentersville, IL

847-426-5089

Serving the Chicago region in the Fox Valley area since 1970

Group Classes

Private instruction

Behavior Modification

Board & Train 

  IACP Certified Dog Trainer/Instructor CDT

One of my greatest pleasures as a dog trainer, comes from seeing dog owners succeed in the training of their canine companions.  Over the many years spent studying, working on, and improving my craft, I have read hundreds of books, attended countless dog training seminars and learned from some of the best teachers in dog training.  Because I am good at what I do, most who come here for training will succeed.  There is, however, a small percentage of people who will not achieve their dog training goals.  I can confirm these very same facts with other good trainers - the ratio of those who succeed to those who don't may vary somewhat but the fact remains that a portion of people who "try" to train their dog will fail.

Even if we set aside those who make no effort and focus only on those who do try, we are still left with the question, "Why do so many ordinary dog owners fall short of their stated training goals?"  Why don't they achieve similar results to those from whom they get their instructions?  After all, it seems logical to assume that if one were to follow the technique as described - follow the recipe, they should get the same results.  Why are there so many different methods and why do so many people continue to search for "the method," which will work for them?  While searching for dog training methods and techniques to "make" all my students successful (and failing to find the "magic bullet") I slowly began to realize that there were times that I was studying the wrong end of the leash. 

We humans are a very interesting species.  There is a  legion of reasons why we may not succeed in many of our endeavors and I couldn't list them all here even if I knew what they all were.  My goal is to simply foster a greater awareness of what dynamics might possibly be interfering with the process.  Very often there is a wide gulf between what we "want" and what we are ready, willing or able to do in order to get what we want.  The amount of success we will realize is often directly influenced by our degree of commitment to our goal.   Examples abound of wants not realized.  We want life partners and good marriages but half of those will fail.   We want to be slim and healthy but over 90% of dieters will put the weight back on and following a healthy lifestyle is something most of us acknowledge as something we should be doing but, for some reason, can't seem to get started.  The "self-help" section in any book-store is one of the busiest in the whole shop with new titles cropping up every day; many (not all) who buy will read and then continue on as always, changing nothing.  This too is our client; this is the occupant on the other end of the leash.

It has been suggested that if a million dollars were given to someone living in poverty, the odds are that within a year the person would once again be poor.  Over the years I have seen people repeat the same patterns over and over, this has been the case in many areas e.g. relationships, finances and missed opportunities.  And dogs?  Some examples that come to mind:

-The person who has had two, three or four previous dogs they had to get rid of for specific behavior problems and now their latest is showing the same behavior.  Coincidence?

-The person who pays someone to train their dog for them.  The dog performs perfectly.  It is tested with several different people and passes all tests.  The owner gets the dog back home and within a month the dog has reverted to almost all of the "old behaviors."

-The trainer finds a piece of equipment that works especially well for the dog in question, demonstrates its use and ensures the client knows how to use it properly.  On the next and any subsequent meetings the owner somehow manages to misplace, forget, break or somehow misuse said equipment.  How many times must this happen before considering that something other than coincidence is at work here?

There is an expression that says, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."  I believe that a corollary to that statement would be, "The teacher will appear and continue to reappear; IF AND WHEN THE STUDENT IS READY, they will learn the lesson."  Sometimes there is no shortcutting the real lessons to be learned and sometimes the teachers are tough.  Sometimes the poverty, obesity, failed relationship or the dog that won't mind is the teacher and one is left trying to figure out what is the lesson.

All is not negative however; we do have a lot going for us.  Humans and dogs share a relationship that goes back to a very early point in our history, many thousands of years ago.  Training our dogs and raising our children has (for the most part) been successfully accomplished for more generations than we can count.  The application of scientific principles to the process and the emergence of "the experts," presumably to understand and improve on the results, is a relatively new phenomena. 

Today, unlike any other time in history, we have more experts telling us how to raise and educate our dogs and kids.  For our children, we have at our disposal a plethora of child psychologists, child development experts, early childhood teaching experts, etc. –  the list is too long to mention.  For our dogs, we also have a list of "experts" that, while maybe not quite as long, is very similar.  Yet it can be argued that despite all the expertise, in some cases we really are no better off.  Sometimes, despite the best of intentions, the experts also focus on the "wrong end of the leash."

As I cogitate on some of the dog/owner combinations that cross my path, I am impressed with the realization that dog won't change until owner does.  In a recent class one of the participants, who has been trying very hard, expressed the frustration that the power struggles with the dog have not improved.  She agreed to stay behind after class and showed me the bruises and scrapes on her arms (covered by long sleeves).  It seems every day when she'd begin working with this six month old Newf cross pup, he'd take the opportunity to grab the leash and her arms.  Her attempts to correct were ineffective (to say the least).  I realized, from talking to
her, that she is quite timid, does not handle confrontation well and deals with everything in a very non-assertive manner.  The dog will behave for the husband, the trainer - hell even for the student sitting next to her - but not for her.  She knows she needs to be more self-assertive but it requires a tremendous amount of effort on her part to "act" assertive.  She can stick with this dog and hopefully learn the lesson she needs to learn or she can get rid of this dog and will likely then have to face another teacher who has the same lesson to teach her.

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Training is essentially a special kind of conversation.  The conversation involves getting to know each other, letting each other know what is needed and/or expected from the other, and what limits will define the emerging relationship.  One does not have a conversation with a "method," one uses a method to converse.  A conversation is a very personal thing.  I believe one must look past "the method," to the people in the equation; this is where I believe the answers lie.  Even though the author of any given method does his best to describe in exact detail what steps to take to achieve the desired result, the formula will be incomplete.  Every trainer has within their method, something intangible - a bit of themself (sic).  They get the best results using their own method because they understand "the conversation" they are having and this conversation is consistent with everything else the dog has come to know about them.

In order to effectively train their dog, one needs to learn how to have this conversation.  This conversation needs to contain all the important pieces of information so that you can be clear about what you want and what you don't want or will not accept.  I believe that a failure to communicate is responsible for most of the problems we have both in our relationship with our dogs and in the relationships we have with other people.  Effective communicators do not withhold information nor do they only say or do what they think the other wants to hear.  They don't make empty threats but are honest about consequences.  With them, you know exactly where you stand.  They do not fear saying something because they worry about being liked or accepted.