Had a training session today...
In case anyone was interested on how it went with "that expensive trainer".
She seemed a bit more polite in person. We tried the gentle leader with Archie. He was not a fan. No shocker there. But the trainer said he got "use to it" pretty quickly. She did handle him a bit too rough one time and he yelped. She stopped. I did NOT like that. If she would not have stop I would've said something. Her assessment of Archie is that he has a good temperament and is a sweet dog. But he acts like he's 5 months old instead of 11 mo. Blamed it all on me, of course. Apparently I've been a total softy with him... *sigh* I know we've been letting him get away with a few things, so time to stop that now! He did manage to walk to heel with the gentle leader. I will be trying that again tomorrow.
She gave me an entire lecture on food. I'm gonna post the food in another thread for feedback. Told me what I'm feeding him sucks and kibble is awful!. *eye roll* She pushed Richard Wolters again. So then I said, "I've heard his techniques are outdated from some folks on this lab forum I'm on". She replied, brace yourself, "oh, they don't know anything". :-O "Um, there are people on there from all over the world. I'm sure SOMEONE on there knows SOMETHING." I say. I can appreciate her decades of expertise but I really can't stand it when people generalize and jump to conclusions. Really rubs me the wrong way.
The last thing we worked on was greeting people when they enter my home. Showed me how to do it by saying "no" and "get back". I have to say, her methods are more correction. I know she threw in positive outcomes (loose leash when near by, a "good boy" when staying in place) but it just felt like most of it was correction. I don't know. Maybe at this point Archie needs that to undo some of the bad habits I helped him form. I feel that it can't always be just all positive because training manors would take FOREVER.
I'm starting to think that there are so many training methods that you just do what works on your dog. I'll train the walking and greeting how she showed me for the next 4 weeks. We have another session scheduled for another small fortune *sigh*. Not sure if I'll keep that appt yet.