No Nonsense Grooming Ep169

Episode 169. A conversation came up this week about no nonsense grooming, common sense grooming.

And it made me think, how can we all have such radically different points of view of what no nonsense grooming is, what common sense grooming is.

And my training point of view is going to, of course, involve things like teaching dogs to be good for it and teaching them to behave themselves and consent and, and other people think that that's nonsense and gibberish. So it's kind of interesting. It's an interesting conversation for us to have this week. This is the Creating Great Grooming Dog Show.

I'm Chrissy Neumyer Smith.

I'm a master groomer behavior specialist, a certified behavior consultant for canines, a certified professional groomer, an instructor at Whole Pet Grooming Academy, and I'm the owner of Happy Critters in Nashua, New Hampshire. And this, my friends and colleagues, is the podcast where grooming and training meet.

So I want to talk a little bit about no nonsense grooming, no nonsense. And what does that really mean? It's very subjective. What one person thinks is nonsense, another person may think is totally normal.

So let's talk a little bit about how we can have such different views on that. Now, I'm coming from a training background, you and I want you to know non trainers sometimes don't understand the same logic chain.

Trainers often, often see people dealing with the same exact problem over and over and over again, trying the same thing, even though it has never worked for them. And they contact us years into a problem doing the same exact thing that they've always done, wondering why their dog is broken.

It's really, really common in dog training. Now, I know that all of us as dog professionals feel like we know dogs very, very well.

And I'm just trying to make sure that we talk about this in a way that helps you understand that dog trainers see the world a little bit differently. When I see a behavior problem, my first thought is, what is the cause of the problem? Why does the dog do it? You know, what is the dog experiencing?

And then my next question is, how can I change that? How can I make a difference? How can I help this dog do something differently?

Now, of course, if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, if you're, you know that I'm going to go straight to how can I help this dog be calm, comfortable and cooperative? The three Cs that we talk about so, so often.

But, but I want you to think about how often we have dogs that are A little bit nervous or scared or, you know, they're wiggling against us. And I don't know about you, but I was taught you just push through it. You just push through it. You keep going.

And the idea was that you would be gentler with a puppy, but not with an adult, because that adult should know better. Or that adult clearly isn't capable of knowing any better. This dog's just a bad dog. Or this dog is spoiled, or this dog is stubborn.

Oh, that one comes up a lot. This dog is stubborn. He is stubborn. He knows better. We have been grooming him since he was a puppy, and he always acts like this, Right?

So it's not uncommon for us as groomers to have been taught, just pushed through.

And I think that idea started because, well, when I started working with dogs in the 80s, it was kind of considered that you had to teach them when they were young and that older dogs were going to have a hard time learning something new. And I'm here to tell you that is not true. Old dogs can learn something new. And I know many of you are like, yes, Chrissy, we know that.

I know, but I'm going to say it anyway. An old dog can learn something new.

So if we have a dog who's afraid of something and we start thinking, can I teach them something new about something they're afraid of? Now, fears are going to be different because fears are emotion driven, Right? It's different than.

Well, I gave an example a couple podcasts back about the difference between, like, giving instructions like how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or how to hold the tarantula you're afraid of. Those things are very, very different. Now, if tarantulas don't scare you, you can hold a tarantula and just observe how interesting he is. Wow.

Tarantulas are neat. If tarantulas are terrifying, there's going to be a lot more work teaching you how to hold a tarantula.

All right, I need to stop saying tarantulas so people don't swerve off the road. I know somebody out there is thinking, oh, my God, stop talking about that. So we'll just call it the scary thing. Scary stuff and things.

So if there's something you're afraid of, it's going to take longer to learn about it. Now, one of the things that had come up in this discussion was that someone who thinks that consent in grooming is ridiculous. Ridiculous.

All right, I hear you. I do. Let's talk a little bit about that, because I Think that if you're not used to the dog training world, you're probably thinking, well, consent.

What, am I supposed to wait until he says it's okay? Hey, puppy, can I touch your foot, please? Oh, I guess not. Okay. And that's not really what we're doing.

We're teaching them to allow us to do stuff that they may not want to do, that they may not really be interested in doing, but to do it anyway and to trust us that this is safe and to follow instructions even when they might not want to do it. Hmm, Interesting, right? It's not just about like, oh, we're just gonna give up.

It's about teaching them to allow us to do the things that we need to do. So I am gonna give you guys some examples of consent that I think will drive the point home that this is not wishy washy.

Consent is part of many of us anyway as dog owners. Many of us as dog owners want this as part of what we do with our dogs. Consent. Human. Here are some examples of consent. All of our off leash training.

Yeah, all of the off leash stuff when you cannot physically control your dog. Now I will add here that I consider off leash when a dog is, like, not wearing any electronic collars.

If you're using an electronic collar and you can physically, well, physically do something to your dog while they're far away, that's not the same as off leash. Yeah, I know, I know. There's somebody out there going, yes, it is. No, no.

If your dog knows you can manipulate them from far away, it's not the same as truly deciding to do what you have been asked to do. So anything off leash is actually consent.

So if you were kind of on the fence and thinking consent was wishy washy, now I think that that helps you kind of go, wow, wait a minute. No. Consent is choosing to do what we're asking you to do. And when we do that, what happens is, is that we have this.

A whole bunch of challenges that we go through first. We don't start there. We start teaching the dog how to choose to do the thing that we ask them to do before we just let them off leash in a field.

You know, we don't just, like, send them outside and hope for the best and just chant their name until they come back. Well, most of us don't. Let's talk about some examples of consent. When I call my dog off of a squirrel and my dog runs back to me, he has nothing on.

My dogs are out in their backyard. I have a Fenced in backyard. They don't even wear their collars out there.

This is a naked dog chasing the squirrel, hears his name and come and does it. That's consent. I ask you, is there anything wishy washy about that when I use it in this term? No. No, I think that's for most of us.

That's the goal, right? When I say quiet and my dogs stop barking, I don't have any way to touch them. I don't need to touch them to do this.

If I say quiet and they stop barking, that's consent. They are choosing to follow my instructions. They are choosing to do a thing that they might not have chosen to do.

When I say quiet before my dogs start barking, right. Quiet doesn't mean to stop barking. Quiet is a, is a thing that you are doing. It's a state of being like sit isn't not jumping. Sit is a sit.

Quiet is quiet.

So if something looks like, let's say the Amazon truck pulls up and I say quiet and they have not yet started barking and they look outside and see the Amazon truck and choose to remain quiet. This is why we talk about choice, control, consent, self control.

And when we talk about it in terms of off leash training, times like I don't need to touch my dog to make my dog do something. I don't need to physically manipulate my dogs to make them do something, that's choice, control, consent and agency.

That's another term you might hear. So let's talk about more of this in the next part. If you're listening to the podcast, please remember to subscribe and tell all of your friends.

So there are a lot of times where we're allowing dogs to have choices. We want them to have choices. I want my dogs, for example, to choose to follow my instructions. But it didn't happen all at once.

So I'm going to give you some more examples of consent.

When I pull out a Dremel, I'm gonna dremel their nails and I pull out a Dremel tool and my dogs come over, over to the area that we do that on because there's a rubber mat on the floor. We have hardwood floors, so there's a rubber mat that we sit on to do that so they're not sliding around. I don't need to ask them, they just go over.

They're like, oh, I guess we're doing nails. That means some fun time and some cookies, right?

Usually the other dog is kind of asked, has to be asked to step back a little bit to give us some space. Whoever got in first gets first. That didn't happen overnight, but that's a great example of choice of consent. This is not wishy washy.

This is the way that we want our dogs to behave.

So one of the things that I feel happens an awful lot is that if you don't know that there is a better way to do it, what you're stuck doing as a groomer is you're stuck trying to force dogs to do grooming. And you're thinking, well, somebody has to do it and they're not going to just choose to do it. And I hear you, I do. But here's the thing.

With work, they can choose to do it. That's what dog training is all about.

And I know sometimes people like, well, I don't want to be a dog trainer or the dog trainer isn't going to help that because we still have visions, non trainers still have visions of dog training being, we put dogs on leash and we walk around in a circle in a room with other dogs on leash and we practice sits and stays and downs and ta da. Now all of your problems are going to be solved. And that's not true. That's an obedience class.

Now your average dog who has impulse control issues and is young and silly could probably do really good work in an obedience class. Not going to downplay that. But there's another whole category of trainers who work on behavior problems. We call them behavior consultants.

In the United States, it's a certified behavior consultant for canines or a certified dog behavior consultant. Certified animal behavior consultant. Sometimes people get confused because they think we're behaviorists.

But in the United States, a behaviorist is a veterinary specialty. I want you to think veterinary dermatologist, veterinary cardiologist, veterinary behaviorist, or a PhD. Right.

In the UK, a behaviorist is very similar to a behavior consultant. So we'll clear that up a little bit here too.

But there's this whole other realm of dog training that's about finding out why a dog does something, what their problems are, why they're having the problem and helping to fix it. So groomers, when you are grooming a dog and that dog fights against you and you're like, consent is stupid. Oh my God.

All the precious snowflakes out there trying to teach dogs to be good for this. It's ridiculous. And you're holding onto that dog and you're telling them no and it's not working and it's just getting worse.

To me, that is a colossal waste of your precious time. And skills. Okay. That dog's going to get hurt. You're going to get hurt. Equipment's going to get broken. Customers are going to get upset. Right.

It's a colossal waste of your skills and of your time. And it is not the no nonsense approach. No nonsense approach. And we'll cover this more in other episodes.

No nonsense approach is saying, hey, your dog isn't well prepared for our services and we need to work on this.

And let's figure out what makes your dog tick, why they're scared of this, why they're worried, why they're being aggressive, whatever the case may be. And also get owners on board. I know, I know. We have to throw some of this back at our owners.

You are not going to make this dog change every six weeks. A once every six week appointment where we force them through grooming.

Has anyone ever seen a dog decide, oh, oh, yeah, just throw some more people on me and strap me up better. I didn't realize it didn't hurt. Okay, I'm fine now. All right. I know. Kind of being cheeky. Not trying to. But think about it.

I know for me, somebody had to word it that way for me, and I was like, wait, no, that's not what. Oh, man. That was what I was doing. Yep. I did it for a long time. I did it that way for a long time. And I want you to think about that. Wait a minute.

That's not helpful. That's not going to teach the dog that it's safe.

And when we teach them it's safe, that's when we can get a dog who chooses to let us do the stuff we want to do. So another thought for you is think about the dogs who are awesome for grooming. All right? Just think about that for a moment.

There are some dogs out there that are simply wonderful for grooming. Often you see them in the competition ring. Right? So the grooming competitions, many of those dogs love being groomed.

They're awesome for being groomed. And. And watch what they're doing. Right? Yeah. They're not being held on there by a grooming loop.

The grooming loop might be on because those are the rules, but that dog isn't pulling against it. That dog's not being held in place by anybody. That dog is choosing, choosing, consenting to be there.

That dog is allowing someone to do a job on them. That dog is allowing all of this to happen. And that's not wishy washy. That's good training.

Now, some dogs are naturals at that, and other dogs are going to have a really hard time. But that should always be our goal.

Especially where behavior is when, well, behavior problems are when dogs get hurt, people get hurt, equipment gets broken and customers get upset. There is no money in injuring a dog. There's no money in being injured by a dog. There is no amount of money.

If somebody came in and said, hey, Chrissy, I just don't want you to use your right hand this week. I'm going to pay you a hundred. I'd be like, no, thank you. I do not wish to get hurt today.

I would like to continue using my hand this week and for the rest of my life. Who knew? My hands are very important to me when these disasters happen. I think for many of us, that's when we have our aha moment.

Now, one of the things that I hear is that people worry about consent and us treating dogs like they're all precious, precious little snowflakes. I know, but the thing is, is that one of the things I've heard is like, yeah, but you guys just turn dogs away.

Ah, yeah, but let's, let's talk about that for a minute. I don't turn dogs away, but I will turn away an owner and I will turn away an owner for non compliance. Yes. We do it for other topics.

Oh, he's super, super matted. We don't like to brush him. We're not bringing him in more often. And this is the trim that we want.

And we tell people, I can't give you that trim today. Let's talk more about dematting. Let's talk more about what our options are. Let's talk about how mattes aren't healthy for your dog.

And they're like, don't care. This is what I want. Just trim over what you think are mats because you're ridiculous, you silly groomer.

You don't know anything about my precious, precious dog. You know, what do we tell those people? I'm sorry, I can't help you. I'm not going to put a trim on a matted dog. Right. And use the same kind of logic.

Your dog is really stressed out by this. I am not going to do the trim that you want. The kind of work that you want me to do on your dog.

While your dog is stressed about it, there is other work that must be done for us to be able to do that. This makes sense. This is no nonsense. This is common sense grooming. But it's not common sense until someone has explained it to you. Right?

It's not common sense until Somebody says, there's a solution set and don't let these owners take advantage of you. And I know sometimes as groomers, because I used to do it too.

It's almost like you're wearing this badge of honor that, oh, yeah, even the toughest of the tough dogs, I can get a muzzle on them. I can use a rabies snare and get them on my table and get a muzzle on and get this job done. You bunch of sissies.

I'm the one they call when they need a real, real strong arm. I was there. I was there. And frankly, yes, I can get nail trims on dogs, but that's not what I do.

I am no longer the person that you come to to lovingly and patiently traumatize your dog. That's not what I'm going to do.

And again, if that dog gets injured, which is pretty likely when they have a behavior problem, someone's going to get hurt. That's the problem with behavior problems. Someone's going to get hurt. Right. And once that dog gets hurt, there's no money in it.

There's no money in it. That owner is not going to be like, oh, wow, I understand you might have an owner who does. You might.

But they're still going to want you to pay the bill. And they're going to be like, you charged me for that, you know? Yeah, I charged you for that.

So consent in grooming is not about being a precious, precious snowflake. It's about teaching dogs to be good for the things they need to learn how to do.

So I'm going to wrap this up with some other off leash examples because I think that's when we really start thinking consent agency choices, allowing dogs to make the right choice and working them up to that, that we don't start there, we build them up to that. So I'm going to give you one last choice, one last example. I'm wearing my Bark flyball T shirt. I compete in flyball with my dogs.

It's a crazy, crazy sport. And there are two teams, four dogs on each team. And the first dogs go over four jumps.

Hit the trigger box, get the ball, carry it back over four jumps. Second dogs go, third dogs go, fourth dogs go right. I mean, there's two lanes, there's at least eight dogs out there.

There are people, there are toys, there are balls all over the place. There's barking. And when you release your dog down that lane, they're loose. There's nothing holding them in.

And every once in a while, a dog you Know, ball pops off wrong way, and they go off course and we all just yell loose dog. You know, but it takes time to get there. But even in chaos like that, you'd be surprised how many dogs can do it.

And that is an example of entirely off leash, because there's no real way to do that game on leash. I mean, you could do it with a long line, but it would just knock all the jumps over. So I think we forget that off leash.

Off leash training is like the wa. Awesomeness of training. And it's consent. It's a dog choosing to do the thing that we ask them to do. Right.

The dog that is not in our hand, the dog that we cannot physically manipulate, choosing to do what we ask them to do is consent. And it's not wishy washy. It's the goal.

And the example for a grooming table might be the dog that all you do is just, you know, go through the motions. And the dog's like, yeah, okay, whatever you want to do. That also is consent. Right? I mean, a dog can make themselves untouchable.

And I think we forget that a dog could throw such a twisting fit that they hurt themselves on the table. I think we forget that until something awful happens. You know, consent is. I choose to stand here politely and.

And be good while someone does stuff to me. And it's the goal. And it is no nonsense. It is definitely the common sense approach. Once Helen has explained it to you. Once. Once somebody has.

Has shown you that that's what it means. Because I think a lot of groomers resist. But not knowing that, oh, wait, that's what it means. Oh, well, I would never have resisted that. That.

That makes total sense to me. Yeah, I just want him to be over here and not bite me and just let me do my job. Yes.

It's not the way I usually word it, but yeah, I don't want them to bite you. I want you to just hang out and do your job. That's what we want from them.

But the wording, I think sometimes comes off as like, super, super wishy washy. But it's no nonsense to keep wrestling a dog every single time until eventually you're like, I just can't get it done anymore.

I guess it's time to go to the vet to have him sedated. That is crazy chaos. That is not common sense grooming. Right. That's misled, misguided. It's not the long term solution.

And it's what I think most of us were taught at some point.

There's a new generation of groomers who have been taught differently, but sometimes even new groomers are being taught by someone who was taught by someone. And a lot of our techniques are just handed down. It's like a medieval guild or something. They're just handed down from the person you learned from.

Right. So you might not know this or you might have a friend or a co worker that you debate this with. Go ahead and send them to this episode. Right?

Use the example. Tell them like, yeah, all that off leash work that you see dogs doing, that looks so snazzy, looks so cool. Yeah, that's consent.

Yeah, that's cooperative. That's consent. That's good training. It's just good training. If you like the podcast, please remember to subscribe. You can find me on Facebook.

You can find the Creating Great Grooming Dogs Facebook group, the Creating Great Grooming Dogs Facebook page. You can also find me Chrissy Neumyer Smith on Facebook and I'd love to get a chance to talk to you.