Veterinary Bunko About Dog Training

Going to a vet for a behavior issue with a dog is a bit like going to a law mower mechanic for advice on how to shampoo a carpet.

Vets are not the beginning or end all of dogs. Most veterinarians know little or nothing about nutrition, breed-genetics, or dog training.

To put a point on it:  Going to a vet for a behavior issue with a dog is a bit like going to a law mower mechanic for advice on how to shampoo a carpet; if they know anything at all, its just an accident.

All of this by way of introduction to the fact that the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) has just put out a publication called "Canine and Feline Behavior Management Guidelines." In that publication they say

More dogs and cats are affected by behavioral problems than any other condition, often resulting in euthanasia, relinquishment of the patient, or chronic suffering.

Yes. Excellent. And what do vets know about it and what are they saying?

And here is where we come to the nonsense.

Under no circumstances should aggression or any condition involving a clinical diagnosis be referred to a trainer for primary treatment. Referral to a dog trainer is appropriate for normal but undesired behaviors (e.g., jumping on people), unruly behaviors (e.g., pulling on leash), and teaching basic manners.

Eh? A dog with "aggression" issues (whatever that is as it is undefined and would likely include all kinds of leash-reactivity, fear, etc.) should never be taken to a dog trainer? Never?? Then, pray tell, who should see this dog other than a vet with a blue solution?

Behavior cases can be complex, often involving public health and safety issues. Board-certified veterinary behaviorists (diplomates of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists, www.dacvb.org) are specifically trained and qualified to treat clinical behavior problems in companion animals. Referral to a veterinary behaviorist may be recommended in cases involving self-injury, aggression, multiple concurrent behavioral diagnoses, profound phobias, or for patients not responding to conventional treatment despite the primary care veterinarian’s best efforts. Dogs either inflicting deep bites or those injuring immunocompromised individuals should be referred to a specialist. Under no circumstances should aggression or any condition involving a clinical diagnosis be referred to a trainer for primary treatment. Referral to a dog trainer is appropriate for normal but undesired behaviors (e.g., jumping on people), unruly behaviors (e.g., pulling on leash), and teaching basic manners.

So, the ONLY person that can help you with your dog is a certified veterinary behaviorist who is diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists?

Fantastic.

Because, you see, according to the DACVB web site, there are only 66 such people in the entire world.

Let me say it now:  Bunko and bullshit.

This country is full of very good dog trainers using a wide variety of techniques. The notion that there is only one way to train a problem dog, and that you need a Veterinary Behaviorist to do it, is complete nonsense.

If you are a good dog trainer, stop by the local vets and explain what you do and how you do it.

If you are a veterinarian, make it part of your job to learn about dog trainers in your area, and what they can do (being very attentive to what it is your customers actually need, which will vary).

As for the notion that there are  less than 100 people in the world that can deal with a problem dog, lets call "shenanigans" and remember exactly what kind of bunko outfit the American Animal Hospital Association really is.

These are pill-pushers and price-gougers, upcoders, and bill padders. Their modus operandi is to write guidelines for over-prescribing, and then to sell the very prescriptions that they have just suggested.

Grifters gotta grift, and there is a tremendous amount of  grifting in the veterinary business.  Caveat emptor.

• Related Posts:
  ** Payola, Pushers and Profits in the Vet Business
  ** The Dubious Ethics of the Veterinary Trade
  ** Your Veterinarian Should Probably Be In Jail
  ** Veterinarians Routinely Rip-Off
  ** Veterinary Trades Say Its Time to Rip-off the Rubes
  ** Is Your Vet Clean? Dont Count On It.
  ** Antibiotics for Less Without a Prescription
  ** Year Round Dosing for Big Veterinary Profits
  ** Grifting: The New Veterinary Stock in Trade
  ** How to Go to the Vet
  ** The Billion Dollar Heartworm Scam
  ** The Billion Dollar Lyme Disease Scam
  ** The Billion Dollar Vaccine Scam
  ** The Billion Dollar Dental Cleaning Scam
  ** Cruciate Ligament Injuries in Dogs
  ** Veterinary Pricing Has Nothing to Do With Care
  ** Low Cost All-Worm Treatment
  ** Lyme Disease: Hard to Catch and Easy to Halt
  ** Ring Worm and Toe Fungus Among Us
  ** Whats Your Vet Charging You?
  ** Will Your Dog Be a Fort Dodge Guinea Pig?
  ** Canine Influenza Vaccines are the Latest Scam
  ** Saving Big Money With a Ball Point Pen
  ** Rimadyl: Relief From a Swollen Wallet
  ** A Business Plan Based on Fencing Out the Truth
  ** Veterinary Billing Without Oversight or Regulation
  ** Veterinary Notes From the Field
  ** The Price of Putting on the Dog
  ** Veterinary Care Reaches Human Care Cost
  ** Attempted Veterinary Extortion
  ** Murder by Can Opener: How Pet Owners Kill Dogs
  ** Get Over It: Bagged Food is Fine for Fido
  ** Dog Food Secrets "They" Dont Want You to Know
  ** SuperGlue to Close Wounds
  ** Rimadyl: Relief From a Swollen Wallet
  ** A Business Plan Based on Fencing Out the Truth
  ** Small Vet Kit for Pack
  ** A Season to Every Thing
  ** More Promotion of Veterinary Junk Billing
  ** AVMA Says Fear Your Pet and Go to the Vet
  ** Puppy Mills, Veterinary Bills and the AVMA 
  ** AVMA Supports Puppy Mills?
  ** Pfizer, Pfrauds and Pfools
  ** Payola, Pushers and Profits in the Vet Busines 
  ** Naked Prostitution from the AVMA
  ** Pimping for Pain at Penn Vet School
  ** Ridiculousness at the AVMA Convention
  ** Swag the Dog
  ** AKC and Pfizer Partner on Defective Dogs
  ** Pfizer Pays for Another Rimadyl Death
  ** And What About Pharma for Pets?
  ** Pickpockets & Quacks Are Interested in Your Dog
  ** A New Health Leader for the AVMA and AKC?
  ** Is Slentrol Just Illness in a Bottle? 
  ** Vet Care Reaches Human Care Costs

Read more

The Comedy of Dog Shows

The cast and characters of "Best in Show"

This post recycled from December 21, 2006

Across the world, but especially in America, people congregate in social tribes, and most of these tribes seem to have an occasional "pow wow" of one sort or another.

For motorcycle freaks, that pow wow might be Bike Week in Daytona, or Sturgis in South Dakota.

A certain type of fundamentalist Christian cannot pass up a tent revival, while folks with other interests may flock to Renaissance Fairs or Civil War re-enactor events.

Gun enthusiasts have their gun shows, while still other Americans are attracted to tractor pulls, car shows, or rodeos.

Whatever the group -- from wine connoisseur to reformed alcoholic, from Star Trek fan to opera aficionado-- each has its own gathering, its own customs, and its own set of odd-ball characters.

The writer and producer Christopher Guest has made a living crafting "mock-umentaries" about such American subcultures.

His first foray into the genre was a movie entitled This is Spinal Tap -- a wonderful send up of the bloated pretensions of heavy metal music.

This movie was so well done -- and done with such seriousness and affection -- that some people actually thought it was a documentary about a real band. Reality blurred a bit more when Guest and his actor "bandmates" toured and played their instruments on stage -- never cracking a smile or leaving character as they sang faux heavy metal lyrics such as "as Big bottom, big bottom. Talk about bum cakes, my girls got em."

Spinal Tap was followed up by A Mighty Wind (a parody of folk music), and Waiting for Guffman (a parody of community theatre).

In A Mighty Wind and Waiting for Guffman, as with Spinal Tap, Guests comedy depended on his movie audience recognizing that his characters had very close approximations to real types.

In A Mighty Wind, for example, estranged folk musicians are modeled on the likes of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Mamma Cass and Denny Doherty, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

In Spinal Tap, the repeated demise of drummers in freak accidents is a reference to the untimely deaths of such rock percussionists as Keith Moon, John Bonham, Eric Carr, Nicholas Dingley, and Dennis Wilson.

For his entry into the dog show world, Christopher Guest created "Best in Show," in which dog show archetypes are dissected with the precision of a surgeon and the cultural sensitivity of an anthropologist.

The thread that holds the tapestry of characters together in Best in Show is not dogs, so much as the recognition that many of the people that attend dog shows seem to be "working out" their issues through the world of dogs. We laugh at the joke because it is so often true, and everyone in the audience knows it and "gets it."






A repeated theme in the movie is dysfunction -- sexual dysfunction, social dysfunction, and emotional dysfunction.





The fact that many dogs show obsessives are driven by a hole in their soul, and that that they seek to fill this hole through the surrogacy of dogs and dog shows is faced head on.

Many of the "normal" people that frequent dog shows are slightly odd, and more than a handful seem to be trying to compensate for the absence of children in their lives by dressing up their dogs, dancing with their dogs, or -- as in this case -- singing to them. Frustrated maternal instincts from both straight and gay couples are worn on the sleeve for anyone who takes the time to look for them.

A recurring theme in Best in Show is the large number of openly gay and closeted gay people that can be found at dog shows. In the clip below, a sad and powerful story is told in a single line: "I asked my ex-wife ... whos that?" The painful laughs that follow are triggered because almost everyone familiar with dog shows knows a character who fits the story. This is a story about lost lives.





Another recurring theme in Best of Breed is that people of moderate financial means often seek personal recognition and an improved social position by participating in the world of dog shows. Or, to put it more succinctly: "Make Fern City proud" !






The role of the dog show judge as part-and-parcel of the scene gets a delightful send up when color-commentator Fred Willard and his side-kick come together to steer the TV public through the judging process. The judge, "a retired school teacher from New Jersey," is initially mistaken for a man, and Willard cannot help but blink at the way she will spend her day.

Click here for >> Fred Willard clip from Best In Show

Following the success of Best in Show, Bravo-TV did a "reality" show knock-off of the movie. It says quite a lot that they had no problem finding a ready cast of real people to populate their series: Showdog Moms & Dads.

In this series, a cast of "real dog show people" were followed around to canine events across the country including

a woman with no kids who freely admitted to displacing her maternal instincts on to her German Shepherds; a married man (and former AKC judge) who came off as a closeted version of Liberace; two screaming queens and their Toy Fox Terrier; a woman whose relationship with her Weimeraner appeared to be much stronger than her relationship with either her husband or reality, and; a "normal" person who was a single-mom and dog trainer trying to raise her son in a dog show world -- and with dog trainer commands.

I suspect Best in Show and Showdog Moms & Dads made some people in the dog show world uncomfortable, if for no other reason than rooms full of people were laughing out loud at scenes not so very different from reality.

Is this what we look like to the rest of the world, they wondered? Others protested that not everyone at a dog show is dysfunctional ... or gay ... or controlling ... or ego driven.

To which we can reply: Of course not. Not everyone at a Star Trek convention was unpopular in high school. Not everyone at a gun show is a Republican. Not everyone who listens to "Peter Paul & Mary" is a Democrat.

But thats the way to bet.

The bottom line is that tribes do share cultures, values, backgrounds and experience. And the people at dog shows are a tribe every bit as strong as those at a Star Trek convention, a gun show, or a "Peter Paul & Mary" concert.

The success of Best in Show, and Christopher Guests other movies, is based on his understanding that obsessive groups do differ from us and each other, and those differences make the people in those groups both interesting and amusing.

Certain "types" are "over-represented" at almost every convention or tribal gathering. The result is that if you want to see tattoos, Bike Week is not a bad place to start, and if you are studying psychological dysfunction, a dog show is not a bad place to collect test subjects.

Of course, if you are looking for plain crazy, you can also do pretty well at the local dog park! As Cesar Milans show, The Dog Whisperer, suggests, a lot of people have very dysfunctional relationships with their dogs outside of the show ring.

A commonality here, as I have noted in the past, is that a lot of people with "dog problems" treat their dogs as if they are human children rather than what they really are ... which is a dog.

Too often, the result is a dog that thinks it is "top dog." These confused "top dogs" believe they must discipline the humans in their pack and also protect their packs (human and non-human alike) from outside intruders. The result is a disaster, as Showdog Moms and Dads captures so humorously on film.

Paradoxically, this little bit of "reality" turns out to be more surreal -- and at least as comical -- as anything dreamed up by Christopher Guest.

In an interview with an Australian publication, Christopher Guest explained how he got the idea for the movie:

"I got the idea for Best in Show six years ago when [wife Jamie Lee Curtis] and I were taking our mutts to the dog park in Los Angeles. I noticed a real dynamic that existed between owners and their pets. The pure-breeds looked down on our mutts in the same way their owners looked down on us. I started attending dog shows to meet the people and to see just how serious this all could get at the top level."

And so, you see, it really did start in a dog park!

Read more