What needs to go to school more than dogs is actually their owner
Text | Caijing reporter Ye Xutong
Edit | Yu Le
Furry puppies sleep in two rows on small pillows and quilts. This "nap photo" from a pet kindergarten in South Korea turned over many netizens, and also let many people learn about the pet school for the first time. But in fact, most of the pet schools in China will not have such a harmonious picture.
"It's particularly hard to achieve." Li Jinglong, the founder of a pet boarding training school in Beijing, told us that the trainer had to control so many dogs that they didn't fight each other and lay there obediently. The dogs in the photo must have had good social training before they were sent to kindergarten.
The smart and sensible Internet red dogs on the Internet have always been "other people's dogs", and the problem faced by many pet owners is "my dog will not do anything", and even many problems.
Most pet owners in China send dogs to school in order to correct the bad behavior of dogs, such as bursting, not being able to go to the toilet, barking and disturbing people, and so on. These pet owners are unable to solve the problem on their own and have to seek help from professional trainers. At Li Jinglong's "Pampered Home" school, each problem dog is placed in foster care for half a month to two months, with three to four hours a day under the individual training of the trainer. Pet owners spend thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on this.
This is a market that is expanding rapidly. Li Jinglong recalled that when he entered the industry in 2009, there were fewer than ten institutions in Beijing that did pet training. At present, there are 178 Beijing pet training schools that can be searched in the public reviews. According to incomplete statistics, there are 2680 companies engaged in pet training in the country.
However, many of the pet trainers we interviewed unanimously said that it is their owners who need to go to school more than dogs.
A pet school training subject/network
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" > not all dogs</h1>
Mr. Zhang's bian mu has bad habits such as "throwing people, defecating on the ground, and not calling back as soon as he runs out". He said helplessly, "Scratch your head." I threw tennis balls and played with it, and at first it was a big fan of playing. As a result, I stopped playing after a beating, and didn't throw the ball. So he sent the dog to the pet school for a month of closed training.
To train pet behavior habits is indeed not simple, you need to have professional knowledge. For example, some of the dog's burst behavior - the dog will drag the leash in front of the owner when going out for a walk - is not something that the owner can solve by tightening the rope.
Deng Jun, head of the behavior training group at Chengdu Zoo, explained that after the dog goes out, the various smells, sounds, and visual information during the walk are a dense rain of scattered bullets for it. He divided the dog's burst behavior into several types: "brainless burst type at any time", "burst type when encountering a specific situation", "burst type when just going out", and the specific reasons for the formation of each behavior are different, and the behavior adjustment training method should be different. For example, for dogs that "burst in a specific situation", desensitization exercises are required for those irritants.
Most of the pet training courses in China are mainly divided into behavior correction, basic obedience subjects (prohibition, lying down, shaking hands and other actions) and ornamental subjects (bowing, praying, rolling, pretending to die and other actions). Behavior correction and obedience courses cost between 3,000 and 6,000 yuan, which is a class that most pet owners who send pets to school are willing to enroll. The more difficult and month-long ornamental tutorials cost tens of thousands of yuan, and there are many fewer people to choose.
Trainer teaches dogs to do "prayer" Photo / Ye Xutong
Pet training schools are mainly offline foster training, and owners need to keep their pets in the training base. In the past two years, the epidemic has spawned many teams that do online training. PerSon TeTOPIA (PST) is a pet training team that specializes in online courses. Founder Zhang Xin said that there are more young people among the trainees, most of them are women, have better economic conditions, and are willing to pay time and energy for dogs.
Interestingly, these courses are mainly taught for dogs, and there are very few for cats. Zhang Xin said that cats are solitary animals, causing less confusion to humans, while dogs are animals with very strong social needs, and the probability of problems will be greater than cats. On the other hand, cats are too flexible, will go up trees, and are easy to get lost, increasing the difficulty of managing offline pet schools.
Cats can stay indoors for a long time, dogs need to go out. Dogs in the city need to follow more rules to ride the elevator with humans and wait for traffic lights. 24-year-old Guizi (Xiaohongshu user @up positive) raised a bianmu named up, up is more obedient, there is no bad behavior. But when she was 4 months old, Guizi still sent it to the 4800 yuan intermediate class, including obedience subjects such as accompanying, waiting, recalling, refusing food, and clapping. "I go to school mainly to cultivate its urban life from an early age." Keiko said.
Up Graduation Certificate Courtesy of Interviewee
The social training of urban dogs is important. Li Jinglong's wife, Zhang Xiaohong, is a trainer who has been practicing for nearly a decade. She said that dogs should change their environment and see more people before they are one year old, so that they can have a good temper, do not fight, and do not bite people. It has dealt with all kinds of animals, so it is not curious, and it is not afraid to see anyone. The dogs that are often kept in the house will bark when they see outsiders. Between 4-8 months is the best training stage, and it is not easy to change if you miss it.
The first day a trainer gives a dog is usually to find out the dog's habits and become familiar with it. Each dog has a different temper and personality, such as the sticky personality of the border herd, and the obedience of the Shiba Inu is much worse, and the personality is more stubborn and autonomous. "A lot of Internet celebrity dogs can't represent all dogs, and dogs are different from dogs." I can train that dog in this way, and the next dog may not be able to use this method. Li Jinglong said.
Pet training methods are mainly divided into positive training and traditional training with both rewards and punishments. In recent years, more humane and safe positive training methods have been promoted. Positive training is to create opportunities for the owner's desired behavior to occur, and then reward the dog for correct behavior, positively consolidate the dog's awareness of doing this action, and avoid the use of intimidation, corporal punishment and other punitive behaviors.
Little Red Book user @ Fish Brother on the shelves once sent dogs to boarding school renovation. She told us that the biggest feeling after picking up the dog home was not how obedient the dog was, but that the dog was very uneasy and panicked, and seemed to be a little melancholy. She felt a little guilty and didn't know if it was right or wrong to send her dog to school.
Although positive training is publicized a lot, many pet owners still do not understand. When Zhang Xin attended an offline salon for pet owners last summer, he found that although positive training has been promoted for many years, the promotion rate is almost zero.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="131" > owners need to go to school more than dogs</h1>
Many pet owners are easy to overlook, and what they need to go to school more than dogs is actually themselves.
Dog behavior problems are brought about by the wrong way humans raise them. "Many people buy a dog on impulse and find out how my dog is so annoying." Zhang Xin said that in fact, they don't even know how to raise dogs, such as what to eat, what to prepare, and more importantly, everyone does not understand the dog species.
"We humans have a lot of requirements for dogs, humans seem to be very simple, but in fact it is difficult for dogs. People don't think that dogs need to learn to understand. Many people think that dogs will not be beaten, punched when they burst, and beaten when they urinate on the ground, which is the biggest misunderstanding. ”
Many pet owners think that by handing over the dog to the pet school to teach, they can once and for all, dreaming that just like the product returns to the factory for repair, they can bring home an incomparably obedient dog every other month. Some pet school publicity also gives pet owners such illusions. In the comparison picture, the dog had many problems before being taught, and after 40 days of teaching, it was reborn into a well-behaved and obedient appearance. It seems to be much better than human bear children.
Promotional photo of a pet boarding training school Photo/Meituan
This is not the case. In the bad online reviews of pet training schools, pet owners often complain that dogs are still the same when they come home.
This is because the dog is a situational learning animal, learning to remember the scene in front of the eyes, after returning home to change a very different environment, need to follow the owner to re-learn. If the owner himself does not learn the method of control, the dog will bounce back even if he trains very well in school.
The trainer's education of the owner is more important than the dog. "You want the timing of the church's rewards and the control of the standards. If the owner is a small white, it is difficult for the dog to adjust itself. Zhang Xin said that the master must learn and make changes.
PST's teaching philosophy emphasizes that owners should cultivate a good relationship with dogs. "A lot of people focus too much on why dogs are bad and how to get them to stop these bad behaviors. Some of the bad behavior of the actual dog reflects that the relationship between the dog and the person is very bad. ”
Zhang Xin gave an example, why does someone's dog go out to play and can't bark back? Because the owner has a poor relationship with the dog, or the dog thinks he is a very low value person, everything in the outside world is more interesting than him. "We hope that through the form of games, we can make the dog feel particularly fun and safe with you, so that the dog can have self-confidence, can solve problems, and get a sense of accomplishment." If your dog can end up accomplishing a lot of things, but it still doesn't have a good relationship with you, I don't think it's a successful training. ”
Zhang Xiaohong claimed that over the years of her career, dogs that had encountered various problems, dogs that other trainers could not get, were handed over to her and could be successfully adjusted, and never failed. "In fact, all dogs are very intelligent, but they just need humans to find good ways to guide them." You see stray dogs are not stupid, why is its escape ability so strong? Because it has a lot of eyes and minds, it is also sensitive. ”
Pet owners teach dogs to "pretend to be dead" under trainer training Photo / Ye Xutong
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="132" > pet training industry is mostly small and micro enterprises, and the number of professional trainers is small</h1>
The pet training market continues to expand, and more and more pet schools are emerging, but many institutions die in the second year of their establishment.
"It's not easy to do, it's very tiring, a dog is equivalent to a child." Zhang Xiaohong feels that doing pet foster training will be more difficult than running a kindergarten, at least the kindergarten children will be sent home at night, and the dogs in the foster care base will be taken care of for dozens of days. "The hardest thing to control is when the dog gets sick." She believes that people who don't really like dogs have a hard time sticking with it.
Most pet training institutions are small and micro enterprises, personal studios, and senior trainers who have been in the industry for several years start their own businesses. Because there are very few trainers with business management literacy, it is generally difficult for companies to scale up.
The pet foster care training institution jointly managed by Zhang Xiaohong and Li Jinglong is a typical small company for husband and wife. In addition to them, the team employees also have seven trainers, each of whom is taught by Li Jinglong. The two couples took care of finance, customer reception, network publicity and operation of these matters, and Zhang Xiaohong also needed to make three meals a day for the employees who packed the food and accommodation.
Dog experience assessment before graduation Photo/Li Jinglong
In addition, the number of pet trainers in China who have undergone years of systematic professional training is very small. Li Jinglong believes that a mature trainer needs to train for at least three years. It is not enough to train dogs yourself, but also to teach others.
As early as 2006, the "National Occupational Standards for Pet Training Instructors" compiled by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security was determined
Pet training instructor this profession. However, pet training instructors lack a sound professional standard certification system. Some trainers lack the relevant qualifications to work, and even more privately treat dogs in a rough way.
Xin Zhang graduated from Peking University School of Medicine and was a former doctor of stomatology. In her view, being a trainer is very similar to being a doctor, a discipline that constantly combines theory and practice, and there is no end to learning.
In foreign countries, pet training has a long history of development, and is regarded as a serious natural science, with animal behavior (animal behavior) majors. A large number of trainers may come from animal doctors, animal behavior, or psychology.
In contrast, there is a lack of standardized and systematic vocational training for pet trainers in China. At present, the entry threshold of the domestic pet industry is not high, and the quality of employees is uneven. This is the reason why many pet owners are not at ease sending their pets to foster care training institutions.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" Data-track="133" how do > become a qualified dog owner? </h1>
"The upper limit of this thing's intelligence is a two-year-old child, what is good to train." "The dog is responsible for selling cuteness, can you learn to shake hands and eat it as a meal?" Also send dogs to school, this is an IQ tax! Many people are not very receptive to pet training.
Zhang Xin believes that the learning of pets and owners is necessary to make the living environment of pets better. "The dog environment in our country is not good, and there are so many people who hate dogs and even poison dogs. But if every dog owner adjusts the dog to a good state, the dog does not have so many annoying problems, and those who do not like the dog will be more tolerant of the dog. ”
Many countries and regions have strict thresholds for dog ownership. In Vienna, Austria, dog owners take the dog walking license exam. The content includes a written test and practical ability to test the owner's understanding of dog knowledge and ability to walk the dog. Typical questions such as "When your dog is wagging its tail, how do you determine if it is happy, excited, or irritable?" "People who pass the exam are exempt from paying the dog tax.
The Danish government offers free puppy class lessons to the owner. Carrie Zhu, a netizen living in Denmark, shared that there is no pet shop selling dogs in Denmark because the policy does not allow it. The most common way to buy a dog is to go to the dog breed to register and queue, need to fill out a resume and interview, including work, living conditions, understanding of the dog will be included in the assessment, "it feels more difficult than I find a job." ”
In Seoul, South Korea, the government offers free courses on "Pet Behavior Correction" and "Pet Socialization and Etiquette Training" to citizens who own pets, and also holds examinations. "A 6-month-old puppy is wary of strangers and barks wildly when someone passes behind him when he walks. When taking a puppy for a walk, what are some of the following things that breeders need to pay special attention to? This is a common sense question in the "Pet Keeper Ability Test" held by the Seoul City Government in South Korea in December 2019.
The standardized pet environment lays a good foundation for the operation of the Korean pet kindergarten mentioned above.
In June this year, a pet kindergarten in Chengdu was on Weibo.com. Similar to the Korean pet kindergarten, it also attends classes according to the curriculum, has a "school bus" pick-up and drop-off, and runs daycare classes. However, the atmosphere of this pet school is not so enjoyable. On the review site, some pet owners who have been to the kindergarten have made bad comments, criticizing the dogs that love to fight are not managed separately, and their own dogs are bitten and bleeding from other dogs.
At present, more and more people are willing to pay for pets, and the number of owners with good pet literacy is also increasing.
Yuki, 27, said, "I kept my dog as a child. She spends at least thirty thousand a year on two dogs, "and illness may rise a little, and this year one of our dogs spent ten thousand for patella surgery." "In addition, it also spends a lot on pet grooming, buying nutritional products and daily necessities.
Courtesy of Yuki's elaborately arranged kennel for "Pocket"/interviewee
One of the dogs, "Pocket Pocket", once had the problem of urinating around at home, and did not dare to go out. After Yuki bought online courses for this, later gave the dog to a professional trainer for training, and then consolidated it with positive guidance at home for a period of time, Yuki no longer made mistakes and dared to go out for a walk.
Like humans, dogs need schooling, and even more so, homeschooling. "There are more dogs to accompany, dogs will really be like people, and more docile, less aggressive." In her view, dogs are like children, with more shackles and worrying, but the healing they bring cannot be replaced.
Yuki currently has no plans to have children. She believes that raising children requires more responsibility and pressure, children can not be raised by their best efforts, and dogs can be raised with their best efforts.
Note: At the request of the respondents, except for Li Jinglong and Zhang Xin, the names of the remaining respondents are pseudonyms.