I'm going to give you a piece of information that I hope, more than anything else, makes you feel better about being a "dog trainer." And I use the quote marks on purpose, for as all of us Labrador retriever owners know, there's always some question about who is actually the trainer and who is the trainee. We are amateurs, the majority of us, and if we can get our dogs to sort of do some things, we're happy.

But, doggone it, sometimes we just want a nicely trained dog and we put in the effort and we train and we commit to a program... and the dog is still sloppy or doesn't listen or has "selective deafness." The following comment was made in an article in a previous issue ("No-No's," January/February 2009): "When it comes right down to it, our Lab's inefficiencies and lapses in behavior can almost always be traced right back to that person staring at you in the mirror."

Well, ya know what? Sometimes it's the dog's fault, too.

Feel better?

I talked with trainer Sharon Potter of Red Branch Kennels in Wisconsin about this idea. Sharon is a keen observer of canine behavior, and she has trained all breeds of dogs -- mostly for hunting and field events -- and even horses. Her short answer when I asked if a dog's disobedience is sometimes, actually, maybe the dog's fault and not -- like most books tell us -- the result of our poor abilities as a trainer? "Yes."

Ha! Take heart in that one little word. Sometimes, we're doing everything right and the dog is wrong.

Most of our "family Labs" are not asked to do too terribly difficult things -- not in the range of what a hunting retriever or competitive field retriever or service animal is asked to do. As such, we, as trainers, can tend to let them slide a little in their compliance; we're happy if our Labs (a) don't run away, or (b) aren't too pushy around the house. But there are certain "good citizen" behaviors that should be required of all Labs and, frankly, they sometimes know exactly what you want but choose not to do it.

"First of all," Sharon says, "before we can assume a dog is at fault, we have to be sure it has been trained to do what we're asking. There's a difference between a dog that is just starting to understand and a dog that is fully trained to a command." That can be a tough thing to determine. We get the dog to sit five times in a row, and we smile and reward and turn the page on the dog's training program and then are flabbergasted when he doesn't sit... immediately... no matter what. So how do we know we've gotten to the point where the dog has fully grasped the skill and has achieved that magical level of being "reliable"? "Too often, we assume a dog knows a command because they've repeated the required behavior a few times in a row," Sharon explains. "While the dog may be on the way to learned behavior at this point, it has by no means learned the command thoroughly. It takes consistent repetition with accurately timed corrections to train a dog to be reliable to a command, and this doesn't happen in a few short sessions. When a dog has been consistently trained to perform a specific cue and has done so reliably and in different locations -- proofing' the training so it works someplace besides the backyard -- we know the dog has learned it well enough to move on.