A professional dog trainer who ran an obedience school for over 20 years, Carol Lea Benjamin is author of over 25 books, including such topics as dog training, selecting dogs from the shelter, dog tricks, the Rachel Alexander and Dash mysteries featuring a dog trainer, and children’s books (including cartooning for kids). Her most recent book is an effective, concise training book titled See Spot Sit: 101 Illustrated Tips for Training the Dog You Love. Her training method is based on the intense relationship between you and your dog, not food. She emphasizes build a positive relationship with your dog.

1. How do you think your training philosophy differs from other dog trainers?

I don’t train with food. It’s fine for training tricks, but food or a toy can work as a distractor if the dog is fearful in a certain situation. For basic training, by which I mean responses that can save your dog’s life such as come and down, I don’t want food involved. My training is based on the intense relationship between you and your dog. You want to build a positive relationship with your dog. Dogs are pack animals domesticated from wolves. When wolves transformed into different types of domesticated dogs, certain characteristics of the wolf were minimized or exaggerated. As such, domesticated dogs have the type of relationship with people in which they will follow you, protect you, take care of you, and do all the things wolves in a pack would do except eat you for lunch. For example, chase and kill were changed to chase and kiss. You get a similar mentality when you work on communication. Pay attention when your dog tries to communicate with you, as this is the ultimate goal of being with dogs. You and your dog can exchange thoughts in a private intense communication between a person and dog. Training is gentle, it’s not jerking the dog around, and it’s not using food: it’s based on pleasurable, intense communication.

2. You were recently in Paris with your service dog, Flash. What was the typical response to a service dog there? Do the French train their dogs the same way Americans do?

The French are intensely interested in dogs, although dogs are not particularly well trained there. They don’t have a concept of service dogs, although they understand guide dogs for the blind quite well. I’m not in a wheelchair, and that makes a service dog a bit more difficult to understand. However, at several museums, when they let us in it was the first time they’d had a service dog inside. All the museum staff helped out immensely. Unlike Americans, French people don’t race up and start petting your dog without asking as they do in America, yet people went out of their way to talk to us about our dog. I train my service dogs myself, which has given me deep insight into training that I didn’t have before, despite having run an obedience school for over 20 years. The first night we ate in a restaurant in Paris, the waiter put us at a tiny table near the kitchen door because he didn’t even see Flash, a border collie. As soon as he saw Flash, the waiter moved us to a larger table by the window with plenty of room for a dog. He brought Flash water in a champagne bucket. It’s fantastic when you’re treated that way. Some restaurants turned us away, but they were all popular and tiny.

3. How are people generally doing in terms of training our dogs?

People used to understand how important it is to train their dogs, but that doesn’t seem to be the case any more. In New York City where I live, dogs go everywhere – in the elevators, on the sidewalks, into the bank. There aren’t any drive-through banks in New York. Dogs have to have basic training to live here. The old ways of training were too harsh and rigid. You certainly can’t train a service dog with harsh methods. I see the dog as my partner, but I’m the senior partner. I know the bus could run us over and the dog doesn’t. All dogs, in and out of New York City, need solid basic commands like come and sit because it can save their lives by not letting them get hit by a car. That’s true of any environment, but particularly an urban one. Today, however, there seems to be a kind of permissiveness where people think a dog’s bad behavior is cute. People even let their kids rush up to pet dogs without asking permission, which can be dangerous for the child.

4. See Spot Sit: 101 Illustrated Tips for Training the Dog You Love is one of the best training books I’ve ever read. Why do you think it is so effective?

See Spot Sit reflects my growth as a trainer. Information is quick and simple these days. It’s the essential stuff. Because it’s simple illustrations with minimal copy – it’s just one tip per page in a 5 inch by 7 inch book – it’s quick, visual, and accessible. Cartooning is an integral part of it. I started using cartoons when I was teaching high school several years ago; I used a rabbit character that I’d draw on tests. Once I forgot to include the rabbit and the kids went on strike: no rabbit, no test. I understood the power of little drawings long ago. A lot of the training information is in the illustration as the drawings augment the text, they don’t just illustrate it. I’ve learned what to include and what to leave out for effectiveness. Someone once said “I love the boots” and missed the key to what was happening. So instead of showing someone next to the dog or the crate, you see hand signals and wrists to show position. The minimalist aspect of the drawing augments the ability to transmit information quickly and make it memorable. Elmore Leonard once said, “I leave out the part people skip.” That’s how I write books. I write the text and then I draw, and when I draw I change the text when I realize how much I can cut out because of the illustration. I can show a loose leash rather than say “hold the leash loosely.” The illustrations and short tips are much more memorable and useful than long text.

5. What’s the most common issue you see as a trainer?

It’s lack of sufficient exercise. It’s rare to find a problem where the basic source isn’t lack of exercise. Owning a dog has to be a family deal, but it isn’t a family deal when the dog isn’t getting enough exercise. I do training in short, fun bursts of 10 minutes, and exercise is the only thing that happens for more than 10 minutes. Dogs must get enough exercise. Training a dog enables a person to live in a way that’s good for both the person and the dog. I have border collies in Manhattan, and they have to be exercised appropriately. While I play with the dog, I also train. Training occurs while I’m doing something else that’s fun.

A professional dog trainer who ran an obedience school for over 20 years, Carol Lea Benjamin is author of over 25 books, including such topics as dog training, selecting dogs from the shelter, dog tricks, the Rachel Alexander and Dash mysteries featuring a dog trainer, and children’s books (including cartooning for kids). Her most recent book is an effective, concise training book titled See Spot Sit: 101 Illustrated Tips for Training the Dog You Love.