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CELEBRITY TRAINER — Celebrity dog trainer Brad Pattison is coming to Elmira, Sept. 8-9, in a fundraising effort for a proposed lease-free park.
Chuck Kuepfer, Staff Reporter
Celebrity dog trainer Brad Pattison is coming to Elmira in a fundraising effort for a proposed lease-free park.
Pattison is best known for the television shows End Of My Leash and Puppy SOS that offer training tips for dog owners.
“Some people don’t agree with it, but I found personally it works,” says Shanna Hoffer of Pattison’s training methods.
Hoffer was having trouble with her dog Ajha, when her husband stumbled upon End Of My Leash while watching TV. He suggested she should give it a try.
“I ended up going to one of Brad’s training sessions and a couple of the seminars and learned way more from him than everything else I had ever done, in a short amount of time,” said Hoffer.
Outdoor training is a key component of Pattison’s training methods, which he teaches to others who want to become certified dog trainers.
“All my issues were outside, but anybody I was going to was always training inside,” said Hoffer. “I found the advice I was getting wasn’t working for the issues with my dog.”
Hoffer, who had previously considered becoming a dog trainer, decided to take the training and become a certified trainer educator.
“It was intense. Everything was hand’s on,” said Hoffer, who completed the course over six weekends in Toronto. “You did everything, you learned everything, then you had to do your homework throughout the rest of the week.”
She is now the only Brad Pattison-certified trainer for the Elmira area for what’s described as dog training in the real world through her business Pawsitive Canine Connection.
“All the training is done outside,” said Hoffer. “And we don’t use treats. If your dog’s running toward the road after a ball and you yell ‘stop,’ is it going to stop if you don’t have any food?”
Elmira residents will have the opportunity to learn from Pattison himself when he comes to Elmira, September 8-9.
On Saturday, Sept. 8, Pattison is hosting a two-hour dog training session at the Village Pet Food Shoppe (10 Church St. W) from 4-6 p.m.
Dog owners are asked to bring a Martingale collar and a six-foot leash. The cost is $25 per person with non-perishable food for Woolwich Community Services.
The following day (Sunday, Sept. 9) Pattison is speaking at a seminar at Elmira’s Lions Hall from 1-4 p.m. The cost is $56.50 per person or $75 after Sept. 1. Food donations for WCS are appreciated. A fundraising barbecue follows the seminar, which includes a raffle with prizes donated by local businesses.
Funds raised through the event will go toward establishing a dog park in Elmira. Earlier this summer, a presentation at Woolwich Council by Lyric Pauley, owner of Shampoochies Dog Grooming, suggested that Bolender Park would make a good location. Council was asked to look into the proposal for a leash-free park.
For more information or to register for the upcoming events, contact Hoffer at shanna@pawsitivecanineconnection.com.
The events are sponsored by Hoffer, The Village Pet Food Shop and Shampoochies Dog Grooming.
[...] is a grassroots movement to get a leash-free park in Elmira where our four-legged friends can run [...]
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To anyone who reads this article/ /To the Publishers of this website / To the public at large:
Please be aware of the following information BEFORE you spend even ONE MINUTE with this “person”!!
$6,000 for this Brad Pattison??!! To Become a Brad Pattison CTE??!! SERIOUSLY??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB1UtIawp6Y
Brad Pattison “handles” an agressive dog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab_yYY9LCqY&feature=plcp
Brad Pattison sets-up a dog to fail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie-NBT9zLDI&feature=plcp
Brad Pattison gets annoyed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pALxsLg0-n0&feature=plcp
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“You may not agree with the methods but they work!” is a simple-minded response to the serious animal welfare issue that Mr. Pattison represents.
Not only is he all over TV and the net hitting dogs in the face, jerking them around hard by the neck, and purposefully running them into trees or slamming doors on them, but he has no education in animal behaviour, learning theory, or psychology; and he scoffs at the idea. He claims he doesn’t need it because he spent “thousands of hours studying coyotes”. He even rejects the number one tool that any behaviourist employs – food rewards. No understanding of how they operate, which he’s clearly passed on to his student Shanna, who thinks food is used as a lure, and not to condition.
He also claims using food rewards kills dogs and makes them aggressive, when studies have shown the opposite. His methods DO work – but this is NOT training. He is very effective at using physical domination of dogs and getting them to tiptoe around him trying to avoid setting him off. The lack of ability to differentiate between this state (which is called “learned helplessness”) and “respect”, which is what he calls the dog that is cowering and showing clearly fearful body language around him, is typical of this type of trainer, who has no understanding of how to actually train dogs without physically pushing them around.
The archaic methods of self-taught TV “dog trainers” who use old school methods based on intimidating dogs into subservience have set training back 30 years, and have nothing to do with actual animal training. Any ding dong can tie a leash around his belly and repeatedly set a dog up to punish it, and end up with a nervous wreck too fearful to move without an OK. That is NOT dog training. Shanna, I’d happily go toe to toe with you and visit any shelter, you pick a couple dogs for each of us and pick something to teach them – and we’ll see who can do it better, but I will use touch free methods. No bullying. It would be a good lesson for you in seeing the difference in body language between a dog that’s tiptoeing nervously around you, and a dog that’s being handled non-violently.
The article focuses on Mr. Pattison supporting a local dog park. Several people have asked the sponsors; Village Pet Food Shoppe, Shampoochies and Ms Hoffer – if Mr. Pattison has waived his fees, and how this event is supporting this dog park – no answers. Many expressed their unhappiness at the sponsorship of a “trainer” such as Mr. Pattison, who writes factually in his book Synergy on how to punch a dog in the face – posts were deleted. Actual credentialed dog trainers even offered their services and were hung up on.
Save your money – and Ms Hoffer, don’t you think that it’s a bit misleading to use Mr. Pattison’s punishment-based methods and call your business “Pawsitive”?
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OMG You have the biggest balls ever. You are saying what hundreds if not thousands of force free dog trainers are saying all over Canada and indeed in other countries.
I applaud you for coming out and saying what you think. Thank you.
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Brad Pattison who’s treatment of dogs is well documented on TV, in videos of his “Street Smarts Seminar” and in his books routinely uses, and teaches others to use methods of training that are mainly punishment based. According to the CVMA Position Statement on dog training includes “Training methods utilizing pain, fear, distress or anxiety, including violent use of choke collars and shock collars are to be condemned.” located at http://canadianveterinarians.net/ShowText.aspx?ResourceID=1506. Web and Youtube pages are easily searched to find repeated incidences where in fact he Brad Pattison can be seen slapping dogs in the face, in fact in one of his books he describes how to most efficiently hit the dog in the face, in another he describes how to pinch a puppies ear until it screams to release something in it’s mouth, he also advocates running dogs over benches and parking barriers with no individual regard for the health of the dog and the joint stress involved, he also demonstrates running a dog up to an upright obstacle then positioning it so it goes on one side of the obstacle while he goes on the other thus delivering the dog a substantial jerk to it’s neck and spine please note, “However, one of the clearest correlations in the whole study was between cervical (neck) damages and ‘jerk and pull’. 91% of the dogs who had neck injuries had also been exposed to jerking on the leash by the owner or been allowed to pull hard on the leash for long periods of time.” as cited here http://dogmatters.webs.com/pullingonleaddamage.htm
I am hoping that given this information you will use this to cancel him as a speaker or leader of a walking/hiking safety seminar. This will reflect poorly on you the businesses supporting him, and could easily come back to cause injuries to dogs involved by unknowing owners. Please read this article about TV trainers http://www.apdt.com/petowners/choose/tvtrain.aspx and this article about the myth of dominance in dogs. http://www.apdt.com/petowners/choose/dominance.aspx There are those people who are uneducated in ethology (the study of animal behaviour) who still believe the old tales of the alpha wolf and pack structure, which have been disproven with research. It is also important to realize, dogs are not wolves, and have evolved to live with people, thus were selectively bred to select a more biddable dog. Nobody’s dog is planning on taking over the house, scheming to rule the kingdom, leading the people in life, in fact dogs that aren’t shown appropriate behaviour will do whatever dogs do, chew things, explore, and be dogs. Just like our children aren’t born knowing how to behave appropriately neither are dogs, thus we need to show HOW TO BEHAVE, not watch and correct and punishing the dog when it is doing something you determine is wrong.
Kim, AHT
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