What is a dog whisperer and what does a dog whisperer do? How to be a dog whisperer explained

Dog whisperer is a pretty fancy title

Anyone can do Dog Grabbing, or Dog Shouting, or Dog Hitting but Dog Whispering sounds like it’s an innate, spiritually-found skill perhaps offered to a select few by the Sirius God of Dog Stars… maybe. Horse whispering shares the same etherial, almost angelic-sounding grace; it conjures up images of someone modestly dressed, knelt down beside the animal, communicating gently, using some sort of higher plane, or sixth sense to break through the obvious language barrier of two different species. You’d expect them to lay their hand on the horse - or dog - gently and calmly, only for the animal to accept them and strike an everlasting bond with them. Dramatic, peaceful and awe-inspiring. That’s what whispering with animals conjures up for me.

Pinning dogs down, growling at them, flipping them onto their backs, grabbing them, holding them up by their metal collar or shouting at them isn’t really conducive with my feeling of what “whispering” to a dog should look like. Call me old fashioned but I always expected something a little more - well, whispery. So if you have a problem with your dog and you watch or consult a “dog whisperer”, I for one wouldn’t expect them to so much as touch or raise their voice around the dog. And I’d certainly not expect them to bring out gizmos and gadgets that spray air or water at my dog or delivery electric shocks. Maybe Black Beauty had it lucky when she found that young kid who seemed to be able to get the horse to do what she wanted it to do, without any force or physical coercion. Does that exist in the real world? Can we really get animals to do what we’d like them to do, without touching them, causing them any pain or shouting at them?

Yes. Yes we can - and animal professionals do, every day, all over the world. What looks really easy to achieve takes a fair bit of understanding, a lot of practice and a lot of patience, too. Animal training is classically one of those things that falls into the “how hard can it be?” category. When people try something that doesn’t work or perhaps try something that works for a while and then doesn’t (what we animal professionals call extinction), they quickly become frustrated and resort to physical prompting or force. It’s trickier than you think to get a dog to do what you want it to do, however, the basics of “dog whispering” are straightforward enough for any and all dog owners to put into practice.

1. Respect that the dog may not feel like doing what you want it to do: it may be tired, in pain or simply uninterested.

2. Respect that dog’s don’t have to like you all the time - just like humans they like time on their own and may not want to be stroked, cuddled or moved.

3. True dog whispering is about understanding the animal - how do they feel? What are they thinking? How do we communicate with them and they with us? Take a look at this poster to get you started.

4. Understand punishment: what is a punishment anyway? Do we have to hit the dog or electrocute it or scare it? No, we don’t - and we shouldn’t. We can learn that punishment is simply a word given by professionals to mean the opposite of reward. Nothing about the word or its definition (“a stimulus that reduces the immediately precipitating behaviour”) says it has to be nasty or painful - not giving your dog a treat is for many an effective punishment - their very own “extinction”.