We're just "snowflakes" who don't use "bonkers": A frank conversation with dog trainer Beth Berkobien of Rehab Your Rescue of Dallas, TX

Texas-based trainer Beth Berkobien has a master's degree in animal behavior, specializes in dog aggression, and offers virtual training sessions internationally. She was raised on a farm with field-trial Labradors and grew up around punishment-based dog training using aversives. After being encouraged by a trainer to use an e-collar on her dog that caused him to completely shut down, she moved away from aversives. Many years later, she works primarily with rehabilitating rescue dogs.

She joins Annie on this episode to discuss her journey as a dog trainer. Together they also listen to “bonker”-based dog trainer Jeff Gellman’s rant on dog trainers who prefer to use methods that don’t cause their dogs (and potentially others) additional harm. They also discuss an apparent societal tendency to blame people for their failures, and of balanced trainers to blame clients when their training protocols are ineffective.

Annie finishes by reading some extreme training methods from a dog training book from the 1970's: The Koehler Method of Dog Training by William Koehler.

Links:

Learn more about Beth Berkobien at RehabYourRescue.com and on Instagram @rehabyourrescue

Just When You Thought the Barbara Woodhouse Days Were Over | Animal Rights & Wrongs (animalrightsandwrongs.uk)

Don't Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor

The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness by Donna Haraway

Walden Two by BF Skinner

Related episode:

Episode 44 | Are you talking to your socks? Marie Kondo, Cesar Millan & training humans with snake oil

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Partial Transcript:

Annie:

Hello, Beth. Thank you for being here. Maybe you can just go ahead and introduce yourself ‘cause I'm worried I'm gonna say your last name wrong. And tell me the name of your business and where you're located.

Beth Berkobien:

Absolutely. Yeah, everybody worries about saying my last name. I am Beth Berkobien of Rehab Your Rescue. We're located in Dallas, Texas, but I do sessions virtually all over the world. I have some clients in South Africa, in London, in Seattle, so we are very accessible...

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