An Interview with Brad Jaffe
Q. How did you come up with the idea to write a book with a dog as the teacher?
A. Over the years of teaching classes and working with people privately, I would always try and help people understand more than just techniques, but why certain ways of communicating to our dogs are so much more effective. If I could get them to understand from their dog’s point of view it was much easier. Courtney allowed me to do that. She's a great teacher.
Q. There are rumors that this is an autobiographical story, is this true, did you really have these conversations with Courtney?
A. What better teachers could there possibly be than our dogs themselves? Let’s just say that I have been a humble student to all of my personal dogs and all of my clients’ dogs as well.
Q. The methods Courtney teaches in the book seem very unconventional, are the really effective?
A. Better than anything else out there.
Q. Can you explain why?
A. Proper teaching stems from good communication, and if we don’t know the language our student speaks, teaching becomes difficult at best. Our dogs have a very different way of communicating and most of it is non-verbal. They are not capable of learning verbal language so it our responsibility to learn to communicate in a language that they can understand. Once we make the switch, and by the way it is quite simple, training becomes easy. Our dogs are willing participants and when we learn to give them the right cues at the right time everything falls right into place.
Q. At one point in the book Courtney states to Jeff that our dogs learn what we want from them in spite of our actions. Can you explain what she means?
A. Most of the techniques that people have been taught and are using are not effectively communicating what are wants are to our dogs, in fact it is utterly confusing to them. To their credit though, through all the confusion, humiliation, and unfortunately sometimes abuse; they figure out what we are trying to teach them on their own.
Q. What do you find as the biggest obstacle in teaching this philosophy?
A. The only obstacle we have at the moment is lack of awareness. Based on our experience whenever anyone reads Conversations With Courtney or attends one of our classes or seminars they have a huge “Aha” moment and wish someone would have explained it to them sooner. It’s the uncommon common sense and it just needs more mainstream publicity so people will have an alternative to what is currently out there.
Q. Where do you go from here, what’s next for Brad and Courtney?
A. Our goal is to be the facilitators of a paradigm shift in dog training. My heart breaks every time I see a confused dog being corrected for something he was never taught in the first place. I know in my heart that most people just want to know what’s best for their dogs and they don’t want to use techniques and methods that are based in force and intimidation, they just need an alternative. Most of us get angry with our dogs out of our own frustration of not knowing what to do. We are going to change that by educating dog owners around the world through books, training DVD’s, worldwide seminars, and training others to teach our methods.
Q. Is there going to be another book from Courtney?
A. I think she has a lot more to say.
Q. Are your dogs perfect?
A. Perfect for me! Everyone has their own version of perfect, and we express to our clients all of the time that a lot of the “No, no’s” that people hear all the time are just opinions. Guess what, my (small) dogs sleep on the bed, oh no … they are going to think they’re dominant over me! My dogs have the manners that I want from them; I don’t want robot dogs. I am pretty easy with my dogs’, Tamara is much stricter; maybe it’s a mom thing.