Becoming a good colleague in the animal world
Becoming a good colleague is a subject that we rarely discuss, if at all, in our professions in relation to education and animal behavior. We are fortunate to have access to numerous articles, webinars, workshops, conferences and courses to become good trainers, educators or consultants in animal behavior for our clients, but also better professionals by developing our skills with animals, but we have very few resources to become a good professional among our colleagues, peers and mentors. In this article, it will not be a question of discussing the fraction between trainers labeled positive and those labeled balanced. I am only sharing with you my personal ideas on what is, for me, a healthy relationship between caring colleagues in the animal world.
Colleague or competitor?
In our current society, competition is defined in a pejorative way and is seen as a barrier to be broken down. As proof, here are the synonyms proposed by Oxford Languages :
Rivalry, opposition, conflict, what strong words to evoke a person who nevertheless shares our passion for this educational work, which aims to help individuals in a kind way.
However, I seem to see a certain antonymy in the words kindness and rivalry.
Therefore, talking about someone who does the same job as us as being a competitor sets us on a path of rivalry, leading to negative emotions and separation.
With 80 million pets in France, almost ¼ of which are dogs, almost one in two homes has a possible need to contact an animal trainer or behavior professional.
Which means that even seeing competition in its most pragmatic form, namely “I have to win the market to be able to make a living”, we do not need to enter into rivalry to achieve this.
Conversely, the definition of colleague reminds us that these are colleagues sharing and exercising the same function, and here are some synonyms :
Having colleagues rather than competitors means being able to:
· Work collaboratively
In a field as vast as animal trainig, being able to / know how to do everything is impossible. To be a good professional, as I explained in the article “Why multidisciplinarity is essential for animal training ” (Article to be found here), we must specialize in specific fields and devote ourself to training in those. So, if I am a behavior consultant specializing in reactive, aggressive and phobic behaviors, I work in collaboration with a lot of colleagues around me, specialized in other themes. Cooperative care instructors, dog trainers, behavior consultants, veterinary behaviorists, and so on, are my allies in providing better services to clients.
· Find a supportive community
“Alone we go faster, together we go further” - Balthazar Dadvisard
Pawsome, Educ & Zen, Alaska’s animal school, Nobody’s Perfect, Maison Dog, Crocs bien élevés, Lupi, Oh my pet, Le monde de Maïkan.
Animal Académie mentees discuss topics related to the profession of dog trainer/behavior consultant on a private Facebook group and meet face-to-face during one-off events.
When, for the first time, we find ourselves stuck on a case of training basics, tricks, fitness or animal behavior modification, we realize how impactful and relevant this proverb is.
Taking a case that we think we have mastered, it goes quickly, putting in place a behavior plan that we think is relevant, it goes quickly, seeing it fail, it hurts.
At this stage of our career, two options are available to us:
- Continue alone at the risk of failing our learners (human and non-human clients) by wanting to go faster
- Find help from our community to move forward and go further
By seeing the professionals around us as competitors, the risk is to choose the first option, sometimes for fear of being judged or described as incompetent, sometimes out of ego. By seeing these professionals as colleagues, we can be supported and get a fresh perspective on a problematic situation and above all, learn.
Today there are many support communities for professionals in the animal world (such as certain Facebook groups intended for dog trainers, or the fabulous Animal Training Academy community) and I thank them all for these superb initiatives.
· Improving the animal cause
The more we see ourselves as colleagues and not competitors, the more our common voice will carry louder and farther. Most of us want to see so-called positive or kind training become the norm tomorrow.
So that the message gets across to our clients, our followers, our readers, our friends, friends of our friends, other professionals, and so on, our communication with our own interlocutors should be based on this same principle of kindness. .
The main qualities to become a good colleague
Now that I have defined why the term colleague should be favored over that of competitor in my opinion, I will list what I think are the main qualities to become a good colleague in the world of animal training and behavior.
In 2022, I had the great joy of receiving the Change Makers Foundation Medal of Honor, which recognizes individuals who are deeply dedicated to improving the well-being of individuals through the application of science in evolution, of the best new emerging practices in their field. Individuals are nominated and then selected based on their overall professional work and non-public volunteer work.
On my medal, 6 essential qualities to be nominated and selected are written:
Excellence, compassion, commitment, philanthropy, courage and resilience. I'm going to discuss it in the way they inspire me and add more.
If these qualities are essential to being a good professional (and a good human in general actually), they are just as essential to being a good colleague.
· Excellence and commitment
Excellence involves having the skills, knowledge and experience necessary to work in one’s field.
Nowadays, certifications that offer “letters to put behind the name” are raining down on the animal training scene: CPBT, CBCC, FFCP, CSAT, CPPT, CPDT, FMD, and dozens or even hundreds of others exist today.
If certifications are, in my opinion, an excellent way to see our knowledge and skills recognized, the phenomenon that we can observed more and more in recent years is the “race for the letters to put behind the name”.
For excellence to be recognized, passing certifications one after the other does not make sense. In my opinion, we should engage in training, apprenticeships, apply our new knowledge in the field, then, once we are comfortable in a field, take a certification to have our knowledge recognized in this field. .
Being a good colleague should involve developing the overall knowledge of our profession by valuing these certifications and not by collecting them.
· Compassion and respect for others
Compassion and respect, when talking about relationships with our colleagues, should be to realize, accept and even embrace the fact that we do not all have the same level of knowledge, skills, experience, that we have not all followed the same courses, training, conferences or workshops, that we do not all have the same certifications in a field.
Do we really need to all be identical professionals, with the same training, the same letters after our names to be valid and good at what we do? Diversity has always been what made us grow in a field.
Thus, claiming that having followed or offered course/certification/conference X is much better than having followed or offered course/certification/conference Y only makes sense if we are talking about marketing, for attract customers and possibly knock out the competition.
In fact, our profession needs diversity, needs people who follow different courses on different themes. No need to diminish the neighbor who has not followed THIS resource. There are far too many today to judge a single one that would be above all the others.
“Diversity in all its forms is the path to greatness” — James D Wilson
· Philanthropy
I admit that I am always saddened when I see rants or other disputes on social networks between so-called positive professionals in the animal world.
When working with non-human animals, we make every effort to use the most positive and least aversive methods possible. We sometimes seem to forget this approach in our relationships with others. However, we are all subject to the same laws and fundamental principles of science with which we claim to work on a daily basis.
For me, ultimately, philanthropy, which is, in a nutshell love of humanity, should be a reminder of what behavior analysis teaches us, including, among other things: labels do not allow us to modify a behavior and are only a reflection of our own prejudices, reinforced behaviors are maintained, the best methods of behavioral modification must be individualized, caring and ethical.
It is not really surprising that professionals in the animal world dare to share their work less and less on social networks when we see to what extent these behaviors can be punished by our very community. The work itself of filming ourself and daring to share is already complicated in itself, but when we also have to live with the fear of being humiliated by our peers, I can only understand that the visibility of education so-called positive or kind may be declining, in favor of other currents of education.
A good colleague should sincerely appreciate humans. Appreciating humans doesn't have to mean being friends with every other professional around the world. Even if we are in a caring and philanthropic upbringing, we have the right not to have an affinity with a person or not to feel comfortable in their company. However, the personal labels we put on a person should not blind the importance of professional sharing, respect and kindness.
If a colleague shares content on social networks and :
- We appreciate the content: we can like, share, comment a kind word
- We don't like the content : we can scroll and move on
- We think we can add value to the content : we can contact the person by private message and obtain their consent before proposing our idea to them
· Resilience and courage
Courage is the act of acting despite difficulties. Resilience is the ability to overcome difficult challenges.
In my opinion, these two qualities should also remind us that we are not alone in suffering the difficulties of our profession and that if courage and resilience are important qualities, they can be supported by the mutual assistance of our community.
Ego is sometimes what damages professional relationships. Admitting that we are wrong, knowing how to question ourselves, realizing that we still have everything to learn, even when we have lots of letters after our name, that is also courage.
Wanting to be “among the stars”, often by bypassing our colleagues, sometimes even trying to “take their place”, should not be an objective or even a criterion for success.
To be seen, appreciated, known and recognized by our peers, we should call on our courage and our resilience, by sharing our work, in photos, videos, texts, by questioning ourselves, by demonstrating our thirst to learn.
Professional opportunities will then arrive “on their own”, without having to try to upset destiny.
To conquer without danger, we triumph without glory. - Pierre Corneille· Generosity
Generosity in sharing is for me an important quality to be a good colleague. I am not necessarily talking here about free sharing of technical information nor resources, but about answering questions that other colleagues might have.
We have all started our career, we have all started a project, we all wanted to have a helping hand to guide us. Let's give back what we received and if we hadn't received anything when we would have liked to be helped, let's break this cycle by offering our time. We are not going to create a competitor, we are going to open a new path to kindness, sharing and mutual aid in our profession.
· Credit, source, reference, be inspired
More and more, I notice posts on social networks discussing protocols, writings, articles (sometimes entire sentences, word for word), creations, and so on, whose initial authors are not cited.
If science is universal, free and accessible, it nevertheless remains extremely important to credit, cite, reference and quite simply thank our sources.
I myself am confronted with this lack of recognition very regularly and although I am delighted to see my work implemented elsewhere, I admit to feeling a pang when I see my creations, which have required an enormous amount of energy, creativity, hours of work, shared without citing me (it could be a training tool that I created, a piece from one of my courses, or even photos/videos where my signature was cut).
If we find a text that we like and inspire us, and we in turn want to share these words, if we find an interesting protocol in a course or training and we were not aware of this tool before, if we ask a colleague to reread our text before sharing it, if we affirm that science demonstrates a fact, if we are inspired by the creation of a tool of a colleague and we wish to reproduce it, we should consider crediting the person who put all this energy into disseminating this resource.
Regardless of the media (articles, courses, social networks, etc.), being a good colleague means crediting our inspirations.
The question here is not whether it is legal or not to appropriate a text, to draw inspiration from others, but to be respectful and caring, while setting an example to our different audiences. This in no way affects our professionalism by being honest and transparent, quite the contrary.
I would personally take much more seriously a person who sources their writings and draws inspiration from others than a person who posts a text or a video suggesting that they invented everything, alone.
Let's all show this example, so that thanking the original authors, the creators, the workers, can become the norm of tomorrow.
Conclusion
In conclusion, in my opinion, becoming a good colleague in the animal field means respecting our colleagues, their own paths, being kind and welcoming, embracing multidisciplinarity, having a good understanding and application of ethics and sharing.
