Before You Call Yourself an Instructor

I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time, but working my detection dogs every day tends to take over. The truth is, I would much rather be out working and training dogs than sitting down writing blogs, but on this occasion, I couldn’t bite my lip any longer.

I’ve just been reading on social media about yet another “instructor course”. There seem to be a lot of them appearing lately, and I am regularly amazed when I read the course content, who the courses are aimed at and, perhaps more importantly, who is actually delivering them. Judging by the number of instructor courses being advertised in the UK at the moment, I sometimes wonder whether instructors now outnumber bog-standard handlers.

I don’t know whether things are still exactly the same today, but traditionally, before becoming a dog instructor within the police or another professional organisation, a dog handler was expected to have gained the necessary skills, knowledge and experience before being selected or put forward for instructor training. That seems perfectly logical to me. How can you teach or instruct someone in something that you have little or no practical experience of yourself?

Instructing is not simply about standing in front of people and delivering information. It is about teaching and developing dogs and handlers. It is about recognising problems, understanding why they are happening and knowing how to correct them. It is also about being able to draw on genuine experience. When someone asks, “What would you do in this situation?”, an instructor should be able to answer from more than a PowerPoint presentation, a textbook or something they learnt on another course. Experience matters.

There is also another important point that I think is often overlooked. Just because you can train a dog well does not mean that you can train a handler well.

An instructor is not simply a dog trainer. An instructor must be capable of developing the team. I have met plenty of people over the years who are extremely good dog trainers but have very few people skills. Teaching a dog and teaching a human being are very different things. Someone who communicates extremely well with dogs does not automatically communicate well with people.

Teaching is a skill in its own right. You need to be able to explain something in different ways because people learn differently. You need to recognise when someone hasn’t understood you. You need to be able to assess performance, give constructive feedback, adapt your teaching and sometimes completely change your approach. Not everyone who can do something can teach it.

When I think back to secondary school, I always remember my maths teacher, Mr Howells. Maths was certainly not my favourite subject, and it wasn’t something I was particularly good at. Mr Howells, however, was clearly incredibly knowledgeable. I think I can confidently say that when it came to mathematics, the man was probably a genius.

But as a teacher, he was terrible.

He understood his subject brilliantly, but the problem was that he couldn’t communicate that knowledge in a way that many of us could understand. That has always stuck with me because it demonstrates the difference perfectly. Knowing your subject and being able to teach your subject are two completely different abilities, and exactly the same principle applies to dog training.

This is why, when I look at parts of the UK nosework and detection dog community, I genuinely question some of the instructor courses being offered. I question who is delivering them, what their background is, what they have actually done, what they have instructed and what practical or operational experience they really have. I also wonder whether some of those delivering instructor courses have themselves ever been properly trained in how to teach people.

Then there is the length of some of these courses.

Two days? Four days?

Are we seriously saying that somebody can arrive on a Saturday morning as a handler and leave on Sunday afternoon as an instructor?

What exactly has changed during those two days? Have they suddenly gained years of experience? Have they learnt how to assess handlers properly, how to recognise different learning needs, how to manage difficult students or how to structure progressive training? Have they learnt how to determine whether a problem sits with the dog, the handler, the training methodology or the environment?

Or have they simply gained another certificate?

That may sound harsh, but I think these are perfectly reasonable questions. At what point does an instructor course become little more than another certificate for somebody’s wall? And at what point does selling instructor qualifications simply become another way of generating income?

Before I became an instructor, I was required to attend college and actually pass examinations. This wasn’t an online course completed at home over a weekend. I attended lectures, sat in a classroom, completed coursework and produced portfolios. I attended college part-time for five months while continuing to work as a dog handler and trainer.

During that time, I had to study learning and teaching strategies, roles and responsibilities, relationships between teachers and other professionals, how to deliver effective learning and teaching sessions, how to maintain a safe and supportive learning environment, inclusive learning and teaching, evaluating my own teaching practice, different methods of assessment and the importance of record keeping.

I was continuously assessed throughout the course. I had to submit a portfolio of evidence, and I had practical assessments, examinations and tests. At the end of it, unlike some of the questionable certificates circulating within parts of the private dog sector, I received a recognised qualification from a regulated awarding system.

But even that qualification did not suddenly make me an experienced instructor.

It taught me how to teach.

The experience came from doing the job.

There is a big difference.

I fully recognise that somebody involved in recreational nosework or sport scentwork may not want to attend college and complete a formal teaching qualification. I understand that. But if someone is considering an instructor course, I think they should still be asking serious questions about what they are buying and who they are buying it from.

Who is teaching you? What have they actually achieved? How long have they been doing it? Have they trained dogs themselves? Have they trained handlers? Have they developed complete teams? Have they genuinely worked in the discipline they are teaching? Do they have any teaching qualifications or substantial instructional experience themselves? How are you actually going to be assessed?

And perhaps one of the most important questions of all is this: can you fail the course?

Because if everybody who pays the money receives an instructor certificate at the end regardless of ability, then what exactly is being assessed?

There is another part of this subject that I have written about before, and that is the importance of relevant experience.

You might have been an excellent drugs dog handler. You might even have been a drugs dog instructor. That does not automatically make you qualified to become an explosive detection dog instructor. Likewise, experience with explosives does not automatically qualify somebody to instruct tobacco detection, cash detection, conservation detection, cadaver work or every other specialist detection discipline.

Yes, there are transferable principles. Odour recognition, search behaviour, reinforcement, handling and learning theory all overlap to some degree. But the operational requirements, the environments, the risks, the target availability, the deployment strategies and the consequences of failure can be very different.

Detection disciplines are not all the same, and they cannot simply be taught as though they are.

There is a worrying tendency within dog training for someone to become competent in one area and then suddenly regard themselves as an expert in everything involving a dog and an odour. It doesn’t work like that.

And sometimes, if I am completely honest, I just love being a bog-standard dog handler. Forget the titles, the qualifications, the courses and the word “instructor”. Some of the best experiences I have are simply being out there with my dogs, working them, training them, watching them develop and learning from them myself. That is the part of this job I have always loved, and I still do. I don’t need to be standing in front of a classroom or teaching a seminar to enjoy what I do. Put me out working with my dogs and I am probably at my happiest. After all these years, actually handling and training dogs is still the best possible experience for me.

Becoming an instructor sounds good. I understand the attraction. Being able to describe yourself as an instructor looks good. Having another certificate looks good on social media. Adding another badge to your website or another qualification after your name may also help with marketing.

But before signing up for an instructor course, I think people need to ask themselves a more important question.

Do I actually want to teach, and am I capable of teaching people?

Because being an instructor comes with responsibility. People are going to listen to you. They are going to change the way they train their dogs because of what you tell them. They may change training systems, purchase dogs, select equipment or even deploy working dogs based on your advice. If you are teaching professional detection teams, those decisions can have very real operational consequences.

That responsibility should mean something.

You do not become an instructor simply because somebody has printed your name on a certificate. You become an instructor through knowledge, teaching ability, relevant experience, continued learning and the ability to develop both ends of the lead.

And none of those things can be downloaded over a weekend.