My thoughts on Dog Daddy, real name Augusto Deoliveira.
There’s been a lot of online hate towards Augusto Deoliveira (‘Dog Daddy’) of late. His training methods are hugely controversial to say the least and people have been demonstrating outside of his seminars to get him shut down. It’s probably worth pointing out a few things.
Are Dog Daddy’s Techniques Abuse?
Firstly, I don’t agree with his methods. Here’s a short clip https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CPV-bD7jghM it’s actually distressing, so be warned. Putting a dog into a fearful aggressive state so you can string them up in order that they shut down is not training. The dog is most likely going to be more fearful and defensive in the future, not less. The current accepted best practice is to keep a dog below threshold. I see no benefit in his method, and of course it is horrific from the dog’s perspective, in fact I think Dog Daddy’s techniques will most likely make the dog worse not better. This is undoubtedly unethical for the dog.
Secondly, people with dogs like the ones we see him train in his YouTube clips are desperate. He is preying on desperate people, shutting down their dogs and taking their money. This is unethical for the human.
Thirdly, we should police our own. I don’t like to use labels like “Balanced Dog Trainer” because Augusto Deoliveira calls himself a Balanced Trainer so the good practitioners get tared with his brush. He abuses dogs and he exploits desperate people and then he makes more money by posting it on his YouTube channel. If we don’t all call him out we’ll suffer as an industry but it will be the dogs that ultimately pay the price. It always is.
If we don’t police our own (or people pretending to be one of us) then people like him cause the “Positive Only” community to come after all of us because from the outside it looks like this is what we’re all doing. That’s why I wanted to get something out there; this circus clown is not a Balanced Dog Trainer. He’s not even a Dog Trainer.
So Is There A Solution?
What can we do about Dog Daddy? This is an unregulated industry (here in the UK at least), should it be regulated? Should there be legislation about acceptable practices? I don’t have a clear solution to stop people like this but perhaps if there was regulation so that all trainers had to be affiliated with a one of the recognised industry bodies, such as the IACP on the Balanced side or the APDT on the Positive Only side then charlatans like this wouldn’t be able to operate their scams. Deoliveira is already a pariah having his rodeo shows cancelled because of demonstrations. If we were all forced to affiliate, which is surely good practice for serious professionals anyway, then the industry would be a cleaner, safer place.
