With charm and leash –
new “coaching skins” for Martin Rütter and his team
Cologne. Germany's most popular dog trainer Martin Rütter returns Saturday, 28 September, 7.10 p.m., with seven fresh episodes on the VOXscreen to solve complex problem cases with his team. Two difficult situations are on the agenda in the first episode: Firstly, the dogs Maya and Lotte of the Moos family from Hesse, who harass visitors and disrupt family life. The children can no longer invite friends over and the dogs show aggression towards the family. Dog trainer Marcel Wunderlich is supposed to intervene in the pack to calm them down. Secondly, the German Shepherd mix Jay and his owner Tom from North Rhine-Westphalia have problems when meeting other dogs. Jay's aggressive behaviour causes stress and he cannot walk without a leash. Dog trainer Ellen Marques is supposed to help change Jay's behaviour.
Ellen Marques
Ellen de Sousa Marques owns a dog school in Cologne and has been a qualified dog trainer since 2010. She used to work as a communications specialist in a Cologne advertising agency. Her training style is honest and direct, with a focus on the needs of the human-dog team. “Even as a child, I had a secret pact with our German Wirehaired Pointer, who always jumped into my bed until my family came. Then she quickly lay back in her basket until the coast was clear again. I think that was what sparked my love of dogs.”
Sophie Grethe
Sophie Grethe from Würzburg studied landscape architecture before becoming a self-employed dog trainer and worked in a landscape gardening company alongside her training as a dog trainer. In her training style, it is important to her to observe the dogs, but also the people, carefully in order to find out the causes of undesirable behavior. This knowledge and the resulting training tasks are then passed on to the owners. “I love conveying an understanding of our dogs to the owners and experiencing the changes in both. The needs of the dogs and those of the people should be brought together in order to achieve a harmonious everyday life. Since every person and every dog must be considered individually, my work remains varied and exciting.”
Melanie Hofmann
Also on the team is Melanie (Melle) Hofmann from Osnabrück. Before she became a dog coach with Martin Rütter, she worked as a theater manager for a cinema chain. Since she no longer liked life with the label “higher, faster, further”, change was on the agenda. In 2013 she began her studies with Martin Rütter. His style and training philosophy included everything she had imagined for her life. She describes her training style as honest, empathetic, with a bit of humor in the right places, understanding and goal-oriented. “My greatest success is my dog school. Here, with my wife and my employees, I can support many human-dog teams every day and bring my job and passion together.”
Marcel Wunderlich
The computer science graduate (with the application subject of psychology) Marcel Wunderlich gave up his successful university career to “preferably do something with dogs”. He has never regretted his decision to become a dog trainer. He describes his training style as “understanding”. He wants to meet the human-dog team where they are, show them ways to achieve their goal and bring them and the dog together. It is important to him that the human learns to understand the dog's needs. His style is “scientific” in that he also creatively looks for other ways when things turn out differently than experience has shown. The 33-year-old considers the greatest success “when we start with desperate people and misunderstood dogs, but the human and the dog grow together through my training and can then face new challenges together without me.”
The most common dog breeds at the “dog professional”
- hybrid
- German Shepherd Mix
- Labrador
- Australian Shepherd
- French Bulldog
- Maltese
The most common problems with the “dog professional”
- Aggressive or conspicuous behavior towards people and other dogs.
- Anxious behavior.
- Lack of education.
- Bay.
- Not being able to stay alone.
- hunting instinct.
- Rage for destruction.
- gluttony.
- Uncleanliness.
The most common causes of the problems
Martin Ruetter:
“The extreme humanization: It creates expectations that the dog can never fulfill. A dog cannot think and act like a human.
Lack of consistency: People set rules but then are too lax with them. Every Sunday the dog is allowed to sit at the breakfast table and get his liver sausage roll, but not on the other days. This only makes the dog insecure. He needs clear rules; this is the only way he can build trust with his owner and rely on him in difficult situations.
Lack of employment: It is important that the four-legged friend is given both physical and mental activity. In principle, exercise is a very important topic because a lot of problems arise when our dogs are not given enough exercise. A monotonous walk where nothing really exciting happens is deadly boring for many dogs. The dog thinks: There's nothing going on here, so I'll have a nice time myself. That's why people should offer their dogs something exciting on the walk, but also at home. Treat-finding games or fetch games with the dog's favorite toy are just two good examples of forms of activity.
Communication misunderstandings: Many people do not interpret their dog's behavior correctly. Jumping up when greeting someone is almost always perceived as the dog's joy. In very few cases, however, it is meant in a friendly way; more often, it is a correction to the person who did not take the dog outside. Or the wagging tail, which is also interpreted as joy. It can have very different meanings. For example, if the body is still when wagging and the dog keeps its head slightly lowered and is staring at the person opposite, the wagging tail simply shows the dog's excitement shortly before an attack.”
Quotes Martin Rütter
- “I would have preferred it if you had bought a guinea pig.”
- “You’re scratching the dog’s bald patches.”
- “I train dogs, but above all their people.”
- “A few years ago I had a case where a man slept on the couch for years, or rather had to sleep, because the dog wouldn’t let him into the bedroom anymore. (laughs). Of course that’s not possible.”
- “The only place you can find THE right dog, or THE beginner's dog, or THE family dog is at Toys 'R' Us. It has batteries in its butt and you can turn it on and off.”
- “Of course, I get spoken to more often and that's part of it. But sometimes at really inappropriate times. On a skiing holiday in Austria, a woman tapped me on the shoulder in the sauna: 'Mr. Rütter, I know it's not a good time right now, but I have a question…' (laughs). But ultimately I always see it as recognition of my work.”
- “The key question is: what bothers the dog? As long as the dog's mental and physical freedom is not restricted and it can live a relaxed life according to its natural needs, everything is fine. For example, there is nothing wrong with a collar studded with diamonds, because it does not affect the dog. The same applies to the pink fairytale castle as a doghouse. But it becomes dangerous when the dog is forced into a dirndl for Oktoberfest. That's where the fun stops; that's animal cruelty.”
- “Dogs generally hear much better than we humans, they just don’t want to listen at certain moments.”
Photos: © RTL