Star of 'It's Me or the Dog' Has Strong Views on Dog Training

by Steve Dale

Victoria Stillwell planned to be an actress. While she never made it to Broadway, this season on "It's Me or the Dog," premiering Sunday, Jan. 8 (8 p.m. ET) on Animal Planet, she's in The Big Apple, where the episodes are taped.

Stillwell's theatrical training, it turns out, not only prepared her to be a TV star, but also a successful dog trainer. She waited three years to get into the prestigious Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and still recalls the first and most important lesson she learned: "Less is more. Don't worry about acting; instead, observe, listen and react," she says.

There's a lesson there not only for dog trainers, but also for family members, "Our dogs do tell us what we need to know, if we only pay attention," Stillwell says. "I begin to get information as soon as I walk up to the front door, whether the dog is barking or not, whether or not the dog greets me at the door. Even as I receive family history and the back-story just after I walk into a home, I watch the dog out of the corner of my eye, who also offers background."

Stillwell says the secret is to interpret what a dog is saying accurately. "Non-verbally, dogs are always communicating, and they never lie," she says. She adds that really listening to dogs has made her a better dog trainer.

Stillwell grew up in Wimbledon, England. "I was a slightly poor girl," she says. As a kid, her dream wasn't to train dogs, but simply to have a dog. "For many years, I put notes under my father's pillow which read, 'Please, please, please, please, can't we get a dog?'"

Her grandmother, a beagle breeder, introduced Stillwell to dogs. Her sister overcame a childhood without dogs to became a veterinary nurse. As she was going to school, Victoria made money walking dogs and pet-sitting. Eventually, she volunteered and worked in animal shelters as a dog trainer. Her fascination with dogs began in earnest in the mid '90s.

Stillwell had a training mentor, but her real teachers were the dogs. "There's no better place to learn than at a shelter," she says. "You're thrown into the fire and dealing with dogs who've been abandoned through no fault of their own. I learned very quickly to deal with dogs who understandably had emotional problems, and to help these lost souls."

Stillwell began to read voraciously about dogs, leaping out of her chair with joy when she encountered books by Dr. Ian Dunbar and Patricia McConnell.

Originally premiering in the UK on Ch 4 (a network there), "It's Me or the Dog" barked off its first season three years later on Animal Planet, in 2007. The slight, attractive dog trainer with the high boots and British accent became nearly as big a celebrity as another dog trainer with an accent (Cesar Millan on National Geographic), but Stillwell's techniques are decidedly different. Her approach is science-based, utilizing positive reinforcement.

Stillwell says the high boots began as a producer's idea in the U.K. "They wanted me to be like the girl on the 'Avengers' (a 1961-68 hit TV series starring Patrick Macnee, Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg). They wanted me to play this tough dominatrix-type, and I did it (and to an extent still does) but it's not who I am in real life. Still, I do love my boots."

Those boots weren't just made for walking, but also to prevent bites. This season includes the story of a woman with six chihuahuas. "I knocked on the door, and the dogs were barking so loudly my eardrums hurt," Stillwell recalls. "I instantly knew this barking wasn't just, 'hello, nice to see you.' And one dog did nail me. Thank God for the boots."

Another dog trainer would likely suggest the problem was that the owner wasn't dominating the unruly dogs, so they didn't know who was the leader of the pack. It's a philosophy now being popularized, which Stillwell calls "old-fashioned rubbish."

In Part 2 (next week), Stillwell talks about her insistence on using positive reinforcement to train dogs, and that she instantly can assess the training technique used on dogs -- even years later -- by looking in their eyes. Some dogs that seem happy might not be as happy as we think. She offers strong views on the right and wrong way to train dogs.

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