As you may or may not be aware, I have my dog, Sadie, enrolled in obedience class at our local humane society. In fact, she is enrolled in two classes--basic obedience and Canine Good Citizen certification. The trainer, Aimee, suggested I sign up for the second one overlapping, partly because Sadie is a good dog who catches on pretty quick, and partly because she had a CGC class that would fit my schedule and needed one more student to go forward. So here we are.
Sadie's doing well in class--this stuff is really starting to click with her, but more importantly, it's starting to become habitual for me, too. The purpose of training classes isn't really to train your dog. It's to teach you how to train your dog. It presents you with opportunities to reinforce your dog in novel situations that may be hard to replicate on your own, but really, the main idea is to get you, the dog owner, to treat your dog a certain way and consequently produce the behaviors you want and extinguish the ones you don't.
The thing that really delights me about these classes is how much I've noticed Aimee conditioning us, the dog owners. I hear the words "what does leash pressure tell the dog" and I immediately bark out "adjust" without thinking. And then she says "that's right" and I feel smart even though I'm well aware that this response was conditioned into me using the same techniques she's taught us to use on the dogs. We don't get cookies or wear special collars, but it's essentially the same thing.
I catch myself wanting to use these techniques on people, too. If there's anything this class has taught me, it's to constantly think about what behavior I'm reinforcing in other people and animals. The principles are the same regardless of what species you're working with, after all.