Four Things Holding You Back From Making Progress With Your Dog
Consistency
If you pick and choose when it’s okay for your dog to listen, your dog will pick and choose when they decide to listen. Be consistent with your expectations and your dog will start to realize you mean what you say.
Believability
How you feel and how you interact with your dog affects how they will respond. If you don’t believe what you’re saying how can you expect your dog to believe you? When you look at your dog and very softly, in your sweetest baby voice say “Can you sit? Will you sit for me? Come on, will you sit?” that doesn’t come across clearly to your dog what you’re asking and that you mean what you’re saying. Look at your dog, calmly and confidently and in a neutral tone say “sit” one time and watch the difference. If you believe in yourself, so will your dog.
Timing
I feel like this is the hardest part for owners. Timing is key in dog training. Is your dog reactive to dogs on the walk? Anticipate the reaction and interrupt your dog before it happens, don’t wait till they’re at a 10 to do something about it - they are likely giving you plenty of cues (some more subtle than others) leading up to the explosion that it’s about to happen. I know you might want to give your dog the benefit of the doubt and wait to see if they’ll react or not but they probably aren’t ready for that kind of responsibility.
Realistic Expectations
You want to set your dog up for success and only put them in situations that you know you have the foundation to stand on to coach them through. Moving at the dogs pace is important. They will show you when they are ready. Is your dog blasting through thresholds? Constantly pushing the boundary of heel? Whining constantly in the car? They may not be ready for an outing in the community park. Start practicing in your neighborhood and work up to more challenging places.
Be confident in what you’re doing and your dog will start to see that you mean what you say and they’ll really feel like you are someone they can trust to guide them on the path to a better life.
