My Dog Won’t Listen To Me!

OK, so we don't really mean "listen." What we really mean is "follow instructions."

In most cases, obedience training means the human presents an instruction and the dog complies. That’s one kind of relationship, and as a dog trainer it’s often the reason why I am called by new clients.

But what I want to invite you to consider is this; rather than the dog merely understanding and obeying us, what happens if we understand what the dog is trying to communicate to us? They have a lot they want to tell us, in fact, they are doing so all the time, if we can just understand them.

As a trainer and handler of trailing and detection dogs, once I learned this it became immediately apparent that the stupid end of the leash has the loop, not the snap.

The more we understand our dogs, and the more they realize we understand them, the more they will want to communicate with us. It’s possible for a very different kind of relationship to emerge. And our dogs will continually surprise us with what they know about the world that we don't.

Once you have this quality of relationship – when the dog is engaged and motivated –  the behavioral training is easy.