If It Feels Difficult, It Likely Is

Despite how it may sometimes seem, your dog is truly always doing the best he or she can to make things easier for you and make you happy.

Whether it’s during class, while you’re at work or in a social setting, if it’s feeling like it’s difficult to get your dog to behave in a particular manner, chances are the scenario itself is indeed just that.. difficult.

It’s not in your dog’s interest to want to make things challenging for you both. But it is in our very own ability (more than anyone) and responsibility to try to manage the types of environments you both find yourselves in, in order to maximize your chances of success.

What this means is that you want to do your best to align the expectations of yourself and your dog’s behaviour, with the type of setting and scenarios you’re working through.

Ask yourself these questions: Is it something you’ve successfully done before and rehearsed it often enough? If not, is there an easier version of that setup that you can practice with first? But if so, has something in particular changed recently that is making things challenging for your dog?

Adjusting the environments you work on together, as well as your expectations is really an important part of reaching your goals with your dog. Ultimately you want to prevent the feeling of frustration and disappointment on you both, by doing the best that you can to understand why your dog might find a particular environment difficult to navigate.