Say It Once Dog Training

This is the most common mistake people make when teaching their dog. your dog should be able to listen to all commands without any hand signal, but most dogs are reliant on the hand signal in order to listen. The easiest way to fix this is to adjust your timing. Say the command clearly, then offer the hand signal, then pay. The goal is to be able to get your dog to complete commands with either just the hand signal, or just the verbal command, and not needing both.

If your dog believes something to be true, and that something is causing stress in their life, take time to change their mind.

You need to progressively add more stress to your dog’s life, stress that they are able to successfully overcome. This is how you build, resilient and confident dogs. We live in a bubble boy society, where we are told to shy away from what makes our dog, stressful and nervous, versus spending time, overcoming it and pushing our dogs through slightly uncomfortable scenarios. With that being said, you do want to incrementally add more stress, or difficulty to the task that you were adding, so that you don’t completely overwhelm and shut down your dog. We need to not forget that our dogs are not made of glass, and if raised and trained appropriately can overcome and achieve more than what most think are possible. More importantly, when you, the confident, calm, owner, are the one who guides your dog through this process, you develop an incredible trusting and beautiful bond with a dog who looks to you for strength and guidance.