Question: What’s one myth about dog training or behavior that you’ve found to be completely false?

Many owners think they have to be gruff with their dogs. They think they have to yell and shout at their dogs. They believe they have to berate their dogs.

So I’ll go a step further by offering some insight using Nature’s holistic approach.

It Starts and Ends With Sleep

For starters, sleep is the lowest energy or excitement level for any dog. (Curiously, there are two evidential sleep modes for dogs, true sleep, and dozing, but that is a point that merits a separate post.) So, since sleep is repeatable, measurable, and observable, everyone can see and say when a dog’s asleep. (Doug, ‘Duh!’ I mean really…) I know. Please bear with me.

Next, think of a dog falling asleep in front of any other animal—as a wild animal it must check its checkbox that says, “I trust you with my life” each time it falls asleep in front of you.

With Progress Toward Submission, not Being Gruff

Furthermore, each time it reaches any of its moments of PROGRESS TOWARD SUBMISSION in front of you it’s approaching that same “I trust you with my life” line in the sand it crosses when it will or does check its checkbox.

I hope you’re still following along, reading these interwoven, convoluted, and seemingly disparate concepts at the moment. Stick with it, though, and Nature will solidify it all in a few moments.

So think of a dog falling asleep in front of you as its way of saying “Yes” to you. Think of a dog going through all of its progress toward submissions. Yes, it will eventually fall asleep in front of you. It’s its way to communicate a message of “Yes” to you. It’s correcting its contradictions and changing its messages from “Nope, can’t trust her” to “Yes, I trust her with my life.”

The lowering of its energy or excitement level is its way of expressing

• its behavior,
• its message,
• and its relationship with you

in a single, decisive action, that is its way of saying

• okay,
• or “I get it,”
• “I understand,”
• or “I accept,”
• or in terms of Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale, “I concur.”

Lower Energy Is Its “Yes,” not Your Being Gruff

In simplest terms, then, you win by getting a dog’s energy or excitement level to decrease. Getting it to sit, or lie down, or put its muzzle down, or to sigh, or stretch, or yawn, or roll on its side, or fall asleep. That’s the way to accomplish everything with your dog without having to be gruff with it.

In that way, being gruff becomes an indicator of a trainer or owner who is unaware of a dog’s mode of communication as well as being unaware of the communication itself. In terms of “energy increasing” or “energy decreasing,” a person being gruff with a dog is an increase in the energy level. So it’s the opposite indicator that Nature is looking for from you.

In the end, Nature needs a decrease in the energy level for the dog to say yes or okay. The change in your relationship gets done in its submissions to you  and in its progress toward submissions to you. That’s the work.

Respectfully submitted.

DOuGTrainer.com — A Working Training Alternative to Dog Training