This isn't a 'how to' guide to training your dog, or about the value of food you should use, the best toys to buy, or what methods to use.
This is about the part of the team that we don't focus enough on: You (owner/handler/guardian whatever you call yourself).
I'm going to break this down into a few blogs, each covering something to think about from the human side of dog training and why you might not be as successful as you'd hoped you would be (and it's likely not because of your dog).
Setting realistic expectations and accepting that it won't be a smooth sailing journey.
The modern humans desire to get everything done at rapid speed is creating unrealistic expectations on themselves, their dogs, and their dog trainer if they've got one.
Trying to "fix" your dogs behaviour within in a couple weeks time is comparable to trying to sprint a marathon. You will very quickly tire out, causing you to give up and then assume you will never reach your goal. This is the same as why people struggle with on and off dieting, because they set themselves too hard a challenge to start with, which they are unable to maintain, and so they go back to 'old habits', feel crappy again and try a new diet without changing their attitude. Round and round we go. This happens in pretty much ALL aspects of life and learning, and it's a rubbish cycle to try break.
At a different time I will even argue about the notion of "fixing" anything because when you have established behaviour it'll be there somewhere in the brain and won't completely be forgotten....but anyway that's for another time.
Behaviour change and learning new behaviour; takes patience, hard work, understanding, empathy, setting appropriate criteria, and sometimes even regrouping when things don’t always go the way you want them too.
I want you to look at success and progress as achieving small goals weekly towards a larger goal; instead of waiting for the entire problem to be fixed to see it as success. There are SO many variations of what "progress" looks like based on the individual dog, so don't compare your dogs progress to other dogs progress.
Just a side note about attempting to quickly fix a problem using methods that are designed to suppress behaviour as a method of learning. If you've "fixed" your dogs problem in a very short space of time, remember that those behaviours were imbedded in the brain for a reason and they don't just float out into the universe when you suppress them. They are there somewhere and you'd better hope you've done a good enough job at covering them up or they'll likely come back to bite you in the ass (maybe even literally depending on the dog).
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