We all want a happy, confident dog. Whether your dog is a patio buddy, a 6am soccer practice companion or your avid adventure copilot, you need them to feel safe and self assured.These five points are the key to build your dog's confidence.

1. Read their body language to keep them safe.
   The first step to a confident dog is learning to read dog body language. If we can learn the subtle signs of stress and fear, we can prevent our dogs from experiencing scary or high stress scenarios. A dog who knows people around him will listen to his cues is a confident dog.
   
   
2. Proactively teach skills
   “Confidence is a function of fluency” (Hannah Branigan). No one can be confident in a situation they’re unfamiliar with. Break big things down into smaller portions and teach your dog what to expect and any skills they might need to be successful. If new situations offer opportunities to practice tricks and skills your dog already knows they become much less overwhelming and worrying.
   
   
3. Focus on the positive
   Teach your dog what TO do instead of what not to do. It’s so much easier for both us and the dog to focus on “lay on your mat” rather than “don’t flail around and acost random people in the vet’s office”. Again, if your dog is fluent in the behaviour they need (lay on mat), their confidence will grow.
   
   
4. Be consistent
   Nothing makes us more anxious than an unknown outcome. The same goes for our dogs. If we are consistent, they can rely on us and we can eliminate a potentially huge source of confusion and anxiety for them.
   
   
5. Give them choice
   When we give our dogs options (what game to play, whether or not they want to train, if they want to be petted) we give them a huge boost of confidence. The ability to control their outcome really can’t be overstated. Yes, there are times when choice isn’t going to be available to them, but if we use positive training methods those times are way fewer than we might otherwise think. Just like we feel more confident when the dentist shows us how to ask them to stop, our dogs become more confident when we give them options and then respect their choices.
   
   

Does your dog have a problem behaviour you want resolved? Need help building your pup's confidence?
Contact us today!

What to do about a stubborn dog?
If you peeked into the average trainer’s inbox, or took a look at dog training forums and message boards, you’ll see the word “stubborn” a LOT.
💬“This breed is so stubborn”
💬“He’s just a stubborn guy!”
💬“My dog is being stubborn and not coming when called!”
Part of being a good trainer is reading between the lines and asking good questions to ascertain just what the owner believes about their dog.
Stubborn, like “soft”, “obedient” and “trainable” are all subjective labels, and they can mean very different things to different people. So let's clarify terms.
A quick google search gives us these definitions:
🗯“having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, especially in spite of good arguments or reasons to do so.”
🗯“difficult to handle, manage, or treat.”
🗯“tenaciously unwilling or marked by tenacious unwillingness to yield”
The first thing that jumps out at me is this: “especially in spite of good arguments or reasons to do so”
⁉️What is more likely; that your dog fully understands why you want him to come when he’s called, and is choosing not to come because “screw you you’re not my real mom”, or that he doesn’t have the skills and history of reinforcement to choose to leave the wonderful world of squirrel smells?
You didn’t sit down and have a reasoned discussion with your dog about why coming when you’re called is important for his safety. I mean I think my dog is pretty darn smart, but he’s not THAT smart.
The other part that jumps out is “tenacious unwillingness to yield”.
Yield to what? Their owner’s will?
What kind of relationship is that?
I don’t want my dogs to yield to me! I want them to enjoy working with me and I want to help them build strong patterns of behaviour that are safe and rewarding for them.
All behaviour is driven by reinforcement. This means that behaviours are repeated because they were reinforced. In the dog training world, this most frequently means food, but it can be a lot more nuanced than that.
Have you ever been ghosted? Pretty soon you stop texting that person, because the reinforcement of a reply has stopped. The behaviour has extinguished.
Some dogs have been bred for hundreds of years to work closely and cooperatively with their people. This is why goldens are so… well, goldeny. They find that working relationship rewarding. They find treats rewarding. They find head scritches rewarding. They like games that we like, like fetch.
Other breeds were not. Maybe they were bred to guard, or hunt independently. Maybe exploring the outside world and accessing smells and hunting opportunities are more valuable to them than a cookie.
Maybe the puppy wasn’t lucky enough to be born into the home of a responsible breeder who utilizes a science based puppy raising program like Puppy Culture, and hasn’t yet built strong positive associations with interacting with people.
Maybe the dog is scared and really needs to keep an eye on the environment right now!
Again, all behaviour is driven by reinforcement. So if I call my dog, and he just stands there sniffing the tree, what is driving THAT behaviour? Maybe someone dropped a french fry there, or maybe a pretty girl peed there recently.
Maybe I haven’t let him sniff enough lately and he really needs to get some sniffy time in.
Almost always, so-called stubborn dogs are dogs who are simply more less motivated to access treats and praise than the average pet golden. Frequently they are overwhelmed by their environment or have other mitigating factors like fear of being handled.
The good news is that while “stubborn” is a character flaw, the rest is just behaviour and learning history.
We can’t fix character flaws, but we can change behaviour.
If you have a hard to motivate dog, you don’t have to go it alone!
Contact us for a free consult, and take the first step to a cooperative, enjoyable relationship with your dog!!

Let me tell you a story.
I grew up in a bit of a dog bubble. My introduction to dogs was through my grandmother, an international judge and accomplished breeder. Her dogs were versatile sport dogs, able to hunt all day on friday and win in the show ring on saturday. They traveled all over, sleeping in hotels and performing under really difficult conditions. These incredibly fit, confident, happy dogs were the norm for me. In short, I was incredibly sheltered and privileged when it came to dogs.
Then I got a job at a doggie daycare and got plunged face first into the pet world.
One thing was an immediate shock, and I’ve never gotten over it.
There is an anxiety epidemic in pet dogs!
Those first few months at the daycare it felt like every second dog was on the brink of nervous collapse. I had never seen anything like it.
A havanese hyperventilating on a corner.
A pug hiding under a blanket.
A weimaraner pacing the gate, whining and whining.
I couldn’t figure it out. What was happening?
It turns out, it’s complicated. (Isn’t it always?)
Honestly I really demonized pet owners there for a while. I had no idea how it was possible for this to happen, and that lack of understanding left me with no explanation other than "people bad".
But I learned more about the realities of where people got their dogs, and the results of poor early puppy raising and genetics.
I learned about what I like to call The Other Epidemic; boredom.
And I learned that a distressing amount of people either are unable or unwilling to recognize their dog’s emotional distress.
This is all very concerning stuff.
We can all empathize with these dogs, especially those of use with anxiety or trauma.
But what can we do?
I know my immediate impulse of yelling “OH MY GOD” really doesn’t help.
Over the years at the daycare we tried a number of different approaches.
I’ll be honest, it was hard. We failed a lot.
It was emotionally draining, and through trial and error, with a lot of tears and sleepless nights (your pet care professionals do have anxiety dreams about your dogs, just an fyi), we came to a surprisingly simple conclusion.
Here’s what works; build relationships with people and spread the dog nerdiness.
The cool thing about this is it isn’t just something that dog trainers can do. Anyone who cares about dogs can do some really serious animal welfare work. If you’re here you’re already probably doing it without realizing.
That was the lesson I needed to learn. Most people are doing their best, but we, as a culture, have a long way to go before every dog has the life they deserve.
So build relationships with people and call them in. Teach by example.
We’re all dog nerds here.
Use it.