Not Reaching Your Dog Training Goals? The Bad News Is, It’s You. And The Good News Is, It’s You.

00:00 — Kati introduces the episode and asks listeners to subscribe to support the show.

Welcome to Off Leash and Unfiltered Trigger Warning. I'm Kati Peppe, delivering the Truth in Dog Training.

Hey everybody, this is your host, Kati Peppe. Before we jump in, I just wanted to take a quick second and remind you to hit the subscribe button because that helps us so, so, so much. We appreciate every subscribe and follow, and we have so much valuable information we wanna share with you. So we don't want you to miss an episode. Without further ado, let's jump in. Hey everyone, thanks for joining me today for another episode of Off Leash and Unfiltered. Hope you're having a, an amazing day, whatever it is that you're doing right now, um, hopefully staying dry.

Uh, we are wet <laugh>. So I think we're in the same boat as <laugh>, no pun intended. As a lot of the country right now, um, at least on the Eastern seaboard, we're all just drowning. It's been raining for days and I'm so over it. I'm ready for it to be done. Um, and I don't mind the rain, but every day it just gets to be a lot, especially when you're a dog trainer. 'cause you have to do, you have to do stuff outside. I say that all the time, right? You can't just train in your living room.

And it's like, okay, but man, it sucks <laugh> when it's raining or snowing like every day, and you're like, okay, um, makes it hard. So hopefully we dry out soon. I am ready.

So we just had group class the other day, and it was a real small group class, and it was, um, just a few clients, all of which come to nearly every group class that we, we have. So their dogs, their dogs are doing great. They're all very advanced, and we were able to do some, some really advanced stuff, which was fun. Um, our group classes opened to all of our clients that have done eco training with us, private lessons board and training. Doesn't matter if they were trained last week or five years ago, doesn't matter.

They're welcome to come to group class. But believe it or not, despite that class is usually very small. Um, you know, and it fluctuates as some weeks we'll have a lot of people show up, and then a lot of weeks we don't. So it was just a small advance group and, and we had a lot of fun. But every time we have group class, it just strikes me, um, how wildly different people handle their dog training. Um, and the wildly different results that we get, especially when you do compare private lessons to board and train.

And they can both do great. But that's, that's part of my point. Um, one of these clients has a board and train dog and a private lesson dog, and you wouldn't know the difference to look at them.

Um, but that's not true for everybody because not everybody is, is so committed to their dog and their dog training and, um, enforcing things and following the protocols and rehearsing with their dog. And it just, every time I, I see them in particular, it just really strikes me, um, how well you can do if you want to. And that's kind of what's been on my mind lately is like, you have to want it. Um, there is, it doesn't matter what program you do, how long it is, how much it costs, who does it. If you don't want it, it will not happen.

04:00 — Realistic training goals fail when owners want results but do not want them badly…

And there's a variety. There's a <laugh>, there's a variety of reasons people might not want it, but it's like everybody wants the results, but they don't want it bad enough. They don't want it bad enough. You have to want it. So here's the thing that gets in people's way. I feel bad, right? Do we always have to walk in a heel? I feel bad. I like to let my dog sniff. Okay?

But that's the training <laugh>, right? That's the training. The, that's literally what dog training is, guys. It's training your dog to do things that you want them to do, not things that they wanna do. That's no training required. If you just want your dog to do what your dog wants to do, then what are, what are you doing? You don't need dog training. <laugh>, right? So if you come to us and, and you want us to train your dog, then we train your dog and we teach your dog to walk in a heel. That's the training.

Now, does your dog have to be in a heel all the time? No. But if you are on an active walk with your dog, why wouldn't you want them walking in a heel?

If you're walking through your neighborhood where there are squirrels and presumably cars where you might walk by other people or dogs or whatever it is, whatever your environment is, there gonna be things. Why not walk in a heel? Why not? So instead of asking, well, why, why should we walk in a heel all the time? Why not? Isn't isn't that the training? Isn't that what you want? Is your dog to be number one with you? Right? You're, you're walking together, <laugh> number two, they're safe, they're calm, they're polite, they're manageable. You can take 'em anywhere.

They're trustworthy.

Isn't that a good thing? Isn't that what you want? That's what I want when I have my dog on a leash. That's what I want. I don't want my dog two feet ahead of me. I don't want my dog pulling me. I don't want my dog overexcited about the environment. I don't want my dog targeting cars or squirrels. Um, I don't want my dog lunging or trying to get away from me. I don't want my dog tuning me out so he can't hear me. He is not listening. I don't want my dog wrapping me up.

Um, frantically sniffing, staying busy, overstimulated. I don't want that. I want my dog to walk in a heel.

But nowadays, everyone's so soft, boom, it's so rigid, so militant, right? It's like Kati's a bully, making the dogs walk in a heel. <laugh>, give your dog a job, guys. It's not the end of the world. Now, your dog can have free time too. Why does this have to be on the walk? Right? If your dog's trained, you can take them off leash, they can go sniff around, then they don't have to sniff the, they don't have to have that nose stuck to the ground while you're walking. Everybody's standards for their dogs are just so fucking low that it basically disables you.

08:00 — Low standards and excessive freedom can prevent owners from making meaningful progress with their…

Like, it prevents you from being able to get anywhere with your dog, because we just wanna spoil them, right? We just wanna do the fun stuff. We just wanna do the freedom. We just wanna do the warm fuzzies.

But then when it's important and we want a dog to come back to us, we want them to just do it right, like magic. Well, guess what? There is no fucking magic. You have to develop a relationship with your dog where they respect you and listen to you. And you need to teach your dog how to control themselves. And the problem, problem is people wanna go through the world with their dog not teaching them how to control themselves. They wanna go through the world with their dog, letting their dog do whatever it is their dog feels like doing, and indulging in every impulse and following every impulse, and not listening and tuning you out and being overexcited and being out ahead of you and just enjoying the pup cups, right?

And then, but they just want the dog to listen when it comes time to listen. Well, it just doesn't work that way, folks.

Hold your dog to a standard nowhere in any of this stuff. Am I saying that your dog cannot have fun? Nowhere am I saying that. But the problem is, people want their dog to be having fun, quote unquote fun, whatever that means all the time. Everything is supposed to be fun all the time. Well, is your life fun all the time? No. And frankly, walking in a heel is fun. And maybe your dog thinks it's fun. Here's the thing, when's the last time you played a game with someone that didn't have any rules? Would that game be fun?

If there were no rules?

No, it would be stupid and meaningless <laugh>, right? It, it wouldn't be a, you wouldn't have a game anymore. It would just be chaos. Meaningless chaos. There'd be no way to measure progress or success. There'd be no goals. There'd be no, no way of knowing if you're doing well or not doing well or achieving anything, you'd have no focus. So your brain would just be all over the place because there's nothing worth paying attention to. If you wanna live that way with your dog, go ahead, but save your money on the dog training <laugh>, right?

So you have to want it.

You have to want a dog that listens to you. If you feel bad about making your dog listen to you, I mean, where's that gonna take you? Nowhere. You can't get there from here, <laugh>. So that gets in people's way, right? I feel bad. They feel bad about everything. Feel bad about using a crate. We feel bad about walking in a heel. We feel bad correcting the dog for getting off place. Okay, well then just keep doing what you're doing, right? But nothing changes that way. Nothing gets better. You're not making your life better. You're not making your dog's life better, right?

You might think you are, you might feel, feel is the big word. You might feel like you are, right? 'cause feelings lie, but you're not. You are not making things better that way.

12:00 — Guilt about correcting a dog often overlaps with fear of judgment from other people.

The other thing that overlaps the feeling bad is the judgment from others. So that, that's a heavy influence too for a lot of folks, right? Because even if they feel like they're doing the right thing for their dog, there's always someone else that thinks they know better, especially when it's someone else in your own household. So there's the judgment piece, but again, just like when you're training your dog guys and your dog weighs their options, like is it worth coming back to you or not? Maybe I have other things I'd rather prioritize right? Now, humans do the same thing, right?

These principles are all the same.

So when you get folks that have people in their life that are super judgmental about how they're training their dog, it's like, well, what do you want more? Do you wanna appease the training gods that you live with? Who by the way, probably know nothing about dog training? A lot of times they're people that don't know anything about you or your dog. Are you gonna prioritize them? Or do you wanna train dog? Because guess what, you're not gonna be able to have both. You cannot have both. You will have to prioritize one or the other.

And if it depends, if it fluctuates from day to day, depending on who's around or where you are, you're not gonna have both guys. You're prioritizing judgment. But you have to want it, and you have to want it more than appeasing the judgment gods that you're friends with. <laugh> appeasing the training Gods rather. So people think a lot of the stuff's unnecessary, like the structure's not necessary, the crates not necessary. Walking in a heel isn't necessary, right? So that's a little different than I feel bad. I feel bad. Similar, there's some overlap for sure, right?

But they just don't think it's necessary. What we hear a lot is, well, I don't mind if, right?

So sometimes we see folks with their dogs on a leash and the dogs are just, they're not being the calm, relaxed, kind of focused dogs we would like to see on a leash. They're kind of, they're up, right? They're standing up, they're mentally up, they're physically up. Sometimes they're trying to wander, they're air sensing, they're stretching that neck out. Like they're trying to push the boundary to stay excited about the environment. Um, maybe whining, things of that nature. And if we say you should correct that, right? You should get your dog to settle. You should use some leash pressure.

You should use a little correction maybe if your dog is, is very up and forward and very whiny. Um, and we'll hear something like, well, I don't care about that. It's like, okay, that's great, but that's not the point. <laugh>. So yes, like ultimately you decide what you're okay with and what you're not okay with, right? But you have to consider your dog's state of mind.

If I let my dog go through their day in that state of mind, even when they're on a leash with me, where they're supposed to just be calm and relaxed, if I let my dog go through their day in that state of mind, how does that impact the moments I do care about? Right? So I say this all the time, you can't wait until that one big moment to try to get your dog to listen. You need to be helping your dog develop those skills all day. Very simple little moments, subtle things where your dog is telling you, I'm having trouble mentally coping.

16:00 — Dogs need practice settling before important moments instead of remaining overstimulated until those moments…

I wanna be up. I wanna be forward. I'm whining. I want to go check things out. I wanna do this, I wanna do that. And I'm having a hard time not doing those things. That is your moment to teach your dog how to cope, how to control impulses, how to resist them, how to resign themselves and exhale until you say, all right, now I'm gonna let you go be free.

And if you let your dog stay up and forward and whiny, that starts to become the norm. Or maybe it already is the norm, it starts to characterize your dog's normal default state of mind all day because they never rehearse anything else. And then when they see the trigger, when they see the thing they're afraid of, when they see the thing they wanna chase, when they see the thing, the dog, the person they want to go say hi to whatever it is, it's 10 times harder because they have no rehearsal all day dialing that back and exhaling just going, it's all right.

Right? Your dog needs practice with that. So it is necessary.

And again, everyone just wants to wait for that big moment and they want the the big ready easy button. And there's not one, some people just can't be bothered with the stuff either, right? It's just too hard, too hard to change our habits. Too hard to put the tools on. This is too hard, right? Or the dog pushes back and they're not willing to do what it takes to win the conversation with the dog, right? So I literally was just talking with someone a minute ago who did some training here when their dog was a puppy and they're gonna come back for eco, which is great.

I'm excited for them.

Um, but one of the things that they want to fix is leash pulling. It's like, okay, well we already fixed that once when your dog was a puppy, okay? So I'm not picking on my customers, but a lot of people fall into this trap where it's like the dog pushes back. People are afraid of it, right? They correct the dog or they, they think they corrected the dog, right? But obviously they really didn't. Dog keeps pulling. Um, so what's the dog telling you guys? Screw keep pulling, right? So it's like you can't blame the dog, right?

20:00 — Puppy training establishes loose-leash habits differently from the tighter heel expected of older dogs.

So we actually did that training once already. We did do it, we did send them home with the tools, with the skills, with the knowledge. The dog did not pull when they were here. They did it first, right? And it was a puppy. So we handled that a little differently. We don't necessarily just correct the pulling immediately. It depends on how old they are.

But in this particular case, by the time the puppy went home, she wasn't pulling, okay? We did the leash pressure exercises. We did, we did click and reward and ultimately we did correct the puppy for pulling us. And we're always a little more lenient about their precise position when we're walking with a puppy. We don't teach them a real tight heel like we do an older dog. We mostly control their position with the length of our leash. But the puppy is taut. You can't have a tight leash. If you feel the leash get tight, I'm gonna give you the leash pot, okay?

And once they know that I'm gonna give you a little leash pop at whatever intensity convinces you to stop pulling on the leash, you cannot have a tight leash. And that's super important guys. Not just because I don't want them pulling, but because I don't wanna desensitize them to leash pressure.

So if you let your puppy walk with a tight leash, that whole time that they're doing that, they are learning that a tight leash is meaningless, it's normal. And we don't want them to learn that. We want them to learn. A tight leash is no good. A tight leash means you're doing something wrong. It means I want something from you, right? You need to keep a loose leash and ultimately whatever training you do with your puppy, right? Because you might be doing mostly food stuff when they're younger. We don't even, we don't even focus on leash stuff when they're super young.

We really don't.

Minimum of like 12 to 14 weeks before we even start caring what the puppy's doing on a leash. Um, but ultimately I'd say by the time your puppy's four months old, you should be telling them, no, pulling me. Don't pull me. Okay? And so, why is that so hard? Because people are afraid of it, right? They think they corrected the dog. Little leash pop dog says, uh, middle finger gonna keep pulling. They do it again. Dog says, uh, middle finger gonna keep pulling, right? And they just go back to it and they go back to it and they go back to it and the people go, well, I guess this is fine.

My dog just pulls me. No, you are letting your dog pull you, you are allowing it. So you don't think you are, but you are. And your dog is telling you you are. I'm not telling you that your dog is telling you that, because if it wasn't, if it truly wasn't allowed, if there truly was a tangible consequence attached to it, they wouldn't do it. A tangible consequence that they care about try to be precise.

So I can assure you, if your dog pulls you, it is because you have not sufficiently drawn that boundary. And again, guys, there's no magic button. There's just not. You have to draw and enforce the boundary. And if you don't, then there just isn't one. So you can't just give up, right? And that's what people do. They just give up dog wins. Okay, well guess what? I can't fix that. I cannot, there's nothing I can do in the world to fix that. Now I can fix it, right? I can fix that in five minutes. That dog walks back through the door in five minutes.

24:00 — Repeatedly allowing a dog to pull teaches the dog that the owner’s boundary is…

It doesn't pull me anymore.

But once I hand you the leash, there's nothing I can do. I can show you, I can teach you, I can tell you, I can explain it to you, right? And I spend time with the dog, obviously, I teach the dog also how to respect the boundary. The problem is the dog knows you don't have that boundary. They know I have that boundary, not you. So you shouldn't have to tell your dog every five seconds not to pull you. So I don't blame people for getting frustrated by that. Um, you shouldn't have to. But the reason you have to is because you are not doing it right.

You're not getting that memo across. And until you do, that's gonna be your walk. So it's just one example, right? But you could apply that to any bad behavior, any behavior that you don't like at all.

You have to want it. It's the power of a made up mind, right? You have to decide, I am going to stop this behavior and then do it. Many of you don't. It continues. So you have to want it. And people say it's too hard. Well, it doesn't have to be time, right? Sometimes people don't wanna put in the time. Um, but the fact is, I find most of the stuff is not it, it's not a time hog, right? Because behavioral stuff, you re you really don't have to carve out time for guys. Behavior is happening all the time, not just in your little training lessons, okay?

If you're making dinner and your dog starts barking out the window, you correct them for that. You don't have to carve out time to work on that.

You do it in real time when it happens. Hey, don't do that anymore. But people will use times and excuse, they'll use space as an excuse. I don't have anywhere to put a cod. I don't have anywhere to put a crate. Yes you do. And you'll figure it out if you want it bad enough. And these things don't necessarily have to be forever. But if you wanna cultivate change, you're going to have to do something different. I mean, it's silly to think that you wouldn't. So you're not spending any time right now and you're not utilizing your space right now.

You're doing things your way and that's great. How's it working for you?

I have pictures of eight, nine clot set up in my living room, my little tiny living room full of dogs all on place. You have space, you do have space, you do have time. We all have the same amount of time, guys, we all have 24 hours in a day. It's just how you prioritize it. So no, you won't have time for everything, but if you want it bad enough, then you'll prioritize it. It doesn't mean every day will be perfect or go as planned, but you have to want it <laugh>. Sometimes people find it a pain to put on the tools, right?

28:00 — Limited space is often an excuse, since Kati has trained multiple dogs on place…

Put on the eco every morning. It's a simple thing. I hate it when I see dogs, especially dogs that have serious behavioral issues, you know? And the people in the house are fighting because like one will put the collar on and one won't, one can't be bothered to do it.

Alright, well, you'll never get there. You'll never get there because you, you gotta use, like these are the tools that are the best for the job. They're the most practical, efficient, effective way to communicate with your dog. If you can't be bothered to put them on, I can't help you. So we see that a lot. Um, sometimes when people in the same household are at odds, or if they have someone else that takes care of the dog. But the tools are your friends, guys, the tools are your friends. Prong collar is another one. Well, you know, if I just, I'm just taking my dog out to potty, it's like, okay, but are you putting a leash on your dog?

Because if you have to put a leash on them, why wouldn't you just put the prong color on them? And Joyce is pretty good about telling everybody, just leave your leash on your prong collar, right? So instead of grabbing the leash and hooking the leash on the dog, you grab the prong collar and you put the prong collar on the dog. But if in your mind you want to make that a big deal, you want to view that as an inconvenience, then it will be instead of going, well, this is the thing we're gonna get used to.

Instead of doing this, now we do this.

Right? And then you do it and after a few days, it starts to become easier. And after a few weeks, you don't even think about it anymore, right? Those are the folks that are successful. 'cause they want it, they want the results. And the results unfortunately are on the other side of the hard work. But if you view things, be careful about how you view things. If you view things as an inconvenience, then it will stay hard. It will stay hard. Changing habits is hard. It it helps a lot if you don't view it as an issue, right?

You convince people, convince themselves, I have no space for that.

32:00 — Owners who prioritize training despite busy schedules are the ones who achieve lasting results.

I have no time for that. It's too hard. It's too early. I'm too rushed. All right? Then I, you get what you get, I guess. And then we sometimes see folks, this is actually more common than you would think, whose dogs do really well. Like they come to us with a problem, we fix the problem, and then the folks are upset. That happens occasionally. It's an interesting phenomenon. It's fascinating. <laugh> really. Um, I have a couple specifics that come to mind. People, someone with a, a nervy anxious reactive dog. Um, I think the dog was five years old, maybe seven, five to seven years old had been struggling with whatever you wanna call it, right?

She called it anxiety, nervousness, fear reactivity. Dog was certainly reactive. Um, man, he did a 180 so fast. Now, was he cured? No. We had only had a couple lessons. I think they did two or three lessons. It was a five lesson program.

And by the end of lesson three, that dog was out in public healing around heavy distraction, holding a down around heavy distraction with occasional feedback from his owner with the eco, with occasional reminders on the e-collar. The dog was doing things he hadn't been able to do his entire five to seven years of life. Couldn't take him anywhere, couldn't walk him in his own neighborhood. Shouldn't like that. Sometimes people don't, sometimes people don't really want their dogs to get better. I know it. It's like, huh? But it's true. Sometimes people don't. Do you want your dog to get better or do you like being the victim?

Do you like being the, oh, we've tried everything poor for fluffy. He's so scared we can't go anywhere. Do you like being that person? You have to want it. If you don't truly want it, it won't happen. And to make sure that people will just quit <laugh> if the results are too good and it's somebody who just didn't truly wanna turn the corner, they just don't come back. Now that particular person I've seen since they quit, I bumped into them and things are good and they're gonna, they're gonna come back for their next lesson. But they're not.

I know that Lisa, probably not. I hope, I hope they do. Don't get me wrong. I hope they do. Um, and you know, I know this guys, because in the lesson I was so proud of this dog and the owner, I was so proud of, like how far he had come so quickly. It was amazing. Yeah. And she had nothing but negative things to say about it. Not about me, not about Joyce, not about the training, exactly, but just, well, you know, he would still do this or he would still do that. It's like no acknowledgement of any success.

36:00 — Some owners resist acknowledging improvement, even when their dogs perform activities previously impossible for…

Even though though the dog was right in front of our eyes at that moment doing things he hadn't been able to do in seven years or five years or however holy he was.

The only comment she had was that, well, the dog's not perfect still with three lessons in person. Didn't want it. She didn't want the dog to be better happens. So you have to want it, like literally, you have to want it, but you also, you have to want it more than the other things that you've been getting by not training the dog, right? If you have a dog with separation anxiety and you've been loving snuggling with your dog, and now you can't do that anymore for a while, you have to want to help your dog and fix the behaviors more than you want to snuggle on the couch with your dog and snuggle in bed with the dog.

And we meet those people too. They just don't, right? They want to curl up in bed with the dog. And that is just more important to them than fixing the problem and getting the results. And you know what? I'm not judging. That's not true. <laugh> not true. But everybody is free to live with their dog the way they want, right? But if you come to us for a program, we're going to tell you the truth. And I don't sit on my high horse and judge other people for living the way they wanna live with their dogs.

But if you're going to do a training program, if you're going to complain about your dog's behavior and pay for a program to fix it, then do it <laugh>, do all the stuff, want it, prioritize it.

Because we have so many clients that are on the opposite end of the spectrum, guys that are doing incredible things with their dogs. I look at the folks that were at our group class a few days ago, and I think I might need to put together like a course with these folks in it. It's something I'm going to think about because you should hear it from them. You should see what they did and what they do and what they get for it. And not everybody is going to make training like the most important thing in their life.

I, I don't expect that. Like I get it. But like you do have to want it, right? Presumably everybody that goes to a trainer, whether it's us or someone else, and they pay money for a program, presumably they want a result.

So you gotta, you gotta put in you like you get out what you put in, you have to want it. And if you feel bad, if you feel bad for your dog, if you feel bad making him do things he doesn't wanna do, how bad do you want it? If you're worried about being judged, if you feel like the things we ask you to do are unnecessary, if you feel like changing your habits is too hard, well, how bad do you want it? If you're gonna make simple things like time and space, if you're gonna make those things obstacles because they're not obstacles, you are making them obstacles, how bad do you want it?

40:00 — Fear of judgment, resistance to habit changes, and excuses about time or space reveal…

If you're not gonna put the tools on, which is like the most basic fundamental rule, right? Because you need to have physical communication with your dog guys, us humans are so yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah. Physical communication. So we give you the best tools to translate things into physical communication. If you're not gonna put the tools on, then you obviously don't want it. You don't want the result. Because the thing is, sometimes people want the result, but they wanna get it doing the same thing they've been doing. And that's just stupid. Just won't work.

Nobody can do it for you. Not even me. You have to want it. But I promise you, if you do want it and you do make up your mind that you're gonna get it, you'll get it. So there's the rare dog out there. We call them one percenters, but they're fewer than 1%. We're like, maybe you're not gonna get it, <laugh>. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're never gonna quite get there. But that's super rare. Super rare. I've had a handful in my entire career. 99% of the time, if people have their mind made up, they get there.

It's just not a problem.

Not 9% of the time if people don't get there, 'cause they just didn't want it bad enough to go get it guys. If you know what you want, make up your mind today and go get it and call us. We'll help <laugh>. Thanks for joining me today, guys. I look forward to next time. Bye. Hey guys, thanks for joining us today. I really hope you enjoyed the show. If there's a specific topic you'd like to hear discussed, you can send that to me directly via email or fan mail. Just jump down into the show notes.

That information will be there for you. I really look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for supporting the show and I look forward to next time.