242 | Is Your Dog’s Training Actually Making Things Worse?

<p><strong>Hey Dog Lover 🐾</strong></p><p>Your dog sees something they’re worried about.</p><p>Their body gets tense.</p><p>Maybe they want to move away.</p><p>Maybe they start barking.</p><p>Maybe everything about their body is telling you:</p><p><strong>I’m not comfortable here.</strong></p><p>So you ask them to sit.</p><p>And they do.</p><p>Success... right?</p><p>Maybe.</p><p>Because your dog may be sitting quietly beside you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything has changed about how they’re actually feeling.</p><p><strong>Sometimes we get so focused on changing what our dogs are doing that we forget to ask what’s happening to the dog underneath the behaviour.</strong></p><p>Sit.</p><p>Stay.</p><p>Heel.</p><p>Place.</p><p>Look at me.</p><p>Stop barking.</p><p>Stop moving.</p><p>And when our dog complies, it can look like we’ve solved the problem.</p><p>But have we?</p><p>Or have we simply changed what the problem <strong>looks like?</strong></p><p>In this episode, we’re talking about what can happen when we become so focused on getting the behaviour we want that we stop reading the dog standing right in front of us.</p><p>We’ll talk about:</p><p>🐾 Why sitting doesn’t necessarily mean your dog is calm<br>🐾 How stillness, silence, and compliance can sometimes hide what’s happening underneath the behaviour<br>🐾 What can happen when your dog’s body is telling them to move and you’re asking them to stay still<br>🐾 Why changing your dog’s body position isn’t necessarily the same as changing how they feel<br>🐾 The important difference between <strong>managing your dog and influencing your dog</strong><br>🐾 Why management and physical control are sometimes absolutely necessary<br>🐾 What it looks like when your information starts to matter to your dog<br>🐾 How focusing only on obedience can cause us to miss what our dogs are communicating<br>🐾 Why listening to your dog doesn’t mean they always get what they want<br>🐾 The question I want you to ask instead of blindly following a training protocol</p><p>This isn’t an episode about never asking an uncomfortable dog to sit.</p><p>It isn’t about throwing away your training.</p><p>And it definitely isn’t about letting your dog make every decision.</p><p>It’s about <strong>reading the room.</strong></p><p>What is happening with THIS dog in THIS moment?</p><p>What are they communicating?</p><p>What are you actually trying to accomplish?</p><p>Because there’s a difference between:</p><p><strong>My dog