Hi {{first_name}} ,

A member brought his rescue dogRed to work with me about three weeks after adopting him. 

Red was doing everything right at home. Commands, crate, the whole thing. 

The second Will put a leash on him outside, it was like training had never happened. This is one of the most common things I see, and one of the most misunderstood.

In This Issue

Reading time: 4 minutes

That is the first thing I told Will. Red was not making a choice to check out. He was in “drive”. His nose, his eyes, his whole nervous system had locked onto something in the environment, and in that state the commands he knew perfectly at home were just noise.

This distinction matters because if you think the dog is choosing to ignore you, you will keep trying to get his attention with the tools that worked at home. The clicker. The treat. The cheerful voice. And you will get nothing back because the dog is not there to receive any of it.

Will had been doing clicker training with Red for three weeks. Good timing, good mechanics, consistent. At home Red was responsive. Outside, Will held up a treat and Red did not even register it.

Drive had taken over. When that happens it is a state problem, not a training failure.

I want to be clear about this because it gets misunderstood. A clicker marks behavior precisely and consistently. That is its value. It conditions the dog to understand that the click means the reward is coming. It is an excellent tool for building behaviors when the dog is engaged and with you.

When a dog is locked onto prey drive, the click does not reach him. And furthermore becomes useless since there is nothing to mark.  The tool requires the dog to be in a state where food and praise mean something. When drive takes over, they do not.

This is where a lot of positive-only training breaks down in the real world. The tools are fine. The problem is nobody told you what to do when the tools stop working.

I took the leash from Will and let Red get further out from me. When he went into drive and started fixating, I gave him a leash correction. Fair, not hard. Just enough to interrupt the state he was in.

He came out of it. Good boy. That was the moment.

That correction is information. It says: you are with me, come back. And when Red came back, the treat Will had been holding out five minutes earlier suddenly worked. Same treat. Different dog, because now he was present enough to receive it.

Then I walked away from him. Away, not toward. And I made it interesting. Changed direction. Moved unpredictably. Gave him a reason to track me instead of the environment.

The moment he tuned in I marked it. That is the sequence: interrupt, reward, become more interesting than the distraction. You build on that until the dog learns that checking back to you is always worth it.

There is a line I draw that Will picked up on quickly. You never bribe a dog. Bribing is showing the dog the food and using it to pull him toward you. That teaches the dog that food is the reason to come back, which means when you do not have food he has no reason.

Rewarding is different. The dog comes back on his own, or responds to your correction and returns to engagement, and then you reward that. You are marking the behavior of being present. Not buying it.

Will figured that out in one session. By the end Red was following him, tuning in when he walked away, and taking treats he had completely ignored twenty minutes earlier. Same dog. Same treats. Different sequence.

This training session went up on YouTube a few years ago and one comment has stayed with me. It said: nobody wants to show the leash correction part of the process because it is not fun or flashy, but without it the dog never has a chance to change his mind.

That is exactly right. The transformation in Red was real and it happened fast. But it happened because Will was willing to do the part that most training videos skip.  And he kept it up.  Continued the training and dedication to his dog.  Now Red is a model citizen.  That’s what you get when you are dedicated and have the right information.

If your dog is perfect at home and gone the second you step outside, the problem is not the dog, and the training you have done so far is not wasted. The problem is that nobody showed you what to do when the tools stop working.

Now you know.

- Robert

1. Free Training Content on My Website

If you work with shelter dogs or you're evaluating a dog for adoption, I've put together detailed guides on behavioral assessment, what to look for in an evaluation, and how to read dogs under stress. No email required. Head over to [ROBERTCABRAL.COM] and dig in.

2. Membership and community support

If you want to go deeper on any of this, everything is inside my membership. 250-plus lessons, over 85 hours of instruction, organized so you can find exactly what you need. Right now for only $29/mo. [BECOME A MEMBER]

3. Puppy Training Course: My 30-Day Puppy Training Program gives you the structure and foundation every puppy needs. Whether from a breeder or a shelter.

Until next Tuesday,

- Robert