Hi {{first_name}} ,

I did a live to answer a question I get more than most any other. Why doesn't my dog listen? I broke it into five parts, and the part that caught people off guard had nothing to do with obedience.

Here is the part nobody wants to hear.

In This Issue

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He wakes up next to you and he eats when you eat. The chair next to yours is his, and he follows you out to the garage and back in again.

That dog is with you every waking minute, and that pattern builds a dependence that comes apart the second you step outside.

A strong stimulus shows up in the street and he gets swayed away from you. He has never had to hold himself together with you out of reach.

What I want is a dog who is very happy to be with me and very content when he is away from me.

Away time should be neutral.

He is in his crate with a bone or a Kong, nothing is happening, and nothing bad is happening either. He learns that I leave and I come back, and that gives him a clear boundary he can rest on.

Isolating a dog in a crate in a closet somewhere is ridiculous and it teaches him the opposite.

Years ago, before the rule changes, AKC obedience had an out of sight sit and an out of sight down. Five minutes. You sat / downed your dog, left the area where your dog could not see you, and he held that position in a line of ten dogs.

My dog Goofy did it, numerous times over different trials. Sometimes fights broke out and sometimes dogs got up, and it was still part of training a dog. In a sport like IGP a dog has to lie on the field while another dog works obedience at a distance a few yards away. Those are the things that make a dog steady, and they start at home with time apart.

My dog does not meet other dogs. He lives with me and he trains with me, and he does not need to make friends on the sidewalk. He has a couple of dogs he is neutral with and that is the whole list.

When you let him play with this dog and that dog and then pull him off the next one, you have taught him to ask why not that one, and that question is what he is pulling toward.

Janet shows in agility almost every weekend and sees forty or fifty dogs in a weekend. Her dog says hello to none of them, and he is as well mannered a dog as you could find.

Somebody on the live told me his Australian Shepherd understands every word at home and falls apart the moment they are out. 

The relationship was built in the living room. Public is high stress for a dog who rarely goes there. The energy is up and the emotions are up, and all of that overrides whatever desire she has to listen to him. 

The fix is exposure. Take her out on a regular leash with food in your pocket and make sure she is hungry. Let her eat out there until the place becomes ordinary. If she will take food in that environment, she is already looking back at you, and that is where listening starts.

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Until next Tuesday,

- Robert