16/06/2026
Why do we chase quick fixes in dog training? 🤔
Imagine boarding a plane and hearing the pilot announce: “Good news everyone - it only took me a week to learn how to fly” 😬
Or being told your surgeon completed their training in three days and is now ready to perform heart surgery
Most of us would be running for the nearest exit 😶🌫️
We understand that complex skills take time to learn. Becoming a doctor, electrician, pilot, teacher, therapist, or engineer requires practice, repetition, mistakes, feedback, and experience. Nobody expects expertise overnight.
Yet when it comes to our dogs, we often expect exactly that;
🛑 We want the pulling to stop immediately.
🛑 We want the barking to stop immediately.
🛑 We want the reactivity gone by next Tuesday.
And when progress doesn’t happen as quickly as we’d hoped, it’s tempting to look elsewhere for a faster solution 🔍
This is often where “quick fix” training methods become appealing.
❌ A dog wearing a prong collar may appear to stop pulling within minutes.
❌ A dog wearing an e-collar may appear to stop reacting.
❌ A slip lead may seem to create instant compliance.
But it’s worth asking:
🤔 Has the dog learned a new skill?
😫 Or has the dog learned that making a mistake comes with a consequence they’d rather avoid?
There’s an important difference.
Learning happens when a dog develops understanding, confidence, emotional regulation, feels safe, and is able to make good choices.
Suppression happens when a dog learns that expressing a behaviour could lead to discomfort, pain, fear, or intimidation 😢
Both can look similar from the outside 🪞
Only one changes how the dog feels on the inside.
Take loose-lead walking.
A dog who learns through practice, reinforcement, and guidance discovers that staying connected to their human is worthwhile. They develop the skill gradually.
A dog who learns through discomfort may stop pulling because pulling predicts pain or pressure.
The behaviour changes.
The reason for the behaviour change is very different.
The same is true for reactivity.
A reactive dog isn’t usually giving us a training problem.
They’re giving us information.
They’re telling us they’re worried, overwhelmed, frustrated, scared, over-aroused, or unable to cope with what’s happening around them.
If we punish the reaction, the outward behaviour may decrease.
But the emotion underneath often remains.
It’s a little like disconnecting a smoke alarm without putting out the fire.
The noise stops.
The problem doesn’t.
The uncomfortable truth is that real learning takes time.
Just as we wouldn’t expect a trainee surgeon to perform complex operations after a week of study, we shouldn’t expect dogs to master difficult skills overnight.
Especially when those skills involve emotions.
Confidence takes time.
Trust takes time.
Emotional regulation takes time.
Feeling safe takes time.
The speed of learning isn’t a measure of success.
The depth of learning is.
Sometimes the hardest part of dog training isn’t teaching the dog. It’s tolerating our own discomfort while the dog learns.
Because while quick fixes can create quick changes, lasting change is built one repetition, one experience, and one successful choice at a time.
Work at the speed of the dog. Not the speed of your frustration.
The results may take longer to see, but they’re far more likely to last.
