08/28/2025
“Unrest urges action”
It is not lost on me that terms such as punishment, correction, or aversives in training do not typically get shown in a positive sense.
HOWEVER, when used correctly, more often than not, are a major component of unlocking sections of the dogs brain and advancing your training.
I will typically explain to clients, “every corner you decide to round for your dog, you have to really ask yourself the honest question of, will the real world round it too?”
Of course we are not advocating stressing the dog for the sake of stressing it or putting it in situations where the dog does NOT understand the stimuli.
What I am saying though is, if we can, through properly exposing your dog to stress, allowing it to use its inherit ability to escape pressure BY DOING SOMETHING, then we do not run the risk of making dogs think everywhere they go the world is going to be filled with soft and round corners.
Goals JUST outside of our reach are what we are after. Build enough confidence and competence in training and then stretch, just a little. Build at that new location and then stretch for a little more and so on and so on.
Stretching not tearing.
