Your Dog Isn't Disrespecting You

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1:28They don't go steal a sock from the laundry basket thinking I know this is going to piss them off. They don't jump on a counter thinking, I'm gonna establish dominance in my household. And trust me. They are not lying underneath the table. thinking, I'm refusing to come because I don't respect what my owner says. Dogs simply don't think like that. And here's the part that people keep getting wrong. Just because your dog isn't making a conscious human decision to disrespect you doesn't mean you have to tolerate the behavior. I think that we've created a really confusing conversation around raising a dog and dog training where you either have to believe your dog is deliberately disrespecting you or

2:32you're supposed to excuse everything they do because they're quote unquote just being a dog. There is a third option out there though you guys understanding the behavior, teaching the wanted behavior, setting boundaries, setting boundaries and follow through. Start your day with a daily dog with Nicole Fortow, the morning podcast on Dog Works Radio, the daily dog available on Dog Works Radio on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your shows. Hello and welcome to Dog Works Radio. I'm your host Nicole Fortow and today we're going to talk about something that I think it's completely misunderstood in dog training. It's the idea of respect because on one side you have people that say my dog is disrespecting

3:34me. They know better. They keep challenging me. I said no. I know that they know what that means. But on the other side you have people that say he's just being a dog. They can't help it. They're not doing it on purpose. Just let them be a dog. Here's my problem with both of those extremes though. Your dog probably isn't sitting there plotting against you but that does not mean you have to tolerate behavior that makes living with your dog difficult or unenjoyable. Understanding why a dog does something doesn't mean you have to accept the behavior. That distinction is where a lot of dog owners get completely lost. Your dog is not a little human. And I know some of you are getting ready to flip this episode off.

4:40But stick with me. Again, your dog is not a little human. No matter how many times you call yourself their dog parent or their your child, your dog is still a canine species. And the word disrespect is a human saying in dog world, they don't have motivation to be disrespectful in their canine behavior. So think about it like this. Your dog jumps on you. You tell them to get off of you. They jump again. You immediately think they're just disrespecting me. They don't listen to me. Maybe your dog pulls you towards other dogs while on leash. You try to stop them. They keep pulling.

5:42And then your conclusion is my dog knows I'm telling him not to do that. Your dog steals something off the counter and you take it away. They immediately try it again. And you go great. He's being defiant. He's challenging me. He's being difficult. They're testing me. But really here's the thing. You're taking a behavior and attaching a human story to it. Dogs don't have human intentions behind their behavior. A dog stealing a sock isn't necessarily thinking. I'm going to steal this because I know my person doesn't want me to.

6:44The sock could simply be interesting. It could smell like you. It could be fun to carry around. Or they'd just enjoy the texture. Stealing something more than likely started as a fantastic game of chase around the living room. Stealing the sock became a great way to get you to engage with them. The dog's perspective was steal sock. Human chase is me. How exciting. That reinforced it. That caused your dog to learn that when I steal this item, I have fun afterwards. It's not revenge and it's not spiteful. It's behavior that has a produced and proven result.

7:47This is why I'm trying to tell you, instead of asking, why is my dog disrespecting me, you have to ask what is my dog getting out of this behavior? That's a much better training question if you ask me. Your dog doesn't have your human moral code. Just don't walk around with the same moral framework that humans do. Think about the concepts that we understand. Fairness, revenge, manners, responsibility, rudeness, and respect. Your dog doesn't need to understand those concepts the way that you do in order to learn an appropriate behavior. Your dog learns behaviors by patterns. Every time a door opens, I'm to sit and wait.

8:47If I try to rush through the door, they shut the door. Every time someone comes over to my house, I keep four feet on the floor and they pet me. When I have something I'm not supposed to have, I give it up and I'm rewarded by something else. Those are behaviors. Those are patterns. That's what we're talking about. That's what we're teaching. I'm not trying to teach you your dog is going to learn to be morally responsible. That simply is just not reality. We are teaching dogs to successfully navigate the world they live in by pattern recognition and consistency. There's a huge difference in that. Your dog is part of the family, but the daily frustration of walks, greetings, and consistency is real. Whether your dog is new to the house or has been with you for years, most owners discover

9:52there's a gap between knowing the commands and actually living them. Alaska Dog Works Virtual and On-site Classes are the best way to close that gap. We help you build a lasting bond and teach practical skills such as establishing a solid routine, setting clear commands, and developing real world reliability. So your dog becomes one of the best partners in the house. Right now, Alaska Dog Works has an exclusive offer just for our listeners. Go to Alaska Dog Works.com and use promo code Dog Works to save 20% off your training program at the time of booking. Understanding your dog's behavior does not mean you're excusing it. Here's something I want to push further. Sometimes dog owners hear an explanation for behavior and interpret that explanation as an excuse. Well, maybe crystal clear. It isn't.

10:53If I as a trainer tell you why your dog jumps on people, I'm not trying to convince you that jumping is acceptable. If I tell you why I observe your dog pulling on leash, that does not make it acceptable. If I explain to you why your dog rushes the door, I'm not telling you that rushing the door is acceptable. I'm trying to give you information so you can actually take steps to change the behavior and it's really a massive difference. You can say things like I understand why you're doing that, but we're still not doing that. That's dog training. That's setting boundaries for your dog. Your dog doesn't have to be angry or offended or be told they're a bad dog. They need you to be clear. Let's talk about an example.

11:54Growing is a great one. I don't know a lot of humans out there who want their dog to do growling. So let's set the scene. A dog grows. Somebody in your household says, how dare you grow at me? But a grow is a communication tactic for a dog. It can be a signal that the dog is uncomfortable, afraid, guarding something frustrated or attempting to create distance. The grow isn't necessarily the problem. The situation that produce the growl is what we need to understand before we can address it. Here's where we have to be careful. Understanding why the dog growl doesn't mean, well, I guess it's okay for him to growl and bite somebody. Absolutely not. Your dog is displaying aggressive or defensive behavior and that should be taken seriously. But you have to understand the behavior and then manage the environment to teach appropriate

12:57responses. You do not need to label your dog as bad and you don't need to build up frustration into the point where you feel like you hate them. And we're not pretending that the behavior isn't happening. We're simply understanding that it is a behavior and we have to intervene intelligently on how to stop it. And put into the pattern that your dog doesn't growl and instead when they're uncomfortable, they remove themselves. They go to their crate. They go to their place spot. Whatever it is. This is where it comes down and boils to your boundaries. Boundaries get a bad reputation in modern dog training conversations because people hear

13:57that word and they immediately start to think punishment. But a boundary isn't punishment. A boundary is simply, this is what we do here. This is what we don't do here. You don't cross a doorway without permission. You don't jump on people because it gets you no attention. You don't drag me on the sidewalk because then we don't go on the sidewalk. You don't get to demand access to everything you want simply because you want it. That's not cruelty. That's structure. We describe boundary training as teaching a dog where they can and cannot go while also building household rules and manners. Think of it like this. If you want your dog to be allowed on the couch whenever they feel like, they get to get up there whenever they feel like.

14:58But if your boundary is that it must be an invitation to get up on the furniture, then every time they approach your furniture from the day one of getting them whether they're a puppy or an older dog that's been rescued, you have them sit and then you create an invitation, Q word for furniture. And then anytime after that if your dog jumps on the furniture without that Q word and invitation, you have to take the second to remove them from the furniture. That's a boundary and a boundary only exists if it actually means something every single time. If you tell your dog, they're not allowed in the kitchen, but every morning when you make coffee and you're tired, they get to follow you into the kitchen. But then you wonder later on at dinner time why they're under your foot as you're cooking?

16:03What exactly did you teach them? You've taught them that the rules change depending on the situation and depending on your mood. It's very confusing for a dog. And no, confusion in a dog does not equal stupid. This is where our consistency becomes incredibly important. Dogs learn through repetition and predictable patterns. If jumping gets attention, sometimes but not other times, it's an unclear boundary. It's an unclear pattern. If pulling gets your dog where they want to go, sometimes, then pulling continues to be useful to them. If you repeat a command three times before you follow through, you've taught the dog the first request isn't particularly important.

17:07So now I'm going to call something out that humans do constantly. We give commands we aren't prepared to follow through one. Take come, for example. You say it three times, there's no response. Maybe it even makes your dog turn around the other way and continue to smell. And then you get frustrated. When you are getting more frustrated, the more times you've had to repeat yourself. But the dog didn't suddenly become disrespectful. They've learned over time that the word come could be ignored. That's a human problem, not a doubt, not a dog attitude problem. Stop just saying words and start to actually communicate. Sometimes dogs have too much information.

18:08You change the come command to come here, come on, come buddy, come on, come on, and different tones of come. So then what is the actual command? You have to emphasize the tone you're going to use and use consistently that one singular phrase or word without other requests in there. Here's something I tell people all the time. You need to train yourself to communicate clearly. Your dog doesn't speak English. They're not sitting there parsing your sentence structure. They learn associations. They learn patterns. They learn what your words predict. They learn what happens when they respond. So if you're wanting reliability, you have to give them something reliable to understand. Because your dog isn't trying to just get away with stuff.

19:11Your dog knows a behavior produces a result. That's different from understanding the concept of quote-unquote getting away with something. If your dog is stealing food from the counter and you chase them around the kitchen, they may learn getting on the counter equals food which then turns into a chase game. They do not think perfect. I have successfully broken the household rules and escape punishment. That's a human story in an animal mind. The more you do that, the more likely you are to respond emotionally instead of actually training. So what about the dog who just doesn't listen? I know last week's episode was about a dog just like this. So you may be thinking, okay Nicole, what about my dog who just doesn't listen?

20:17Well, I have a few questions. And a first one to tell you to go listen to the episode on an untrainable dog. So I would ask you, does your dog actually understand the behavior? Have you practiced it in multiple environments? Have you increased distractions? Are you asking for something that's realistic in the environment you're in? Are you consistent? Are you following through? Are you giving in? Or are you giving the dog a clear opportunity to succeed? Dogs are contextual learners. A dog that can perform a beautiful sit in your living room may not automatically understand that the same behavior applies at a busy trailhead. That's not stubbornness, that's a training gap. That's why you can't just say, oh my dog knows it. Because they may only know it in one context. And now you have to keep teaching them where it applies and that it should apply to everywhere

21:20you go. You don't have to be angry to have expectations. This is probably the biggest point I want you to take from this episode. You can have expectations for your dog without being angry at your dog. You can have boundaries without being cruel and you can interrupt behavior without believing your dog is bad. Those things are not contradictory. In fact, clear expectations can make life easier for you and your dog. They're beginning to know what works, they know what to do to earn access to things and they know what behaviors get reinforced. They're no longer constantly guessing. It's not about your dog being perfect. I'm not saying that.

22:21Your dog's going to make mistakes, they're going to have bad days and they do forget things. They may decide one day that chasing the grabbing the sock and getting chased is still fun. So they do it again. You're going to encounter situations that they're not ready for or that you may have to retrain again six months after you thought they mastered it. That's kind of how dog training goes. It's never perfection. It's progress. It's continued boundary setting and advancing and resetting. You can't improve a behavior that you're unwilling to define. You can't teach a boundary you aren't willing to maintain and you can't build reliability of the rules change every day.

23:21Your dog is not disrespecting you. They're not sitting there plotting your downfall. They're responding to their environment, their learned history and the reinforcement they received. That doesn't mean you have to tolerate behavior you don't want. Your standing is not excusing. Compassion is not permissiveness and boundaries are not cruel. Your job is to become clear enough that your dog understands what you're asking. Consistent enough that the rules actually mean something because a well trained dog isn't a dog that is afraid to make a mistake. It's a dog that is learned. Here's what works. Here's what doesn't and here's what my human expects of me. That's structure and that's trust. So the next time your dog does something you don't like, before you say, my dog is just

24:24disrespectful. Pause and ask yourself. Does my dog actually understand what I'm trying to ask of them? Your dog doesn't need you to take their behavior personally. They need you to teach them. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do for your relationship with your dog is to stop being offended by their behavior and to start taking responsibility for teaching them what to do instead. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, I know I've got to get more structure for my dog going or you have a neighbor that could really use listening to this episode. Give it a share. Visit AlaskaDogworks.com to learn more about this kind of training and how your dog is not disrespecting you. Until next time, happy training!