June 4, 2025 • 18 mins
This week, Tony explains not only the importance of having confidence in ourselves as dog trainers and what happens when we don't.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Foundation's podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about how we
can become more confident and handling dogs, which is a
huge component of training. Two weeks ago, I dropped an
episode of this podcast dedicated to developing confidence in our dogs.
(00:23):
That matters so much because it flavors a dog's entire
life in a positive direction. Generally, Well, guess what, the
same rules apply to us, And often our training efforts
fall flat or just don't have the horsepower they need
because we don't have confidence in ourselves. That is no
bueno and it's what I'm going to talk about right now.
(00:48):
A hunting industry friend of mine told me a story
years ago about a sheep hunt that he went on.
If any of you know anything about sheep hunting, it's
not the kind of activity that most outdoorsmen do even
once in their lives. So getting to go at all
is pretty incredible big horn sheep. And while most of
the sheep that are nearly impossible to get a tag
for these days aren't known for thriving in states like Iowa,
(01:12):
they live where the earth goes up and down a lot,
where gravity is a real issue, and things are still
pretty wild. To get to a sheep, you tend to
have to board some small planes and often climb on
the back of a horse for a while. Now, this
friend of mine, at the end of his sheep hunt,
ended up getting into one of those small planes that
still utilizes a propeller and can land on nothing more
(01:33):
than a cleared strip of timber that is pretty far
from what most of us think is a runway. Well,
on that flight, his plane didn't make it and they
made a crash landing. Now, while the pilot, his guide,
and he all survived, it didn't look great for them.
I forget now whether they were in Alaska or Canada,
but I remember him talking about how brutally cold it
(01:55):
was and how much snow they dealt with. Now, when
they finally got picked up by a rescue hell, they
thought they were good to go, as most of us would,
except that the helicopter suffered the same fate as the plane, which,
if you're keeping track, comes to a total of two
crash landings on one trip, which we can all agree
is about too many. They survived that one too, and
(02:18):
when I asked him what the worst part about it all?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Was.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
He said it was when they were huddled under a
tarp with a single candle for warmth, and he looked
at his guide, who was a survival expert and someone
you generally find comfort in when things get really dicey,
and he was bawling his eyes out. That my buddy
said was the hardest to deal with because he saw
someone who was supposed to be in charge, supposed to
(02:43):
be conditioned to deal with real life and death adversity,
and it felt like he had given up. My buddy
said that was an absolute gut punch. He also said
climbing into the second rescue helicopter wasn't as joyful as
you'd expect because he had developed a pretty healthy and
understandable fear of flying machines in the undefeated gravity that
(03:03):
they attempt to defy. His guide had lost his confidence,
and it changed their outlook. It changed their whole situation
for the worse. My friend said, it was terrible. Now,
confidence is just wildly important to life, even if you're
not in a life or death situation. Now, if you
(03:25):
don't believe that, look up self help books that are
supposed to take the average low confidence person and prime
them up. To fight lions or whatever. The amount of
those books that are available is mind boggling.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
It truly is.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
In fact, just to see I search for self help
books on Amazon and the results totaled over one hundred thousand.
Not all of those deal with confidence and self esteem,
but a lot of them do. It's a big deal,
and it matters in many facets of our lives. Setting
boundaries with your lunatic family members, being assertive enough to
(03:59):
ask for as you think you deserve, or at least
telling your boss to go kick rocks in the street
when he asked you to color way outside the lines
of your job description. Whatever it is, confidence matters, and
as you probably can guess, it matters with how you
handle your dog. The energy we project is important, but
that walks in lockstep with us just being confident in
(04:22):
what we are asking the dog to do, and then
what to do when the dog doesn't deliver. You might
remember that a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that
I've been training a King Charles Spaniel to give this
woman a hand, since her life is pretty full and
she didn't ask for that dog.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
In her life.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
His name is Nico, and he actually is a really
good boy. He just has very little connections to human
after being rehome three times in the first year, mind you,
and he's pretty comfortable entertaining.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Himself while ignoring most people.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
But we did some placeboard work, and we did some
basic obedience stuff and he showed plenty of signs of life.
Then we worked again on the same stuff and he
had regressed some, mostly I think because he had been
cooped up inside for a few days and is not
really the kind of dog who wants to live the
life of the average housecat. So just this morning I
met up with Nico and his owner again and we
(05:13):
went to work, but this time about halfway through, she
took the lead and I watched her interact with the pup.
It was clear that she had been working hard with
that little dog and that he is way more bonded
to her than me. It was actually pretty awesome to see,
and I told her that, and she admitted that she
was working with him every day and that when she
(05:35):
knows what to do, she's all about putting the work in.
But originally she didn't know what to do. She had
zero confidence in herself as a trainer or her dog's potential,
and so she didn't do anything. Now, what is really
cool about that is she will be the one to
have the most influence on that dog and the one
who will get the most out of having that dog
(05:56):
for his whole life. Just her change in affected her
dog's behavior more than my presence had. And that's what
you really want to see, because it changes all of
the little interactions, the little signals. And what I mean
by that is that when I first watched her with
that dog, she would praise him and love him up,
just randomly for no reason, and often when he didn't
(06:18):
do what she asked him. This is super common because
we naturally want to be really positive around our dogs.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
We can't help it.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
But if you spend time with a professional trainer, you'll
see an awful lot of like neutral interactions with dogs.
The emotion just doesn't come in until a behavior is delivered.
Then it's party time. Pros understand that there is value
to praise and rewards, but those things need to be earned,
and they are confident they can get that message through
(06:47):
to dogs. Now, us amateurs have a harder time believing that,
so we tend to default to the fur baby side
of things, which is kind of like eating a whole
sleeve of oreos when you're feeling a little snacky. Sure
they taste amazing, especially with a giant glass of cold milk,
but it would be hard to argue that, aside from
the instant pleasure of gnombing on some cookies, that's generally
(07:09):
not a great decision. So how do you develop confidence
as a dog trainer? Your first impulse might be to
watch some YouTube videos or maybe buy into one of
the master classes that a lot of trainers offer. Now,
I wouldn't discourage anyone from doing either, because I think
that filling your head with knowledge is a good thing.
And maybe you pick up a book at least if
(07:30):
you're one of those people like me who was born
way back in the nineteen hundreds, It doesn't really matter.
There are a lot of ways to learn about this stuff,
and consuming content is a pretty good way to get there.
It's not as good as training with someone who is
better than you, but that's often a hell of a
lot more difficult to facilitate. Fill that big, beautiful brain
of yours up. But then remember that learning about a
(07:53):
subject and then actually engaging in that subject are just
different things. And also remember that the people who create
a lot of the content probably just way better at
training than you, or they might have a style that
just doesn't jive with your personality or your dog's personality.
And even if it does perfectly match what you have
going on, there is the reality of someone explaining how
(08:14):
to do something in a five minute video or a
twenty minute podcast and then actually going out and confidently
putting that into practice for weeks until lessons start to stick.
This is where it gets tricky, and there are a
million examples of other things in life that kind of
create or at least contextualize this concept. So here's one
(08:36):
that stuck with me and changed my life. When I
was in college, I fished a lot of bass tournaments.
I was eaten up with it, even though the travel
and stress and expense nearly killed me. But I did
enjoy it for many reasons, but one was that I
just got to fish with people who were really good
at it. Now, if you know anything about bass, you
know they love cover and they love structure, small mouth
(08:57):
and large mouth alike. Rocks true use weed lines, and
of course docks. Docks provide overhead cover from avian predators.
They're full of hard structure to use to their advantage
when trying not to get eaten and also while trying
to eat something, And they often create really harsh shade lines,
which are perfect if one of your primary strategies for
(09:18):
eating is to ambush smaller fish, you just hide in
the shadows. A lot of people fish docks by casting
to each side with a spinner bait or some other
chunk and wine lure. But when you learn how to
skip underneath docks, everything changes. And I thought I was
pretty good at skipping senkos and tube jigs and swimming
jigs and whatever else under docks until I drew a
(09:38):
pro and a championship tournament on Lake Minnetonka here in
the Cities one time. Then I got a lesson in
skipping docks, and it changed everything for me. He was
so much better at it than I was. It wasn't
even funny. It made me realize how much better I
could be, and I started working on it to the
point now where I'm very confident in that strategy. But
I can also tell you I wouldn't have gotten there
(10:00):
by just reading an article or listening to a podcast
or watching a video. I had to see it in action,
but most importantly, had to put it into practice in
different conditions for a long time. Dog training is like that.
You can read about treat training your dog to do something,
which is great, but until you spend days or weeks
(10:20):
treat training a dog to do something, it's just a
different thing. And I know this is simple, but I'm
going to go somewhere with this. Let's say you have
(10:41):
a one year old Labrador Retriever that you've done a
pretty good job with as far as obedience is concerned.
He doesn't pull too hard on the leash when you
walk him, he sits on command, he doesn't beg and
he heals just like you want him to. If you
make him sit and you toss a bumper, he'll go
get it, and if you've done a really good job,
he'll deliver it to hand. Honestly, that's better than a
(11:03):
hell of a lot of dogs already. So that's great.
But what about double retrieves, what about long distance retres
what about water work or some other environment that he's
unfamiliar with. Well, I can tell you this. Make believe
pup can do all of those things if you make
them happen. And if you did all of that earlier stuff.
You probably have the confidence to try to make that happen.
(11:25):
But what if you didn't. What if you didn't work
the basics first, so that when you ask your dog
to sit, he sometimes does and he sometimes just ignores you.
Or what if you just couldn't get him to not
pull on the leash NonStop while you walked him. Will
you have the confidence to try the upper level stuff?
Probably not. This is a process that feeds itself, and
(11:48):
the momentum can swing one way or the other depending
on what you put in and how patient you are.
We preach the message of training a puppy from the
moment you bring it home with. The idea is that
the dog needs to learn and you're the one who
will teach him. And without a doubt, that's absolutely true.
You want to train your dog from the jump. But
(12:10):
it's not just to have a better dog. It's also
a way for you to see the results of a
training plan, positive results, because that matters a lot. And
while it's pretty dang easy to treat train most puppies
to do a few basic things, and that's great, it's
also not just for them. It's a starting point for you.
Think about it this way. If you can take an
(12:32):
eight week old puppy and get him sitting pretty consistently
on command after a few days, why can't you do
the harder stuff later. Because usually there's a breakdown in
confidence somewhere in between there, and that's when things get tough.
This is where the pros earn their money and why
they deserve their money. When your dog is struggling with
some task, it's easy to think all kinds of things,
(12:55):
he's not smart enough.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
He's too stubborn, whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
But most of that is projection on our part, because
we've already seen that we can ask them to do
things and they'll deliver, but at some point, for some reason,
they won't, and that can get really frustrating fast. This
is where the timeline often shifts and it's easier to
decide that training has gone far enough. But mostly it's
because we aren't confident enough to help them through whatever
(13:20):
we are asking. This happens for plenty of reasons, but
it's so important to remember that you have to get
those early wins and sometimes revert to the easy wins
to keep your training momentum going in the right direction
and your confidence growing. This is also why when you
watch pros work, they might dedicate a little time to
(13:41):
some type of training with a dog and then switch
gears ten or twenty minutes later to work on a
different task. It's not that they couldn't push through the
original one, but if the wheels start to fall off,
or they see the dog has just moved enough in
a certain direction maybe with their attention, they consider it
time to do something else. Plus, they are generally pretty
(14:03):
confident that they can offer up situations where the dog
will eventually have success, and that matters in a major,
major way. They're not going to let the dogs fail,
and in that process, they won't fail at training even
if something they wanted to check off the list just
didn't get there on a specific day. They also know
(14:25):
that all of this stuff helps them be confident and
is recognizable by the dog. If you think that's not true,
you need to work with dogs more, because they can
read us very very well. A calm, assertive, and confident
trainer is one who can ask a lot of dogs
because dogs generally respond very well to that energy. A
(14:49):
person who isn't confident, who is an assertive will watch
a dog make its own decisions because it knows it can.
This is kind of like in grade school when you're
usual teacher who took absolutely no shit is out and
a sub is in, and the sub was working in
the mortgage industry until weeks ago, and they have no
business teaching kids because they don't know what the hell
(15:10):
they are doing. Do you think the classroom behavior will
be the same then with that sub it won't, because
kids are just like dogs, and that they can sense
things about authority figures and that flavors their interactions in
a palpable way. If they get a whiff of uneasiness,
then they'll test your boundaries. It's nature, honestly, and dogs
(15:33):
understand that game very well. So not only is it
just generally a good idea to work on something like
training until you're more confident, but it's also necessary to
get the results you really want out of the task. Now,
of course, I should probably say this, confidence can be
a double edged sword. If you're over confident, you can
ruin a dog pretty quickly, and likely will, because that's
(15:55):
the kind of situation that can lead the best of
us to absolutely lose our shit when things go wrong.
Confidence should ideally manifest itself in a bend. There done
that attitude, not a know it all attitude, if that
makes sense. So I'll say this just to reiterate it
one last time. If you aren't overly confident in your training,
(16:16):
consume whatever content you need, get around the right people,
but also just go for it. Train your dog on
the simple stuff, get those easy wins. Then train that
simple stuff over and over while you slowly add in
more challenging things. Your confidence level should move in lockstep
with your dog or be so damn close you can't
(16:38):
tell who is in the lead. Now if you hit
a roadblock, make sure you're incorporating other training tasks to
give the dog a win no matter what, every time
you train, and then figure out how to navigate those
troubled waters. Believe in yourself. Dog training in many ways
isn't that hard, and I say that followed by a gigantic,
(16:59):
super huge, But it certainly can be really difficult, and
it only gets more difficult the less confident we are,
which often leads to a good enough attitude, and the
dogs that are trained to that level often are barely
trained at all. Work on yourself in this category and
the dog and you will be way better off for it.
(17:22):
Do that and come back in two weeks because I'm
going to talk about genetics, like really really dive into
the topic and explain why it's so important to the
dog world, way beyond the usual ways in which we
think about canine genetics. That's it for this episode of Houndations.
I'm your host, Tony Peterson. Thank you so much for
(17:45):
listening and for all your support. You guys showed up
big time a couple weeks ago when we had the
Dog Days of May at meat Eater here.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
We really really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
If you're interested in more than dogs, and we know
you are, head on over to the medeater dot com.
Give Brent Reeves this country life podcast to listen, just
good storytelling. We have new podcasts on there, all kinds
of crazy stuff, dropping new content every single day over there.
Go check it out at the meat eater dot com
(18:14):
and thank you once again,
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Foundation's podcast. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about how we
can become more confident and handling dogs, which is a
huge component of training. Two weeks ago, I dropped an
episode of this podcast dedicated to developing confidence in our dogs.
(00:23):
That matters so much because it flavors a dog's entire
life in a positive direction. Generally, Well, guess what, the
same rules apply to us, And often our training efforts
fall flat or just don't have the horsepower they need
because we don't have confidence in ourselves. That is no
bueno and it's what I'm going to talk about right now.
(00:48):
A hunting industry friend of mine told me a story
years ago about a sheep hunt that he went on.
If any of you know anything about sheep hunting, it's
not the kind of activity that most outdoorsmen do even
once in their lives. So getting to go at all
is pretty incredible big horn sheep. And while most of
the sheep that are nearly impossible to get a tag
for these days aren't known for thriving in states like Iowa,
(01:12):
they live where the earth goes up and down a lot,
where gravity is a real issue, and things are still
pretty wild. To get to a sheep, you tend to
have to board some small planes and often climb on
the back of a horse for a while. Now, this
friend of mine, at the end of his sheep hunt,
ended up getting into one of those small planes that
still utilizes a propeller and can land on nothing more
(01:33):
than a cleared strip of timber that is pretty far
from what most of us think is a runway. Well,
on that flight, his plane didn't make it and they
made a crash landing. Now, while the pilot, his guide,
and he all survived, it didn't look great for them.
I forget now whether they were in Alaska or Canada,
but I remember him talking about how brutally cold it
(01:55):
was and how much snow they dealt with. Now, when
they finally got picked up by a rescue hell, they
thought they were good to go, as most of us would,
except that the helicopter suffered the same fate as the plane, which,
if you're keeping track, comes to a total of two
crash landings on one trip, which we can all agree
is about too many. They survived that one too, and
(02:18):
when I asked him what the worst part about it all?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Was.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
He said it was when they were huddled under a
tarp with a single candle for warmth, and he looked
at his guide, who was a survival expert and someone
you generally find comfort in when things get really dicey,
and he was bawling his eyes out. That my buddy
said was the hardest to deal with because he saw
someone who was supposed to be in charge, supposed to
(02:43):
be conditioned to deal with real life and death adversity,
and it felt like he had given up. My buddy
said that was an absolute gut punch. He also said
climbing into the second rescue helicopter wasn't as joyful as
you'd expect because he had developed a pretty healthy and
understandable fear of flying machines in the undefeated gravity that
(03:03):
they attempt to defy. His guide had lost his confidence,
and it changed their outlook. It changed their whole situation
for the worse. My friend said, it was terrible. Now,
confidence is just wildly important to life, even if you're
not in a life or death situation. Now, if you
(03:25):
don't believe that, look up self help books that are
supposed to take the average low confidence person and prime
them up. To fight lions or whatever. The amount of
those books that are available is mind boggling.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
It truly is.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
In fact, just to see I search for self help
books on Amazon and the results totaled over one hundred thousand.
Not all of those deal with confidence and self esteem,
but a lot of them do. It's a big deal,
and it matters in many facets of our lives. Setting
boundaries with your lunatic family members, being assertive enough to
(03:59):
ask for as you think you deserve, or at least
telling your boss to go kick rocks in the street
when he asked you to color way outside the lines
of your job description. Whatever it is, confidence matters, and
as you probably can guess, it matters with how you
handle your dog. The energy we project is important, but
that walks in lockstep with us just being confident in
(04:22):
what we are asking the dog to do, and then
what to do when the dog doesn't deliver. You might
remember that a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that
I've been training a King Charles Spaniel to give this
woman a hand, since her life is pretty full and
she didn't ask for that dog.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
In her life.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
His name is Nico, and he actually is a really
good boy. He just has very little connections to human
after being rehome three times in the first year, mind you,
and he's pretty comfortable entertaining.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Himself while ignoring most people.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
But we did some placeboard work, and we did some
basic obedience stuff and he showed plenty of signs of life.
Then we worked again on the same stuff and he
had regressed some, mostly I think because he had been
cooped up inside for a few days and is not
really the kind of dog who wants to live the
life of the average housecat. So just this morning I
met up with Nico and his owner again and we
(05:13):
went to work, but this time about halfway through, she
took the lead and I watched her interact with the pup.
It was clear that she had been working hard with
that little dog and that he is way more bonded
to her than me. It was actually pretty awesome to see,
and I told her that, and she admitted that she
was working with him every day and that when she
(05:35):
knows what to do, she's all about putting the work in.
But originally she didn't know what to do. She had
zero confidence in herself as a trainer or her dog's potential,
and so she didn't do anything. Now, what is really
cool about that is she will be the one to
have the most influence on that dog and the one
who will get the most out of having that dog
(05:56):
for his whole life. Just her change in affected her
dog's behavior more than my presence had. And that's what
you really want to see, because it changes all of
the little interactions, the little signals. And what I mean
by that is that when I first watched her with
that dog, she would praise him and love him up,
just randomly for no reason, and often when he didn't
(06:18):
do what she asked him. This is super common because
we naturally want to be really positive around our dogs.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
We can't help it.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
But if you spend time with a professional trainer, you'll
see an awful lot of like neutral interactions with dogs.
The emotion just doesn't come in until a behavior is delivered.
Then it's party time. Pros understand that there is value
to praise and rewards, but those things need to be earned,
and they are confident they can get that message through
(06:47):
to dogs. Now, us amateurs have a harder time believing that,
so we tend to default to the fur baby side
of things, which is kind of like eating a whole
sleeve of oreos when you're feeling a little snacky. Sure
they taste amazing, especially with a giant glass of cold milk,
but it would be hard to argue that, aside from
the instant pleasure of gnombing on some cookies, that's generally
(07:09):
not a great decision. So how do you develop confidence
as a dog trainer? Your first impulse might be to
watch some YouTube videos or maybe buy into one of
the master classes that a lot of trainers offer. Now,
I wouldn't discourage anyone from doing either, because I think
that filling your head with knowledge is a good thing.
And maybe you pick up a book at least if
(07:30):
you're one of those people like me who was born
way back in the nineteen hundreds, It doesn't really matter.
There are a lot of ways to learn about this stuff,
and consuming content is a pretty good way to get there.
It's not as good as training with someone who is
better than you, but that's often a hell of a
lot more difficult to facilitate. Fill that big, beautiful brain
of yours up. But then remember that learning about a
(07:53):
subject and then actually engaging in that subject are just
different things. And also remember that the people who create
a lot of the content probably just way better at
training than you, or they might have a style that
just doesn't jive with your personality or your dog's personality.
And even if it does perfectly match what you have
going on, there is the reality of someone explaining how
(08:14):
to do something in a five minute video or a
twenty minute podcast and then actually going out and confidently
putting that into practice for weeks until lessons start to stick.
This is where it gets tricky, and there are a
million examples of other things in life that kind of
create or at least contextualize this concept. So here's one
(08:36):
that stuck with me and changed my life. When I
was in college, I fished a lot of bass tournaments.
I was eaten up with it, even though the travel
and stress and expense nearly killed me. But I did
enjoy it for many reasons, but one was that I
just got to fish with people who were really good
at it. Now, if you know anything about bass, you
know they love cover and they love structure, small mouth
(08:57):
and large mouth alike. Rocks true use weed lines, and
of course docks. Docks provide overhead cover from avian predators.
They're full of hard structure to use to their advantage
when trying not to get eaten and also while trying
to eat something, And they often create really harsh shade lines,
which are perfect if one of your primary strategies for
(09:18):
eating is to ambush smaller fish, you just hide in
the shadows. A lot of people fish docks by casting
to each side with a spinner bait or some other
chunk and wine lure. But when you learn how to
skip underneath docks, everything changes. And I thought I was
pretty good at skipping senkos and tube jigs and swimming
jigs and whatever else under docks until I drew a
(09:38):
pro and a championship tournament on Lake Minnetonka here in
the Cities one time. Then I got a lesson in
skipping docks, and it changed everything for me. He was
so much better at it than I was. It wasn't
even funny. It made me realize how much better I
could be, and I started working on it to the
point now where I'm very confident in that strategy. But
I can also tell you I wouldn't have gotten there
(10:00):
by just reading an article or listening to a podcast
or watching a video. I had to see it in action,
but most importantly, had to put it into practice in
different conditions for a long time. Dog training is like that.
You can read about treat training your dog to do something,
which is great, but until you spend days or weeks
(10:20):
treat training a dog to do something, it's just a
different thing. And I know this is simple, but I'm
going to go somewhere with this. Let's say you have
(10:41):
a one year old Labrador Retriever that you've done a
pretty good job with as far as obedience is concerned.
He doesn't pull too hard on the leash when you
walk him, he sits on command, he doesn't beg and
he heals just like you want him to. If you
make him sit and you toss a bumper, he'll go
get it, and if you've done a really good job,
he'll deliver it to hand. Honestly, that's better than a
(11:03):
hell of a lot of dogs already. So that's great.
But what about double retrieves, what about long distance retres
what about water work or some other environment that he's
unfamiliar with. Well, I can tell you this. Make believe
pup can do all of those things if you make
them happen. And if you did all of that earlier stuff.
You probably have the confidence to try to make that happen.
(11:25):
But what if you didn't. What if you didn't work
the basics first, so that when you ask your dog
to sit, he sometimes does and he sometimes just ignores you.
Or what if you just couldn't get him to not
pull on the leash NonStop while you walked him. Will
you have the confidence to try the upper level stuff?
Probably not. This is a process that feeds itself, and
(11:48):
the momentum can swing one way or the other depending
on what you put in and how patient you are.
We preach the message of training a puppy from the
moment you bring it home with. The idea is that
the dog needs to learn and you're the one who
will teach him. And without a doubt, that's absolutely true.
You want to train your dog from the jump. But
(12:10):
it's not just to have a better dog. It's also
a way for you to see the results of a
training plan, positive results, because that matters a lot. And
while it's pretty dang easy to treat train most puppies
to do a few basic things, and that's great, it's
also not just for them. It's a starting point for you.
Think about it this way. If you can take an
(12:32):
eight week old puppy and get him sitting pretty consistently
on command after a few days, why can't you do
the harder stuff later. Because usually there's a breakdown in
confidence somewhere in between there, and that's when things get tough.
This is where the pros earn their money and why
they deserve their money. When your dog is struggling with
some task, it's easy to think all kinds of things,
(12:55):
he's not smart enough.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
He's too stubborn, whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
But most of that is projection on our part, because
we've already seen that we can ask them to do
things and they'll deliver, but at some point, for some reason,
they won't, and that can get really frustrating fast. This
is where the timeline often shifts and it's easier to
decide that training has gone far enough. But mostly it's
because we aren't confident enough to help them through whatever
(13:20):
we are asking. This happens for plenty of reasons, but
it's so important to remember that you have to get
those early wins and sometimes revert to the easy wins
to keep your training momentum going in the right direction
and your confidence growing. This is also why when you
watch pros work, they might dedicate a little time to
(13:41):
some type of training with a dog and then switch
gears ten or twenty minutes later to work on a
different task. It's not that they couldn't push through the
original one, but if the wheels start to fall off,
or they see the dog has just moved enough in
a certain direction maybe with their attention, they consider it
time to do something else. Plus, they are generally pretty
(14:03):
confident that they can offer up situations where the dog
will eventually have success, and that matters in a major,
major way. They're not going to let the dogs fail,
and in that process, they won't fail at training even
if something they wanted to check off the list just
didn't get there on a specific day. They also know
(14:25):
that all of this stuff helps them be confident and
is recognizable by the dog. If you think that's not true,
you need to work with dogs more, because they can
read us very very well. A calm, assertive, and confident
trainer is one who can ask a lot of dogs
because dogs generally respond very well to that energy. A
(14:49):
person who isn't confident, who is an assertive will watch
a dog make its own decisions because it knows it can.
This is kind of like in grade school when you're
usual teacher who took absolutely no shit is out and
a sub is in, and the sub was working in
the mortgage industry until weeks ago, and they have no
business teaching kids because they don't know what the hell
(15:10):
they are doing. Do you think the classroom behavior will
be the same then with that sub it won't, because
kids are just like dogs, and that they can sense
things about authority figures and that flavors their interactions in
a palpable way. If they get a whiff of uneasiness,
then they'll test your boundaries. It's nature, honestly, and dogs
(15:33):
understand that game very well. So not only is it
just generally a good idea to work on something like
training until you're more confident, but it's also necessary to
get the results you really want out of the task. Now,
of course, I should probably say this, confidence can be
a double edged sword. If you're over confident, you can
ruin a dog pretty quickly, and likely will, because that's
(15:55):
the kind of situation that can lead the best of
us to absolutely lose our shit when things go wrong.
Confidence should ideally manifest itself in a bend. There done
that attitude, not a know it all attitude, if that
makes sense. So I'll say this just to reiterate it
one last time. If you aren't overly confident in your training,
(16:16):
consume whatever content you need, get around the right people,
but also just go for it. Train your dog on
the simple stuff, get those easy wins. Then train that
simple stuff over and over while you slowly add in
more challenging things. Your confidence level should move in lockstep
with your dog or be so damn close you can't
(16:38):
tell who is in the lead. Now if you hit
a roadblock, make sure you're incorporating other training tasks to
give the dog a win no matter what, every time
you train, and then figure out how to navigate those
troubled waters. Believe in yourself. Dog training in many ways
isn't that hard, and I say that followed by a gigantic,
(16:59):
super huge, But it certainly can be really difficult, and
it only gets more difficult the less confident we are,
which often leads to a good enough attitude, and the
dogs that are trained to that level often are barely
trained at all. Work on yourself in this category and
the dog and you will be way better off for it.
(17:22):
Do that and come back in two weeks because I'm
going to talk about genetics, like really really dive into
the topic and explain why it's so important to the
dog world, way beyond the usual ways in which we
think about canine genetics. That's it for this episode of Houndations.
I'm your host, Tony Peterson. Thank you so much for
(17:45):
listening and for all your support. You guys showed up
big time a couple weeks ago when we had the
Dog Days of May at meat Eater here.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
We really really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
If you're interested in more than dogs, and we know
you are, head on over to the medeater dot com.
Give Brent Reeves this country life podcast to listen, just
good storytelling. We have new podcasts on there, all kinds
of crazy stuff, dropping new content every single day over there.
Go check it out at the meat eater dot com
(18:14):
and thank you once again,
Host
Cal Callaghan
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