From Frustration to Success: Empowering Your Dog’s Learning Journey

Hey there, dog lover! Welcome to this episode of the Unconventional Dog Trainer. We hope you enjoy our battle tested, relationship based solutions for helping your unconventional dog shine, with your host, Luzelle Cockburn. Let's dive in.

Have you ever heard your dog go, when you're trying to teach them something? Do you do that? Hi, I'm Luzelle, the unconventional dog trainer. And in this episode, we are going to talk about the sigh of discontent, what it means for you and what it means for your dog. Right. So let's get into it. I don't know about you, but have you ever had an experience where somebody was teaching you something and you made a mistake and then they went, how did that make you feel?

Afterwards, did you make more mistakes or less mistakes? Of course you made more mistakes because now you started feeling stressed because you felt the frustration of the person teaching you. Right. Keep that in mind when you're training your dog because that is actually a bit of a bullying tactic.

People do it without realizing though and it puts people in a distress. So if you go back to my video on learning styles, you will um be able to understand this a little bit better. So, because now you've got a whole bunch of extra stress hormones, you're struggling to learn. Now, the problem is when you, as if you're the trainer, and you start going, that's when your patience starts running out.

So, when I first started dog training, I realized that I had a temper problem and a patience problem. So one of the things I did was I started paying attention. Where does my training go downhill? And it was where the sigh of discontent came out. So when I started going, that's when I knew I had to stop my training.

And so I take a break and then get back to it later. So I needed Some time to process, time to think, time to think of what else I could do. And when you're a newer trainer, um, you don't really trust the process as much. So you always really struggle with, um, the concepts of, will this work? You are always struggling with a little bit of self doubt.

As you get better as a trainer, you start doubting it less, because you just know it's going to work. So you go, right. I don't care if it takes me 1 minute or 10 minutes, we are going to work through this and with the dog until their brain processes it. Now, something I noticed is that, here's the thing though, if your dog is doing the because you're being unclear with your cues and your information, you are going to wreck your relationship, just like with human training.

If. Your dog is doing that because they're getting frustrated with themselves. Now that's a good thing. That's where, um, we are getting that discomfort where learning happens. So this is where we can really utilize that because this is where the dog is getting frustrated with themselves. Now, bear in mind if your dog is getting overtired or is get.

Going from discomfort into distress, so getting really so frustrated, so chewing on the lead and stuff like that, barking, all these frustrated sort of behaviors. This is where I would consider, not always, it depends on the dog, whether I would stop the session there or whether I would continue, but it's always in the back of my mind.

Um, I would then pop the dog away or do something really calm to de stress the dog and then we could try it again. There's nothing wrong with stopping the session. I haven't found any benefit necessarily. Well, it depends on your relationship with the dog, whether you should end on a win or end when the dog is struggling.

Because you, ending when the dog is struggling could relieve that stress for the dog and ending on a win is not always necessarily a good thing, especially if your dog's enjoying the activity. If you end on a win, the dog could feel like it's, they're being punished for that. So, think about your training style, but one of the things is you must be clear on what you're doing and that it's going to work.

And a lot of the times, Now, I can persevere whether it's, um, whether I'm training for two minutes or two hours. I can, because I'm training in a calmer mindset, um, you will have a more tired dog, but some sessions require you to be able to do it for a longer period of time. Now, the other thing is, if a dog is starting to feel frustrated, just check, and I call it the toddler list, if the dog's basic, has a basic need, they need to.

meet, whether they're thirsty or hungry or tired or

over stressed or need the toilet. I think those are the five. Um, if I have repeated something, it's okay. I'm sure I'll, I'll pop it in the notes below. So make sure your dog's basic needs are met so that they're not uncomfortable. Because you know how you feel when you're busting to go to the toilet and you can't