Your dog doesn't listen

Dog obedience

Your dog knows sit. In the kitchen, with a treat in your hand, with nothing else going on. Take it outside and it's gone.

So you say it again. Then you say it louder, then you start bargaining, then you give up and do it yourself. Somewhere in there somebody told you your dog is stubborn, or dominant, or just needs to know who's boss. None of that is what's happening.

What's happening is that your dog was never taught the command all the way through.

Why doesn't your dog listen?

Obedience isn't a list of words your dog memorizes. It's built in phases, and most dogs stall in the first one.

In the learning phase, the behavior gets conditioned first and the word gets attached after it's reliable. Say the word too early, over a dog that hasn't figured out the behavior yet, and "sit" ends up meaning nothing in particular. Then it gets repeated, and repeated, and the word wears out completely.

Then there's the part everyone skips. A dog that performs at home hasn't learned the command — it's learned the command in the kitchen. Every new place, every new distraction is a new problem to your dog until you go prove it there. That's the distraction phase, and it's the one nobody does.

And underneath all of it sits engagement. If your dog doesn't look to you, check in with you, and want to work with you, then nothing you say has anywhere to land. Engagement is the foundation of every command on the list, and it's the thing that's missing in almost every dog that "doesn't listen."

Your dog isn't defying you. It's confused about the word, unpracticed in the place, and not engaged with the handler.

How we build obedience and real life control

We go back and build it in the right order, which is usually faster than it sounds.

First your dog's temperament is evaluated — drives, disposition, engagement. A hard dog and a soft dog both ignore you, but the work is opposite. The evaluation tells us which way to work your dog.

Then your dog gets a map: the foundation first — the reward mark, engagement, and leash yielding — then the commands in order, focus before everything else. Sit, down, stay, come, heel, place, leave it, off, each one conditioned, then named, then proofed in the places you actually need it.

You'll be the one giving the commands, because your dog listening to us isn't the point.

The finished picture is a dog that responds the first time, in your driveway, not just your kitchen.

20+ years · author of Building A Solid Canine · every dog is evaluated first

Two ways to start.

Bring your dog to a Saturday.

Garrett reads your dog live at the Saturday workshop in Placerville, CA — that's a Working Evaluation, $200. You get the full day, the printed workbook and the full book, and your dog's written route through it. Every dog is evaluated first. Bite histories welcome with honest disclosure.

Or we come to you.

An In-Home Session at your house, up to two hours, with the same workbook, book, and written route.