Running Wild

There is a big difference in the mindset of a dog who roams freely and downs when he feels like it in a place of his choosing and the mindset of a dog who downs on command where his handler chooses. The first dog is making all the decisions without a thought to his handler’s guidance while the second dog is deferring to his handler to make the decisions and then politely following his commands.

This is a super simple example, but if we owners and handlers miss all these small moments and allow the dog to take control all the time in these small moments, then when a really big moment arises (like on a walk with a reactive dog- when he passes and becomes reactive towards people) the dog is DEFINITELY going to assume that he can take control and handle things his way. The magic of the mindset is in controlling all the small moments ALL THE TIME and using these seemingly small (but mighty!) moments to build our leadership and ‘believability’ with the dog so that when a big moments arise, we have consistently made ourselves into strong enough leaders that the dog will continue to defer to our guidance.