It's a journey, not a race

Often trainers will say stuff along the lines of “let your puppy be a puppy and worry about training when they grow up” and I agree to an extent, but honestly I think this sentiment has things mixed up a little.

I prefer “work on emotions first and worry about the fancy bits when they’re ready”

With an anxious dog, loose lead walking isn’t really important. A great stay isn’t important. Settling isn’t important. Building confidence, creating positive associations and showing them how to deal with their fears comes before that.

Sure, you can teach a dog to do tricks if they’re anxious, and I’d definitely recommend that as it boosts confidence. However, expecting something like perfect loose lead walking whilst surrounded by triggers is incompatible with teaching them that they have agency and can escape from scary situations.

Out of my dogs, my two confident dogs walk lovely on their leads and my anxious one doesn’t. I’d much rather her communicate that she’s anxious by pulling on the lead than force her to walk to heel. She has a beautiful competition-style obedience heelwork in training, and is highly trained, but expecting loose lead walking from her wasn’t fair. Only now, as she’s far less anxious at five years old, have I started working on her loose lead walking in the street.

By contrast, my youngest dog didn’t have negative emotional responses to stimuli in the way my anxious one did. I didn’t have to put as much work into counter conditioning and building confidence, because through socialisation, cultivated encounters and (likely most importantly) good luck and genetics, she was pretty bombproof, naturally optimistic and happy.

At 16 months, my young dog is probably more highly trained than my 5 year old anxious dog. Because I didn’t have to channel the work into behaviour work, I’ve been able to do more with her. It’s not been a level playing field for them.

It’s important you let your puppy be a puppy, but if they’re emotionally ready to learn new tricks, learn about loose lead walking, settling, work in harder environments etc, you can do more with them. And in contrast, just because a dog is an adult, it doesn’t mean that they should just be able to cope with uncomfortable situations, have perfect day-to-day obedience and be totally infallible. Each dog is an individual.

Sure, it’s not one or another, and there is overlap in training. As I mentioned, certain activities can build confidence- agility, scentwork, hoopers, trick training etc. But expecting 100% focus in scary or unknown environments is unfair for a dog that struggles with their emotions. One dog may be an agility champion at three years old, and another may just about be able to start attending classes due to their anxiety- both requiring a huge amount of work and both being massive achievements.

If your reactive dog isn’t a perfect citizen, don’t kick yourself. If their recall isn’t good so they need to stay on a long line, if they pull on walks, if they don’t bring the ball back first time, if they jump up when people walk into the house… that’s okay. I’d far rather see someone comfort their anxious dog when they jump up than shout “off” at them, and I’d much rather a dog feel comfortable enough to express their opinions than feel forced to comply with their owners when they’re clearly unhappy.

Don’t feel embarrassed if this is your dog. The work you’re doing is amazing, considering you were dealt a far more difficult hand, and you shouldn’t compare your dogs to ones around you