Is Your Dog Stubborn? (or is it something else?)

Every dog owner can recall a moment of frustration when they’ve asked the dog to do something but the dog doesn’t follow through. Those times when words seem to fall on deaf ears as Fido continues his joyful pursuit of the cat, or refuses to quit jumping on grandma despite how emphatically you’ve told him to stop.

When these things happen, it is easy to label the dog as being stubborn. But the word stubborn implies that the dog has a moment of intentional deliberation and is making a conscious choice. In most of the situations that our dogs cause frustration, that isn’t the case. Take the cat chasing or jumping on grandma for instance. It is most likely that the dog is in a state of arousal and responding impulsively rather than mulling over the choice of behaving vs deliberately disobeying.

Before going further, let me state that I do believe there are times when a dog will weigh a decision and choose to do something other than what was requested. Willful disobedience does happen. And it is important to note that sometimes there is a good reason for it. I’ll save that discussion for a future article, for now let’s discuss the far more common reasons your dog may be struggling to follow through.

Number One: The dog doesn’t understand what you want, is by far the most common reason. Most of the time, we have not put in the work needed to truly teach the dog what is expected.

Before you begin protesting “but, he knows!”….let me explain.

Dogs do not generalize well. It would be great if we could be in the kitchen, teach that “Sit” = put your butt on the floor, and the dog could then take that knowledge and apply it to a wide variety of contexts. But dogs aren’t able to do that.
Dogs learn in context. We have to teach in all sorts of situations to help them generalize. That means lots of reps, in lots of different contexts. Think of it as learning in pictures.

If you’ve taught the dog to Sit by practicing in the kitchen when there is a treat in your hand and nothing else exciting happening, your dog has learned that picture of Sit. It’s an entirely different picture to Sit when the doorbell rings and grandma shows up. If you want your dog to Sit in that context, you have to take time to teach and practice in that context. There isn’t any shortcut to good training. It involves many repetitions, done successfully, in many contexts. ie. Capturing lots of pictures of that behavior in lots of environments and circumstances. 

Moral of this part of the story: Do The Work

Number Two: The dog isn’t sufficiently motivated to do what you request, goes hand in hand with the reps you’re putting in as you work your way down the long list of pictures you need to capture. 

Every dog is a bit different than the one we’ve had before. Regardless of breed, or age, our dogs come with their unique blueprint of who they are. The blueprint is created through genetics, current health, and prior experiences. It is our responsibility to work with the dog in front of us. What motivates them? What do we need to do to influence them? How do we balance the consequences of rewarding what we want and unrewarding what we don’t want? How do we help them learn the correct picture we want them to capture?

The answer to all of those questions is found in a lifetime of study. 😉 There are general principles and some recipes you can follow, but I can guarantee you that you’ll have to modify any recipe to some extent. That is the Art of dog training. If you’re struggling with this piece, the best thing you can do is find a dog training artist (trainer) that resonates with you and learn from them. 

Moral of this part of the story: Understand Your Dog.

Number Three: When the dog has something physically compromising their ability to respond properly, this is the tricky one. It is also the one that gets the most easily overlooked. It’s where even a highly experienced trainer can get stumped and will need to turn to others to find more answers.

I’m not referring to the situation when physical cause is the underlying issue giving rise to a behavior. For example, when an ear infection causes an otherwise gentle dog to suddenly starts nipping. I’m referring to when you’ve done the work, and you’re certain the dog understands. I’m talking about a dog that is well mannered and overall compliant. But there is that “one thing” that the dog routinely refuses…that’s when you start considering potential underlying health issues.

I remember the first time I learned this valuable lesson. I was working with a pet owner who had been a previous client. I knew his level of dedication to putting in the practice time and doing the work needed to have a well trained dog. He was going through a series of lessons with a young German Shepherd Dog (GSD) that he had acquired some months earlier. Her obedience training was progressing nicely. The dog would do all the things we had been teaching; she would walk calmly beside him on leash, come when called, remain on her place through most any distractions and understood the stationary commands, but she would not hold a Sit. Every time she was asked to Sit, she would lie down within a few seconds. 

Initially I suspected that my client might be doing too many reps of requesting a Sit behavior, followed by a Down. When that same sequence is repeated over and over it becomes a pattern. Essentially the dog captures “the picture” that Down always follows Sit and it becomes part of the behavior.  I figured we just needed to switch things up so the dog could learn there wasn’t a predictable pattern or connection between the two.

But it didn’t work. She continued to lay down very soon after being asked to Sit. It didn’t make sense to me that an otherwise very compliant dog would struggle to learn one behavior. Fortunately, I had a brilliant colleague coming in to teach a seminar on gate analysis and body mechanics. She took one look at the dog and said, “I suspect that dog has Lyme disease, get it checked out.”

And that is exactly what was going on. The dog titered high for Lyme, got treated with a round of Doxycycline, and the problem went away. Apparently there was something about holding the Sit position that became physically uncomfortable, causing the dog to seek increased comfort by laying down. 

The lesson about “physically can’t”  was reinforced a few months later when I began working with a client with another young GSD. The dog had been diagnosed by a DVM as having OCD and prescribed behavioral medication. The behavior was not improving so her owner sought me out for a second opinion. The dog was a tail chaser. It wasn’t the type of chasing that some pups do on occasion for entertainment. This dog would repeatedly spin to grab her tail as she walked. If she was called to come from 20 feet away, she would spin 3 or 4 times enroute. If she was walking on a leash, she would spin every few feet. It was one of the strangest things I had seen up to that point in my career. I knew I could take an approach of interrupting the behavior to help minimize it, but I also knew there was more going on so we got an appointment set up with a DVM chiropractor/acupuncturist I trusted to see what we might learn.

The dog had two vertebrae at the very base of the pelvis that were completely malaligned. If you’ve seen a tail on a dog where there is a significant zigzag in the straight alignment, you can visualize what it looks like. That can happen from an injury or occasionally be present from birth. Now imagine that zigzag happening higher up, by the pelvis, where it would not be obviously visible to someone without more advanced knowledge of the skeletal structure of a dog.

It took a while to resolve the behavior, but after a few visits the DVM chiropractor was able to get things back in place. And through my training protocols we were able to effectively retrain how to walk/move without resorting to spinning. We speculated that the behavior initially started because the dog felt physical discomfort of some sort, perhaps a “pins and needles” sensation happening from nerve impingement occurring in those vertebrae. But because it had gone on for over a year, the dog had essentially engrained this pattern of movement as the “new normal.” Through a team effort, this dog was able to regain normal movement, but if we hadn’t dug deeper, it would not have been fixed despite neurological medications. 

Underlying physical issues might be playing a role in misbehavior. If you’re questioning whether the dog is being stubborn or if there is something physical going on, remember to first ask yourself, “Have I done the work? And do I know my dog?” The answer to those two questions will bring you full circle to the fact that training your dog is about building a relationship. 

Once you really commit to building a training relationship with your dog, you’ll discover it’s one of the best journeys that you’ve ever been on! 🐾 🥾