08/21/2026
WHEN OBEDIENCE LOOKS GREAT… BUT THE ACTUAL PROBLEM IS STILL THERE.
I was recently called into a home to help with a dog who has resource-guarding tendencies involving the owner, the children, the couch, food, and food around the other dog. This dog had already gone through an extensive four-week Board & Train, and let me be clear, the obedience looked great. He walks nicely on leash, understands e-collar communication with his owners, has recall, knows place, and can hold a down-stay while you walk completely out of sight. That’s all great training, and I respect good obedience work.
But that wasn’t the problem this family desperately needed help with. The problem was happening inside their home, and after spending all that money on training, they’re now considering rehoming the dog because the behavior they actually needed help with is still happening.
OBEDIENCE AND BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION ARE NOT THE SAME THING.
Obedience can absolutely be used as part of behavior modification. I use recall, place, leash communication, boundaries and impulse control all the time. But putting a resource-guarding dog on place doesn’t automatically change how that dog feels about someone approaching his food, another dog getting near something valuable, or someone entering a space he believes he needs to control. You can interrupt the behavior and you can manage the dog, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve changed the behavior.
What I’m looking for is a new pattern. Consistency, repetition and reinforcement are what build that new pattern. If I repeatedly show a dog another way to handle a situation and make that choice more rewarding than the old one, eventually I want that dog choosing the better behavior without me constantly telling him what to do. That’s where I think the real power is. The choice becomes the dog’s.
I don’t want a robot dog that has to be commanded through every difficult situation for the rest of its life, especially when I’m dealing with behavioral issues. There’s a big difference between a dog that isn’t resource guarding because I’m standing there telling him “place,” “leave it” or correcting him every time he starts, and a dog whose patterns have actually changed enough that he’s beginning to make better decisions on his own.
SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO TRAIN THE RELATIONSHIP, NOT JUST THE DOG.
In a case like this, I need to see the dog and owner together in their own environment. I need to see what happens on that couch, what happens around the food bowls, what the children are doing, what the owner is doing and what happens immediately before that dog’s behavior changes. That’s information I can’t completely get by taking the dog away from the family and teaching obedience somewhere else.
If a dog believes he needs to resource guard his owner, we need to change that relationship and that pattern. You shouldn’t become something your dog believes he needs to possess or defend. The same thing goes for resources between dogs. I’m not going to repeatedly put two dogs into competition over something valuable and expect them to “figure it out.” I’m going to control access to those resources, create predictability and stop creating situations where the dog believes he has to fight to keep something.
And when children are involved, the adults have an even bigger responsibility. If your children are constantly getting into the dog’s face, crowding him, bothering him around resources or ignoring his attempts to create space, you need to advocate for the dog before he feels like he has to advocate for himself. At some point a dog can say, in the only way he knows how, “I’ve had enough.” Unfortunately, that’s usually when everyone suddenly blames the dog.
AND THEN THERE WAS THE SERVICE-DOG VEST.
This part absolutely floored me. The family told me that after approximately one month of training, they were given a service-dog vest and card and told they could take the dog anywhere. They were also apparently told that putting the vest on would make people leave the dog alone.
No. A vest doesn’t make a dog a service dog, and neither does a card. A service dog is individually trained to perform work or specific tasks related to a person’s disability. You don’t create those public-access rights by buying identification and putting a vest on a dog. For a professional dog trainer to send owners into public believing otherwise is incredibly irresponsible.
And if the reason for the vest is simply because you don’t want strangers touching your dog, you don’t need one. Advocate for your dog. Use your voice and your body language. Step between your dog and someone approaching him and tell them, “Please don’t pet him.” There’s actually something valuable happening there too. Your dog starts learning that you’re going to handle those situations so he doesn’t have to.
LET THE DOG BE A DOG.
One other thing I disagreed with was the idea that every walk needed to be a structured heel from beginning to end. Of course there are times when I want my dog beside me. If we’re in a crowd, crossing a street, passing another dog, navigating a tight space or dealing with reactivity, I want control. But if we’re walking somewhere quiet and the dog isn’t reactive or causing problems, I don’t see the point of having him glued to my leg the entire time.
Give the dog some freedom. Use a long line or an appropriate leash. Let him sniff, investigate and experience his environment. I want a dog who understands when I need control and when he has the freedom to just be a dog.
There are trainers who specialize in beautiful, flashy obedience, and I genuinely respect that work. Some owners specifically want that, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just not what I specialize in. I’m much more interested in what happens when the command is over. What happens when the dog gets off place, the food comes out, another dog approaches something valuable or the child gets on the couch?
That’s real life, and that’s the part I want to change.
You can have some absolutely beautiful obedience, but if the dog is still biting the kids, we worked on the wrong damn problem.
Train Where Life Happens™
