10/09/2026
This Article is from a monthly newsletter from Training Between the Ears. I thought it was so relevant to what so many people experience when trying to train their dogs.
Sometimes the Problem Isn't the Best Place to Start
One of the things I kept thinking about after our recent Perception Modification event was how naturally we all want to start with the problem.
Your dog loses their mind when people move?
Let's work on people moving.
Your dog is terrified of strangers?
Let's work around strangers.
Your dog jumps all over everyone who walks through the door?
Let's work on the jumping.
It makes perfect sense. That's the problem you want solved. But it isn't always the best place to start.
We sometimes talk about behavior problems like a mountain. The things that are hardest for your dog, the things that probably brought you to training in the first place, are near the top. And yet, we often march the dog straight up the mountain and start trying to teach there.
The problem is that the top of the mountain isn't just a difficult place for the dog to learn. It's a really difficult place for you to teach.
Your dog is already struggling. Their emotions are big. Their ability to think, process information, recover, experiment with something different, or actually begin to feel differently may be at its lowest. And you're standing there trying harder and harder to make something happen.
You repeat yourself. You try another technique. You become frustrated because nothing seems to be changing. It can start to feel like you're hitting your head against a wall.
And in a way, you are.
You're trying to create learning in one of the places where learning is hardest to create. That sets both of you up to struggle.
So what if, instead of pushing harder at the top of the mountain, we changed where we started?
What if we found a place farther down the mountain where your dog could actually learn, and where you could actually be successful at teaching?
That's where we can begin creating the emotional and behavioral changes that eventually make the harder things easier.
Because the jumping isn't just about jumping.
The barking isn't just about barking.
The reaction to movement isn't just about movement.
Behavior is being driven and sustained by something underneath it.
And if we only stop the behavior without changing what's underneath it, we may make that particular behavior disappear. But we haven't necessarily changed how the dog feels.
That's why some of the most important training we do can look, at first, like it has absolutely nothing to do with the problem someone hired us to solve.
We're not ignoring the top of the mountain.
We're creating change that makes it possible to get there.
And here's something worth thinking about:
If training constantly feels incredibly hard, it may not mean you need to try harder.
It may mean you're trying to create change in the wrong place.
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