A dog trainer argues that reactive dogs don't need excuses—they need owners willing to take accountability. He identifies five owner traps: making excuses, thinking they've tried everything, skipping exercise, refusing physical corrections, and believing their dog is unsolvable. Proper training, exercise, and professional guidance are what actually work.
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Okay, so today I want to talk about something a little bit different. Here at the Yorkshire Canine Academy, we're not really dog trainers, we're human trainers. But Yorkshire Human Trainer Canine Academy, it doesn't have the same ring to it. We train you to train your dog, and that's the secret behind all good dog training. And after working with thousands of owners with reactive dogs, we see the same 5 patterns, the same 5 excuses that are keeping you stuck. And if you do these things, your dog will forever be reactive. So if you have a reactive dog and you've been trying different things for a long time with no success, this video is for you because chances are the problem isn't your dog, it's you. And you're likely falling into one of these 5 traps. The first and most common trap is making excuses. This is where you give the responsibility for your dog's behavior to something or someone else. It is human nature. We do not like to feel accountable for things that go wrong. It's like a kid who breaks a lamp. When his mum asks what happens, he says, "The cat did it." He blames everything else because it takes away the guilt of admitting he was the one who knocked it over. Reactive dog owners do this exact same thing. Here are the excuses we hear every single day. He's too old to learn, which is untrue. We've trained 10, 11, 12-year-old dogs. His breed is just stubborn. We hear this about Chows, Huskies, Shibas all the time. We've trained each one of them to a pretty high level. He's a rescue, so his past is the problem, and I can't do anything because I've not had him since a puppy. His past, yeah, is a factor, but it's not a life sentence. You can still train a rescue dog. I work full-time and I don't have the— I don't have the time. You have the time for what you make a priority. We work with lots of people that work full-time and, and have great dogs. By blaming the dog's age, breed, or past, you're essentially saying it's out of my hands. And this makes you feel better because if it's not your fault— and by the way, I can see you just fucking typing away your excuses now, your exceptions. Bloody— just give it a rest. I'm not gonna read the comments. And if it's not your fault, you don't have to do the hard work to fix it. But here is a harsh truth. It doesn't matter who's at fault. Your dog is your responsibility, and it's time to stop blaming the cat and fix the lamp. All right. This one's a big one. People come to us and say, we've tried everything, but that's impossible. You can't have tried everything because you don't know everything. Neither of us do. I don't know any— everything either. In life, there are things we know we know, like our own name. There are things we know we don't know, like how to fly an aeroplane. But then there's this huge category of things we don't even know that we don't know., and that's where the real solutions are often hiding. Think of it like a video game. You're stuck on a level and you say, I've tried everything. I've jumped, I've run, I've pushed every button. But what you don't know is there's a secret hidden door behind a waterfall that you never even knew existed. You haven't tried everything. You've tried everything that you know. You've watched a bunch of YouTube videos. That's not trying everything. Unfortunately, if watching free videos worked, every dog trainer on the planet would be out of a job. For the big problems, the deep-rooted reactivity, you need a guide who can show you where the secret doors are. Alright, this one's gonna sting a bit, and it won't be applicable to all of you, but at least some. And it kind of needs to be said. It's a very common trait that lazy people have reactive dogs. And I'm not saying everyone with a reactive dog is lazy, but if your dog isn't getting enough exercise and fulfillment, their needs are not being met. Imagine a kid that's just been cooped up inside all day with nothing to do. He's gonna be bouncing off the walls, getting into trouble, and looking for an outlet for all that pent-up energy. Your dog is exactly the same. If you hit the snooze button for an extra 15 minutes instead of getting up to walk your dog, you are choosing your comfort over your animal's needs. And a tired, fulfilled dog is gonna be less susceptible to anxiety and less reactive. It is that simple. Stop being lazy. Get up. Meet your dog's needs before you try and fix their behavior. This is a huge piece of misinformation that the force-free world has pushed, really. They say that since most reactivity comes from fear, or at least insecurity, which I agree with, by the way, you can't punish a fearful dog. Now, this sounds nice, but it's wrong, and why so many people stay stuck. Imagine a child is terrified of bees, and one day a bee flies near him, and starts screaming and running into a busy road. As a parent, what do you do? Do you just say, oh, you're scared, that's okay, and let him run into traffic? Of course not. You grab him, you say, no, stop. You use a punishment, a consequence. And again, I'm not talking about hitting the child, of course not hitting your dog, but just using something physical to stop them. You potentially prevent a disaster, and your correction keeps them safe. And it's the same with a reactive dog, the dog that sees another dog and thinks, oh my God, that is going to hurt me, I need to bark and lunge and make it go away. If you just let them do it— the barking and lunging, growling in this example— they believe it saved them. But if you step in with a clear, fair consequence at that moment and you stop their behavior in its tracks, the dog is forced to experience the moment without reacting, and they have this epiphanial realization where they go, 'Oh, the other dog passed by and nothing bad happened. I wasn't gonna get hurt after all.' You have to interrupt the panic so they can learn that their fear was misplaced. Sometimes you have to say no to a fearful dog to show them there's nothing to be afraid of. And finally, the last trap is believing your dog is a special, unique unicorn. You think there's never been a dog like this, not with this exact problem in the history of mankind or canine kind. Nothing will ever work for my dog. And that is categorically untrue. It is extremely, extremely unlikely that your dog's case is unique. But for some reason, everyone thinks their dog is this special snowflake syndrome that has just never been seen before. We've dealt with every little nuanced case that you can imagine. So have a lot of dog trainers. This isn't about us, but 99.9% of the time it's the same story. An insecure dog that deals with its insecurity by barking, lunging, and growling. It's like going to the doctor. You think your strange combination of symptoms have never been seen before, and you Google it and you think it's something disastrous, but the doctor has seen thousands of patients, and they can very quickly recognize the pattern and say, oh, you just have the flu, it just looks a little different. Dog training isn't that complicated. The problem is you've been listening to online dog trainers who are in a constant competition to sound smart to each other, and they use big words and really confusing theories because they care more about their ego than about helping you. I don't serve other dog trainers. I serve dogs and their owners. I don't care about sounding smart. I care about getting results. So there you have it. The 5 traps that are keeping you and your dog stuck. If you've been making these excuses, it's time to stop. Be honest with yourself. If you feel like none of this applies to you, then you probably need more help than anyone else. It's time to take accountability and get your dog the help it needs, whether it's with us or another trainer that gets real results. Stop making excuses. And just start training your dog. If you found this video helpful and you want to join our free community full of dog owners just like you, click the link in the description. It's called the Behaviour Bible. There's a free course, there's free lives, weekly lives, and a safer corner of the internet where you can ask questions without being judged. If not, you can continue to watch our channel. And if you didn't know, any money that YouTube gives us for your viewership goes 100% to Saving Dogs. We send it to various rescues up and down the UK, in some instances across the world. So I wanted to thank you for joining me here today. And if you could hit that subscribe button pressing a button can literally save a dog's life. And I think that's a pretty fair trade-off. See you in the next one.
