3 Training Goals That Go Against Your Dog’s Nature

As dog owners, we focus on training that allows our dogs to more easily fit into our world. After all, we don’t want a small wild animal marking our furniture, digging holes in the backyard, or eating everything in the pantry.

The problem is, we don’t often acknowledge just how many of our dog’s natural traits and tendencies we’re asking them to suppress in order to live a harmonious life with us! And, that can lead us to taking for granted just how incredible it is that they’re able and willing to learn our rules. It can also make us feel frustrated and impatient during the training process when we assume that our dog’s should just get it instead of understanding how much willpower it takes for our furry friends to put their own intuition aside and take our lead.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at 3 training goals that go against our dogs’ nature so that we can have more empathy and try to find common ground! 

Training Goal #1: Walking slowly on a leash
Evolutionarily speaking, your dog is a speed machine. 

All canine species, from the Arctic wolf to the African wild dog to the Dingo, use what’s called digitigrade locomotion—the scientific name for what is essentially tip-toeing. Whereas we humans walk by placing our entire foot on the ground, heel-to-ball-to-toe, digitigrade animals walk only on their toes with the rest of the foot lifted. 

This adaptation allows them to use less energy while moving more quickly than us humans. With very little effort, most canines can maintain a pace of 8 to 10 miles per hour and cover distances of many miles a day.

What this means is that it’s likely quite awkward for dogs to slow down enough to keep pace with us. Imagine the patience it would take to walk in step with a tortoise or toddler just learning how to stand up, every single time you left the house (our readers with kiddos will know that at a certain point, you put the baby in a stroller so you can get to where you’re going!)

If you have a dog that pulls on the leash, then, you can start to understand that they’re not doing it to make your life harder but probably out of frustration or impatience at your slowpoke pace. There are a couple of things that you can do to compromise with them:

• Use positive reinforcement for leash training. By giving your dog treats or verbal praise for staying at your side, they can learn that it’s not so bad to slow it down.
• Walk them in a group. As social animals, many dogs enjoy the experience of walking in a group with other dogs. And, they may be more tolerant to a slower pace when it means that they get to cruise in a pack.
• Give them safe places where they can stretch their legs. Whether it’s a fenced backyard, dog beach, or alongside you while you ride a bike, it’s a good idea to find an activity that allows your dog to trot at their natural pace.

Training Goal #2: Calm car rides
It can be easy to forget that our dogs are walking around with a couple of senses that are far superior to ours! It’s believed, for instance, that a dog’s sense of smell is up to 100,000x stronger than ours while they have a hearing range of about 4 times the distance of ours and with a wider range of frequency sensitivity. 

Couple those super powers with the fact that being in a car usually means adventure, and it makes sense that your dog might get overstimulated every time you buckle up. If they whine, bolt from window to window, and seem generally unable to calm the heck down, it’s likely because the combination of scents, sounds, motion, and anticipation is creating a supercharge of neurological responses in the brain. Unfortunately, when we raise our own voices to try to command them to quiet down, it only adds to the overwhelming experience.

Luckily, there are training methods that you can use to help Fido feel more relaxed in the car. In fact, we have an entire article dedicated to helping prepare a puppy to ride in the car. But here are a few tips for dogs of any age:

• Lower the music volume
• Reward calm behavior
• Take shorter trips around the neighborhood or to run errands so that car rides don’t become associated with high excitement activities
• Install BreezeGuards so that your dog can receive scents and sounds without putting their head out of the window

Training Goal #3: Self-restraint around food 
Some dogs are completely unmotivated by food while others will bowl you over if you get in between them and their favorite snack. And, while we might all wish that our dogs would err on the side of being unbothered by food, it’s actually more evolutionarily typical that your dog would get scrappy for scraps.

This is because canines have a natural instinct to scarf down food whenever it’s available. Whereas felines evolved to be highly specialized hunters, canine evolution took a more wide-net approach to survival. Your dog’s early ancestors evolved to be opportunistic eaters, allowing them to digest a wide range of food sources from berries to roughage like grass to meat. Basically, their instinct tells them not just to eat when they’re hungry, but whenever they see food available—and for a dog, food is a very loose term!

That being said, if you feel that your dog is unnaturally hungry, it’s worth having them checked out by a vet. It could be possible that a digestive problem or other medical condition could be causing a nutritional deficiency. 

But, once your pup has been cleared clinically, try to have a little bit of empathy for their food obsession. After all, it’s likely baked into their genes. A good training goal could be to reward your dog for showing even the slightest bit of self control around food. By offering them an even tastier treat for not eating something off the ground, you can start to harness that food obsession for positive reinforcement training.

Learn to work with your dog’s nature, not against it!
If you want more successful training sessions and harmony in your household, it’s a good idea to start thinking of the ways that you can find middle ground between your human rules and your dogs’ natural instincts. So, how will you compromise with your amazing canine?