Hard Truth: The Environment Could Be Training Your Dog More Than You Are

I’m sure you’ve heard “you get what you reinforce” before. Here’s the truth, your dog is being reinforced whether you’re involved or not, meaning you also get what you allow.

The majority of reinforcement in your dogs life can come from the environment, not from you. The dog that pulls and gets where it wants to go is being reinforced. The dog that barks and lunges at people and dogs or chases wildlife is being reinforced. The dog that barks or avoids and makes pressure go away is being reinforced. The dog that ignores your recall because something else is more interesting and valuable is being reinforced. Dogs are learning 24/7.

This is why good training isn’t just about teaching and understanding behaviour. It’s about building engagement, emotional stability, productive structure, obedience, exposure to the world and suitable outlets for your dogs genetics and individual needs.

Stop focusing only on what you don’t want and start showing your dog what does work, actually acknowledge good choices rather than take them for granted. Dogs repeat behaviours that are successful. Reinforce engagement, obedience and good decisions often enough and they become habits. People spend far too much time worrying about training labels, markers and reinforcement protocol. Markers aren’t magic, they were designed to buy you time to reinforce a behaviour or choice and communicate what the dog did right, that’s it. The real question is whether you’re reinforcing enough to matter. Be present, motivating, inspiring and most importantly, relevant. If everything in the environment is more valuable than you, the environment will continue to do the training.

At the end of the day, dogs become good at whatever they practice. If your dog spends more time practicing pulling, ignoring, reacting and self rewarding rather than engaging with you or making good choices, that’s exactly what they’ll get good at. Training isn’t just about what happens during the time you set aside for it, it’s also about the rest of the time that you haven’t set aside and how you live with your dog. Your dog is already in training even if you aren’t working with a trainer. The only question is, are you the one doing it ?