If you’re going to be a dog trainer, you’re going to have to come to the place where you take charge. Take charge of you, take charge of your dog, take charge of your training. You need to own it to make it work.

When we start in our dogged pursuits, we want to do it right. And we quickly realize that there are a lot of people who know a heck of a lot more about it than we do and are awed by their skill. This is good, this is healthy. We need to gravitate to those trainers who resonate with us. Those trainers who get good results and have a relationship with their dog that we want to emulate. We need to listen, to ask questions, to watch.

But we can’t fall into the trap of handing our training over to them – physically or mentally.

Don’t fall victim to the list of “buts”

“But they know better than me”

“But I’m not completely sure about what I’m doing”

“But I’ve never done this before”

“But I may make a mistake”

All of the above are very likely true.  Big deal. It’s okay. You have a dog and they are always learning and adapting. Whatever trainer you’re learning from had a very similar beginning and worked like crazy to get to the point where you want to learn from them today.

When we allow another to own our training (and it’s just as often in a mental sense as them physically doing our training for us) we become adept at following, but not so much at doing. We’re not taking responsibility but placing it on someone else. I believe that this tends to create a bit of a learned helplessness. A “I’ve never done this before so I can’t do it” mentality. Or a “I have to do x, y, z or I’ll fail”, or “if only I was as natural as them, then I’d get better results”. We become either more passive and let them do the work, or frantic and overwhelmed because we can’t do it all right, can’t do it all just the way they would.

Those frames of mind are incredibly counterproductive in training. Because you’re letting things happen to you and don’t have confidence in what you’re doing.

And if you don’t have confidence in yourself, how in the world is your dog supposed to have confidence in working with you?

So get out there, keep learning, but start owning up to what you’re doing. Get out of the “but I don’t know how” and start trying stuff. It doesn’t have to be everything, you can start with small with this. Your future dog training self will thank you for it. And so will your dog.