Recently a dog owner reached out to me and asked a valid question. “My dog listens to me but not my wife. Why is that?”. I get questions like this and vice versa where it is someone else who the dog doesnt listen to. There is a reason for this and i will explain it in this article.

The answer:

Most dogs do not generalize well.

What that means is that dogs, whose behavior is not proofed for different situations and scenarios, might not do the behavior all the time.

For example, i might teach my dog to not run out of my front door.

But that doesnt mean that they understand not to run out of my neighbor’s front door or a friend’s front door.

Its pretty simple to us because we make these connections.

Dog’s do not easily make these connections.

This means that you have to show them enough times. As a general rule for me i need to make sure i do at least 100 successful repetions for each scenario.

Teach your dog not to go out your front door and have them do that successfully 100 times. Then do the same thing for your friend’s door 100 times.

You can make sure this goes toward people as well.

If your dog jumps on one person and learns how to stop, then you still have to do that with more people to generalize the behavior.

I give you the number 100 reps as something to work toward. The reality is some dogs you will have to do more and some dogs a little less.

And then we have to add distractions to proof the behavior.

I know it seems like a lot, but this is what it takes to get your dog to level where most people want.

If you want help with this we can walk you through it step by step.

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Otherwise be on the lookout for more post that will help you.

If you have questions that you want answered then send it at Fraternityk9@gmail.com