Your Dog Isn't Giving You a Hard Time. They're Having a Hard Time.
- Melissa McNally
- Mar 18
- 5 min read
I hear it in almost every first session I do. The owner sits down, takes a breath, and says some version of the same thing: "I think my dog is just stubborn."
I understand why it feels that way. When you've asked your dog to do something a hundred times and they still aren't doing it, stubbornness seems
like the only logical explanation. But in the vast majority of cases, that isn't what's happening at all.
Your dog isn't stubborn. They have absolutely no idea what you want them to do.
And that's not a criticism of you. It's actually one of the biggest misconceptions in the dog world. The idea that our dogs innately understand that we're trying to teach them something. That they should just get it. That if they don't, something must be wrong with them.
Something isn't wrong with them. Something is missing from the conversation.
Your Dog Doesn't Speak Human
Think about what we actually do when we try to communicate with our dogs. We talk to them constantly. We say their name, we give commands, we narrate our frustration out loud, we praise them, we correct them, we repeat ourselves. Most of us are talking to our dogs all day long.
And here's the hard truth: after a certain point, most of that becomes meaningless noise.
When an owner talks to their dog nonstop, blah blah blah good boy blah blah no blah blah come here blah blah stop that, the dog eventually stops processing it. Not because they're tuning you out on purpose. Because none of it carries consistent meaning. And when you do try to say something meaningful, something you really need your dog to understand, they don't respond. Not because they're being difficult, but because you've accidentally trained them to ignore you.
What your dog is actually doing all day is trying to figure out a world that doesn't make a lot of sense to them, using the information they have available, in a body and brain that is wired very differently from yours.
"Asking your dog to listen to commands in the middle of a reactive episode is like asking someone to solve advanced math problems while having a panic attack."
I sometimes run an exercise with people where I try to teach them to perform one simple physical action without using any words. Just clicking a clicker to mark when they get close to what I want. It sounds simple. It is genuinely hard. People get frustrated, confused, and discouraged within minutes.
And then I remind them: we ask our dogs to do this every single day. Except our dogs are also navigating fear, stress, unpredictable environments, genetics they didn't choose, and a species barrier that means they are fundamentally wired to see the world differently than we do.
One Small Thing You Can Try Today
Here is something simple that can make a real difference: pay attention to how often you say your dog's name.
Most people say their dog's name constantly. As a greeting, as a warning, as punctuation at the end of a sentence, as a way of getting attention, as an expression of frustration. By the time your dog hears their name fifty times before noon, it has stopped meaning anything at all.
Your dog's name should mean one thing: pay attention, something important is coming. But if it gets used for everything, it signals nothing.
Try going one day saying your dog's name only when you actually need their attention for something specific. Watch what happens. Most people are genuinely surprised by how differently their dog responds when their name actually carries weight.
That is a tiny window into how much of our communication with our dogs is working against us without us ever realizing it.
Behavior Is Not Defiance. It's Communication.
When I sit down with a behavior case, I'm not looking at a bad dog. I'm looking at a dog who is communicating the only way they know how, through their behavior, and an owner who hasn't yet been given the tools to understand what their dog is saying.
The dog who barks at every person who walks past the house isn't being naughty. They're doing what dogs do. And here's the part that surprises most people: every time that person walks past and eventually disappears, the dog's brain registers that the barking worked. The threat is gone. The behavior gets stronger. Nobody taught the dog to do this. It just happened, naturally, through repetition and reinforcement, even though nobody intended to reinforce it.
The same thing happens on leash. Your reactive dog loses their mind when another dog appears. You move away, or the other person moves away, and your dog's brain learns that the reaction made the scary thing go away. The behavior makes complete sense from the dog's perspective. It has been working.
Reward and punishment are not as simple as giving a treat or using a correction. Every outcome teaches something. The question is whether you know what's being taught.
Some of It Is Also Just Genetics
There is something else that doesn't get talked about enough: some dogs are born with high levels of fear, anxiety, and stress reactivity. Just like some people are.
This isn't something that happened to your dog because of something you did. It isn't something you can train away with enough repetition or enough willpower. A dog born with a nervous system that is wired toward fear is going to experience the world through that lens regardless of how calm you are or how many treats you have in your pocket.
What we can do is help them. We can teach them, slowly and carefully, that the things that scare them really aren't as bad as they feel. We can build their confidence. We can change the emotional response over time. But flooding them, throwing them into what scares them and hoping they get over it, doesn't work. It usually makes things worse. A slow, controlled approach is what creates lasting change.
Dogs Learn to Learn. Owners Learn to Teach.
Here's what I see in almost every behavior case I work with: the dog doesn't know how to learn, and the owner doesn't know how to teach. And neither of them has been set up to succeed.
Dogs who live with high levels of stress, fear, and anxiety are often so overwhelmed that they literally cannot process what their owner is asking of them. Their nervous system is in survival mode. Learning requires a sense of safety. When a dog doesn't have that, nothing we try to teach them is going to stick. No matter how good the treats are or how consistent we try to be.
So before we talk about exercises or commands or training plans, we talk about that. We talk about what's actually happening in your dog's brain and body. We talk about what they're communicating and why it makes sense given everything they've experienced. We talk about what you can change in their daily life to start shifting their baseline stress level before we ever ask them to do something hard.
Because when a dog finally starts to feel safe, and an owner finally understands what their dog has been trying to tell them, something shifts. The frustration starts to lift. The connection starts to build. And from there, real progress becomes possible.
Your dog isn't giving you a hard time. They're having one. And with the right support, that can change.
Ready to understand what your dog is actually telling you?
That's exactly where we start. Book a consultation and let's figure it out together.
Melissa McNally, CPDT-KA | Harmonious Handling Canine Behavior Consulting
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