Dog Training Frustration

Training your dog is not always as easy as whipping up peaches and cream. It’s also not full of sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. Honestly, it can be downright frustrating.

Please bear with me on the dog-training frustrations front, it gets a little brighter at the end of this piece.

Reality Means Frustration and Elation

One thing I promised myself, and that I am now sharing with you, is that I would keep this site as realistic as possible. I didn’t want to set high expectations and promise that life would be easy if you were a novice owner of a particularly stubborn breed of dog. Nothing is gained by people who claim you can train your dog, and all will be rosy. It just makes us feel like failures. And we’re not, and neither are our dogs.

Before we brought Pandora home, I started watching dog training videos. I knew I was a novice, and I knew Australian Cattle Dogs are not recommended for novice owners. So, I watched video after video. One thing that stood out, was that professional dog trainers made it look somewhat easy.

Each episode began with a problem that was the video’s focus and, in a half-hour, we got the final results. We know, realistically, these trainers didn’t get those results in a half an hour. Yet, we don’t know how long it took to get those results. We don’t know how many hours a day they worked with the dog; we don’t know how many days they worked with the dog.

I wanted to avoid that. I want people to have a real sense of how long training can take. Some things Pandora picks up quick, and some things…well, that’s today’s focus.

Complete, Utter Frustration

Last week was a low point. I hit rock bottom. Frustration punched my gut and stomped on my heart.

Each time my husband and I take our evening walk, I see dogs with their people, walking happily around the lake. Last week, every time I saw a person with their dog, I started to cry.

The Melt Down

I can’t get Pandora to walk with us near vehicles. After yet, another regression in the training, my heart broke. I went into full-on self-pity mode:
She’s never going to walk with us. She’s never going to get over this fear. I can’t train her anymore. I’ve hit a wall and there’s nothing left I can do.

I was so gut-wrenchingly destroyed, that when I went out to work with Pandora, I had no feelings. Complete numbness. I knew nothing was going to change. If this were a movie, this is where I would say, “But she did it! This was the day she walked up to the top of the driveway.” Alas, this is not a movie, she didn’t go to the top of the driveway. It was the same thing as the previous two and a half weeks.

The only difference is that Pandora knew something was off with me. Pandora’s cure all is Frisbee, so she’d bring the disc and I’d half-heartedly play with her. I truly felt I failed her.

Each evening I spent a good hour tossing and turning: is it me? Am I that inept at training? Is it Pandora’s stubbornness? Could it be her fear of cars? Is it that her hearing is so sensitive that the cars sound 40x louder than we hear them?

The Moment of Clarity

I felt defeated. It was time I saved up and paid for a professional dog trainer. But, at $150 per hour (some are the same price but only 30-minutes), I realized a professional is not in our immediate future. I’m sure Pandora would need many lessons.

I started journaling about my frustration. We’ve been working on this walking issue since we brought her home. She’s two now. A month and a half ago, I made it a Priority Training Exercise. Meaning, that was the main task we would work on every day.

The first week went well. I got her to the telephone pole. Joy of all joys! Then we went backwards. She stopped walking tentatively with me and started pulling the leash for the back yard. She started turning her back to me and crouching down. I had to walk backwards and offer endless treats to get her to go back to the telephone pole.

It was then I realized. I was using regular dog treats.

We Are Making Progress – Frustration is Waning

Regular dog treats. This may not seem like a big deal, but one year ago, I couldn’t even get her past the front end of our vehicle. And I was using the “big guns” of dog treats. Bacon. A full slice of real bacon. She wouldn’t even walk with me for that.

Now, even though we struggle, even though it seems like endless setbacks, she will follow me for a regular dog treat.

If you look at the picture above, you’ll see where the front of the car is. That was as far as I could get her a year ago. Now, we can get to the telephone pole. By this time next year, we should be able to get to the top of the driveway.

Don’t give up. You will get some wins and some frustrations, don’t quit. We’ll get there. I don’t know when, but I believe we will. You will, too.