It’s Not Your Dog — It’s the Conversation You Didn't Know You Were Having

Let’s get this out of the way:

Your dog isn’t plotting against you. They’re not stubborn. And they DEFINITELY didn’t wake up wondering how to ruin your day.

If anything, the only chaotic creature in the room… might be you.

People love to say their dog is “being dramatic.” But the truth?

Most dogs aren’t dramatic — they’re confused. Usually because we’re sending mixed signals like a malfunctioning turn signal.

Last month I worked with a dog everyone swore was “stubborn” and “selectively deaf.” You know the type — smart enough to open a cabinet, but apparently too dumb to understand “sit.”

Except the dog wasn’t the problem. He was reading a completely different instruction manual than the humans were speaking.

Every time they said “sit,” their body was saying “come here.” Every time they tried to reward calm behavior, their tone sounded annoyed. And every time the dog actually got something right, the moment had already passed because everyone was two steps behind.

He wasn’t stubborn — he was playing charades with people who weren’t even looking up from the clues.

This is what I mean when I say most “dog problems” aren’t dog problems.

They’re timing problems. Consistency problems. Or humans projecting their own chaos onto a creature who has no idea what a mortgage, deadlines, or emotional baggage even is.

Try this today — without me giving away my entire training program:

Pick one behavior

one word

one signal,

and use ONLY that for the next 48 hours.

No variations. No “Well sometimes I say it this way…” No extra hand motions that accidentally translate to “Go climb a tree.” Just one clean message.

You’d be shocked how fast things change when you stop speaking in riddles.

Dogs aren’t plotting our downfall — they’re just trying to make sense of the noise.

Clean up the signal, and the behavior follows.

The rest? That’s what I’m here for.

I’ve spent years watching people swear their dog was “broken,” “defiant,” “too hyper,” or — my personal favorite — “just like their ex.”

Almost every time, the dog is sitting there like: “Dude… I literally have no idea what language you’re speaking.”

Early in my training career, I worked with a dog who acted like he had never heard a human word in his life. Total meltdown. Chaos. Zero cooperation. The owner was frustrated. The dog was overwhelmed. And I, in my rookie optimism, was determined to find the real problem.

Spoiler: it wasn’t the dog. It was the conversation between them — a mess of mixed signals, off-timing, and expectations that made zero sense from the dog’s perspective.

The dog wasn’t misbehaving…He was responding perfectly to the information he had been given. It just wasn’t the information the humans meant to give.

That was the day I learned the most important lesson in dog training:

Most “dog issues” are human communication issues wearing a dog costume.

The dog wasn’t stubborn. He wasn’t dominant. He wasn’t broken. He was confused.

And honestly? Haven’t we all been there?

People want to believe training is about controlling the dog. It’s not. It’s about controlling the conversation.

Dogs read timing, tone, patterns, body language, and consistency with Olympic-level accuracy. Humans? We can barely read email subject lines correctly.

So when your dog “isn’t listening,” they’re not being defiant…They’re responding to the messages you’re actually sending —not the ones you think you’re sending.

There’s no shame in that. Just truth. Truth that’s extremely fixable once you finally see the mechanics behind it.

Your dog isn’t ignoring you —they’re following the rules of a conversation you didn’t realize you were having.

Change the conversation, and you change everything.

(Or you can keep blaming the dog if you want…but the results won’t change until you do.)