Accountability

Author: Denise Partlow

Instagram: @modernk9 Carolinas

Imagine this…

You are working on a sit stay with your dog. You have practiced in a few rooms in your home and have even been able to walk away about 10 feet from your dog without him breaking.

And then the doorbell rings.

Your dog begins to bark and breaks the sit.

You decide to tell your dog to sit again but he doesn’t listen. He just keeps barking. So you say it again, and again and again. He sits but the moment you open the door he breaks the sit and jumps on your guests.

Who is in the wrong here-The dog or the human?

The human. It’s easy to get upset with our dogs in a scenario like this but this is a case where the human needs to hold themselves accountable, not the dog.

They have never practiced this scenario where the dog is sitting when the doorbell rings or when there’s a human at the door. They haven’t even added in any distractions into their training yet, so the dog does not have any pictures in his mind as to what this should look like-because he was not taught.

So in this scenario it is less about holding the dog accountable and more about holding ourselves accountable. We must teach our dogs every step of what they have to do before we can hold them fully accountable for anything.

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