Hard Truth: Your Dog Doesn’t Need You To Be The “Leader”

There are some outdated training ideologies becoming popular on mainstream social media that are harmful to the dog training industry. You may hear/see statements like “be a leader and your dog will follow” or “project calm, confident energy and your dog will behave”. It sounds convincing until you ask, what is the dog actually learning ?

Energy isn’t a training method, leadership isn’t a behaviour and pack theory isn’t a substitute for understanding why a dog behaves the way they do. Your dog doesn’t learn to walk with you because you stood taller and acted more confident, a reactive dog doesn’t suddenly overcome fear or frustration because you changed your “energy”. It isn’t dog training or psychology, it’s an outdated concept being presented as such.

Dogs are social animals who have evolved alongside humans to communicate, cooperate and work with us. They don’t need to be your follower, subordinate or member of some household pack.

Dog training means teaching behaviours, building reinforcement history, creating clarity, understanding motivation, managing thresholds, developing engagement, developing play, providing fair consequences and providing rules, structure and boundaries. Most importantly, addressing the emotional driver behind behaviours. Doing so is how you actually learn to understand dogs and the psychology behind their actions.

You can control a dog without actually teaching them anything productive, you can suppress behaviour without changing the emotion underneath it and you can make a dog look “calm” without actually teaching them how to cope with their struggles. Suppression can look like obedience but real training gives the dog skills they can actually use and rely on without a humans constant aid. Your dog doesn’t need you to be a leader, they need a partner who understands how to teach them.