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The 3 Rules to Building Your Dog's Confidence: Episode 145
Learning how to build your dog's confidence is going to grow your relationship in a whole new way. There are three main rules when it comes to building your dog's confidence and you need to know them if you are going to be successful in your dog training.
Confidence is Built Through Successful Repetition
It is harder to fix than it is to build
Confidence is relative
If you can understand these three rules your dog will become bulletproof (not actually but pretty close)
Do you want to train with Matador Canine? Try our 14 Day Free Trial with the link below https://www.matadork9.com/14daytrial
#dogtraining #matadorcanine.
00:00:01:02 - 00:00:21:13
Michael Accetta
Hey, guys. Welcome to today's episode. The topic is going to be about building your dog's confidence. We're going to go over the three rules of building your dog's components. And once you understand those, you're going be able to take your anxious, nervous all-over place scatterbrain kind of dog and have them be a hero. I want to tell you two quick stories before we jump into those three rules.
00:00:21:14 - 00:00:43:17
Michael Accetta
No. The first story, actually, I was gonna say number one, but the first story is about a dog, a train named Sky. And we called her Sky because her eyes were wide open all the time and had these beautiful blue eyes and her eyes were open because she was terrified. And that's a sign of a nervous dog. Dogs that have big, wide-open eyes, they're nervous, they're tense.
00:00:43:17 - 00:01:03:09
Michael Accetta
Everything's pulled back. Sometimes it looks like they're smiling because they're actually pulling their cheeks back, and their ears go back. Everything's, like, all tense and tight. We want to help a dog relax. But this dog Sky we ended up working with for maybe two or three months and the program we had in place was all about building up her confidence.
00:01:04:07 - 00:01:25:10
Michael Accetta
It was everything we did. We didn't do obedience. We didn't do manners. We didn't do walking unleash. The sole purpose of the training was to build their confidence. In about two to three months, this dog was then able to focus on obedience and engagement, and manners. And other skills and tricks and all those things. Some people will say obedience is going to boost your dog's confidence, and that is absolutely correct.
00:01:26:02 - 00:01:43:03
Michael Accetta
Manners can boost your dog's confidence and we're going to actually go over why that happens and how that works. But I want you to understand that if your dog is nervous, your sole purpose right now, just like with Sky, your sole purpose should be to build their confidence first if you do not have any confidence in your dog.
00:01:43:07 - 00:02:05:27
Michael Accetta
Your dog doesn't have any confidence. You can't do the fun things that you want to get to do. The second story I want to tell you is about a Dogo Argentino. This is a story I recently heard about that fought off a puma. A feline, a giant feline in the mountains of the woods, wherever they were. A family had gone out, you know, picking food, going on a hike, something like that.
00:02:07:06 - 00:02:33:13
Michael Accetta
And their dog followed them and a puma went to attack the dad and the two little girls, and the dog intervened. The dog won this dog. Argentina won the fight against a puma. A nervous dog cannot do that. A nervous dog cannot think clearly enough in order to enter into that situation, think critically, and react responsibly. Right. It just can't do it and everything.
00:02:33:13 - 00:02:56:02
Michael Accetta
It would run away. A nervous dog is going to flight. They're going to run. They're going to flee. They're going to get out of this situation. A confident dog will stand their ground fight, and defend its territory, just like human beings. A confident individual is going to puff up their chest and stand for what they or believe in. And a coward, a nervous, anxious person might run away in those situations.
00:02:56:03 - 00:03:20:06
Michael Accetta
And I don't mean coward in a negative context, although it does have a negative connotation. I mean coward as in someone who flees a situation. We usually call people cowards in a negative light. But it's not necessarily negative. Just you left a situation when you could have possibly done something different. So let's jump into those three rules and I'm going to break down Sky and the dog Argentina unfortunately, I don't remember the dog's name, but the first rule of confidence.
00:03:20:21 - 00:03:47:06
Michael Accetta
The first rule is confidence is built through successful repetition. It's the only way your dog can build confidence. They cannot do it by doing something once. They cannot do it by repeating something over and over and failing. That's not how confidence is built. Confidence is built through successful repetition. The more you do with your dog and they succeed, they more they're going to want to do and succeed just like your life.
00:03:47:11 - 00:04:03:25
Michael Accetta
If you do something and you're good at it, you're probably going to continue doing it. And that's how a lot of people get into art, music, acting, in that kind of creative style because they were good at it. Someone complimented them for it, and then they continued. They said, Wow, I really enjoy this. I'm going to continue doing it.
00:04:04:22 - 00:04:25:25
Michael Accetta
Super simple, right? Confidence is built through successful repetitions, buying things that your dog is good at, and then continuing to do it over and over and over again. This is where tricks, obedience and manners can have a place if your dog is really struggling and you can just get them to put their butt down and they can just sit, you can reward that.
00:04:26:29 - 00:04:52:19
Michael Accetta
They've now completed one successful repetition of an action, and then we can do it again and then again. And then they become confident in that action itself. They become confident in sitting right. If you want them to be confident about climbing on things, then you have to build that confidence through successful repetitions of their climbing on things. This is why agility is such a wonderful activity and exercise that you should do with your dog.
00:04:52:23 - 00:05:20:00
Michael Accetta
If they're nervous or anxious, the more they get over their fear and they're successful, their confidence will go up and it'll start to trickle into other areas of their life. As long as you then teach, that now moves on to the next. That moves on to rule number two, guys. Confidence is relative confidence is relative. This means that your dog is not going to become confident in one area of life and their entire life is fixed.
00:05:20:22 - 00:05:41:22
Michael Accetta
Think about your own life. If you're confident that you can write a skateboard, that doesn't mean you're confident you can go stand on a stage in front of 30,000 people and give a speech. Those are two very different things. Same thing with your dog. They might not be confident in going up to somebody. They might not be confident in greeting somebody.
00:05:41:22 - 00:06:04:09
Michael Accetta
Politely. They might be nervous about the person, but they have no problem greeting a person with a dog. Those are completely different things, right? Your dog might be so confident to rush up to another dog and say hello. And then there's a person attached to that dog. Cool. Awesome. I love it. But if there's one person by themselves or that person's wearing a hat or persons wearing a glass-like glasses wearing a glass wine glasses, what do I like to wear?
00:06:04:09 - 00:06:30:10
Michael Accetta
Monocle. They're wearing glasses that might instigate fear in your dog. Right? They don't have the confidence to go up to them because maybe they've never been introduced to somebody with glasses or a hat or on a bike. All of those things change the picture for your dog. Okay, not everything is the same, but the more you do with your dog, the easier it's going to be for them.
00:06:31:16 - 00:06:47:00
Michael Accetta
The more you expose them, the more confidence you build in every area of their life, and the easier it's going to be for them. They're there shouldn't be. Okay, well, we're just going to do agility. Let's say you just did that. You found an agility group. You said we're going to work on confidence, added Jody. Your dogs have become amazing at agility.
00:06:47:20 - 00:07:04:23
Michael Accetta
That doesn't mean they can jump up on your couch and not be afraid. That doesn't mean they can get into the car and not be afraid. That's up to you to practice separately. It's definitely going to make it easier, right? The more confident your dog builds, the more confidence they're going to be able to build. But you have to practice it in all of these different areas.
00:07:05:18 - 00:07:35:21
Michael Accetta
So rule number one, confidence is only built through successful repetition. Rule number two, confidence is relative. Rule number three, confidence is easier to build than it is to fix. Confidence is easier to build than it is to fix. If you have a puppy or a young dog, it is imperative right now that you build that dog's confidence. You build it up, you make them bulletproof, you make them a superhero from the beginning.
00:07:36:04 - 00:07:49:26
Michael Accetta
If you do that, it becomes so much easier for the rest of your dog's life. Anything you want to do with your dog, you can then go do. Both of my dogs are insanely confident dogs. They weren't in the beginning, but they are now because of all the work that we've done. And one day I decided, You know what?
00:07:49:26 - 00:08:08:27
Michael Accetta
I'm going to take them kayaking. They've never been on a kayak, right? They've never practiced it. Sure. I took my time and taught them what they should know. But the process was very smooth and very quick because of their confidence. Right. I can ask my dogs to do almost anything and are willing to try. I've had my dogs try to climb trees.
00:08:09:02 - 00:08:32:29
Michael Accetta
I've had my dogs hop over fences. They've had no problem attempting those things because of the confidence that we've practiced over and over and over again. And I never pushed them past what I know they were capable of doing. If I were to do that, I would damage their confidence. Now what? I mean, by it's easier to build than it is to fix is if you realize very early on, oh, my dog's nervous, my dog's anxious.
00:08:33:08 - 00:09:10:14
Michael Accetta
Let me build them up. That is much easier than saying, Oh, I don't know if they're anxious. Let's test it out. You damage your confidence, you destroy. Yeah, destroy their ability to quickly overcome problems and situations, and you've put them at a decent, advantageous position, a disadvantageous position simply because you rush the process. So if you have a dog that might be fearful of people might be fearful, and you introduce them to somebody and they are fearful, now you have to go back and fix that relationship with that person.
00:09:11:20 - 00:09:30:09
Michael Accetta
You're essentially starting backward. But not only do you have to build their confidence back up, you also have to build it past the point of zero, though. Zero was here, right? And we didn't know they were afraid, but now we made them more afraid. Now we have to cover new ground plus all the ground we would have had to cover in the beginning.
00:09:30:24 - 00:09:54:17
Michael Accetta
You're just making double work for yourself. That's why it takes longer and it is harder to fix a confidence issue than it is to build your dog's confidence. When you are training, do not push your dog to the point of failure. Build up their confidence slowly. That way they understand what they should be doing. They feel comfortable in it, and you can progress that much faster.
00:09:54:27 - 00:10:23:26
Michael Accetta
Confidence is only built through successful repetition. So if you are failing, you are not building confidence. That's rule number one. Rule number two, confidence is relative. And rule number three, confidence is easier to build than it is to fix. If you understand those three and you implement them every single day. Confidence is an everyday thing. Practice it every day with your dog morning, afternoon and night if you can, and introduce them to as many new things as you possibly can.
00:10:24:14 - 00:10:45:09
Michael Accetta
That's the secret. It takes a long time. It takes practice, it takes diligence, it takes determination, and discipline. And if you can do all of that, your dog is going to be an absolute superhero. Thank you guys for listening. If you have questions about dog training and want to hear more. Make sure you put it in the comments what problems you're having, and what questions you have for me.
00:10:45:09 - 00:10:56:04
Michael Accetta
I would absolutely love to talk about it on the podcast and on my YouTube channel. If you're not following us on social media, make sure you do that. Matador, Canine Matador. Cannot. Thank you guys for listening and I'll see you next time.
View all episodes
By Matador Canine Brilliance
5
88 ratings
Learning how to build your dog's confidence is going to grow your relationship in a whole new way. There are three main rules when it comes to building your dog's confidence and you need to know them if you are going to be successful in your dog training.
Confidence is Built Through Successful Repetition
It is harder to fix than it is to build
Confidence is relative
If you can understand these three rules your dog will become bulletproof (not actually but pretty close)
Do you want to train with Matador Canine? Try our 14 Day Free Trial with the link below https://www.matadork9.com/14daytrial
#dogtraining #matadorcanine.
00:00:01:02 - 00:00:21:13
Michael Accetta
Hey, guys. Welcome to today's episode. The topic is going to be about building your dog's confidence. We're going to go over the three rules of building your dog's components. And once you understand those, you're going be able to take your anxious, nervous all-over place scatterbrain kind of dog and have them be a hero. I want to tell you two quick stories before we jump into those three rules.
00:00:21:14 - 00:00:43:17
Michael Accetta
No. The first story, actually, I was gonna say number one, but the first story is about a dog, a train named Sky. And we called her Sky because her eyes were wide open all the time and had these beautiful blue eyes and her eyes were open because she was terrified. And that's a sign of a nervous dog. Dogs that have big, wide-open eyes, they're nervous, they're tense.
00:00:43:17 - 00:01:03:09
Michael Accetta
Everything's pulled back. Sometimes it looks like they're smiling because they're actually pulling their cheeks back, and their ears go back. Everything's, like, all tense and tight. We want to help a dog relax. But this dog Sky we ended up working with for maybe two or three months and the program we had in place was all about building up her confidence.
00:01:04:07 - 00:01:25:10
Michael Accetta
It was everything we did. We didn't do obedience. We didn't do manners. We didn't do walking unleash. The sole purpose of the training was to build their confidence. In about two to three months, this dog was then able to focus on obedience and engagement, and manners. And other skills and tricks and all those things. Some people will say obedience is going to boost your dog's confidence, and that is absolutely correct.
00:01:26:02 - 00:01:43:03
Michael Accetta
Manners can boost your dog's confidence and we're going to actually go over why that happens and how that works. But I want you to understand that if your dog is nervous, your sole purpose right now, just like with Sky, your sole purpose should be to build their confidence first if you do not have any confidence in your dog.
00:01:43:07 - 00:02:05:27
Michael Accetta
Your dog doesn't have any confidence. You can't do the fun things that you want to get to do. The second story I want to tell you is about a Dogo Argentino. This is a story I recently heard about that fought off a puma. A feline, a giant feline in the mountains of the woods, wherever they were. A family had gone out, you know, picking food, going on a hike, something like that.
00:02:07:06 - 00:02:33:13
Michael Accetta
And their dog followed them and a puma went to attack the dad and the two little girls, and the dog intervened. The dog won this dog. Argentina won the fight against a puma. A nervous dog cannot do that. A nervous dog cannot think clearly enough in order to enter into that situation, think critically, and react responsibly. Right. It just can't do it and everything.
00:02:33:13 - 00:02:56:02
Michael Accetta
It would run away. A nervous dog is going to flight. They're going to run. They're going to flee. They're going to get out of this situation. A confident dog will stand their ground fight, and defend its territory, just like human beings. A confident individual is going to puff up their chest and stand for what they or believe in. And a coward, a nervous, anxious person might run away in those situations.
00:02:56:03 - 00:03:20:06
Michael Accetta
And I don't mean coward in a negative context, although it does have a negative connotation. I mean coward as in someone who flees a situation. We usually call people cowards in a negative light. But it's not necessarily negative. Just you left a situation when you could have possibly done something different. So let's jump into those three rules and I'm going to break down Sky and the dog Argentina unfortunately, I don't remember the dog's name, but the first rule of confidence.
00:03:20:21 - 00:03:47:06
Michael Accetta
The first rule is confidence is built through successful repetition. It's the only way your dog can build confidence. They cannot do it by doing something once. They cannot do it by repeating something over and over and failing. That's not how confidence is built. Confidence is built through successful repetition. The more you do with your dog and they succeed, they more they're going to want to do and succeed just like your life.
00:03:47:11 - 00:04:03:25
Michael Accetta
If you do something and you're good at it, you're probably going to continue doing it. And that's how a lot of people get into art, music, acting, in that kind of creative style because they were good at it. Someone complimented them for it, and then they continued. They said, Wow, I really enjoy this. I'm going to continue doing it.
00:04:04:22 - 00:04:25:25
Michael Accetta
Super simple, right? Confidence is built through successful repetitions, buying things that your dog is good at, and then continuing to do it over and over and over again. This is where tricks, obedience and manners can have a place if your dog is really struggling and you can just get them to put their butt down and they can just sit, you can reward that.
00:04:26:29 - 00:04:52:19
Michael Accetta
They've now completed one successful repetition of an action, and then we can do it again and then again. And then they become confident in that action itself. They become confident in sitting right. If you want them to be confident about climbing on things, then you have to build that confidence through successful repetitions of their climbing on things. This is why agility is such a wonderful activity and exercise that you should do with your dog.
00:04:52:23 - 00:05:20:00
Michael Accetta
If they're nervous or anxious, the more they get over their fear and they're successful, their confidence will go up and it'll start to trickle into other areas of their life. As long as you then teach, that now moves on to the next. That moves on to rule number two, guys. Confidence is relative confidence is relative. This means that your dog is not going to become confident in one area of life and their entire life is fixed.
00:05:20:22 - 00:05:41:22
Michael Accetta
Think about your own life. If you're confident that you can write a skateboard, that doesn't mean you're confident you can go stand on a stage in front of 30,000 people and give a speech. Those are two very different things. Same thing with your dog. They might not be confident in going up to somebody. They might not be confident in greeting somebody.
00:05:41:22 - 00:06:04:09
Michael Accetta
Politely. They might be nervous about the person, but they have no problem greeting a person with a dog. Those are completely different things, right? Your dog might be so confident to rush up to another dog and say hello. And then there's a person attached to that dog. Cool. Awesome. I love it. But if there's one person by themselves or that person's wearing a hat or persons wearing a glass-like glasses wearing a glass wine glasses, what do I like to wear?
00:06:04:09 - 00:06:30:10
Michael Accetta
Monocle. They're wearing glasses that might instigate fear in your dog. Right? They don't have the confidence to go up to them because maybe they've never been introduced to somebody with glasses or a hat or on a bike. All of those things change the picture for your dog. Okay, not everything is the same, but the more you do with your dog, the easier it's going to be for them.
00:06:31:16 - 00:06:47:00
Michael Accetta
The more you expose them, the more confidence you build in every area of their life, and the easier it's going to be for them. They're there shouldn't be. Okay, well, we're just going to do agility. Let's say you just did that. You found an agility group. You said we're going to work on confidence, added Jody. Your dogs have become amazing at agility.
00:06:47:20 - 00:07:04:23
Michael Accetta
That doesn't mean they can jump up on your couch and not be afraid. That doesn't mean they can get into the car and not be afraid. That's up to you to practice separately. It's definitely going to make it easier, right? The more confident your dog builds, the more confidence they're going to be able to build. But you have to practice it in all of these different areas.
00:07:05:18 - 00:07:35:21
Michael Accetta
So rule number one, confidence is only built through successful repetition. Rule number two, confidence is relative. Rule number three, confidence is easier to build than it is to fix. Confidence is easier to build than it is to fix. If you have a puppy or a young dog, it is imperative right now that you build that dog's confidence. You build it up, you make them bulletproof, you make them a superhero from the beginning.
00:07:36:04 - 00:07:49:26
Michael Accetta
If you do that, it becomes so much easier for the rest of your dog's life. Anything you want to do with your dog, you can then go do. Both of my dogs are insanely confident dogs. They weren't in the beginning, but they are now because of all the work that we've done. And one day I decided, You know what?
00:07:49:26 - 00:08:08:27
Michael Accetta
I'm going to take them kayaking. They've never been on a kayak, right? They've never practiced it. Sure. I took my time and taught them what they should know. But the process was very smooth and very quick because of their confidence. Right. I can ask my dogs to do almost anything and are willing to try. I've had my dogs try to climb trees.
00:08:09:02 - 00:08:32:29
Michael Accetta
I've had my dogs hop over fences. They've had no problem attempting those things because of the confidence that we've practiced over and over and over again. And I never pushed them past what I know they were capable of doing. If I were to do that, I would damage their confidence. Now what? I mean, by it's easier to build than it is to fix is if you realize very early on, oh, my dog's nervous, my dog's anxious.
00:08:33:08 - 00:09:10:14
Michael Accetta
Let me build them up. That is much easier than saying, Oh, I don't know if they're anxious. Let's test it out. You damage your confidence, you destroy. Yeah, destroy their ability to quickly overcome problems and situations, and you've put them at a decent, advantageous position, a disadvantageous position simply because you rush the process. So if you have a dog that might be fearful of people might be fearful, and you introduce them to somebody and they are fearful, now you have to go back and fix that relationship with that person.
00:09:11:20 - 00:09:30:09
Michael Accetta
You're essentially starting backward. But not only do you have to build their confidence back up, you also have to build it past the point of zero, though. Zero was here, right? And we didn't know they were afraid, but now we made them more afraid. Now we have to cover new ground plus all the ground we would have had to cover in the beginning.
00:09:30:24 - 00:09:54:17
Michael Accetta
You're just making double work for yourself. That's why it takes longer and it is harder to fix a confidence issue than it is to build your dog's confidence. When you are training, do not push your dog to the point of failure. Build up their confidence slowly. That way they understand what they should be doing. They feel comfortable in it, and you can progress that much faster.
00:09:54:27 - 00:10:23:26
Michael Accetta
Confidence is only built through successful repetition. So if you are failing, you are not building confidence. That's rule number one. Rule number two, confidence is relative. And rule number three, confidence is easier to build than it is to fix. If you understand those three and you implement them every single day. Confidence is an everyday thing. Practice it every day with your dog morning, afternoon and night if you can, and introduce them to as many new things as you possibly can.
00:10:24:14 - 00:10:45:09
Michael Accetta
That's the secret. It takes a long time. It takes practice, it takes diligence, it takes determination, and discipline. And if you can do all of that, your dog is going to be an absolute superhero. Thank you guys for listening. If you have questions about dog training and want to hear more. Make sure you put it in the comments what problems you're having, and what questions you have for me.
00:10:45:09 - 00:10:56:04
Michael Accetta
I would absolutely love to talk about it on the podcast and on my YouTube channel. If you're not following us on social media, make sure you do that. Matador, Canine Matador. Cannot. Thank you guys for listening and I'll see you next time.