I am in a position where I hear dozens and dozens of dog training questions every week.   I field questions through this website and I also do a call in radio show where I hear all sorts of problems that dog owners are having with their dogs.

There are many times, however,  when the questions border on the crazy and I’m left asking myself, “What happened to common sense?”  There seems to be several questions that I get all the time:

“Every time I take my dog to the park and let him off the leash he runs off and/or gets aggressive with other dogs and/or people.  What do I do?”  Why do you take your dog off leash at the park?!  He’s not off leash trained, obviously, so why would you continue doing something like that?

“Every day my puppy sneaks away from me and pees on the floor.  What do I do?”  Why do you keep letting your puppy get away from you.  It happens every day yet you keep letting it happen.  Don’t let him get away from you!

“Every time I open the door my dog bolts out.  What do I do?” 
“Every time my dog sees a cat he bolts.”
“My dog chases cars every time he’s off leash in the yard.”

Now I can understand that the reason more people aren’t fixing these problems is that they don’t know how to communicate what they want their dog to do.  I get that.  But if you know that your dog is going to do something wrong EVERY SINGLE TIME, you can’t just let it keep happening.  You have to put an end to it now.  If you don’t know how to stop the behavior at least prevent it from happening in the first place and then your dog wont get in the habit of doing the bad behavior.

Preventing bad behaviors is the name of the game.  Dogs are creatures of habit so if you never allow your dog to get in the habit of bad behaviors you can have the dog of your dreams.