My name is Jake, and I suck at one of the fundamental rules of dog training:
Being consistent.
And not just with dog training. I’ve had a hard time with consistency and following through with things my entire life.
As it turns out, I have ADHD. I didn’t get diagnosed until I was an adult, and when I did… wow. Everything made sense.
ADHD hates consistency. Big on starting new projects, not so great about sticking with them every day for a long period of time.
And since dog training is pretty much a long series of repetitive small steps that don’t always show results right away, I guess you could say dog trainer was an, uh, interesting career choice.
I won’t sugarcoat it – a lot of goals I really wanted to accomplish fell by the wayside because of it. I’ve crushed a lot of my own dreams and wasted a lot of time.
But with some projects, I found ways to make them work.
Rather than continue to beat myself up about my inability to be a functional adult, I asked myself, “yeah but what would happen if we set ‘CoNsIStEnCy Is KeY’ on fire and just did dog training without it?”
Okay, I didn’t get rid of it completely – I just embraced the idea of selective consistency.
And every time I inject selective consistency and room for mess and imperfection into a training challenge, THAT’S when I make progress.
Because consistency IS important in dog training. But a lot of what we call “consistency” is actually rigidity in disguise.
And rigidity sucks for everyone.
What does consistency in dog training actually mean?
If you’ve spent more than two minutes researching dog training, you’ve probably encountered some variation of the “consistency is key!” advice.
Never let your dog get away with something you don’t want them doing.
Never allow pulling on the leash.
Never let your puppy out of the crate when they’re crying.
Train for five minutes every single day.
And if you make an exception, you’re supposedly undoing all your hard work.
You get told to “just be consistent” like it’s a test of your character.
Like if you don’t stick to the plan every single day, your dog is gonna become a feral couch-destroying maniac and it’s all your fault.
But that’s not how it works.
Let’s talk about what consistency is actually supposed to accomplish.
Consistency is about clear communication
It means giving your dog reliable, predictable feedback so they know what to expect, what’s expected from them, and how to succeed.
But rigidity means forcing a plan or training technique to stay in place no matter what. It’s following rules to the letter, even when the dog is hopelessly confused, you’re burning out, and everyone’s having a bad time.
One builds trust. The other builds resentment.
And somewhere along the way, we’ve gotten the idea that being consistent means doing everything exactly the same way, every single time, regardless of the circumstances.
Which creates some interesting problems.
What happens when your dog is struggling with an exercise and your chosen training method clearly isn’t working?
What happens when your puppy is panicking in their crate, but you’ve been told that consistency means never letting them out when they’re crying?
What happens when you’re having the week from hell and the thought of adding another task to your daily schedule makes you want to crawl into a hole and sleep for a hundred years?
Are you supposed to grit your teeth and keep doing the same thing?
Of course not.
Consistency works best when it’s paired with flexibility.
Like a bridge that’s been engineered to flex and bend in the wind, instead of snapping like a twig because it’s too rigid and unyielding.
Selective consistency: work smarter, not harder
Here’s a little secret about dog training:
You get to decide where consistency matters.
You can establish very clear rules and expectations in situations where they’re important, while deliberately building flexibility into the rest of your life.
In fact, this is how we teach some of the most important training skills.
Example 1: The sacred recall cue
When it comes to teaching your dog to come when called, conventional wisdom says that you should never call your dog unless you’re certain they’ll respond. Every time you call them, you should follow through and make sure they come to you.
There’s a good reason for this advice. If you want a reliable recall, you need to protect that cue. You want your dog to develop a strong history of responding successfully, so that when you REALLY need them to come back, they do.
The problem is that not all come-when-called scenarios are created equal.
Sometimes I need my dogs to come to me for very important reasons, but sometimes I want them to come over because I want to scratch their ears. Sometimes I want them to come over because I have something cool to show them, but if they don’t care, then it doesn’t matter.
Sometimes I need to collect them for something unpleasant, like bath time.
Am I really supposed to use the same recall cue for all of those scenarios?
Absolutely the frick not.
We teach recalls by using multiple recall cues.
We have a Super Recall cue, which is basically a sacred incantation with strict guidelines so as to maintain an excellent response from the dogs.
And then we have a bunch of casual cues for when I can’t be bothered to do it right.
“Hey River, come here! …no? Okay whatever.”
This allows me to maintain an extremely high standard of consistency where it actually matters, without having to maintain that standard every time I open my mouth.
See also: How We Got This “Stubborn” Teenage Dog to Listen and Come When Called
Example 2: Loose-leash walking without losing the last shred of your sanity
A common piece of loose-leash walking advice goes something like this:
“Every time your dog pulls, stop walking. Every. Single Time. Never move forward if there’s tension on the leash.”
Yeah I don’t know about you, I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a fork.
And what happens when your dog encounters a situation they’re not ready for?
Maybe you’ve been working on leash manners in your quiet neighborhood, but today you’re somewhere much more challenging. Are you supposed to spend twenty minutes frozen like a statue, waiting for your dog to stop losing their mind from excitement long enough to logic their way through figuring out what the hell you want?
That’s miserable for everyone involved.
Which is why we usually teach loose-leash walking with our On Duty and Off Duty method, where the dog learns that there are times when pulling is and is not allowed.
When they’re On Duty, we have clear expectations about how they’re supposed to walk.
When they’re Off Duty, they have more freedom and yes, they’re allowed to pull.
We establish clear signals so the dog knows which set of expectations applies. And because we’ve deliberately created room for flexibility, it’s much easier for me to be consistent about the rules when they DO apply.
See also: Going crazy trying to get your dog to stop pulling on leash? Here are 5 things you can stop doing
But won’t that confuse my dog?
“If I do things like allow pulling sometimes but not others, won’t my dog get confused?”
Potentially!
If you’re constantly changing the rules without giving your dog any way to understand what’s going on, you’re going to have a communication problem.
But dogs are a lot better at understanding context than most people give them credit for.
Think about all the things your dog already knows:
They probably know the difference between you putting on your shoes to go to work, and putting on your shoes to take them for a walk.
They may have learned that jumping on one family member results in enthusiastic attention, while jumping on another gets them nowhere.
They probably know they can’t pee on the kitchen floor, but they can pee three meters away in the backyard.
Maybe they’re allowed on the couch but not the bed. Maybe they’re allowed to wrestle with your friend’s dog, but they’ve learned that the dog next door would prefer to be left alone.
You get the idea.
We can deliberately teach them how to recognize different sets of expectations. The trick is to make those distinctions clear.
You don’t need to maintain the same standards in every situation, you just need to make it understandable to your dog which standards apply.
This is the beauty of selective consistency – it lets you put your energy where it actually matters.
Where consistency can kill your training progress
If you’ve ever found yourself repeating a training exercise over and over while your dog just stares blankly, you know that being consistent doesn’t always mean making progress.
Quick story:
We were helping our virtual training client “Amanda” teach her dog “Bruce” to focus better, even when surrounded by distractions.
Bruce was the type of dog who often gets slapped with the Stubborn and Defiant label: independent, an explorer at heart, not naturally excited about training.
Amanda’s training homework included an exercise that was basically a Leave It. Dog on leash, a bowl of food on the floor. Dog must move away from the temptation and return to the handler.
But Bruce wasn’t getting it. He’d lunge for the food and sharply hit the end of the leash.
Over and over.
We could see the frustration building and Bruce’s already-tiny ember of motivation burning out.
Amanda asked us a question we’ve heard from many people when they hit a training roadblock:
“I just have to be consistent and keep trying, right?”
An understandable assumption.
But actually… no.
Make it easier. Split it into smaller steps.
First, we made the food bowl less tempting by putting it up on a table instead of the floor. Then we split things even more – instead of asking Bruce to move toward Amanda, he just had to look in her direction.
Once Bruce caught on to the game, it was easy to build back up to the full version.
And because he’d built up so much confidence and enthusiasm with the easier version, he became much more engaged overall. Amanda was then able to use this skill to improve his reliability in the real world, with real distractions.
Notice that we didn’t change the ultimate goal; we still wanted Bruce to learn how to disengage from distractions and focus on Amanda.
We were consistent about the goal and flexible about how we got there.
When a dog struggles with a training exercise, good trainers don’t just repeat the same thing over and over and hope they figure it out.
Good trainers adjust.
They find the version of the task that the dog can do, and level up from there.
It might seem like splitting would make training take longer. But it actually speeds it up. By making it really easy for the dog to succeed, you quickly get a string of wins and build momentum. Instead of wasting time (and killing motivation) with a string of failures.
And when your dog realizes they can trust you to guide them instead of scolding or pushing through, training becomes a lot more fun for everyone.
See also: He Knows What to Do, He Just Doesn’t Want To? Three Reasons Dogs Ignore Commands
Sometimes, consistency means changing the plan
Let’s look at a few other situations where dog owners are commonly told to be consistent.
“Never let your puppy out of the crate when they’re crying.”
Let’s say you’re working on crate training. You’ve been told that if you let your puppy out when they’re crying, they’ll learn that crying gets them what they want. So you need to be consistent and never open that door until they’re quiet.
But what about when your puppy is genuinely frightened and starting to panic?
What if they’re not panicking, but they’re overtired and their brain is fried and they’re not in a place where they can learn anything?
Are you just supposed to ignore all context in the name of consistency?
Nah.
Start by asking yourself what you’re actually trying to accomplish.
Presumably, you want your puppy to feel safe and comfortable in their crate. You want them to be able to relax when they’re confined, and eventually develop the skills they’ll need to cope with being alone.
That’s your goal. But whether your puppy is panicking or losing their mind from frustration, whatever you’re currently doing isn’t getting you closer to it.
Comfort your puppy. Help them feel better. Then reevaluate your approach and figure out how to make the next training session easier.
See also: Training a Behavior vs. Changing an Emotion: What All Dog Owners Need to Know
“Always redirect your puppy’s biting to a toy.”
You’re trying to teach your puppy to stop biting you.
You’ve been told that every time they bite, you should redirect them to an appropriate chew toy.
So you do.
And your puppy keeps biting the shit out of you.
That’s partly because “puppy biting” isn’t just one thing. It has a bunch of potential causes. Maybe they’re overtired, frustrated, or overstimulated. Maybe they have a legitimate need that isn’t being met.
Whatever the case, repeatedly shoving a toy into their mouth isn’t going to solve the problem.
But a nap might. Or some changes to their routine might, or clearer communication about how to interact with you might, etc.
The point is that the puppy’s behavior is giving us useful information. When we insist on responding to every instance of biting in exactly the same way, we’re effectively ignoring that information and again, ignoring all context.
You can be consistent about teaching your puppy how to interact with you while responding flexibly to what they need in the moment.
See also: The Puppy Who Wouldn’t Stop Biting: a Case Study in Overcoming Extreme Puppy Bitiness
“Train for five minutes every single day.”
Look, I understand why trainers recommend short daily training sessions. Regular practice is useful. Five minutes is a manageable amount of time for many people. It’s generally much easier to make progress when you practice a skill regularly.
Great advice!
Until it becomes another obligation on an already overwhelming to-do list.
Maybe you have a demanding job, or three demanding kids, or health problems. Maybe your brain simply refuses to cooperate with rigid daily schedules.
And now, on top of everything else, you’re feeling guilty because you haven’t done your five minutes of dog training.
Here’s a controversial suggestion:
Don’t.
Take a break.
Maintain whatever everyday routines and management strategies are necessary to keep everyone safe and reasonably happy.
And when you have the capacity, pick your training back up.
Maybe that means doing a little extra training on the weekend. Maybe it means finding ways to incorporate training into things you’re already doing.
You can absolutely benefit from regular practice without forcing yourself to follow a schedule that doesn’t work for your life.
Build a training plan you can actually follow
Here’s a lesson I’ve learned, forgotten, and re-learned an embarrassing number of times over the years:
If a plan requires me to become a fundamentally different person in order to follow it, it’s not a good plan.
I can have the best intentions in the world.
I can buy the notebook. Set the reminders. Make the schedule. Promise myself that THIS TIME I’m really going to stick with it.
And sometimes I do! For about three days.
Then life happens, my attention wanders, and suddenly it’s a month later and I’ve completely forgotten that I was supposed to be working on something.
I could spend the rest of my life beating myself up about this.
Or I could design systems that accommodate the way my brain actually works.
This is where selective consistency has been super handy. By identifying the things that genuinely require consistency, I can devote my limited energy to maintaining those standards. And by deliberately building flexibility into everything else, I make the whole process more sustainable.
This applies to dog training regardless of whether you have ADHD.
Dogs learn best when you meet them where they’re at.
And humans stick best to plans that are sustainable.
If your current approach is backfiring, please, I beg of you, don’t just grit your teeth and keep doing it harder.
Zoom out, look at the bigger picture, and ask:
- What am I actually trying to accomplish?
- What is this behavior telling me?
- What does my dog need right now?
- How can I respond in a way that helps them succeed?
- What can I change about this plan to make it more realistic for my energy, schedule, and the way my brain works?
Consistency is but one tool in our toolbox (one key on our keychain, if you will)
Next time someone (perhaps your own brain, even) tells you that consistency is key, ask what exactly they want you to be consistent about.
Your goals? Your communication? Your training schedule? Your timing? The overall training strategy? The individual training tactics? The hand motions you make while training a particular trick?
Because those things aren’t exactly interchangeable.
If you’re teaching your dog a specific cue, clear and predictable communication is key.
If you’re trying to help your dog overcome a training challenge, flexibility to adjust your approach when they’re struggling is key.
And if you’re trying to build a training routine that you can maintain over the long term, a plan that works for your actual life is key.
So if you, too, are consistency-challenged and worried you can’t live up to unrealistic dog training standards…
Either because of your brain or because the world is a dumpster fire and you just CAN’T today…
Give selective consistency a try.
Figure out where consistency genuinely matters, build clear communication around those things, and give yourself some breathing room everywhere else.
When something isn’t working, change the plan.
Your dog doesn’t need you to be a perfect rule-following machine. They need you to help them understand the world, learn useful skills, and navigate life together.
You can do all of that while leaving plenty of room for mess and imperfection.
Trust me. I’ve made a career out of it.
