The 99 Percent

99 percent of the time the dogs with a bite history are good dogs. 99 percent of the time the dogs with separation anxiety are perfect family pets. And 99 percent of the time the dogs with severe enough behavioral issues to require rehoming or, worse, euthanasia, are wonderful and loving companions.

These are the extreme examples, of course, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of the difficulties we experience with our dogs come in the form of the 1 percent. And we can get trapped into thinking that it is the 1 percent that we need to fix in order to solve those problems. But it’s actually how we infuse our training, our expectations and our rules into the 99 percent that the problems get resolved.

For an example, let’s briefly consider the leash reactive dog. For clarity, my definition of a leash reactive dog is a dog that is not necessarily aggressive (i.e. willing to do harm to another dog/person with their teeth) but a dog that will create a lot of noise and ruckus when they see something (usually another dog), typically on leash. There might be a time when we need to deal with the issue as it is occurring, but usually we work with the dog around very limited distractions and create a system for what we expect 99 percent of the time. Then, and only then, do we expose the dog to the objects/dogs/people that trigger their reactivity.

We teach what we expect, we train the dog to reliably follow through on those expectations, and then we proof the dog around the 1 percent.

And that is how the 99 percent dog progresses towards being a 100 percent dog.