Training

The most common owner complaint about a 'trained' dog is that the dog responds reliably at home but fails at the park, in the vet's office, or in any unfamiliar environment. The owner concludes the dog is being stubborn or selectively obedient. The actual cause is stimulus generalization: a behaviour conditioned in a single environment is, by default, tied to that environment's specific cues — the room, the floor, the handler's posture, the absence of distractions, the presence of the treat pouch. Transfer to new environments requires explicit re-training, not just more practice. The article walks through why this happens, the protocol for proofing across environments and distractions, and the common owner errors that make generalization slower.