Episode #275 Training the Human: Expectations, Consistency & Why Your Puppy Isn’t the Problem

Why does puppy training sometimes feel inconsistent—even when you’re trying your best?

In this episode of The Puppy Training Podcast, Amy Jensen dives into one of the most overlooked parts of dog training: training the humans. Your puppy is constantly learning from patterns, routines, and reinforcement, which means unclear expectations and inconsistent responses can create confusion fast.

You’ll learn:

•  Why consistency is so difficult in real life 
•  How to create family training plans that actually work 
•  Common reasons training seems to “stop working” 
•  How to set realistic expectations for puppies 
•  Why management and routines matter just as much as commands 
•  Simple ways to improve communication with your dog 

Whether you’re struggling with jumping, barking, leash pulling, potty training, or simply feeling frustrated with progress, this episode will help you refocus on clear communication, patience, and practical consistency.

Because successful puppy training isn’t about perfection—it’s about building understanding and trust together.

Listen now and learn how small changes in human behavior can create big improvements in your puppy’s behavior.

Transcript

Dog Training Is Human Training

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today we are talking about training humans. Honestly, I think that's the hardest part. Welcome to the Puppy Training Podcast, the show designed to help you raise a confident, well-behaved puppy using positive practical training methods. Each week we'll explore real-life training strategies, break down common puppy challenges, and give you clear, step-by-step guidance you can start using right away. Whether you're dealing with potty training, biting, jumping, or just want to build a stronger bond with your pup as their handler, you're in the right place. Hi you guys, welcome back to the puppy training podcast. I'm Amy Jensen. I'm the founder of Baxter and Bella the online puppy school. If you haven't checked that out yet, you should maybe go check that out. But I like to get on weekly and give you just a short 10-minute-ish tip on your puppy, your dog training. I just love talking dogs. So here we are. And today we're talking about the people that are behind the dogs. And when people ask me, is it harder to teach the dog or the human? I usually answer it's the human. Most puppy training challenges are not actually because your dog is stubborn. A lot of people will say, My puppy is being stubborn, dominant, they're manipulative, or they're just trying to be bad or get me back, right? But usually the biggest challenge is unclear communication on our part. Maybe we're inconsistent or we have unrealistic expectations. Sometimes humans accidentally change the rules from day to day. And please know that you are normal. You are not failing if consistency feels hard. You're just human. And life gets busy, schedules change, kids get involved. We're coming up with a big schedule change here as summer approaches. One person allows jumping while another corrects it. And one day the puppy gets rewarded for barking because it's so cute. And the next day everyone is frustrated because the barking won't stop. Dogs thrive on patterns. So today we're going to talk about why consistency is so hard, how to create family training plans that actually work, what to do when training feels like it's just not quite working, and how to simplify your expectations so both you and your puppy can succeed. Let's go.

Why Consistency Changes Everything

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Okay, first off, why consistency matters so much. Dogs are constantly learning. Everything about their environment is teaching them something. So not just when you're doing a formal training session, and not just when they see food or smell food. It's not just when you say sit. They are learning all day long from outcomes. What works, what gets them attention, what earns rewards, what makes humans respond or pay attention to me. That means every interaction teaches something. Now, if jumping sometimes earns attention, even negative attention, it can still reinforce the jumping. If barking at the back door sometimes gets the puppy outside quickly, barking becomes more likely. The puppy's kind of figured out that works. If pulling on leash eventually gets that dog where they want to go, guess what? They'll probably pull next time. Now, dogs repeat behaviors that are reinforced. Now, that reinforcement can come from us, it can also come from outside factors. Now, that's not your dog being stubborn, that's learning. And honestly, this is why consistency matters more than perfection. You do not need to be a perfect dog trainer. You just need to be predictable enough that your puppy can understand the pattern. Because inconsistent reinforcement creates confusion. And sometimes it actually creates stronger, unwanted behaviors. Think about going to Vegas and doing a slot machine. People keep pulling that lever because occasionally, every once in a while, it pays off. Dogs work similarly. If countersurfing only works once in a while, they might keep trying for months because maybe this time there's going to be that piece of pizza on the counter. That's what we call intermittent reinforcement, and it's very powerful. So if we accidentally reward behaviors inconsistently, we actually often make them harder to eliminate. Now

Why Families Struggle To Stay Consistent

SPEAKER_00 3:51

let's be realistic. Consistency sounds easy in theory, but in real life, I know it's hard, especially with puppies, because puppies are exhausting. You're tired, you're busy, you're trying to work, maybe you have kids, maybe you're sleep deprived, maybe you thought your puppy would learn faster than this. And sometimes consistency breaks down because we're emotional. One day I have patience, the next day I don't. One day the puppy jumping is cute, and the next day I'm carrying groceries and suddenly it's frustrating. That inconsistency is incredibly normal. Another reason consistency is difficult is because families often don't have shared or the same expectations. Maybe one person wants the dog up on the couch and another doesn't. Maybe one person feeds them from the table and another says absolutely not. Maybe one person says cues like down and another says off, but they mean the same thing. The puppy isn't trying to ignore you. The puppy's just trying to decode 10 different systems at once. So they're feeling overwhelmed too. Now imagine learning a new language where every person uses different words for the same thing. That's what many dogs experience. And honestly, this is why I often say dog training is really human training. So here at Baxter and Bella, we spend a lot of time coaching humans because clear communication matters just as much as the actual training exercises. So how do we fix this?

A Simple Family Training Plan

SPEAKER_00 5:14

First, we're going to keep it simple. The best family training plans are not complicated. They're simply clear, specific, and we want to be realistic. So here are a few things I recommend. Number one, decide on rules first. Before training your puppy, teach every human in your household what are the rules with our dog. So have a family conversation. Is the dog allowed on furniture? How do we greet guests? Where does the dog sleep at night? What words are we going to use for cues? What behaviors are non-negotiable? Things like that. You cannot consistently reinforce behaviors if the humans don't agree on the expectations. Number two, use shared cued words. Pick one cue per behavior. So do we say come? Do we say here? Do we say puppy puppy come? Do we say get over here? We need to pick one. Choose one that means come. The clearer the communication, the faster your puppy's going to learn that behavior. Number three is we just want to focus on a few behaviors at a time. Many families try to fix everything all at once. I want to fix the jumping, I want to fix the biting, I want to fix the potty training, the leash walking, the recall, the barking, the crate training. It's really overwhelming for both you and your dog. So instead, let's just choose some top priorities. Maybe with a brand new puppy, my top priorities are potty training, sleep routines, and let's just eliminate the jumping. And then we'll celebrate all the small wins and then move to the next thing. There's no deadline, you guys, on training your dog. There's no expiration date. There's no window you have to have your puppy trained in before training expires. So you have your entire dog's life to work on things. And we don't ever expect them to be perfect. I don't ever expect me to be perfect. I don't expect my kids to be perfect. I don't expect my dogs to be perfect, right? We just want to live together happily. So number four would be make training part of daily life. If your dog doesn't need to hold a two-hour downstair, we don't need to train a two-hour downstay. What will I actually use in daily life? What will help my dog be happier in our home? What will help me be happier with a dog in my home and work on those things? So short sessions are way better than long sessions. We want to practice simple little things like sit before I put your food down, wait at the door instead of bolting out, right? Maybe I want calm behavior while I'm watching TV. I just want my dog to settle and do nothing. Um, actually, training your dog to do nothing is important and we can teach you how to do that. Um, asking for eye contact before throwing the toy. Again, training works best when woven into everyday routines. Like it's nice that my dogs know how to stay while I'm up the floors. It's nice that my dogs will lie down while I take out the dishes, things like that, right? So training works best when woven into everyday routines. What will you actually use? That's what we want to work on. Number five is management. This is a big one. Sometimes consistency fails because the environment is simply too hard for our dogs. If my puppy keeps stealing shoes, I'm just going to put the shoes away for now. If countersurfing is happening, I'm going to manage my kitchen better. If greetings are chaos, I just am going to use a leash or a baby gait. And I'm going to teach better behavior, but as I'm training, as my dog's learning new things, I need to pair that with management. This is not cheating. This is preventing rehearsal of unwanted behaviors.

Five Reasons Training Falls Apart

SPEAKER_00 8:38

All right, segment four. What do you do when training isn't working? This is probably one of the most common questions we hear. My puppy knows it at home, but not outside. Or they were doing great and suddenly forgot everything. Maybe training stopped working. So usually one of five things is happening. Number one, the environment is too hard. Dogs don't generalize well automatically. A puppy who can sit in my kitchen may genuinely struggle to do it outside of my backyard or at the park, especially, right? That's normal because distractions change the difficulty levels dramatically. So if training falls apart outside your home, it doesn't mean your dog is stubborn. It usually means the environment is just too challenging. So what do we do? We can lower the difficulty. Usually this is increasing distance away from distractions. Maybe we use better rewards, higher value rewards, and then we can practice and slowly build up to that end-all behavior. Number two would be my expectations are just too high. Sometimes we accidentally expect adult dog behavior from these little tiny puppies. Remember, puppies are learning patience and impulse control, emotional regulation, social skills, and communication, and it's happening all at once. I like to say with puppy training, progress is not linear. It's more like a roller coaster. So we go up and we go down and we go up and we go down, but over time you'll see that you are making positive progress. So there's going to be setbacks. Your puppy's going to be teething, they're going to go through adolescence, which by the way, teenagers are great. You guys don't fear them. They're going to have fear periods, maybe some growth spurts, environmental changes. That's all part of normal development. Okay, number three is maybe my reinforcement just isn't good enough. If my puppy is ignoring their dog food outside because squirrels are running around, that's useful information to me. The environment is now more rewarding than my food reinforcement. So I might need better, higher value food rewards. Maybe I need to make sessions shorter. Definitely I need to increase more distance. I need to maybe uh pick better times to go out or what where to be when and lessen the distractions if possible. Uh number four would be training is just inconsistent. So, you know, maybe I'm accidentally reinforcing something without realizing it. Maybe a dog barks and I say quiet, and then I eventually open the door. My dog could be thinking that the barking was still part of that pattern and they might repeat that. So that gives me again information and I can adjust and try to rework that pattern that they're learning. Number five is the puppy's just overstimulated or overly tired. You guys, if you have a puppy that is zooming around, they're very bitey, they they can't think, they're not being rational, they're just reacting to every little thing, they don't need more exercise. They need nap time. So the answer is not more training. It's I actually need to give my dog some downtime, okay?

Progress Over Perfection

SPEAKER_00 11:38

All right, lastly, you guys, we want to focus on progress over perfection. I think one of the most damaging ideas, if you will, in dog training is the belief that good dog handlers should have perfect dogs quickly or just perfect dogs in general. That's simply not realistic. Training is a process. We are focusing on relationship building. And honestly, some of the best dog people I know still have imperfect dogs. You guys, my dogs are imperfect because perfection is not the goal. My goal is communication, building trust, being consistent, and just making progress. I can't change my dog's personality. I can work with it, right? And your puppy does not need you to be perfect either. They need you to be patient, predictable, kind, and just willing to keep practicing. So some days are going to feel easy, you guys, some days are going to feel messy. That's just part of raising a puppy. So today, if you remember anything, I want you to remember if training is starting to feel hard, it does not mean you're doing everything wrong. It usually means expectations might need adjusting, communication needs to be simplified, or maybe consistency just needs some improvement. These small changes in our human behavior often create large improvements in our dog's behavior. So instead of asking, why won't my puppy just listen? Try asking, okay, how can I make this clearer, easier, and more consistent. You guys, thanks for listening. I hope you have a great week. Go give your dogs a high five for me. Happy training. Thanks for tuning in today. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a training tip. And if you're enjoying the show, leaving a quick review really helps other handlers find us. For more training resources, tips, and support, visit me Amy Jensen at baxterambella.com. Until next time, happy training.