Episode #284 Helping Your Puppy Handle Frustration

Why does your puppy bark when dinner is taking too long? Whine behind a baby gate? Get frustrated when they can't greet another dog? These aren't signs of a "bad" puppy—they're opportunities to teach one of the most important life skills: frustration tolerance.

In this episode, Amy explains why learning to cope with delayed gratification helps puppies become calmer, more resilient, and easier to live with. You'll learn practical exercises you can start today to help your puppy stay calm while waiting, handling closed doors, resisting temptations, and managing everyday disappointments.

Transcript

Why Puppies Lose Patience Fast

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever noticed how quickly a puppy can become frustrated when they have to wait or they hear the word no or maybe they don't get what they want right away? Today we are talking about how to teach one of the most valuable life skills your puppy can learn, how to handle frustration with patience, confidence, and self-control. 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 pupp as their handler, you're in the right place. Hi you guys, welcome to the puppy training podcast. We like to talk all about dogs here and positive practical training methods. Today we're going to talk about the skill of teaching our puppy to handle frustration. I know that can be a hard one and a big one, so let's dive into it. Why does your puppy bark when dinner is taking too long? Any of you have a puppy like that where they bark at you while you're trying to get them food? Or maybe they're whining behind a baby gate, maybe they're frustrated when they can't greet another dog. These aren't signs that you have a bad puppy. They're opportunities to teach one of the most important life skills, tolerating frustration. So let's think about it for a minute. How often does your puppy hear the word wait? Wait for breakfast, wait before going outside, wait before saying hi to somebody, wait while I answer the phone, wait while I clip on your leash, wait while I pick pick up after you. Life is just full of waiting, and puppies actually have never been taught how to wait. Instead, they do what comes naturally to them, which would be barking, whining, jumping, scratching, pulling, trying to get what they want as fast as they can. That's just natural dog behavior. So that's a normal dog, you guys. That's not a bad dog, okay? And maybe your puppy completely falls apart emotionally because something didn't happen immediately. Maybe you had to put them in the exercise pen because you couldn't watch them 100% and you had to go do something and they fall apart, right? The good news is frustration tolerance is a skill. And like every other skill we teach our puppies, it can be

What Frustration Tolerance Really Means

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learned. Let me start by defining frustration. So frustration happens whenever your puppy wants something but can't have it immediately. Maybe the toy is under the couch or the food bowl is empty or the neighbor won't come pet them or the squirrel ran away or the door is closed. You get the idea. These are perfectly normal experiences. The goal isn't to eliminate frustration. That's just life. There's going to be frustrating things. The goal is to teach our puppies how to experience that frustration without falling apart emotionally. So emotional resilience for puppies is what we're talking about today. I think one reason this topic has become increasingly important is because our world moves incredibly fast. Everything is immediate, right? Packages arrive tomorrow, we order food instantly, videos play immediately. We don't spend much time ourselves practicing patience or waiting. Sometimes we unintentionally raise puppies the same way. The puppy barks, we feed them, the puppy jumps, somebody pets them, the puppy cries at the crate, we open the door. Puppy paws at us, we immediately respond. So without realizing it, we could be teaching our puppies that persistence gets immediate results. Instead, we like to teach, I can wait, I can stay calm, good things come when I'm patient. Those are lifelong skills. Now here's something else important. Frustration itself isn't harmful, it's actually necessary. Think about kids. We don't expect our children to never experience disappointment. Instead, we help them learn how to cope with disappointment. The same is true for our puppies. Every small moment of waiting becomes practice for real

Turn Mealtime Into Patience Practice

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life. Let's start with feeding time. Most puppies become wildly excited when food is involved. I can think of some breeds that are probably better at this than others. That's normal. But mealtime is one of the best opportunities we can use to practice patience. Instead of rushing to place the bowl down while our puppy is jumping and barking and whining, simply pause and wait. Stand quietly, don't say anything. Wait for that sit to say please. Or at least have, you know, your puppy has four feet on the floor. And you could even help them step by step if it's too much to expect them just to wait there while you, you know, scoop the food, dump the food, hand them the food. You could, as you scoop, feed them a little food reward for holding all four paws on the ground, right? Or holding a sit for you. And then as you go to put it in the bowl, give them another little piece of food for sitting. And then as you go to put the bowl over by them, give them another little food piece of food for sitting and waiting. So you can help bridge that weight into a longer weight by feeding them a little bit here and there as you're doing this entire process. You'll have a much more calm, quiet puppy if they wait for breakfast to arrive. So every meal becomes a training session. All right.

How To Delay Rewards Safely

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The next thing that we want to talk about is rewarding puppies immediately. So that's appropriate while teaching new skills. For example, when I teach my puppy to look at me, the second they look at me, I say yes and I reward. The second they sit, I say yes and I reward. But we can start to build patience. We do this when we start to teach a stay or a wait. What I'm going to do is ask them for a sit. I'll pay them for the sit. I might count to two and then reward them again. And count to three, reward them again, then five, then 10, then 20. This teaches our puppy, I don't have to panic. My reward is still coming. I might just have to wait for a second for that next reward to come. So as you move through the training process, we're going to start to delay rewards. Now many puppies

Closed Doors Are Not Emergencies

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become upset whenever a door closes. Maybe it's their crate door or their exercise pen door or the bathroom door. Instead of only using closed doors when you're leaving, we can practice dozens of tiny repetitions of closing the door for five seconds, open it, feed them. Maybe we uh close it for 10 seconds, open, feed them. Maybe it's two seconds, open, feed them. So we're helping our puppy discover that closed doors are not emergencies. We don't need to panic. They're simply part of life. And if we just wait for a few seconds, then the door opens and a reward appears.

Teaching Calm Around People And Dogs

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Okay, what about people? Some of you are like, my puppy is so excited about people. This is a big challenge for many social puppies now. Many puppies believe that every person exists to pet them, right? Everybody needs to be greeted and have a big lick in the face. Every dog exists to play, every child should say hi. And that's simply not real life. Imagine if every time you walked into the grocery store, every stranger expected a conversation with you. That would be pretty exhausting, right? Instead, we want to teach your puppy that walking past people is completely normal. Walking past other dogs is completely normal. Not stopping to talk to every person or dog we pass is completely normal. We want to reward instead attention on us. We want to reward that checking in, reward the calm walking. Sometimes greetings happen, sometimes they don't. And we want to make that normal for our puppies.

The Closed Fist Self-Control Game

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Okay, what about a game? Do you guys need a game to kind of help with this? One of my favorite impulse control games is incredibly simple. I'm going to hold some food in my hand. I'm going to present that closed fist to my puppy where they can easily reach it. So not up high down low. My puppy's likely going to sniff, paw, lick, or maybe even try to nibble at my hand. I want you to stay still. The instant they pull away from your hand, even half a second, I want you to open your hand and give them one of the food rewards, close your hand and play again. My puppy's going to discover something amazing. They're going to learn that actually, like by trying to get my hand, that does nothing for them. But if they back away from my hand, oh, it works. The hand opens and food comes out. So they're starting to learn some self-control and patience. And they're thinking, oh, if I try to get it, I don't. If I

Leave It As Emotional Training

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stop trying to get it, I get it. And that's a really good skill to teach all puppies. Another one I love to teach every puppy is leave it. Leave it isn't only about safety, it's about frustration tolerance, really. Your puppy sees something they want, and instead of grabbing it, they learn to pause and look at me instead. We teach you how to teach your dog to leave it in our basic training program. It's a six-week course, and we build on that leave it lesson through four of those weeks. So you're welcome to check that out if you need help with that.

Waiting Politely At Doorways

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Okay, waiting at doorways is one of my favorite ways to help puppies with patients. Instead of just opening the door and letting them bolt out, I use this as a training opportunity. Every time I open a door, it's a training opportunity. So I might start to open the door, I pause, I wait for my puppy to do a sit to say please, and then I count to one or two or five or seven. I mix that up, and then I open the door and let them out. So they have to change how often they're waiting. Maybe it's two seconds, maybe it's 10 seconds, maybe it's 20 seconds, maybe it's one second, and then that door opens and I say, okay, and then we can proceed out. So using that opportunity to get them to pause and wait, to the point that when they're in their crate, you open that door all the way, they wait there until you say, okay, and then they come out rather than you open the door and they push past

Training A Real Settle On A Bed

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you. The other thing I like to do with dogs is teach to settle, teach them to settle on a bed. So sometimes doing nothing is actually one of the hardest things for puppies, and it's something we forget to train, just doing nothing. So I'll have my dog go get on a rug or a mat or a dog bed, and they just are that's their whole job is just to be there and I'll reward them for being there. That's it. That's all they do. So while I'm working, I love to train a go-to-bed behavior. In fact, as I'm recording this podcast, I've had Baxter sleeping on his bed and Bella's sleeping on the bed behind me. They just realize it's Amy's work hour, so I'm just gonna do nothing until she's done. And then we'll go outside and play. Now, here are a few mistakes I see often.

Stop Rewarding Demand Behaviors

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First, don't accidentally reward demanding behavior. So if barking immediately gets attention, they will keep barking. If your dog's whining to open the door and I open the door, whining increases. So puppies will do what works for them. If it doesn't work for them, they'll change their behavior. And so it's our job to set them up for success and help them see what works. It makes a big difference. The other thing that can really help is giving them small wins, set them up for success. So puppies who learn to tolerate frustration often become more confident. Why? Because they discover they can solve problems. They realize discomfort isn't permanent. They learn that emotions come and go, and that confidence carries into training. It carries into socialization, vet visits, grooming, staying home alone, everyday life. They're just more confident. And remember, your puppy is always learning. So your puppy isn't only learning cues like sit, stay, or come. They're learning emotional habits. They're learning whether the world feels predictable and whether they can trust the process. And if calm pays off, sometimes it's easy to not reward the calm because it's calm. That means it's quiet and often unnoticeable. But I need you to notice the calm. If your puppy comes to you and sits to say, please, I need you to notice that and reward that. I prefer that over a biting of my ankle, a jumping on me, or a whining at me, right? So it's calm and you might not notice. You've got to notice. Then they'll repeat that.

The Five-Second Calm Challenge

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So here's a simple challenge I want to leave you with this week. I want you to just pick one daily routine, whether it's breakfast, opening the door, greeting visitors, putting on the leash, pick one. Practice just five extra seconds of calm. That's it. And do small repetitions because those are going to create lifelong habits. All right, you guys, thanks for tuning in today. I hope you learned something new that you can go try with your puppy this week. If you know somebody getting a dog soon, will you let them know about this show? I think they might find it useful. Happy training, you guys. Have a great week. 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 baxterandbella.com. Until next time, happy training.