The Weekly High Five 🐾

Hey Reader,
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An owner walked into one of my sessions last year shaken. Her Standard Poodle, Moose, had snapped at another dog on a neighborhood walk. Teeth, lunge, the whole thing.

She came in sure he was broken.

"It came out of nowhere," she told me.

It didn't. Not even close.

I asked her to walk me back through the sixty seconds before. When she did, she counted five moments where Moose had told her he was over it. A leash that went tight. Treats that stopped working. Eyes that locked onto the other dog and shut her out completely.

He'd been talking the whole time. Nobody had ever taught her what it sounds like when a dog says no.

Here's what most people don't realize. A dog snap is almost never the first thing that happens. It's the last. Before the snap, there's a whole conversation most families don't know is happening.

Three signals show up in nearly every story I hear:

Lip licking when there's no food around. That's not hunger. That's stress.

The whites of the eyes showing (trainers call it whale eye). That's a dog saying "this is too much."

A full-body freeze. Still as a statue. That's the final warning before the dog decides they have no other option.

Your dog isn't aggressive. They're a dog who ran out of ways to say "please stop." And the reason you missed it isn't your fault. Nobody taught you. Not the breeder. Not the vet. Not the puppy class handout.

This is very normal. Not the snap. The not-knowing.

This week, try one thing. Pick any moment your dog is in a new situation. A guest arriving. A walk past another dog. A kid leaning in for a hug. Just watch.

Look for lip licks. A head turn away from the interaction. A body that goes stiff and still.

Don't fix anything. Don't redirect. Just notice.

You will start seeing a conversation that was always there. That awareness changes everything.

Moose's owner? She learned what those signals looked like. Now she reads him every walk. Same dog. Same neighborhood. She just finally learned the language he'd been speaking all along.

Here's the part nobody tells you. Noticing the signals is step one. Knowing what to DO in those moments, how to respond, how to train through it so the signals stop showing up in the first place, is a different kind of work.

That's exactly what my 2-Hour Consultation is for. We go deep on your specific dog (virtual or in-person), assess what they already know, talk through what's actually driving the behavior, and walk out with an action plan you can start on this week. Within 24 hours of our session, you get a detailed written summary and your resources folder.

You don't have to speak dog fluently. You just need a plan.

​Click to Book Your Consultation ​

If this one hit close to home, hit reply. I read every one of them.

You're doing better than you think.

Happy training,

Pam,
CPDT-KA
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PS. If you've already done training and something still feels off underneath, the stuck behavior that training alone can't reach, that's where an Animal Communication Reading comes in.
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60-minute virtual session to hear what your dog is trying to tell you on a deeper level. Click here to learn more.​