What to do about your stubborn dog
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I hear it frequently…my dog is stubborn. I heard it just last night at the dog park while I was playing with lovely sociable pups after a training session nearby. I met the dog who’d been labeled stubborn and she did everything I asked her to do despite her owner telling me how she wouldn’t listen because, yep, “she’s stubborn.” Last night’s interaction reminded me that I’d been meaning to write this post for a long while.
So, let’s look at the phenomenon of stubborn dogs and what to do about them.
Let’s start with the actual definition of the word.
stubborn
/ˈstəbərn/
Stubborn means refusing to change your mind, plans, or behavior, even when given good reasons to do so
That sounds about right, doesn’t it? I’ve met those people. Heck, I’ve BEEN that person at times. We humans get pretty dug-in to our positions sometimes and, even when given good reason to change our behavior or opinion, we refuse to not lose the argument and be embarrassed about being wrong. But guess what? I’ve never met a dog who did the same.
I’ve met dogs who blew me off. They “refused” to come when called, sit when asked to do so, or drop a chew toy when requested. But I don’t see those things as evidence of stubborn dogs. No, I see issues around motivation or misunderstanding.
Sometimes a problem isn’t “why should I?” it’s “I don’t know what you’re asking.” I’ve seen plenty of insufficiently-trained dogs labeled as stubborn and it always strikes me as unfair. If they simply don’t know what to do, I can’t expect them to to that behavior reliably. Sure, they might have done it a few times in the past. They might have even done it a LOT of times in the past in a different location or under different circumstances. But it takes extra effort for dogs to generalize behaviors to new locations and distractions. I love the rare opportunity to teach puppies the basics. And I see this sort of thing happen frequently: they learn to sit reliably in the living room where I’m doing training. They do it quickly and happily time and time again. Then I walk with them into the kitchen and give them the same hand signal and they just stare at me for several seconds. It’s as if they never sat upon request before - even though they’d just done it twenty times only ten feet away. The change in environment looks completely different and they don’t realize that the same hand signal indicates they should do the same thing EVERYWHERE. And it’s not just the change in rooms that could cause this apparent memory loss. If I was kneeling while working with a small dog, my standing up might look sufficiently different that the confused dog doesn’t sit when requested. But none of this means the dog is being stubborn - they are just confused. A bit more training will get us past this and everything will work itself out. I might happen in a few minutes or in a few different training sessions. Insufficient training can be fixed with more training.
Other dogs may understand what you’re asking and they know how to do it - but still choose not to. Is that stubborn? Well, if we go back to the definition, I’d suggest that the dog might not believe we’ve “given good reasons to do” what we’re asking them to do. Imagine this - they’re out playing with their friend or chasing a squirrel and we call them. They hear us and way the options: continue doing the really fun thing they’re already doing or (based on what they’ll learned from past experience) go inside where there’s nothing to do. If you offer me the chance to do fun things or end the fun right in the middle of having a ball, I’m likely to make the same decision the dog did. The question here isn’t about what to do - the question they are (rightly) asking is, “why should I?”
The answer isn’t what many people would hope. We can’t expect dogs to simply do what we tell them to do simply because we said to do it. We CAN expect them to do it though when they’ve learned from past experience that doing so will produce an outcome they like. Again, this is a training problem.
My dogs will come when called even if they are chasing squirrels. It’s not that the treat that I have to offer them is “better” than the chase or the possibility of eating squirrel for dinner. No, it’s that they’ve learned through careful training over a period of time that a recall is a reliable promise of good things happening and their body just responds almost as if they can’t help themselves - they peel off from the chase and run right to me. Dogs who continue the chase simply haven’t had the same level of training and they are doing the entirely reasonable thing by weighing their options. They aren’t stubborn - they’re actually quite smart.
There’s a third sort of situation that might get a dog labeled as stubborn - pain. When we ask a dog to go upstairs, lie down, sit, hop in the car, get off our bed, or any number of other things, we might not realize that our dog is going to be physically uncomfortable by doing it. Our elderly dog most likely have some arthritis. But even young, generally healthy dogs might be achy after the dog park or day care or a day romping with you at the beach. These dogs are responding very much like I might - with real reluctance or even some snarkiness if asked to move after getting settled or being asked to do something physically difficult and painful.
The dog last night at the dog park was soon dropping the ball at my foot because it produced a reliable response - I’d throw the ball. When I handed the ball back to the dog owner, the dog refused to drop it because that was likely to cause the end of fun. I don’t blame her one bit. And I thought she was rather clever. But I sure didn’t think she was stubborn.