The Importance of Letting Your Dog Exhale

My recent journey to Florida for the "Training Without Conflict" program, led by Ivan Balabanov, was born from a sense of failure. I felt that I had let down a dog and his family, struggling with severe human-directed aggression. I specifically sought out Ivan because of his reputation for taking on and solving such difficult cases—an area where I want to improve. Working with such cases is a different world; your senses are on high alert, and you become hyper-aware of the dog's slightest signal, knowing the cost of a misstep.

While I left with new friends and valuable knowledge, the most profound takeaway was a simple but important reminder that will stay with me as I approach ANY case: you must let the dog exhale.

This was my error. In my enthusiasm for progress with this dog, I pushed. Seeing a breakthrough, I pressed my advantage instead of stepping back, giving the dog a moment to process, and allowing him to choose to continue. I was so fixated on the destination that I neglected to fully consider the dog's experience.

A Lesson Sealed with a Bite

This dog was deeply fearful of his collar and his family sought my assistance in helping him overcome this fear. The dog and I gradually built a strong, trusting relationship through walks, play, and sharing affection. He would let me do almost anything else, and through patient work, we reached a huge milestone: I could drape a buckle collar halfway around his neck. He was confronting the thing in his life that scared him the most.

In that moment, seeing the hope on his owners' faces, I felt a rush of success. I had done everything right... until I didn't. I pushed just a little further, and in doing so, I confirmed his worst fears. He didn't growl; he didn't snap. He bit. And just like that, every ounce of trust we had built vanished. We were back at square one.

This made me think of other mistakes I had made over my 10 years of working with dogs: the intense session that ran ten minutes too long, the decision to take one step forward instead of one step back, the rush to get a quick result for a desperate client. All these actions subtract from a dog's willingness to confront a fear, only because we are asking him to do so. That is such a huge gift from a dog, and one that should never be accepted without deep humility and gratitude. It made me think about scary things that I have done over my lifetime and how I would have felt if somebody had asked for more, right after I had just done the one thing that was so hard for me! My stomach sank.

Building the Pause into the Process

The good news is that there are many effective training techniques that already have this principle built-in. Techniques like "Treat and Retreat" for dogs wary of people, or "Engage-Disengage" for environmental reactivity, are fundamentally about creating pressure-free moments. They are designed to let the dog exhale and reset. I encourage you to see how you might be able to use them (or some variation of them) as you work with your dog and the things, people, or places that make them nervous.

Paying Attention to Smaller Gestures

It's telling how the stakes of a situation dictate our level of attention. That feeling of being acutely tuned in, of noticing every detail of the dog's body language, crystallizes when you're faced with the immediate, painful consequence of a mistake. The lesson about giving a dog space becomes undeniable when you pay the price with your own skin, rather than when a dog simply internalizes its fear or redirects its anxiety onto something else.

So whatever challenge you may be facing with your dog, remember to let them breathe. Let them move toward the scary thing and then away from it. When you and your dog are working on something difficult or scary, give them the time and space to breathe, recover, and make a choice.