There are going to be instances when a lesson that you have performed countless times with other dogs fails with a particular dog. You will misread the situation, setting up the same scenario that has always worked before, but the result backfires.
Here is an example. You are practicing Come when called. Simple exercise. Let’s say you are using treats as the reinforcement.
I was doing this with a dog about 3 years ago with a student in her kitchen area. She was on one side of the kitchen; I was on the other. She would call the dog, when it came, she gave a treat. I’d then call the dog back to me, when it came, I’d give the dog a treat. But after several repetitions, the dog got spooked and wouldn’t go into the kitchen and didn’t want to Come to either of us. Sigh. A setback!
There was something about the kitchen that triggered a fear in the dog. The more I worked with the dog, it became clear that this dog didn’t feel safe in confined spaces. The narrow passageway from the living room into the kitchen was a danger sign for this dog. Fear had infused itself into the Come command, shutting down the food motivation, and making Coming a bad thing instead of a good thing.
What might seem a non-issue to you can sometimes be a major issue to a dog. There are many such danger clues that you need to watch out for when working a dog. Some very subtle.
Being a professional, I was kicking myself after that appeared, saying to myself that I should have seen it coming sooner. But I didn’t. My expectancy was what I had seen countless dogs do well in the past, and I listened to that belief more than what I saw happening. The signs were very subtle and until the dog quit, it didn’t reach my awareness.
Humans perceive the world differently than animals. Each animal species has different abilities to perceive various stimuli and situations. Each individual animal also has varying levels of sensitivity to detecting various stimuli. Humans and dogs generalize stimuli and attach feelings to those stimuli. Some stimuli have innate properties. Some stimuli acquire properties. All of this is happening in the middle of each dog training lesson.
Obviously, when something goes wrong… stop. Then puzzle out what is causing the problem and devise a solution. These things can almost always be worked out, but it is harder when a fear response becomes associated with a context or stimuli. You then must unravel it all and help the dog adapt.