If there’s one thing difficult dogs have taught me over and over again, it’s this:

Time is your friend.

When a dog is difficult, people often want an immediate answer. They want to know what command they’re missing, what collar to use, or what technique will suddenly make everything better.

But with some dogs, the answer isn’t a magic command or a piece of equipment.

The answer is time.

Difficult dogs often have a “key” that unlocks them. You have to figure out what that key is—and sometimes that means spending enough time with the dog for it to trust you before you can even begin meaningful training.

And I’ve learned something else over the years:

Trust me, every dog has a motivator.

You just have to find it.

The Chow Chow I Will Never Forget

Several years ago, I had a Chow Chow come to me for training that presented an enormous challenge.

He was owned by a single woman and had essentially become a social misfit, for lack of a better description. He was unable to be around people safely. His response to people was aggression, and he had a history of biting.

His standard operating procedure was pretty simple:

Keep people away.

If someone got too close, he would become aggressive. That behavior had become his way of dealing with the world.

And from his perspective, it worked.

If he became aggressive, people backed away.

So why would he change?

That was the first thing I had to understand.

The First Two Weeks

When he initially came to me, I knew I couldn’t simply put him into a traditional training routine and expect him to cooperate.

He wasn’t ready for that.

For the first couple of weeks, I used a muzzle that allowed him to eat and drink while wearing it. The muzzle wasn’t the solution to his behavior. It was a safety management tool that allowed me to work with him while preventing him from immediately falling back on his most familiar response—aggression.

That distinction was extremely important.

I wasn’t trying to overpower him.

I was trying to take away his ability to use aggression as his automatic escape strategy while I slowly built trust.

And I took my time.

I watched him.

I learned his body language.

I paid attention to what made him comfortable and what made him uncomfortable.

I didn’t demand more from him than he was ready to give.

Little by little, he started to realize something:

I wasn’t there to hurt him.

I wasn’t going to disappear every time he challenged me.

And I wasn’t going to give him a reason to believe that aggression was the only way to control the situation.

Then Something Changed

Eventually, I began to see little cracks in that defensive wall.

He started accepting my presence.

Then he started accepting interaction.

Then he became willing to participate.

And once I had his trust, I could begin teaching him.

That’s the part people sometimes don’t understand about difficult dogs.

You can’t always start with obedience. Sometimes you have to start by creating the relationship that makes obedience possible.

Once he trusted me, we could begin building communication.

And the transformation was remarkable.

The dog who had previously been unable to safely interact with people began becoming manageable and trainable. The aggression that had defined so much of his behavior no longer had to be his automatic answer to every interaction.

It wasn’t an overnight transformation.

It wasn’t one magic technique.

It was time, patience, consistency, safety, observation, and trust.

The Lesson Was Bigger Than the Dog

That Chow Chow reinforced something I’ve learned countless times throughout my career:

Sometimes the hardest part of training a difficult dog isn’t teaching the dog what to do. It’s convincing the dog that it is safe to learn something different.

And that takes patience.

You have to be willing to try different approaches. You have to be willing to change your strategy when something isn’t working. You have to pay attention to what the dog is telling you.

Most importantly, you have to resist the temptation to label a dog as simply bad or aggressive and stop there.

The behavior is real. The risk can be real. Safety has to come first.

But there is often a reason behind the behavior, and there is often a way to begin changing it.

Difficult Dogs Make Better Trainers

I think some of the most difficult dogs I’ve worked with have actually taught me the most.

They force you to slow down.

They force you to observe.

They force you to become creative.

And they remind you that training isn’t about making the dog fit your method. It’s about finding the method that allows you to reach that particular dog.

That’s one of the reasons I believe my experience working with thousands of dogs has been so valuable.

I’ve learned not to give up on a dog simply because the first approach doesn’t work.

I’ll try something else.

And something else.

And something else.

Because somewhere in that dog is a motivator.

There is something the dog values.

There is a way to establish communication.

And there is a point where the dog begins to understand:

“I don’t have to fight this person. I can work with this person.”

That Chow Chow taught me something I’ve carried with me ever since:

Time is not wasted when you’re building trust. Time is part of the training.

And sometimes, patience is the most powerful training tool you have.