20/10/2026 - Training
When your dog jumps up, mouths your hands, grabs the lead or chews something precious, it is very easy to label it as naughty, but behind every behaviour there is an emotion, and behind every emotion there is a need, so when we learn to meet that need, the behaviour we don’t want to see tends to fade away on its own. Dogs are not setting out to be devious or to wind us up, although it can certainly feel that way, because these behaviours affect us, leave us feeling frustrated and out of control, and sometimes genuinely hurt.
A great deal of what gets called naughty is actually overwhelm, and this is especially common in puppies and adolescent dogs up to around two years old. It can seem strange to think of a dog feeling overwhelmed when they have no bills to pay or jobs to juggle, but their overwhelm comes from different places, such as too much input on a busy walk, too little stimulation and boredom, or being asked to concentrate and think when their brain has simply had enough for now. Young dogs, much like young people, haven’t yet learned to recognise those feelings building, so they need us to spot the signs and help them through it while they develop the skills they will carry into adulthood.
It also helps to remember that behaviours are only repeated when they serve a purpose. Lead ragging is a good example, because dogs hold a lot of frustration in their jaws, so gripping and shaking the lead releases emotion and feels good in the moment. When we respond by holding on tighter, we add tension to pull against and accidentally create a game of tug, and before long the lead and a toy feel like much the same thing to your dog.
The answer is to work out what the behaviour achieves and offer another way to achieve it that is easier to live with. Sniffing does a very similar job to ragging, since it releases emotion and helps a dog settle, and scattering a few treats on the floor gives your dog a reason to choose sniffing when a waggling lead is far more tempting. Timing is everything here, because if you only scatter treats once the biting has started, you may end up rewarding it, whereas if you notice the signs leading up to it and step in early, you are interrupting the build-up before it ever boils over.
Those early signs are often misread. A dog who keeps scratching at their harness may well be uncomfortable, but very often it is a thinking scratch, a decompression behaviour that says your dog is finding things a little tough and is trying to calm themselves down. Context and patterns matter, because every dog is an individual, yet learning to read these quieter signals means you can help your dog before overwhelm turns into the big behaviours.
So the next time your dog does something that winds you up, pause and ask yourself what else it might be telling you, because a dog who seems like the naughtiest in the world is usually a dog who simply needs a little more understanding and support with their emotions.
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