When our dog is stressed, we often find our connection breaks.

Picture a Venn diagram where two circles, stress and connection intersect. It is here that we need to find our way back into connection and away from the dark cloud of stress.

While connection has much to do with our dog's ability to perform the behavior you have cued, stress can prevent a known behavior from being able to occur in an environment for which you cannot or do not train, like a trial.

In the episode, I discuss how you can look for this stress, how you can use class to train through it and examples of how I moved that dark stressy cloud out of my way.

Keep in mind, each team is different, for some stress-relieving behaviors before entering the ring are paramount, for others they are detrimental.

Happy to be listening and learning? Want to keep me motivated? You can ⁠buy me a matcha or a chai latte by dropping some coin here⁠ (hit the donate button right there on the homepage).