Is my dog being spiteful?

Kodak

The in-the-moment version. Kodak is a flight risk who resists pressure by running, jumping up and grabbing the leash, and the trainer classifies it out loud while it happens: nothing horrifying, nothing bad, no attempt to hurt him, just a dog trying to get out of the pressure. The instruction is about behaviour, not feelings: move him around, stay calm, stay neutral, show him the right thing. This isn't softness. In the same file the trainer argues that refusing to use pressure at all is what makes a dog's life 'uber small'.

Rocko

The case where the cause is a dated event, and the owner already knows it. At drop-off she traces Rocko's reactivity to dogs from next door coming into the yard and fighting, after a time when he had lived happily with four dogs, five cats and some birds. On a walk months later she puts it in one sentence: it was when he got bit. The trainer doesn't assign blame; he gives a prognosis: he'll be fine, he's already on the way.

Dolce

The general statement comes out in conversation with a household while Dolce works. The practical corollary is clean. Asked about a dog who chews things up when left alone, he says to crate him: that is management, not training, and training it out would take more punishment than he thinks is ethical. The dog would be just as happy asleep.

Murphy

At the go-home lesson, Murphy guards the household's other dog, Wiley, near the people. Kelton declines the word the family might reach for: it isn't jealousy, which puts an emotion on the dog that probably isn't there. It's a space issue. That reading sets the intervention threshold: act on the smallest instance of Murphy going at Wiley over space, and leave anything smaller alone.

Poseidon

The family reports that Poseidon dislikes the child getting in his face and has corrected the child. The trainer calls his dislike fair. The problem is that he has no way to deal with it, and that is how dogs end up with horror stories and a label of mean and dangerous. His answer is management and an alternative behaviour, not teaching the dog to accept being poked: never leave them unattended, stop it early, and teach a recall to redirect him.

Major

After go-home, Major's owner says she thought she had done something wrong. The trainer answers: no, she did everything right and the dog chose to do something wrong. A few days later, the same absolution comes with the other half attached: she did everything right, 'except he chose to not he chose to act out and you gave in.' Not being at fault for the behaviour still leaves her in charge of the fix: nope, then the correction, every time.

Reaper

The case where blame is refused in every direction at once. Reaper has a bite history and a street of frightened neighbours. The trainer asks whose fault it is and answers three times: not the dog's, not the neighbour's, and in this case not the owner's, because he is the second owner and inherited the problem 'already in full swing'. He goes straight on to what makes this serious: dogs like this get locked up until their lives shrink, or do something bad enough to be put down.

Finn

The absolution given to a family's face, unprompted, as a finding. Finn is frightened of everything, and the family have been looking for the event that caused it. The trainer tells them there wasn't one: most likely his genetic makeup, and in most comparable cases nobody did anything. In the next breath he gives the honest ceiling: genetics can be largely overcome, but he'll probably always be a little odd in extreme situations. At the go-home lesson Kelton extends the same courtesy to the previous trainer whose leash rule he is about to take apart.

Zeus

Zeus arrived with an aggression reputation. Months later, in front of the household, the trainer reads it as insecurity and gives his evidence: at the start the dog flipped around at him in a way that never read as aggressive. The same visit shows how far the no-blame stance goes. The household volunteers that it introduced Zeus to the other dog after being told not to, and what happened. Nobody reproaches them; the conversation moves on to what the dog does now.

Deuce

The principle applied to a single rep. A stranger actively greets Deuce and he gets excited. The trainer doesn't correct it and says why: the man engaged him, so punishing it would be unfair. He logs it as proofing still owed. The rep fell short of the standard, and the dog was not at fault for it; both are true.

Dutchess

The stance turned on the trainer himself. After hearing what the jumping actually amounted to, he revises his own assessment in front of the owners. He then explains the behaviour mechanically: it worked once in a while, so the dog came to treat it as available. That becomes a demand on the owners: the rule has to hold every single time.

Daisy

A staff exchange during a place session, caught by two cameras. One staff member asks another what 'we say about that word', and 'stubborn' is rejected as a label: nearly every dog has some other explanation, and it comes last after everything else. The '98%' is the speaker's rhetoric, not a measured figure.

Bo

A borderline case, included for how carefully it is handled. The trainer thinks part of Bo's ignoring comes from how his owner sounds: a calm, level delivery that lacks the extra signals the dog reads alongside the word. He introduces the diagnosis by saying it isn't a dig, calling it a personality question and contrasting it with his own amped-up style. Where the handler is part of the cause, the trainers still say so; they change the framing, not the finding.

Louie

The only place a non-trainer gives this reading. Over a meal, the man taking on Louie, who has a bite on his record, says in Spanish that if the dog bit someone, something happened that shouldn't have; the dog doesn't like being cornered. His conclusion is that this dog doesn't bite, except when he's scared. He locates the bite in the circumstance, not in the dog.

Chaparro

A young, large dog filmed at a first home evaluation (18 Sep 2026) after fights with the household's older dogs, which are the family's reports, not observed. The evaluator's reading assigns no malice: the older dogs' nervousness makes him tense, he tries to stop them being nervous, and when they do not leave a fight starts - he is the initiator, but he thinks he is doing the right thing. A second line, 'No, this would have happened no matter what', may be the same absolution offered to the family, but the question it answers is inaudible, so that part of the fit is tentative. All of this is the evaluator's first-visit diagnosis.

Ace (Chihuahua-terrier mix)

When Ace fails a down on a slope, the handler resets and moves to a better spot, putting the failure on his own choice of place rather than on the dog.

Callie

In a leash-pulling clip the handler corrects Callie and reassures her in the same breath: she pulls because she doesn't know better yet, and the fix is to keep correcting it every session until she does.

Fiona

At a lesson (published 4 Jun 2026) the trainer tells Fiona's owner that if she reacts on a loose leash, the owner did not cause it: Fiona made a choice that made no sense, and that makes it a simple thing to penalise.

Milo

Asked about Milo snapping at a dog that pesters him, the trainer says he could punish it but would rather make it easier and fairer for Milo by stopping the other dog, comparing it to a child punished for finally snapping at the one who was taunting him.

Penny

Both halves of the rule on Penny's film. After a setback in heel the handler takes the blame aloud: 'never blame the dog', it is always the handler. A week later the trainer tells the owners her fear-based reactivity is not their fault - nothing seems to have happened to her; she is naturally set up that way.

Stormy

In a lesson with Stormy's household (published 6 Mar 2026) the trainer explains how dogs who snap at handling get labeled dangerous when, to them, it was just 'get off me'; the household dog Stella's snapping is read as a strategy that worked every time, not as her nature, and the work is to change what it gets her.

Nobody is at fault, against the handler being part of the mechanism

How to read it

Probably compatible (no blame for the history, responsibility for the fix), and Major's trainer comes closest to saying both in one sentence. No one on film states the distinction in general terms.

Is unsupervised destruction a training problem at all?

How to read it

Different speakers about different behaviours. The line, if there is one, is whether the handler is there to act; nobody states it in general terms. Poseidon's trainer draws a similar line for the child: management plus an alternative behaviour, and 'that doesn't mean you have to like treat them like a prisoner'.

Is my dog doing this out of spite?

No. The trainers grant that dogs really do things that are not good, and then refuse the idea of spite. A dog fighting a correction is 'just trying to get out of the pressure'; a dog standing over the other dog is guarding space, not jealous. The useful question is what he was trying to get.

Did I cause this?

Often not, and the trainers volunteer it. For a nervous dog, the finding was that nobody did anything and it was most likely genetic. For a dog with a bite history, it was that the owner inherited the problem. For an owner who thought she'd done something wrong: 'you did everything right'.

If it isn't my fault, do I still have to do anything?

Yes. The same owner told she did everything right is told in the next lesson that she gave in when he acted out, and that is why he keeps doing it. No blame for the history; the fix still belongs to you.

Is my dog just stubborn?

The staff reject the word. On film it is called 'exceedingly rare', the explanation of last resort after everything else, usually confusion, pressure or a missing step.

My dog snaps when my child pokes him. Is he dangerous?

His trainer calls the dislike fair. The problem is that he has no way to deal with it, which is how dogs get labelled mean and dangerous. The answer given is management (never unattended, stop it early) and an alternative behaviour such as a recall, not teaching him to accept being poked.