What happens in the first week after my dog comes home?

Luna has the fullest statement of the rule anywhere in the corpus, and it is given twice. At the first in-program lesson the prediction is made flatly and the breed is dismissed in the same breath - a husky shepherd mix is going to test you, but so is every dog. At the house lesson it becomes an instruction with a mechanism: be as strict this week as you want life to be, and for these seven days every marker you say gets backed up with the collar, with the discretion to let a self-correction slide arriving later. The analogy he uses is a parent who announced a rule and now has to stand behind it because it is a principle. The go-home lesson closes the set by naming the window as a general fact about the business's dogs - about a week in which they work out that the rules that applied with the trainer apply here too.

Stormie is where the week gets its name and its picture. A soft, sweet, very physical puppy whose problem is not fear and not confusion but a willingness to decline - and whose family are told, mid-program, that the dogs take a week to settle and that the risk is not knowing how to snap everything back into place at the end of it. The grandkids image is the delivery mechanism and it is aimed precisely at the failure this family is most likely to have: the trainer later tells them he is worried they will be too soft. The promise attached is specific - stay strict and the over-excitement does not become unmanageable.

Deuce is the same week stated from the dog's side, in a dog with no avoidance in him at all - a ten-month-old Rottweiler doing ordinary adolescent things at ninety-six pounds. The framing is preventive rather than corrective: the danger is not the trash or the chair, it is him discovering that he can. And it comes with the sharpest sentence in the cluster, which is that he will actively teach you how to give in, and do it fast. The mechanics for the week are the most concrete anywhere: keep the e-collar on, and do not give a command while it is off.

Zeus supplies the three warnings that together are the closest thing the business has to a relapse protocol, and two of them are things nobody else says. First, the dog will look worse at home than he looked in the videos, and the family should be told before they see it. Second, the testing happens specifically in front of his person - it is narrated live and laughed at, which is the useful way to deliver it. Third, the handover lesson is the worst performance the family will see, and the reason is arithmetic rather than authority: roughly two hundred commands in a changed context. The trainer pre-empts the owner reading that as her own failure.

Lola's go-home lesson gives the shortest version of the rule - about a week to settle in, new environment and everything, so stay really strict on everything - and it is delivered in the owners' living room alongside the e-collar fitting. It matters that it is said about a nervous, softly handled dog as well as about a hard adolescent: the window is presented as a property of dogs coming home, not of difficult dogs.

Is my dog going to forget everything when he gets home?

A change at home does not by itself show that the dog has forgotten the training. The cited Luna lessons predict a transition while the dog encounters familiar instructions with a different handler and in a different setting. The trainer describes that as testing whether the rules apply. Keep that explanation attributed: a particular changed response still needs context, and the selected handover statements do not measure what happens in every home.

How strict is strict? I do not want to be harsh with him on his first week back.

The Luna lesson emphasizes consistency with the routine being handed over, and Deuce’s lesson gives a specific equipment instruction. Ask your trainer to turn general words such as strict or consistent into a clear plan: the cue, expected response, follow-through, equipment schedule and when to ask for help. The separate examples do not establish a single equipment routine for every reader. A plan should be understood and demonstrated, rather than reconstructed from fragments of different handovers.

Why does he try things in front of me and not in front of the trainer?

In the cited Zeus lesson, the trainer interprets the changed behavior in front of the owner as testing boundaries. That is the explanation given in that scene. It does not prove deliberate testing whenever a dog responds differently to another person. Record what changed in the cue, handling, setting and response, then review that example with the trainer.

He was terrible during the handover lesson. Was that my fault?

An uneven handover performance alone cannot establish whose fault it was. In the cited lesson, the trainer points to the large number of commands given during the visit as context for the performance. That estimate is not a measured comparison showing that every handover is the worst the dog will ever look. Use the lesson to identify what the owner needs to practise and what follow-up will help.

What happens at the end of the week?

The selected Stormie and Lola statements predict about a week to settle. They do not document a fixed end point or prove a result for every household. Use the first week as an opportunity to compare observations and review the agreed plan. If a response is different from the lesson, report it when it occurs; there is no need to wait for day seven before asking for help. Follow-up evidence is still needed to evaluate the predictions in these cases.

Going easy on the dog for the first week because he has just got home. This is the named failure mode, and the trainers say the loose-looking training that follows is not decay - it is the absence of reinforcement.

Saying a marker word and not backing it. For this week the instruction is absolute: if you say it, you follow through with the collar. The discretion to let a self-correction go belongs later.

Giving a command while the e-collar is off. For the first week the instruction is to keep it on and to give no command without it, so the word is never separated from what stands behind it.

Letting the small things go - the trash, the counter, the chair - because they are not the trained commands. The trainers aim the warning precisely there: the risk is him learning that he can.

Reading the go-home lesson, or the first days at home, as proof that the training did not take. It is the worst the dog will look, for reasons that have nothing to do with the family.

Taking the testing personally when it happens in front of you. It is expected, it is specifically aimed at the person watching, and the trainers narrate it as a normal event rather than an embarrassment.

Your dog has just come home from a program and is doing things this week that he never did on camera - the counter, the trash, the chair, ignoring a word he clearly knows.

He tries things specifically when you are in the room, and behaves when you are not.

You find yourself saying the marker word and then deciding not to follow it up, because he has only just got back.

The dog looked much better in the trainer's videos than he looks in your kitchen, and you have started to wonder whether the program worked.