How do you handle frustration?

I've thought about this topic a lot before, but it was at the forefront of my mind while I just finished watching this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-VY_H_TG_Y

I was getting frustrated with the dog just watching it. I don't think I'd actually be able to work with a dog with that behavior and remain calm and patient. Or maybe I could as long as it wasn't MY dog. Somewhere in there he mentions that most people would probably slap a prong on this dog... YEP that'd probably be me.
I'm very.... reactive. lol. My dogs can, for example, be doing excellent while we go for a long walk. And if they lunge at one dog, I'm like THAT'S IT I'M DONE TRAINING FOREVER RAWR. I pretty much take it as a personal insult any time they practice a bad behavior, and in that MOMENT I don't even want to do anything to work on fixing it, I'm just annoyed and done and have Worst Dogs Ever. Afterwards I'm more focused on thinking about what I can do in future situations, but at the moment the bad behavior occurs, frustration takes over and I can't even be logical and can't even care.

I can hold grudges too, I remember a couple weeks ago being sooooo annoyed with Cajun and this was happening right before we were going to leave for her obedience class. And all I could think was "I don't even want to go and have to reward you for things. You deserve no rewards today." Obviously we went and life was fine but when I get frustrated... I hate training. I have no desire to work with the dog that is frustrating me. It's too hard for me to get back into a mindset where I can see the positive things that are happening.

So, there's my very human confession. What do you do when you're frustrated with your dogs... are you able to set it aside and keep trucking on? Do you stop and take a breather, and go back to things later? Or is it possible there is someone else like me out there who is just DONE when frustration occurs?

Wow, that dog.

I'm kind of mixed. If we're training and I'm getting frustrated with my dogs because they're distracted, not getting it, etc, I'm pretty good about staying on track and trying to get their focus and mind running again. That's a minor frustration for me. But there are some things that I can't deal with. I've posted before about how bad Rowan is on the leash. He pulls constantly. "Being a tree" or changing directions don't work because he's not pulling toward anything in particular, he just... pulls. Constantly. Is there SOME method out there that would work to teach him how to walk nicely? I'm sure there is. I can't deal with it, though. I get so frustrated and have absolutely no desire to work with the behavior because it's just a constant stress. So I got an Easy Walk harness and don't even worry about it anymore.

I was watching Linus today after my mom went to work, and I was trying to sleep. Riff was chewing on a bone (which is fine) and Linus's new idea of a good time is to bark constantly at Riff when he has a toy. When I finally dissuaded him from the barking, he ran to my door and started scratching at it. Over and over and over. He's learning to ask how to go outside and that's one of his signs, so I took him out. Nothing. Went back in, and he started scratching again. I took him out again. Nothing. Came back in, and he started barking at Riff again. I got him to stop (again) and he started scratching at the door again. After that he got up on my bed and started incessantly scratching at my sheets. This all happened over about an hour. That was it for me. My frustration was through the roof, I was losing my temper and I was past the point of trying to work with him and teach him what's acceptable, so I crated him in the other room for a few hours.

I don't reach that breaking point with my own dogs very often, honestly, but it certainly happens with other people's dogs and it's always either taking a break, or removing myself from the situation entirely. At the daycare? Oh man, there were some times that I had to take a breath, go to my supervisor, and explain that I could not work one-on-one with x dog any more, I just couldn't. So I'm not quite as sensitive to it as you, but I absolutely experience the same thing sometimes!

My dogs taught me to handle my frustration very well. Both are very soft dogs; Meg in a traditional way, and Gusto in a way that took me 18 months to understand.

Early on in training, if I so much as uttered a word of frustration or anger or anything, Meg was done. One time she started to go to the bathroom in the agility ring, I let out a sharp 'EH!' to try to stop her so I could leave, and she spent the rest of the class hiding under a table while I ran the instructor's dog. It was not the only class where I couldn't run her because she wouldn't come out of a crate or out of the corner because something I did had shut her down.

The trainer likes to tell people that Meg made me into a great actress. I can fake 'happy and don't worry and everything is okay!' no matter how I'm actually feeling. And there are moments where it is definitely an act. After a particularly frustrating run with Gusto at the agility trial this past weekend, we came out of the ring and of course went to the cookies and he was getting love and praise and cookies like crazy (because he stresses in the ring, and my frustration will not help that). And then I cooled him off, put him in his crate, told him he was a genius, and went to my car to have a meltdown

Training wise, agility wise - it just isn't worth it to me to upset my dogs because I'm frustrated. When I want to let them know I'm annoyed, I think back to something I saw happen with a very big trainer in our region. He had a bad run, was clearly annoyed - and his dog took the last jump, cowered, and ran from the ring. Now, I don't think he hits the dog or anything like that. But it looked like a soft dog who knew the owner was upset. And it broke my heart a little. I desperately want my dogs to see me as the safe, reliable, steady thing in their lives. I want to be able to be that for them. So I have gotten very good at just putting aside my own frustration and ego and needs so that I can handle the moment in the moment.

And then I go to my car and have a meltdown if needed

That's pretty much me in a nutshell, too. Although I'm OK with one or two "butt head" things when we're out walking/hiking. Already this morning, I'm thinking of leaving Caleb home when I go to Rally tonight (Since I organize it, I have to go). Some of it's me, some him. Just spending time sitting and snuggling with Caleb usually brings me around.

Crossbone is helping me with my frustration. He is super soft and sensitive to little things and he notices my frustrations before I do. He can completely shut down and refuse to do the behavior we were working on for weeks--even if I don't direct anything toward him. I can throw my hands in the air and walk away and he gets upset.

I always get compliments in agility class because no matter what he does, I'm peppy and happy even though I want to ring his neck sometimes

I now end everything on a happy note, leave the area/dog and come back later with a different approach or plan.

Well, 2/3 of my current dogs disconnect and/or shut down to varying degrees if I get noticeably frustrated/irritated with them. Even just a heavy annoyed sigh can do it. So I've learned to fake it until I make it with them, I could win a freakin' Oscar at this point. And the third dog apparently has a negativity force field because any noticeable frustration (with the exception of one time I let out something like a primal scream) on my part seems to simply bounce off and have no effect whatsoever. (I'll leave you to figure out who is who.)

Also, I'm old. And I'm not saying that to be flippant, but with age came enough wisdom to make it a little easier to recognize and admit that a lot of the times that I'm getting frustrated with my dogs I need to take a step back and see whether I have made a contribution to the situation. Or to recognize that some days dogs (and people) have bad days and act like knuckleheads or that some things are out of my control (like passing six leash reactive dogs in a row on a walk). It's also easier to convert that recognition to patience.

As to what I actually DO... it depends on what is actually going on but first, I take a deep breath and try to calm myself a little. If we're, say, on a walk and they are being knuckleheads, I just turn around to go home and act as neutral as possible along the way. If we're in a training session, I end the session with a couple of simple skills I'm very confident will be successful, then stop and try to figure out what the problem was. Am I rushing through the steps of a skill? Is the environment too distracting? Have I been inconsistent in my expectations or what I'm rewarding? Is there something physically wrong? Is the stress bathtub full? Have they had too much or too little exercise to focus? And come up with a plan to tackle it. The plan it what REALLY helps diffuse my frustration.

I am for the most part pretty good about not getting too frustrated,especially when I am trying to teach a new skill and he hasn't got it yet, but also just in general. For the most part, I am just a person that doesn't get upset or rattled easily.

However, if Leo is really being a brat dog, I do hold grudges. It doesn't work very well, because Leo gets over corrections very quickly. I can give him a talking to about something he did wrong, and he will act appropriately sorry. 5 minutes later, he'll be all "Hi! Let's play! I am so happy!" and I'm still like "RAWR you are still a brat, and don't you forget it!"

Honestly, it depends on my underlying mood. There are some days not much bothers me, but other days I really have to take a step back and remove myself from the situation because everything peeves me off, and I'm snarky. (And this goes for my human interactions too, not just the dogs.) When I know I'm having one of "those days", I avoid situations that may escalate my frustration.

Cynder is a very soft dog and as a result...I just don't work with her. LOL That sounds so bad, but it's true. I don't try to teach her new tricks or actively train her, because if she thinks she's not doing what I what (even if the only thing I'm doing is not rewarding her/trying to lure her to a different position) she shuts down, and that frustrates me, and then she shuts down more, and it is just this vicious cycle. I really need to pull out my clicker and hard core associate that with Good Things, then work on very easy free shaping exercises removing myself from the equation as much as possible...but she's well behaved, so my motivation is low.

Abrams and I get along very well. There are times he frustrates the CRAP out of me, but he takes nothing personal and bounces back from anything. Even if I do grump at him or give him a correction, he responds with, "Oh, sorry. Okay....PLAY NAO?!?!?!!!" This in and of itself is annoying at times, because you have to be really, truly upset for him to even notice. (Like when he busted the frame out of our patio door...he noticed that time. And hasn't touched the door since, actually. Good dog. The sheer rage radiating off of DH while he fixed the door was enough to leave an impression. LOL)

In short: I do my very best to not get frustrated during training. If I find that I'm loosing my cool, I tend to stop and remove myself from the situation. Once I'm over it, then I go back and try again. If I'm not actively training and a dog is frustrating me, I'm not above giving a correction to get them to knock it the heck off. What that correction is depends on the dog, but I don't/can't tolerate a lot of crap. I also do my best to set the dog up for success, and redirect the dog/remove the dog from the situation that happens to be frustrating me until I'm able to work with the situation.

Walter has been a big change for me. My other two dogs are much more sensitive and a verbal "no" was enough of a correction to stop a behavior. Walter is NOT a soft dog. You can yell at him and he'll wiggle his butt and do a happy dance because you're "playing" with him. I'm pretty sure it's next to impossible to hurt his feelings. So for him, my training style had to change. He's very easily distracted and it's something we work on constantly and can get very frustrating for me. The biggest distraction for him are other dogs because he wants to go play. When he gets very excited and frustrated about not being able to go play with the other dogs he whines and barks. I HATE obnoxious barking. So every class we go to starts with him barking and whining at the other dogs. To get him to focus back on me we do commands. throughout class we are constantly working. While the instructor is talking, while we're waiting in line to do obstacles we are doing sits, downs, watch me, spin, touch and so on...constantly. It works well for us because it gets him to focus on me during class, but I get jealous of the other people whose dogs just lay calmly at their feet. I know the only way to get past my frustration is to work through it. He's not going to change his behavior when I'm frustrated. We just have to work through it together.

My dogs are not soft AT ALL so thankfully I can basically be as frustrated as I want and they're like "HEY WHAT ARE WE DOING!?" lol.

The funny thing is in general I don't get upset by things and people tell me they can't ever imagine me angry or upset lol but when it comes to my dogs... well I'm a perfectionist and get bothered when I have hard time meeting expectations.

I was actually thinking about this the other day.
Cobain, Rigby, and I were out for a run and they weren't doing things "the right way" which was starting to frustrate me. I felt irrational and anger driven. It just kept building to the point that I came to a dead stop.

Took a breath. Saw a river close by and figured that I should change what we were doing to something I knew the dogs would enjoy so we could all unwind a bit.

Cobain being a Border Collie can be pretty touchy at times. He's only really shut down twice during training sessions. But it's still something I am aware of and try to avoid.

Rigby is weird. There are times when I am frustrated with her and she will just submissive urinate all over the place and avoid me. Others she pretty well tackles me with "I just want you to be happy, stop being frustrated and focus on how cute I am being." Sometimes that's all I need, and other times she makes it worse.

Honestly I don't get frustrated with Jackson very often. BUT, with all 3 dogs over at my dads house (Jackson and my dads dogs) the barking can drive anyone up a wall. Sometimes there is just so much going on outside... four wheelers flying by, kids walking by the fence, loose dogs running around our fence, trucks driving by, cropduster airplanes flying above our house, LOL, it can be quite insane.

And Lilly, the JRT, pulls this crap where she scratches at the door and barks and barks to get outside and then you open the door and let her out and she turns RIGHT back around and wants to come back in. Then Buddy will non-stop bark until you pick him up and tell him to stop. Jackson has this ear piercing bark and he never even knows what he's barking at, he just follows the other dogs. So anyway, I often am yelling 'SHUTTTT UPPPP!' which I know doesn't really help the problem at all.


Oh I watched that video last night and felt the same way. I definitely wouldn't have that much patience.

Training protocol non-withstanding, I'd have put a prong on that dog purely so I wouldn't kill it during training. Being drug around is something I cannot STAND.

Astro is a very, very frustrating dog. I don't think I've ever even met another dog who has the exact same cocktail of frustrating elements. In order to deal with any of it and get anywhere with him, I have to be zen. Not "should be," hafta be. I can see him eyeing me up anytime I ask him to do something, evaluating hard whether he think it's worth it or not. There isn't a single bone in his body that wants to do something just because I asked him to do it. He hates repetition (practice it 4 or 5 times? yeah, try once, and congratulate yourself if you get it out of him a second time...), he is STRONG and has a natural tendency to lunge, he chews heavily and destroyed my bed, part of the couch, and some of the drywall (!!) within a few months of me getting him, he quits easily and often, he will straight up ignore cheese and Natural Balance and hot dogs and liver and steak under the mildest of distractions, and oh, the things that do motivate him consistently even in the face of distraction, like tug toys? He guards heavily. Making the whole thing inherently stressful. (The two toy game is actually the "Astro is somehow fast and powerful enough to get both toys, then he guards them and makes you regret taking out two things he will guard instead of just one" game.)

Corrections are a no-go, period. He DOES have a streak that will aggress if pushed, and he does NOT forgive and forget.

I've thought a lot about it. I have cried over this dog. I mean actually stood in the hallway of my apartment building, and sobbed where people could hear me, and said "STOP DOING THAT PLEASE DOG JUST STOP!" I have watched trainer after trainer take him, try to do a demo with him, and then stare at him with a confused frown. After all my evaluating, I've realized that a lot of my frustration came from a place of comparison. I know so, so many trainers with Corgis, Border Collies and Labs that are just so "what can I do for you today, human?" and "you want to take the toy? ok, go ahead!"

Nosework classes have helped, because they take his total lack of handler focus and turn it into something fun for both of us. What's also helped is turning my frustration inward instead of out on him. I remind myself a lot: "YOU'RE THE ONE WHO PICKED OUT A SHAR PEI MIX, DOOFUS. If you wanted a Border Collie, you should have gotten...a Border Collie! If you wanted a retriever, there are a million of those, you should have gotten one! But you didn't!" And that makes me metaphorically throw up my hands, shake my head, and press on with my day.

His RG is still frustrating on a regular basis, mostly because of where we live (people leave their trash all over this city). I can admit that. I get frustrated, not just with him but with the whole situation. Why do people just dump their stuff on the curb? The only thing that keeps me from showing my frustration to him is that it makes him batten down the hatches and guard harder. I have done lots of the acting mentioned in this thread, lots of happy-go-lucky "may I have that please?" when I'm really thinking "give me that cooked chicken bone before they have to cut it out of you, you crazy mutt!" I've been able to handle it with training and management so that no harm has come to either him or me, but I get so annoyed with myself when he finds something before I do and I don't have a chance to tell him to leave it. Maybe I should just muzzle him, I've gotten him fitted for one, but the whole thing just makes me incredibly sad and weary. I can't wait to move.

When I first started teaching Jari weaves, I made enough space in my living room to be able to work him with one 2x2. After a couple of days working hard entries, I decided to use his food bowl as a target at the end. Well he skipped the weave and went right for the bowl. I said, "Uh oh!" and he RAN to my couch, jumped on it and cowered and peed. So yeah. My dogs are really soft.

Like others have mentioned, I've also become a cheerleader for them. I have to. Otherwise they cannot deal and shut down. Sometimes if I get TOO excited they can freak out as well.

But I've found a good rhythm with Kimma in agility and life so that's good. We have actually had some people compliment me on my running her, saying that they love watching us because it looks like we are having so much fun. If they only knew how exhausting it was to continue to talk to her and cheer her on while I'm sprinting LOL.

That being said, dealing with dogs like in that video is my job. Not so much in regular training class (though I do get some interesting ones), but some of the dogs we have at the center are just tough. High drive, smart, and sometimes fearful/reactive dogs. If I weren't so patient and hadn't learned so much from my own dogs, I definitely would not be able to work there.

What makes me sad is how I have almost infinite patience when working with dogs that are not my own. We get some dogs like the one in the video, obviously as one-on-one cases and not for group classes, and I can handle that.

I have a whole lot more patience than most owners I see, but when I come to my own dog, it's not infinite. And that's not fair, she deserves to be treated with the same respect I give clients' dogs.

I think I've lost it with her maybe three or four times in the year and a half I've had her, and just yelled or slapped the leash against my leg to startle her. She's very soft so it wrecks our whole day and I feel horribly guilty.

I like to think I have come a LONG way in the last year or so about just shutting the door, walking away, calming down, and returning. Getting pissed off isn't worth the damage it does to our relationship so I'm pretty good about catching myself before I get frustrated.

While working my dogs, if I get frustrated I will ask for repetition until I get it right. Or until I finally realize that my dog is too tired or otherwise unable to comply. Then I'll try something easier that I can reward instead.

When living life, I give my dogs a great deal of freedom and in return I expect quite a bit from them in return -- perhaps a bit too much. If they let me down it'll result in a raised voice and maybe a collar grab. If the infraction is egregious (all of 1-2 times in the past few years) I'll slap a leash on and go home and give the dog a time out in a room so I don't kill her.

I tend to recover from anger and frustration pretty quickly. Cohen recovers quickly too. Mega will cower but can be jollied back to normal with food pretty well.

Straw I'm like you, I have way more patience with other people's dogs. They can be ding dongs and do quirky things and I think it's cute or funny. I can try to teach them something basic and don't care how long it takes and think it's brilliant when they figure it out. Frustration doesn't exist because "not my dog, not my problem." I wish I could just be that way with my own but there's too much of that "they NEED to be able to do this" feeling.

Super glad I started this thread though, we're all human!

Spacemutt - you are a saint. I've had a dog with resource guarding issues (as well as a multitude of other behavioral problems), but at least she was handler oriented and responsive. And while you couldn't physically correct her or force her to do anything she didn't want to do without her becoming defensive, she was a blast to work with because she loved to learn and do things. I don't think I could have handled her otherwise. Kudos to you.

I'm the exact opposite. Lol With the exception of puppies, I hate trying to train other people's dogs. I think it is because I don't know their quirks/habits? (Whereas puppies are pretty much a blank slate.) I also find it extremely discouraging when I work with a dog who just doesn't care. I need for the dog to enjoy what is going on for me to enjoy it. Abrams isn't the brightest crayon in the box, but he is *so* enthusiastic about learning that I can't help have a good time working with him, even if he's slower to pick up on things than Chloe was. (She loved to learn AND had the problem solving skills to really make things fun. I miss her. But she really wouldn't be happy living with me. :/)

For me, yes I have a low threshold and frustrate too easily with the dogs. The key for me is recognizing its NOT the dogs, its me and backing off til I cool down. It is irresponsible of me to allow my issues to be taken out on my dogs IMO. So yeah, we dont do as much as I originally planned on because I have not gotten myself to a point where I feel I can be fair.

Of course I am not talking about actually HURTING my dogs or anything like that. One of my past dogs seemed to take corrections really well (before I learned what I know now) and seemed to be "hard". It wasnt til I crossed over I realized how many of her issues where because of me and the way I treated her. Not that I didnt love her, not that I was abusive to her in anyway. BUT I got frustrated easily, would yell, yank her collar, etc.