By Andre Yeu, KPA CTP, CPDT-KA, Founder of When Hounds Fly
There is no shortage of dog training tips online. TikTok, Instagram, Reddit threads, YouTube channels — you can spend hours watching people train their dogs and come away more confused than when you started. And honestly? That’s kind of the problem.
Over the years I’ve worked with hundreds of dogs and their owners across the GTA, and one of the most common things I see when a new client walks through the door is what I’ve started calling “maximal dog training.” I met one family whose dog was wearing a prong collar, an e-collar, and a harness — with a clicker in one hand and treats in the other. They had picked up something from every corner of the internet and layered it all on at once. Their dog had no idea what was being asked of him. Neither, honestly, did they.
So let’s cut through the noise. Here’s what the dog training methods that actually get results have in common — and what you can stop wasting your time on.
The Problem With Training Advice From Social Media
The core issue with scraping dog training tips from Instagram or TikTok isn’t that the content is always wrong. Some of it is fine. The problem is that it’s decontextualized, inconsistent, and often contradictory — and when you pile it all on top of each other, you end up with a dog that’s getting a dozen different signals and a handler who has no clear framework to work from.
Dog training is a system. When you mix incompatible tools and techniques, you don’t get the best of all worlds. You get noise.
“They had a prong collar, an e-collar, a clicker, and treats — all at the same time. It was such a convoluted mess, and it was confusing for both the dog and the owners.”
The first thing we do with new clients is simplify. What is your dog actually responding to? What do they value? What’s the one thing we’re working on right now? Clarity is a kindness to your dog.
Where the Force-Free vs. Balanced Debate Goes Wrong
If you’ve spent any time researching dog training methods, you’ve probably stumbled into this debate. And it can get heated.
Here’s my honest take.
Force free dog training emerged with genuinely good intentions. The science behind positive reinforcement is solid, and the move away from dominance theory and punishment-based training has been overwhelmingly positive for dogs and their owners. But in some corners, the force-free movement has been taken to an extreme that is simply unattainable in the real world — and that ends up hurting dogs.
For example: in our Walk with Me module, we teach dogs to yield to gentle leash pressure. This is a technique that trainers like Shirley Chong pioneered (Silky Leash). It works. But by today’s most rigid force-free standards, it wouldn’t qualify — because you’re applying pressure to a leash. Trainers like Jean Donaldson, one of the most respected positive trainers working today, use time-outs as a consequence. Also not considered acceptable in certain force-free circles.
What happens when positive trainers are restricted to nothing but a kissy noise and a treat — the so-called “positive interrupter,” which I’m not a fan of — is that clients get frustrated. Their dogs are still pulling like freight trains. Their dogs are still bulldozing other dogs at the park. And so they go looking for someone who will actually fix the problem, and they end up with a trainer who slaps on a prong collar or turns up an e-collar and calls it a day.
That’s the real cost of force-free extremism: it pushes people toward highly aversive training.
But here’s the thing. I wouldn’t call myself a balanced dog training advocate either. Why? Because “balanced” can mean teaching leash pressure, or it can mean delivering a harsh e-collar correction for resource guarding. Those are not the same thing. Not even close. The word has become a cover for a wide spectrum, and a lot of what sits under that umbrella I wouldn’t recommend to my clients.
What I’d say is this: the positive trainers of yesterday would be called balanced trainers by today’s force-free community. The goalpost has moved, and not always in the right direction.
What Actually Works
So what does work? Here’s what I’ve seen make a real difference with the dogs and families I work with in dog training toronto and the surrounding areas.
1. Learning to Read Your Dog
One of the most impactful things any owner can do is learn to recognize canine body language and advocate for their dog. This sounds simple. It isn’t always easy. But when owners understand what their dog is communicating — when they can spot stress signals early, when they know the difference between a dog who’s curious and a dog who’s overwhelmed — they can keep their dog out of situations that later become serious fear and aggression problems.
Prevention is not glamorous. It doesn’t make for exciting content. But it works.
2. Using Positive Reinforcement Correctly
I’ve met so many clients who come to me saying they “tried treats” and it didn’t work. When I ask what that looked like, I often hear some version of the same story: they waved a milk bone in front of a dog that was already in a reactive state, already over threshold, already trying to bite.
That’s not positive reinforcement. That’s just offering food to a dog who can’t take it.
Positive reinforcement works when it’s applied correctly — to grow behaviours you want to see more of, not to interrupt behaviours that are already happening. It also means being careful not to accidentally reinforce the things you don’t want. This is exactly why I don’t teach positive interrupters: in practice, they end up reinforcing a lot of unwanted behaviour, because the treat arrives right at the moment the dog is doing something problematic.
3. Knowing What to Do When Things Go Sideways
Dogs make mistakes. They find themselves in situations where they’re doing things that society can’t tolerate. And when that happens, the goal isn’t punishment for its own sake. The goal is to stop the behaviour as efficiently as possible.
That might mean raising your voice to interrupt. It might mean grabbing your dog’s collar and putting them back on leash. These aren’t cruelty. They’re practical responses to real situations.
When a positive trainer doesn’t give clients a clear answer about what to do when their dog is about to pull the dinner off the counter, or when they’re rushing another dog at the park, those clients are left confused. And confusion leads people to seek out whoever promises a quick fix. That’s how dogs end up with overcorrections from trainers who should know better.
A Dog Named Jake
I worked with a Beagle named Jake who was highly reactive — to other dogs on the street and to the mailman. We used a lot of food rewards to help Jake learn that calm behaviour around triggers was worth his while, and that the sound of the mail slot meant treats were coming. That part worked well.
But the real turning point for Jake’s owners was when they understood what was driving the reactivity in the first place.
Jake’s street was full of small, excitable dogs who would hurl themselves at windows and rush fencelines screaming as he walked by. Every day. Multiple times a day. And Jake’s owners, trying to be good trainers, would push through it, hold their ground, work the treats.
What Jake needed wasn’t more treats. What Jake needed was to feel safe.
Once his owners understood that — once they started actually moving around the aggressive yard dogs, crossing the street, giving Jake space before he even had a chance to react — everything changed. Not because we added a new technique. Because we addressed the core need. Jake wasn’t being defiant. He was scared. And when he learned that his owners would protect him, he could finally start to relax.
“What Jake wanted more than treats was to feel safe. Once his owners understood that, everything changed.”
There Is No Standard Definition of Success
One of the first things we do when we meet with clients — whether they’re coming to us for dog training in Mississauga, Toronto, or anywhere else we work — is ask them what success looks like to them.
Not what they think success is supposed to look like. Not what they saw on Instagram. What they actually want for their life with their dog.
For some families, success is a dog who can walk calmly past other dogs. For others, it’s being able to have people over without chaos. For some, it’s simply enjoying their dog without dread. Those are all different goals, and they require different plans.
Once we know what success looks like, we help clients map out what it actually takes to get there — and whether that’s realistic given their dog, their environment, their schedule, and their starting point. That honest conversation is something you’re not going to get from a 60-second reel.
The Bottom Line
The best dog training tips aren’t tips at all. They’re a framework: understand your dog, use reinforcement correctly, know what to do when things go wrong, and get clear on what you’re actually working toward.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by conflicting advice, you’re not alone — and it’s not a reflection of you or your dog. It’s a reflection of how much noise is out there. The dogs I’ve seen make the most progress aren’t the ones whose owners watched the most videos. They’re the ones whose owners had a clear, consistent approach and someone in their corner who could help them apply it.
If you’re looking for that kind of support, we’d love to talk.