When Cookie and I began, I lived inside a moral certainty. Reward was right, force was wrong. The world of dog training neatly divided into good and bad. I imagined training as a kind of civic virtue. It was like a public school of manners. Patience and treats would remake whatever roughness time and poor choices had produced. That image held until it didn’t. Cookie had been rehearsing a reactive script for years. She would bark, lunge, and fixate. This behavior had fossilized into something that no longer responded to encouragement alone. Habits, I learned, have a momentum of their own. When a dog’s arousal becomes its own reward, you don’t simply layer more praise on top and expect the physics to reverse.

The change in my thinking did not arrive as a conversion so much as a series of small humiliations. Treats piled up and produced an overweight dog who still snapped at triggers. Walks remained exercises in tension. An off-leash encounter had left us rattled and made the need for reliable communication painfully obvious. When our trainer suggested a prong collar, I recoiled at the image of coercion I had spent years criticizing. What she actually offered was anatomy, timing, and a vocabulary. It was a way for Cookie to receive immediate, comprehensible feedback. Then Cookie was given the opportunity to make a different choice. That different choice would be rewarded. The tool, in her hands, was not a cudgel but a punctuation mark, short, instructive, and followed by kindness.

Watching Cookie change was gradual and oddly intimate. She began to walk with less drawn tension; the whites of her eyes receded as she turned her gaze toward me with something that looked like pleased recognition. Crate time regained its old dignity as rest rather than rehearsal for the next outburst. The trainer taught me more than how to fit a tool; she taught me how to time a correction so it reads as information instead of reprimand, how to reward in a way that restores agency rather than buys compliance. Trust, I discovered, is built in the space between consequence and choice.

If you are contemplating a similar approach, place greater weight on the trainer’s competence and ethics than on the training tools. Watch them teach. Sit in a session and notice whether dogs leave calmer or angrier, whether handling feels precise rather than brutish. Pay attention to the trainer’s own dogs, how they behave in public reveals as much as any certification. Ask for before-and-after examples, and don’t be shy about speaking with previous and current clients. Honest people will understand that you’re looking for long-term welfare, not a quick miracle. A good trainer will be transparent about when and why they might use pressure-based tools, will explain how those tools are phased out, and will give you a practical plan you can follow at home.

My regret is simple: stubbornness. I held an idea more tightly than I held Cookie’s experience, and in doing so I delayed a kind of healing that has, in the end, made our lives quieter and richer. I’m not here to promote a certain approach. This is what worked for us. Balanced training is not a doctrine but a set of instruments that, in the right hands and guided by least-intrusive principles, can interrupt a pernicious loop and let learning begin again. For Cookie, that interruption was the doorway to confidence. For me, it was a lesson in humility.

So, to anyone standing where I once stood: be skeptical, be demanding, and be willing to change your mind when evidence and compassion point in a new direction. And one last thing: an enormous, affectionate thank-you to our trainer Michelle from Say It Once. She taught me far more than she taught Cookie. I learned about timing, empathy, and how to speak clearly to another being so that both of us could finally be heard.

I’ll share more updates soon about plans for Cookie’s antidepressant medication, our upcoming move to Canada, and our careful steps toward off‑leash hiking with an e‑collar.

Stay safe and warm friends! May this fall, with its amber light and rustling leaves, be the best one yet spent beside your dog.

With love, Seda & Cookie 🍁