Where to Start?

Obedience cannot be taught. Obedience can’t be measured, but it can be an indicator. Dogs can be obedient or not, but it can’t be said how obedient they are.

High energy dogs are “unable to be obedient.” The high energy dog does not have its brain present. The high energy dog is wild, out of control, unable to pay attention, even triggered by its surroundings to react in ways we don’t want and don’t know how to address.

Low energy dogs have the ability to be obedient, because their brain is present.

High energy dogs are not relaxed

High energy dogs are not submissive

High energy dogs have lots of problems

High energy dogs sleep a lot less

High energy dogs bark a lot. Constant barking is the message that tells everyone about the physical dog‘s high energy level. No dog should be barking all the time over hours and hours of time. Furthermore, when dogs do bark, no dog should be barking for more than a brief period. It’s impossible to put a time limit on it, but common sense rules. The physical dog barks—the brain conserves energy.

Low energy dogs will bark, but their barks are short, and short lived. They conserve their energy, instead of burning it up in unproductive ways—like obsessive, constant barking. The brain conserves its energy and keeps barking to a minimum—the wild, out of control, physical dog barks non-stop.

High energy dogs destroy things. Nature needs all wild animals to free themselves from everything—thus the need to destroy. A destructive dog is giving the communication that their energy level is sky high, and that’s never a good thing.

Low energy level dogs generally won’t destroy things. I’ve seen low energy level dogs that will not pull the stuffing out of stuffed animals, when given their stuffed toys in a certain manner. It’s called “claiming” the toy.

High energy dogs fight with other dogs because—being wild—it must defend itself with its life. The physical dog doesn’t understand it’s safe in your home. Two out of control dogs, put together, are more likely to fight because of their being out of control, and those two, out of control dogs result in a situation and environment which is further out of control.

Low energy dogs are programmed to get along with each other. If dogs are not getting along well, that’s an indicator of their high energy levels. It works both ways.

High energy dogs are Nature’s dogs being trained to live and survive in the wild. It’s life and death, wild dog training. “You can take the dog out of the wild, but you cannot take the wild out of the dog.”

The relaxed, 0-5 level, voluntarily submissive dog gets that way because it’s received the triggers and the input from its leader that keeps it from becoming the wild dog.

High energy dogs, being on the high end of the energy continuum, are going to be out of control, since that’s Nature’s training grounds for the wild dog to be wild and survive out in the world on its own, destroying anything and everything that would otherwise keep it from being wild. It’s a sobering comment and awareness to fully understand.

Low energy dogs, being on the low side of the continuum and not being on the “out of control” portion of the continuum, are not necessarily “in control,” but they are not “out of control.” That’s different from what a lot of owners expect to hear.

High energy dogs are unable to pay attention due to a host of factors. They’re high energy, they’re easily distracted, they’re hypersensitive to sounds, they’re essentially being trained to be the wild dog in the wild, because all indicators to the physical dog’s brain is that that’s what’s in the process of happening.

Low energy level dogs aren’t on the out of control, high end of the energy continuum. Their brains are present, making sense out of the patterns they’re detecting. Their getting triggered to be relaxed and voluntarily submissive.

High energy dogs are hypersensitive to sounds in their environment. Even their leader’s voices are not in the foreground.

Low energy dogs have given up their hypersensitivity to their surroundings. Their noses have become cold and wet, and those cold, wet noses have come online. Since their noses are online, their ears can go offline. Their leader’s voices go to the foreground. They “listen” to their leaders. They “pay attention to” their leaders, when they didn’t before because they were out of control.

“Warm, dry noses” means the physical dog’s nose has stopped working. High energy dogs are not getting the patient attention that would trigger the triggers to get their noses to work. Nature makes the ears hypersensitive to make up for the loss of the use of the nose. Until the nose comes back, until the cold, wet nose comes back online, oversensitivity results. That is not a place we want our dogs to be.

High energy dogs pull a lot on the leash