Lead with Heart: How Trust and Joy Transform Dog Training | Ep. 4

In Episode 4 of the Kaizen Doggie Dojo Podcast, Trevor Smith dives into the final and most powerful pillar of dog training — The Heart ❤️.

Technical skills and consistency matter, but true transformation happens when you build emotional connection, trust, and joy with your dog. This episode is all about recognizing that dogs don’t just respond to cues—they respond to how we feel.

🎯 Key Topics:

• Why emotional safety is critical for learning
• How to reward effort, not just perfection
• The role of empathy and patience in daily training
• Managing your own emotions to help regulate your dog’s
• The hidden power of joy and playfulness in long-term success
• A Kaizen Challenge to strengthen your bond every day

If you’ve ever felt frustrated in training or disconnected from your dog, this episode offers a fresh perspective on how heart-led training can reignite both your passion and your pup’s enthusiasm.

Remember—your dog doesn’t need a perfect trainer. They need a present one.

Tune in weekly for new episodes that blend practical dog training tips with mindset, philosophy, and inspiration. Let’s grow together, one step at a time.

Transcript

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Welcome back to Kaizen by Doggy Dojo, where we grow and mind, body, and heart, alongside with our dogs. One small step at a time. I'm your host Trevor Smith, and today we're exploring the third and final pillar of doggy dojo path one. That honestly changes. Everything. Once you start training with it in mind, and we've worked on the mind learning to observe, think clearly, and train with intention, we've strengthened the body by tuning into movement, timing, and energy. But now we go just a bit deeper, and today we are going into the heart, and the heart is. Kind of a interesting place. I wanted to call it spirit, but also soul. It's just all that little emotional, invisible connection between us and our dog. Heart is where trust lives, where motivation grows and where the bond becomes more than just the behavior, it becomes the relationship. And we all strive for a great relationship with a dog. And you can have all the technical skill in the world, but there is no connection and no joy. Your training will. Eventually just fall flat. So technical skill's important, but also having a bit of heart behind it. Because dogs just don't learn through cues. They learn through how you feel. They mirror your emotions. They respond to how you are in the moment. They pick up on like little frustrations or stress, and they also pick up when you're happy and joyful and full of love. Training starts from the heart and means to show up fully. Not just to get results, but to build a relationship that's emotionally safe and inspiring and fun. I see this all the time. You know, sometimes you and your dog meet somebody you just know when they're stressed out. We see this in therapy dog work, and we also see it in just everyday life. A lot of people think trust means like whether their dog listens to them or not, but real trust is where your dog knows. When you're consistent, when you're patient and they feel safe, even when they make a mistake, you celebrate their effort and not just their performance. And here's a question to reflect on. I've seen this a lot in my training more recently with my trainer, Jenny Kerwick. She's talked about this over and over again. When you are consistent and you are intentional with your cues like we've talked about in previous episodes, then the dog can learn to trust you, but also that. You aren't always just rewarding the perfect performance out of a dog, but the effort behind that performance, when that comes so important dog agility that we talked about last week. How you can have all the training, all 19 of the 20 obstacles, but then if you. Downhearted get upset that your dog dismiss that one of the 20 obstacles or you get upset with yourself, it becomes really hard to build that relationship with your dog. More specifically, where I learned it is like we polls when I'm working on like a we poll situation with my dog, my dog's trying and they're having good effort behind something. Like there's a really hard entry. I'm trying to teach my dog to get into the wee poles, and it takes a long time to get to where I want to with them. Like rep, after rep, after rep. When I finally get it. The temptation sometimes used to go, oh, finally, goodness gracious, that took you forever to learn. Or if you're asking your dog to come and call and it takes you 10 times to call them, you're like finally being that 10 times to call you back to me away from that squirrel. Yes, that can be frustrating, and the dog's making a ton of mistakes in the moment, but they eventually come to you. You don't always necessarily have to give enthusiastic reinforcement when it takes 'em forever to listen to you, but in a situation with the weave poles. When they're just learning a new skill, it's very important to be enthusiastic for the effort. If it took them a long time to get to a certain point in your training and you just kind of fluff it off, like, oh, finally man, you're such a dummy, how would we feel about that? Right. The fact is that if, if you were working really hard on a project or something for somebody like the Yard and they walked down and be like, ah, you did a good job, I guess you'd be like. I'm never working for you again, but, but if you worked really hard on something, and even if like it wasn't done perfectly, I was like, maybe your first time doing something, but you, you nailed it and they know that you worked really hard on it and they gave you like a lot of reinforcement for this. Like, man, I'm so happy you worked so hard on this project. I know it took a lot out of you and I appreciate the effort that you put behind this and this is gonna work out great, man. You'd be like. Wanting, put more effort next time you work for that person. And you know, that is the key that with our dogs too, that when they're working really hard for us and they're trying really hard for us, we have to reinforce them. Now let me ask you a few questions here. When you're training with your dog, do they feel safe when they make mistake? If the answer's yes, then you're training with heart. If the answer's no, that is where we need to have an opportunity to grow. And trust isn't something you command into your dog, you must trust me. It's something you earn over time through empathy and consistency. One of the biggest roles you play in your dog's life isn't being a trainer, but more of an emotional regulator. When your dog is scared, excited, distracted. Frustrated. They need to borrow. You're calm. They need you to calm down. They need you to help out in that situation because here's the kicker, you can't help your dog regulate their emotion if you aren't regulating your emotion. And we see this a lot in training and that's why Kaizen is so important. It means checking in on your own emotions before a session, breathing when things maybe go a little bit sideways, and reframing mistakes as data. Not failure. Ending on connection and not correction. Your emotional tone sets the stage for your dogs overall performance. The more you grow on your emotional awareness, the more connected your dog becomes. A simple area, I've seen this, the more consistently than ever is when it comes to like fireworks and thunder and like lightning and storms with dogs that are like emotionally unregulated in those situations. I mean, that's scary. There's. Big booms outside. One of the more important parts of that situation is how calm you are. If you're like, oh my gosh, there's fireworks. Oh my gosh, there's lightning. Like it's okay buddy. Don't worry. I hope this stops soon. You're like mad or frustrated'cause your neighbors are blowing up fireworks outside. Don't they know the fact that your dog is scared of fireworks? Yes. It could be frustrating and be so upsetting and if you are getting upset at your neighbors for blowing off those fireworks or. You're getting scared for your dog about the thunderstorm that makes your dog even worse in that situation and can really dysregulate their emotion. So we need to calm down, take a deep breath, and try to help our dogs through a situation. So I was talking to my agility students today just about that, that if you're nervous. About walking into the ring and you're like, oh my gosh, there's so many people, there's dogs, there's Will my dog sniff that person? Will my dog run off course when my dog did this? And their emotions are worked up and this is something I've had to specifically work on a lot. Because my dogs will tell me when I'm freaking out because they act differently than they do in class. I need to learn to calm down. I've been working so hard on this. You can ask people that train with me and they've helped me be like, Hey dude, you're a little too much. My wonderful friend Kathleen Remy, she's like, family to me is, are help, is get a chance to run her corgis. Morgan and Kat, she's sometimes the best at this for me. She's like, Trevor. I'm kind of freaking out a little bit. Can you please calm down? Like it? It's gonna help you. Trust me. And like, take a deep breath. I thank. Thank you. Thank you. It's like, 'cause also like sometimes when I go to agility show, when we get our dog set up and I have a toddler that's running around and maybe something else happens, it starts to make me go spiraling outta control. I have to take a deep breath and calm down. And if I do that, I typically have much better runs in that moment. If you're stressing out about something in life right now, that's all. Take a deep breath together. And let's talk about something that often gets ignored in technical training. And it sounds simple, but it's one word joy. Training should be fun for both you and your dog. Yes. Structure, consistency. Those are all important things, but joy. Joy is what keeps your dog coming back for more, whether it's that little silly voice you have for your dog coming puppy, or a play session between reps or simply smiling during your training cues your dog is watching, and feeling and responding to all those little things. Dogs are very emotionally intelligent. They know when training is a chore for you, and they know when a celebration is happening. I see this all the time. When people cheer for dogs in the crowd, they go crazy. So here's your permission to let go being perfect. Instead, lean into the playful and begin being present with your dog. Heart LED training is joyful. Training and plus, if you're not having fun doing the training, and if you're not having fun doing the agility and your dog's not having fun, then why are you there? Like you need to relax and you need to help your dog to have some fun. Sometimes we make a mistake of seeing connection as the reward. It's good, but connection isn't just the reward, it's the path and the leash walk, and both breathing in sync. It's the eye contact. It happens naturally, but not on cue. Get your dog curling up next to you after a training session. Content, not just tired. So if you're training through a rut, try to focus less on fixing and more on feeling what needs to happen in that moment. Ask yourself these questions. What does my dog need right now? How can I show up with more patience? What brings joy? To me and my dog today. That's where real breakthroughs happen, and sometimes we just need to just go and take a step back and use all the skills we've been learning about thinking. Use your body. Take deep breaths, use your heart. Get all this done. Now, on that note, let's go into our Kaizen Challenge of the week. Choose one of these connection focus practices to do every day of the week. One can be being silent and present. Just sit for five minutes a day. Silent and present next to your dog. The one could be celebration cue, where you can just pick one cue that you know that your dog loves, and make a big party outta that. Another one could be emotional Check-in before you start training. Take a deep breath, check in with yourself. Am I ready? Am I ready to train right now? Then proceed from that information, proceed or not proceed from that information actually. And as always, make sure to go ahead and tell us how your journey's going, and tag us at the doggy dojo on social media. Let me know if there's some questions or thoughts that you have about what we've talked about over the last few weeks. We've explored now all three pillars of the doggy Doja journey, and it's time to just as a review, think about each one of those with mind. Clarity and awareness and understanding with body movement, rhythm and energy, and with heart. Trust, emotion and relationship together, they support one another and they create a complete path of Kaizen, one that transforms your training in your life one step at a time. These principles aren't just about our dogs, remember it's about us as well. We're gonna jump into future episodes where we tackle not only helping our dogs with specific like behavior issues. But helping ourselves with specific mind, body, and heart challenges and becoming two sides, right? It's not just about the dog, it's not just about us. It's us and the dog working together and building that harmony and that connection and that focus with one another. And we're gonna dive into those things together here on the Dokey Dojo. And this is just the beginning of our journey here. Coming up in future episodes, we'll start exploring how to apply these principles to real training challenges, whether it be leash walking, recall dog sports, confidence building and more, and things that will help us as well as trainers and training our dog and regulating our own emotions and. I want you to remember something real quickly. Your dog doesn't need a perfect trainer. They just need a present one. And on that, let's grow together. And thanks for joining us here on The Doggy Dojo. It's been a great journey discovering these different principles, but we're not done here. Let's keep on growing together and as always, have some fun with your dogs and we'll see you next time. Bye.