As Sydney starts warming up, you might notice your dog behaving a little differently.
Their responses are slower. They disengage sooner. Food or toys suddenly seem less interesting. They become frustrated more quickly, struggle to settle after activity, or a training session that normally feels easy suddenly feels messy.
Before assuming your training is going backwards, consider the temperature.
Heat changes the conditions your dog is working in
Training never happens in a vacuum.
When a dog is warm, their body is already working to regulate temperature, primarily through panting and other heat loss mechanisms. Physical activity adds to that heat load, and fatigue and thirst can develop more quickly.
Then we add the environment.
Dogs passing nearby. Traffic. Wildlife. Exciting smells. Leash handling. Movement. Thinking. Responding to cues.
The behaviour we see is always occurring within those conditions.
A dog taking longer to respond on a warm afternoon hasn't necessarily forgotten their training. The conditions under which you're asking for that behaviour have changed.
What might you notice?
Depending on the individual dog, warmer conditions may coincide with:
• Reduced engagement
• Slower responses to familiar cues
• Less interest in food or play
• More frequent disengagement
• Shorter periods of useful concentration
• Increased frustration
• Difficulty settling after activity
• Seeking shade, water or opportunities to stop
• Panting and reduced willingness to continue
These behaviours shouldn't be interpreted individually. Look at the whole dog, their physical state and what is happening around them.
The same exercise can become a different exercise
Imagine your dog can usually walk calmly past another dog at a particular distance.
Now ask them to do exactly the same thing when they're warm, panting, physically tired and have already spent 30 minutes navigating a stimulating environment.
To us, the exercise looks identical.
For the dog, the difficulty may have changed considerably.
This becomes particularly relevant for dogs already working through reactivity, frustration, environmental sensitivity or difficulty regulating arousal.
Adjust the criteria, not just the reward
When a dog starts struggling, adding increasingly valuable food isn't always the answer.
Sometimes the environment needs to change.
That could mean increasing distance from a trigger, reducing repetitions, shortening the session, moving into shade, allowing more recovery time, choosing a quieter environment or training during a cooler part of the day.
Good training requires us to continually assess whether the dog in front of us is still capable of doing what we're asking.
Watch when the quality changes
More training isn't automatically better training.
Ten useful repetitions while your dog is comfortable and engaged may achieve considerably more than continuing once the quality of their responses has deteriorated.
Pay attention to the transition.
When did their response become slower?
When did they stop taking food normally?
When did scanning increase?
When did their play lose intensity?
When did they start seeking shade?
When did something that was easy ten minutes ago suddenly become difficult?
Those changes are information.
Temperature is another environmental variable
We readily understand that asking for recall in the living room is different from asking for recall beside an exciting group of dogs.
Temperature deserves similar consideration.
A cool morning and a hot Sydney afternoon create different training conditions.
This doesn't mean training stops during warmer weather. It means we become more thoughtful about timing, duration, intensity, environment and recovery.
Train during cooler parts of the day where possible. Provide access to water and shade. Be conscious of surface temperatures. Allow adequate recovery after physical activity. Pay particular attention to dogs who struggle in warmer conditions.
Most importantly, watch the individual dog rather than relying solely on the temperature displayed on your phone.
The dog in front of you determines the session.
If your dog's behaviour seems to change dramatically between environments, situations or levels of excitement, there is usually useful information in that inconsistency.
At Willowhound, training starts with understanding what is influencing the behaviour before deciding how to change it.
Need help understanding what is happening with your dog?
Get in touch with Willowhound Dog Training in Sydney's Inner West.
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