The emotional state of the animal is one of the essential pillars of any training, education, or behavior modification process. This protocol promotes the need to identify, understand, and manage the dog’s emotions throughout training, avoiding approaches focused solely on mechanical obedience or external control of behavior.
Key recommendations include continuously assessing signs of stress, frustration, fear, overarousal, avoidance, or emotional fatigue during training sessions, adapting the intensity and complexity of exercises to the animal’s emotional state. Highly stimulating environments should be avoided during early learning stages, while safe and predictable settings should be prioritized to support emotional stability.
The protocol also recommends teaching emotional self-regulation, rest, frustration tolerance, and calm recovery strategies, especially in young, sensitive, or highly reactive dogs. An emotionally overwhelmed dog cannot maintain healthy, sustainable, or meaningful learning.
The objective is to integrate emotional welfare as an inseparable component of every educational, behavioral, or therapeutic program involving animals.