Why Speed Matters

When teaching our puppy classes, one of the main principles we emphasise is starting your dog’s training from day one with the end in mind. In simple terms, this means having a clear picture of the dog you’d like to be living with in two years’ time. Not just how they look or their basic behaviours, but how it feels to engage, train, and live alongside them.

Holding this picture helps shape what is truly important in your training journey. It becomes an orientation point — a reference for how you want your dog to behave, respond, and interact with you.

If we look at some common obedience mechanics, such as recall or a down, we often see dogs responding slowly, reluctantly, or only after being asked repeatedly. The behaviour is technically there, but it lacks willingness. There’s often a sense of pressure behind it — and in many cases, duress is the best word to describe it.

Duress is defined as being forced or compelled to act against your will, usually through threats or intense pressure. Unfortunately, this accurately reflects how obedience is sometimes taught and reinforced. An exercise may begin as enjoyable, but over time attention fades, the environment becomes more interesting, and without really noticing it we start to apply more pressure to get compliance.

The danger here is subtle but significant. We fall into a pattern where success relies on our ability to apply pressure. Remove that pressure, and reliability quickly drops.

To avoid this trap, we often return to another concept we discuss regularly: “How does it feel?”

At first, this can sound like a vague or slightly odd question. But when applied consistently, it becomes one of the most accurate gauges of training quality. If your dog is offering engagement, responding enthusiastically, and clearly enjoying the interaction, there’s a strong chance the behaviours being practised are being positively reinforced and will hold up over time.

Another critical element to consider is speed.

When we ask a dog for a behaviour, it’s common to see a pause — the mental cogs turning while the dog weighs up the pros and cons. Although this only takes a second or two, that delay matters. It gives the dog time to scan the environment and potentially find something more rewarding than responding to us.

This is why, in our puppy and obedience classes, we introduce speed early in the training process. The goal is for important behaviours to become conditioned responses, not prolonged negotiations.

Take recall as an example. When most people imagine a perfect recall, they picture a dog that reacts instantly and returns at speed. The problem is that if training repetitions don’t resemble this picture, the finished behaviour never will. How we practise is what we get.

For this reason, recall training with our puppies is never about how many repetitions we complete. The focus is on how quickly they respond to the cue, how fast they return, and the intensity and enthusiasm within the sequence. A dog that practises reacting with speed and urgency stands a far better chance of succeeding when faced with real-world temptations — because they aren’t thinking, they’re doing.

When we remove pressure from our training and integrate play as a central component, we stop pushing our dogs toward behaviours and instead build their own drive toward the outcome we want.

Speed matters — because feeling, intention, and repetition all shape the dog you end up living with.