What happens in the first week after my dog comes home?

Luna has the fullest statement of the rule anywhere in the corpus, and it is given twice. At the first in-program lesson the prediction is made flatly and the breed is dismissed in the same breath - a husky shepherd mix is going to test you, but so is every dog. At the house lesson it becomes an instruction with a mechanism: be as strict this week as you want life to be, and for these seven days every marker you say gets backed up with the collar, with the discretion to let a self-correction slide arriving later. The analogy he uses is a parent who announced a rule and now has to stand behind it because it is a principle. The go-home lesson closes the set by naming the window as a general fact about the business's dogs - about a week in which they work out that the rules that applied with the trainer apply here too.

Stormie is where the week gets its name and its picture. A soft, sweet, very physical puppy whose problem is not fear and not confusion but a willingness to decline - and whose family are told, mid-program, that the dogs take a week to settle and that the risk is not knowing how to snap everything back into place at the end of it. The grandkids image is the delivery mechanism and it is aimed precisely at the failure this family is most likely to have: the trainer later tells them he is worried they will be too soft. The promise attached is specific - stay strict and the over-excitement does not become unmanageable.

Deuce is the same week stated from the dog's side, in a dog with no avoidance in him at all - a ten-month-old Rottweiler doing ordinary adolescent things at ninety-six pounds. The framing is preventive rather than corrective: the danger is not the trash or the chair, it is him discovering that he can. And it comes with the sharpest sentence in the cluster, which is that he will actively teach you how to give in, and do it fast. The mechanics for the week are the most concrete anywhere: keep the e-collar on, and do not give a command while it is off.

Zeus supplies the three warnings that together are the closest thing the business has to a relapse protocol, and two of them are things nobody else says. First, the dog will look worse at home than he looked in the videos, and the family should be told before they see it. Second, the testing happens specifically in front of his person - it is narrated live and laughed at, which is the useful way to deliver it. Third, the handover lesson is the worst performance the family will see, and the reason is arithmetic rather than authority: roughly two hundred commands in a changed context. The trainer pre-empts the owner reading that as her own failure.

Lola's go-home lesson gives the shortest version of the rule - about a week to settle in, new environment and everything, so stay really strict on everything - and it is delivered in the owners' living room alongside the e-collar fitting. It matters that it is said about a nervous, softly handled dog as well as about a hard adolescent: the window is presented as a property of dogs coming home, not of difficult dogs.

Is my dog going to forget everything when he gets home?

No - he is going to find out whether it applies here. Every trainer in this corpus predicts about a week of that, about every dog, unprompted, and one of them says it in the plainest possible way: every dog that goes home has a week where they have to realise that all the rules that applied with me apply here. What you do in that week decides which answer he settles on. This is also why a dog can look excellent in the training videos and chaotic on his first evening at home; that gap is the week, not the program unravelling.

How strict is strict? I do not want to be harsh with him on his first week back.

The instruction is not about harshness, it is about consistency: be as strict this week as you want life to be for the rest of his life. In practice that is mechanical rather than severe - keep the collar on, do not give a command while it is off, and back up every marker you say, every time. The trainers are explicit that the licence to let a small self-correction pass comes later, once the dog has settled. The reason for the front-loading is stated as a principle about announcing rules: if you say it and do not stand behind it, you have taught him that your words are optional.

Why does he try things in front of me and not in front of the trainer?

Because you are the person he is finding out about. It is predicted, it is narrated live in at least one handover, and it is treated as funny rather than as a failure - he is doing more things in front of you, and that is him seeing what he can get away with. The right response is not to be embarrassed by it; it is to answer it, because your answer is exactly the information he is collecting.

He was terrible during the handover lesson. Was that my fault?

No, and one trainer names it before the family can. The handover is the most command-dense hour of the dog's life - his estimate on camera is roughly two hundred commands since he arrived - in a context the dog has just changed. That is the worst set of conditions the dog will face, so it is the worst he will look. The same trainers tell families in advance that the dog may look like he is going crazy again once he is home, precisely so that first evening is not read as the program failing.

What happens at the end of the week?

He settles, on the trainers' account, and what he settles into is whatever was actually enforced. Stormie's family are told the dogs take a week to settle and that the thing to have ready is how to snap everything back into place; her later session attaches the specific payoff, which is that the over-excitement does not become unmanageable. Lola's family get the same thing in one sentence at the go-home lesson. Be aware that this is a prediction, not a measurement: no session in this corpus follows a dog into that week, so nothing here checks it.

Going easy on the dog for the first week because he has just got home. This is the named failure mode, and the trainers say the loose-looking training that follows is not decay - it is the absence of reinforcement.

Saying a marker word and not backing it. For this week the instruction is absolute: if you say it, you follow through with the collar. The discretion to let a self-correction go belongs later.

Giving a command while the e-collar is off. For the first week the instruction is to keep it on and to give no command without it, so the word is never separated from what stands behind it.

Letting the small things go - the trash, the counter, the chair - because they are not the trained commands. The trainers aim the warning precisely there: the risk is him learning that he can.

Reading the go-home lesson, or the first days at home, as proof that the training did not take. It is the worst the dog will look, for reasons that have nothing to do with the family.

Taking the testing personally when it happens in front of you. It is expected, it is specifically aimed at the person watching, and the trainers narrate it as a normal event rather than an embarrassment.

Your dog has just come home from a program and is doing things this week that he never did on camera - the counter, the trash, the chair, ignoring a word he clearly knows.

He tries things specifically when you are in the room, and behaves when you are not.

You find yourself saying the marker word and then deciding not to follow it up, because he has only just got back.

The dog looked much better in the trainer's videos than he looks in your kitchen, and you have started to wonder whether the program worked.