Is Your "Once In A Lifetime Dog" Holding You Back? #329
Shaped by Dog with Susan Garrett
DogsThat
4.8 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Visit us at shapedbydog.com
Is your "Once In A Lifetime Dog" holding you back? What you believe about your dog shapes what you notice, how you respond, and the results you create together. In this episode, I'm sharing how the stories and labels we attach to our dogs influence our focus, our training choices, and ultimately our dog's success. Through the lens of neuroscience and real-life examples, you'll see how belief drives behavior, how confirmation bias reinforces those beliefs, and why even positive labels can quietly limit what's possible. When you shift the story, you open the door to more possibilities and a dog who can truly become everything they're capable of.
In this episode, you'll hear:
• About the viral Facebook post and why it sparked such emotional reactions.
• What I believe is the real limitation in dog training.
• Why the story you tell about your dog can shape your training and results.
• How belief influences what you notice and how you respond to your dog.
• The story of my dog, Encore and how belief played a role in her success.
• How your brain filters what matters through the Reticular Activation System (R.A.S.)
• Why labels like "reactive" change what you notice about your dog.
• How confirmation bias reinforces what you already believe about your dog.
• Why labels can become self-fulfilling in your training.
• How your expectations influence your dog's confidence and success.
• Why dogs don't need words to feel what you believe about them.
• The real cost of "heart dog" or "once in a lifetime dog" labels.
• The difference between gratitude and limitation when describing your dog.
• Why every dog has the potential to be extraordinary.
• The question to ask yourself to help you shift your perspective and open new possibilities.
Resources:
1. Podcast Episode 13: Naming Your Puppy or Dog - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/13/
2. Podcast Episode 168: Creating Confidence For Anxious, Stressed Or Reactive Dogs Part 1 - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/168/
3. Podcast Episode 189: All The Things That Influence Your Dog's Behavior And What Behavior Tells You - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/189/
4. Podcast Episode 224: Unleashing Fluency In Dog Training: Cracking The Canine Communication Code - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/224/
5. Podcast Episode 8: Get Your Dog in the Belief Loop of Awesome - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/8/
6. Podcast Episode 71: Pro Dog Trainer's Secret to Help Your Naughty Dog - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/71/
7. Podcast Episode 124: The Woo Side Of Dog Training: Power of Words - https://dogsthat.com/podcast/124/
8. Watch this Episode of Shaped by Dog on YouTube - https://youtu.be/bpbf_-U2-V0
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The post I created on Facebook, over 700 comments on that post. One commenter thought I was dismissing |
| 0:07.6 | grief. It was a frenzy. People weren't just reacting to the words that they read on my post. |
| 0:13.6 | They were reacting to the beliefs that they had in their own minds. And why were the comments |
| 0:20.2 | so emotional? |
| 0:25.9 | Hi, I'm Susan Garrett and this is shaped by dog, where training makes sense at both ends of |
| 0:31.4 | the leash. What if I was to tell you the most limiting thing about your relationship with your |
| 0:37.2 | dog is the story you tell |
| 0:39.3 | yourself. Not the breed of dog, not the genetics of the dog, not even your training |
| 0:45.7 | abilities, just the story. Because once you decide this dog's a slow thinker, this dog is clumsy, |
| 0:53.9 | this dog will never be as good as my last dog, or this dog's a slow thinker, this dog is clumsy, this dog will never be as good as my last |
| 0:56.3 | dog or this dog is my heart dog, my one and only heart dog. Your brain will then start looking for |
| 1:03.8 | proof, continuously looking for proof. And that changes how you respond to the dog, how you think about the dog, how you talk about |
| 1:13.2 | and talk to the dog. And before long, this story, it feels true. Not because it was any sort of destiny, |
| 1:21.4 | but because it was a directive coming from you. A few weeks ago, I made a post on my personal Facebook page where I suggested |
| 1:29.9 | that people should stop calling their dogs their heart dogs or their soul dogs or their |
| 1:35.1 | once-in-a-lifetime dogs. And that post, it blew up. Not because of the words that I wrote, |
| 1:41.3 | but because of the meaning that people attached to the words that I wrote. |
| 1:46.1 | And that's exactly what I want to talk about today. The stories we tell ourselves and the meaning |
| 1:52.8 | we give things. This episode is not about trying to police the language people use about their |
| 1:58.2 | dog. And it's not about judging how deeply anyone loves their dog. And it's |
| 2:03.3 | certainly not minimizing the connection we all have with our dogs. It's about something much more |
| 2:09.3 | powerful than that. It's about how the human brain works, how belief shapes attention and how |
... |
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