Why Your Dog Isn’t Reading Your Vibes (Man)
I’ve noticed increasingly over the past couple of years that that the push for visibility on social media often encourages dog trainers to frame their method as the “right” one. It’s a dynamic that keeps outdated concepts — particularly the idea of “energy” — in circulation.
“Dogs can sense your energy” is a cornerstone claim for certain training approaches that present themselves as more intuitive and more connected than evidence-based methods. Except dogs can’t read energy in any mystical sense. What they can read is concrete: body language, muscle tension, breathing patterns, and biochemical signals. The distinction matters, because one approach leaves owners with vague instructions like “stay calm”, while the other gives you practical, observable tools you can actually use
The appeal of "energy"
The idea that dogs read your ‘energy’ seems to makes intuitive sense. We feel anxious, the dog acts anxious. We relax, the dog settles. Cause and effect.
But correlation isn't causation. Your anxiety doesn't transmit wirelessly to your dog's nervous system. What happens is mechanical: anxiety changes your body - shallow breathing, tight muscles, jerky movements, elevated cortisol in your sweat - and your dog reads those signals the way they've been reading mammalian stress indicators for thousands of years. Like the pack leader myth, it sounds plausible but misunderstands how dogs actually process information
Calling it "energy" is like calling gravity "the universe's intention to keep things grounded." Poetic, but useless if you're trying to build a bridge.
What dogs actually read
Dogs are spectacular at reading:
Body language - posture, gait, hand position, head angle. A tense handler moves differently. Shoulders rise, stride shortens, hands grip the lead tighter. Dogs don't need mystical energy to notice you've changed shape.
Muscle tension - transmitted directly through the lead. Every micro-adjustment in your grip, every unconscious tug, every bracing movement travels down the line. The lead is a direct nervous system connection.
Breathing patterns - shallow, rapid breathing signals stress in every mammal. Dogs recognise it immediately, not through psychic waves but through audible, visible respiratory changes.
Biochemical signals - cortisol, adrenaline, other stress hormones appear in sweat. Dogs' olfactory systems can detect these at concentrations we can't imagine. When you're anxious, you literally smell different.
Vocal changes - pitch rises, pace quickens, tone sharpens when stressed. Even if you think you sound normal, your dog hears the frequency shift.
This isn't "energy." It's information. Observable, measurable, concrete information your dog evolved to interpret.
Why the distinction matters
If you believe in energy, the advice is vague: "stay calm," "project confidence," "don't be nervous." How? What does that actually mean in practice?
If you understand the mechanism, the advice becomes specific:
Breathe deeply and slowly (changes your physiology and the audible signals)
Relax your shoulders and jaw (changes your body language and lead tension)
Move deliberately, not jerkily (changes your gait and the mechanical feedback through the lead)
Keep your voice low and steady (changes the acoustic signals)
Train when you're genuinely calm, not when you're faking it (because you can't fake the biochemical signals)
The outcome might look the same - you calm down, dog calms down - but one approach gives you tools, the other gives you mysticism.
The training trap
"Energy" thinking leads to a particularly nasty trap: if your dog misbehaves, you blame yourself for having "bad energy." Not your training plan, not your understanding of the dog's genetics, not your technique - your vibes were off.
This is how people end up believing their anxiety caused their dog's reactivity, when the actual sequence is: dog has genetic predisposition to reactivity → owner hasn't trained appropriate responses → dog reacts → owner gets anxious → dog reads anxiety signals and escalates → owner blames their energy instead of addressing the training gap. It's anthropomorphising - projecting human emotional reasoning onto dogs who are simply responding to observable signals
Your state matters. But it's not causal, it's amplifying. Fix the training, and your state becomes far less relevant.
What to do instead
Stay calm if you can - but understand why it helps. Your dog isn't absorbing your emotional frequency. They're reading concrete, physical signals and responding to what those signals have historically predicted.
If you're anxious on walks because your dog pulls, the solution isn't meditation (though it might help). It's training loose-lead walking so you're no longer anxious because the pulling is solved. Treat the cause, not the symptom. This is what evidence-based training addresses - the actual behaviour, not mystical energy.
If your dog reacts to other dogs and you tense up anticipating it, the solution isn't "project calm energy." It's counter-conditioning and desensitisation so your dog stops reacting and you stop tensing.
Your state matters. But pretending it's mystical makes it harder to manage, not easier.
The Dog’s Honest Truth
Dogs are extraordinary at reading mammals. Thousands of years of evolution built that skill. They notice things we don't consciously control - micro-expressions, gait changes, scent variations, muscle tension.
That's not magic. That's biology. And biology you can work with.
Stay calm when you can. But when you can't, fix the training that’s creating the stress, and your dog will read the difference immediately