Building Capacity on Both Ends of the Leash - What Stayed with Me from the 2026 IACP Conference

Puppies, capacity, agency, recovery, cognition, and looking at the dog beneath the training.

I've been home from the IACP Conference for a few days now and I'm still marinating on a few of the presentations and conversations. I went into the conference with a pretty good idea of who I wanted to see, and there were a couple of presentations that I absolutely loved. More than anything, I came home feeling really validated in some of the things I've already been noticing and prioritizing in my own work.

Of course, some of it sparked new ideas and potential projects that I'm already playing around with in my brain. Kelly Dunbar's puppy presentation and Behesha Doan's This Able Veteran – Canine Partners for the Journey Back Home were probably the two that hit home the most for me.

I also really enjoyed both Lunch & Learn Workshops with Jay Jack and Stephanie Vichinsky. Jay is always incredible to learn from, no matter how many times I go, and Stephanie was so nice to meet and listen to, she is a wonderful public speaker; I could have easily listened to both of them for much longer.

There were also pieces from Chad Mackin and Brett Endes that connected with things I was already thinking about. Puppy development, service dogs, emotion, cognition, resilience, agency, nervous systems, communication, biological fulfillment...a lot of it kept bringing me back to the individual dog in front of us.

Behavior is information.

We can reinforce behavior, change it, teach new skills, interrupt things when we need to. Learning theory obviously matters, however, I also want to know what the behavior is telling me about the individual dog.

What are they noticing? What are they expecting? What have they learned? Do they actually understand what we're asking? How are they feeling? What can they handle right now?

What do they need?

I loved how this kept showing up in different ways across several presentations. Looking beyond the behavior itself and paying attention to the dog underneath it was definitely a theme that resonated with me. 

Building the Dog Beneath the Training

Kelly Dunbar's puppy presentation was easily one of my favorites. I work with a lot of puppies, and I especially love puppies who have some kind of future purpose in mind such as service dogs, sports, working roles, or just becoming really well-rounded and happy companion dogs.

I love having goals for puppies; I love training them, but I also see how easy it is to get so focused on the dog we hope they'll become that we forget about the puppy they are right now.

Puppyhood is short!

They need to explore, play, move their bodies, interact with their environment, problem solve, experience some frustration, recover from things, build confidence, learn to settle, have appropriate biological outlets, and sometimes just be a puppy.

One distinction Kelly talked about that I loved was: compliance vs. capacity.

Can my puppy sit around a distraction? Great.

Can they also recover after being startled? Handle some frustration? Explore independently and then reconnect with me? Settle without constantly being told what to do? Experience something new, gather information, and become curious again? Those things tell me so much about the dog I'm developing.

Something else I keep coming back to is: agency.

How much freedom does your puppy actually have?

How often do they get to explore without being directed? Make a choice? Communicate that they're uncomfortable? Figure something out? Move their body the way they need to? Decide what they want to sniff? Try something and realize it didn't work?

Agency doesn't mean puppies run the household or never hear "no." Boundaries are part of life too, but if nearly every part of a puppy's day is managed, directed, cued, interrupted, or decided for them, they're missing opportunities to practice navigating life for themselves.

A puppy growing up with very little meaningful agency may have fewer opportunities to develop frustration tolerance, confidence making decisions, and the ability to figure things out without someone always giving them the answer; those can be much harder things to go back and build later than a sit or a down.

Those experiences matter later!

Another point from Kelly that I loved was her approach to pro-social behavior. One of my notes from her puppy presentation was essentially: rarely punish pro-social behavior.

That made so much sense to me! Sometimes we're so focused on obedience that we're quick to interrupt behavior that's actually completely appropriate.

A puppy wants to sniff something. Investigate. Move their body. Greet appropriately. Play. Communicate. Look away. Take a break. Before interrupting something just because it isn't what I asked for, I want to ask:

“Is this actually a problem?”

If the puppy is making a safe, socially appropriate choice, sometimes letting that choice happen is part of developing the dog too. Also, to be clear, that doesn't mean letting a puppy become wildly over-aroused or greet every person and dog they see; I still want to be thoughtful about when, where, and how those interactions happen.

There are times to walk past another dog, times to stay with me, times to observe without interacting...but there should also be appropriate opportunities to go say hello, play, investigate, and actually learn how to navigate social interactions. 

I don't want to take those experiences completely off the table in the name of neutrality or future obedience!

Giving puppies appropriate opportunities to interact can also help people and other dogs become “less of a big deal”. They don't always have to be this incredibly exciting thing just out of reach, or something the puppy is constantly being redirected away from.

I want them to learn how to read the whole picture: sometimes interaction is available and sometimes it isn't, and they can learn how to handle both.

I also think about what happens when we're constantly interrupting or correcting appropriate pro-social behavior when they're young. Puppies are still figuring out how to interact with the world. If so much of what they try is met with don't do that, don't go there, leave that alone, stop moving, stay here, we may be taking away opportunities for them to figure out what appropriate choices actually look like!

Then adolescence comes along, with plenty of developmental change on its own. I don't want to add more frustration or confusion by spending puppyhood micromanaging every choice and then expecting the adolescent dog to suddenly know how to navigate situations on their own.

And that carries into how I think about adult dogs too. If we've spent so much time controlling the outward behavior, how much opportunity did the dog actually have to learn how to work through things themselves?

A dog can become very good at obedience and still struggle underneath all of that management; that's where some of my thoughts around masking through obedience start to connect too.

I don't want to spend puppyhood teaching a dog that every spontaneous choice needs to be replaced with one of mine. I think this is especially important with puppies with a purpose!

Service-dog prospects, sport dogs, working dogs – we have big dreams for them, and because of that we can accidentally put even more expectations on them; more training, more focus, more management, more emphasis on being "good."

You can aim to train as “positively” as you can and still put a ton of pressure on a puppy to constantly perform, focus, engage, behave, and prepare for their future job.

A future service dog is still a puppy. A future sport dog is still a puppy. They need and deserve a childhood too!

“Obedience” can matter and be helpful. I absolutely want my dogs to have skills, but honestly, obedience is one of the easier things to add later.

We don't get puppyhood back!

I see dogs later for reactivity, frustration, overarousal, anxiety, and other behavior concerns, and it makes me look at development too. Genetics, health, environment, learning history, and so many other things contribute to behavior, but I don't want to overlook what the dog had opportunities to experience and develop when they were young.

Often what looks like a dog who needs more training makes me wonder what else they need.

More opportunities to explore. More biological fulfillment. More experience making choices. More practice recovering. More confidence navigating the world without someone directing every second of it.

So along with all the skills you're teaching your puppy, pay attention to the things that aren't on an obedience checklist.

What happens when something doesn't go perfectly? How quickly do they recover? Do they investigate something new? Can they leave you to explore and then reconnect? Can they work through a little frustration before immediately looking to you to solve it? Can they play hard and eventually come back down?

What choices do they make when nobody is telling them what to do? That's all an essential part of learning too.

Kelly used the phrase “building the dog beneath the training,” and I absolutely loved that.

That's the puppy I want to develop! 

More Than a Sit

Another idea I kept coming back to throughout the conference was how often we ask dogs to be still when they're having a hard time.

Sit. Down. Stay. Place. Stop moving. Look at me.

I do teach and use these skills. They're useful skills, and sometimes giving a dog something familiar to do can provide clarity when they need it. However, I think we have to pay attention to what we're actually accomplishing with that stillness.

Imagine your dog is worried about another dog nearby. You put them in a down. They're technically doing what you asked, but their body is tense. They're staring at the other dog. Maybe they keep trying to reposition, stand up, look away, or create a little more space.

Every time they move:

No. Down.

Maybe the leash gets shorter. Maybe we repeat the cue. Maybe we add more pressure because we really want them to understand that getting up isn't an option.

Eventually, we may have a dog who stays perfectly still.

But what did they learn?

Did they become more comfortable? Did they learn how to move through that feeling? Or did they learn that expressing what they were feeling wasn't an option, so staying down was the safest choice?

That's what I mean when I talk about “masking through obedience”.

The outward picture can look beautifully trained while the dog underneath it is still struggling.

If we're repeatedly asking dogs to contain big feelings without enough opportunity to move, communicate, create appropriate distance, gather information, or recover, sometimes we'll see dogs begin to shut down. Sometimes a dog seems "fine" until suddenly they aren't. Sometimes there's a much bigger reaction later that feels like it came out of nowhere.

It makes me think about burnout and meltdowns too, and what can happen when an individual spends too much time holding everything together; this is one of the reasons movement is so important and interests me so much.

Looking away. Sniffing. Creating distance. Investigating. Orienting back to us. Shaking off. Moving their body. Those are all little pieces of information about what the dog is experiencing and how they're working through it.

That doesn't mean we should never ask a dog to hold a position. Sometimes a familiar behavior genuinely helps a particular dog settle or gives them some clarity in the moment.

I want to watch the individual dog and what is actually helping them. If I ask my dog to sit or lie down around something difficult, I'm watching more than whether their elbows stay on the ground.

Can they look away? Can they sniff? Can they respond to familiar information? Can they take food normally, if that's typical for them? Is their body becoming softer or more tense? Can they disengage?

What happens when I release them?

How quickly do they return to being themselves afterward?

Instead of only measuring success by: "My dog stayed in a down while another dog walked past." I want to know what happened to the dog during and after that experience.

Not just whether the dog can obey while they're having an emotional experience, but whether we're helping them develop the capacity to navigate that experience.

This is also something I think owners should pay attention to when choosing training, especially for a puppy. A training program can have structure and still make room for the individual dog. A group class can have a curriculum without every dog needing the exact same path through it.

I'm cautious of cookie-cutter approaches where every dog receives essentially the same intervention, the priority becomes compliance, and unwanted behavior is routinely suppressed without asking enough questions about why it's happening.

Two dogs can show the exact same outward behavior for completely different reasons.

A dog barking because they're frustrated that they can't say hello may need something very different from a dog barking because they're afraid and trying to create distance.

A puppy bouncing around because they're exhausted and can't settle may need something different from a puppy who has been contained all day and desperately needs to move.

And a dog breaking a down because they're struggling emotionally may need something different from a dog who simply hasn't learned a reliable down-stay yet.

The behavior tells me what's happening. It doesn't automatically tell me why.

I'm especially cautious when very young puppies are expected to comply through increasing pressure rather than being given room to develop, explore, communicate, make choices, and learn how to navigate their environment. If the answer to every struggle is simply more pressure until the dog complies, I want to ask what we're actually teaching besides compliance.

Stopping behavior can absolutely be necessary. Safety matters, boundaries matter…there are behaviors we can't simply allow a dog to continue practicing. However, what happens after we stop it? What are we teaching instead? What does this particular dog need? Are we helping the dog become more capable, or are we mostly getting better at controlling what we can see?

I want dogs who understand direction. There are situations where I need my dog to stay with me, hold a position, move away from something, or trust what I'm asking them to do.

I also want a dog who has practiced navigating emotions instead of only practicing holding still through them. Especially with puppies, I want to be careful about which one I'm spending their developmental time building.

Good training should be flexible enough to change when the dog in front of us tells us it needs to.

Movement, Rest, Agency, and Finding Our Way Back

Stephanie Vichinsky's presentation and Lunch & Learn Workshop were another highlight for me. She is such a great speaker, and one thing I wrote down over and over from her was:

Movement and rest. Movement and rest.

It sounds simple, but there's a lot more to it.

Dogs get excited. They get frustrated. They play hard. They experience uncertainty. Their bodies move through different states throughout the day.

I'm interested in what happens afterward too:

Can they come back down? Can they recover? Can they actually rest?

And when something happens again, can they move through that cycle a little more successfully?

Stephanie talked about adaptation and developing pathways that help a dog find their way back "home." I loved that way of looking at it. If we're constantly trying to prevent a dog from ever becoming activated, they don't get much practice recovering from activation. That doesn't mean overwhelming a dog in the name of resilience…the challenge has to make sense for the dog in front of us.

Maybe a puppy investigates something slightly strange and then goes home and sleeps.

A dog plays hard, gets excited, moves their body, and then has an opportunity for real rest.

A worried dog notices something difficult from a place where they can still gather information, move, communicate, and eventually recover.

A dog works through a little frustration while solving a problem and discovers that they can keep trying.

Movement and rest.

Chad Mackin's discussion around agency and controllability connected here for me too. Dogs need experiences where their choices matter: opportunities to explore, problem solve, communicate, try things, make mistakes, seek help, and sometimes figure something out without us immediately stepping in with the answer.

Sometimes I make the decision too. Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes we're leaving. Sometimes you can't greet that dog. Sometimes I'm asking you to come with me even though you'd rather investigate something else; both are part of navigating life.

A question worth asking is:

How much of your dog's day is actually theirs?

Not unmanaged or unsafe. Just theirs.

Do they get to choose where they sniff sometimes? Investigate things? Solve problems? Play? Move their body? Communicate preferences? Have periods where nobody is asking them to perform anything?

And then…do they actually get enough rest? True rest. Not just laying down and being passive, but truly resting (especially after fulfillment and needs are met).

Especially with puppies, sport dogs, and working dogs, people can be so good at giving them activities that recovery gets overlooked too. I really liked the reminder that the recovery afterward is part of the experience too. We can give our dogs opportunities to do things, work through things, and experience the world, but they also need the time and space to come back down and rest afterward; and if I want to know whether a dog can actually settle, I need to give them the opportunity to show me!

Putting a dog in a down position and insisting they stay there doesn't necessarily tell me that. Sometimes I don't want to give them direction at all. I want to wait them out and see what happens when they're responsible for finding that resting state themselves.

How long does it take? Can they stop scanning the environment? Does their body actually soften? Can they disengage from what's happening around them? Can they eventually lie down and truly rest without being told to?

Often the dog who looks much less dramatic outwardly can actually have a really difficult time settling on their own. Meanwhile, the loud, explosive, busy dog may be able to have their moment and recover relatively quickly. The intensity of what we see isn't always the best measure of how well a dog can regulate and recover.

That's another reason I'm cautious about constantly using obedience to create stillness. I don't want to put a dog in a position where they're repeatedly expected to mask what they're experiencing by holding a behavior. A dog looking calm and a dog actually settling aren't necessarily the same thing.

I think about burnout and meltdowns here too, and what can happen when an individual spends too much time holding everything together.

That idea of finding our way back "home" stayed in my notes. Behesha's presentation made me look at it from the other end of the leash.

I also loved Jay Jack's Lunch & Learn, and getting to watch Emily Haley – The Dog Listener work her Rottweiler, Barrett, during one of the working spots made it even better. Emily is a phenomenal trainer I really respect and look up to. It's always a pleasure getting to spend time with her and watch her work. I love getting to observe the little decisions great trainers make in real time that you don't always get from just talking about training.

The Partnership Builds Both Ends of the Leash

Behesha Doan's This Able Veteran – Canine Partners for the Journey Back Home was probably one of the presentations that affected me the most.

I've spent a lot of my life around service dogs, so this is already an area that's really important to me. I loved the way she talked about the partnership beyond simply training a dog to perform tasks.

We often describe service dogs by what they do: alerts, interruptions, creating space, providing pressure, helping someone navigate an environment; those tasks are incredibly important.

One of my biggest takeaways from Behesha was her discussion around building the human nervous system and capacity through the partnership.

That was fascinating to me, and with my own history of trauma, it hit me personally too.

A service dog can help someone through a difficult moment, but all of those experiences together can also become practice over time: recognizing what's happening, responding differently, recovering, building trust, and developing new patterns.

The dog is helping in the moment, and the human is developing their own capacity too.

There's a relationship developing there that goes far beyond a collection of trained tasks.

This is where Stephanie's idea of finding pathways back "home" also connected for me.

Stephanie had me thinking about helping dogs move through experiences, adapt, recover, rest, and find their way back. Then I'm listening to Behesha talk about the dog helping the human on their journey back home, and I really connected with the way those two ideas came together. 

There's also a reality every service-dog partnership eventually has to face: the dog won't be there forever. Dogs retire. Eventually, we lose them.

If someone's ability to navigate the world exists entirely because that individual dog is physically beside them, what happens when the dog isn't there anymore?

This is where the idea of building the human really stayed with me: The experiences they've had together don't disappear. The patterns they've practiced, the confidence that's grown, and the capacity they've built through the partnership can become part of that person.

What if part of a service dog's legacy is what they helped build in their human while they were here?

That idea stayed with me. It also makes me think about how we develop service dogs in the first place. We're developing one half of a future partnership.

That puppy needs agency too. Biological fulfillment. Opportunities to explore, recover, make choices, communicate, play, rest, and develop into a capable individual before we're asking them to help another individual navigate the world; I think that's another reason Kelly's puppy presentation and Behesha's service-dog presentation connected so much for me.

Somewhere between Stephanie talking about helping dogs find their way back "home" and Behesha talking about the human's journey back home, I started thinking about that idea on both ends of the leash. That connection ended up being one of my biggest takeaways from the conference. 

Seeing Through a Different Lens

Brett Endes' presentation was another one I really enjoyed, especially his discussion around neurodivergence, patterns, sensory processing, and how his own experiences have influenced the way he sees dogs.

As someone with AuDHD myself, there was a lot about this that felt validating.

I know what it's like to notice patterns or tiny environmental changes that someone else doesn't seem to notice. Something that seems insignificant to another person can be a very big deal to my brain, and when there's too much information coming in at once, something I normally know how to do can suddenly become much harder.

I don't know exactly what a dog is experiencing, and I don't assume they're experiencing the world the same way I do. However, knowing how differently I can experience the same environment as another person makes me even more curious about their experience. 

What is this dog noticing that I'm not?

An environment can look basically the same to me while one little thing has changed for the dog. They may have picked up on a pattern long before I did, or something that looks like an overreaction might make a lot more sense once I notice what happened immediately before it. Sometimes my communication may not be as clear or predictable as I thought it was.

The dog and I might simply be assigning very different importance to the same information; that is one of the reasons canine cognition has become so interesting to me.

Dogs have different learning histories, genetics, motivations, sensitivities, instincts, experiences, and ways of approaching problems. Some immediately look to a human for information. Some start experimenting on their own. Some investigate novelty quickly, while others want time to watch first.

I want to know more about how this particular dog learns. You don't need a formal cognition assessment to start getting curious about that either. Take your dog somewhere and spend a few minutes not training them.

Just watch:

What do they notice first? What do they completely ignore? Do they immediately explore, or do they stop and observe? What happens when something changes? When they're unsure, do they look to you, create distance, investigate, freeze, sniff, or try something else?

Dogs are learning patterns from us all the time too:

The shoes you put on before a walk.

The bag that means you're leaving without them.

The sound that predicts dinner.

The difference between you walking toward the refrigerator and walking toward wherever you keep their treats. 

We're communicating much more than the cues we intentionally teach. So if a dog suddenly can't perform something they normally know, I don't only want to ask why they aren't listening. I want to look around.

What changed? What are they paying attention to? What are they anticipating? Is there too much information competing for their attention? Does this dog actually understand this skill here, or have we only practiced it somewhere easier?

Sometimes a dog simply hasn't learned something yet, maybe they're excited, or simply they'd rather be doing something else; there doesn't have to be a complicated hidden explanation for everything. I just think it's worth being curious before deciding what the dog's behavior means or what we should do about it.

That's probably why Brett's presentation felt so validating to me. My own brain has given me plenty of experience with how differently the same environment can be experienced, and how much the little details can matter.

I think that's also part of why I enjoy cognition work so much. I'm genuinely curious about what the individual dog in front of me is noticing, how they're putting information together, and what I might be missing.

Bringing It Home

Going through all of this, I can see why so much of the conference felt validating. A lot of these ideas fit naturally into things I've already been trying to prioritize in my work: relationship, clarity, biological fulfillment, cognition, and really understanding the individual dog in front of me.

I want to know more than whether a dog can perform a behavior:

What do they notice? What do they need? How do they communicate? How do they learn? What happens when they're frustrated? What choices do they make when nobody is telling them what to do? Can they explore independently and then reconnect? Can they ask for help? Can they get excited and come back down? What does recovery actually look like for this dog?

All of that matters to me when I'm training. I care about reliability, boundaries, clear communication, and being able to safely navigate the real world with our dogs. I also care about making sure they have appropriate ways to sniff, move, play, explore, problem solve, rest, make choices, and just be dogs.

Cognition also keeps becoming a bigger part of that picture for me too. The more I pay attention to how an individual dog takes in information, solves problems, responds to uncertainty, and interacts with their person and environment, the more information I have to work with.

I don't want the appearance of a well-trained dog to become more important than the dog underneath it.

I want dogs who can think, explore, communicate, handle some frustration and recover, get excited and still function, be uncertain and know how to seek help, and have appropriate outlets for the things that make them dogs; and yes, I also want dogs who understand when we're giving them direction…there's room for both!

The idea of “finding our way back home” is probably one of the things that stayed with me most from the weekend. Stephanie had me thinking about it from the dog's side – helping them develop pathways to move through experiences, adapt, recover, and find their way back – while Behesha brought that idea around to the human side and how the dog can help build capacity through the partnership too. I hadn't expected those two presentations to connect in that way for me, but somewhere between the two, I started thinking about what we're building on both ends of the leash. 

So, apparently I had more thoughts about all of this than I realized, because what was supposed to be an Instagram caption turned into an entire blog! I'm still marinating on a lot of it, especially the pieces around puppies, service dogs, cognition, agency, and recovery. Some of it was validating, some gave me another way of thinking about things I already care about, and some sent my brain down an entirely new rabbit hole.

I have a feeling at least a few of those rabbit holes are going to turn into future projects.