I love training dogs. Always have. When I was a kid, I spent hours trying to teach our family Vizsla to climb my tree-fort ladder and rocket down the slide. Dogs are honest, loyal, and endlessly fascinating. If you give them structure, leadership, and a little bacon, they’ll give you everything they’ve got.
Over the years I’ve had trainers work for me from all kinds of backgrounds. One guy, Ben — ex-Navy with a beard that made him look like he strangled bears for fun — was dead asleep in bed one night when his house caught fire. Smoke rolled in. No alarms. No warning. His dogs woke him up. He got out. So did they.
Stories like that are powerful. But if we want to understand how dogs think, we have to stop focusing on what they do and start paying attention to how their mind actually works — especially if we want to influence how dogs communicate back to us. Spoiler: it’s not how most people think.
When I started training, I didn’t understand how dogs think OR how dogs communicate. I just copied what I saw from other trainers. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.
Then I realized the truth:
Dogs think like toddlers.
Specifically, like a 2- to 2½-year-old child.
It’s not just my opinion — it’s backed by science. A University of Arizona study comparing dogs, toddlers, and chimpanzees found dogs and two-year-olds scored almost identically in problem-solving, communication, and cognition.
Dr. Stanley Coren, world-famous canine researcher and author of How Dogs Think, agrees — dogs understand up to 165–250 words, recognize tone and body language instantly, and absolutely know when you’re trying to short them half a treat.
Dogs understand you. They’re smart. But they don’t think like adults…and they definitely don’t communicate like adults.
One afternoon, I tossed a toy for my chocolate lab, Ranger. He didn’t see where it went. But my two-year-old son Richard did… so he toddled over, grabbed the toy in his mouth (yes, mouth), and jogged back to me wagging his diapered behind like a hero.
That’s toddler-logic: see → act. No strategic planning. No weighing pros and cons. Just immediate impulse.
That’s how dogs think too.
If your dog seems impulsive, random, or totally unreasonable, just picture a two-year-old with a soggy fetch toy hanging out of his mouth — a mental image that might save your sanity.
Here’s where the rubber meets the road:
Dogs Think Like: | Toddlers |
Dogs Move Like: | Teenagers |
Dogs Are Powered By: | Wild instincts |
That’s why understanding how dogs think is so vital before you judge their behavior. They communicate with limited language, a short attention span, and massive hormones — which means your expectations must match their brains, not your convenience.
To train a dog well you must:
At the end of the day — your dog is:
That’s why chaos shows up without structure.
When you understand how dogs think and listen to how dogs communicate, the lightbulb goes on: you stop getting mad…and start getting results.
Let trainers like us help you turn that toddler-teen-wolf into a polite, happy, obedient companion you truly enjoy.
Read the next article in this Series: Are Board & Train Programs Effective?
Explore our full series of Dog Training Psychology articles below. For the best clarity, we recommend reading in order.
Are Board & Train Programs Effective?
Most Effective Dog Training Methods
Operant Conditioning In Dog Training
Adapted with permission from Ryan Wimpey’s book, Dog Training Simplified (West Sky Publishing).
