The Counterintuitive Reason Your Great Dane Won't Listen to You

Picture this.

It's 7 AM. You clip the leash onto your gentle, towering Dane. You take one step out the front door.

And it begins.

Your Great Dane starts knocking over furniture with their tail, dragging you down the street, and trying to climb into your lap despite weighing 150 pounds.

Your shoulder aches. Your hand is raw from the leash. A neighbor walks by with their dog — heeling perfectly, no tension on the leash — and gives you that look.

That look. The one that says: “Why can't you control your dog?”

You love your gentle, towering Dane. You chose a Great Dane because of their gentle giant softness and goofy clumsiness that belies just how massive and powerful they really are.

But right now? At 7:03 AM? With your coffee getting cold on the kitchen counter and your arm getting yanked out of its socket?

You're wondering if you made a mistake.

Great Danes are incredible companions — when you know how to communicate with them.

Here's what nobody told you when you brought your Great Dane home:

Great Danes are not "easy to train" just because they're gentle giant who often forgets they weigh 150 pounds and tries to be a lap dog.

In fact, that desire to lean on their owner (literally and figuratively) and sensitivity that makes them incredibly responsive to calm guidance is exactly what makes them harder to train with generic methods.

A giant, moderate-energy breed like the Great Dane processes the world differently than other dogs. Their brain is wired for gentle giant softness and goofy clumsiness that belies just how massive and powerful they really are — which means the cookie-cutter “sit, stay, treat” approach from YouTube trainers and $200/hour behaviorists doesn't just not work...

It actively teaches your Great Dane to ignore you.

Think about it:

• ✕You say “come.” They look at you. Then they look at the squirrel. Squirrel wins.
• ✕You say “heel.” They heel for six steps. Then it's back to counter surfing and not understanding their massive size — right back to the same behavior.
• ✕You try “positive only” training. It works indoors. Outside? Total chaos.

This isn't a training problem. This is a communication mismatch.

You're speaking English to a brain that processes the world through gentle giant softness and goofy clumsiness that belies just how massive and powerful they really are.

If you're like most Great Dane owners, you've already tried:

None of these failed because you did something wrong. They failed because they weren't built for a Great Dane.

Here's what changes everything.

Three years ago, a team of certified canine behaviorists started cataloging breed-specific training responses across 83 breeds.

Not theory. Not textbook stuff. Real-world data from thousands of owners documenting what actually moved the needle for their specific breed.

What they found was striking:

The same command, taught the same way, produces dramatically different results across breeds.

A Great Dane responds best through desire to lean on their owner (literally and figuratively) and sensitivity that makes them incredibly responsive to calm guidance. A Golden Retriever needs food motivation and short, enthusiastic sessions. A German Shepherd needs structured authority and longer repetition cycles. A Beagle requires scent-based engagement that most trainers have never even heard of.

The data was clear: breed-specific training isn't a nice-to-have. It's the only approach that produces lasting behavioral change.

That research became the foundation of what we now call:

For Great Dane Owners

Every technique, every command sequence, every troubleshooting guide in this system was developed specifically for Great Danes and their gentle giant who often forgets they weigh 150 pounds and tries to be a lap dog nature.