Wild Awake Ep 3: The Stages of Competence in Training

Valerie Naegele
Jul 18
17 min read

Updated: Jul 21

Hello and welcome to Wild Awake, a podcast where we discuss how training and business meet personal and spiritual awakening led by the wisdom of our equine and canine companions. I'm your host, Valerie Nagila. I'm a dog trainer in southern Maine, and I have a business called Venture Doggie. So, you can reach out to me for dog training.

Today I wanted to talk about the stages of competence and how skills set and pressure on that skill set will change how you're approaching training with your dog or your horse. Most of us have started on this journey with our animals because we have some problem. So maybe your dog won't start bark. Stop barking. Maybe you have a horse who's spooky and you know that this problem needs to be fixed or solved, depending on your language of how you're approaching it. But you might not know what to do.

Or you might be in this researching phase of trial and error where you're okay, I'm clicking a lot of stuff, I'm on YouTube and I'm going to try and trial my trial and error my way through this, which is a place you can be. I don't recommend it because it's a pretty a pretty low reward type of approach. If you have a smaller problem. That could work just fine. If you have a bigger problem, I definitely recommend just getting help because that's the shortcut to success with everything is just getting the help you need.

So, I wanted to talk about this starting with more high-level athletes, because I think that's the extreme example of competence. So, if you think of an equestrian athlete, maybe a cross-country adventure, who's jumping these six-foot water jumps, and it just looks incredible. And you wonder, how on earth are they not freaking out? How on earth are they doing something that and keeping it all together?

Or maybe you'll see a documentary on a big wave surfer. How on earth is someone surfing a wave that 100ft tall. That's totally crazy. Or for dogs, it could be just watching someone do a competition and wondering how they're not getting nervous, or how if they are nervous, how they're kind of focusing on their skills and how they're trusting their dog. Or that can even be, you know, in police work, you know, they're using these dogs to sniff out drugs or bombs. And I can only imagine that's extremely intense.

So how do these people at this high level keep it together and how do they get to this point? So really that's the four stages of competence model, which I really because it kind of breaks this down.

So you have four stages unconscious incompetence where that's the first stage. Your life is good I know what I'm doing. I, I have this kind of this problem with my dog or my horse, but I've got it under wraps, like I'm doing. All right. And if you have a pretty simple problem or an easier dog to work with, or an easier horse to work with, you might stay there for a while. You might just not even know what you don't know. And whatever you're doing could kind of put a Band-Aid on the issue of what you're dealing with and be fine for you.

What's actually wonderful about. Dogs that are really challenging to work with and horses that are really challenging to work with, is that they force you to look at what you don't know. So you go into this conscious incompetence phase where you're man, I thought it was really good at this. I guess I don't know what I'm doing, and that's a pretty shitty place to be. It doesn't. It doesn't feel great, at least not for me. I never have to be there. But it's a great motivator because it's not fun to be there.

And you become very motivated to learn a lot. You become really interested in figuring out how do I solve this problem. And that's where I feel you can kind of try and do it all on your own, or you can get the help you need, which will be the shortcut. And honestly, the shorter you can stay in that phase, the better. I think by just getting the help you need. So conscious incompetence. Not so fun.

Um, conscious competence might be okay. You've hired a trainer now they have walked you through some maybe some steps or skills that you need. And when your horse is going to spook or when you feel them getting tense, you know, oh, I can, you know, straighten up in the saddle. Ask for shorter steps. And, you know, if you've kind of worked with horses or dogs that there's all these steps up to these things. So sorry for the crude examples, but you have maybe some steps that you can go through to help you through this problem.

But it's very it takes a lot of bandwidth. So you really have to think about each little thing you're doing. So I think writing is the helpful example for this. I know for myself I have to think about moving my elbows. Am I moving my elbows? Is my right lower leg underneath me? These are constant reminders at this phase of my writing that I have to tell myself so I know what I'm supposed to do, but I have to really think about it.

And when I become worried about something, those things tend to fall away. So when you're conscious, when you have conscious competence, you know what you're supposed to do. But it's not just staying there. Even when you're thinking about something else. So it's not on autopilot.

For dogs. This could be your reactive dog when you pass other dogs. If you have conscious competence, you know, okay, the timing of this treat or this pressure, or I need to be this far away, all those things, you know what you're supposed to do, but you really have to think about it. You might still be kind of thinking, oh, is my hand on the leash in the correct place? Okay, is my treat hand in the right place, all these things and my rewarding correctly and in the right place.

Those things, you know, unconscious incompetence. You might be, oh, my dog does great. I just walk him by other dogs and I shove a hot dog in his face. And that's how we pass other dogs. And that's fine. If that works for you, fine. You don't really get pushed into this for a lot of dogs that won't work for forever. Or you might not have a hot dog on you at all times, so you might not get pushed into that space where you know, okay, this isn't the end all for me. Or I can just get by on this. I need something more.

So those are kind of the first three stages. And then the last stage is where you find high level athletes where they're unconsciously Consciously competent. So they're not thinking about, am I moving my elbows? Is my leg underneath me? When they're riding to a six foot jump, they're already in the perfect position. They don't need to think about it. All they need to think about is okay, maybe their distance and their and when to cut their leg on. You know, they've got two things they're working on. They're not thinking about how to ride as they're going up to the fence for dog training.

This could be you're not thinking about where is my hand on the leash? Am I pulling on the leash? Is am I applying pressure at the wrong time? Am I, you know, treating in the in the right way with my dog? You're just thinking about. Okay, I gave a treat. At this time. I turn at this time, whatever it is, just as some examples.

So, unconsciously competent is a place where once you have the skill set, you've built those skills to a level that you don't need to think about them. So, when pressure happens so the dog walks by you, your horse spooks. The wave is 20ft higher than it was before. If you're gradually adding pressure. Silly 20 foot isn't a good place to be. Maybe a two feet higher wave if you're gradually adding pressure to your skill set over time. Eventually, you can do these skills under immense amounts of pressure. So are immense amounts of challenge, however you want to think about it.

So, someone who's doing cross-country, eventing and jumping over a six-foot water jump doesn't start there when they're four-year-old or whenever they start riding. Maybe they started when they're 20, but they don't start there. They start everyone else on a lead line. No stirrup lessons. Whatever it is, they start by learning how to ride. And then when they learn how to ride, they can add these little pressures. They start over a cross rail a little bit higher, a little bit higher in a different area.

And as you look at this, these stages of competence apply to us and they apply to our animals. And since we are working together, human and animal, we each need a skill set, a physical skill set where to put your hand on a leash, how to follow with your elbows if you're riding whatever it is a skill set. And then we each need to bring those skills under small amounts of pressure over time, and titrate pressure in so that those skills can hold up under more amounts of pressure over time.

And your goal with your dog might just be, I need to be able to walk past a dog from five feet away. Okay, then you don't have to go farther than that if you don't want. You might be someone who's putting a lot of pressure on yourself. No no no no. I want to compete at this high level with my dog. Okay. No problem. There's just going to be your skills are going to need to get even better, more nuanced. And those skills, as they grow are also going to need to go under small amounts of pressure.

And for your dog, they're learning new skills too. They're learning how to emotionally regulate themselves as you're adding pressure, which is something you're also doing. So if you're trying to work on your dog's reactivity and you break out in a hot sweat and you're having trouble breathing, you should not be working on your dog's reactivity. You need to learn how to feel comfortable in less amounts of pressure because your body is telling you in that moment, this is too much. I'm in fight or flight. I can't think or learn.

And your dog is most likely going to pick that up from you. And even if they were going to do just fine, they're not going to know, because all of your energy in that moment is going to leak into them. So, it's really important that we also take the time to learn the skills. And if you're feeling really good with the skills in your living room. Then you can start to bring the skills outside when there's nobody out there, and then outside when there's some people there and then the grocery store or wherever it is.

So, watch your own physical reactions to things, and don't judge yourself if you feel worried. There's nothing wrong with that. Something Stacy Westfall says that I really, really love is when you feel afraid. You can ask yourself, does this fear point to danger? Am I in physical imminent danger, which is usually something more with horses, if you're riding, you might be in a very dangerous situation with horses, or you might just have more of a mental fear. Maybe it's I'm going to embarrass myself in front of these people, or I'm going to feel failure and judge myself, and I'm afraid of that.

So looking at taking the time to just instead of pushing that fear away and judging it and not wanting to look at it, look at it, see what it's telling you and then work on that. And that's sort of the internal skill you're going to learn when you're putting yourself under more amounts of pressure. Is that a lot of training, is learning how to internally deal with emotions that you're having as as they come up, because you'll find most of your fears are actually based in the mind and are usually not physical danger cues.

And if you're if you are crossing the threshold into physical danger, you are way out of where you should be working, whether that's you or your dog. So, you need to step it way back, slow down, and be okay with taking your time.

So this applies to you and it applies to your dog or your horse. If your dog or your horse is showing small signs of stress. Okay. If I feel very confident and I have a lot of bandwidth for that, I can help my dog or my horse through that. If I have very little bandwidth and my dog is starting to get kind of stressed, I still might want to back it up. Take this a little slower. If my dog is showing more or my horse is showing more than small amounts of stress, they are in over their head. They don't feel safe.

So work on it at the smaller steps, the lower level. Once you can get 100% there, you'll be able to get, let's say, 80 to 50% at the next step. So I think something I'm always telling clients, and this is some picture I saw that I really liked, is I think for us, we're so linear in our thinking that we feel if I'm not continually progressing, I am messing everything up. I'm falling behind. I'm never going to get there or whatever you might tell yourself.

But actually training is working on the same things over and over again. So I think sometimes people think, oh no, I have to go back a step and work on this again. What did I do? No, that's how training works. You're constantly going to go back to your foundation basics and get better at those.

It's just I mean, it's any sport. You do higher level, you take that sport. The more of those apparently simple things actually matter and you're. Whoa. I didn't know breathing matter that much. Literally breathing. In most sports, there's some element of when you breathe and how you're breathing because it affects your nervous system. It affects you emotionally, it affects you mentally, and it also affects how your physical body is behaving in that moment.

So literally something as simple as breathing can actually be somewhat of a skill set when it comes to training your dog or training your horse. So, it's amazing to me that, you know, we kind of beat ourselves up for, oh, I take I have to go back and work on that again. It's like, yeah, that's part of the process.

So instead of thinking about it, I'm, I'm climbing these steps up this mountain to this goal. The way that I saw this picture, it was think of a spiral. You're going to come back to the same things over and over and over again. But each time you do come back to that point, you're going to dig a deeper groove which you can, you know, is sort of the metaphor for building nuance, building true skill, building confidence and that unconscious confidence. And that's the same for your dog or for your horse.

They're you don't have to think your higher level, your more trained horse doesn't think about how I do, I don't know what pressure on the bit means. They're not thinking that when they're going over a six-foot jump or doing a high-level dressage test, Grand Prix level, whatever, they already know all about pressure and release on the bit of your legs, and they have these extremely nuanced cues where they're paying attention more to how's my person breathing?

You know, they have these super subtle whispers they're listening for. And the same with dogs. They're listening for the whisper of something or looking for the whisper of something, so they could look at their person's face and know what's coming next. Versus the person has to say the word sit and lure them into the sit. That's a very basic you for a dog. A dog with higher understanding doesn't need all that information. A certain way of breathing, a certain way. Your eyes are looking.

So that's where it starts to look. Dancing and look a a dog whisperer or a horse whisperer, where you see this person working with this animal and you can't even tell what they're telling the animal. But that pair has gotten so nuanced with one another that they don't even need to have these clear to us what, look, these very obvious signals. It looks like they're doing nothing, but they're accomplishing all this communication.

So that's where training becomes really, really beautiful and makes me cry when I think about it. But I think it's just amazing because it's sort of building relationships with your friends or your spouse. You can have kind of a secret language with that person where you don't need to say anything, but they know how you feel. They know the glance you're giving them means a certain thing.

So, you can really think about that and the relationship with your dog or your horse that there are these deeply subtle, nuanced ways you communicate. And that's what we're striving for. But that takes time. You don't you don't get to have that right away. And if your goal is to just have a problem fixed, that's fine too. You don't have to achieve this crazy level of deep communication.

But I mean, chances are, if you're listening to this, I mean, I'm assuming you're interested in those things, and that's why I have such a a passion about more of this personal development, spiritual awakening type of piece of training. Because when you start to become deeply nuanced about what you are working on with an animal.

Instead of your, uh. There's a horse trainer in the Netherlands if you've ever seen her stuff on Instagram. She's absolutely incredible. Yvette. Blackish. Hopefully I'm saying that right. I'm in her Featherlight academy. She's just incredible with horses. But she's always saying the question starts from within you, which in the context she's describing is maybe she's asking a horse to go out left on the circle instead of pointing to the left and opening her hand as the first cue, she's literally asking the question within her body. And horses are so sensitive that they can pick up on that energy change within you and start to see it slowly reflect in your body, slowly reflect in your face into your, you know, emotional body. And then it then it goes into your physical body.

So over time, they can just respond to that, that energetic level of a question, which I think is the most amazing and magical thing ever. So, I really love that, uh, the way she describes it, because that's sort of where if you have, uh, if you're not really focused on your internal state, you're going to always be in this kind of more mechanical, physical part of the training, which is also fine.

But if you want to get to a level where you can get really nuanced, you have to work on on your internal growth and what you're saying inside. Because I know for myself. I go to ask when I don't really know what I'm doing, and I'm asking for something for my dog or for my horse. They get the question. They hear this question, but there's a lot of doubt in it.

It's sort of could you walk over there instead of walking over there? So, if I have doubt or confusion within me, your animals pick up on that. So, they're going to need more explaining about what you're asking. Which is fine. But you want to know if you want to continue to grow. You can make that very seamless and very clear.

And I think that's just why animal training to me is so meditative. It it really requires this clarity and purity in your intentions and your question and this full presence when you're asking them something which is its own skill. So, I'm totally fascinated by that. And I just yeah, I can't say enough about it.

So we're really, as we're externally growing this skill set that we're working on, we're also internally growing this awareness of what's going on within us. And as we become aware of certain things, we can either work on them and give them the attention they need, create more spaciousness within us so that we can become more present and show up more clear for our dog or for our horse in that moment, so that when we ask them something. We have. We're coming from a very clear place, a very present place. So once you have that, you've got this clearness, this presence within you, you have the skill set and you're starting to add external pressures to those things because your external pressures. I find it so fascinating because it's so clear with animal it can be okay. I'm working on my dog sit, stay in the living room now. I'm working on it in the driveway.

Now I'm working out around the neighborhood. So yeah, the external pressures seem very simple if you add another person into that mix. So now I'm walking around the neighborhood, and my neighbor comes walking by. Now I not only have the external pressure of the neighborhood, but I have the external pressure of judgment, embarrassment, and how have I been conditioned to deal with those skills in the past? So, you have these cultural I don't know if it's cultural. Maybe it's societal pressures of just being human, but you have to take a look at.

Because if you can't move past this feeling of, oh, I don't want to be judged or I want to be embarrassed, you can't grow or help your animal in that moment because you can't be present. So, your communication lacks that clarity, that presence, that purity, and it starts to become clouded with this self-doubt. This lack of confidence, this fear of, oh no, what if I mess up? And then you can't be as clear.

So, I find it just fascinating how much we can really learn about ourselves through working with our animals and then apply that into all areas of life. So, I know it's a deep way to take a deep take on animal training, but I really that's really how I look at things. I'm always trying to seek the deeper route. And I've really been inspired to do that because of my animals.

So, it's a gift to me that they offer us all. So, if you're not succeeding with some something you're working on, I think about it. Okay. Am I lacking a skill set? This is some is this some kind of competence issue. Is it the amount of pressure I put myself or my dog or my horse under? Maybe the environment wasn't great for us, or maybe all those things are all lined up and yeah, you're stuck where you're. Oh, it's because I just get really afraid of what might happen when people are around.

Not speaking from personal experience. I think it's a superhuman and common thing because we are social beings and it is very it's a it's actually a life-or-death thing to us as humans to have connection. So, if we think we're going to lose connection with people, we can go into fight or flight. So, it makes perfect sense that we feel this way, but we just have to learn how to look at these things, create space and be okay with feeling uncomfortable, and learn how to feel that uncomfortable feeling.

And then just go back to what we were doing and not make it mean so much about us. Because that's really where we often get stuck, because what we make it mean about us and the story we tell ourselves.

So that's my appeal on levels of confidence and skills and pressure in training. As far as this podcast. So I have some really great guests lined up. I'd love your feedback or suggestions on this or any experiences you've had. Please reach out to me. My email is venturedoggie@gmail.com My website is www.venturedoggie.com

You can get more information there on dog training. I have some free eBooks, some mini courses, and I'm going to be releasing my full training program online this fall called the My Dream Dog course. You can get wait listed for now if that's something you're interested in.

Otherwise, I just want to connect with more people who really value working with their horses, working with their dogs, and all the things that yes, we are teaching them, but really, they teach us so much more. So, I get very passionate about it. So, please reach out with any questions and any feedback. I'd love to hear it. You can catch up with me on Instagram @venturedoggie. Otherwise, I will see you in the next episode. And I am so happy you're here.

Valerie and her other best friend, "Zara"

About Valerie Naegele | Founder of Venture Doggie LLC

Valerie Naegele is a professional dog trainer, behavior specialist, and founder of Venture Doggie LLC. She helps dog owners who feel overwhelmed, unsure, or stuck finally find clarity, confidence, and connection with their dogs. you're tired of second-guessing your training, avoiding walks, or feeling like your dog just isn’t “getting it”—you’re not alone. Val understands what it’s like to love a dog deeply and still feel frustrated, embarrassed, or unsure of what to do next. Her work is designed to give you the tools, insight, and support you need to turn things around—not just on the surface, but in a way that feels good and lasting.

Val’s approach is relationship-based, emotionally intelligent, and rooted in practical science. Whether your dog is overly friendly, reactive, anxious, or just doesn’t listen, she helps you shift the dynamic—not by forcing obedience, but by building communication, structure, and trust. Her own journey started with a deeply sensitive and reactive dog, and that experience opened the door to a lifetime of study in behavior, psychology, and the human-animal bond. With a background in vet clinics, shelters, ranches, and intensive mentorships with leading trainers, Val brings a rare mix of expertise, heart, and down-to-earth support to her work.

She’s not here to judge or pressure. She’s here to walk alongside you—to help you feel more capable, more connected, and prouder of the relationship you’re building with your dog.