Yeah, I do kind of hate the word “train” for that reason. It just makes it sound like the animal is braindead and all the effort was on the trainer’s side.

In reality, it’s much more of a communication problem. You need to explain to the animal without using speech that you will reward it for a specific action. And then you need to explain that you will do this repeatedly and not just today either. Well, and the animal has to actually want whatever reward you’re giving it, too.

So much training advice seems to just boil down to communicating clearly and not breaking the contract of “do the thing → get reward”…