When Gerrit Cole mentioned Clarke Schmidt on the first day of spring training in February, the Yankees’ ace called his staffmate “my dog.”

A few days later, Cole revealed that his word choice for Schmidt — who at that point had not officially secured a rotation spot but went on to do so in part through injuries to other pitchers — was not a coincidence.

“He likes to bark at people,” Cole said. “He literally will bark at people.”

“That’s accurate,” Schmidt said with a laugh later in camp. “I like to make guys laugh and I’m a very light-hearted person as well off the field.”

On the field, though, there’s a different kind of dog that comes out in Schmidt, one with an intense demeanor that sometimes needs to be reeled in, or at least channeled into the right directions in order to have success.

That’s where Cole has come in.

During Schmidt’s up-and-down 2022 — both in results and shuttling between the Yankees and Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre — the right-hander had Cole and Jameson Taillon take him under their wing.

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Across Schmidt’s four stints in the big leagues, they spent plenty of time together, whether that meant going out to dinner and grabbing coffee on the road or just talking while playing catch and in the dugout.

That has only carried over into this season as Schmidt, who will make his second start of the season on Friday at Camden Yards, continues to try to establish himself in the majors, this time as part of the rotation.

In the 27-year-old Schmidt, the 32-year-old Cole sees some of the things that he needed to work on when he was at a similar stage of his career.

“Just managing adrenaline,” Cole told The Post last week in Washington, on the eve of the regular season.

Schmidt knows it, too, and he has taken heed.

“The way that Gerrit plays, there’s a lot of [similarities with] the way I play with the competitiveness and kind of that fierceness,” Schmidt told The Post near the end of camp. “Sometimes when you’re in high gear at all times, you can go off the rails a little bit. So it’s good to kind of be able to know Gerrit — he was always that high-intensity guy, always on the attack, and now he’s able to control that in environments. So being able to tone it back and knowing when to turn it up a notch is something that I’ve learned from him for sure.”

Finding the right amount of adrenaline to use on the mound without letting it work against him is a fine line that took Cole “a long time” to figure out.

He still has to use some tricks every now and then to channel it properly, depending on the situation.

But Cole cited three key factors that helped him: experience, a veteran catcher and a veteran team.

When he was breaking into the majors with the Pirates in 2013, Cole had Russell Martin catching him.

Whatever Martin wanted him to throw, he would do it.

Cole also had some veterans around him in the rotation — AJ Burnett “ran the staff,” he said, and Charlie Morton “was everybody’s best friend.”

Ten years later, Cole is trying to return the favor.

Schmidt has veteran, defensive-minded catchers in Jose Trevino and Kyle Higashioka, a veteran pitcher pouring into him in Cole and an opportunity to gain more experience on a big-league mound.

“I feel like he’s in that position here,” Cole said. “He’s got people around him to do that. But it’s gonna be his own journey, and he’s just gonna have guys here for him to help him out and try to get it to wherever he wants it to get to as quick as possible.”

While both were first-round draft picks with high expectations, Cole and Schmidt’s situations are not fully comparable.

Most notably, Cole did not have to deal with swinging between the majors and Triple-A while breaking in, though he realizes how challenging it must be for the handful of Yankees pitchers who do it each year.

But he still walked part of the path that Schmidt now finds himself on, particularly with managing his emotions on the mound.

“He’s got a high motor. He revs high,” Cole said. “I can relate to that.”

Schmidt said he always wants to be on the attack and stay aggressive.

Sometimes, though, if he feels himself chasing strikeouts or trying to do too much, he knows things can get out of hand easily.

Finding the balance is especially important for Schimdt as he tries to remain a starter.

He spent the offseason working on adding a cutter — Cole was the first person he sent a video to after he tried it out in a bullpen session — to help attack left-handed hitters.

But he also knows he needs to spread his energy over five, six or seven innings instead of the shorter spurts he had as a reliever last season.

“You have to be able to control this thing; you don’t want to just be full bore at all times,” Schmidt said.

In his first start of the season, Schmidt struck out five over three scoreless innings against the Giants before running into trouble in the fourth. Two home runs later, his day was done.

But Schmidt will have a longer runway to prove he should stay in the rotation, at least until both Luis Severino and Carlos Rodon are ready to return from their respective injuries, which may be mid-to-late April for the former and early May for the latter.

In the meantime, Schmidt is confident in what he’s capable of proving with the opportunity in front of him, especially with Cole at his side.

“I feel more mature and within myself and where I’m at with my game, and so I think it’s just gonna only continue to improve,” Schmidt said. “I do feel like that breakout is on the way.”