Dog Talks

Do you have conversations with your dog like I do? If I stop to think about it, I know they understand very little of what I am saying, but I talk away at them anyway. Sometimes, I even get responses back that seem eerily appropriate. Dogs can pick up on a lot of cues, from our tone and cadence to body language and respond to that. Sometimes, they hit the nail on the head and reinforce our belief that they understand us so well. I think many people do not give dogs enough credit for what they understand. However, we can also confuse our dogs and make learning more difficult if we don't stop to consider the perspective of the dog. Dogs learn human language as we do, by association and repetition. It does not matter what words you use for any behavior, as long as you are consistent. Students are constantly asking me what words to use for specific behaviors and every time I answer, it is up to them. The dog only knows what they are taught. Recently, I was doing some training with a woman and her puppy. I showed her how to teach the puppy to spin in circles. She loved it and was excited about the puppy learning to "dance" with her kids. The next week, she was frustrated that the puppy was not doing the trick well and told me that she even tried changing the cue word from "dance" to "spin". Her thought process was that the puppy knew it was not really dancing and therefore would respond better to "spin" since that was what it was actually doing. I could not help but chuckle a little. In the same week, I had an agility student question if using the word "charge" to refer to the A-frame was too exciting for her naturally hyper dog. I asked her if she had already taught the dog that "charge" meant to be excited and she said no, but that it is a common use for the word. It took a full explanation on my part to make her understand that her dog had no predisposed understanding of the word "charge".

Now, once we teach these words, we need to use them correctly. I am often correcting students who are telling their jumping dogs to "get down". I ask them, are you really looking for a "down" here (as in lay down) or are you wanting the dog to "get off".
I too am guilty of this. Since my dogs have so much freedom when walking on retractable leashes, they will often make a turn at a sidewalk intersection, but I want to continue straight. I will say "this way" and they know to change directions. One morning, we were near the end of our walk and we hit a point where we could go right or straight and still get home. Luey was ahead and turned right and I said to him, "oh, are we going home this way"? Of course all Luey heard was "blah blah blah this way" and immediately changed direction. I felt bad because he was tracking a scent and I pulled him off of it for no reason other than a poor choice of words.

Go ahead and enjoy your little chats with your furry friend, but if you are having any behavior issues or not getting training results, take a look at how you are acting first and remove extraneous words and actions, it may be that simple.