As humans, our language is a verbal one. In order to communicate clearly with one another, we have to open our mouths and talk. Our dogs must think we are the loudest animals they have ever encountered. We’ll just open our mouths and make noise about just about anything. We make so many mouth noises and we make them so often that we just assume that our dogs understand what we’re saying—when the opposite is actually true, especially at the beginning. Over time, your dog will start to understand what some of the noises you make mean.
He’ll start to associate the word “walk” with getting to go outside and explore the neighborhood. He’ll understand that the sound “treat” means he gets something tasty. One of the most common words a dog hears, even a well-behaved dog, is “No.” It’s usually accompanied by an angry tone and angry body language. When you say, “No, drop that!” he isn’t responding to the word no, he’s responding to your tone and body language, because that is how dogs communicate. They know you’re upset about something but they have absolutely no idea why you’re upset.
People might justify their use of the word “No” by saying that their dog looks guilt when they are told no. Again, this is just your dog responding to your tone and body language. You’re the dominant creature. You’re expressing displeasure with the submissive animal, so they are trying to use submissive body language to indicate to you that they are not trying to threaten you.
What are you teaching your dog with your behavior? That you are unpredictable and that you may occasionally threaten them for no reason whatsoever. We say the word “no” all the time and only very rarely is it accompanied by that aggressive tone and body language that makes your dog look “guilty.” He won’t be able to associate that word with your displeasure because you use it so often and in other contexts where it does not apply to him. There is an additional problem, in that we use it all the time, unilaterally, for everything our dog might do wrong. We use the same word to mean “stop biting,” as we do “stop jumping.”
Even if he learns that “No” means “stop biting,” you’ll use the word again during another misbehavior, and he’ll become totally confused. It’s so overused that your dog will have absolutely no understand of what it means. Eventually your dog will just stop hearing it and it will blend into all the other spoken words that your dog does not understand.
All your overuse of this world is going to do is make your dog fear you—this is very bad. Dogs naturally do things that we think are bad. They chew, the pee in the house, they bark—these are all things that they have to be taught are “bad manners,” because their instincts are simply to bark when there is danger, chew when they are bored, and pee wherever they can, as long as it is not in their “den.”
What’s the solution? First, substitute a word that you use only for disciplining your dog. With my dog, we say, “watchadoing, Maxy?” when we catch my dog doing something he knows he should be doing. Second, train yourself to not use the aggressive body language and tone that can so often accompany “No.”
