How Do I Make My Dog Listen To Me?

You know the story...You say "scruffy, come here!" and they just stare at you like you're crazy. They jump on you and you say "Sit! Sit! Sit!" only to be ignored.

Or you say "no! no! no!" and they don't seem to care at all.

There's a few things you can do to get your dog to listen better, starting today.

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Make Your "No" Mean Something

If your dog hears "no" and then nothing else happens, there's no physical kind of consequence, the dog has no reason to listen to or respect "no." It's just another word that is totally meaningless for their lives. Think about it from your dog's perspective: you are on the phone for an hour with an old friend talking about only God knows what, and none of those words have meaning for them. You turn on the TV and countless words are spoken but none of them mean anything for the dog. What words mean something for the dog? "Play," "Treat," "Car Ride," and "Outside."

These words mean something for the dog and they always seem to respond to them. You may have seen them tilt their heads when you say those words and then immediately get super excited or even fearful (for those that hear car ride and think of the vet.)

How did those words become consequential?

The words brought experiences. When you say "Walk," you then get the leash out. When you get the leash out, you then go outside and walk. The dog has learned "walk" means leash, leash means going outside, going outside means fun. If you say "no" and then do nothing, this is just another word that means nothing for them. If you say no and then deliver some sort of consequence, the dog will learn to listen to "no."

It's worth mentioning that I am specifically saying you should say "no" and THEN correct the animal. Not correct THEN say no and not a "no" and a correction at the same time.

There are a thousand ways to correct a dog, some helpful and some unhelpful, and I'll leave how to correct them up to you. But you have to say "no" and THEN correct. That's the only way the dog finds out the "no" brings the correction.

How To Make it Work Permanently

If your phone is at 10% battery and you put it on the charger for just 10 minutes, it's going to be back on the charger within an hour, most likely. You need to leave it on the charger for a while to get the desired effect.

If you follow the instructions I just laid out for you, you could probably start using the word "no" alone in just 72 hours and see some success. But this is a charging process. The consequence that comes after the word "no" is charging it up like a battery. If you'll take a week or two to correct every time you say "no" you'll reach "full charge" but if you start getting lazy and rely only upon the word too early, you'll be undoing your work.

And if you say "no" twice, there should be two consequences, otherwise one of them was a lie.

3 Ways to Make Any Dog Stop Doing Things You Hate (Or Start Doing Things You Love)

1. Make it suck

2. Make it unsuccessful

3. Train a competing behavior.

   
   

But more on this in another blog post later. If this helped you, subscribing would probably help more