Why doesn’t my dog listen to me?

What if I told you that most dog obedience problems aren’t really about obedience at all? They may look like disobedience or a dog refusing to listen, but in fact, many of these challenges stem from communication issues.

Here are some tips on improving the communication between you and your dog.

Imagine trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t speak your language. Misunderstandings are bound to happen. For dogs, our human world is full of mixed signals, inconsistent cues, and expectations they can’t naturally grasp. Once we learn to communicate with dogs in ways they understand, what seems like stubbornness or defiance often turns out to be a simple lack of understanding.

If we can improve the ways we communicate with our dogs to be better understood and to also better understand what they are communicating to us, some great things start to happen. First, the bond between you and your dog strengthens, building trust and respect. Second, you gain the tools to make yourself better understood, allowing you to address and resolve problems more effectively.

How many times have you heard someone say of their dog, “He looks guilty. He knows he did something wrong!”

But does he really? Humans often misread canine signals. A dog that avoids eye contact or turns its body away might be trying to show submission or avoid conflict, but to us, this could come across as guilt. The dog is more likely just responding to our tone and volume, serious body posture, direct gaze and serious look.

These miscommunications are very common. For example, scolding a dog with words might seem clear to us, but the dog may only notice our animated tone and interpret it as excitement (possibly even reinforcing the unwanted behaviour).

1. Stop Talking (so much)!

Try it. Literally, stop talking all the time to your dog. For dogs, it’s often just background prattle, static on the radio, that adds nothing to the relationship. One fun challenge is to take a simple command that your dog knows like “sit”. Now put a piece of tape over your mouth and prompt your dog to sit. Once you can’t speak when you communicate with your dog you start to pay attention to other means of communication.

2. Learn and use a few significant words consistently

This can include more formal training words, often called cues or commands. These are such words as “Yes”, “No”, “Good”, and so forth which have a specific consequence attached to them. It can also include less formal words that the dog can recognise and respond to such as “Let’s play”, “Enough” and so forth. With repetition, our dogs will understand and expect the result that follows the word. The actual word is not important, as it’s the consistency of what follows that counts.

This is where it often goes wrong: no clear word is used consistently and no clear meaning is attached to the word. For example, the family dog jumps on the couch and Mum shouts “Down” (the same word as the command to lie on the floor, but now in a very different context), and Dad shouts “Off” (a word which has no meaning to the dog), and everyone gets frustrated because the dog is not doing “what he is told.”

👀👀 “How to communicate effectively with your dog” 👀👀

3. Use MORE than words

As human beings, we primarily communicate verbally. While we certainly can use body language, we’re more heavily into words.

We can explore other methods for how to communicate more effectively with our dogs. If we think about how dogs communicate with and learn from other dogs, this expands our communication options. Here are a few examples, also showing that within each of these, there are numerous variations (starting with our human words first):

• Tone and volume of words (loud, quiet, excited, calming.

• Word sounds (words the dog has come to associate with specific things vs background prattle)

• Gaze (soft, firm, fleeting, staring)

• Touch (amount of pressure, location of touch)

• Spatial pressure (giving way, stepping towards our dog)

• Leash pressure (soft, firm, insistent)

• Posture (leaning over the dog, at ground level, on the floor)

• Movement (jumping, stepping, crawling, coming towards vs moving away)

• Gait (even/uneven walking, running, limping)

Dogs are very good observers and notice these communications from us whether or not we are aware of sending them.

💁‍♂️ Pick something from the above list and try it out… 👌👌👌👌

• What to do: Here’s a Youtube video that explains How to communicate effectively with your dog.

• And. a famous example of What not to do (Frustrated dog owner). Trigger alert: angry man swearing🤬)

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