Dogs are incredible animals. They can adapt to any situation, and they have a great power of associating things. This includes understanding various sounds as well as a human language. An average dog can learn up to 150 words. Unfortunately, dogs cannot be trained to perform a human verbal communication. Therefore, your dog can understand your commands with the help of several factors such as face expression, tonality, and body language.
Not having a good communication can result in many issues during the training process. Regardless of dog breed, this article will teach you how to establish a proper communication and avoid losing time when it comes to training your dog.
The attention is the key feature
Regardless of the level of skills, the attention is the essential part of the communication. Whenever you pay attention to a particular dog’s behavior, you are actually giving your feedback. Smile, touch, eye contact, and voice are just some of the ways to give your attention. This kind of reaction clearly shows your interest. A dog will appreciate it, and it will always tend to get it more. This is important when it comes to producing a particular behavior during the training.
Focus yourself on your dog for the same amount of time you want it to focus on you. If you are occupied with other things or simply do not feel good, just postpone the training until you get in an excellent form. To make the training successful, be active and aware of your dog. Also, be ready to reward it immediately for good behavior. If your dog acts improperly, do not pay attention and ignore it for a while. This way, it will see that you are not impressed by its behavior. Therefore, it will most likely not repeat it again.
If you apply this strategy during the training, you will notice a significant transformation in your dog’s behavior. It will naturally seek for your attention by showing an excellent performance. Once your pooch raises its training abilities to a new level, you will truly start to enjoy the time spent with your canine and the satisfaction is going to be mutual. This is your ultimate goal.
Incorporating the body language properly
Training a dog gives you the chance to prove your leadership abilities. Your job is to control the situation, teach, and provide feedback. Therefore, you must adjust your body language to match your role as a leader. Stay calm and establish a confident communication. Now we are going to consider the most important aspects of non-verbal communication:
The face is the most relevant indicator of a body language. To keep the training enjoyable, maintain a gentle smile by relaxing the facial muscles and eyes. Deep breathing will provide you with additional energy and concentration. There is nothing better for a dog’s happiness than the focused and relaxed owner. Having too stiff eye contact will distract your dog and possibly scare it. This will result in a further poor communication.
Dogs can reflect a human’s negative emotions such as anxiety and frustrations:
- It can ignore you completely by looking elsewhere or trying to distance itself from you. It can also display extremely slow reactions with the intention to influence your emotions.
- It can become upset and try to perform some actions that may distract you.
- Being nervous will cause your dog to feel uncomfortable and run away, or at least try to discover the reason for your anxiety.
Do not blame your dog if one of these situations happen. Instead, breathe deeply, relax, and repeat the process again!
Show confidence. Whether you are training a puppy or older dog, make sure that your body language and movements are relaxed and confident. Stay calm and avoid being stiff. According to experts, quiet and upright posture will significantly help demonstrate your authority and your teaching abilities. When bending, keep your shoulders back not to lose the alpha male attitude. Too much and too fast movements can confuse a dog, particularly if it is a newbie to training. It can start thinking that you are playing and being submissive rather than performing the training session. The hand movements related to issuing commands must be straightforward and clear. Avoid worthless motions that may bother and upset your dog.
Show composure. Regardless of the type of exercise, always tend to keep your posture relaxed. Do not waste your time on worthless activities and movements. Let your dog concentrate on your verbal and non-verbal signals. When it gets better in training, you can teach it to operate according to your verbal signs, regardless of your body language. However, do not hurry!
Communication is a broad term
To establish a clear and efficient communication take care of your tonality and gestures because they play a significant role in a dog training process. Do not forget that your voice reveals much more than just pure commands.
Stay consistent. A lot of inexperienced dog trainers tend to change their tonality regularly. So, pronouncing a particular command in a slow and calm motion and a quick and aggressive one are two different things. A dog will hear those as completely different sounds. Changing tonality and length while issuing a command will indeed seem confusing for your pooch. So, to make it easier, select the perfect sound and stick with it.
Implement teamwork. While giving verbal signs, adjust your tone, so it is something like calm and relaxed. Have a conversational voice. To help yourself, imagine your dog completing an exercise successfully, and it will boost your confidence immediately. Producing cranky and interrogative tone will result in a fail, and it will lead both you and your dog into frustration. You will not get confirmation nor respect. However, being a leader does not mean that you should have too aggressive and rough voice because it can cause resistance or passive obedience. Another thing, if your dog has healthy ears, then there is no reason not to hear you when you are talking in a calm and conversational tone. It will certainly react to the commands you previously taught it. If you would like to develop a smart dog, then do not allow the stress to disrupt the training.
Praise your dog sincerely. People often concentrate too much on training, and they are not giving quality enough praises. However, sometimes the words are less important than the manners. When giving praise, you do not necessarily need to display a particular tone quality as long as you demonstrate your real happiness and pleasure. The point is that your dog deserves your appreciation for an exceptional performance and goals accomplishing. Sometimes it may take a while for success, but once it is achieved, give your honest feedback and praise and let your dog feel it.
An excellent way to find out what your dog likes is to test a few different sounds and tones just to see its reactions. Do not forget that a pooch must understand your emotions from your voice and body language. Also, there is no way to trick your dog because it clearly knows when you are happy, angry, or sad. Giving regular praises will help boost the dog’s confidence and trust so you can expect better performances and relationship in the future.
Whenever you want to express your discontent with a particular behavior, try to use dismissive voice rather than intimidating one. Your goal is to educate your dog, not to scare it. Mistakes are the part of the training, and it is natural that they happen occasionally. Learn how to solve them, instead of making a panic and creating stress. If you follow these guidelines, your pet will understand what you are actually looking for so it will strive for the best performances.
Conclusion
I hope that this article will help improve the overall communication with your dog during the training. There is no need to waste your time with improper communication. That is why I wrote these tips to maximize the success rate for every dog owner. Once you start applying them, you will actually see how powerful they are, and you will enjoy the training as well as your dog. The training time should be funny and useful. So, do not worry if you make some mistakes in the beginning. Just stay consistent, and you cannot fail.
Right Way To Communicate with your Dog
