Dog Training Tips on Canine Communication

I am doing everything I can to get my dog to sit.  I say "Sit!  Sit,sit you crazy dog, sit! Just humor me this one time and put your rear on the ground!  This isn’t funny anymore, now I am getting mad, SIT SIT SIT!"  It’s just not happening....

So how was that for you?  You have run head long into a big difference in the way humans communicate and the way dogs communicate.  We have words, languages, punctuation, antonyms, synonyms, slang, accents, and other ways we verbally communicate.  Multiple people can look at the same thing and describe it using different words and we all can understand exactly what that thing might look like.

Our dog does not have the multiple communication choices that we have.  He does not have a dictionary where the same word might have multiple meanings and a list of other words that mean the same thing.  All he has are the sounds and tones that come out of his mouth.  We might call it whining, growling, or barking.  Those are all the tools that he has when he wants to verbally communicate to other animals.

In order to verbally communicate with our dog, we first have to understand that words are simply sounds to him.  If we want him to understand those sounds, they must be unique, with only one meaning.  For us, this could be equivalent an emergency vehicles siren.  We hear that siren and we know that there is an emergency vehicle nearby.  We look for the vehicle, pull over, and let it by.  The unique sound of the siren invokes a unique response from us.

That is how our dog verbally communicates.  If we want to have our dog sit, we must have a unique sound that whenever he hears it, he always sits.  Most people use "Sit".  And, by the way, "Sit, sit, sit, sit" is a different sound than “sit”.  

So remember, you must use unique sounds with your dog to have him understand you.  For more information, please contact The Best Dog Trainers in South Florida.

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When Your Holiday Guests Leave

All of our out of town Holiday guests left several days ago and our home is now returning back to normal.  The one thing that has not turned back to normal is Wolfie, our dog.  Although he has been perfectly house broken for several years, he is not going into the guest bedroom and going to the bathroom.  What gives?

Remember when we were little and our parents would drop us off at Uncle Bob’s and Aunt Lizzie’s for the weekend?  Uncle Bob would take us to the movies, the local amusement park, and the ice cream parlor.  Aunt Lizzie would make us our favorite goodies and we could stay up late watching all the TV our parents never let us watch. 

The funny thing is that when we got home, everything we had smelled like Aunt Lizzie’s rose peddle perfume.  Mom had to wash our clothes several times until we finally got that smell out.  Until then, we refused to wear those clothes.  They smelled “icky”.

The same thing happens when our house guests leave our home after the Holidays.  They leave their natural smells in our home’s guest room.  We really don’t care because we understand that is just “Uncle Bob and Aunt Lizzie smell” and will go away after a few days. 

Our dog does not react to this different smell in the same way as us.  He expects “his territory” to smell one way, the way it smelled before our guests “invaded his territory”.  He needs to reestablish the prior smell (smelling like him) and he only has one way to accomplish that.  He goes into the guest room and raises his leg.  We really don’t want this to occur and need it to stop as quickly as possible.  We need to remove the foreign smell from the territory.

First of all, we need to neutralize the foreign smell.  As opposed to our dog’s urine smell, we will introduce another, natural smell that we and our dog can “live with”.  We suggest the scent of lavender.  This is a calming scent and also introduces a neutral smell.  Get a lavender Glade plug-in, a lavender candle, or a bamboo lavender oil vase and place it in the guest room.  If you have carpet in the room, vacuum the room after sprinkling lavender carpet dust on the floor.  If you have a tile floor, clean the floor with lavender Fabuloso.  To make sure that everything is consistent, place some lavender Glade plug-ins in other rooms in the house.

Shampoo your dog with a lavender dog shampoo.  You have now removed the “Uncle Bob and Aunt Lizzie smell” from the guest room and have reestablished a singular smell that is like Wolfie, your dog.  He no longer has the need to raise his leg.

Leave the door to the guest room open for several days but don’t allow your dog in the room.  The best thing to do is to place a doggie (baby) gate in the guest room doorway.  This allows the room to “air out” and to allow your dog to pass by but not go in the room until all the old smells have dissipated.

Remove the doggie gate after about a week and you can probably stop using the lavender products after another week.  The house smells have now returned to normal and you have reestablished the natural smells of the pack.  The potty issue should now be resolved.  If you have any questions, you can always contact us at TheBest Dog Trainers in South Florida.

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