Dog owner communication bridges the world of dogs and those of humans to enable the owner to communicate and work with the dog in a way that helps the dog adapt to an environment that otherwise would be very stressful.
Dogs communicate through body language as well as ten different dog tones which people cannot simulate.
We can teach dogs how to communicate through words but we have to start with sequence and patterns and then only through a couple thousand repetitions, it becomes classically conditioned (a non-thought in which the dog simply follows through with the command or associated behavior).
We can’t teach dogs to think like people, but we can teach people to think like dogs.
In my training, I teach clients about dog psychology, different tones of voice, body language that communicates clearly to a dog, and how not to do over-shadowing behaviors.
Over-shadowing behaviors are those that contradict the key lesson that you are looking to train a dog in. An overshadowing behavior example is, you say “sit” to a dog while making a gesture with your hand to give the dog a food reward. Dogs are hard-wired to pay attention to our body language. The dog will be so focused on the body gesture of your hand providing the food that the dog does not hear the word “sit”, nor associate that behavior to the word “sit”.
Instead, there is a sequence you need to follow and do repeatedly until the dog fully learns the command and associates the word “sit” with sitting. The sequence is:
1. Say “sit”
2. Then provide the hand gesture
3. After the dog sits, say “yes” or “good” with a cheerful and upbeat tone
4. Provide the food reward and let the dog enjoy the food reward
Providing the food reward is a critical step as you are rewarding or paying the dog for the desired behavior. Because food is a valuable resource, the dog looks to its pack-leader to provide the food resource.
To summarize overshadowing, the real behavior we want the dog to do, is sit when the word “sit” is said. Therefore, we don’t want to show an additional body or hand gesture at the same time of speaking “sit” because the dog is hard-wired to pay attention to our body language. And because the dog will be so focused on our body language and hand gesture, this will cancel out the entire lesson we want to teach.
