There is little that is more frustrating for a dog owner than trying to get your dog to listen to you in the heat of the moment — before he grabs your dinner off the counter or jumps on Aunt Alice when she walks in the door — and having your command words go unheeded.
Everything you’ve been told is true: Consistency, practice and patience are crucial in teaching Fido commands. But trainers, behaviorists and researchers have also found that there may be certain words — or more precisely, specific sounds and speech patterns — that are easier for dogs to discern than others.
“I don’t want to say that dogs can’t learn any word you want to teach them, but they certainly are better equipped to respond to certain sounds,” says Dr. Pamela Reid, vice president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals located at the Animal Behavior Center in Urbana, Illinois.
Sound associations
When Beth Shaw, a Torrance, California–based yoga teacher, says two little words, “Palm Springs,” her three dogs go nuts. Their excitement level rises and they race for the car. Of course, they don’t know Palm Springs is a golf town two hours east of Torrance. But Shaw has taught the dogs that when she says those words, they get to go on vacation with her. In fact, Shaw’s dogs have a “vocabulary” of more than 50 words, ranging from “bone” to “flashlight.”
“No sound has a value until the dog knows what that sound means,” says Jim Burwell, owner of Petiquette, a Houston, Texas–based dog training firm. It takes conditioning for a dog to associate the sound of the cookie jar with the fact that he’ll receive a treat. Shaw’s dogs only learned “Palm Springs” after repeated conditioning. In addition to repetition and conditioning, there are verbal tricks you can employ to help your dog succeed in learning to speak your language.
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