04/12/2022
Try this experiment
1. Without a treat in your hand, ask your dog, once, to sit. Note the response (ask once only)
2. Standing with the treat bowl/bag on a table next to you, and your dog beside you, reach for the treats. Note if your dog sits. No verbal cue.
3. With your dog next to you, reach for the treats and say sit (once) at the same time. Note the response.
You might need to do watch stage a few times to get consistent data.
Feel free to video this and post them on this thread.
The exercise should tell you what the signal to sit is for your dog. It might be the word, it might be the action, it might be both. What our dog learns and what we try to teach them are often different. If we apply the same thing to yesterday's discussion on "bribery" your dog may have learned that the signal to come for example, is you calling the dog WITH the treat in your hand and doesn't recognise the signal without the treat in your hand. This is not bribery, it's just what the dig has learned which is at odds with what we maybe wanted them to learn.
In human terms, language is just signals which mean different things. Think of the words "then" and "than". Two extremely similar signals which mean two completely different things. We can also have two completely different words which mean the same/similar thing such as car and automobile.
When we have a deeper understanding of how our dogs truly learn (and they all learn this way, there's no "every dog is different" nonsense), we can concentrate on teaching cleanly and ethically without moral judgements on behaviour creeping into our interactions.
Love and peace.
