Talking to your dog is one of the great experiences of being a dog owner. You can pour out your heart to a dog, and heel cock his head, sigh and pay complete attention. It seems like he's following everything you say, sympathizing and commiserating with you.
Unfortunately, he doesn't understand a word you say. He may like the sound of your voice and he certainly likes the attention, but he doesn't understand and has no advice to offer.
Now, there's nothing wrong with talking to a dog. Its fun and you can work through a lot of problems just by speaking them out loud. Don't overburden the poor dog by expecting him to follow your arguments or reason with you.
From a training point of view, talking to a dog is worse than useless. Trying to explain something to a dog is a total waste of time. One of the best things you can do for your relationship with your dog is to set aside a period of a week or two periodically and absolutely refrain from talking. In fact one of the most important pieces of equipment in your dog training kit is a roll of duct tape. Tear off a big piece before you start a training session and stick it over your mouth. You'll do much better.
I'm not saying here that dogs don't respond to voice commands. They definitely can be trained to do that. Just watch a working border collie in action. He responds to both voice commands and gestures in ways that seem almost human. That's a matter of conditioning and training combined with the natural instincts of a herding breed.
One of the biggest mistakes people make is to start with the voice command and then try to convince the dog to understand. The correct way to teach voice commands is to get the response you want first through body language or luring and then add the voice command on at the end. Its actually pretty easy to combine a voice command to a behavior the dog is doing naturally.
For instance, sometimes you want your dog to change the side he's walking on. Sometimes your dog will naturally try to change sides on you and usually you correct this to keep him on the left. Try this instead. Walk with your dog and watch for the times that he wants to change sides. When he does, instead of correcting say right or right side and lead him around behind you into the position you want. Maybe give him a pat or a little treat when he does it. Do this a few times and the dog will learn to change sides whenever you want him to. The key to this is to catch the dog when he is about to do what you want of his own accord, and amplify it just a bit each time.
This technique of catching the dog doing something right and pairing it with a command is very similar to clicker training, but much less formal. In strict clicker training you shape the behavior to a high standard with the clicker and add the voice command or hand signal as the final step. Either way, the key is to harness a naturally occurring behavior and pair it with the command. If you use this technique with sensitivity you can achieve almost magical results and the dog never feels put upon or pushed around.
One of the things that makes this technique work is that you aren't constantly chattering at the dog or nagging it. If you do that he'll just tune you out and the process won't work as well. This way of training is at its best when the only time your dog hears your voice is when you are giving a command. Then you get his attention.
Glenn enjoys training dogs and horses using natural methods. More of his advice can be found at Dog Leash Training Blog.
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