Dale Carnegie said “Remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” But I think he missed the forest for the trees: what we really love is the sound of our own voices. We love to talk, and if we don’t get some sort of acknowledgment, we tend to repeat ourselves.
Meanwhile dogs don’t send or receive very much information vocally. Sure, there are plenty of dogs – entire breeds actually – that seem to love the sound of their own barking, but this is not a dog’s primary way of transmitting or, and this is important, receiving information.
I’ll repeat that.
Vocal communication is not a dog’s primary way of transmitting or, and this is important, receiving information.
When we train a dog to do something on command, such as sit when we say sit or lie down when say down, we are not teaching them what those words mean. We have assigned a sound (a cue) to an action. We could just as easily get them to sit when we ring a bell or lie down when we snap our fingers.
When we repeat our commands to a dog, one of two things happen. They either learn to not respond the first time: sit becomes sit. sit. sit. Or worse, they learn to ignore it completely. Think of what happens when the radio stations discover (or decide) that a song is popular. After the 1,000,000,000,000th time it comes on you don’t hear it (or are tempted to jump out of the car, but I digress.)
This effect is what trainers are trying to avoid when they tell you to not repeat your commands. It’s really tempting to repeat a cue when a dog doesn’t respond right away and even the pros do it at times, but there’s good reason to try to say things once and wait it out.
