Why do so many people shy away from telling their own dog "No."
As a kid I was no stranger to discipline. Both of my parents disciplined me and because of them I'm the respectful and strong person I am today. I can only remember getting spanked twice, but my goodness, my mom had what we called the death grip, and when she used it on an arm there was no getting free and struggling only made it worse. My point is, my parents were not afraid to tell me or my brothers "no." When you see kids out in the public, you can probably pick out the ones that never hear the word “no,” and a laundry list of thoughts runs through your mind about what kind of trouble the teen will get into in the years ahead. Luckily, I was not raised this way.
Skip forward twenty or so years and we have just sold our house, so fast in fact, that we barely had time to pack, let alone, find our dream home to move into. Yup, we moved in with my mother as she graciously opened her home to us. Plus 2 kids and 3 dogs. And our suitcases. Literally everything else went into storage.
Luckily, Mom loves dogs. Since I can remember, we have always had at least one, if not two. They seemed to always find us. We always lived a little bit out in the county and dogs would just show up. I remember going to the SPCA to adopt a dog one time and the rest of our animals just showed up and stayed. Dogs were never crated and the only time we attempted to train one of the dogs, was because he kept trying to chase our horses and our cars. The training for him was my idea and it’s still debatable whether it was successful.
So now that I’m training dogs, my mother and I are having some interesting conversations...to say the least, as our philosophies are no longer in sync. The other day my pitbull, Frank, who is a bit of a knucklehead and easily excitable, decided he was going to try to snuggle with Mom on the couch. He did a football dive right into her lap and I immediately told him "no" and gave a stimulation with the e-collar (ya’ll he is a sensitive boy, so I can use levels under 10 and get a significant reaction from him). He understood what was going on and, as Gary Wilkes likes to say, he tried to "suck up and get straight" by running to me and sitting next to me.
My mom’s response, "Oh my gosh! Did you just do that?!"
My response, "Well yeah Mom, he gets corrected for that kind of stuff. He doesn't need to be jumping on you or the couch and acting crazy. "
So why would my mom question me about correcting Frank for something he shouldn't be doing when clearly she had no issue with the idea of correction and punishment for us as kids? I didn't hit him, yell at him, or correct him in such a manner that left him in a corner shaking for hours (that's a topic for later). Frank didn’t become afraid of me because I corrected him. He came to me because he knew he had done something wrong, was told “no,” and he wanted to make it right by sitting next to me. Yet, Mom saw this transpire and still to this day, I posit, disapproves of my dogs being “corrected,” as infrequent as it may be. She has even seen the great change in my aggressive dog, Sadie, who used to try to lunge at her and bite her every chance she had. Sadie can now be around Mom like any of our other dogs, getting pets and treats periodically, something we thought might never be possible.
Many other cultures don’t seem to complicate the human dog relationship to the extent that our society seems to be doing as a whole. Is it because in those cultures, dogs are more of a working class breed? Living outdoors like the rest of the farm animals and not as pets. So many people in our society are humanizing dogs but this seems to go much deeper than that. Have we as an American society put dogs on a pedestal so high that no other creature on earth compares? We know that animals in the wild know punishment well. Wolf pups learn early on about the pack and survival. Pups and other pack members are kept in line through punishment, banishment, or death. And yet the dog, a descendent from wolves, have so many people getting up in arms about bonkers (literally a rolled up towel thrown at or near the dog), e-collars, prong collars, slip leads, or any other tool that when used, can give the dog a value to the word “no.” The value is what gives the word meaning and power. The power to stop a behavior.
We get corrected on the daily and have learned about it from a very early age. Speeding tickets, late fees, low grades on exams-I could go on. And the fear of these keep us doing the speed limit, paying our bills on time, studying, all to prevent the negative feedback and keep the positive reinforcement coming. So to not correct a animal when it makes a poor choice leads only to more bad choices and potentially to chaotic and dangerous situations. There must be a balance between the yes and no. Absolutely when a dog makes the right decision, it should be praised so that the dog will want to repeat the behavior again. But not correcting a dog that jumps on the couch and expecting it to not do it again because you did not praise it and only ignored it, is like expecting a kid to not steal a cookie because you turned a blind eye the first time he did it.
For me and my dogs, I will train them to be obedient with non-negotiable commands. Mistakes and poor behavior earns them fair correction. Therefore, if one of my dogs were to ever run towards a road with a speeding car, I can recall them and be sure they will return without hesitation. That’s because each of my dogs knows they will receive a correction for not coming when called. I much rather teach my dogs what “no” means rather than watch one get hit by a car (which happened to one of my childhood dogs even though my brother and I screamed “No!” Unfortunately, the word “no” had little to no value to her as she had never known a consequence for disobedience.
This fear and stigma of correcting poor behavior and giving them necessary feedback is keeping many dog owners from having an amazing relationship with their dog. The same relationship a parent can have with a well-behaved child. That relationship isn't achieved by saying yes to every desire they ever wanted. As Sean O’Shea says, keep their cup constantly full of food, treats, and free love, and they will never have a need to work for you. There will be challenging moments; moments that don't feel as good as others. A client of mine just recently had to bonk her dog for being a brat at the groomers and I really commended her for doing so. My spouse asked why it was such a big deal and the best way I can explain it is it’s like when you are standing in the aisle of a grocery store and your kid throws a tantrum about the candy bar they want, but your answer must remain “no.” In the moment it totally sucks, it’s embarrassing, but mostly, you want the behavior to not keep happening. And the best way for that to happen, is to correct it.