The best way to communicate with your dog is during play that recruits the self-reinforcing energy of your dog’s instincts. That’s what made it possible for Chaser, my family’s Border collie, to acquiring the biggest vocabulary of any animal and achieve other unprecedented language learning.
All domestic dogs share a set of instincts that are part of their evolution from wolves. But certain instincts are stronger in certain breeds or individual dogs (including mixed breed dogs) than in others.
For example, all domestic dogs have an instinct for chasing, and practically every dog will enjoy chasing and fetching games. That’s especially true of herding dogs like Border collies. Likewise, all domestic dogs have amazing sensitivity to smells, and practically every dog will enjoy games based on tracking scents, like following your smell to where you’ve hidden a toy. That’s especially true of scent hounds like Bassets, Beagles, and Coonhounds. But mixed breed dogs may also have the full range of canine instincts to a very strong degree.
Whether or not your dog is purebred or a mix of breeds, spend time getting to know what his or her own strongest instincts are. And then tailor your play together accordingly. Getting to release his or her instinctual drives in play is the most positively reinforcing thing your dog can experience and will make any learning that occurs in that context extraordinarily memorable.
To teach your dog anything, start small and keep on taking lots of little steps, just as with toddlers learning their ABC’s. Dogs are eternal toddlers and remain puppies at heart their whole lives. That can sometimes be hard to see in an older dog who’s had some rough experiences, but play can almost always reawaken the puppy within and ignite a dog’s latent curiosity and problem-solving ability. With a playful approach, you can definitely teach an older dog new tricks.
Another key is that soft beats harsh. You can and should be firm when necessary to keep your dog safe from running into the street and other dangers (a scary incident in pursuit of a speeding car is how Chaser got her name). But try to make your words and physical interactions with your dog soft and gentle, again just as you would with a toddler.
Food treats are helpful at the beginning of training, and I used them with Chaser when she was a puppy. But you don’t want to depend too much on food treats, because they satiate and lose their effectiveness. That’s why play that releases a dog’s instinctual drives can create such a powerful learning situation. Instincts never satiate and are more positively reinforcing than the yummiest treat. The more you play with your dog in this way, the more you yourself, and your affectionate praise and pets, become positive reinforcers for your dog’s learning.
As far as teaching your dog words goes, start with the verbs for the basic obedience behaviors. If your dog doesn’t understand, or isn’t willing to heed, the obedience verbs “sit,” “stay,” “come,” and so on, you won’t be able to teach them much.
Once your dog understands “sit,” etc., you can advance to two- and three-word phrases, such as “Fetch ball,” that involve his or her favorite games and toys. From the simple obedience verbs, Chaser has progressed to a proper noun vocabulary of more than a thousand uniquely named toys, more than a dozen common nouns (conceptually much harder to learn than proper nouns), lots of verbs, and even prepositions, adverbs, and adjectives. Most recently she has learned to understand sentences with three elements of grammar, such as “To ball, take Frisbee,” and a semantic reversal, such as “To Frisbee, take ball.”
Whatever you’d like your dog to learn, the best thing you have going for you is that dogs and people have evolved a unique interspecies social relationship. All dogs come into the world with a social intelligence that prepares them to pay close attention to, and bond with, people. Once again, play is the way to supercharge this and make your dog super attentive to, and super bonded with, you.
Your dog is watching you closely to try to figure out what you want him or her to do. Try to match your dog’s amazing powers of observation and get to know his or her individual personality, preferences, and body language. When you see your dog’s positive mood or attention falter, it’s time to stop formal training and indulge in pure play, to renew a positive frame of mind and a positive relationship with you, and then some quiet time to enable your dog to relax and rest up for the next playful training session.
With this approach your dog has the best possible chance to amaze you with his or her learning. There’s no limit to what your dog can learn if you supply lots of play and lots of patience. But the biggest reward of all is how you and your dog become more attuned and in harmony with each other. That is ultimately what has made Chaser such a beloved family member for me and the rest of our family, immeasurably enriching our lives together.
John W. Pilley is professor emeritus of psychology at Wofford College and the author, with Hilary Hinzmann, of “Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
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