Everyone wants their dog to be better behaved. I don’t care how well behaved your dog is, there is always something your dog could do better. With three little secrets you can start implementing today at no cost, you’ll find that your dog will start behaving better right away.

Start using sign language to communicate with your dog

Believe it or not, your dog has never learned to obey your voice commands. Sure, it may have seemed to obey “sit, stay and come” or whatever else you’ve taught him, but in reality your dog learned to follow some other signal. Your dog has learned that when you move a certain way, you want it to do the trick.

If you watch yourself, you’ll start to see that maybe you pat your leg when you want him to come or raise your hand when you want him to sit. Signal without the words and your dog will continue to do the trick. In fact, teach tricks without the signal and your dog will learn faster.

Start using body language

This goes along with sign language. People often wonder why my dogs don’t run to the door when the doorbell rings. It is because I have taught them not to do this. I tell people that I can also teach their dogs not to rush to open the door in less than five minutes. (No one ever believes me.)

I have a volunteer who rings the bell. When the dogs run for the door, I get between the dogs and the door and close in on the dogs. The dogs back off. I drive the dogs back until they reach a predefined point. So, I head for the door. If the dogs head for the gate, I turn around and approach the dogs again until they back off past the point. It takes a few minutes, but they get the point. (I sometimes add the word “back” if they have been trained, but not always).

This method requires a few rings of the bell so that the dogs learn not to go past the predefined point. Then I have the owners try the doorbell challenge. Owners are always amazed at how quickly dogs learn not to run to the door. It just took a bit of body language to learn.

stop yelling at dogs

This is actually a common mistake. Dogs start barking and people start yelling for her to shut up. This is actually reinforcing the behavior. In essence, you are telling the dogs that there is something to bark about and you join in by sounding the alarm.

While this may sound strange, this is an effective maneuver. If your dogs bark at something outside, call them inside. Even if they only stay inside for a few minutes, you’ve disrupted the pattern and stopped the barking. If they are barking inside, take them out. The message that is sent is barking just as they must leave the activity and silence means that they stay. Never pet a dog that is barking.