Mike’s Doghouse

Imagine that you are in France. You cannot speak French and everyone around you cannot speak English. So they teach you some phrases so they can interact with you on a very basic level. Now, let’s say there’s a French word for something important that sounds an awful lot like something else important in French. Each time either of those two words are used, you have to pause and try to figure out which of the two applies.

I’m betting that is how our dogs feel. It is why I work hard to not have two dogs at the same time with similar names. We once had a cat named Max and a dog named Maggie. Call either one of them and they both would look at me trying to figure out which one of them was being called. We also once had a dog named Zeus and for several months, we babysat a dog named Drew. Oh, now that was fun!

I also try to not have command/cue words that sound the same. I also tend to use more than one word once the dog understand what the word means. OFF morphs into “get your fuzzy butt off the bed”.

Sometimes words are used that sound too much like words that aren’t commands. The best example is one given at the first dog class. Many people use FREE as the release command. The instructor had been either on a Search and Rescue exercise or a big hike, I can’t remember which. Anyway, they line all these well-behaved dogs up together for a group photo. They are all doing a wonderful SIT and are focused. The instructor, who was taking the photo, said “Okay, one….two…three!”

Can you guess what happened when she said “three”? If you guessed the dogs all broke their sit and went charging about in play, you were right! It was total chaos as humans were laughing, dogs were playing, and the instructor/photographer was going “What happened?”