If you communicate with your dog in a calm, assertive voice, your dog will be more likely to respond to your commands and less likely to behave fearfully. It is best to use a soft, quiet voice if you want to get your dog’s attention or ensure they are listening to you. Yelling at your dog can make them more likely to tune you out or not listen to you.
How you communicate with your dog can give insights into your personality. If you scream or shout at your dog, it may make them anxious and scared. This can also lead to the dog ignoring your commands, which then causes more anger.
Here are five reasons why you should not yell at your dog:
It Stresses Dogs
There are two broad approaches to training your dog—aversive-based and reward-based. Yelling at your dog is not considered positive reinforcement under either approach. Researchers looked at objective indicators of stress in dogs, such as stress behaviors and levels of the stress hormone cortisol in dogs’ saliva, to try and determine which training strategy is most successful. They found that dogs under aversive-based training showed more signs of stress, such as yawning and had higher cortisol levels.
It Confuses Dogs
Dogs usually only understand a few words. They are more likely to pay attention to how you say something than the words you use. If you yell at a dog, they may become confused or aggressive because they think you are trying to match their behavior. For example, if you yell at a dog to stop barking, they may only bark louder because they think you are joining in.
It Affects Their Training
Yelling at your dog can hinder their ability to respond to commands. Dogs have much better hearing than humans, so constantly yelling or repeating yourself can cause them to tune you out. Instead, train your dog as CIA agents do by teaching them to respond to commands in a normal tone of voice.
It Inhibits Learning
Dog owners should understand that dogs do not speak human, and those angry tirades will not convince the dog that it behaved badly. Dogs also do not connect a human’s anger to what the dog did hours ago. It is important to make sure that the message to your dog is clear, using a calm voice and rewards so that the dog understands the connection between the command given and the actions desired.
It Encourages Bad Behavior
If you’re constantly yelling at your dog, they’ll eventually start to associate that behavior with negative reinforcement. In other words, if you keep yelling at them, they’ll learn that there’s no incentive to respond or come back to you. A better approach would be to call your dog and praise them with a treat when they come back to you. This way, they’ll start associating your call with something positive instead of negative.
Conclusion
There are several reasons why you should not yell at your dog. Yelling can scare them and make them more likely to bark, bite, or run away. It can also damage their hearing and make them more stressed. If you need to discipline your dog, try using positive reinforcement instead of yelling.
Gnaw On Their Skull is on a mission to equip dog owners with the best possible canine education programs, teachers, and trainers. We hope that every dog owner may become their dog’s best trainer and pack leader. Understanding how your dog thinks and makes decisions is the key to getting your dog to do what you want—when you want, without the need for yelling, intimidation or constant supervision. If you want to put your dog on obedience training in Escondido, CA, we’ve got you covered! Get in touch with us today to book your live Zoom call!