Dog Not Listening? Stop Yelling. Do This Instead

Today I'm going to show you how to get your dog to listen to you. Contrary to what you might think, your dog isn't deaf. You're just not speaking their language. Let me explain. What does this sound mean to you? What about this one? And this one? What about this one?

Now how about this one?

It's like Likely that you instantly recognized those sounds. What do they all have in common? They announce something. They might even make you feel a particular way. They all have instant meaning. And that's essentially what markers are. Since a dog's cognitive capabilities don't typically surpass those of a 2 to 3-year-old child, communicating with them as efficiently and as simply as possible It's not just a preference, it's an absolute necessity if you want your dog to listen to you. And in this video, I'm gonna show you exactly how to do that.

We've kind of formatted this to be a little bit different to what we've done before. Hopefully you can hear me over the squeaking pointer. Hopefully. I haven't got my Brittany mic today. About 3 and a half years ago, I got a little Malinois puppy, right? And, um, As you might know, his name's Stark, and for the first year we really didn't work on much other than markers. We compete in a sport called PSA, and it's known to be one of the most difficult, challenging dog sports on the planet because you're really testing your dog at the upper echelon of obedience, but also the protection elements in that sport puts the dog in such a heightened state of drive to be able to cap and control a dog in that state of drive is, it's really difficult, especially when we're working with high caliber dogs. So he's currently 3 and a half and we're, we're in the upper levels now. So the sport comes in 4 levels and we're in the third out of the fourth level. Now, he didn't know sit until he was 1 year old, right? He didn't know pretty much any obedience other than a recall until he was 12 months old. I didn't actually start teaching him the process of sitting on command until he was 12 months. But what we did do up until that point was a lot of emphasis on the markers and the communication channel we had up until that point. And so it really is the underpinning, our communication system, our, our system of cues that we can give the dog to give them feedback on whether they're getting things right or wrong. This is stuff I incorporate with puppies on a really kind of basic level, but also the stuff we incorporate with really high-end level, like working dog sport dogs in order to make sure that we're successful in teaching them. Right. And so the consistency we want through our communication needs to be the utmost priority when it comes to, well, behavior change, obedience, and so on and so forth. The analogy I give is like if you wanted to move countries, let's say you wanted to move to France and you wanted to go and make coffee. You want to be a barista before you go and take up your job of a barista and you go and get employed and you learn how to make coffee. You better learn French first, because of how well you learn French will dictate the time frame in which you learn your job. If your French is poor and you're just shouting there, like, gesticulating and just shouting louder in English, as we tend to do, then chances are your coffee-making skills are going to be lackluster for months, years on end. But if you invest the time early doors in learning the language beforehand and you get there, you're going to learn your job in a couple of days.. And so the markers in this analogy is our language and obedience is the job, right? Is the making of the coffee. And more often than not, we'll actually spend more time in perfecting our markers than we do teaching the obedience because of the level of understanding of our markers very much dictates how effective, how reliable, how powerful our obedience is going to be. I always say, if you gimme 5 hours to chop down a tree, I'm going to spend 4 hours sharpening my axe. And so the marker system again is the process of sharpening the axe. The job, the obedience is the tree, the chopping of the tree. And of course, investing time developing the dog's understanding of what we want is of paramount importance. So there's my spiel on why it's important to have different markers, right? Or give our dog a comprehensive understanding of markers.

So markers aren't something you can just pull out of your ass one day. They actually need to be conditioned. They actually need to be shown to your dog and given the meaning in the first place. Now, if you haven't yet done that, I would encourage you to click the link in the description and download our Behaviour Bible that goes through all the fundamental obedience that you might need in order to train your dog. It goes through how to condition markers, how to create motivation for you guys that are probably watching this video and thinking, well, my dog doesn't care about food or toys. It's going to solve that problem for you too. I genuinely mean this. I think a bunch of dog trainers would charge you a substantial amount of money for the Behaviour Bible, and we're giving it away for absolute free for our YouTube audience. So, um, yeah, it's there for you in the description. Finish this video, click it, download it, and, uh, I'll see you over there.

And we've got a, a terminal reward marker, which for a lot of you is our yes or our click. A lot of people use clickers so we can be consistent with the sound. I don't use clickers because I lose clickers, right? A lot of people say yes, but a lot of the times they'll say yes Yes, yes, yes. And then we start have actually having different cues within a cue, and that's gonna really kind of dilute the importance of that marker. And so if you wanna change a marker, I'd recommend something salient, but with your mouth. A lot of people, different sounds as opposed to, um, uh, actual words, right? So what's our yes marker? Our yes marker is stop doing what you're doing, come to me.

I'm going to pay you.

Once I've paid you, you're dismissed. So it's what we call a terminal marker. Your job is done. Come and get payment. That bit's not optional, but after that you're free to do what you want. And if you don't want your dog to be free to do what they want after that, then you should give them another command to do. All right, so that's our first one. That is good job, buddy. Do more of that. Finish doing what you're doing right now. Come to me, get paid, and we'll move on. Our terminal marker, it typically finishes behaviors or sequences of behaviors. All right, so that's the first one we're gonna work on. We're all gonna have our dog on the place bed. We're gonna move away. We're gonna give our terminal marker, which you should all have really at this point. Y-E-S, or your sound, or your clicker, or whatever. You're gonna move away from your dog, you're gonna pay your dog, and then you're gonna give him something else to do. That might just be go back to the place bed. All right. Does that all make sense? So Suki, what you're gonna do is you're gonna just take a couple of steps away from Trav. And what you're gonna do before your hand moves into your pocket, and I'm gonna be really big on this, before any movement, you give your cue. Yes. And then move and then pay the dog. We never deliver our marker at the same time as any sort of physical cue. All right. So especially our terminal marker. So Suki, do that for me. "Yes." So, yeah, we give the word, we move, we pay our dog. All right? What we're not going to do is, "Yes!" Okay? What we're not going to do is hand in the pocket, "Yes!" Pay our dog. If we want our dog to listen to our words, we put the word first and then action after. Okay? If your dog doesn't move, that's absolutely fine. You just then encourage them to move after the fact. Okay, do a couple of reps of that for me. Hand out your pocket. If your dog breaks before you give your cue, you want to reset your dog. All right, okay, pause there. On the beds. For most of you, it was pretty crap, and I'll tell you why. A lot of you, you're getting out in front of your dog, your hand's moving, you're moving, your dog's moving. That is because prior to now, what you've done is you've put your hand in your pocket or you've moved before giving your marker, and that has taught your dog that the first part of the sequence to be rewarded is to look for movement or hands. Of course they're gonna get flinchy, they're gonna be breaking positions, but not through disobedience, but because of you've taught your dog that movement equals yes, which equals payment, and we don't want that. We want yes equals movement, which equals payment. And so if I move before delivering the yes to my dog, that should mean nothing. All right? So if a lot of you are moving away from your dog and your dog follows, nope. We take the dog back. We reset. We reset as well. Move. They're gonna, and we're gonna just take some time. Pause. Yes. If they do nothing, that's fine. Then we move, encourage, pay. All right, let's give it another go for me. Let's have a look. Yes is good job for doing the job, just come and get paid. If you throw in obedience after your marker, you're going to poison your marker. Think of delivering your yes as like, now you've got to catch me, dog. All right, so don't say yes, the dog moves, and then you stop and pay them there. Yes. Keep moving and let the dog chase your hand. Okay. And we want a nice open hand when delivering this marker. I'll talk about different hands later. Nice, nice, nice. And pause there for me. Oh, I see. Oh, just a couple of pieces would be good, bud. Couple of things to improve this. I don't necessarily have to have the dog in any sort of obedience or anything. But yes, move. I'm gonna keep moving until my dog catches the food, comes and takes the food from me. Yes. And if I need to like turn to buy me time, that's absolutely fine. Of course, like, watch your behind. What are you doing? Yes, move, move, move, move, move. And I become a target. Right? We want this marker to be punchy, powerful. It's what we're gonna associate to our faster, potent behaviors. Now, if we want those behaviors to be potent, then the meaning of our marker also needs to be our yes marker, should I say. And so we always wanna associate it with move. Yes. Right, to trigger a little bit of prey in the dog, a little bit of chase, right? What I don't want to do is— yes, go to the dog. Okay, so let's get out of that habit. We're saying yes and then moving away, and then we're paying the dog. Yes means stop doing what you're doing, come and catch me and take some food. And what you'll start doing is seeing in your dog a lot of anticipation, a lot of excitement, a lot of arousal, and we want that for speeding behaviors up. So we're going to go back into the same drill in a second. We put our dog on place. Down. We step out. I should be able to hand in my pocket, the dog not move. I should be able to move, the dog not move. I should be able to tie my laces, my dog not move. But once I give the yes, I give it, I move, I present payment, and I'm going to keep that target up until the dog comes and grabs the food from me. I want them to be pushy for this. All right, just a little bit of food again. Just a couple of things. So I'm here. Yes, move. And I keep moving until she comes and takes the food. Okay. What I don't want to do, a lot of people do— yes, right, that's going to kill the value of our marker because we're adding brakes to something that we want to be an accelerator. Okay, all right, cool. Let's give her a few more goes, guys. Nice, that's it. See, Max, very nice, nice. There we go, that's more like it. Good job, team. Little challenge for you. You're going to put your hand in your pocket, take your pocket out. Your dog's going to stay there. You ain't going to move away like this. Your dog's going to stay there. You ain't going to tie your laces or pretend to. Stand back up tall. Your dog's going to stay there. If they yield to the distractions and they don't come off the bed, yes, and then move. Okay, yes is the instigator to movement. We don't want to be anything else other than yes. All right, a lot of people's dogs are breaking commands because of inadvertently— we've accidentally taught the dog that when I move, you get paid. Because they move and then say yes. And then we suddenly correct them, we put them back in the down, they're like, hang on a minute, so sometimes when you move you pay me, sometimes when you move I get told off for moving, that's not fair. And so this is why it's so important to have word, pause, action, all right? And the action in this instance is going to be movement, payment. Super important concept to have. So you're going to bring yourself out in front of your dog. I've got my imaginary dog here. I'm gonna, uh, hand in the pocket, take it out as if I'm presenting food. If your dog breaks, hey, nope, set them back, right? Don't have to be super harsh. Um, hand in pocket, out. They should go like, oh, not falling for that one again. Then we're gonna move away. Some dogs might then move because they're like, oh yeah, reward time. You say, no, no, no, not reward time. Just because I have moved doesn't mean we're finished. We'll put them back. Tie laces. They might go, oh, Mom and Dad's distracted. Once they yield and you can go through that 3-part sequence without them breaking— yes, move, pay. All right, let's give that a go for me. Really nice. Now we're getting nice and, uh, Consistent. Good job. So to recap, yes means— oh, your noise or clicker means job done. Finish doing what you're doing, get to me as soon as possible, take your reward, and then you're dismissed. There's actually 3 forms of reinforcement with this marker, one being the food Second being the movement, and the third being the freedom after they've taken payment. And so we use it for, let's say, recall, speed the dog up, yes, pay. They've had to catch us, the prey's in there, the food's in there, and then because if we taught it as a terminal marker, they're then dismissed. So they get a trifecta of payment, movement, food, freedom. It's our most powerful marker. It's our most powerful marker. It'll create anticipation, it'll create drive,. It'll create like explosiveness into behavior so long as we teach it explosive, right? Yes. And then moving. However, we don't always want that. So that brings me to my next marker. Stability is the abil— the ability for our dog to remain stable inside a behavior, to hold a command. Our YES marker is gonna speed behaviors up, but if we want our dog to hold and be good at, um, contain themselves within a behavior, we're going to use a different marker and some different physical signals associated with that marker for our dog to be able to understand that is in their best interest to keep in this behavior. And so for a lot of pet dogs, we want to use this following marker a lot more. We want our dog to be able to hold long, stable downs. So when we go to the cafe, we go to the pub, We go to the park, we say lie down, chill out, they do nothing. All right? However, if we wanna focus on obedience and we wanna speed things up, like we wanna speed our dog up going to the place, we wanna speed our dog up going into the down, we wanna speed our dog's ass hitting the floor on the sit, we're gonna use more of our terminal marker to create potency. All right? But we've always got this ebbs and flows. So our duration marker for most people is typically the word good. Right, it could be anything you want though. Like, it could be your clicker, it could be the word banana, it could be anything you want. Um, but what we're going to communicate to the dog is when I say this word, I need you to stay where you are. I will come to you and pay you. Now, some similar concepts we need is I say my marker before I move, but obviously my movement is going to be now towards the dog, not away from the dog. So I say good I move towards, I can then reach into the pocket. And when I present the food, I present it with a closed hand and I can start teaching my dog, when the hand is closed, I will come to you. But when the hand is open, you come to me. So I've got my dog, I put 'em on place. I say, good. Now a lot of your dogs might break at that point cuz they're used to hearing good boy, good girl, and then you move and then they might break. Okay. All we do, hey, no, reset, put 'em back. Good. Take the food here. Now if my dog breaks in anticipation of the food, I'm gonna say hand in the pocket, reset the command, and go all the way back. All right. I don't wanna start, they, I say good and then they come out and get the food here because of what I'm, I'm gonna do is drive anticipation into my, into my marker that I don't want anticipation in. Okay. So this is our room service cue, our room service marker. If you hear good, you keep doing what you're doing. You're currently doing a great job. I want you to keep doing it. When I give you the food doesn't mean you're done. So lots of ingredients into this, but the main ones to take away are I say good, I come to you, I pay you in position with a closed hand. Keep doing what you're doing. You're doing a great job. And let's see where we go from there. So next little drill, what you're gonna do is you're gonna put your dog in the down or the place or whatever. It could be a sit, it doesn't really matter. And I'm gonna leave my dog. I'm gonna come out in front. I'm gonna statue and do nothing. I'm gonna say good. Hand goes into pocket. I go back to my dog. I present with a closed fist. Once my fist touches their nose, I open it so they could take the food. All right? So they start seeing the closed fist and they're like, oh, I know I have to stay here. All right? So that's what we're gonna work on now. So, um, in your own time, step away from your dog. If they break, simply reset them. Very nice. Hand out your pocket. Stand still. Don't pull him off the bed. Just say good and do nothing else. Now go back to him. Take your hand in a fist, food in a fist. Go to his nose.

Open your hand.

Perfect. Let's do that another 4 times for me. Just pause there for me. If I've just spent a load of effort to teach my dog, yes, fly off the bed and come to me, and then I go put the dog in a down and I come back and I say yes, and I pay the dog in position, I've just diluted my commands, right? I've said sometimes it's move, sometimes it's stay still. That's not fair on the dog, right? And so when he hears next, yes, next time he'll be like, oh yeah, you're coming to me, right? And so super important we discriminate between these two markers. Good. I will come to you and pay you. Yes. You come to me and take payment. Good is room service. Yes is going to out to get your paycheck. All right. Super important. We discriminate between the both. I want to see a rep from every single one. Go. So we move away. We say good. We can then head towards the dog. To the dog. Very nice, Jamie. Nice. Nice, nice, very nice. Go back to the dog in a fist. Very nice. What the fuck? Do it again for me. Move away from your dog. Stand still. Hands to your side. Say good. Now food. Back fist. Good job. Nice, John. Nice. Right, no one's fucked this up yet. Not one person's fucked this up. Nice. Awesome. All good. Just a reset. Don't mind if your dog gets it wrong. I don't mind. Reset the down. Hand out your pocket. Reset the down. Good. Go back. Say good. Do nothing else. Now you can go back and in. Very nice. Trav. Sorry, Trav. Very nice. Perfect. Okay, now what we're gonna do, very quick couple of minutes using both your markers. So you put your dog on the bed, you're gonna leave your dog, you're gonna stay here. Your options are good, go back. You can do that once, twice, 10 times, 40 times, doesn't matter. You wanna finish the behavior? Yes. And move away. Put your dog in a down. Leave them, say good, come back, say yes, pay them, reset. Good, come back, yes, pay them. Whatever you want to do, just mix it up. And what we're looking for in this bit is be able to communicate effectively with our dogs so they understand and are able to distinguish and discriminate between those two different markers. And what you'll start seeing out of your dog, which is like an indicator that we're going to— that we're on the right track, is We'll say good and they'll twitch and they'll go, ooh, no, no, I know this one. I know I'm supposed to stay here. And that is starting to indicate that your dog's on the right track. So have a little play around. Remember the fundamentals of both, please. Very nice. We don't need a stay or a wait. If we're adding in a stay or a wait, we're implying to our dog, if I don't say stay or wait, you're allowed to get up whenever you want. There's never a time for that, right? The stay and the wait is implied, and the feedback via the markers are yes and are good. Is feeding back on how good of a job they're doing or have done. Each and every command, if I give you a sit, a place, or a down, a recall, is do that command unless I tell you otherwise. All right, as opposed to here's an optional command, but now I've said stay or wait, it's important. Didn't really make sense, right? So keep doing what you're doing, couple more minutes, we'll move on to the next one. Nice, guys, really good. Nice work. So the next one, although really simple, really effective, and it's going to be a break or a free command. I'll talk about some mistakes, how we teach it, and so on and so forth. This is literally telling the dog you were dismissed, you can do what you want within behavioral confines. All right, you can do what you want, but you can't go in eat the postman or whatever, right? Really simple. We give our dog something to do. Once they've done, we say break or free. They don't do anything, we just encourage them out of the command. Sometimes we might even put a distraction on the floor and allow them to have it. And we're saying to our dog, okay, now you've done that for me, you can do what you want. And therefore we can use it for what we call the Premack Principle or Grandma's Law. The reason it's called Grandma's Law is because Grandma would tell me, say, would give us some chores before we were allowed to go and play outside. Yeah, you can play outside and have your freedom, but you need to do the dishes first after dinner. Absolutely fine, Grandma. We do the dishes, we're allowed to play outside. And so we can then start utilizing our environment, right? Utilizing our environment as the reward. And so if I step onto the sport field with my dog and I know another dog has been out there on season Right? And none of my rewards can cut it versus the smell of another dog on season. Well, what I can do is take him over to the distraction and say, hey, look, what do you smell there, bud? This could be anything. It could be the opportunity to chase a squirrel. It could be the opportunity to roll in fox shit. It could be the opportunity to just go ahead and sniff, right? I can say, hey Starkey, what do you smell there? Okay, heel. He heels., and I say okay, which is my release. I could say break or free, and I can release him back to the distraction in the environment. Of course, if it's safe. Now that way I can just take a distraction, which is a 10 outta 10, and use it as my reward. Heel, break. He goes and sniffs and he is like, oh, okay, I heeled and I got a 10 outta 10 reward. That's great. We will never be the best thing to our dogs. But we can manipulate the environment to serve us instead of against us. And so this is why we want a really solid break or free command. And so all I want you guys to do in a second is you're going to walk your dog out, you're going to put them in a sit, you're going to sprinkle some food on the floor, and you're going to say break or free or okay or whatever you want. If they don't break, you can just, just like kind of gesticulate and go like, go on bud, fill your boots. And this cue is teaching our dog, if you give me obedience, I will let you be at liberty to fill your boots in the environment. Great for recall. Fido, come. Okay. And we just release again and we can start teaching our dog. You come to me, you get to chase the rabbit. You come to me, you get to say hello to the other dog. You come to me, you get to piss up that tree, whatever it is. And we can then start essentially like taking the environment, putting all the value of it and putting it into our pocket, which is extremely powerful. All right. So in a moment, take your dog out, put them in a command, step away from them. If they break, there, throw some food out and say break or free or okay. Super easy. All right, give it a go. And if they don't want the food or whatever, it doesn't matter. They just doing what they want. It's fine. Do nothing. Don't pay them in break. Whatever you do, don't poison your break by giving them some food or delivering other markers. Break is about interacting with the environment. Now we need to take them somewhere, anywhere in this field that you think that they might want to sniff. Then what you're going to do is you're going to put them in a sit, you're going to wait 5 seconds, and then give them the break command, right? Super easy. Chances are something someone's pissed on. All right, fill your boots, fill your dog's boots. Easy stuff, right? Okay, if they break the command before giving the cue, simply just come back, reset, put them in a sit. Once you want to terminate break mode Give the dog another something else to do, maybe put them into a loose lead walk. The whole point of this is the dog will choose their reward, which might be a sniff, it might be a wee, it might be say hello to someone. It's some food, and you can just be next to him here. Uh-huh. Break. Right, super easy. So if your dog's struggling Just put them in a sit, shorten your leash so they can't actually get to the thing, sprinkle the food in front, relax your leash. They go to get the thing— hey, no, sit, break. All right, just try that, and eventually you'll be able to put the dog in a down, walk away 50 foot, throw the cheese that way. You say break, and they're going to go and do what they want. It might be the cheese, it might be the Pissing on the lamppost, could be whatever. Purpose is today is just a clear communication system with our dog. All right, back onto place beds, please. Take your place bed, move it anywhere in this area, give you and your dog some space. And I want you to do some sent to places. You might do some sits, you might do some downs, and mix up those 3 different markers, right? Just mix 'em up. Might be good and going back to the dog. It might be yes and the dog coming to you. It might be break and the dog going for a sniff. It might be 10 goods to a break. Might be a yes to then a down to a good to a break. All right, and the purpose of this is not to have really strong obedience, it's to have really strong communication with our dog that we can then transfer into obedience. So take your place, Bed, get some space, have a little work on those 3 different markers with a variety of behaviors. And I'll make my way around. Very quick one. If I put my dog in a sit here and I leave him and he creepy crawls or he breaks and I catch him and say, hey, no buddy, you should have sat, I must reset him where we started. If I go and sit my dog on this patch here, this grassless patch— sit— and he breaks, I'm not going to go, oh hey, no, I said sit, and leave him here, because now he's closer to the reward or potential reward, and he's learned that breaking the command gets me closer. And what he'll do next time is just creep again, creep again, creep again, until he's right in front of it, and then it makes an easier job for him. So it's a bit like What's the Time, Mr. Wolf, the game we used to play in school. Sit. He breaks. No, no, sit. And reset from the get-go, not halfway point. Okay, super important. You all get that when it comes to the place beds, but as soon as people moving off the place beds, they're letting their dog creep everywhere. So super important, where we start the position is where we expect to hold the position, and therefore where we'll reset the position to. All right, cool, carry on. Nice. All right, last little test for you and then we'll wrap up. We're gonna take our dog, we're gonna pop him on a place bed or in any stationary position, and we think of a clock face. 12, 6, 3, 9. All right, what we're gonna do, we're gonna head towards kind of 7, maybe a bit further. We're gonna take some distracting food, throw it over there, and we test our dog's understanding of markers. If we say yes, where should they go? To us. If we say free or break, where might they go? To the food. All right, now they might come to us, which isn't the end of the world. All right, um, because of the whole point is you're free to do what you want. Um, but we're going to give our dog multiple options off the place bed or out of the command. Uh, we might even just say good And they might fly and get that, and we say, hey, no, good means stay and do what— keep doing what you're doing. We might say yes, we might say get it, or not get it, free or break. All right, that all makes sense. All right, give that a little go, bit of a discrimination exercise. Brake. Yeah, that's it. You just help him and you can show him. Well done. All right, that was good stuff. Well done. Hopefully, hopefully we can start to see how this sort of stuff starts underpinning everything and you can start being able to take, take each reward and be able to throw them around obedience to manipulate what outcome you want from the dog. But that was really good, and that's your homework from now until I see you next. Is going to be giving your dog a really good understanding of those markers. All right, and it will really test your dog's brain out. You'll see today when you go home how tired your dog's going to be because of where, like, really working on impulse control. We're really, really working on them figuring out, okay, if X equals Y and so on and so forth. Um, so super important stuff. Get a clear-cut marker system. The world is your oyster.

So if you feel like that's what you need for you and your dog to finally get on the same page and you want a step-by-step breakdown of how that looks all together as a whole puzzle, then you're going to want to click this video right here. And I will show you and hold your hand in taking your dog from reactive to neutral just a couple of weeks.