Casey Lomonaco KPA CTP

This is a follow up to my previous DSD blog entry entitled "A Call for the Dogmestication of Humans," so I'll be picking up where that entry left off.

A brief recap of dogmestication:  humans should learn to read dogs to increase the likelihood for greetings which will be enjoyable to both the two and four-legged participants.  Remember, reading before greeting!  Additionally, I emphasize the importance of asking permission to greet, from both the handler and the dog. 

I thought touching on the handler's responsibility might make the dogmestication piece a little too lengthy, so figured I'd split this out into a two part series.  We've already established the responsibilities of the approaching human and introduced some of the signals the dog will give as to how she is feeling about the situation.  But what about you, the person at the other end of the leash?  What is your responsibility to your dog in these situations?

Sometimes you use a body cue to elicit behavior, and you'd like to transfer the cue to a verbal cue.  Alternatively, you may want to transfer your verbal cues to body cues, note cards with words for behaviors written on them, whistle cues, even scent cues.

When selecting a new cue, make sure it is both easy for the dog to perceive and distinct from existing cues (For example, "bow" and "down" sound very similar; this can be confusing for dogs.  If you have a verbal "down" as your cue to the dog that she should lie down; you may want to call a play bow "greet" or "curtsey").

Regardless of what type of cue you currently use to elicit the behavior, you can always transfer the cue to a new/different cue.  Let's say that we have a body signal as a cue for Mokie's sit behavior (hand extended out from waist, palm up, move towards shoulder) and that we want to transfer the cue so that she will respond to the verbal cue "sit."  Here's the protocol: