No Means No

When I’m teaching dogs what the commands mean and how to perform them, I give them lots of guidance and information including using feedback words ‘No’ and ‘Good’ to help guide the dog away from unwanted choices and towards great choices.

‘No’ means stop what you’re doing and I’m going to tell you what to do instead. When our dogs are making a poor choice, we want to stop them and then we can guide them into the better choice.

Good means ‘that’s the correct choice, do that again next time!’. Be very careful not to mark inappropriate behaviour or mindsets with this word by over using it at the wrong times.

Both feedback (or marker) words are used to give the dog information about their choices and behaviour but neither word should have human emotions or volume attached to it. Meaning that ‘good’ shouldn’t be an over excited and over the top emotional ‘goooooooooodddddd!!!!! ’ and ‘no’ shouldn’t be an angry, loud or frustrated ‘NO!!! ’. Simply give the words as neutral and meaningful feedback to the dog that he can use to learn without being unnecessarily distracted.

The feedback words that we use are pretty simple... ‘good’ and ‘no’. That’s it!