The Ultimate Guide to Dog Training. Teoti Anderson
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affects your training. If you bend over at the waist and call your dog to come to you, he may come but sit at a distance from you so that you are not looming over him. If you bend at the knees and crouch down to call him, he may come more enthusiastically because you have lowered your body and are less intimidating.
When you are angry or upset, your body language changes. Always be sure that you are in a good mood and full of patience when you train your dog; otherwise, he will sense when you are upset. Your body will be stiffer, your hands may clench, your jaw might tighten, your voice may sound different. You may think that you’re acting the same as you usually do, but your dog is very perceptive and will notice even the slightest change. Your dog may be less likely to respond to your cues when you are tense or upset. He may even start bouncing around and acting silly, trying to reduce the tension! This will likely just make you tenser, so it ends up being a frustrating training session.
Staring a dog in the eyes intently is very assertive, and some dogs may find it a challenge. This can be especially troublesome with children. Some children like to cradle a dog’s face, get close, and stare into in his eyes. They mean it affectionately, but do not allow this! While some dogs will tolerate this, others will not. And in this position, the dog’s proximity to a child’s face is extremely dangerous. Even if your dog doesn’t mind, children don’t often understand that what one dog likes, another dog will not. So if your child should try to get too close to a dog that is less tolerant, there could be a tragedy.
It’s easier for dogs to learn hand signals than verbal cues.
Hands Over Words
Because dogs are so in tune to body language, it is easy to teach them hand signals. It’s easier for them to learn hand signals or other physical cues than it is for them to grasp verbal cues. They can learn verbal cues, of course, but it just takes a bit longer.
It’s important to be consistent when you use hand signals or other physical cues with your dog, just as with other aspects of dog training. If you motion downward with your hand pointed when teaching your dog to Down, but then one day you keep your hand by your side, your dog may not respond. He’s not being defiant, he’s just confused. He’s learned that your hand pointing downward means you want him to lie down, and you didn’t make that motion. This doesn’t mean that you always have to make exaggerated hand signals in order for your dog to perform. You can “fade” hand signals to make them smaller, you just have to do it gradually.
A Dog’s Senses
A dog’s senses are much more acute than a human’s. That’s why your dog is so good at reading your body language. It also explains why dogs can be distracted during training, or when you take them for walks, or in new locations. They can perceive things that you can’t!
Dogs have far superior scenting ability than we do.
The All-Knowing Nose
A dog’s sense of smell is uncanny. Scientists have not been able to pinpoint exactly how powerful it is, but they estimate that it is 10,000 to 100,000 times more acute than ours. Dogs have up to 300 million olfactory (scent) receptors in their noses. We have about six million. Dogs also have a significantly large part of their brains dedicated to analyzing smells—about 40 percent more than we do.
When we inhale, we smell and breathe through the same pathways in our noses. When dogs inhale, a fold of tissue within their noses separates the air into two pathways: one is for smelling, and the other is for breathing. Researchers have determined that about 12 percent of the air goes to a recessed part in the back of the dog’s nose that is dedicated to smelling. The rest goes into the lungs.
When we exhale, we send air out the way it came in—through a single pathway. When dogs exhale, the air goes through slits in the sides of their noses. When this air rushes out, it swirls new odors into the dog’s nose. It also lets a dog sniff almost continuously.
As if this wasn’t enough to make them superb smelling machines, dogs have a part of anatomy that we don’t. It’s called the Jacobson’s organ. It’s at the bottom of the dog’s nasal passage, and it senses pheromones, which are the chemicals that animals produce to attract other animals, especially their mates. The pheromone molecules that the Jacobson’s organ detects don’t mix with the other odor molecules. The Jacobson’s organ has its own nerves, which lead to the part of the brain that is dedicated to analyzing pheromones.
It’s no wonder that dogs are so distracted by smells! They’re very good at smelling because of their anatomy. Some breeds and individual dogs are better at scenting than others, but all dogs have far superior scenting ability than we do. Dogs excel at scent sports, such as tracking and K9 Nose Work®. They also serve people by working in search and rescue, cadaver detection, and more. Some have been trained to detect termites, bed bugs, and even cancer by scent.
Did You Know? There’s More to a Nose Wiggle than Meets the Eye
A cool thing that dogs can do that we can’t is wiggle their nostrils independently of each other. The aerodynamic reach of each nostril is smaller than the distance between the nostrils. What this means is that a dog can tell which nostril an odor enters, which helps him track scent.
The Eyes: Not Just Black and White
We used to think that dogs could see in only black and white, but recent research indicates otherwise. Dogs may actually have some color vision. How an eye perceives color is based on the presence of cone photoreceptors in the eye’s retina. The cone photoreceptors work in bright light. The central region of a human’s retina consists of 100 percent cone photoreceptors, while only about 20 percent of the photoreceptors in the same region in dogs are cone photoreceptors. So while we’re able to see a broad range of colors, dogs can see only a few. Researchers have conducted behavioral tests in dogs indicating that dogs can tell the difference between red and blue but have difficulty telling the difference between red and green.
Where eyes are placed on the head determines what kind of peripheral vision an animal has, as well as the size of the visual field that the two eyes can see at one time. Dogs’ eyes are on the sides of their heads, which means that they have a visual field of 240 degrees, whereas humans have a visual field of 200 degrees.
Binocular vision is used to judge distances. Dogs have about half of the binocular vision as humans do. Thus, dogs have better peripheral vision than we do, but they need to be closer to objects than we do to see them clearly.
What Can Dogs Hear?
Puppies are born deaf. Their ears don’t open until they are about two weeks old. Some dogs have floppy ears, either short or long. Some have prick ears. No matter what shape or size, there are about eighteen muscles in the ear that move it in different directions to help a dog hear sound. Dogs’ ears can move independently of each other. Dogs can hear sounds at significantly higher frequencies than we can.
A dog’s ear canal is different from a human’s. People have ear canals that are horizontal to the ear drum. In dogs, the ear canal is L-shaped. It’s vertical toward the jaw, and then it takes about a 90-degree turn horizontally near the ear drum. This shape makes the ear canal difficult to examine without special equipment. It also makes the ear a host for bacterial and yeast infections, especially in drop-eared dogs, where the ear flap covering the ear canal provides a moist environment.
Dogs can hear sounds at significantly higher frequencies than we can.
Taste and Touch
Dogs do not have as many taste buds as we do, which means that they can’t taste the range of flavors that we can. This may explain why some dogs appear to eat anything! Dogs can taste sweet, salty, sour, and bitter tastes, but they smell more than they taste. Their powerful sense of smell compensates a bit for their lack of taste buds.
Dogs