10/15/2025
✨ Stop Chatting, Start Leading
If your dog isn’t listening to you, it’s not because they’re being stubborn — it’s because your words stopped mattering. So say less, not more.
In behavior terms, when words lose their meaning, it’s called learned irrelevance. It happens when cues become inconsistent, repetitive, or buried in noise.
Let’s say you tell your dog:
👉🏻 “I want you to sit down!” instead of simply “Sit.”
👉🏻 Or maybe it’s “Sit sit sit sit!” because the first one didn’t land.
Here’s the problem:
To your dog, all those extra words become background noise. They can’t tell what the actual cue is — is it “sit,” “sit sit sit sit,” or “I want you to sit down”?
Dogs are pattern learners. They’re constantly analyzing what predicts what.
If the cue changes every time, or the outcome isn’t consistent — sometimes “sit” earns a treat, sometimes nothing, sometimes praise, sometimes petting for not sitting but other times a frustrated “no” — the pattern breaks.
When that happens, your cue stops holding value. It’s no longer reliable information — it’s just sound.
And the more we talk, the worse it gets. The constant chatter (“sit… sit… come on, sit down… you know this…”) muddies communication until your voice becomes white noise.
The fix isn’t saying it louder or more often — it’s saying it less, and meaning it more.
Be clear, consistent, and efficient:
🟢 Use one cue per behavior.
🟢 Deliver clear feedback after every rep.
🟢 Keep your words predictable and purposeful.
That’s how your dog learns that your cues always predict something meaningful.
We want clarity, not quantity. Leadership isn’t about talking your dog into listening — it’s about creating patterns that make listening valuable, fun, and worth repeating.
✨ Stop chatting. Start leading.
