Corrective Cues and How to Make Them Effective
Hi Y'all! Tj here with Rocky Camp Animal Training where we are finding success with training thru diligence, patience, and consistency.
Are you one of the many dog owners that have to yell "no" to your dog several times in a row before getting a response, if any? Then today's Rocky Tip is just for you!
We cover this in our video blog as well if you prefer to watch: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg-8whnw_N9qCYIzUJJsEnw
Today we are going to talk about corrective cues and how to make them effective with our pets.
So first, what is a corrective cue? A corrective cue is simply a marker to target specific behaviors we want to eliminate within our pet. These corrective cues vary from person to person and household to household. What makes the corrective cue more or less effective is how frequently we are repeating the cue and following up with action when pet dog ignores our corrective cue
Here at Rocky Camp we don't use the word "no" in our training. The reason for this is we use the word "no" so much in our every day speech its really hard for pets to associate the word “no” with a consistent corrective cue. Instead we use "uh-oh" or something to that nature.
This corrective cue works great as we rarely use this guttural sound in our every day speech so our pets are better able to isolate and associate this cue consistently with their unwanted behaviors. Also, for most pets they communicate first through body language, then energy level, their own verbal language, and lastly our verbal language. So we are only setting them up for success by using a sound that’s much closer to their own verbal language.
The biggest thing to keep in mind when trying to make our corrective cues effective is following through with some praise after our pet stops doing the unwanted behavior.
Now when you’re dealing with a stubborn pet then we must also continue to follow through with bigger corrections until the behavior we want to eliminate subsides.
So remember to make our corrective cues effective we must first use a consistent cue that we don’t use in our everyday speech. We must also be sure that we are not using the cue excessively. And lastly we must be sure that we follow through with some praise once the behavior we do not like subsides.
Well that’s all for today!
I hope you have enjoyed your Rocky Tip.
Until next time, Pack Leaders of the world!