On a lazy August morning I took my dog to a beach. As I started unloading my stuff from the car, I noticed another couple with two dogs doing the same. However, they seemed to really struggle with making their dogs stay still long enough for them to grab a beach bag and a bottle of water from their car trunk. The male owner demanded: “Sit, Fido, sit, sit!” pointing with his finger towards the ground. The dog kept pulling the leash and did not really care. The owner quickly gave up and held on to the leash with all his strength while trying to reach to that bottle of water in the car.
By no means was it the first time I have witnessed this scenario. However, it made me think: what is it that makes us, the owners, believe that the more times we say “sit” the better our dog’s reaction will be? Are we expecting our dogs to feel bad for their unruly behaviour and respond out of guilt? Are we suspecting they are hard on hearing and did not register the first request? Or is it that we are hoping that the lack of reaction to the first command was a fluke, and it will surely be fixed with more repetitions of the same word? Honestly speaking, none of that is true. The dogs do not feel guilty, it is counter-productive to the very nature of their existence. If you think about it, how could a predator who feels guilt and compassion remain a predator?
Likewise, except for rare medical conditions or old age, dogs have no trouble hearing you the first time. Nevertheless, they show little to no response, especially in a high-stress environment full of various distractions. To be even more specific, neither high-stress environment, nor distractions are at fault when it comes to your dog ignoring your requests, or not those factors alone. And most certainly, it is no fluke that your dog does not listen to that first “sit.”
But I get it, people are “nice,” and do not feel that they should be bothering others by insisting on their dog’s obedience in public. So, they try to shame their dog (This is not nice! Stop barking and pulling and sit already!) or “apologize” by saying to no one in particular with a great degree of disappointment and drama, “I don’t know what is going on with him today, he always sits right away!”
What is really going on here and what to do about it? First, avoid confusing your dog by repeating the same old “sit” garnished with a dog’s name hundred times in a row. It really is not helpful and can be actually harmful in that you do not provide consistency. What is the command that you expect your dog to perform? Is it “sit”? “Sit, siit, siit” (with the increasing amount of insistence in voice)? “Sit, Fido, sit”? Dogs are creatures of habit and repetition. Live by that ever-repeating scenario three times in a row, and you can tap yourself on a shoulder – you successfully created a behaviour where dog knows that all those “sits” really mean nothing.
Second, such a behaviour could also point to the lack of training in high-distractions environment, which brings me to the other point, that is, how to deal with your dog ignoring you in public. There is only one way it can be dealt with: make them do it. There is a great variety of ways to do so, it does not have to be violent or abusive. And yet, if you really want your dog to sit on command when other dogs and people are around, you need to deliver that idea to them.
And this brings me to my concluding thought. What do we say after we say “sit” once? Nothing. We say absolutely nothing. If the dog did not react, we simply show them that this is not an option by making them to execute the command.