How do you let a dog know they did something wrong?

When your dog misbehaves, you want to use a firm tone. Avoid yelling, but speak in an authoritative tone as you point out the behavior that you did not like. Dogs exist in the moment, so point out the undesirable behavior as soon as possible after it occurs. Use the same verbal cues, such as a simple one-word “no,” to help your dog’s brain make the connection between behaviors that are wrong. Redirect the dog’s attention to a more desirable behavior, for example, if your dog is chewing on a shoe, you can take the shoe, say “no” in a firm tone, and give the dog a chew toy to use instead. Remember to praise your dog for good behavior with a treat, petting, or a positive affirmation. Use consistency when training, as dogs learn the best through repetition, and make sure that everyone who comes into regular contact with your dog uses the same techniques you do.

So let’s think of some examples: Let’s say your dog jumps up at the kitchen counters. We could shout at the dog for doing this. However the more effective and kind method would be: To manage the situation to prevent rehearsal of the behaviour we don’t want – so make sure that there is nothing your dog wants on the kitchen counter so that if they do jump up, they are not rewarded. Plus prevent them from getting to the kitchen counter in the first place to prevent rehearsal. Think about what we want them to do instead. When they are next to the kitchen counter, reward them downwards for having all 4 paws on the floor. By telling our dogs off we are using positive punishment, in other words we are doing something which our dogs find unpleasant. You may have seen dogs who are shouted at, have the lead jerked, use prong collars or slip leads who are SUPER well behaved. Unfortunately this is due to fear shutting down the dog’s responses. Their wellbeing is severely compromised – is that really what we want? A fearful dog who does not trust us? So to summarise, by far the most effective way of training a dog is to reinforce what they SHOULD be doing using reward, rather than punishing what they SHOULD NOT. In which case rather than worrying about whether they know if they have done something wrong, we want them to know, clearly, when they have done something right.