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One of the things I love about working with dogs is that we still have SO much to learn. Some fascinating studies come up here and there that make me think about what I am currently doing and how I might improve my work with dogs.
In a recent study, it appears that dogs pay more attention to vowels than consonants. Which is pretty much the opposite of humans.
You can read the article below – and below that is the link to the abstract of the actual study (if you like more technical language).
So, if you want your dog to respond better to you, pay attention to the words you use. If your dog's name is Beau and you use “No!” a lot with him, you are probably going to have some confusion.
I used to teach my dogs Down and Bow. I changed Bow to Stretch. Down and Bow sound very similar and the vowels are exactly the same. So by changing the word to something different, I make it much easier for my dog to understand what I am asking for.
If I have a dog named Charlie, I should not name my second dog Farley. Too confusing if you want them to respond to THEIR name.
So if you like names that start with the same letter or have similar consonants, that's much less likely to be problematic than those with names that have different consonants but the same vowels.
What cues do you use? Are there any that will be confusing? Too similar? I am going through my list of cues and assessing whether I need to make any changes to better clarify things for my dogs.
Any names or cues that you might want to change now that you know how important the VOWELS are?
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