As human beings, we have a very highly developed sense of right and wrong. No other animal in nature has that. There are no other creatures that perform an action and realize that what they did was wrong. Unfortunately, we tend to assume that the same punishments we use for our children – timeouts, yelling, taking away of personal possessions – will work on our dogs.

Unfortunately, all you ever do when you act this way is confuse a dog. Even yelling or threatening a dog, which seems to have a direct impact on them, will only confuse them because they do not understand why you are upset.

So, when trying to change the behaviours of your dog, you’ll need to use corrective and disciplinary actions that will teach your dog to change their behaviour in the language they are used to. If you have ever watched the Dog Whisperer, you may have seen Cesar Milan grip a dog lightly on the neck to simulate how a mother dog communicates that a pup has done something unacceptable. Or how he taps a dog in the hindquarters with his foot. These are not violent actions – but corrective physical cues that tell a dog the action they just performed was not acceptable.

Touching a dog calmly without any anger or aggression behind it is effective because for a dog, it is communicative. You could never walk up to someone in a crowd and tap them with your foot to communicate that they should talk quieter on their cell phone, but it is effective when attempting to teach a dog to stop chewing on your shoes.