Chihuahua barks at everything and everyone on walks.

[shuz1980]

My 1 year old male chihuahua barks and every dog, cat, bird, person he see's. He has daily walks so it's not a new experience seeing other animals and people. He's so chilled at home then on walks he's like a different dog. Any advice on how to stop him barking at everything? Tia

No is also not a good idea to train as it's such a high frequency word the dog will hear it day in and day out from general human conversation with no treat for behaviour/consequence so they are less likely to pay attention to it reliably.

@midnightstar66

No is also not a good idea to train as it's such a high frequency word the dog will hear it day in and day out from general human conversation with no treat for behaviour/consequence so they are less likely to pay attention to it reliably.

It’s also a rubbish command because we use it to mean loads of different things and dog’s don’t speak English well enough to work out what you actually mean every time you say no in different contexts.

I mean, I do say no to dogs because they get quite a lot of unnecessary chatter from me, lol, but it just becomes an interrupter, something they know I say just before giving them an actual command that they know.

Problem with saying No is that it is not asking the dog to do anything just stop doing something.

That is quite a hard concept to train. It is dead easy to train an alternative behaviour eg see trigger come to me. Really easy to train dog understands clearly what they have to do job done.

Just yelling no is tricky to understand, is it no for breathing is it no for looking is it no for standing, is it no for being close to you on a lead, is it no for the.......But first you have to train the no (an unconditioned stimulus to be a condititioned stimlus) eg they have to be trained to know what no means. Waste of time just train them to do what you want them to do in the first place.

it just becomes an interrupter, something they know I say just before giving them an actual command that they know

I suspect, in reality, this is all it means to most dogs (if anything). Over time they come to link it's sound as something that it then followed by something more comprehensible, such as "come here". In the example given, it sounds like a word that is often followed by treats - a lesson itself likely to interupt a barker because it's better to eat treats than bark (sometimes).

Unless "no" is used in anger, in which case the voice and associated human behaviour used is pretty aversive because it triggers some level of fear or anxiety. Nothing to do with the word, of course, though I suppose an association may be made if used enough.