Your Dog Doesn’t Know What “No” Means—Reward Markers And Punishment Markers

00:00 — Kati Peppe introduces markers as a way to establish simple, clear communication during dog…

Welcome to Off Leash and Unfiltered. Trigger warning. I'm Kati Peppe, delivering the truth in dog training.

Hey everybody, Kati Peppe of Diamond K9 Dog Training. Welcome to another episode of Off Leash and Unfiltered. And today I thought we would talk about markers, um, because I only have a few minutes for today's episode, but this is something I can cover pretty quickly and it's super, super important. So I don't know how familiar you are with the concept of markers, but it's really important, guys, to have a really simple and clear language with your dog if you're going to be effective at training. Okay, so a lot of people have heard of clickers, right?

Most people have heard of clickers. So clickers, like, you know, this little plastic thing, it makes a clicking noise when you push the button. When your dog does something good, you click the button, yay, give a treat. That's clicker training, right? I mean, there's a little more to it than that, but not really.

That's, that's essentially what it's all about. So the idea there, um, is you just teach your dog that the clicker means a treat is incoming. Okay? That means your clicker becomes a marker and you can use it whenever the dog does something well. Dog makes a good decision. Dog did what you asked them to do, dog did a behavior that you're trying to teach it to do more of. You click and then you follow it with food. Okay? Now, one thing that seems to be clearly common knowledge is that you reward the dog. Like everybody knows that. Everybody's really good at it.

And so most people, even if they're not great at really marking behaviors properly, meaning using good timing and that sort of thing, they still manage to teach their dog things pretty okay, even if they're not super efficient at it. But yet, when it comes to punishment markers, nobody seems to understand that concept.

So what's gonna happen, guys, if you have a reward marker like a clicker or a verbal marker, some people say "yes" or "good" instead of clicking, and that's fine, and follow it with a reward. And you have that part of your training, you have that part of your communication. But then when your dog does something bad, you say "no" and then that's it. It's not followed by anything <laugh>. So what kind of a message does that send? You're giving your dog half of the information, okay? You have a communication to tell them what they did right and what they're doing well, and to tell them that a reward is imminent.

But you have no way to communicate to them in a tangible sense that they did something bad, that they made a bad choice, that they made a mistake, or that that's a behavior you don't wanna see repeated.

So "no," when I meet people, is almost never attached to a negative consequence. Almost never. Okay? So how do you do that? Well, first let's take a step back and talk about the reward marker first again. Okay? So all you have to do is sit down with your dog for five minutes and maybe do this a couple of times. Provide your marker, whether it's a clicker or a word, but if you're gonna use a word, use one word, okay? Don't use "good girl, Sammy." You got three words. You're drawing it out and things stay fuzzy for the dogs.

04:00 — Short, consistent markers help pinpoint behavior; the click or word should precede reaching for…

They can't tell what you're actually marking because it takes you so long to do the marking. So the shorter your marker is, the better. And that's why a click is kind of nice. It's nice and fast, it's precise. It's also uniform, right? So it sounds the same for everybody, which is good.

But if you wanna say "yes" or "good" instead, that's fine. But one word. All right? And then just follow that word with a reward. Whatever your dog values, it doesn't matter, okay? Make sure you do not move your hands to grab the reward or to deliver the reward until after you mark, okay? So you sit down with your clicker and you click and then you grab the food, give it to the dog if you're using food, okay, click, grab the food, give it to the dog. It's that. That's it. It's that simple. And then you can start stretching the time out in between the click and the food.

So they learn, sometimes it takes a few seconds and that's okay, right? And then just mix it up. But your marker has to come first before you even start to deliver the reward. Otherwise, the dog's not even gonna notice your click. They're just gonna be staring at your hands. <laugh> Okay? You have to do the same thing with the word "no," guys. And you don't have to use the word "no." You can use any word you want. It doesn't matter. But "no" makes the most sense. And that's usually easy for people 'cause they're usually already saying it.

Start saying "no" and then start following it up with a tangible consequence.

Okay? So, well, how do I do that? How do I deliver a consequence? Well, I'm not gonna go super in depth on how to do these things in a podcast, but it is on my social media. I talk about it, I show it, it's on my YouTube. There are other trainers out there that show it on their social media as well. Learn how to correct your dog. So you say no first, then you provide a correction. It might be a leash pop, it might be a bonker, which is a rolled-up cotton towel with elastics on it.

Look it up on YouTube. Okay? So I love the bonker because it's super safe. It's just a cotton towel. You're not gonna hurt your dog with it. And everybody has them in the bathroom right now, unless you're really weird and you don't use towels for some reason, okay? But most people do. And so that's a great tool to correct your dog, but you gotta learn how to do it. Or an e-collar correction is another option, right? So I use e-collars in almost all of my adult dog training. Um, this isn't all I can do with it.

I do a ton with e-collars. If you're not familiar with me, you can jump on my social media, on my Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and see what the work is that we do with e-collars. They're amazing tools, but we certainly do use them to deliver corrections as well. And it's so practical. So this has been one of the most practical tools for my clients. And they've been very, very successful

using the e-collar to eliminate bad behaviors. Very effective, very practical, very efficient, okay? But the bottom line is however you choose to do it, it has to be unpleasant to the dog. Like that is the bottom line. Okay? So your reward marker indicates a reward is coming. Your correction marker has got to indicate that a correction is coming and it has to be a correction that is valued by your dog. Because if it isn't, then they're not going to care. It isn't going to work, it isn't going to matter, alright? But kind of my point today was that it's not just about the consequences, it's your markers too, right?

08:00 — Kati distinguishes immediately marking behavior from delivering the reward or correction afterward.

And so we all have heard the, oh, you have to deliver consequences within two seconds, right? You have to catch the dog in the act, you have to reward them right away. You have to do it immediately. And it's all false. It's not true. It's not technically true. You have to mark the behaviors immediately with your reward marker or your punishment marker. And then after that you can deliver the consequences. And it's okay if it takes you a minute and you can kind of stretch that out so that the dog understands. Once I hear the marker, I know the consequences are coming, even if it takes a little time.

And ideally, that's really where you wanna go. 'Cause now you have a language with your dog that they understand and you can communicate very clearly and very effectively with them. But it's super important that once you provide a marker, you provide the consequences, right? So if I tell my dog to do something and they do it

and I click because maybe we're still in the early stages of training and I'm just trying to teach them how to do this thing, I'm going to deliver the food, okay? Even if they stop doing the behavior, I'm gonna give them the food. They did it. I clicked. Now the food must come. It's the same thing on the other end, guys. So people have a hard time transferring that they, you know, people do great with the rewards, but then they have a hard time transferring that over to the correctional aspect. It's like if my dog jumps on me and I say no,

I'm not gonna skip the correction just because they get down once. They jump on you and you say no, you have to deliver the consequences. People say, well, why? They got down. Because they're going to do it again in 10 minutes, <laugh>. So I mean, I see where people are coming from, like it makes sense to me. But if you just sit down and you think through it for five minutes, it would be obvious to you. So the idea isn't to interrupt the behavior, the idea is to eliminate it. So I want my dog to stop jumping on me, not just right now, but pretty much forever, which means if they jump on me, there has to be a consequence attached to that.

So they'll learn very quickly that I just say no. And as long as they get down, they're safe. So they can keep doing that, right? It's like if your kid came home after curfew. Well, let's say your kid stayed out past curfew, okay? And you message them and you say you're gonna be in trouble. And so they immediately come home. Do you not punish that? There's either a punishment for staying out past curfew or there isn't. Okay?

So if there isn't, what a lot of kids might do now, not at all. And it's the same for dogs, but what a lot of kids are gonna do is they're just gonna stay out past curfew the next time. 'Cause they know as long as they come home, when you get mad, there's no consequence. So it's all just common sense, guys. All you gotta do is think about it. But the bottom line today is establish those markers with your dog. Have a reward marker. Have a correction marker, right? So just take a tiny bit of time and instill both of those in your dog.

12:00 — Kati closes by urging listeners to teach both reward and correction markers as predictors…

Teach them what your reward marker is and that a reward is coming. Teach them what your correction marker is and that a correction is coming and that's gonna give you the language you need to really shape behavior with your dogs, guys. Alright guys, that's it for today's episode. Don't forget to hit subscribe so that we can do this again real soon. And I look forward to hopefully seeing you all right back here for the next time.