Is that even a word? If it is or isn’t it’s an important concept for our dogs. In all areas of our dogs lives the little cues (& not so little) often dictate how they interact with us, what they expect us to do and their behaviour as a result is often prompted by them. often its the smallest of cues that can give the biggest behavioural clues.

Understanding those cues can tell us what is going on with our dogs and they can be very small indeed. The classic example would be a dog that suffers with separation anxiety (thats a topic in itself) seeing you putting your coat on and realising you’re about to go out.

How does cueing effect our dogs?

Cues affect all aspects of our dogs behaviour, your dogs, my dogs every dog we meet. Understanding those cues means we can modify our behaviour and in doing so we easily modify their behaviour to

They can be very subtle.

I recently had a cocker who’s recall was fantastic except when he knew it was time to go home. Eventually we realised that we changed the hand we were holding his lead in from left to right. That was enough for him to realise it was time to go home. As soon as we stopped changing the recall issue was solved.

In Summary

We can see how important and subtle cues can be. Looking for them can be hard, but once we’ve understood the motivation we can easily use them to change behaviour.