<\/a>As a dog trainer and behaviorist, I would like to openly admit that my favorite at-home command is “whatever.” It’s beyond reason how quickly my dogs learned to respect the power of the word “whatever.”<\/p>\n

If I say it with a slight 1980’s Valley-girl tone, they are happy to respond. I find it particularly beneficial to use this command when all five of them are at the door waiting to come in and I am attempting to limit the entry to two of them.<\/p>\n

As they are lined up at the door, I may say “Zoe and Moby, stay! Olive and Najiv, ok.” As Zoe starts to move, I ask her politely if her name is Olive? She will sheepishly back off. Okay, so it doesn’t happen exactly like that.<\/p>\n

As I select who may enter and who may not, I will – with much authority – release all of them with the respect-gaining “whatever” command. It always works! This is really taking dog training to another level, so I advise that you proceed with caution when incorporating this strict form of structure in your own home.<\/p>\n

Do not attempt to use the “whatever” command without proper instruction and guidance from a professional dog trainer. Results may vary. =)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a dog trainer and behaviorist, I would like to openly admit that my favorite at-home command is “whatever.” It’s beyond reason how quickly my dogs learned to respect the power of the word “whatever.” If I say it with a slight 1980’s Valley-girl tone, they are happy to respond. I find it particularly beneficial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-behavior-modification","category-dog-psychology","category-training-ideas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaylecousineau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaylecousineau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaylecousineau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaylecousineau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaylecousineau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gaylecousineau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gaylecousineau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaylecousineau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gaylecousineau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}