Why Words Mean Nothing to Your Dog (And Saying Them Louder Over and Over Doesn't Help)

If you’ve ever caught yourself shouting a cue at your dog as if saying it louder might suddenly make it work, you’re not alone. One of my biggest bugbears in dog training is the meaning we attach to words. We assume that because a word means something to us, it must mean the same thing to our dog. But to dogs, words aren’t language. They’re just sounds, and those sounds only gain meaning through learning and repetition.

Dogs have lived alongside humans for thousands of years, so in many ways we assume they speak our language. And to an extent, they do. They read our body language brilliantly, they pick up on tone, and they are incredibly tuned in to our emotions. But this is also where training often falls apart. We start to believe that because dogs live so closely with us, they understand our words in the same way we do.

They don’t.

For dogs, words are not language in the human sense. They are simply sounds. Those sounds only gain meaning through learning, repetition and experience. When we say a word like come, we attach emotion, urgency and expectation to it. The dog doesn’t. Unless that word has been carefully taught and consistently reinforced, it is just noise.

This is where so much frustration creeps in. We bring human meaning to a word, assume understanding, and then feel ignored when the dog doesn’t respond. But the dog isn’t being stubborn or disobedient. They simply don’t share our understanding of what that word is supposed to mean.

Take the word come, for example. To us, it feels obvious. It means come back to me, right now, stop what you’re doing and pay attention. To a dog, however, the word come has no built-in meaning at all. It is just a noise unless it has been carefully taught, reinforced and practised in lots of different situations. Without that learning history, the word itself carries no weight.

This is why so many people struggle with recall. Owners often say, 'He knows what come means, he’s just ignoring me.' But dogs don’t ignore cues out of stubbornness or spite. They respond based on what has worked for them before, what else is happening in the environment, how they are feeling emotionally, and how strong the reinforcement history of that word actually is. If something else has been more rewarding in the past, that will win every time.

Dogs do understand tone and emotion. They can absolutely pick up on frustration, tension or excitement in our voice and body language. What they don’t understand is why it’s happening. When we repeat a cue in a frustrated tone, the dog doesn’t think, 'Ah yes, I should come faster.' They just register emotional pressure without context. The word itself still hasn’t gained any extra meaning, it’s simply being delivered with more intensity.

This is why I often say we would all be better dog owners if we had to train in a foreign language we didn’t understand. Not one we’d studied, but one that meant nothing to us at all. We would forget the word constantly. We’d have to think about what a word meant when we heard it. We’d would sometimes be unsure about what we were saying. And we'd panic and start to throw lots of words out there until we got to the right one.  Sound familiar?  That's why your dog is cycling through behaviours when you ask for a down or a touch.  It's so easy to assume understanding when there is none.  

Dogs don’t learn through explanations. They learn through patterns. A sound predicts an outcome. A behaviour leads to a consequence. That’s it. If a cue isn’t working, it’s not because the dog is being difficult. It’s because the word hasn’t yet been built into something meaningful enough to compete with the environment.

When we shift our mindset from 'my dog should know this' to 'have I actually taught this clearly,' everything changes. Training becomes calmer. Communication improves. Frustration drops. And dogs finally get a fair chance to succeed.

The moment we stop expecting dogs to understand our language and start teaching them in a way that makes sense to them, training becomes easier for everyone involved.