# how to teach my dog to shake his head yes and no



## bigworm36 (May 3, 2009)

how do I teach him to shake his head no when I tel him to say no and shake his head yes when I tell him say yes. Then how do I teach him to shake their head yes and no when I ask him if he needs to go out or if he wants something.


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## GSDinOly (Apr 19, 2009)

All I know is there is a young lady on youtube via the name kikopup I beleive who has an awesome way to do this. I don't have the link, but you could try searching her name kikopup. You'll know her because she also has the slumdog millionaire video. She ROCKS!!


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## IliamnasQuest (Aug 24, 2005)

My youngest chow, Khana, shakes her head "no" when I ask her "what'd ya think?" .. *L* .. so I can say something like "should I give this treat to the other dog? What'd ya think?" and she'll shake her head no. She kind of does it with her front feet, too, shifting weight back and forth, but it looks like she's saying "no".

I worked on the up and down movement for saying "yes" but I didn't really give it the right amount of dedication. She'll point her nose at the ceiling and then back down, but it doesn't really look like a up and down head nodding. So we changed it to just pointing her nose straight up and holding it.

I started out by luring with a piece of food, and then quickly faded out the food and lured with my hand (following with the piece of food when she did the behavior). I made a mistake at first with the "no" because I was shaking my head back and forth and when Khana first learned the behavior, she would only shake her head when I did .. *L* .. so I had to work on taking that visual cue (my head moving) out so that she would do it just on the verbal cue.

By the way, these tricks are just learned behaviors - the dog doesn't really know that she's saying "yes" or "no". She's simply responding to my cue, and I'm telling her to either shake her head "no" or to point her nose up. OH - I just remembered that instead of doing the "yes" with the head nodding, I taught her to bark when I asked her "what about Khana?". It fit into the trick where I asked her if I should give the treat away, and she'd shake her head "no" - and then I'd say "but what about Khana?" and she'd bark and get the treat.

Good luck if you try this! It's all a matter of figuring out how to get the dog to physically do the behavior and then marking and rewarding that behavior until the dog does it consistently.

Melanie and the gang in Alaska


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## greyim (Nov 12, 2011)

The problem is dog thinks yes and no are comands to itself, maybe words like smile and nod might be better


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## Carolyncote (8 mo ago)

greyim said:


> The problem is dog thinks yes and no are comands to itself, maybe words like smile and nod might be better


That's not true I've never taught my dog yes and no. He's 14 and picked it up on his own and absolutely knows what he is saying.


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## Cassidy's Mom (Mar 30, 2003)

This is a very old thread, none of the participants have been here in over 10 years.


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