Pet Peeves: What to do if your pets aren’t listening to you?

Do you always have a facepalm emoji on your face whenever you call your pets and choose to royally ignore you? How many times have you seen on social media reels throwing facts like pets actually have very good listening powers and when they are not responding to you it means that they are royally ignoring you?

Why does your pet ignore you and what to do under such circumstances?

This can be due to a number of reasons. Ranging from lack of training, pet moods, or communication gap.

Basic Needs

For pets, their time clock work differently. If they regularly eat food at 6 pm, they would feel like you have abandoned them if they don’t get food by 6:01 pm, and that is when their mood starts flaring up and they choose to ignore you. Thus, it is important to make sure that your pets’ schedule is not hampered because in such case they can clearly ignore commands.

Praise and treats

There might be various reasons why your pet might feel low. For females, they might be experiencing heat pain or others might feel anxiety, depression etc. In such cases immediately start praising them as ‘Good Girl’ or ‘Good Boy’ and offer them a few treats to up their mood.

Command Tone

While it is a given fact that many a times our voices changes into alien voice after getting excited on seeing our pets, it is important to stick to simple and clear commands in a tone that is clearly understood by them. Also, do not use a lot of synonymns while giving commands that might lead to confusion and in turn, ignorance.

No distractions

The more distractions, the higher the chances of your pets ignoring you. You should start training your pets in a quiet and controlled environment, and slowly introduce distractions as part of the training practice too. If there are many distractions from the beginning, it becomes difficult to make them listen to you. Apart from being in a quiet and controlled environment, there is also the idea of maintaining focus. If your pet trains to focus on you and the commands, they would listen to you more often.

Tonality matters!  

You must have a calm but firm tone while giving commands. It is common pet behaviour that the pet copies the temperament of their parents or trainer. Thus, it is important for the tonality to be maintained so that the pet understands, accepts the commands and carries it out.

Evaluate your techniques

If you have been maintaining the right track for command training and yet your pet doesn’t listen to you, then you might have to change your approach. Sometimes, it’s time to re-evaluate because every pet has a different learning style. Adjustments have to be made to the training procedure to bring results in this case.

Professional aid

If you have tried all ways and still your pet does not respond to you, then it is suggested to take professional help.