Damn. I never update my ping list for home. Always forget to forward it from work.
It’s not at all unusual for “our people” in the US to use German commands. I think both police as well as definitely the “sport” people. Platz, sitz, fuss are all common.
Not being a dog owner, I had no idea. That's quite interesting, thank you :-)
> It’s not at all unusual for “our people” in the US to use German commands. I think both police as well as definitely the “sport” people. Platz, sitz, fuss are all common.
There are excellent training reasons for doing so. The German-language “requests” are short, unique and in a language that is uncommon in day-to-day-use in the US/UK/NZ/OZ/CDN &tc and less likely to be confused with anything else: so a good audio cue for your GSD that it is time to go to work.
Couple that with a different tone of voice to what you usually use in conversation (make it friendly and up-beat: you don’t need to sound like a Hun POW Commandant even tho’ German lends itself to sounding harsh) and the GSD will find it even easier to do as it is being requested to do.
GSDs actually don’t follow “commands” they fulfil “requests” — they can actually understand spoken, free-form English and a do a whole lot more if you work conscientiously at it.
During downtime (not training, not working) speak kindly and conversationally with the GSD, starting with short simple sentences with short words. It won’t be long before they clearly link what you are saying with what you are doing — even if you switch around the word order, or use different words.
They are truly amazing animals.
And yeah, I *do* call them “Commands” usually, because everyone does. But that is not what is actually going on in the GSD’s mind, and it also gives people the wrong impression of how to articulate what they want their GSD to do. Particularly when they start training them in German.