Can you teach your dog too many commands

Over the past three years I've been told by a couple of trainers (on two separate occasions) that my dog will be confused because I have taught her too many commands. Both were what I think of as old fashioned trainers, i.e. no toy or food rewards, but worked in different disciplines.

So I just wondered what people thought. Does teaching several commands cause a problem or do you think dogs are intelligent enough to understand?

Do you mean teaching several different commands for the same behaviour, or just lots of different commands for lots of different actions?

If it's the former, then I suspect it would be confusing. If the latter, then I expect it depends on the dog's aptitude & skills at understanding human words/sounds, plus how we teach them. I hesitate to say some dogs are more "intelligent" than others but some definitely have more of a liking or aptitude or skill for paying attention to human words or sighns & so are more capable of learning. But I don't see anything wrong with teaching lots of different commands as long as the dog enjoys the learning process & it's taught in a way that the dog understands.

I mean teaching lots of different commands for lots of different actions.

The answer to this depends on what precisely your trainers meant by those statements!

1 If you have several commands for the same thing (as many people do) eg sometimes you use "here/come/Fido/oi" etc to mean "recall" than they have a point.

2 If you have taught hundreds of commands for different things, then no.

I find the former is quite common.

It is like for me personally I find the words stay/wait completely superfluous as my dogs will sit/stand/down until and unless I release them or give them another command.

Therefore it is completely unecessary for me to use an abstract term (such as stay/wait) as well, I find that can be confusing.

I compete with my dogs and have never needed to use the word stay or wait to indicate to my dog whether it will be coming to me or I will be coming to it; personally I think that is poor training, I do not want my dog to anticipate what the next exercise is in THIS PARTICULAR context, as they can lose concentration.

I have clients for example who used to say "Fido" which "apparently" meant several different things to the dog.

I discovered that it meant only one thing, tuning out to the owner!

So I am not sure if you mean the first or second alternative?

i do get what u mean sb re 'wait' as sit means sit till i 'release u'...but i find wait handy...i say wait before food...and wait if my dog is in front of me and i want him to wait a min lol(rather than down, sit or come)

the name thing is a real bug bear of mine tho.. 'fido' yes? fido what

Do you think it is perhaps because they don't train using positive rewards like food or toys they think like this?

Parker and Cherry love learning new things as they are clicker trained and know a lot of commands. Dogs that are very food-motivated like mine enjoy learning new things as they get something out of it.

A little boy saw right through Parker the other day on the field near us. Parker loves children and when he sees them coming stands nearby hoping they will come up and fuss him. A lady was coming up the field with 4 children and they all made a beeline for Parker so he did a few tricks for them.

The little boy of about 8 said "He's only doing it for the treats"! Out of the mouths of babes....

but i find wait handy...i say wait before food...

But you see my POV is that they are ALREADY in a positon, all they have to do is maintain it until given permission to eat!

Personally it is one command I find very difficult to follow myself when the roast dinner arrives............

ahh but sometimes i havnt asked them to be in a position..just for a wee bit of self control... but yes good point bout the roast dinner scenario lol

I get where you're coming from re the "sit" means sit until I release you & I don't train a stay either for these reasons. But I have trained "wait" to mean stop where you are & wait for me to catch up with you. I could just as easily use the recall command to get my dogs to come back to me, but they have both easily learned wait, & it means as long as they stay there, they can continue sniffing, or eating grass etc, as long as they don't move away from where they are. It works for me

I think some people greatly underestimate a dogs intelligence. None of mine have shown any signs of being confused because they've been taught more than a handful of commands. How many did these trainers consider too many?

I'm another who uses wait to get my dog to get Rupert to stop when I don't care what position he's in or whether he continues sniffing or eating grass or whatever.