There are two main reasons why you would want to change a dog’s name: because you’ve simply gotten tired of it or feel that it’s hard for your dog to associate it with it, and the second is when you’ve adopted a dog that already had a name and you just don’t think it’s the right one for it.
One of the things that we must take into account the most is that a dog does not associate the name that you have given it as a human being would. We call ourselves Antonio or Luisa or Juan, and he is part of our individuality as human beings. Some even say that the name forges the character, but that’s another story.
However, for a dog, the ‘name’ we give him means nothing to him, beyond a command voice that he recognizes as ‘come’. Just like when we say ‘take’ (there is a joke out there that all dogs are called ‘Take’) the dog associates the sound of the word as an invitation to come and get some food. He tries to say to any dog, randomly, the word ‘Take’. He will come to you thinking that you have a delicious croquette on your hands.
So, if the dog is associated with a particular name to go where we are, or to call attention to something he is doing and should not, it will be a little more difficult to make him “understand” that he should change that word for a new one. . That she is no longer going to be called ‘Linda’, that now she is going to be called ‘Shakira’. Because she is in fashion.
The best thing to change a dog’s name, and for a multitude of other things, is to use positive reinforcement. Call him by his new name while you pet him, give him a kibble. Try that the new name is not too long, and if it is phonetically similar to the one it had before, even better.
Any change that we want to see in a dog must be done through positive reinforcement, never through punishment. If we don’t want him to sit on the couch, reward him when he lies on his bed. It is much better to reward when he does something we want than not to punish when he is wrong. And the same goes for the name change. It is clear that it requires patience, but if you learned the first one, in the end you will be able to answer for his new name. And if it is with croquettes, much better.
