She answered saying she once asked her kids if they remembered a certain moment when she lost her temper etc. The kid just looked at her and said " What ?, when ?"
I guess we're all different in that way too, because I sure as heck remember!
I didn't use the word "no" with my late dog, who could hear. I would change the tone of my voice -- he could recognize exasperation, or impatience -- and I would use an interrupter in an emergency (he's about to jump out the car door while still attached to the seatbelt) but "no" isn't very useful to me. It doesn't tell the dog what to do instead. So I'd rather teach a strong Wait, Down, Sit, Leave It, etc. than waste time playing whack-a-mole with things I don't want him to do.
Once you get a deaf dog, of course, there is no more using tone of voice. So oddly enough, I do use the ASL sign for No with Calvin. I use it rarely, and really only as an interrupter. I tried to teach it as a means of telling him he's on the wrong track -- for example, he follows my hand movements closely and there are times when I guess he thought I was pointing elsewhere, or had thrown a treat, and he starts searching for it, and I tried to tell him there was a mistake, but No didn't work in this instance.
Physical punishment and other forms of intimidation, always end up working against the relationship. I found it very hard to work with Calvin at first, both because he is very intense about working (to the point where he gets overwhelmed with excitement) and because - speaking honestly - he's not nearly so clever as my last dog. When I found myself wanting to proclaim him an unteachable dunce and stomp off into the sunset, I signed "all done," threw a few treats and had him "find it" and then I picked up my iPod and opened up a game or something else fun. I always have my iPod touch with me, and I would look at the news, or email, or a game. It would both distract me from my hair-pulling feeling and actually reward me for the training session. (It didn't occur to me till much later that I was doing that; I just started it to distract myself and let myself calm down.)
In time, through not making our sessions a big frustrating deal, we actually can have longer sessions (so that I can choose when to end it) and they are infinitely more pleasant. If we start out training and he's too off-the-wall, we just stop and do it some other time.
I can't tell you how frustrating I found it to work with Calvin in the beginning. If anyone finds herself/himself in a situation where they're afraid of resorting to punishments, feel free to contact me, I can share my stories of extreme exasperation and what I did to work things out for the better.