Positive Reinforcement training emphasizes rewarding good behavior over punishing bad behavior. This is good. This is wise. This gets the best results. But it is still inevitable that your dog will do bad behaviors. What are you supposed to do then? Just ignore it and hope it goes away? Well, no, of course not.
Except
that, yeah, sometimes you should! If your dog is engaging in bad
behavior that you can
safely ignore, then that's often the best way to handle it. If your
dog is barking at you to get your attention or to demand food or a
toy or to be let out of a crate, then your best strategy is to just
completely ignore your dog until they've been quiet for a while. No
eye contact, no talking to them. Act as if they didn't exist. Once
they've figured out the bad behavior isn't getting them anything,
they'll eventually stop wasting their energy.
Dogs themselves can be masters of this. Here is a video of my boxer Krypto when he was a wee puppy, trying to see if being a barky little pest will get him the bone that my older girl Derby was chewing on. Other than a slight snark from her when he actually tried to get in and take the bone, all she did was quietly but utterly ignore his obnoxious behavior. It took him almost four minutes to get the message, but eventually he figured out it wasn't going to work and he calmed down. After that, he almost never barked at Derby for anything again.
WHEN IGNORING DOESN'T WORK
A lot of times,
just ignoring a behavior isn't an option. If your dog has jumped up
on a piece of furniture that you don't allow them on, then ignoring
it is the same as giving them permission to misbehave. What to do
then?
Well,
the first thing to do is “management” - setting your home and
lifestyle up so that your dog has a little opportunity to misbehave
as possible. Your dog can't jump on your bed if he can't get into
your bedroom. He can't jump on guests if he's kept behind a baby
gate when they come over. While this might seem like “cheating”,
it actually serves a very real training purpose – it
keeps your dog from practicing bad behavior and building bad habits.
It's not usually enough to fix a problem on its own, but it is an
absolutely necessary part of training. Set things up so that your
dog only has the opportunity to misbehave when you can be there and
are able to do something about it. The rest of the time, set them up
so they have no chance to misbehave.
If
your dog does misbehave, usually just being more stubborn than your
dog is enough to fix the problem in a short period of time. If your
dog jumps on the couch and won't respond to you saying “Off”,
just calmly (not angrily!)
pull him off the couch. If he jumps up again, repeat. Repeat as
many times as it takes him to understand that you are more stubborn
than he is!
(My mentor, Janine
Pierce, likes to say that the best dog trainers are women, because
they're naturally bossy. My retort is that men make awesome
trainers, because we're stubborn!)
But a
very, very important flipside to handling your dog's misbehaviors is
that you must
be aware and reward your dog when he doesn't
misbehave. Did your dog jump on the couch five times and you had to
pull him off each time? On the sixth time, did he look like he was
thinking about it, but then turned away? Praise the heck out of that
little guy! The next day, did he come up to the couch but then just
lie down on the floor next to it? That deserves a belly rub!
Remember,
good behavior, almost by definition, is easy to ignore. Don't.
Notice
when your dog is doing the right thing, and reward them for it, and
both of your lives will be much easier.
