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The “Safe Place” Protocol (for dogs that are fearful, reactive, or hyper with strangers)

February 12, 2019 by sharon Leave a Comment

The arrival of strangers in the home often leads to undesirable behavior — jumping up to greet, excited barking, or general mild chaos. In most cases, this is easily trained by rewarding the dog for keeping “four on the floor.”

For other dogs, the arrival of strangers is a serious problem. This is the case when a dog is reactive to strangers (barks, lunges, growls, etc.) or shows fear-avoidance (hides, cries, barks and retreats, etc.), as well as dogs who are “over the top” in greeting with jumping, muzzle-punching, scratching, etc.

Training for these dogs can involve a range of strategies, from training the dog to go to a mat or crate to lie down, counterconditioning the dog to be more comfortable with strangers, training the dog to back up, etc. However, a critical first step is to set up management and enrichment so that dogs don’t continue to practice bad behavior and make negative emotional associations with visitors. For this, I recommend creating a “safe place” for the dog.

A “safe place” is a room, crate, or other confinement area where your dog stays when people visit – or when visitors first arrive and get settled. It should be a place your dog feels can relax. For dogs that are fearful, reactive, or overly exuberant with visitors, the safe place prevents your dog from making negative associations or practicing bad behavior with visitors. This is a critical part of the training process for fearful, reactive, or “hyper greeter,” dogs. For some dogs, this is a stepping stone toward training to be calm and comfy around strangers after people have come in and settled. For other dogs, the safe room may be a long-term solution.

Covering a crate with a towel can make it more cozy for some dogs

How to Create a Safe Place?

The best safe place is…

  • As far as possible from the door where people enter
  • At least one door (two is better). For dogs with a bite history, you definitely need at least two barriers, such as a crate inside a closed bedroom. This backup is in case a child or guest opens the bedroom door or the crate door doesn’t latch properly. The other barrier will still be there to keep everyone safe. A sign on the door that says, “KEEP CLOSED. DOG SAFE SPACE” reminds guests it’s NOT the bathroom or coat closet
  • Sound masking – continuous white noise is best, such as a fan or white noise machine
  • A drop of lavender or other calming essential oil on a blanket near the crate may also help (don’t use more than a drop, and forego if you  have cats – it’s not safe for them)
  • An engrossing high-value chew: a meat marrow bone, frozen stuffed Kong, or bully stick. For dogs that are power chewers, you may need to bring a new chew every so often. Remember that for these stressful situations, that old Nylabone or squeaky toy is not going to be good enough. Use the high-value chews!

Condition Your Dog to Love Their Safe Space

When possible, make the crate a happy and relaxing place from puppyhood to build a lifelong positive association with going into the crate

You MUST get your dog to be happy and comfortable in their safe space when visitors are NOT present! Otherwise, being sent to their safe space becomes a predictor that strangers are going to arrive, getting your dog worked up or worried every time they go to their safe space.

If your dog already likes being in their crate or room by themselves with their chew, simply do a “dress rehearsal” once every day or two at different times: take them to their safe place, turn on the white noise, give them their high-value chew, and leave them alone. They’ll learn sometimes they go there before people come. Sometimes they go there just to relax.

For dogs that don’t already have a crate or room where they’re comfortable being alone, you may need to help them get used to it by spending some time with them in the room, and then over time, periodically walking out, shutting the door, come back in, etc. Help them learn it is no big deal to be in their safe space by themselves, enjoying a delicious chew.

Remember: A safe place does not take the place of training. It helps set the stage for more successful training by reducing stress (for dogs, owners, and visitors alike) and creating more positive associations with strangers. Once this protocol is in place, the training that comes after will be easier, more pleasant, and much more effective.

Filed Under: Behavior modification, Dog training, Enrichment, Fearfulness or anxiety, Management (Prevention), Reactivity Tagged With: greeting, management, prevention, reactivity

Help! My dog needs exercise — in winter!

December 13, 2017 by sharon Leave a Comment

Recently a client asked how they can keep their high-energy dog exercised during these short, dark days of winter. I sent them several suggestions, and they were really excited to try them out.

TIP: Physical exercise is important, but don’t discount mental exercise, too. A mental workout can really wear your dog out! Use both for the ultimate in a well-behaved dog.

Here are a few fun ways to work your dog’s body and mind when the weather is lousy and the evenings are dark. Different ones will work for different dogs and households:

Creative commons usage from Dozer Does youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAHf57sucxo

  • Hide and seek in the house – version 1 — find the human: Put your dog in a Sit-Stay or Down-Stay — or if they don’t know that yet, have another member of the family hold them — then go and hide. Call your dog once and wait for him to find you. Give him praise, petting, and treats when he finds you. This is also great for training coming when called.
  • Will work for food. Don’t put your dog’s meals in a bowl that only takes a minute for them to eat! Get a feeder toy — see my favorites in my post on enrichment to make your dog work for their meals. It keeps your dog occupied for a lot longer, engages their body and mind, and they love it!
  • Hide and seek in the house – version 2 — find the food: Put your dog in a Sit-Stay or Down-Stay — or if they don’t know that yet, have another member of the family hold them — and hide a little pile of food or your dog’s feeder toy. She has to find it. Nose work can be very tiring. You can hide several piles of food or feeder toys all over the house!
  • Similarly, if the ground is not covered in snow, you can add foraging and nosework to your dog’s routine by tossing her kibble into the yard (as long as she is inside a gate or tethered). She has to use her nose to find every kibble! A great way to work for meals!

    Used with permission of Eileenanddogs – https://eileenanddogs.com/2013/04/24/dog-play-flirt-poles/
  • A flirt pole is like a cat dancer for dogs. It’s a stick with a rope and a toy attached to it. You can either buy one here or buy one here or make one (video instruction) or make one (easy how-to article). This does need to be played outside, but it’s a way you can get some pretty intense exercise in a small space, like a yard, and it does not require going for a walk, etc. If you have floodlights, you can even do it after dark.
  • Play ball with a glow-in-the-dark ball. I’ve heard good things about the Chuckit! Max Glow Pro Launcher.
  • If you do want to walk your dog safely in the dark, check out Whole Dog Journal’s great review of nighttime safety gear.
  • If you have carpeted stairs in your home, and your dog is confident on the stairs, young, healthy, and nimble, you can give your dog a lot of exercise in a short period by calling him up and down the stairs between two people (and also, again, good recall training!). If there is only one person in the home, you can play fetch up and down the stairs by standing at the bottom and tossing a toy to the top. You can even toss treats up and down the stairs. Just make sure your dog is not so excited that he’s not being careful enough. You don’t want your dog to get injured. Don’t do this if stairs are open in the back, wood, slippery, etc.
  • If you have a treadmill, you can train your dog to walk on the treadmill. (If you don’t have one, you can usually get one free or cheap from Freecycle or Craigslist.) Take it slow and train it positively like this or treadmill train positively like this. Some dogs learn to love this!

These are just a few options. The possibilities are endless. What about you? How do you keep your dog exercised over the winter?

Filed Under: Chews & Feeder Toys, Dog gear, Dog Health, Dog toys, Enrichment, Management (Prevention), products

Does Your Dog Need a “PET Plan”?

May 2, 2016 by sharon Leave a Comment

Is your puppy out of control? Are you having trouble getting your dog to listen? Here are some common dog behavior problems for my clients. See if any sound familiar.Black and white puppy baring teeth at person's hand on its butt.

Example #1: Your six-month-old pup is mouthing and nipping your clothes and skin, jumping up on your kids, and stealing the family’s stuff whenever she sees her opportunity. You have tried every way you can think to tell her no: Yelling “No” or “ouch,” shaking her collar, and rolling her onto her back, but none of it helps.

Example #2: Your newly adopted dog is pulling on leash, especially when you walk on the street. He is okay on the quiet woods path, but as soon as you get near people, dogs, or cars, he stops listening. You are walking on a retractable lead so he has as much room as he needs to explore, but he’s still not satisfied. You tell him no, you jerk the leash, but it makes no difference.

Example #3: Your dog goes wild whenever someone comes to the door. He barks and jumps. You keep telling him to be good, but he doesn’t listen.

The problem behavior is different in each situation, but a similar approach will work for each dog. In every case, the dog needs a PET plan!

What is P.E.T.?

  • Prevention
  • Enrichment & 
  • Training

For fast, effective training, set up a plan that combines P.E.T. — Prevention, Enrichment, and Training.

Prevention (Management)

Like people, dogs have habits. The more a dog practices doing something, the better she gets at it. This is just as true for bad behavior as for good behavior. Practicing bad behavior makes it an entrenched habit. The first step in behavior modification is to PREVENT the bad behavior.

Snow-covered hill with several deep paths worn into snow and people climbing up them.Think of your dog’s mind as a hill covered with snow. Each time the dog does something, the neural pathways in the dog’s brain fire along a certain path for that behavior. That is like sledding down a hill in the snow. The more you sled down the same trail, the smoother, faster, and deeper the snow becomes on that path. It gets easier and easier to slide down the same trail and harder to forge a new trail where the snow is fresh and deep.

Stopping the dog from using that mental pathway is the first step. When that trail is not being used over and over, the path gets slower, bumpier, and harder to use. Now your dog has the mental space to learn a good behavior — creating a fast new mental path — instead.

Examples of Prevention (Management solutions)

  • Put your dog behind a gate or another room
  • Crate your dog
  • Tether your dog to a heavy piece of furniture
  • Tether your dog to your belt
  • Attach a “house line” (aka “drag leash”) you can step on
  • Cover the windows with wax paper
  • Put a fence around the flower garden
  • Bring the dog indoors

Enrichment (Keeping your dog positively & constructively engaged)

Dog contentedly licking inside of a black Kong, holding rubber Kong in place with one foot.Bad behavior often arises from too much “free time.” Dogs, like kids, have a lot of energy. If we don’t direct it towards constructive outlets, it will find destructive outlets. A tired dog is a good dog! Exercise is an important form of enrichment, but mental exercise is as tiring for some dogs as a run.

Examples of Enrichment (Canine occupational therapy)

  • Foraging for food or toys (“Find it!”) uses scenting, seeking, eating, moving
  • Meals from feeder toys (problem solving, licking, nosing, pawing, eating, moving, chewing)
  • Chew toys (lying down and licking is relaxing, exercises jaw muscles, problem solving)
  • Tug of War or Fetch with training/rules (running, problem solving, thinking, cooperating, chewing, seeking, communicating and building your bond)

TIP: Combine Enrichment with Management

If your dog jumps on visitors, give her a bully stick or peanut-butter stuffed Kong in her crate right before guests arrive. If she’s too hyper to train polite leash walking, play a tiring game of tug before you take a walk. Want her to ignore the kids in the kitchen? Scatter her dinner all over the back yard so she has to hunt for every kibble. Give her something positive to do while you prevent naughtiness.

Training (Teaching your dog the right things to do)

Training is making predictable changes in a dog’s behavior over time. It is TEACHING. Use management for behavior you need today. Use training for behavior you need tomorrow. Training requires time and repetition. Training may not affect current behavior, but done properly, it will affect future behavior. After a few days of training, your dog should offer desirable behaviors more often and undesirable behaviors less often. If that’s not happening, get in touch. You need a better plan. We can help.

Putting PET Plans into Practice

Let’s look at the three scenarios we started with. How can we apply the PET plan to each?

1. The mouthing, nipping, jumping, toy-stealing puppy: This puppy needs more supervision and confinement.

Prevention and management will make this situation much easier and safer for everyone.

Large brown dog stands behind white metal pet gate while butterscotch colored tabby cat walks through a cat door in the bottom of the gate.This puppy is like a kindergartener in people terms who cannot be expected to know the rules yet. Just as you would child proof your home with a child who is too young to know what is safe and what is dangerous, with a puppy you can use crates, exercise pens (“x-pens”), or baby gates that prevent her from getting to the kids or door to jump, mouth, or run out.

If your home set-up makes this difficult, you can use tethers and “house lines.” Tethering is when you leash your dog and attach the other end to the wall, a heavy piece of furniture, or yourself! Tethering your puppy to you is a great help for puppy training and service dog training, especially. A “house line” (or “drag line”) is leaving a leash on your dog all the time that just drags behind her. It is MUCH easier to step on a leash — to prevent bolting out the door or to stop her from leaping on the kids as they walk in — than to try to catch a fast little puppy by hand!

Combine management with enrichment by having the puppy chew on a bully stick or lick food out of a Kong when you need to keep her occupied during high-excitement times, such as when the kids come home from school or first thing in the morning when everyone is busy and rushing around getting ready for their days.

Train the puppy how to behave by teaching her to sit for greetings, teaching a “drop it” for things she has in her mouth, and by offering her toys and chews to occupy her mouth instead of mouthing or nipping.

2. The newly adopted leash puller: This situation primarily requires training, but management and enrichment can help a lot.

Prevention: Until this dog has the training to learn how to behave around distractions such as cars, people, and dogs, you can prevent him practicing this behavior by walking him in quieter areas. You can also get more control by using a fixed-length leash — retractable leashes strongly encourage pulling — and the proper body harness or head halter that discourage pulling.

Enrichment: Pulling is often a result of a dog who is too wound up and excited by a walk. If your dog works off some extra energy with mental or physical exercise before his walk, he may be less likely to lunge and pull when you go out. Having him work for all his food with food-dispensing toys or clicker training are cheap, easy, and enriching methods for most dog. Playing tug of war (with rules), hide-and-seek, fetch, or scenting games (inside the house or outside) are also very enriching and can take the edge off a hyper dog.

Training: Start training the dog to walk calmly on a loose leash INSIDE your home first! Give treats for walking nicely by your side and paying attention to you. This will take time for your dog to learn and for you to transfer to outdoors, with all its distractions. While your dog is learning good leash manners, when you go on a real walk, use a no-pull harness or a head halter to prevent pulling in the meanwhile. (See our post on harnesses and halters for the pros and cons of each.)

3. The badly behaved greeter: As with the puppy in #1, your first step here must be management/prevention.

Prevention: Dogs must be prevented from rushing guests at the door. Whether they’re motivated by joy, fear, or anger, it’s unpleasant for everyone and not something you want the dog to practice. If his behavior is fearful or aggressive, putting him in a crate far away from the doorway or a bedroom with the door closed will help your guests enter with a lot less chaos and distress for dog and humans. If he’s overexcited and loves people, tethering or using a baby gate to keep him away until both dog and guests have settled will help prevent the free-for-all.

Enrichment is a key part of this plan. Most dogs, if they are just prevented from seeing or approaching people with nothing else to do, will bark, whine, or work themselves up. However, most dogs, if given a very high-value chew to work on (cheese-stuffed Kong, bully stick, dried trachea stuffed with broth-soaked kibble and frozen) would rather work on their delicious occupational therapy than fling themselves at the end of their tether or the gate or door. A lot of exercise or intensive play or training before guests arrive can also help take the edge off a frenzied dog.

Training is important here, too. What you choose to train the dog to do will depend in part on whether your dog’s behavior arises from attraction or aversion to guests. One skill that works well for both types of dogs is to train the dog to relax on a mat when people arrive.

What about you?

Do you have a favorite PET plan for your dog? Share it in the comments!

Filed Under: Barking, Car reactivity, Jumping, Loose Leash Walking (Heel), Management (Prevention), Nipping, Pet dog training, Puppy training, Training Tagged With: dog training, positive reinforcement, positive training

Car Safety Tips for Dogs (and the people who ride with them)

February 1, 2016 by sharon Leave a Comment

Recently, a Facebook post went viral when a dog trainer’s Belgian Malinois, Pivot, jumped or was thrown from the car when she was rear-ended on the highway. Pivot had been loose in the car, and the owner didn’t realize her back window had been shattered till she pulled over and discovered her dog was gone. Pivot was injured but ran off, crossing busy highways until searchers eventually found her. This story has raised awareness about safety for dogs in cars.

We humans spend a lot of time in cars. We may be driving, or we may be passengers. Either way, we know to wear our seat belts. We have air bags to protect us. But how should we keep our canine family members safe in the car?

Car Safety Tips for Dogs … and Their People

To keep your dog (and yourself and your family) safe in the car, follow these tips:

Red bull mastiff sitting in front seat of a truck, with paw on the steering wheel.
The first safety tip is, “Don’t let your dog drive!” (Credit: Creative commons)

  • Dogs should not ride in the front seat. Front seats are dangerous for dogs, just like for small children, because if the front-seat airbags deploy, it can cause serious injury (including death).
  • Dogs loose in the beds of pickup trucks or riding with an open window are at high risk for serious injury. They can easily be thrown out of the truck or jump through the window — while the car is moving — to chase a wild animal or another dog, for example.
  • Dogs should not be able to get under the driver’s feet, on her lap, on the dashboard, etc. This can easily cause a serious accident. In fact, some state officials are trying to make it illegal to drive with a pet in your lap.
  • Dogs with reactivity, aggression, or fear issues may be triggered by people, dogs, or other sights around them in the car. If you have put a lot of training into your dog, don’t let it get undone in the car by allowing your dog to practice lunging, barking, or other undesirable behaviors.

The best way to prevent many of the above issues is to CONTAIN YOUR DOG when in the car:

  • Keep your dog contained in a crate or carrier, or when this isn’t possible, with a harness secured to a seat belt, to prevent accidents caused by distracting the driver. For dogs who are reactive to sights outside the car, using a crate can also help support training and behavioral goals.
  • Keeping your dog contained can also prevent an excited or scared dog from jumping out the window of a moving car — obviously a very dangerous situation.

Photo Credit: Nestor Lacle; Creative Commons
Not a safe way to ride. (Photo Credit: Nestor Lacle; Creative Commons)

  • In a minor accident, the safest option for a dog in a car is a crate because the crate may keep the dog from being thrown out of the car or into the dashboard, etc. It also protects human passengers from being injured when pets become projectiles. As horrible as it is to consider, people (especially children) can be injured or killed when struck by a pet in a crash. Containing your dog is therefore important for your safety as well as for your dog’s.
  • However, for true safety, invest in a crash-tested harness, carrier, or crate. This is because in a high-speed crash or other serious accident, most crates fail. The Center for Pet Safety published reports and crash test videos for smaller pet carriers that are placed on a back seat and larger crates on the floor of a car or truck. Almost all plastic crates break on impact, with the dog hurtling through. Metal crates also break on impact, and they also easily bend, piercing the dog.

Tan crate with metal bar doors, looks very thick, sturdy, heavy
The Gunner Kennel was the only crash-tested large-dog crate that passed.

Far and away, the top performing carriers and crates by the Center for Pet Safety were these:

  • Gunner Kennel (G1 Intermediate with 8 ft. Tie Down Straps) was the only successful crate for large dogs (approximately $500)
  • Sleepypod Mobile Pet Bed with PPRS Handilock carrier for small dogs and cats (approximately $180)
  • Pet Ego Jet Set Forma Frame (only with ISOFIX-Latch Connection) carrier for small dogs (approximately $150)
If you don’t have enough room for a crate, or if your dog is not comfortable in a carrier or crate, the next best option is a harness.
The Center for Pet Safety ran tests of harnesses in 2013, and posted the videos and reports online. The only harness that passed their test was the Sleepypod Clickit Utility, with sizes for small, medium, and large dogs.
Last, but certainly not least: If your dog is ever in a car accident, take your dog to the vet afterward. Even if your dog seems OK, serious injuries after an accident can go undetected. It’s best to make sure that everyone has truly walked away unscathed.

Filed Under: Dog Safety Tips, Management (Prevention), or equipment

The Difference Between Dog Training and a McDonald’s Hamburger

January 21, 2016 by sharon Leave a Comment

We live in an instant society. If you want a McDonald’s hamburger, it is easy to find a McDonald’s, go in, tell the person behind the counter exactly what McDonald's Double Cheeseburgeryou want (yes cheese, no pickles, yes fries, no shake). And you get it in a minute or two, and you’re eating it immediately. The same is true of a Starbuck’s latte — or my own personal nemesis, a chocolate meal replacement bar.

When we try to approach our dog as if he is a McDonald’s hamburger, we run into trouble. We want the new behavior NOW. We want the dog to STOP jumping now. We want the dog to COME when called now. We get frustrated when the @%#$! dog is NOT doing it. We have started training them — why are they being stubborn?!

The problem is we want the new behavior now, but training a dog is about changing habits. Changing habits takes practice — which requires time and repetition. Changing habits is hard for YOU, and it’s hard for YOUR DOG!

Whose habits must be changed?

The dog’s. The dog has been doing things the same way for months or years. Even a six-month old puppy may have the habit for five or six months, which is his whole life! The longer a dog has been doing the bad behavior, the longer it can take to change things. How do you do this? Practice (time and repetition).

Training a dog is about changing habits.

Whose habits must be changed?

Yours. Unless you just brought this puppy or dog home today, you have a shared history of habits. The longer the dog has been with you, the more challenging it is for you to learn to do things a new way. Maybe you have the habit of letting him out in the yard off-leash because that’s easier for you when you’re rushed, even though you know he will not come when you call. Or you know you should ask him to sit politely before you put his food bowl down, but you don’t want to have to spend the time to teach him to sit.

How do you learn to change habits? Practice: Time and Repetition

Have you ever changed a habit? It’s difficult, but it’s doable. It takes a lot of practice! Here are some of the habits I have changed over the years:Extreme close-up of a burning cigarette

  • Quitting smoking
  • Not eating while I’m talking on the phone
  • Eating less sugar
  • Remembering to write my mileage down at the end of the day before I exit the car
  • Going to the Y to swim at least twice a week

All of these habits have environmental cues associated with them. For example, when I used to smoke, some of the cues that triggered me to light up were being around other smokers, being at a party, drinking coffee or beer, or eating pizza. For me to stop smoking, it helped a LOT if I avoided these triggers, especially multiple triggers at once. I may be able to not smoke if it was just me and a non-smoking friend eating a pizza, but if I was at a party where people were drinking, smoking, and eating pizza, that would be MUCH harder.

You and your dog have environmental cues, too. If seeing dogs walk by out the window triggers your dog to bark out the window, you have to find a way to prevent your dog from seeing out that window. If your dog tries to bolt out the door when you’re leaving for work, you need to prevent your dog from being at the door when you leave for work.

Habits exist because they meet needs. Most of our dogs’ bad habits meet emotional needs. The dog is scared of something, so she barks at it. The dog is frustrated by the fence, so he gets angry and lunges at it. The dog destroys the couch because she’s bored, and chewing the couch relieves boredom.

Granola bar with rice, raisins, and other ingredients held in a person's fingers above a plateA habit is a habit because it is the easier thing to do. When I was trying to eat less sugar, one of the habits I had to overcome was eating Zone (“meal replacement”) bars in the car while I drive from lesson to lesson. It was easy to eat Zone bars. They took no preparation, no refrigeration, contain chocolate, and gave me an instant sugar buzz. But in the long run, it was not the habit I wanted. I used to eat Zone bars almost every day, sometimes several a day.

To change this habit, I had to do three things:

  1. I had to make a commitment to change. I had to decide I didn’t want to eat Zone bars anymore. Your dog cannot make this commitment. You have to make the commitment for both of you. Making a commitment means doing what it takes to make the change. It usually means committing time or money or both. Sometimes it means bucking social convention. Successful behavioral change requires strong commitment.
  2. I had to make it harder for me to eat Zone bars. I took them out of my car. That way, to eat one, I had to decide to get one in the morning and bring it with me to eat later that day. I could not mindlessly reach for one if it wasn’t there. The equivalent in dog training is what we call “Management” or “Prevention,” and it’s just as important as training for new habits.
  3. Most important: I had to find other ways to meet the need that the Zone bars fulfilled. I ate Zone bars because I was hungry! I couldn’t wait several hours to eat till I got home. I needed nourishment: energy, satiation, relief from hunger and thirst. This allowed me to function well at work. So, I started to buy sandwich fixings, fruit, and nuts that I could bring in the car. I had to remember to buy these things days before I needed them and allot extra time in the mornings to pack a lunch. I needed to buy a little lunch bag with ice packs to keep it cold. This took work, and in the beginning, it was a real hassle. I wasn’t used to it yet, and it felt cumbersome, annoying, and it took too much time. But, after a year of doing that, it’s now a habit. Meeting a dog’s needs in good ways is often what trainers call “Enrichment.” A bored dog may need to work for his food. A dog who’s not getting enough exercise may need longer walks or an intense game of fetch.

Now I almost never eat a Zone bar. I don’t even want to eat them most of the time anymore because I have new habits that I like better, but that took a year of practice.

Look at the list of habits I’ve changed. Notice how many of these are about NOT doing something? Stopping smoking, stopping eating a lot of sugar, stopping eating when I’m on the phone, etc. This is how we often approach dog training: We want the dog to stop barking out the window or stop jumping. But we can’t really train and practice a “not.” Instead, we have to find other good things to do to replace those bad habits.

YOUR DOG’S BAD HABITS have several things in common with MY bad habits:

  1. The habits fulfill a need
  2. The dog has an opportunity to practice the bad habit
  3. To stop doing the old habit requires lots of practice with a good, new habit

If you want your dog to do things differently, you can train him to change:

  • Figure out what need is being met with the old habit.
  • Make the old habit harder to perform.
  • Practice, practice, practice a new habit that fulfills the same need — using rewards that your dog works eagerly for.

With time and repetition, you’ll both have new habits.

P.S. Did you notice that this post was very repetitive, repetitive, repetitive? That was intentional. Because changing habits requires repetition.

Filed Under: Enrichment, Management (Prevention), Training

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What Our Clients Are Saying…

TJ Legg
Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner
"It’s just brought so much pure joy! My dog and I like each other a lot more now." -- Sam Legg with TJ
APDT Professional Member
"She has worked miracles with my dog!" -- Gail Mason with Dazzle

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