Is Your Home Causing Your Dog's Bad Behavior?
How training smarter can save you time and stress when trying to implement behavior change with dogs.
What if I told you the problem behavior you are struggling with wasn’t hopeless, what if it wasn’t entirely your dogs choice, what if there was something simple you could do to instantly start improving the behavior?
While I’m not a fan of quick fix concepts, one size fits all and most behavior hacks are offered up by… well, hacks, people regularly overlook the ways they can change the environment to change behavior. I once fixed a families biggest dog complaint with a can of WD40 and charged them $6.25 for my service that day. I’ll tell you more about Edward in a bit.
We tend to talk about dog behavior that is produced as being caused by the dogs personality rather than something that is regularly being influenced, shaped and prompted by the environment where animals spend their days.
Quick behavioral tutorial. Let me give you a really simplified version of something I might make my students learn at the University. The smallest significant measurement of behavior we can look at is called a 3 term contingency. It basically states that there are 3 parts to all behaviors. We call them the A,B,C’s of behavior. Or the antecedent, behavior and consequence.
Antecedent is what happens right before the behavior occurs sometimes this is the cue for the animal performing the behavior.
Behavior is the response to the antecedent.
Consequence is what happens right after the behavior which will reinforce or punish the behavior and either increase or decrease the frequency.
Get it? Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequence. Now you know your ABCs.
The case of the barking Rat Terrier Edward in Seattle. I went to their home to meet this gregarious little pup. He was as friendly as could be but the family lived in a condo and their landlord was threatening they would have to leave or get rid of him if the constant barking didn’t improve and fast.
When I met them they told me that Edward “loved to use his voice” and is “extremely stubborn”. They had all these anti-barking devices and techniques, most were geared toward scaring him when he started barking to try to suppress the behavior. The shaker can, the squirt bottle, the compressed aerosol spray, all the aversive common wisdom advice you could think of. These tools are often advised by well-meaning friends and neighbors who don’t understand how limited they are and the effects they can have on the animal’s well-being if they are successful. I don’t recommend them. While I sat in the condo suddenly there was a high-pitched metallic sound and Edward irrupted with barking. It was a seriously big bark coming from such a little dog, as he barked he ran to the door, and then he started nervously watching over his shoulder to see how his people would react. They clapped angrily and shouted and yelled, “No Bark!” but the barking persisted. Once he was calm, they said, “Now you can see what we are dealing with”. I felt for them. There was a lot of pressure, no judgement but they didn’t have a lot of canine competencies to utilize on this difficult task. I paused and asked what the metallic sound was that happened before the barking. They told me about THE GATE.
I learned that directly across from their unit was the main metal gate that leads to the parking lot. So every single person who comes and goes from the condominium who has a car comes through that gate at least twice per day. That means the event that prompted him, “the screeching gate”, is our Antecedent prompting Edwards’ barking behavior and it occurs at a high frequency throughout the day. I could see that a plan to *desensitize and counter-condition his response to the sound would be difficult and take a lot of “unlearning” and we didn’t have a lot of time. I took Edward for a walk and we happened to walk past the hardware store. I had an idea. WHAT IF THE ANTECENDENT DIDN’T HAPPEN? I went inside, purchased a can of WD40 for $6.25, and returned to the condo with Edward. I went to work on the hinges of the gate and within seconds, the gate opened and shut more quietly.
I set up a baby gate in their front door and prompted their door open. Every time someone appeared at the gate I said, “Good quiet” and gave Edward a treat. Everyone smiled and said hello, and soon people stopped to see what we were doing. Edward being the outgoing, charming little fellow walked up to the gate to greet everyone. Soon the scourge of the condo had become the official greeter. People loved seeing Edward when they came home. The couple who had moved from New York met all their neighbors and got connected with their new community all because we trained smarter, not harder.
Now not all cases are this easy but it shows us that Edward was not stubborn, bad, or an asshole as his people had told me. His environment was putting pressure on him to perform the behavior all day, every day. There is so much we can do to soften sounds, limit sight lines, and decrease the intensity of the external stimuli that our dogs experience. We need to stop labeling dogs and internalizing the behavior as if it were part of their genetic personality.
The principles of behavior change are limiting in the same way poetry and gravity are. The application of the principles are endless. If you want to change behaviors consider first changing conditions in the environment which are a part of the bigger picture.
It’s a very overwhelming and often overpowering world for our dogs. They are constrained and limited in how they are allowed to make decisions and perform species-typical behaviors. We must acknowledge that every individual should have a way of behaving to have influence over their environment. This provides agency and will allow them to thrive.
*Want to know more? Let’s get into it.
DESENSITIZATION AND COUNTER-CONDITIONING
These techniques are often used when working with fearful or reactive dogs. The goal here is to change the emotional state and reaction of a dog to certain triggering stimuli.
Desensitization
Desensitization is the process of gradually exposing your dog to the triggering stimulus. The process should start at a level where the dog does not react to the stimulus. The key to successful desensitization is to make sure the dog remains calm (sub-threshold) as you slowly expose the dog to slightly more intense levels of the trigger.
Be familiar with common signs of fear such as avoidance, crouching, tail tucked, stiff body musculature, lip licking or disinterested in food. If your dog shows any of these signs, decrease the intensity of the trigger. You don’t want your dog to keep having negative experiences with the trigger as you may risk the behavior getting worse.
Classical (Respondent) Conditioning
Physiologist Ivan Pavlov famously “discovered” classical conditioning (also known as respondent conditioning) when he noticed a dog would salivate after hearing a bell that predicted food. A respondent behavior is an automatic physiological response elicited by a stimulus. Dinner appears and a dog salivates. In this example, salivation is the respondent behavior.
Pavlov demonstrated that we can condition that same salivation response by presenting a neutral stimulus (a bell) immediately prior to the unconditioned stimulus (the food). If we do this correctly, the neutral stimulus attains the eliciting properties of the unconditioned stimulus. The bell predicts the presentation of food. The dog will now salivate when it hears the bell in anticipation of dinner.
Emotional responses fall under the category of “respondent behavior”. In the example above, along with salivating the dog might wag it’s tail or move towards the dinner bowl after hearing the bell. In another example, the automatic physiological responses that happen when a prey animal sees a predator (heart rate increase, release of adrenaline, among others) sums up to what we label “fear”. This is why we call emotions “feelings”. We literally feel the automatic physiological changes in our bodies.
Counter-Conditioning
In counter-conditioning we are teaching your dog to like a triggering stimulus by pairing the stimulus with something the dog already likes. We often use a type of treat that a dog loves and only gets during this exercise.
We then pair the sight or sound of the trigger with getting these high value treats. For example, if your dog is reactive to dogs, we feed your dog a continuous stream of cheese immediately after your dog observes another dog. The flow of treats stops as soon as the other dog is out of sight. Timing and the order of the sequence are important. In order to create the association, we want the dog to see the trigger first and then the food comes after (ideally within 3 seconds). If you feed before the dog appears or at the same time, the association is not formed as efficiently.
Using Desensitization and Counter-Conditioning Together
Pairing the desensitization and counter-conditioning (DS+CC) together helps your dog develop a positive emotional response to triggers. Use desensitization to keep your dog at a distance from the stimulus so that he or she does not react but can see the trigger. Use counter-conditioning to develop a positive emotional response when he or she sees the trigger at a safe distance.
While keeping your dog sub-threshold, slowly increase the level of exposure to the trigger while pairing the stimulus with the treats. Keep sessions short and try to always end on a positive note. Changing an emotional response takes time so work at your dog’s pace and don’t get discouraged if the process takes longer than you like. The work will pay off!