“How can I fix my dog’s bad behavior?”

This is a question I get quite often from well-meaning dog guardians! Instead of focusing on fixing your dog’s behavior, let’s try and rephrase it to, “how can I change this behavior my dog is doing that I don’t really enjoy?”

Now that - that I can help with! And it actually involves what I like to call the dog training triple threat.

The dog training triple threat, what on earth could that be!?

Every good training plan includes the dog training triple threat, while it’s definitely not called that in the real world, we’re going to call it that here in Mutt Talk world.

The dog training triple threat consists of management, enrichment, and training. Preferably and most importantly positive reinforcement-based training.

Let’s first start out by discussing management. If you’re new to dog training, you may be wondering what exactly management is.

Management is quite literally managing your dog or the environment in which they are in. The goal with management is to prevent unwanted behaviors from happening while teaching a new behavior that you find more desirable. Remember, the more times your dog performs any behavior, the more likely they will offer it again in the future. This is due to some behaviors, such as pulling on a leash, and it being self-reinforcing for your dog. For example, if your dog smells an awesome tree 5 feet away, they may pull on their leash to get to the tree. The behavior of pulling on the leash is immediately reinforced by indulging in the amazing smells.

You can implement management for this behavior by either using a longer leash (such as the ones here) so that your dog can walk freely to their favorite smells or fill your hand with stinky treats when you see an awesome tree up ahead and feed, feed, feed until you approach the tree and then invite your dog to sniff said tree.

More examples of managment:

baby gates
crates and x-pens
window film
harness and leash
muzzle
closed doors
calming music
privacy fences and trees

[Image Description: A large German shepherd dog with large, upright ears, dark brown and light brown fur on face and tan fur on front legs is laying with head up, in a black wire and wicker kennel. Front legs are resting on a tan blanket.]

Next, we have enrichment. What exactly is enrichment?

Canine enrichment is essentially making life for your dog ‘more like nature.’ It is all about imagining what your dog was bred to do and would have done out in the wild and then giving them opportunities to satisfy those natural instincts. Providing your dog with enrichment activities daily is an extremely important component of not only their training plan, but also for their mental sanity. Imagine a life where you couldn’t engage in human enrichment such as hanging out with your friends, trying new foods, listening to music, exercising, crafting or doing your favorite hobby. What a horribly depressing life that would be.

Examples of enrichment:

sniffy walks on a long line
food puzzles
snuffle mats
licking a frozen kong or lickimat
cardboard shredding
trick training
dog - dog play
chewing

[Image Description: A medium sized dog with long black hair, light brown fur on legs and a white spot on chest is sniffing a stick that is standing upright between rocks in front of a body of water.]

Lastly, we have the training component. We’re going to focus on the use of operant conditioning to teach new, desirable behaviors.

Operant conditioning is when your dog performs a behavior and receives a consequence that will either increase or decrease the likelihood of it happening again.

Your dog operates on the environment.

Once you have implemented management, then enrichment, it is now time to start thinking about what behaviors you want to see from your dog. Those are what you will use clicker training for! With clicker training aka positive reinforcement based, mark and reward training, the focus is on identifying the goal behavior and teaching it to your dog. We want to avoid punishing the unwanted behaviors as much as possible. One reason is because it simply does not teach your dog what to do, it only teaches them what not to do. Along with that, punishment can cause unnecessary stress and fear in your dog which can then lead to a lack of trust and damage to the human-dog bond that you share with your dog.

You will find that when you start focusing on rewarding the behaviors that you like from your dog using food, toys and praise, not only will your dog begin to offer those behaviors even more, they will likely become more attentive to you.

Thanks to science, we know that positive reinforcement works when you do it correctly. Positive means to add something and reinforcement means to increase. So, positive reinforcement literally means that you add something (a treat, toy or praise) to promote an increase in the behavior.

Just remember, your dog is the one who decides if the added stimuli is reinforcing. Not you.

Ways to add in positive reinforcement training organically:
When your dog relaxes on their bed, tell them yes and then give them a treat. Repeat that every time you see your dog relax on their bed and keep track of how much more frequently they go to their bed.
When you’re out walking your dog and they glance over at you, tell them yes and give them something super awesome like tuna! Now, do that every time they look at you and watch how much more attentive they become.
Have a baby gate set up blocking immediate access to you and your dog to eliminate the possibility of jumping on you when you first get home. Grab a handful of treats and every time your dog has four paws on the floor, say yes and give them a treat. Give it a couple of weeks and your dog will be mastering four paws on the floor!

[Image Description: A person and a dog outside in the grass. The person has shoulder length brown hair and is in a white shirt with a red sweater, jeans and white shoes is holding a leash in their right hand and holding a treat above shoulder level with right hand. The dog is standing on its hind legs with it’s front arms stretched up. The dog is small-medium sized, dark brown color with tan arms, legs and muzzle. Has shaggy hair on head and a nub tail.]

Now that we have discussed the dog training triple threat, I want to point out that hiring a certified positive reinforcement dog trainer is the best way to set you and your dog up for success.

If you enjoyed this blog post and learned something new, send it to your favorite dog parent so they can also learn more about improving their dog’s life!

Emily Fitzpatrick, VSA-CDT

emily@misunderstoodmutt.com