Almost every person I have worked with-in my animal training career comes to me with the question “How do I stop my dog from doing such and such?” Though this is a common question, I point out that, though stopping behavior seems useful, it might not be as useful as we think. What do I mean? Read on to find out!
Giving Directions
So why is stopping behavior not as helpful as we might think? My favorite analogy to use to help people understand this is giving directions. Imagine you are driving a car. You are with your best friend or spouse and you don’t know how to get where you are going. Your friend knows a shortcut, but you keep thinking you could just use the GPS or wing it. However, you decide to listen to your friend, until you hear their directions. Your friend simply tells you what not to do and where not to go. “Don’t turn here.” “Stop slowing down.” “Don’t go that fast.” “Don’t turn here either.” “See that fence up there? Don’t turn there either.” At this point you are quite lost. Your friend has given you very little helpful information and you are beginning to get frustrated. Finally, frustrated and confused, you bail, pull over, open your GPS, putt in the coordinates to your desired location, pull back out into the road, and drive to your destination.
When Starting is Stopping
At this point you might be thinking “why would someone give directions like that? It doesn’t make sense!” Well, believe it or not, this is what we tend to do with our dogs when we focus on stopping behavior. We spend too much time telling our dogs where they should not “turn”, sometimes going so far as to bring this “no no” to their attention even before they have noticed it themselves. This turns out to be counterproductive as it points our dogs in the wrong direction by motivating them to focus on what they are not supposed to be doing.
You might be wondering, “So I should not stop behavior in my dog?” To answer that question, stopping behavior is perfectly acceptable and definitely something we have to do in certain situations. However, how we go about it is a whole different matter. To politely stop a behavior, we actually have to start a new one! If that sounds odd, just think about it a little bit. By starting a new behavior that is contradictory to the old, the old behavior must stop in order to allow the dog to engage in the new behavior! Voila! Your dog has stopped the behavior! This is why it is so important to train your dog, because even for emergencies you will get a better response from your dog when you teach it what to do and when (please be aware that you must train behaviors for emergencies before they will be effective. Please do not try to use an untrained or partially trained behavior in an emergency. If you have not trained a behavior for emergencies, please simply remove your dog from the situation).
Making This Work
To stop behavior politely you must train your dog to respond to cues quickly and joyfully. Positive reinforcement can help with this! My favorite behavior to teach dogs exhibiting behavior their parents don’t like is simply eye contact in response to the dog’s name. This behavior is actually a commonly used positive interrupter (something that will interrupt behavior in a positive way and redirect your dog’s attention to you). The dog learns that when it hears mom, dad, brother, sister, etc., call its name, it needs to make eye contact with them. This is extremely helpful as it not only stops unwanted behavior, but puts the dog’s attention on the handler allowing the handler to smoothly and quickly give the dog a new cue such as “sit,” “come” or “lay down” that will help prevent reengaging in the old behavior or finding a new unwanted behavior. While this eye contact behavior might involve the dog getting up and “coming” towards the person this is different than the “come” behavior. If you would like more information on the difference, post a comment and let me know. I’d love to chat about it!
Closing Thoughts
Starting behavior is where our focus should lie. The more we focus on what behaviors we want, the more we will know what to train our dogs, and the more our dogs will be able to understand what we are teaching them. Next time your dog does something you don’t like, take a moment to ask yourself, “what do I want my dog to do instead?”
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