It’s More Than Just Training! Considerations For A Successful Behavior Modification Plan

Check any social media platform, online forum, or ask your neighbor/aunt/coworker for dog training advice. You’ll probably find yourself swimming around in a massive pool of different or conflicting advice, yet everyone makes it sound so easy to get results. Why isn’t it working for you?!

The unfortunate truth is, in many cases, generic advice or a quick 1, 2, 3 step method isn’t always going to address the actual root(s) of the issue with your specific situation. And, changing our dog’s behavior can become multi-faceted or can need various different approaches working together like puzzle pieces to make a complete picture. Building a plan for you and your dog that will actually lead to long lasting or effective change can take more than just teaching your dog more obedience drills, more focus, or correcting what we’re determining is “bad behavior.” So today, let’s talk about a few different considerations you’re going to need before building a training plan with your dog to ensure you’re actually setting yourself up for success, rather than spending months or years feeling like you’re swimming upstream with no results.

Consideration #1: Compare Your Ideal Goals To The Dog Standing In Front Of You

We’re going to start with a reality check before diving any deeper, as the essential first step to making achievable goals is to ensure they’re actually, well, achievable. Think about the dog in front of you in relation to the behavior change goals you have for them: How many months, years, etc have they been “rehearsing” the undesired behavior? If your dog has been “rehearsing” barking, lunging, and growling at strangers when on leash for 3 years with no intervention, don’t expect to be able to peacefully walk him through a Saturday farmer’s market after just a couple of lessons with a trainer or behavior consultant. If your dog was just recently adopted and is showing signs of separation anxiety after shuffling through multiple fosters and living situations, don’t expect her to be able to snooze the afternoon away for 4 hours while you run errands after only working on desensitization to absences for a week. On the other hand, if your new puppy has only been jumping up on people for 2 weeks since you’ve adopted him, we can assume it’s safe to say a training plan for teaching alternative behaviors to jumping up can be achieved more realistically in a shorter time frame with the right plan for management, meeting needs, and setting criteria (more on this later). 

Your dog’s breed or breed type(s) can also have an influence on their likelihood of success depending on your training goals. This is highly variable based on the individual, and outliers exist in plentiful numbers no matter the breed of dog, but we always need to be mindful of what our dog’s genetic predispositions and purposes they were bred for can bring to the table when it comes to training. Think about the breed type(s) your dog falls under. A livestock guarding dog is, in general, might not find as much success working obedience drills like a herding breed does. On the other hand, a herding breed might not find as much success being as independent and patient/tolerant as a livestock guarding breed will. All dogs were originally created many years ago for “purposes” that often do not get many outlets these days in our more modern world, even though those genetic predispositions are still there. Think about the dog you have and ask yourself if you’re asking them to go against their “nature” in the name of your training goals. If you are, is there a way to compromise so you both still get what you need from each other?

On another note, we may also want to consider YOUR relation to the goals you have with your dog. Many of us live busy lives with other day-to-day factors pulling our attention away from our dogs: taking care of the kids, spending time with our partner, an intensive work schedule, etc. None of this is a bad thing: it’s just life! Things need to be prioritized! But realistically, ask yourself how much time, dedication, and ability you have to commit to your dog’s management and training plan on a regular basis. While effective behavior change does NOT need hours of “drilling” your dog every day, there still is a lifestyle adjustment that is needed, and we also need to be realistic with ourselves and ask if we have the full ability to commit to setting our dogs up for successful behavior change on a consistent basis. If you think this might be a struggle for you, ask us how our supplemental services might be helpful to your training plan! We’re here to support you and your dog long-term and help fill in any gaps in your routine that might be missing for them.

It’s important to understand that we humans brought our dogs into our homes and routines, they didn’t ask to be there. So, we need to make sure we approach training from the perspective of understanding that we are the ones who need to shoulder a large portion of the responsibility for teaching our dogs what we would and wouldn’t like them to do, while making sure that the rest of their day to day life is fair to them in relation to the behavior we are asking them for. They are living in an entirely human-made world with human-made rules, after all! What makes complete and total sense to us humans may be like learning a foreign language to our dogs, so we always need to keep that in mind when setting them up for success through behavior modification.

Consideration #2: Have You Met Your Dog’s Needs First?

This is a really big “missing piece” I see when clients are hitting a plateau or struggling to make progress with their training. A lot of the time, we see a dog displaying undesirable behavior and think they are “missing” some form of training to teach them how to behave. In reality, a lot of problem behaviors we see in dogs can be a form of natural or normal behavior being expressed in an inappropriate context because they have no other outlet for it otherwise! From a learning standpoint and an ethical standpoint, we cannot ask our dogs to change their behavior until we have met their needs first and provided them a stable baseline to operate on. 

A high-energy dog who does not have enough outlets for high-intensity exercise and free body movement cannot be asked to go on a leisurely neighborhood walk as their primary form of exercise and keep slack on a 4-6 foot leash. A dog who has a strong propensity to dig cannot be asked to leave the flower bushes outside alone if he does not have an appropriate designated digging spot as an alternative. A dog who’s favorite activity is shredding and dissection cannot be asked to leave the couch and throw pillows alone if he isn’t given other varied and satisfying options to chew and shred on a regular basis. If you’re seeing a lot of problem behaviors in your dog, instead of jumping to a mindset of “she needs to be trained to stop this!” think first: “is there something she needs an outlet for first that I’m not providing her?” Often, when a dog’s instinctual or breed-specific need is met and satisfied on a regular basis, we see the problem behavior either drastically reduced or go away entirely in many cases, no training needed!

While all dogs may benefit from different approaches when it comes to providing them fulfilling exercise and enrichment, the majority of dogs benefit immensely from being able to spend unstructured time in nature. Take some time on a regular basis with your dog to ditch the neighborhood march and take a “decompression walk” in a natural space. For best results, you’ll want to try and find a natural space that significantly limits the exposure your dog has to their “triggers” in the environment. Meaning, if your dog is stressed or reactive/aggressive towards people, dogs, cars, etc, you’ll want to make an effort to find a space that is more private and less frequented. This might look like a low-traffic hiking trail out of the city, visiting a dog park during “off hours'' when no one else is present, or booking a Sniffspot (www.sniffspot.com) for your dog to have private time in a space with no other triggers present. The key to a decompression walk is to let your dog do “dog stuff” without us humans micromanaging them- allow them to sniff freely, lead the way, track scents, dig, run, walk, observe, whatever they choose to do! There is no wrong answer, the key is to let them engage in natural behaviors, have as much free-body movement as possible, and have agency to make their own choices. These walks are best done on long lines (15+ feet leashes) attached to a back-clipping harness, or off leash when safe and appropriate. Decompression walks may not seem like they’re part of a successful training plan, but when done regularly, can have an immense benefit on lowering your dog’s day-to-day stress levels and building their resilience.

Consideration #3: Is My Dog ACTUALLY Healthy, Mentally and Physically?

This can be a very complicated but extremely influential factor in your behavior modification success with your dog. Just like with humans, dogs can often spend months, years, or even lifetimes experiencing undetected medical concerns that have a large influence on their behavior and ability to learn. And often, we don’t recognize that our dog’s behavior might have an underlying medical cause because the behavior doesn’t seem related to the concern they’re having. A dog who suddenly developed a fear of riding in the car could have severe unnoticeable dental disease, and the bumps and turns of riding in the car cause them significant pain in their mouth. A dog who is suffering from an undiagnosed gastrointestinal condition can show signs of chronic anxiety, fearful behavior, or noise sensitivity. A dog with painful hips could seem reluctant to respond to obedience cues because the different positionings cause them serious discomfort to perform (we often mislabel these dogs as stubborn or unmotivated). A dog who finds even the act of going outside to send them “over threshold” may have a chemical imbalance in their brain that could be mitigated with behavior medication.

Getting a thorough and in-depth vet check up is essential to ensuring your dog’s behavior isn't actually a symptom of poor health or discomfort. And often this looks like more than just a yearly palpation and exam with their vaccine updates. Schedule a consultation with your vet, discuss the behavior concerns you’re seeing with them at length, and don’t be afraid to really advocate for your dog if you feel like your concerns aren’t being heard. Sometimes opting for a referral to a specialist or for elective testing (bloodwork, x rays, etc) may be the key to actually finding out what underlying conditions are going on with your pup. All the training in the world will never fix or cover up a medical issue. If you feel like you’ve tried everything and are hitting a wall, this is probably a key missing piece in helping your dog’s life and behavior improve! If you are working with a professional trainer or behavior consultant, I would also encourage you to get them involved in the medical investigation process with your vet- they are often happy to connect with your dog’s medical team and work together to find the best approach to addressing your dog’s underlying medical concerns.

Consideration #4: You Probably Need More Foundation Work Than You Think

A common saying in the dog training world is that “high-level training skills are just the basics done really well.” This is often actually the case! A lot of dog training requires strong foundational work, and a lot of people don’t actually realize how many steps it takes to train a behavior to fluency. Where a lot of people are quick to blame the dog “knowing better” is actually a circumstance of the dog lacking foundational work to the level they need to be successful in that situation. As an example:

Mary has trained her dog how to walk on a loose leash in the house, in the backyard, and in the front yard of her house. Proud of the several weeks of training she has done with her dog, she jumps in the car to head to the nearby city park to go for a nice relaxing walk with her dog, anticipating her dog to be able to walk nicely with her after the weeks of training they’ve just done. They get there, and her dog is acting like he hasn’t had a day of leash walking training in his life! He is pulling her, distracted, jumping on her, and generally pretty overwhelmed with his surroundings. Frustrated, she takes him home and declares that all the training she’s just done “doesn’t work” and that her dog should know better. What actually happened here?

In reality, the distraction level in her training program was made too difficult, too soon. Starting to teach your dog new skills in low-distraction environments is always a great strategy, as this helps give them an environment where they can focus and properly learn. But once those initial foundations have been set, it’s important to incrementally increase the distraction level in small pieces that your dog can tolerate instead of jumping from “kindergarten” to “college.” In Mary’s situation, jumping from the “slight distraction” of the dog’s front yard to all the stimuli found at a local park was too drastic, and the dog was not able to generalize the skill to this newer, much more challenging environment. Think about all the stimuli that were introduced all at once: new smells of all the other people, dogs, and wildlife that have recently been at the park. Traffic sounds from a nearby busy street. Squirrels and birds fluttering around in the trees nearby. Several children screaming and laughing on the playground. A jogger rushing by trying to get a workout in. Someone else’s dog barking nearby. That’s a LOT to take in for a dog who is still in the initial stages of learning a new skill that requires lots of self control! 

So, when you are thinking about teaching your dog a new skill or behavior to fluency, think about all the different ways you can split down the foundation work into “bite sized” pieces for your dog to process to set them up for success. Layering in different levels of difficulty to foundation work takes baby steps. You will often actually find that the more time you spend breaking down skills into attainable small pieces, you may actually progress faster than trying to skip foundations and move to higher level training in a rush. If you find yourself in a training rut or regression, sometimes the key is to find a new way to split the difficulty down into a smaller piece before working back up.

Consideration #5: Are You Incorporating Enough Management Into Your Dog’s Routine?

The key to an effective training program often requires an element that takes very little training at all: management! It’s really important that in circumstances where we are trying to change behavior with our dogs, especially behavior that is “well rehearsed,” we are also implementing an effective management strategy that reduces their opportunity to continue rehearsing that undesired behavior. 

As an example, a dog who is reactive and will bark/lunge at other dogs on leash, may suspend walks in their neighborhood temporarily where they are most likely to rehearse this behavior towards every dog they see. Instead, they may utilize Sniffspots, at-home enrichment protocols, or drive to less heavily trafficked parks and walking trails nearby instead for the time being. This ensures that the dog’s ONLY or predominant exposure to other dogs is strictly during structured training sessions in controlled setups until more skills can be built up and the dog is reacting less to other dogs while on leash. Once training progress has been made, the owner can then ease up on some of that management and start walking in the neighborhood again after they have ensured the dog has the skills to handle walking by other dogs on leash without barking and lunging.

Another example of management in a behavior modification program might look like keeping a dog on leash or putting a dog away entirely in another part of the house when letting guests in the front door. If you have a frantic, overexcited greeter on your hands, you may want to be working on teaching them to greet people more politely. By putting your dog away or having them with you on leash during initial introductions, you can ensure your dog does not get a chance to rehearse charging the person coming in the door and jumping all over them to greet. This way, you can work with your dog and help them get to a calmer state of mind before releasing them to go greet your visitor at a lower arousal level. Without a tether or barrier in place, your dog is likely to make a mistake. Management helps reduce their ability to make mistakes in circumstances they may struggle with. 

Think of your dog’s training plan and undesirable behavior like a piggy bank. Each time your dog gets a chance to “practice” the behavior you would like for them to do, a quarter is deposited in their piggy bank. Every time your dog gets to “practice” the behavior you would NOT like for them to do, that quarter falls out the bottom opening of the piggy bank. So, we consider management to be the “plug” that closes up the opening at the bottom of your piggy bank to keep all the change inside and allows you to accumulate wealth in the desired behavior. 

Sometimes The Problem Isn’t Your “Training”

Dog training and behavior modification can be a wonderful way to help your dog either learn how to navigate our human world in socially appropriate ways, keep them (or others) safe, and can help improve their quality of life. So when it doesn’t go according to plan, it’s easy to get disheartened or frustrated. But as we’ve covered here, sometimes the issue isn’t with your training at all, but instead with an element to behavior modification that can make or break your dog’s ability to make progress. If you’re struggling with making progress with your dog, we are here to help! Reach out to work with us in person in the Atlanta, Georgia area, or virtually anywhere in the world. Let’s get you back on the right track to behavior modification success with your dog!