Your dog spends all day making choices that he hopes will result in your attention or some other form of reward for him. You spend all day ignoring all the good behaviors, waiting for the dog to do something bad so that you can “correct” him. You are systematically teaching your dog to choose bad behaviors (because those bring him your attention.) Is it any wonder that so many people live with unruly dogs?
"Will this potentially wonderful puppy grow up to be a Doggie Outlaw?"
How does this sweet, angelic puppy turn into the monstrous bane of your existence? It’s simple. Just don’t do anything to raise him right, and you’ll teach him to be an outlaw. You’ll have a carpet-wetting, couch eating, child chasing, food stealing, hand biting, garbage raiding, yard digging, barking, wandering outlaw.
You may actually develop an adversarial relationship with your dog, until you say to yourself, something’s got to give! You are living with a creature that seems to have it in for you and is doing something “bad” every minute of his waking day. One of the dictionary definitions for the word “outlaw” is an uncontrollable animal. But the word suggests someone who is living outside the law. How can your dog break the “laws” in your family if you’ve never showed him what kind of behavior was expected from him in the first place. You have to set up the laws by which you want your puppy to live within your family.
There are just millions and millions of dog owners out there adopting cute, innocent puppies, and then dumping them in shelters six months later because they were out of control. Well, who was in charge of training the dog? These people erroneously expected the dog to teach himself to be good. This twisted thinking happens every day. People adopt a canine into a human family and are aghast when the little guy insists on behaving like a canine! How dare he! The people somehow get the idea that all you add is love, and the little cutie will grow into a charming, subdued, noble and judicious guardian of the family.
What I find equally unacceptable is that the ones that aren’t dumping their canine miscreants on someone else, but are living with them! These people are accepting a life of daily combat with their dogs, because they don’t want to dump them in a shelter. They just think that dogs are supposed to be rude, wild, fiendish idiots. People see my well-behaved dogs in public and they are always astonished. It’s as though they are looking at an anomaly of nature. What is shocking to me is the description of their own dogs that they immediately start telling me about. “My dog would never be that calm in public,” they say. “He’d be jumping all over the place and probably biting people.” These people have made for themselves a life of hell, and they have made their dog a prisoner by not teaching him the simple things that I taught mine. To them, my dogs look like extraordinary departures from reality. They look flawless. Flawless dogs are made, not born. And it doesn’t take a genius to create one. EVERY DOG can become a well-behaved, model citizen. Every single dog in the world can be a wonderful pet.
People think it is beyond their capability to transform an unruly puppy into a perfectly behaved adult dog, but it is SO EASY! The fact that people just continue to not do anything to shape their dog’s behavior, and are content to live with an atrociously out-of-control beast really grieves me. So many people have lost hope that “Sparky” will ever be socially acceptable, so they do what they think is one step better than sending Sparky to the shelter. These millions of dogs never leave the house, get locked in the garage or basement, or are relegated to be chained in the back yard, like a prisoner. This is so distressing to me, when I know that these dogs could be mannerly family members and model citizens enjoying outings with their family.
Everyone has the capability of shaping a life. It’s a very simple matter of rewarding acceptable behaviors and ignoring or redirecting unacceptable behaviors. If people can’t work this out with creatures as easy to mold as dogs, then what on earth are they doing, trying to raise children? All of the principles for raising dogs and children are the same. You don’t need to buy a special collar for the dog and go to an obedience class and learn to apply various punishments, as if you were taming a wild beast. Dog training is like child training. It is a 24-7 operation. You do it all day long, every day, usually with very little effort.
Every single decision your dog makes requires a choice. You simply have to teach him to choose wisely. To do this you apply consequences to each thing your dog does. Traditional training relied on waiting until the dog did something wrong so that you could punish him. Well, guess what? From the dog’s point of view, he’s making choices based on what rewards he gets. Oops! We’re working against each other here! The dog tries lying quietly at your feet. Well, rats! That didn’t do him any good... the dog tries sitting and being quiet. Not barking or jumping up, just staring adoringly at his human. Oops. That’s not working either; he can’t seem to get any attention from that busy human. Not a glance, not a stroke, not a word... I wonder what on earth I can do to get someone to notice me around here... I think I’ll run at the glass door and bark at the squirrels. YUP! They noticed that! Cool!
What a tragedy! While you were waiting for the dog to do something which needed a correction, your dog was making lots of choices (many of them GOOD ones), but you weren’t rewarding them. You didn’t see the dog as DOING anything. But in fact, he was doing plenty. He was NOT barking, NOT jumping, NOT destroying something and NOT getting into trouble. In fact, he was sitting, lying down, doing a beautiful stay, giving you eye contact (or trying) and relaxing quietly. But what did you do? You ignored all of those good behaviors. Instead, you were waiting for the dog to make a mistake, so that you could “punish” him. When you yell at him for throwing himself against the glass door (the first excitement he’s had all day), he says, “Well, FINALLY! Something got a rise out of my deadbeat owner. From the attention I’m getting, I guess this is a pretty worthwhile behavior. I’ll choose to do it more often!”
Let’s review. Your dog spends all day making choices that he hopes will result in your attention or some other form of reward for him. You spend all day ignoring all the good behaviors, waiting for the dog to do something bad so that you can “correct” him. You are systematically teaching your dog to choose bad behaviors. Is it any wonder that so many people live with unruly dogs?
When you see your dog doing something good, give him a reward. Interpret “doing something good” as the ABSENCE of doing something bad. If you don’t reward these instances of what you might call “non behaviors,” they will go away and be replaced with a behavior that you probably won’t like. We’re used to a society that leaves you alone when you are remarkable or good, but climbs all over you when you make a mistake. For this reason, “punishment training” makes sense to us. But, do you like to be treated this way (by your boss or spouse)? Would you want your kids’ first-grade teacher to work in this way? Positive reinforcement (rewarding good behaviors with pleasant consequences) works so much better than punishment.
With your guidance (no special training and no expensive training equipment needed) your dog will seek to perform the behaviors that earn him attention and rewards. And by controlling the consequences, you can be sure that he will want to choose the behaviors that keep him in the “reward zone.” You don’t even have to worry too much about punishment. The behaviors that aren’t rewarded will go away on their own. But preventing the dog from choosing unwanted or unsafe behaviors is a smart thing to do! Keep things you don’t want the dog to chew out of his reach. Use a crate, baby gates or an “X-pen” to limit the dog’s access when you can’t be watching him closely. From the dog’s point of view, why repeat something that’s not getting him what he wants? If you think that by not punishing something that you are rewarding it, you are wrong. Ignoring a dog is like a punishment for him. Remember the dog’s formula for making choices:
Is it working? Do I get favorable consequences for doing this? What’s in it for me? Will I get attention? Will I receive a cookie (or a click that means I will get a cookie)? Do I like doing what I’m doing?
-or-
Is it not working? Do I get no response from my owner? No cookie, no praise, no dirty looks, not even yelling or chasing. Do I really want to pursue this behavior when it gets me NO attention?
Basically, the dog’s mind says, if it’s working, I’ll keep it in my repertoire. I’ll do it more often. It may even become my favorite behavior or a habit. If it’s not rewarding, it will go by the wayside. It’s not a behavior worth repeating.
With this formula, it is ridiculously EASY to have total control of your dog’s choices. He makes the correct choice because you manipulate the consequences, providing positive consequences for good behaviors or the absence of bad behaviors. And doing what you can to prevent the dog from choosing incorrectly. Remember, your dog has no idea which behavior is which. Your dog hasn’t a clue that sitting calmly in the corner during dinner is good and begging at the table is bad. So don’t wait for him to form choices based on OUR notions of what is good or bad.
The thing that is so WRONG about traditional training methods is the waiting. While you’re waiting for a behavior you can punish, to teach the dog a lesson, you’re ignoring the hundreds of lessons that could be taught on a day-to-day basis if you were to reward all of those instances of “non-bad” behaviors. And, when you finally give the attention-starved animal the tongue-lashing he deserves for some misdeed, he’s thinking this is the “good stuff.” He doesn’t perceive it as punishment at all, because whatever you do to him, it’s better than the constant ignoring of all behaviors that you have been doing. The dog decides if something is a reward or a punishment, and a dog that only receives attention when he’s wrong, will think that this is a pretty good way to get noticed by the owner. By waiting for a bad behavior, that’s exactly what you’ll get. The dog will exhaust all of the possible GOOD behaviors and get nothing, so he will invariably start trying bad behaviors, and “bingo,” he hits the jackpot. See why so many people end up with “the dog from hell?”
With positive training, that sweet, angelic puppy will remain sweet and well behaved his whole life long. He will offer only the behaviors that have resulted in positive consequences. He doesn’t entertain any thoughts of naughty or unseemly behavior, because you have made sure to reward only the nice and appropriate behaviors and have done your best to prevent him from learning that chewing the couch is fun. With hardly any effort, you have wound up with the dog you deserve. He’s not an outlaw. You can take him with you, and he’ll be on his best behavior. You will hear people say, “Look at that lovely dog! My dog would never be that calm and obedient in public...”
(Send them to this web site!)
