Dog owners are really starting to understand that their own behavior is part of the process of behavior change in their dogs. Believe it or not, loving dog parents sometimes take the idea of their own need for learning a little too far. Prospective clients often tell me, “I know – you have to train me, not the dog!”
Your Behavior Matters
It’s encouraging when people understand that their behavior matters. There’s more to the dog training equation, but the humility of admitting that you may not be doing everything exactly perfectly is a big first step. Certainly, not everyone gets that.
Pitfalls and Clues
Even though I see evidence of people understanding that they need to change their own behavior, I still often hear, “How do I make my dog stop _____?” Readers of this blog know that we don’t train dogs to stop doing things; we teach them to do something else instead.
Sometimes, people carefully describe a behavior problem: “Every time I ____, my dog _____.” They are so focused on what they don’t like about the dog’s behavior that they can’t hear their own word choices describing the change they need to make to modify the dog’s behavior. If they stopped doing ____, their dog might not do _____.
“And,” Not “Or”
We are not training the humans instead of the dogs. We’re changing the behavior of both species. We definitely train dogs! People who successfully train dogs behave in new ways in order to get the behaviors they want from their dogs. They plan ahead to reinforce the behaviors that they want to see more of. The behaviors they reinforce become reliable. They can count on these behaviors to occur regularly. These are the behaviors than can be useful to themselves and thus, to their dogs, as they pursue a life together.
Modifying Behavior: Management is Not Enough
On some social media trainer groups, I see trainers giving advice about how to manage dogs around problem behaviors. The advice doesn’t describe management as a precursor or support process to teaching a different behavior. These trainers simply tell people to prevent the dog from doing the behavior, with no follow-up about what alternate behaviors to reinforce.
Management Can Travel the Wrong Path
I believe this focus on management alone can lead to fortified fencing and more separation between owners and dogs as they put more and more physical barriers in place. The potential consideration of training devices that screech at, spray, or shock dogs increases when owners see how much trouble they have to go to in making sure baby gates and doors are closed, gates are locked, and dogs don’t have access to the areas and thus the behaviors their parents don’t like. Management that only blocks behaviors, that doesn’t build routines including desirable behaviors, doesn’t build partnerships. That kind of management builds psychological walls between dogs and owners.
Counter-surfing: An Example Behavior
I recently read a discussion in which multiple trainers advised a dog owner who described a problem with counter-surfing. The advice was management for the foreseeable future, including:
(1) never put food on the counter
(2) never allow the dog in the kitchen
Management is a First Step
Please don’t misunderstand: the first step in a good training plan is preventing the behavior you don’t like from occurring. You can’t quit smoking while enjoying a cigarette! Similar to modifying bad habits for humans, we have to prevent the dog from doing the undesirable behavior while we build another behavior for him to do instead. This, my friends, is one of the deep, dark “secrets” of animal training – Training “Secret” #1. It’s also one of the ways the human dog trainer (yes, you are your dog’s trainer!) can change their own behavior so that the dog can more easily change his. Management fits usefully into a training plan but cannot stand on its own.
While working your management plan, you have the opportunity to put further plans in place. Teach your dog what to do instead of putting his paws up on the counter to gather up crumbs or even a whole meal. While your ingenious management plan renders your dog incapable of counter-surfing, you can give him treats and opportunities when he is doing behaviors you like. Your dog learns to make the behavior choices you want to see in the future by practicing them continuously, without the interruption of doing behaviors you don’t want him to do.
Management Provides Learning Opportunities
Management, or prevention of undesirable behavior, is not meant to be lifelong. It is required as part of a training plan, applied at the beginning and for as long as it’s needed. A good management plan actually starts helping you build the behaviors you want from the beginning. It also helps you plan the proofing process for the new behaviors you’re teaching your dog. In the case of counter-surfing, you’ll see in a moment how a management plan begins to shape routines for your dog.
While you’re using your management plan, you’re learning along with your dog. You learn where his strongest temptations are. You’ll see which behaviors appear to have been reinforced in the past. They are the ones that you see most often and with the greatest intensity. It will also be easy to observe some things that cause your dog concern and those precursor behaviors that indicate he’s on the path to putting his paws on the counter. Training “Secret” #2 is that it’s your job to observe your dog’s behavior and learn to predict what comes next so you can make a change at that point, before the dog engages in the behavior you’re trying to change.
Training Incompatible Behaviors
Dog Training “Secret” #3 is to look for behaviors that are somewhat opposite to the undesirable one. Focus on behaviors that your dog cannot do at the same time as putting his front paws up on the counter. As always, these behaviors are so tiny that they don’t seem like behaviors at all!
Learning Useful Things
To counter-act counter-surfing, you’ll want to see behaviors that involve the dog’s front paws touching the floor. Walking calmly, standing still, sitting, and lying down are great first choices. These four behaviors are also desirable in many other situations you’ll encounter with your dog, so reinforcing them in the kitchen is a start to many more desirable behaviors!
You can set your dog up for longer-lasting, more advanced alternate and desirable behaviors that are incompatible with counter-surfing, like lying on a mat or dog bed and chewing a bone. Leaving the kitchen is also a reinforceable choice he can make. Walking out is different from keeping the dog out of the kitchen. When your dog walks out of the room, he’s making an observable choice that cannot coincide with counter-surfing, even though the choice to counter-surf was available to him. This may be his first time to make the choice you want to see, so celebration is in order! Blocking him from entering the kitchen simply prevents him from being able to make the choice to counter-surf.
Learning for You
You do not have to choose an individual behavior or even a select few. The choices your dog can make are nearly endless, as long as he’s not starting the process of counter-surfing. This includes raising a paw or heightening himself in any way to get closer to putting his paws on the counter. Practice your observation skills. Notice how your dog tenses his muscles, raises his head, or starts to lift a front paw that indicates his next step is counter-surfing. Then teach yourself to notice when he’s prepping to do one of the behaviors that keep his front paws on the floor. What does your dog look like when he’s about to sit, lie down, or stand still? Is he looking toward the counter, or at you?
Practice With Your Dog
Training a new set of behaviors is a partnership activity and should be fun for both of you. Set up one or two short training sessions every day to walk with your dog into the kitchen, through the kitchen to another room, or have him hang out in the kitchen while you put the dishes away or some other small task. Don’t start with food on the counter. The only food around should be the treats in your treat bag that you’ll give your dog when he makes a good choice.
At times when you are preparing food in the kitchen, give your dog a stuffed Kong or a delicious bone to chew in a particular spot in the kitchen, designated by a dog bed or mat.
Follow Your Management Plan At All Times
Management is an essential part of your training plan! When you’re not available to actively train with your dog, prevent him from going into the kitchen. During the training period, keep the counters clean. Don’t mess this part up! Discipline yourself to help your dog do the correct behaviors by not offering him the opportunity to do the ones you don’t like.
Don’t Let the Wrong Behaviors Be Reinforced
Remember, every time your dog is reinforced for putting his paws up on the counter, it’s another repetition that offsets your focused training for him to do just the opposite! Reinforcement may be simply the chance to smell the aromas of foods that were recently on the counter, so be careful. You can’t “not eat sweets” while you’re having a candy bar, and your dog can’t “not counter-surf” while enjoying the activity of having his paws up on the counter.
Reinforce the Behaviors You Want to See
“How do I make my dog stop counter-surfing?” You make it very reinforcing for him to do opposite behaviors.
“When I _____, My Dog_____.”
“Every time I let my dog go in the kitchen, he gets up on the counter and tries to steal food.” This one is a little more challenging, because it seems simple to just not allow him to go into the kitchen. That’s certainly an option for some people, and if it works for you, go for it. But again, management is not enough. Sooner or later, management will fail.
Some people don’t have doors on their kitchens and that can be a challenge. Still others can’t be sure what their dogs are doing when they are not in the same room with them. You can put your dog in his crate or other safe, comfortable confinement area, or you can have him go outside to play in your safely fenced yard while you cook or clean up after meals. There’s nothing wrong with these management options. But you need to be training regularly. Management will fail.
Management Always Fails
What if you move? What if you visit a friend, stay in a vacation rental, or otherwise encounter a situation in which it’s more difficult to prevent your dog from being in the kitchen? We won’t even talk about those bad days when you don’t discipline yourself to follow your own rules, or when a family member has not been fully enrolled in the training program and lets the dog into the kitchen.
That’s the problem with relying purely on management to prevent your dog from performing behaviors you don’t like. Some may argue, but I believe management will always fail at some point. When it does, your dog will perform the behavior you were working so hard to prevent. He’ll do it so fast it might make your head spin! The behavior will be reinforcing for him at some level.
The behavior is still just as strongly a part of your dog’s repertoire as it was when you began, but the antecedent environment and ability to perform the behavior were not available to him. When the environment changed and allowed the behavior, he performed it.
Learning How to Change Behavior
Your dog didn’t do it to spite you, he did it because it’s what he does. If you’ve ever tried to change a habit, you know that if you don’t have an alternate behavior in place and the opportunity to engage in the ingrained habit pops up, you will do it, post-haste. It’s the same with your dog.
What if, every time your dog came into the kitchen with you, you sent him to his assigned mat or dog bed and gave him a bone to chew? Every time. Would you be surprised on that day when you walked into the kitchen to prepare a meal and your dog went over and laid down on the mat, looking at you in expectation of his bone? Don’t be. While using your management plan, you created that behavior for him. The counter-surfing behavior is not “gone,” but it has begun being over-powered by a different behavior that has been reinforced in the same environment where the counter-surfing occurred. Plus, counter-surfing has not been enabled.
Preventing Typical Undesirable Dog Behaviors
Knowing dogs like to eat and like to solve puzzles like searching for food in various places, I deliberately teach my dogs alternate behaviors like the ones mentioned here before they ever get up on the counters. A kitchen counter with a loaf of bread or something better is a glaring example of a super-fun puzzle that includes a little physical exercise!
Feel free to ask if any of my dogs have ever made the choice to counter-surf anyway, after being taught to do other things instead. The answer is yes, but training gave me the opportunity to immediately ask for, and get, any of several alternate behaviors.
Developing this set of skills makes it look like I have deep and abiding relationships and open communication with my dogs, which I like to think that I do! The truth is that we have a long history of practice and preparation that allows my dogs to make good choices at every turn and allows me to give cues to help direct their behaviors when needed. This is why I’m such a proponent of recognizing that your dog is learning all the time, from the moment you meet him or bring him into your home.
Training Classes: Not for Solving Problems
The most frustrating thing I hear potential clients say is, “He’s a perfect dog 99% of the time! But he _____.” They’ve often spent a few years with a dog at this point, although some people see problem behaviors sooner. Either way, the behavior(s) in question are typically ones they allowed to develop from the beginning because they didn’t know how to tell where the slippery slope was heading. This is a disheartening description for a good trainer to hear because the dog’s parents believe we can focus on just the problem behavior and “fix it.”
In reality, there is usually a cluster of dog behaviors that all stem from a set of human behaviors that the parents are not even aware of. Educated dog trainers are required to explore the dog’s and owner’s lifestyle to discover the areas ripe for adjustment in order to help. Trainers often must help dog owners open their eyes to what’s going on because it may seem foreign to the dog owners.
Learning “What You Don’t Know You Don’t Know”
“We don’t know what we don’t know” is a concept that sits at the root of many problems we encounter in life, and dog behavior is just one of these areas. Training “Secret” #4: Dog training classes are most helpful before behavior problems develop, because they help you learn “what you don’t know you don’t know.” That opens up a whole new way of being your dog’s partner.
Counter-surfing is only one of a million behaviors that can be modified thoroughly, but it works best to think ahead and prevent it. That’s why it makes such a nice example for this descriptive article about how to look deeply into a problem, define it in detail, examine its functionality, figure out how to prevent it, and identify a few incompatible behaviors to teach your dog to begin to replace it.
Learn to think through, predict, and prepare for all of your dog’s behavior choices. (Reading his body language correctly is a good place to begin.) Practice the behaviors you want to see, immediately, regularly, and in the smallest details. Help your dog become the dog he is capable of being, the dog you dreamed of when you chose to bring him home and start right now.
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