Dog behaviour traning requires a lot of patience and understanding of dog body language. It also requires a knowledge of different training methods.
Before seeing a dog behaviourist, it is important to rule out any medical factors that might cause or contribute to problematic behavior. This will help the trainer treat the problem effectively and more quickly.
Habituation
One of the most important elements in raising a confident dog is socialization and habituation. Socialization involves exposing your pup to people, animals and environments and habitsuation is the natural process of acclimating them to the sights, sounds and smells that are part of their everyday environment.
Over time, dogs become accustomed to the sight of cars driving by, the sound of footsteps and even the smell of their owner’s perfume. However, if a dog is exposed to these things with a fearful or aversive response it can lead to behaviour problems such as jumping on people, barking at traffic or pulling on the leash.
Extinction
Extinction is a common dog behavior modification strategy used in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). It involves withholding reinforcers that maintain a target behavior to reduce its frequency.
For example, if your dog begs for food at the table, you can stop feeding them and they will eventually learn that the behavior no longer pays off. However, if you occasionally pet them when they beg, you’re reinforcing the behavior and ensuring that it will continue.
Extinction requires time and patience from both you and your pup, but it can be an effective behavior change technique. Just make sure you understand how it works and avoid common mistakes that can ruin its efficacy.
Desensitization
Desensitization involves slowly exposing the dog to a feared stimulus at a low “volume”. The goal is for your dog to notice the thing that makes them nervous but not experience any full-blown fearful response.
Desensitisation can be used to help dogs overcome a range of stimuli including loud noises (e.g. thunderstorms), veterinary clinic handling, and painful procedures such as injections. While tailored training programmes by an accredited behaviourist are ideal, a simple desensitisation program can be implemented by owners based on veterinarian recommendations and guidelines. Bulldogology offers more information on this!
It is important to monitor your dog’s reactions during these sessions, and to make sure the exposures are brief and frequent. Desensitisation can also be combined with counterconditioning to improve outcomes.
Counterconditioning
The aim of counterconditioning is to change a dog’s emotional response to their trigger by predicting something they like when the feared thing happens. Usually tasty food treats are used to create this positive emotion. This method is long-term and needs to be worked on at the right level of your dog’s trigger threshold to prevent stress and anxiety.
Always work under-threshold (no barking or lunging) for this training and it is best done with a leash and basket muzzle to ensure safe control. It is also important to train them the behaviour they should be showing in the presence of their trigger and work through levels of intensity until they are fluent.
Flooding
Flooding is a dog behaviour training technique that can be effective in overcoming some fears and phobias. However, it is important that this method be used under carefully maintained conditions in order to prevent stress and anxiety.
Some people, including trainers like Cesar Milan, advocate using flooding to help fearful dogs. This involves forcing the dog to confront a frightening stimulus until it becomes “flooded out” and stops reacting. Unfortunately, this is often a traumatic experience for the dog and may actually exacerbate its fear response. It also reinforces negative associations with the feared stimulus and feelings of helplessness. This can lead to future behavioural problems.
Avoidance
Avoidance is a step in the process to help dogs control their impulses. If dogs are trained to avoid a trigger they will not have the big unwanted reaction when triggered.
Dogs that are not taught a behaviorally balanced battery of prosocial coping responses can become fearful, aggressive, and/or disobedient, and they may be at risk for developing separation-related disorders. Compared to secure owners, persons with high avoidance scores are less likely to take their dogs on walks and spend time with them in public spaces.
Persons with low agreeableness scores are also less willing to invest in their pets, such as for veterinary care and training, and they are more likely to abandon their dogs. Anxious-aggressive dogs are more often abandoned, which increases the risk of suffering from neglectful and abusive environments.