How Do You Use Positive Reinforcement To REDUCE An Unwanted Behavior?

For many people who want to train their dog using positive reinforcement methods, the idea of rewarding your dog for behaviors you want to see persist makes absolute and total sense.

For example, you ask your dog to sit, and if he sits, you reward him with a treat in the hopes that he'll reliably sit when you ask him to do so again in the future. But for many, at least conceptually, it's harder to understand how to reward your dog for behaviors you want to see go away, like jumping, biting, and of course, barking.

On the latest episode of The Family Pupz Podcast, we asked the founder of Positive Partners Dog Training LLC, Brianne Harris, how she conceptually explains to her clients how positive reinforcement training methods will work to decrease a behavior before training begins.

Her answer is FANTASTIC.

Check out her answer above!

To listen to the rest of the conversation with Brianne, check out the podcast episode below:

[TRANSCRIPT BELOW]

Family Pupz: For many people who want to train their dog using positive reinforcement (and I think a lot more people are wanting that very specifically), I think the idea of rewarding your dog for behaviors you want to see more of, or to see persist, makes absolute and total sense.

For example, I ask my dog to sit. And if he sits, I reward him with a treat, in the hopes that he'll reliably sit when I ask him to again in the future, right?

But I think for a lot of people, at least conceptually, I think it's harder for them to understand how to reward your dog for the behaviors you want to see go away, like jumping, biting, and of course, what we're going to be discussing today, barking.

So obviously, you need people to understand what you're conceptually doing before you can actually tell them, “Hey, do this with your right hand” or, “do this with your left hand” or, “hold this” or, “hold that”.

So how do you find yourself conceptually explaining how you use positive reinforcement methods to decrease a behavior like barking so that you and your clients are at least on the same page during the training sessions?

Brianne Harris: Yeah, so there's a lot! I can give you a really long answer to that question.

But, you know, really, when I am working with a new client, and most of the people that I work with are, you know, really busy people. They might have kids. They're professionals. They've got a lot going on.

And like you said, they want to train their dogs in a kind way. They're just trying to do what's best for their dog.

And they like the idea of positive reinforcement. But like you said, they don't understand how that applies to problem behaviors.

So I'm doing a lot of new pet parents. I live near a college town. So I'm working with a lot of college students and young adults, and this is their first dog and they want to do everything right, which is really fun to have a blank slate to work with.

So I always start with explaining to them that positive reinforcement isn't just giving our dogs cookies, you know? When we're training in a positive way, or with rewards-based training, we're not just rewarding them for doing the right thing. And we're not just focusing on, “sit!”, “down!” and, “stay!”.

It's really, kind of, a whole philosophy of working with our dogs.

And the first thing that I tell all of my clients, and it's in their packet that they get, it says “start here!”.

And number one is making sure that the dog's needs are met.

And you can't train anything, if your dog has an unmet need. If your puppy is exhausted, you are not going to be able to train them not to bite you. And you have to scream. And not to run around the house like a toddler having a tantrum, because yeah, they're exhausted and they're too tired, and they just can't make the choices, just like I get too tired and don't make good choices.

So it starts there.

And then the next thing that, you know, we talk about how dogs learn by association and how dogs do what works. And if you make the right choice really fun and rewarding, they're going to make that. And then they always say, “Well, what do we do when they mess up?”

And that's where I explain, it's really important that we make sure that our dog has the correct information moving forward, because mistakes are gonna happen. It's just a part of life. And we're humans, and we're going to say no, even if we've been told that's a bad thing. And you know, there's nothing morally wrong with saying no to your dog, as long as you're not being really mean about it.

But just saying no isn't enough information.

So, you know, if my dog is chewing on the coffee table, and I tell him, “no, don't do that!” Okay, he has no idea what to do next, because “no” is not a behavior that he can do. That's not a cue and it's not a command, I didn't give him any information.

So he might go and find something else to do, because all I did was make a vacuum, and nature hates a vacuum, so he's gonna fill that hole with something else and that might be chewing on my barstool. LOL

So instead, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to stop my dog in a kind and positive way. And then I'm going to redirect him to the appropriate thing.

I might say, “Hey, please don’t chew on the coffee table, but here is a treat-filled Kong”, or “here is your…” - my dog loves his gorilla chew. It's actually a wood chew, because he was pulling sticks out of all of the bushes. So he clearly needed to chew on wood so I bought him a dog chew that's wood that's designed for that.

Or I might tell my dog “um, why don't you come settle down with me?” or, “maybe you need a nap, let's go to your quiet space”.

So if my dog is doing something that I don't want them to do, it's important that I stop him kindly, and then give him that additional information.

And when I'm making the right choice easy, and the wrong choice, not so easy to do, they're going to keep doing the right thing.

And another big part of positive training is, you know, management.

It’s problem prevention, by setting my dog up for success and making sure that they're not in a situation where they can keep practicing the wrong behavior because, “practice makes permanent”.

So I want to help them be successful by helping them make the right choice easy, and we want to make what we consider the wrong choice, a little bit harder to do.