WEDNESDAY'S WORD OF THE DAY

Wednesday's word is" Behavior."  

Behavior can be defined as the way a person or animal behaves.

This sounds obvious, but when training your dog, one of the most important aspects of training is to focus on what the dog is actually doing without putting a spin on it. Viewing a dog’s actions as “blowing you off,” “dominant,” “acting stubborn,” even being “fearful” or “aggressive” without first objectively viewing the behavior can be counterproductive, since the label we put on it can affect what we do to change or encourage it. 

When analyzing behavior, it helps to remember your ABC’s.  A = Antecedent, what happens before the behavior occurs; B = Behavior, what actually is the dog doing; and

C = Consequence, what happens after the behavior occurs.  Looking at behavior this way objectively can give you insight at what might be going on.  It also helps to keep in mind that what might be triggering the behavior and what might be maintaining it are not always the same.  Only then can you begin to change the behavior. 

But what about feelings the dog may be having? Don’t those matter?  Those are internal states that are hard to quantify.  We know that dogs’ brains *do* show that dogs have emotions, and yes those things are important. But, since we can only infer what the dog might be feeling, the behavior itself is what we mainly have to work with.  Humans aren’t always good at interpreting what other humans feel, let alone another species.  Its behavior change that we are interested in—often if you change the behavior, the emotions will follow. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to engage in techniques such as counter-conditioning, etc. It just means that we need to be careful when we put a label on the dog's feelings, the dog can't verbalize what he's feeling. 

Just one more thing:  When teaching a behavior, the word cue is the least important.  Remember that ad campaign, “The quality goes in before the name goes on.”  Since dogs don’t know English, the word is the least important, they focus more on our body language.  I’ll save a discussion on reinforcement schedules, cueing, shaping, and other things to consider when changing behavior for another day.