Problem Solving

Long-Term Rules

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The most common problems owners have with their dogs is teaching, and correctly maintaining, long-term rules. Long-term rules govern behavior outside of giving your dog verbal obedience commands like “sit”, “down” or “heel”. These rules govern everyday behaviors, and are often established to solve problems. In turn, these rules typically help to create manners.

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Of course, the rule “never jump on counters” makes sense for a counter surfer, as it’s a non-negotiable absolute: concrete and all-encompassing. It is knowing how to effectively teach and maintain these rules where most owners are at a loss.

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Solutions to Behavioral Problems

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The solution is almost always to first teach the concept of what is wrong, and in turn, the desirable alternate behavior. In other words, jumping on counters is wrong, and remaining on all four feet is correct. Once rules and alternate behaviors are clearly understood conceptually (an essential piece), a system of resourceful rewards, and personality-appropriate corrections for disobeying, can be implemented.

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Unique Rules: Manners with other Dogs

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Many dogs enjoy playing, or the companionship, of other dogs yet can cause them problems. These problems range from just irritating other dogs to eliciting aggression. The solution is to teach conceptually, or bring awareness to, which behaviors are undesirable. These undesirable behaviors might be jumping on others dogs, pawing at them, biting their necks, licking their mouths and dominate posturing. These behaviors are not bad in and of themselves, they only need to be corrected when they repeatedly cause problems.

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Aggression (towards dogs, strangers, family members including resource guarding)

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Aggression requires correcting wrong behaviors, and establish desirable behaviors, but is far more complicated. Dog aggression is driven by thoughts which drive the aggression, and is usually directly connected to a trigger. Given the associative mind dogs possess, solutions are not as simple as just teaching the concept of not showing aggression, then correcting the aggression and rewarding the dog when not aggressive. The thoughts themselves which drive aggression must be changed. We call this ‘getting in the gap”. Influencing that space between experiencing the trigger, and having the instantaneous thoughts associated with it. This is one of our specialties, and regularly correct dog’s with very severe problems with aggression.

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For more information on aggression, see our pages on Aggressive Dog Training (our program to address aggression), Understanding Dog Aggression as well as blog articles on aggression.

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