Extinction vs Duration

Lately I’ve seen a lot of cases where a client was trying to extinguish a behavior but instead created a wicked duration with intensity.  The most common behaviors were barking, followed by the jump & hump, and finally the crotch sniff.  Yes all of these behaviors can completely get under your skin and annoy even the best of us, however just because these behaviors are “socially no-no” you shouldn’t treat them different than any other behavior.  Me personally: I like to always prevent the dog from being able to do the undesired behavior and heavily reward the alternative behavior I want.  However, we’ve had cases where we’re not the first trainer the client has gone to; and the advice given?  You guessed it!  “Ignore the dog.”

I’m not saying “ignore the dog” is bad advice.  It’s actually just fine advice.  My concern is that it’s not done right.  Part of the problem is the “ignore” isn’t clearly defined.  When you ignore a dog, you’re trying to not offer any reinforcement at all.  You’re withholding attention.

And I still see people look right at their pet, say a quick “no,” push them away, etc, etc, etc…  The key is to pretend your dog doesn’t even exist.  You can’t see him, hear him, feel him, or even notice he is in the same room no matter what he’s doing! It only takes one little eye contact for the dog to learn he’s getting somewhere.  And the second the dog is given eye contact (or whatever else that tells him you notice he’s there), he’s rewarded.  So think about it.  If you have a dog who’s barking, and you “ignore him.”  He keeps barking, and barking, maybe gets a little louder, or barks with more gusto, or just barks more BPM (barks per minute), and THEN we reward him.  Oops.  Now we’ve created a behavior of barking with duration that will increase in intensity.

What happens is now the dog has learned to just give it his all, and bark like he’s never barked before for two minutes straight.  For some reason I always think of a small child tugging on his mom’s shirt saying, “Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.Mom. Mom.Mom. Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!” until the mom turns around and says, “WHAT?!?!!”  Which has now taught the kid this works.

If part of the behavior plan is going to be “ignore the dog” you need to make sure that no reinforcement happens at all.  The other part to this training (which is unfortunately often left out), is you need to reward what you want the dog to do! Trust me when I say dogs are smart and will figure out exactly what works to get what they want.  And it might just be another obnoxious behavior.  Dogs aren’t given Human Handbooks, just like when you have a baby they don’t come with manuals either.  Just remember, the outcome isn’t changing.  The reward isn’t different.  The way the dog gets what he wants is.  So if your dog is barking at you for attention, you’re not changing the reward.  Think of it more like taking the desired outcome the dog wants and putting it on hold.  You don’t want to just withhold attention until the end of time, or think giving him a completely different reward will work.  That’s nonsense.  (And can actually cause a doggie road rage frustration.  It’s like, if I’m hungry I want food, not a hug – if I’m sad I want a hug, not food, etc.)  The whole reason the dog will be motivated to change his behavior is to get the desired outcome he’s been striving for in the first place, so you don’t change that.  Instead you would give him attention by doing a different behavior.  And in order for the dog to learn this quickly, you have to heavily reward a desired behavior, like sit for example.  So only when the dog sits he gets attention.  You have to be really black & white about it.  No grey area.  It’s vital to remember to reinforce the desired behavior.  Otherwise we’re basically taking away the car keys without any information on how to earn them back.  A trick before doing this is to have about a week of heavily rewarding for sit (or whatever behavior you want to replace the no-no bad behavior with), because then the dog will likely try this behavior first when he learns what he was doing (barking) just doesn’t work anymore.

The light bulb moment goes something like this:

• I want attention!  I’m going to bark.
• Hum… maybe I’m not barking enough! (ie: an extinction burst, which is where we usually fail at the ignoring part and say, “WHAT?!?!!!”)
• Gee… this worked before, now I’m confused.
• I think I’ll try sit.  That was just working a few days ago for other stuff.  Might work for this too.
• <dog sits> (AND WE NOTICE & REWARD)

Believe it or not, sometimes we human beings are so focused on the part we can’t stand that drives us crazy we forget to notice the behavior we actually want.  Sort of like when a puppy chews on his toys we don’t do anything.  But when he has our $500 cell phone, we dish out all kinds of attention & sometimes even teach a fantastic catch me if you can game.  So, make sure you pay attention and teach your dog what does work.  That’s the way to replace behavior.