It’s a common misconception that dogs have to be “corrected” or shown what not do when it comes to barky and lunge-y behavior on walks.
In reality, dogs can absolutely learn to choose calmer behavior around their triggers using positive training. In fact, it’s the safest and most effective approach.
Dog trainers and behavior consultants help dogs feel better about their triggers and make calmer choices using positive methods all the time.
If you’re used to waiting for your dog to mistake so you can show them it’s wrong. force-free training can require a bit of a mindset shift. Learning to think like a positive trainer can take some getting used to.
The mindset for training your dog effectively using rewards, and the mechanical skills to do so, are skills that anyone can learn. And they are absolutely worth learning.
How does positive training for reactive dogs work?
There are two main ways in which force-free training works for leash reactive dogs:
1. Teaching an alternative behavior
This approach is pretty straightforward: We can often substitute a new, preferred behavior in place of barking or lunging. If we could talk to your dog, we’d be saying: “here – do this instead”.
The really neat part is that by focusing on one, concrete behavior that we DO want, we don’t even have to focus on getting rid of unwanted ones. Barking and lunging will naturally reduce once your dog realizes that a calmer behavior works out way better for them. Pretty cool, huh?
Choosing a behavior
It’s best to choose a behavior that is incompatible – that gets in the way of barking and lunging. We can ask ourselves, what’s a convenient behavior that my dog can’t do at the same time as barking and lunging?
As you can imagine, there are many behaviors that could fit the bill. Here are a few:
- sit and stay while the trigger goes by
- look at me (at the owner, not at the trigger)
- leave it
- look at the trigger without barking
- turn and walk away from the trigger
- hunt for a treat
- tug or chase a toy
Getting and using the new behavior
Once we’ve chosen a desired behavior you’d like your dog to perform, we help the dog understand how to do it, step-by-step, in the desired context (on a walk). The broad strokes of that process look like this:
- Get the behavior
- Name the behavior
- Put it into context
- Add distractions
There’s also a 5th bonus or “extra credit” phase that’s really cool:
5. Reward automatic sits/watches/etc. when the dog notices a trigger
What this looks like is: Your dog sees a trigger, let’s say another dog. Then, without being asked, your dog sits or looks away “automatically”. If your dog jumps the gun in this way, pay them bigtime!
This is an example of “cue transfer”. What’s happened is the other dog in our example becomes an additional cue to sit or watch. If you ask your dog every time to sit when they see another dog, then the word “sit” becomes redundant. Your dog knows what cue is coming from prior experience, so why wait and make it take longer to get their treat?
If you are consistent with noticing and paying these automatic good choices by your dog, you can end up with a dog who does their trained cue on auto-pilot.
Sometimes, you may only know a trigger is nearby because your dog is staring at you, saying, “hello owner, there’s another dog, don’t you see them?”.
Maintaining the new behavior
You will need to continue reinforcing calmer choices to maintain this pattern. If you get stingy with rewards, the old behaviors are likely to resurface. This is because barking, lunging, and staring can be intrinsically reinforcing, or in other words, natural fun for your dog.
2. Changing how the dog feels towards triggers
Another fundamental approach to training for leash reactivity or leash aggression without force is to change how the dog feels.
Dogs are really good at noticing patterns. They notice that when you pick up the leash, a walk is about to happen! Or that when they arrive in the vet parking lot, a not-so-fun time might be coming.
These patterns create associations in our dog’s minds – with all kinds of things, all the time, and whether you and I are conscious of it or not.
And these associations lead to different behaviors that pop out in response. Your dog might jump around and act silly when the leash comes out in anticipation of their walk. Or they might shrink away or protest walking into the vet office.
We can use this same phenomenon to elicit happier, calmer, quieter behaviors when your dog notices a trigger.
If every time your dog sees a trigger, treats appear, then they will start to look at you in anticipation of snacks – even if you never trained your dog to look at you specifically.
With this approach, your dog’s behavior changes because of what the trigger means. Which is that snacks are coming! And when snacks are coming, there’s no reason to bark, lunge or stare at the trigger anymore.
Real-life reactivity training
When applying these two approaches to real life distractions on walks, things can get a little more complex. It’s especially important to implement a plan thoughtfully and with good technique when your dog’s reactions stem from fear or anxiety. But, understanding these two approaches empowers you to go forth knowing that it is possible to make progress with your dog’s reactive behaviors on leash without the use of punishment.
The key is having the right plan for your dog, an educated pro in your corner, and plenty of chicken in your treat pouch.
