Manage It!: Hacks for Improving Your Dog’s Behavior

Part 1

The What and The Why

Chapter 1

What is Management?

As a dog trainer and behavior consultant, I often say to new clients: I’m a dog trainer, not a magician. I don’t have a magic wand to solve this problem! This sentiment aims to set realistic expectations for dog guardians embarking down the road of training. We as dog trainers want you to know that lasting change takes time and requires commitment: there is no such thing as a quick fix. But what if I told you there actually is such a thing as a quick fix or hack, and it’s what this book is all about!

This book dives into a concept that in the dog training world we call management. Simply put, management focuses on preventing unwanted behaviors from occurring by altering parts of the environment that prompt a dog to behave in a way that you as the owner/ guardian find unpleasant, such as barking at the mail carrier every time they approach your house. This means you are using the environment to increase the likelihood of the behavior you want (no barking) and, more importantly, to decrease the likelihood of the behaviors you don’t (barking). The dog training industry doesn’t have an exact agreed upon definition for management. It’s not a scientific term, but it is rooted in the science of behavior—more on that later. For now, think of management as using your dog’s environment to your advantage when trying to change their behavior.

Not only is there a lack of agreement among dog trainers on the role of management, it is not exactly a concept used and understood by most of the general public, and that lack of understanding can cause confusion. Most people think of the term management as something that happens in the business world. While there are a wide variety of opinions as to what makes a good business manager, they almost all agree it is the ability to influence other people to do what is best for the entire team. Sounds like dog training to me!

I once gave an entire two-hour webinar on the subject of management and when someone joined thirty minutes late, having missed the introduction, they wanted to know when I was going to get to the actual training information. I get it, if you don’t have background or additional context, solutions that focus on management instead of training can seem confusing or maybe even pointless, but management is not pointless—in fact, it can be life changing. This is why I am here writing an entire book about it.

In this book you’ll find two main parts: the first being background about what management is and how it ties into training and what dogs learn, and the second part being separate chapters focused on specific behavior challenges. Both parts carry equal importance when it comes to understanding how to change your dog’s behavior. Let’s dive in.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

Management is meant to create a life where you immediately see less unwanted behavior from your dog. By rearranging your dog’s environment, you remove the cycle where the unwanted behavior occurs and you have to repeatedly jump in to stop your dog. With proper management in place, the unwanted behavior doesn’t even happen in the first place.

You might be thinking, Well, if it really is as simple as preventing the unwanted behavior, I would have done that already! Management doesn’t occur as a solution to a lot of dog guardians because they don’t see dog behavior the same way that we do as professionals. Therefore, they don’t recognize opportunities to prevent unwanted behavior. So, many people immediately turn to what makes the most sense to them, which is to try to change the behavior after it has occurred. The dog jumps up on the counter to search for food, the owner yells at the dog to get down, but the dog has already snatched a tasty morsel and their behavior of counter surfing will likely be repeated in the future.

Some people feel apprehensive that management is not as good as proper training and that it is like a band-aid. This worry is usually the result of society’s arbitrary and unrealistic standards when it comes to raising and training our dogs, so kudos to you for being here to learn an alternative perspective.

Some real-life scenarios

To help you fully understand what management is, let’s talk about some real-life scenarios. Don’t worry, I’ll deep dive into these behaviors in future chapters. For now, I want to make sure we are on the same page about what management is. Remember, management focuses on changing the environment, not the dog directly. Putting a lid on your trash can to prevent your dog from getting into the garbage is an example of management. Another would be putting your shoes in the closet if your dog keeps chewing on them, or putting your dog on a leash when guests come over so he doesn’t jump up on them. You might have noticed that with each of these examples you are not actually teaching your dog not to go into the trash, or chew on your shoes, or jump on guests—you are simply preventing it.

The reason you want to prevent the unwanted behavior from occurring is that every time your dog engages in the unwanted behavior, they are getting better at it, and training progress is being slowed or set back. This is true for even the most in-depth training plans that are focused on directly addressing the behavior and its root cause. No matter how much training you want to do, it will be very hard to change your dog’s behavior without also doing management.

Unfortunately, by the time most people get around to implementing management to undo undesirable habits their dogs have gotten really good at. The other, and actually best-case scenario, is to proactively use management to prevent unwanted habits from forming in the first place, leaving room for shaping desirable behaviors instead. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Chapter 2

Management and How Dogs Learn

I need to confess something to you: while I say that management is easier than training, management actually is training. Dogs are always learning, and management influences what a dog will learn. Behavior science—specifically the science of learning, known as behavior analysis—informs the best practices in the dog training industry. We know a great deal about how behavior works; therefore, we know a great deal about how to change it. What we understand about how behavior interacts with the environment is called operant conditioning. The laws of learning are occurring whether you are aware of them or not, just like the laws of gravity. The laws of learning support the use of management, so it’s important that you understand the basics. Once we get through this chapter, we’ll dive back into all the ways management will be beneficial for you.

The ABCs

Behavior, what a dog does, is influenced by antecedents and consequences. Antecedents are the events, actions, or circumstances that happen before a behavior, and consequences are what happens during or after the behavior. What happens in the environment before, during, and after the behavior are known collectively as the conditions under which behavior occurs.

Most qualified dog behavior professionals agree that the best training practices include arranging antecedents to prevent the rehearsal of unwanted behavior—what dog trainers call management—while using positive reinforcement to teach acceptable replacement behaviors. This book will help you to recognize all the ways you can arrange antecedents to quickly and easily live a more harmonious life with your dog.

Two important things to know: behavior does not occur in a vacuum, and behavior always occurs for a reason. What this means is that something in the environment (an antecedent, or set of antecedents) cues your dog’s behavior. Think of when a dog barks at the mail carrier. The conditions of the blinds being open allow the dog to see outside. The mail carrier walking to the house is the antecedent that cues the barking behavior. There is also a consequence to that behavior that will cause it to occur more or less frequently.

Every time your dog engages in what you consider to be an undesirable behavior, that behavior brings with it a consequence. When the consequence increases the behavior over time, we say their behavior has been reinforced. Positive reinforcement means that when something is added to the environment following a behavior, it increases the likelihood that the behavior will occur again in the future. Positive reinforcement is often associated with giving a dog treats during a training session, but toys, playtime, and praise can also be reinforcement options if your dog enjoys them and they increase the behavior over time. In addition, the environment can be rich with reinforcers for your dog, including opportunities to engage in chewing, sniffing, and destroying. Often when nuisance behaviors are occurring frequently, a negative reinforcement contingency can be at play. Negative reinforcement means that the consequence of removing something from the environment increases the likelihood that the behavior will happen again in the future. For example, when the mail carrier approaches your house and your dog barks, the mail carrier leaves. To the dog, the consequence of barking may have been the removal of a stranger approaching the house. The dog doesn’t know that the mail carrier was planning on walking away anyway!

If a behavior is occurring, especially if it is occurring consistently, it is being reinforced in some way—even if you can’t identify the reinforcer. Behaviors that get reinforced get repeated. When you use management to prevent the rehearsal of the unwanted behavior, you are also preventing the reinforcement that was keeping that behavior strong. Let’s use an example: Your dog jumps up and puts their front paws on the counter. Many trainers call this counter surfing. There are a few outcomes that typically occur. One option is that you run over to your dog, put your hands on them, and guide them off the counter, maybe saying bad dog! while you do it. For some dogs, this attention and physical interaction could actually be something they enjoy! Something they want more of! They learn that jumping on the counter gets your attention. In this case, your effort to stop the behavior may have accidentally strengthened, or reinforced it.

Another outcome of the counter surfing behavior would be that your dog jumps on the counter and grabs the sandwich you’re making. This could happen 1 out of 100 times they jump up, but that one single delicious win could reinforce their counter surfing enough that the behavior continues. Given that we are humans with imperfect behavior ourselves, this outcome is more likely than we think. Despite our best efforts, we will inevitably leave something out on the counter. Your dog learns: A-ha! I just need to try harder, or more often, and I will score something else tasty one day! This, as you can imagine, is reinforcing.

One other possible outcome is that your dog simply gets to scavenge and sniff while their front paws are on the counter. Scavenging is an innate need that dogs have. The act of sniffing and scavenging is going to be enjoyable for most dogs, so even if they don’t actually get any food when they counter surf, the opportunity to scavenge could still reinforce their counter surfing behavior.

Additionally, many people’s initial reaction is to yell at the dog, interrupt the behavior, and attempt to teach them that what they are doing is bad or wrong. In other cases, people might set up a bunch of metal trays so that when the dog jumps up all the pans fall down, and the dog is so scared that they don’t try it again. Others reach for more intense interventions, like correcting the dog by yanking on their collar, or spraying them with water. These are all intended to be aversive consequences following the behavior that decrease the chances the counter surfing occurs again in the future. An aversive is something that causes your dog to behave in a manner to escape, avoid, or prevent. Punishment relies on aversive consequences. Some might not think of these outcomes as punishment due to society’s constructs around the topic, however the scientific definition of punishment is any consequence that decreases the likelihood of a behavior happening in the