When I began apprenticing as a dog trainer, almost a decade ago, I had a million questions for my new mentor, Laura Monaco Torelli, and most of them started with, “What do I do when . . . ”
I imagined any professional dog trainer would just have a mental catalog of predetermined responses for various situations: When the dog does this, you should do that. If he does that, you do this.
But instead, the answer to almost all of my questions, to my frustration, started with some variation on “Well, it depends.”
It turns out this answer is so common in dog training that it’s sort of an inside joke—at one seminar I attended, Nicole Wilde joked that she should just have a T-shirt made.
It would be a couple more years before I really understood this answer, and I’m not sure I truly, deeply grokked it until my interest in dog behavior led me into the broader field of applied behavior analysis.
That’s where, finally, I learned that what we think of as a single behavior—let’s use puppy biting as an example today—can actually be many different behaviors, and that each one must be viewed in context of its environmental conditions.
Two main kinds of "conditions" are:
Antecedents: signals in the environment that tell the animal a given behavior is likely to produce reinforcement now.
Also, broader conditions that influence how likely the consequence is to be satisfying at this time; e.g., if your puppy has been resting for hours, consequences involving access to a potty area, chewing or shredding opportunities, or play with you might be more valuable.
Consequences: outcomes that make the behavior more or less likely the next time the same circumstances arise. Behaviors that produce desired consequences will be repeated, and antecedents that predict desired consequences for a given behavior will become cues for those behaviors.
To change behavior, we have to adjust these environmental conditions.
This is why dog training “tips” and even whole “methods” sometimes fail. General advice, by nature, cannot take into account the specific context in which a behavior occurs.
Yeah, yeah, you say. I get it in theory—but my puppy is biting my hand right now, and it hurts like a motherf@#%er. I have to do something, don't I?
First, let me make one thing clear:
Most puppy biting is normal and developmentally appropriate. It will happen. If you don't screw things up too badly, it will usually diminish with age. This is when good general tips do come in handy, like making sure your puppy is getting enough sleep, getting them comfortable in a crate or pen so that you and they can have a break, giving them lots of legal ways to use their mouths, not sitting on the floor with a puppy who's not sleepy, etc.
But you can do all that and still end up teaching your puppy that it's really fun to bite your sleeves or feet or that biting makes you get off your phone or stop trying to futz with her toes. This goes for behaviors like barking too--also normal, a behavior that comes with the "dog" package, and also one that dogs can easily learn lots of uses for if you're not teaching them other ways to get their specific needs met.
The good news is that with some practice, assessing why a behavior might be occurring--what need is being met--and figuring out what to change doesn’t have to take long.
First, identify the behavior you're wondering about. Be specific--not "attacks me," for instance, but "puts her teeth on my arm."
Then, as if you were examining a filmstrip frame by frame, look at what typically happens immediately before and just after, in similarly objective terms. For example:
ANTECEDENT: Holding a leash in my other hand, I move my hand toward the puppy’s collar.
BEHAVIOR: The puppy puts her teeth on my arm.
CONSEQUENCE: I pull my hand away.
Now we can make a hypothesis—an educated guess—about whether, if these conditions are repeated, the behavior is more or less likely to happen again next time. It can be helpful to rephrase the above terms as “when,” “if,” and “then”:
WHEN Holding a leash in my other hand, I reach toward the puppy’s collar
IF the puppy puts her teeth on my arm
THEN I pull my hand away.
PREDICTION: When I reach for the collar, the puppy will continue to put her teeth on my arm in order to get me to pull my hand away.
Then we might do some closer investigation:
One, what other behaviors is the puppy doing at the same time as putting teeth on your arm? Is the puppy bowing, wiggling, jumping, stiffening, freezing, growling? Is the tail tucked or spinning like a propeller? Growling in this type of context is often used to create distance, but if it's combined with a wiggly body and propeller tail, it may be part of play.
To figure that out, let's look at that consequence more closely: how does your hand get pulled away? For instance, is it whipped back in a way that resembles a tug toy flying through the air, which might provide a purpose for chasing with the mouth?
Then, what does your puppy do next, and what's the outcome of that behavior? Does she chase and jump at your retreating sleeve, causing you to flail your arm around like the aforementioned tug toy? Or does she shake off as if wet and walk away from you at the first opportunity, attaining distance or maybe avoiding something that the reach predicts, like you fumbling to find the D-ring with your leash clip or the loud firework sound she heard last time you went outside? These contextual observations may give you more clues as to why your puppy is biting (and doing the other behaviors) when you reach toward her.
The specific information you have gathered should inform your next moves. If the issue is loud noises outside, you may need help from your vet, a professional trainer, or both to make a plan to help your puppy get mmore comfortable with loud noises.
If the puppy has learned that biting your arm produces tug or stops your groping clumsily at her collar, you can start to teach a simple alternative behavior for her to do so that you can put her leash on without all that annoying fumbling and then go do fun things.
Here's one way I like to do that:
WHEN I reach toward the puppy’s collar
IF she looks forward
THEN I give a treat
PREDICTION: The puppy will increasingly look forward more when I reach toward her collar.
The beauty of this is that she can't look forward and bite my arm at the same time.
Usually I teach the forward look by pairing my reach toward the collar with a treat that appears where the dog would be looking if facing forward, repeating until my reach prompts the dog to look forward in anticipation of the treat. (For the nerds: you can think of this as a classical conditioning procedure performed with an eye to what operant behavior is likely to emerge--and get reinforced--between the reach and the treat.) Then I add in attaching the leash between the forward look and the treat, so that the leash attachment is also paired with the treat. Ultimately the forward look can become a way for me to gauge if the dog is prepared for me to attach the leash.
Here's an example (done imperfectly and refined since, but still probably helpful):
There can be lots of nuances to this simple procedure. For instance, if the puppy is extremely uncomfortable being reached for, we might have to break it into super small steps, only reaching partway toward the collar at first, or even only slightly moving that hand. The treats in such a case might also need to be something this particular puppy receives with great joy, not just something that came in a bag labeled TREATS that they'll eat if nothing else is available. The timing of the food is important too--it should appear after the little bit of reaching. If we're using food to lure the dog in but then reach too abruptly, we may make the puppy suspicious of food.
If we do it right, in addition to the forward-looking behavior getting reinforced, the puppy’s motivation to make my hand go away in the first place is probably going to get weaker. I'm no longer fumbling, and my reaching or leashing, or small steps toward it, now predict a favorite treat. If the puppy's motivation was tug, we can add play with a toy after the leash goes on.
And over time, the puppy is likely to learn that me reaching for the collar predicts me clipping the leash on, which predicts a walk. Once the routine is learned, treats for looking forward during leashing can usually be faded out in favor of the naturally occurring reinforcers related to walking.
Now let’s look at another puppy biting scenario that commonly occurs when people are advised to "redirect" the puppy to a chew or toy.
WHEN I am working on my computer
IF the puppy bites my arm
THEN I reach for a toy
PREDICTION: The puppy will bite my arm more often when I am working on my computer.
The first time your puppy bites your arm here, she probably isn’t requesting a specific item. But behaviors that start with one function can easily acquire another. Sitting is not the behavior dogs naturally do to get food. Yet most pet dogs, even if you’re barely making an effort to train them, will somehow learn to sit to acquire food. Think about that—what animal, in the wild, sits to get food?
Your solution should acknowledge that a puppy needs lots of legal stuff to do with her mouth. So you can still direct her to a toy, but timing matters: Take your arm out of play right away, without a lot of fuss, and then watch for a moment or two of some other behavior that you like better. Then present the toy so that it not only satisfies the puppy's need to chew or play but also reinforces that bit of more desirable behavior.
But then, try not to get in this position again! Give your puppy the toy as soon as you sit down at the computer. Anticipate and meet the need or desire before she has to “ask.” (For more, see my blog post Redirect or Preempt?)
Limit the ways in which she will be able to "ask." For example, you could confine her to an exercise pen near you during computer time, with plenty of legal options for chewing and play, but zero access to your pants. Think of the pen as training wheels: she can ride the bike, but she can’t fall over. When she’s developed good riding habits, you can take the training wheels off.
From there, you can teach easily your puppy something like:
WHEN I am working on my computer
IF you sit next to me
THEN I will give you a toy
Note: This is a place where standard "tips" can really go awry. The behavior here doesn't have to be a sit—and maybe it shouldn't be. Sitting might be hard for your individual dog, because it hurts his hips or because he's too excited or because the surface near where you use your computer is slippery. Standing, lying down, or doing an adorable head tilt might be acceptable or even preferable ways of making this polite request. For more on how to select alternative behaviors, see my blog post Training With the Grain.
There are as many behaviors as there are reasons to behave. Figure out what need your dog is expressing, and teach her the easiest way to get it met.