Does your dog do things you don’t like?
To stop your dog from doing the things you don’t like, the first step is to prevent your dog from continuing to do these unwanted behaviors. For example, let’s focus on dogs who jump on your guests.
Every time your dog jumps on a guest your dog’s brain gets better and better at determining that’s what the dog should do when guests come over and telling its body to jump.
Think of your dog’s brain like a map and the tiny neurons in your dog’s brain form the different routes on the map.
Every time your dog jumps on guests the neurons in your dog’s brain that prompts your dog to jump becomes more and more efficient resulting in a more and more defined route, until, it becomes the most obvious route to take: A>B
When that happens, even though there is another path to take from point A that leads to a different outcome “C”, the dog’s brain will by default choose the A>B path because is the most defined.
In terms of our example, this means that when guests come over (A), the dog’s brain will be more efficient and effective at prompting the dog to jump on them (B) rather than prompting the dog to go to its bed (C).
So if you want your dog to stop jumping on your guests, you first have to stop your dog’s brain from traveling that route when guests come over.
The best ways to do this are to crate your dog before guests come inside or have your dog on a leash and away from guests when they arrive unit it is calm enough to greet them without jumping.
Preventing the jumping will actually cause this neurological pathway to erode and you’ll see the path revert back to a less defined route to take.
Now it’s much easier to teach your dog and train its brain to choose the A>C path because the two paths are more evenly matched.
So the more your dog practices doing the thing you don’t want it to do, the more efficient their brains become at doing it and the more likely they are to do it again in the future, even when presented with other options.
The less they practice doing the thing you don’t like, the less likely they are to do it again in the future.
