One of the trickiest parts (and best parts!) of dog training is that dogs are excellent at connecting dots. It’s one of the ways dogs learn. Sometimes they connect dots that we don’t want them to connect and that’s where clients can run into trouble and well-intentioned training backfires.
I often work with clients who are doing what looks like the right things. They are using cues, rewarding good behavior, not punishing and staying calm. Yet the unwanted behavior keeps getting worse. It doesn’t stay the same – it gets more frequent or more intense. That tells me, the behavior is being reinforced somehow. Maybe not intentionally but it is.
When this happens, I can usually uncover a hidden culprit, called a behavior chain. A behavior chain happens when a dog links two behaviors together because one reliably leads to reinforcement. The problem is that sometimes the first behavior in the chain is the one we do not want. Let me show you how this plays out in real life.
Case Study 1: The Puppy Who Learned The Wrong Lesson
Puppies are hard and people think training a puppy is easy. That’s a nope!
I’ve had many puppy clients come to me frustrated about their puppy’s jumping for attention. Like many people, they had been taught to ask for an alternate behavior. But, the puppy was still jumping.
Here is what was happening:
- Puppy jumps on the client (unwanted behavior)
- Client asks the puppy to sit (wanted behavior)
- Puppy sits
- Puppy gets a treat
On the surface, this looks solid. Sitting instead of jumping is a common recommendation, and the puppy is sitting.
But here is the key question:
What did the puppy actually learn?
From the puppy’s perspective, the sequence looked like this:
Jump, then sit, then treat. Over time, the puppy did not learn that jumping does not work. Instead he learned that jumping is how the game starts. Jumping became the first step in a reliable path to food. That’s how reinforcement works. It makes behavior go up.
What did the client see before they contacted me? More jumping. Faster jumping. Jumping with enthusiasm. Not because the puppy was being stubborn or rude, but because jumping had become part of a successful behavior chain.
Case Study 2: The Alert Barker Who Got Paid For Barking
Another client had a dog who took his watchdog duties very seriously. Every sound in their apartment hallway, every delivery person, every neighbor closing a door triggered alert barking saying “Hey! Did you hear that noise? I just want to make sure you know about this delivery guy!”
My client’s approach was well-intentioned:
- Dog barks at the hallway noise (unwanted behavior)
- Client calls the dog to her (removing the dog from the unwanted behavior)
- Dog comes
- Dog gets a treat
Again, the dog was technically doing something right. He came when called.
But what he learned is a different story: Bark, then come, then treat. And the result was an increase in barking. The dog learned that barking was very profitable. Barking reliably led to being called over and paid. From his point of view, barking was not a mistake. It was step one to his paycheck.
In both cases, the dog was not ignoring training. In fact, the dog was following it perfectly and doing what was asked. Behavior chains form when an unwanted behavior consistently comes before a rewarded behavior and the dog figures out that the first behavior is required to access the second. When that happens, often the unwanted behavior gets stronger, not weaker, because it is reinforced in the long run.
“Reinforcement drives behavior.”
This is one of the risks of doing DIY training. You can pretty easily unintentionally reinforce unwanted behaviors and then it’s harder to undo, because there’s a longer history of reinforcement and it working for the dog.
The goal is not to stop reinforcing good behavior but is to make sure the right behavior is what opens the door to reinforcement. Training is not just about what you reward but about the order in which things happen.
If you need help, grab your one on one session with me here! And, be sure to sign up for my free weekly newsletter so you don’t miss out on free tips, videos, personal stories, client successes and more!
If you would like to support my efforts and make a contribution to allow me to continue to create free resources like my blog and all of my other free resources, you can Buy Me A Coffee!
Happy training!
Proud Partner Of The Farmer’ Dog. Get a special discount on your first box.
(This post contains affiliate links. If you click the link, I earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you.)
