I primarily get called to help clients work with behavior problems. Many people, and even some trainers, think that means teaching the dog to sit, down, heel, recall, and/or stay. You know… obedience! In all honesty, most behavior problems have underlying ‘emotional’ issues and obedience alone isn’t the answer. If your dog is barking at someone, which is most often a ‘distance increasing’ behavior which comes from the place of fear, we need to address that emotion first, not suppress it. There IS a difference between training and behavior modification! Not all trainers understand behavior, and in all fairness, not all people who work with behavior problems understand training complicated skills. But again, dogs with behavior problems need to have the reason for the behavior addressed so that any ‘obedience’ training can result in a dog that isn’t compromised by negative emotions. Even the way obedience is trained can affect your dogs’ emotions. If your dog is working to avoid something (leash correction, bop on the nose, knee in the chest, stimulation from an electric collar for example) then the behavior that is learned will carry with it the emotion that goes along with that avoidance. Behaviors trained by reinforcing what you want means your dog wants to do the behavior to GET something instead of doing it to AVOID something. This often requires you to minimize the opportunity for your dog to practice the behaviors you don’t want until you can replace it with something you do want! Much like an alcoholic… you don’t want them to go to the bar every day if you want them to stop drinking. And you need to address the underlying emotional reasons for them drinking before they can change!

Addressing the emotional aspect, along with perhaps teaching some incompatible behaviors that also carry with them a positive CER (Conditioned Emotional Response), you can change behavior instead of just suppressing it.

Karen Deeds, Certified Dog Behavior Consultant - IAABC