ABCs of Dog Training

When life presents those WTF moments immediately my brain switches to first breathing and then assessing the environment thinking through "The ABCs of Behavior".   This has helped me triage situations and reduce risk. Because of my profession and business my l live dog training. Its a constant in my life.

Behavior analysis was introduced to me in the online course Living and Learning with Animals. The instructor,  Dr Susan Friedman PhD was fantastic at breaking concepts down and always providing examples that made sense. She is a wonderful individual and teacher. Taking Dr. Friedman's' online course LLA was one of the many courses that helped shape me into the trainer I am today.  Others I recommend,  Dr. Sophia Yin, Dr Ian Dunbar, Dr. Patricia McConnell, Dr. Michael Fox, Mark Beckoff, Dr. Karen Overall, Dr. Raymond Coppinger, Sue Sternberg to name a few. I highly recommend if you're interested in dog behavior, dog training or just learning and understanding our furry friends please look up any or all of these Canine Scientists and experts who have dedicated their lives to research and sharing about the world of the dog.

Dr. Friedman does an outstanding job teaching Applied Behavior Analysis in her online course Living And Learning with Animals.  She explains, and I’m paraphrasing here, “we can't stop behavior – any behavior we can’t stop it because the animal is getting something out of doing that behavior. The consequence is rewarding to the individual. What we can do is instead is to help the individual learn to change their behavior by changing the environment. And so, by changing the environment we essentially change the consequence of the behavior changes.  We will unknowingly reward unwanted behaviors i.e. jumping on us because our dogs are soooo cute, barking at us because its annoying and we’ll look at them, walking away from another dog because our dog wants to jump on them or bark at them and we are embarrassed, etc etc.  I’ve shared the “Attention Seeking Behavior Report Log” to use as a means to reduce and eliminate unwanted behaviors however you have to make sure you’re consistent.  Consider the next time your dog presents an unwanted behavior and think about how you want to handle it.  The way we approach ABC of Behavior is,

1. first evaluate what's the B (B=behavior) that we want to help the individual (dog) change?
2. Then consider what in the environment we should try changing A (A=environment) to help change the
3. C=Consequence or outcome.

 
Life can be crazy and sometimes things are thrown at us or present themselves.  However breaking behaviors down into manageable pieces and focusing one behavior at a time will help.  Sometimes there’s just too much going on and we are emotionally affected. In those times we are completely overwhelmed by the situation we are in remember to BREATH.  This will help us to focus and THINK rather than become REACTIVE (sound familiar people???).  We are verbal individuals unlike our canine friends however we are affected by our environment and emotions just the same.  

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