training
Making Life a Little Simpler Anna Bradley discusses the importance of management and making environmental changes as part of any training or behavior change plan, highlighting a recent case of a dog struggling to adapt to his new home
© Can Stock Photo / vauvau
© Can Stock Photo / gabrielabertolini
It can be difficult for dogs to find grip on shiny or slippery floors, exacerbating any pain they may already feel in their muscles or joints
A dog may growl if he is in pain or does not want a person to approach him; growling is an important part of canine communication
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ciations involved. All of this is of course excellent, because successful resolution of behavior issues must involve a careful and strategic analy sis. However, we also need to bear in mind the use of preventative strategies. This is what I want to focus on in this article because I feel sometimes these can be overlooked as simplistic or overly obvious, or even associated with a feeling of failure or letting the dog win, so to speak. But in actual fact, environmental management is a huge part of successful training and behavior modification and a huge first step that none of us should overlook.
s professionals, when we talk about training or behavior change, we’re often talking in great depth about psychological techniques that will transform dogs’ emotional processes, thereby altering the way they think or feel about situations, triggers or events that might currently be, for example, anxiety provoking or stressful. We may look at scenarios that evoke feelings of frustration or excitement and then look at ways to slot in a newer and more appropriate way to behave and promote that rather than inadvertently reward symptoms we don’t want to continue. In fact, we often spend a great deal of time dealing with thought processes and strategies, some of which can be difficult to formulate and apply to individual circumstances. Even before we do this, we will have been working on unravelling the sometimes very complex reasons why dogs behave as they do and the chains of reinforcement and asso
The owners found that he would growl quite a lot ‘for no reason’ when he walked across the hallway and kitchen floor towards them. Both areas were hard surfaces. It was obvious to me that the dog found it difficult to grip the floor and that this exacerbated the strain on his hips.
Environmental Adjustments Environmental management is a formative approach I include as part of every behavior modification plan. We want to be sure we are analyzing the exact situational context of each behavior or training concern, in cluding where it happens, what the features of the location are, who is present (people, other animals), sensory stimulation, equipment used, what the handler is doing etc. Essentially, we’re taking a snapshot frozen in time of what happened, when it happened and how it happened, and noting every aspect. Once we’ve done that and before we think about intervention in the form of behavior modification, we’re going to think about what we can do about all those factors in the dog’s immediate environment that might be contributing to the issue – and change them for the better.
BARKS from the Guild/November 2021
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