Changing your behaviour is crucial if you want your dog's behaviour to improve because dogs are highly sensitive to their environment, including the actions and emotions of their guardian. They will mirror your behaviour, energy levels, and emotional states. By altering how you interact with your dog, you can create a more positive, consistent, and understanding environment, which is essential for effective training and behaviour modification.
Why It's Important
Consistency and Clarity: Your dog thrives on consistency. They understand and respond better when rules and boundaries are clear and consistently enforced. If your behaviour is inconsistent, it can confuse your dog, leading to uncertainty and potentially undesirable behaviours. For example, if you sometimes allow your dog on the couch and other times scold them for it, they won't understand what's expected.
Guidance: Your dog looks to you for guidance and cues. By being calm, assertive, and consistent, you provide a stable framework that helps your dog feel secure and understand their place in your relationship. If you're anxious or overly permissive, your dog may feel unsure or become overly assertive, leading to unwanted behaviours.
Balanced interactions: Changing your behaviour to focus on balanced interactions can encourage better behaviour. Rewarding good behaviour with treats, praise, or playtime reinforces that behaviour, making it more likely to be repeated. For instance, if you want your dog to stop jumping on guests, reward them for sitting calmly instead of scolding them for jumping.
Energy and Emotional Influence: Dogs are attuned to your emotional state. If you're stressed, angry, or anxious, your dog can pick up on these feelings and mirror them, possibly leading to stress-related behaviours like barking, whining, or destructive actions. Maintaining a calm and positive demeanour can help your dog remain calm and relaxed.
Overexcitement, Anxiety, and Overprotection: Being overly excited, anxious, or excessively protective can inadvertently create unwanted behavioural habits in your dog.
For example:
Overexcitement: If you greet your dog with high energy and excitement, they may become overly excitable, leading to hyperactive behaviours like jumping, barking, or difficulty calming down. Dogs mirror this energy and may have trouble settling, especially in stimulating environments.
Anxiety: If you're anxious, especially in situations where your dog might feel unsure (like meeting new people or animals or being dropped off at the boarding facility), your dog may pick up on your nervous energy and become anxious themselves. This can manifest as fearfulness, aggression, or avoidance behaviours.
Overprotection: Overprotecting your dog can lead to dependency and insecurity. For example, if you constantly shield your dog from new experiences or other dogs, they may become overly reliant on you for comfort and lack confidence in unfamiliar situations. This can result in clinginess, separation anxiety, or even aggressive behaviour when they experience a perceived threat.
Examples of Changing Your Behaviour
Training Consistency: If you're training your dog not to beg at the table, ensure you never give them food from your plate, even occasionally. Consistent behaviour from you will teach your dog that begging doesn't result in rewards.
Calm Guidance: If your dog is reactive to other dogs during walks, maintain a calm and assertive posture. Avoid tightening the leash or showing anxiety, as this can increase your dog's tension. Instead, practice calm, controlled walking and redirect your dog's attention with commands or treats when encountering or seeing other dogs.
Reward-Based Training: Move from using punishment to using balanced and cue marker training. For example, if your dog barks excessively, instead of yelling, reward them when they're quiet with a treat, affection, tickle or toy play together with a marker word linked to it. This approach encourages them to associate quiet behaviour with positive outcomes alongside a verbal cue.
Body Language: Be aware of your body language. Dogs interpret your gestures and postures as part of communication and they are very good at it! If you're trying to teach your dog to stay off the furniture, ensure your body language is clear and consistent with this rule. Stand up straight and use a firm voice when giving cues, rather than slouching or using a soft tone.
By changing your behaviour to be more consistent, positive, and clear, and by managing your emotions and reactions, you can effectively communicate with your dog and set them up for success. This approach helps foster a strong, trusting relationship and encourages your dog to exhibit the behaviours you desire while avoiding the development of unwanted habits triggered by overexcitement, anxiety, or overprotection.
Remember you are a mirror to your dog, whatever behaviours, emotions and state of mind you are in your dog will most likely try to copy and match you.
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