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How We Help Cause Our Dogs To Misbehave
Often, dog owners inadvertantly cause or exacerbate their dogs' behavioral problems.
Here are five primary examples:
- Insufficient daily exercise, stimulation and play
Exercise is so important, not only for our dogs health and well-being, but in in the prevention of numerous behavioral problems.
Problem behaviors resulting from lack of aerobic exercise include:
- Hyperactivity
- Destructive chewing
- Hole digging
- Excessive barking, howling, and vocalizing
- An extreme neediness for constant attention, petting, etc.
- Getting into mischief a lot (ie: garbage raiding, picking up or "stealing" owner's things, jumping up on counters, getting into "stuff", playing "catch me if you can", etc.)
The solution is constructive outlets for the dog's natural energies:
- 1+ hours of leash walks daily (backyard exercise is NOT enough!)
- 30+ minutes of aerobic exercise every day (except during extreme weather/temperatures)
- Play dates with other friendly dogs
- Playing fetch, retrieving a ball or toy.
- Games (such as "go find", "hide 'n' seek")
- Sports and activities (Frisbee, Agility, Flyball, Schutzhund, SAR, etc.)
- Obedience training
- Trick training
- Swimming, hiking
- Lack of early and on-going socialization
Please see our article on "Socialization".
Problem behaviors resulting from under-socialization include:
- Shyness and timidity
- Fears, phobias and "spookiness"
- Fear-based aggression
Preventive steps:
- Begin interactive socialization with a variety of unfamiliar people (children too) very early on.
- Expose immunized puppies to a variety of environments and locations, including urban areas.
- Socialize fully immunized puppies with other appropriate (easy-going, friendly) puppies and dogs
- Isolation, and insufficient companionship, interaction and affection
Dogs are both social animals and pack animals. Most dogs living in isolation most of the time, whether in a garage, basement, junkyard,
or outside one's home in the backyard, experience extreme boredom and loneliness. These unfortunate dogs are subjected to a virtual jail sentence. A life of isolation and neglect is no life for man's (and
woman's) best friend.
Problem behaviors resulting from lengthy periods of isolation include:
- Hyperactivity
- Destructive chewing
- Hole digging
- Excessive barking, howling, and vocalizing
- Garbage raiding, jumping up on counters, getting into "stuff"
- Trying to escape from home, property or backyard
- Extreme neediness for attention (nudging, pawing, jumping, whining, and misbehaving in order to get noticed)
- Failure to provide their dogs with obedience training
- All dogs, like all people, deserve an education. Obedience training helps to strengthen the bond between a dog and its owner, and develops communication, trust, teamwork, and mutual respect. Humane obedience
training is in fact one of the kindest things we can do for our best buddies. Please see our article "Why Train Your Dog?"
- Inadvertantly reinforcing undesirable behavior
- When I do an in-home behavior consultation, I get to see the behind-the-scenes interactions between a dog and their human family. One of the most commons things many dog owners do to make their dogs
problem behaviors worse, is to inadvertently reinforce undesirable behaviors with lots of attention (even negative attention), while often overlooking their dog's good behavior (ie: dog lies down quietly and
gets ignored... dog jumps up on owner and suddenly gets lots of attention and interaction). While we've probably all heard the saying "Catch your dog in the act of doing something wrong", few
dog owners realize how much more effective our training would be if we would just do a better job of catching our dogs in the act of doing something RIGHT (and instantly rewarding the behavior)!
Problem behaviors resulting from inadvertantly reinforcing undesirable behavior include:
- Barking at owner
- Jumping up on people
- Picking up owner's things (such as socks, shoes, etc.) and playing "keep away".
- Harsh handling and physical abuse
Problem behaviors resulting from abuse and harsh handling include:
- Distrust of owner
- Hand-shyness
- Defensive biting
- A cowering animal with a broken spirit
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