Attention driven behavior

Prevent

• Meet your dog’s needs for physical, social, and mental stimulation through structured enrichment.  

• Make sure your dog has water, is not hungry and does not need to go potty – the best of us can forget once in a while and upset tummies happen.

• Make sure everyone is on the same page, family and guests reinforcing the behavior you are trying to address will be frustrating for you and confusing for your dog.

What to do

• When you plan to offer an activity, wait to engage your dog until they are settled, calm or offer polite behavior.  If you allow your dog to settle on their bed before you pick up the leash, instead of picking the leash up when they are dancing around expecting a walk, they will learn to settle and wait for you to invite them over time.

• Pay attention to the behaviors your dog does BEFORE they escalate -intense eye contact, chin rest, sitting, pacing. Meet their need when you see the early warning signs, so these more appropriate behaviors will become stronger. 

• Keep your dog from starting the display by using treats or toys tossed away from you on the floor. Use gates, crates or leash to manage your dog around guests as needed while you are working on training. 

• Ask for simple known behaviors (attention, touch, sit) to replace the behavior. 

• Use a calm voice, and calm attention to reinforce appropriate behaviors.

• Reward polite behavior with things your dog wants in the moment: petting, going for a walk, starting a game of fetch/tug or offering a chew.  You do not need to have treats all of the time.

• If you occasionally miss the early warnings or your dog was too worked up to be polite, you can choose to meet their need in order to help them calm down. You can also choose to walk away/leave the room until they settle, then return and meet their need after they have settled down.

• Dogs practicing these behaviors are not trying to be the leader or dominate you, they are trying to meet a need and do not understand your expectations.

• A tired dog may not be a good dog, but a satiated dog is a content dog!  Physical exhaustion should not be the goal of a good enrichment plan.  Adjusting the balance of the enrichment offered is usually more effective than increasing duration or intensity, which may trigger jumping, mouthing, and barking.

• Attempts to correct these behaviors ultimately give the dog attention (yelling, squirting, pushing them off) and will further reinforce the behavior. 

• Sometimes crossing your arms and looking away will work, but in many cases, they will just escalate to more intense behavior. Dogs are usually more persistent than us.