A Simple Way To Think About Your Dog's Behavior

On a daily basis, dogs are walking around looking for things to enjoy. They’re also avoiding things that they do not enjoy. If something is painful or scary it’s probably best to avoid it. Or, if certain behaviors cause the pleasant thing to go away, it doesn’t make much sense to do those behaviors.

Dogs are amazing, but also, their behaviors are quite simple. If something works, they’ll do it again. If something doesn’t work, (they may try a lot if it’s worked in the past) they’ll stop doing it.

Sometimes we overcomplicate why dogs are doing things. Honestly, regardless of why it’s happening, we need to focus on preventing our dogs from getting joy for the behaviors we don’t want to see. We also need to focus on providing awesome consequences for the behaviors we want to see more of.