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HEY!!!
DON'T PUT YOUR
BAD BEHAVIOR ON ME!!
(Parts reprinted courtesy of the American Humane Society)
So you came home from work and the new dog you got from the pound chewed the leg on one of your kitchen chairs. Well, it's time to show her who's boss, right? And you can't have the dog chewing your house up are while you're gone--that just won't work. So you since dog's so much want to please us, the thing to do is to show your displeasure, right? So you get really mad--you holler, and maybe even hit...surely, this has got to get through to her.
To prevent breaking the bond between us and our pets, we need to understand how our pet thinks so we can change his or her bad habits with a minimum amount of confusion, frustration, or damage.
How Your Pet Thinks
Your dog tips over the kitchen trash can whenever he is left alone. You try scolding and shaking him in front of the mess, but he continues to dump the trash, only now he cowers and has that "guilty" look when you arrive home. Well obviously, you think to yourself, he knows he's doing something wrong, right? No, wrong. The "guilty" looks are submissive postures to show you that he knows you're angry, but he doesn't know why. If you dumped the garbage yourself and then left the house, your dog would have that same "guilty" look when you returned. What your dog understands is that he gets yelled at when you come home to find garbage on the floor. He does not understand that it is the actual act of dumping the garbage that upsets you. The same applies to chewing, scratching, or housesoiling.
This is why punishment is such an impractical and often damaging way of training your pet. Punishment makes your pet fear you and sometimes forces him or her to become aggressive, and it does not necessarily make for an obedient pet.
For correction to be effective, you have to catch your pet in the act and the correction has to be strong enough to make him or her stop after only a few times. Animals have no long-term memory for things like "yesterday, I pulled the garbage out of the can and got in big trouble for that, so I better not do that again." They are truly creatures of the moment. Animals are also extremely intuitive and are sponges for our "bad vibes." If you continue to react angrily toward your pet, trust will be broken and the animal's fear of you will take hold.
How To Change Your Pet's Behavior
Even though pets are not people, we do share a preference for pleasant things. Humans and animals alike catch on very quickly if rewarded. If you stop scaring or hurting your pet when she does something wrong and start rewarding her every time she does something right, you will see a definite difference.
Be sure not to make the behavior worse by using positive reinforcement in the wrong situation. If you console your pet while he is acting afraid of people or noise, he will think you are rewarding him for being scared.
As with most pet-and-owner problems, your pet is probably doing a perfectly normal behavior, like urinating or barking, but in the wrong place or at the wrong time. You first have to determine why your pet is doing it and encourage her to it some place else or at another time.
Punishing your dog when he sniffs or licks at the baby can teach the dog to: be afraid of the baby because bad things happen to him when the baby is around; he could become aggressive toward the baby because he fears the baby; or he could do something like barking to get your attention away from the baby and directed toward him. Instead of punishment, try the following: teach your dog to sit and lie down using food rewards or tell him to obey these commands around the baby in return for a chew bone, snack, and/or petting
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