A common question I get is around the purpose of management..
- “isn’t it avoiding?”
- “isn’t it giving in?”
- “isnt it a waste of time and a lot of effort?
Think about it in a human world
You are with a 2 year old in the supermarket. You walk down the aisle with toys in it whilst you are walking to the tills. The child immediately starts to say “I want that” and becomes upset – crying and yelling when you say no.
What would you do? The simplest approach is to not walk down that aisle with a small child who lacks the emotional development to understand why they can’t have it RIGHT NOW. What wouldn’t you do?
Another example – you have hurt the ligaments in your knee by playing football and it really hurts. You have been advised to rest, elevate your knee, take painkillers and ice it for short periods.
What would you do? Hopefully follow the medical advice! Maybe then get some physio and do your exercises to help this improve and prevent it happening again. What wouldn’t you do?
Both these examples show management – preventing the situation from getting worse, or being repeated in a situation which is not appropriate for teaching.
Its not directly teaching. It is avoiding the things that make it worse or repeating the situation without the opportunity to teach for it. Yes at times it takes planning and more effort, but boy is it worth it!
What does management look like for dogs?
Example: your dog gets really excited when a familiar person comes into your home – jumping up, mouthing, barking and grabbing.
Management tactics could be – dog is behind a stair gate in another room (to keep the distance and prevent the physical behaviour), dog is on a lead away from the person arriving, dog is in the garden or out on a walk.
None of this teaches, but it does prevent the physical behaviour happening. Separately to this, we have to add in teaching – what should the dog do instead? We dont start trying to teach in this situation, we teach for this situation…
Note also that none of this management changes how the dog is FEELING. Yes your dog behind a gate will still bark, jump at the gate and display the behaviour you dont want. However, the management in this case is to prevent the physical behaviour at a person (for safety and to prevent inadvertent reinforcement). It does not change the excitement, frustration or fear (or any other emotion) the dog is feeling. We have to teach for that!
Witness the situations and plan forward
- Make a list of the situations in which your dog demonstrates behaviour you don’t want – be really clear about if this is for specific people, dogs, prey, toys etc and list these all separately as we have to plan for and teach the difference versions.
- Plan – with those you live with – what will you do to manage and prevent the situation? What measures do you need to put into place?
- Decide together what do you want the dog to do INSTEAD of this physical behaviour – stand calmly, move away, look at you etc. Sometimes sit is not the answer as lots of dogs find being still when emotional really hard and can heighten further.
- Plan out the way you will teach this. Remember start without any distractions, teach the behaviour solidly in that location and then slowly build up distractions
If you go too quickly, the behaviour you are teaching will start to break down so you will know!
