Shaping Puppy Behavior

Do you reward your puppy for misbehaving?  You might say “Of course not!  Don’t be ridiculous!”  But what you may not know is that you may be rewarding your puppy whether you know it or not.  For instance, when you are teaching your puppy to sit, it sits and you reward it with a treat, praise and possibly pet it.  What about when your puppy jumps up on you or a guest?  Do you tell it off, push it down or look at it?  If you react in any way you are inadvertently rewarding your puppy.  A puppy will repeat any action that gets rewarded, whether good or bad.  So when you are looking at your puppy, talking to it (yelling at it to get down) or touching it, you are giving your puppy attention and that’s what your puppy wants.  In the training world, we call that negative reinforcement.  Your puppy is still getting attention from you so the likelihood of the behavior happening again is highly likely.

To get your puppy to stop jumping up on you simply ignore it.  Yes, ignore it.  Don’t talk to it, don’t look at it, don’t touch it or in any way give it attention.  Any behavior that doesn’t get rewarded will go away.  Puppies don’t want to waste their time if there is no reward in it for them.  Instead, reward your puppy for what I call the “Four on the floor” rule.  When the puppy has all four paws back on the floor, reward it, praise it and tell it what a good puppy it is.  For help with your puppy call me at the clinic.   Connie