One of the most common pieces of dog training advice?

Ignore the problem.

Now, I’ve done my share of ignoring problems in life. But what gets me about this nugget is that it’s often misunderstood as a tenet of positive reinforcement-based training: Reward the good and ignore the rest.

But… that’s not a training plan.

Sometimes, your dog does something annoying and it works for them. Whether or not you like it, something in the environment is probably going to reinforce the annoying behavior.

Take my dog, Poppy. She often barks when people are making noise in the hallway near our door.

Poppy in her natural habitat.

If I try to ignore her, she’s probably going to keep barking—and no one particularly likes a barking dog in a Manhattan apartment. Especially if that dog belongs to a dog trainer.

But let’s say I do try to ignore it.

Here are a few things that might happen:

• Someone else yells at her. The result is she gets attention, which she generally likes. Barking has probably been reinforced.

• I happen to go into the kitchen (which she associates with treats—why else would I go there?). She thinks barking caused me to do this. Could lead to barking.

• The barking makes the scary guy in the hallway go away, and she congratulates herself for a job well done. Next time the scary guy is in the hallway, she’ll know what to do!

• I don’t acknowledge the barking but I send her to her crate and give her a treat → now barking leads to snacks. This is the only option that could result in less barking… we will come back to this scenario it.

Another thing: Even if I—and everything else in the environment—turned to salt statues every time she barked for a year… on day 366, one of the above things could happen. And that’s all it takes.

A variable reinforcement is powerful don’cha know!

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Stop Barking!

There are lots of different kinds of barking, in lots of different environments, and each dog is an individual, dammit. So I’m not going to pretend there’s one fix.

But if you’re dealing with a barking dog, here are a few places to start:

1. Change the feeling
If your dog is barking out of fear, pair the trigger with something good.
Guy in the hallway → treats appear. Barking is often caused by fear. If you can get rid of the fear, you can often get rid of the barking. “But aren’t I rewarding barking?” you ask. Answer: Yes. But you’re also creating a new association that can change the behavior, and that is the more powerful kind of conditioning that is going on here. (Also: You probably are only going to be rewarding a few barks — see point 3 for more on this).

2. Lower the intensity
Expose your dog to the trigger at a low intensity and build up slowly. This might mean setting up decoys in the hall or using sound recordings. Basic desensitization. As above, less fear should cause less barking.

3. Reinforce a smaller version
Reward after one bark. This is sometimes called the “Thank You For Barking” protocol.
One or two barks? Usually NBD. Ten? Not ideal.

4. Change the environment
Door sweep. Sound machine. Tell people to not ring the doorbell. Fewer triggers = less barking.

But these all sound like they’re going to take time!” you say. “I bet there are faster ways to stop barking!”

Sure. You could shock give her an electrical shock when she barks, or spray her with a water bottle or put a collar on her that mists her maw with citronella or that makes a high pitched noise.

But, you shouldn’t do these things.

Why not? Well, we bred them to be our little alarm systems for thousands of generations. So, you could go for the quick fix, even it is maybe possibly sort of sadistic (Heck, they’re just dogs! They’ll love us no matter what, amirite?!) or you could take a little bit more time to figure out how to use your brain to train without pain.

Don’t be a dick to your dog! 🙏😂🐕

Also! I wanted to mention that, I have a couple things coming up if you want to join me in real life:

—> Thursday April 23rd (TODAY!): It’s World Book Day! Come by Boris and Horton on East 12th St and Avenue A in Manhattan! It’s trivia night! I’ll be there from 5:30 to 9, answering training questions and to sign copies of How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science. (Trivia starts at 7)

—> Saturday April 26th: I’ll be doing a free Q+A and signing books at the Olly Olly Market at a pop-up market at the Starrett-Lehigh Building at 601 W. 26th Street in Manhattan.

—> Wednesday April 29th : I’m going live at 5:30PM ET on Substack to answer training questions and drink wine in front of a live audience. It’s free! Join me!

—> Thursday October 8th: I will be presenting at the inaugural CANIS Conference in Chicago! My talk is called: The One Where We Learn About Conditioning — Helping Clients Understand The Science of Training Without The Jargon. There’s a great lineup of speakers. I’ll share more about this soon, but wanted to make sure to give it a mention as the Early Bird rates (for both virtual and in-person attendees) ends May 2.

More soon.

Thanks for being a dog person.

Annie

IG: @annie.grossman

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