I'm very often asked if we are reinforcing a dog for being afraid, for barking, for being aggressive. And yes, it is absolutely possible to make all of those things worse if we use food or toys or praise incorrectly.

Cue/mark/reinforce right? Ask our dog to do something, say 'yes' and feed a treat. That is how we build behaviours.

Training emotions is different. We use food or toys or praise to CREATE a better emotional state, THEN we think about behaviours.

It gets complicated though as the underlying motivation of your dog matters.

Frustrated Barker EXample

If your excited dog barks and lunges because they want to go see another dog, you might pull out cheese or a favourite toy to distract them, to stop them. And if that is all you do, yep, you might get more barky-lungey behaviour.

Step 1 is interrupting the behaviour with the least amount of behavioral and emotional 'damage' possible. We don't want to use threats or pain as that can have fallout in our relationship with our dog and it can create negative associations with whatever they were excited about. Sometimes we need that cheese or tug toy. Ideally, away from the excitement, we work on some low arousal positive interrupters like my NOYB game.

Step 2 is lowering arousal. Teach your dog to calm down in the presence of that exciting thing. This is going to look different for every dog.

Step 3 is thinking proactively. How can we use the stuff we did in Step 2, with a little more distance, to proactively teach our dogs to calm down around the other dog/deer/person they wanted to go see?

Other challenges

• Fear Reactivity - Similar to above, except this time we focus on confidence and agency first. Then we work in the other steps.
• Separation Anxiety - We use food to build positive associations with separation and very slowly build on that.
• Stimulation Seekers - This one is a little different. We use calm energy and little to no food to help our dogs learn how to settle. A lot of the stimulation seekers need LESS. not MORE, but they still need to be taught how.

Behaviour Modification is different

Changing emotional behaviour works differently. We aren't training behaviours as much as we're changing emotions. Food isn't always a reward for something your dog did. It's a tool to help them regulate.

Energy/arousal matters. If we bring too much energy, we can accidentally teach our dogs that the hard moment is a big, exciting event. If we don't bring enough energy, we can't reach our dog.

The goal is to understand what your dog needs, meet them there, then help them regulate their emotions.

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