Dr. Yin's Animal Behavior and Medicine Videos
What Do Dogs Do All Day When Humans Are Away
What do dogs do all day? This foster Jack Russell Terrier has a reputation for being naughty. He is an escape artist, neighborhood nuisance, and has lived in at least 3 other homes. He tends to countersurf only when people are away, or in a different room, even after he's gone through the Learn to Earn program, had thousands of rewards for more appropriate behavior and no opportunity to countersurf for several weeks. See how Dr. Yin adds a well-timed booby trap to his training plan and how elaborate the set-up has to be in order to work. The timing has to be spot-on as does the element of surprise. Then the set-up has to remain consistent until ONLY the new desired behavior (of staying on the floor) is a habit.*
This particular foster dog has a history of jumping on counters when people are not looking. He jumps up whether or not there is food because in the past, he's been accidentally rewarded on a variable schedule of reinforcement—meaning sometimes he finds food and other times he does not. As a result, the activity has become extremely fun, like gambling in Las Vegas. Most likely, even if he didn't find food on the counters or stove for several months, he'd probably continue jumping up because even the searching part of the behavior is fun. Most people deal with this type of problem by grabbing their dog and rubbing their nose in the stolen food found on the counter thinking that this will teach the dog to a lesson. What it often teaches the dog is— my owner is psycho, "he randomly grabs me and shoves my nose in stuff," or if the owners catches the dog in the act, it teaches the dog, "Hmm. Next time I better wait until the humans are not home."
The first step in dealing with this type of situation and with counter-surfers too is to work on general self control exercises and reward the dog a lot for sitting politely and having all feet on the floor. More specifically, I generally put such dogs through my version of the Learn to Earn Program (see Perfect Puppy in 7 Days, chapter 5 for a step-by-step photo-illustrated instructions) so that within several days to a week of earning every bit of their daily meal, kibble by kibble, for desired calm behavior, they have a strong history of rewards ONLY for desired behavior and have not had opportunities to be rewarded for unwanted behaviors (such as being pushy for attention or food or blowing owners off). As a result, they are developing a habit of keeping all four feet on the floor instead of jumping on the counters. This plan alone, when done correctly, stops counter jumping (and counter surfing) in over 50% of dogs. It wasn't enough for Woody Two-Shoes though. One option here, would be to just keep him out of the kitchen at all times. In this house it would mean he would have to spend most of his day locked in a crate since he can jump the 6 foot backyard fence and since the house has an open floor plan.
The purpose of this video is to show an appropriate way to use booby traps. For aversives to work right and have the least chance of an adverse effect, they must be perfectly timed and the punishment must occur every single time the animal performs the unwanted behavior. If he sometimes gets punished and other times gets rewarded, then the unwanted behavior may become even stronger because it goes onto a variable schedule of reinforcement which is the strongest schedule of reinforcement (e.g. it's how and why people get addicted to gambling). it's also best if the punishment is not associated with people since we need for this dog to learn that he should NEVER jump on the counters, even when the owner is NOT home or not looking. In the case of booby traps, it's best if the dog does not see the trap. If he can see the trap ahead of time, he can learn to avoid it. All of these factors were controlled here and as a result the punishment was effective. Of course in real life, people use punishment effectively probably more like 10% of the time because they are unaware of the factors that must be controlled. And in cases where the timing, consistency, intensity and surprise are performed correctly, there are still side effects (See How to Behave So Your Dog Behaves, "Pitfalls of Punishment" chapter or Low Stress Handling, Restraint and Behavior Modification of Dogs & Cats (the operant conditioning chapter).
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