Management for a calmer canine

In training, “management” doesn’t mean getting an MBA for your dog!

find out how managing the environment can help prevent unwanted and reactive behaviors before they start.

In dog training, “management" doesn’t mean getting an MBA! It means setting up the environment (trainers call this “arranging antecedents”) to prevent your dog from having behavior mishaps or to prevent your dog from being able to engage in unsafe or nuisance behaviors from the get-go.

Management is one of the items in a dog pro’s toolkit, along with training and enrichment activities, to help you achieve your behavior goals.

If you have a baby, for instance, that might mean tethering your dog to a sturdy piece of furniture so he can be safely nearby but restrained during the baby's feeding time. Sure, I can teach your dog to lie quietly on a mat during feeding, but that is a longer training process, may fail at an inopportune moment, and new parents have plenty of other things to attend to. A management technique like this can be easily practiced before the baby arrives.

For some dogs, Trash Day is the scariest day of the week. If your dog is frightened by the sight and sound of garbage trucks, management might mean walking him at a different time and place on trash days, or skipping longer walks altogether and just having bathroom breaks outside paired with enrichment activities such as food toys, kibble hunts, tug games, and training drills inside.

One of my favorite management interventions for dogs who sit on furniture in the window and bark at the world outside (which might be fear, anxiety, or boredom, but is sure to drive their guardian bonkers) is to simply move the furniture away from the window, or cover the window with opaque cling film. In my house we’re fans of the brand Rabbitgoo, which lets in plenty of light but prevents our dog with Very Big Feelings from seeing the driver on oil delivery days.

A solid fence is ideal for a dog (keeping unwanted people and critters out and your dog safely in) and also prevents your dog from watching the world go by and engaging in frustration or fear barking.

you can also cover a wire or slatted fence with opaque privacy panels to reduce visual access. This made all the difference for us when we realized that our dog Daisy could see right into the neighbor’s yard to bark at their dogs (who, of course, barked back). A few opaque privacy panels were just what we needed.

Baby gates, solid fences like the one pictured, porch screens, brown noise machines, and no–pull harnesses are other examples of ways to manage the environment to reduce external stimuli or restrict your dog’s movements, keeping everyone safe and setting your dog up for success.

When management isn’t the solution

As my colleague Kristi Benson pointed out in a recent blog, a dog who is a little too exuberant or even snarky at the dog park doesn’t need to be banned for life. Dogs are social creatures and species-specific interactions are immensely valuable. There are a number of rewards-based training techniques and interventions to help a dog learn appropriate play skills. For instance, when we brought Petey into our lives, we needed to brush up Daisy’s play skills which meant monitoring play and giving her brief time-outs to cool off. See below how well-matched their play became.

Similarly, a dog who is an exuberant greeter of people shouldn’t be banned from saying hello. Rather, a positive, rewards-based training program to teach polite greetings is what’s needed.

Sweet Bob the Basset Hound is an exuberant greeter of people so we worked in my Manners Refresher Program on his learning to Politely sit to meet people. His guardians recently reported:

We took Bob to the dermatologist in Latham, N.Y. yesterday, lots of people and animals in the waiting room. A woman approached us and asked if she could meet Bob, she had a basset as a child. I said yes but ask him to sit before saying "Hi". Bob sat right away and got his pets and scratches. No jumping, no mouthing. He remained calm even with a steady flow of cute basset fans wanting to fawn over him.

A credentialed, rewards-based pro dog trainer should be able to offer you management, enrichment ideas, and training for almost every behavioral scenario.