Dogs in High-Rises: A Modest Proposal

Practicing preventively with puppy Siena in the elevator

There’s probably no tougher place to have a dog with fear or aggression issues than a high-rise. Except maybe a “dog-friendly” high-rise.

For dogs, as for all of us, fear is mitigated by distance. Generally, the farther away you are from something scary, the less scary it is. But distance can be hard to come by in long, narrow hallways, busy elevators, and tight foyers, especially when they’re populated by other dogs and dog lovers. And when dogs can’t get distance through avoidance, aggression becomes a more likely option.

Sound programs to reduce fear and aggression usually start with keeping the dog “under threshold,” which roughly translates to “far enough away from his triggers that he’s not freaking out as soon as he sees them.” So ideally, dogs who can’t cope in close quarters wouldn’t be brought into high-density living situations in the first place. But owners can’t always predict such issues in a new dog, prevent them from developing, or simply pack up and move if they do. Plus, small spaces not only aggravate existing problems—they can create new ones. A dog or puppy who wasn’t previously afraid of people or other dogs may develop new phobias and related behaviors after a single traumatic experience—especially one where escape was made impossible.

A lot of problems could be prevented in high-rises with some simple rules for dog-owning residents—even those whose dogs are comfortable with other dogs and humans. Here are a few suggestions to start with:

ONE DOG PER ELEVATOR CAR. Stand back from the door while waiting. If there's already a dog inside, wait for the next car. Additionally, instead of designating only one elevator that must be used by all dogs, as some buildings do, let them spread out, or maybe designate some elevators as dog-free or others for use by space-sensitive dogs.

OWNERS MUST GO THROUGH DOORS WITH OR AHEAD OF THEIR DOGS, including elevator doors. If someone or something problematic is on the other side, this prevents an immediate conflagration and allows you a chance to turn back or negotiate space before proceeding.

DOGS MUST BE LEASHED IN PUBLIC AREAS, INCLUDING HALLWAYS. Most buildings probably have this rule, but many don’t enforce it well. I’d add: on fixed leashes of a reasonable length, no retractables.

These rules alone wouldn’t prevent every incident, but they would likely reduce how often a person or dog actually gets injured or traumatized.

Buildings billing themselves as “dog-friendly” might also want to go deeper than private dog runs and free poop bags. In addition to multiple elevators, consider letting dog owners use a variety of exits to manage their space. And if you’re installing an off-leash dog run on the property, definitely don’t require all dogs to exit and enter the building through it. (This was a real situation in at least one building I’ve worked in.)

Feel free to bring these ideas up at your next condo board or pet committee meeting. But in the meantime, individual owners can make a dent by changing some of their own practices. Most of these suggestions are good etiquette whether or not your own dog is space sensitive, but a few, toward the end, are geared more toward those who need to actively manage space.

TEACH WAIT AT DOORS, including the door to your apartment. You can use the same technique for when you approach blind corners.

TEACH WAIT INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE ELEVATOR. This can be accomplished using existing behaviors, like a sit- or down-stay, but here’s my favorite method:

• PUSH THE BUTTON, THEN STEP AWAY: Move back as far as you can while maintaining your sightline to the car’s interior—ten feet is great if you can get it. Shorten your dog’s leash, leaving slack between your hand and the harness or collar. From this position, if something pops out unexpectedly, your dog cannot get to it. The slack is to prevent your dog from instantly feeling trapped if a person or dog does appear.

• CHANGE WHAT THE “DING” PREDICTS: Whether you're inside or outside the car, when you hear the ding that says the door will open, or the elevator coming to a stop just before the doors open, start feeding your dog little bits of something special, one after the other, or let him lick out of a food tube. Practice this frequently without actually getting on or off the elevator. The instant the doors close, stop the treats. Over time, your dog will begin to look to you when the doors open, which you can mark and reinforce (this is what you see in the video at the top of this page), at first with a treat, then with a release to go through the door. If your dog is looking toward you, he’s not running into or out of the car or focusing on what might be coming through the other direction.

• PUT THE ENTRY/EXIT ON CUE: Teach a cue that means going through the elevator doorway will earn a treat—again, both in and out. Reinforcing the release behavior will help your dog learn to wait till you give the all-clear. Keep the leash short enough that the dog cannot run through if you haven’t given the cue.

Teaching your dog where to hang out in the elevator is a good idea too—ideally somewhere that's not right up against the elevator doors. Routinely walk him to that spot and reinforce a stationary behavior, like standing or sitting with eye contact and you should start to see a habit develop.

CONSIDER CARRYING YOUR TINY DOG. Preemptively, I mean, from the door of your apartment to the exit—not just after he barks at someone or someone lunges for him and freaks him out. Some dogs feel safer in your arms, and won’t try to fight or flee from there. However, others may struggle or bite you if they get frightened; in that case, you might consider using a carrier of some sort to get in and out of the building, at least temporarily. (That is, if your dog is comfortable in a carrier. If not, here's how to start training comfort with confinement.)

TAKE THE STAIRS. If you live on a lower floor, just consider it part of the exercise program. If you live on a higher floor, consider getting off the elevator a few flights up from the main, congested lobby and hitting the steps.

ASK FOR SPACE SO YOUR DOG DOESN’T HAVE TO. Your body language—curving out and around instead of walking straight toward another dog or a person, putting your body between a handsy stranger and your dog, avoiding eye contact, etc.—often works as well or better than verbal communication to prevent unwanted approaches. But don’t be afraid to speak up, too, and politely ask if a person with another dog can wait to get on the next car, or if they can give you a little space to get off before they jump into this one.

DON'T FORGET THE DOG WALKER. Dog-care pros sometimes walk our pets more often than we do, so it's important that the dog's experience with them is the same as it is with you. Teach partners, family members, dog walkers, and pet sitters to take the same measures you do when they take the dog out. (Or as my friend and fellow trainer Laura Monaco Torelli puts it, more catchily, "communicate for consistency."

TEACH YOUR DOG TO WEAR A BASKET MUZZLE. You might fret that it makes your dog look "mean," but if your dog has a bite history, or you think a bite is likely, it’s the responsible thing to do in close quarters. Basket muzzles, such as the Baskerville Ultra Muzzle, are ideal because they let dogs not only pant normally but also eat through them, so you can train and make positive associations using food. I like these videos from Dr. Colleen Koch, a downstate Illinois veterinary behaviorist and trainer, on how to turn the muzzle into a “treat basket.” There are more instructional resources, as well as sound arguments for muzzle training, at the Muzzle Up Project.

And should you see a neighbor with a muzzled dog, or even one who just seems to be actively working with her dog to reinforce good behavior around the building, give her space, avoid staring at or moving toward her dog—and flash her the biggest, most approving smile you can muster.

This post was originally written for One Tail at a Time. It has since been revised and updated.

The Problem With "Ignoring" Unwanted Behavior

If you’re even vaguely familiar with positive reinforcement training, at some point you have received the advice to ignore unwanted behavior.

As with the advice to redirect to a preferred behavior, this advice is rooted in good science, but has become so divorced from the understanding of the underlying principle that it sometimes does more harm than good.

The process people are trying to use when they ignore behavior is called extinction. Extinction is nonreinforcement of a previously reinforced behavior. It’s not the withdrawal of a reinforcer that’s already been offered, and it’s not something taken away contingent on the performance of the unwanted behavior. Whatever was reinforcing the behavior is simply is no longer available for doing that behavior.

Reinforcement is what makes a behavior stronger, and removing reinforcement, permanently, will eventually make it weaker. But it’s not a straightforward or tidy process—and beyond that, ignoring is only nonreinforcement if your attention was the reinforcer your dog was behaving to get. Your attention is not generally the reason your dog starts pulling on the leash, barking at strangers, or peeing in the house (though through accidental training, it can certainly come to be).

And even if your attention is the reinforcer, you need to be aware of what will happen when you stop giving it.

Extinction is best used in conjunction with reinforcement of another behavior—ideally one that serves the same function as the unwanted behavior, and definitely one that will provide at least the same quantity and quality of reinforcement.

That’s because the problems with using extinction by itself are many. The ones I’ll discuss here aren’t even all of them. Extinction is different from punishment (where something is added to or removed from the learner’s environment, contingent on the behavior, to decrease the behavior), but that doesn’t mean it’s more pleasant for either the learner or the teacher. In fact, it can have some of the same side effects as punishment, including the emergence of frustration-related behaviors and aggression.

Before a behavior starts to decline due to nonreinforcement, it will predictably flare up in what’s called an extinction burst. If you and your dog live in a condo or an apartment, or you have a headache or are tired, or you have a guest with whom you are trying to have a nice meal, an extinction burst of barking will be very hard to ignore. You’re more likely to end up reinforcing it—thus teaching your dog to bark more or more intensely.

This Family Guy clip has probably been shown at least once at every dog training conference I’ve ever attended, and it is a rather perfect example of reinforcing an extinction burst:

Extinction isn’t fast, either. A single session “is often not enough to extinguish behavior . . . even when the extinction session lasts for several hours and involves hundreds or even thousands of unreinforced acts,” writes Paul Chance in the textbook Learning and Behavior. And once it does go away, it can come back. In the phenomenon known as spontaneous recovery. Chance writes, “What usually happens is this: The rate of the previously reinforced behavior declines and finally stabilizes at or near its pretraining level. Extinction appears to be complete. If, however, the animal or person is later put back into the training situation, the extinguished behavior occurs again, almost as though it had not been on extinction.” Chance wraps up his chapter on extinction by noting that “there’s considerable doubt, in fact, about whether a well-established behavior can ever be truly extinguished.”

Another extinction-related phenomenon is called resurgence. When one behavior is no longer reinforced, other, previously reinforced behaviors tend to emerge. In other words, when the behavior doesn't work, the dog tries other behaviors that have worked to get the same sort of outcomes.

Many dog owners have seen this in a scenario like the following: You’ve stood up and collected your training or walking gear, but get temporarily distracted or fumble with the equipment. Or you’re in class, with your dog in front of you, but the teacher is talking. Your dog first offers an expectant sit—a behavior that probably has been reinforced a lot by you in this context. But you’re listening to the teacher, and so there’s no reinforcement. Your dog then offers a paw, goes into a down, rolls over, then barks and paws at you.

And when you do finally turn your attention to him, because pawing your leg hurts, what have you just reinforced?

But if we stay focused on our learner, we can actually take advantage of resurgence.

One of my favorite brief training articles to send clients is this item by Dr. Caryn Self-Sullivan, a KPA CTP in Virginia: Stop, Watch, Wait, Reward. It’s just a quick hit, so she doesn’t go into extinction or resurgence or any other technical business, but I think it’s important to read it with the concept of resurgence in mind:

For example, if your dog jumps or barks when you enter your home:

1. STOP: Stand perfectly still and be absolutely silent.

2. WATCH: Observe your dog out of the corner of your eye and watch for a behavior you want to reinforce.

3. WAIT: Wait, wait, wait for a desired behavior, such as a sit or even just eye contact with four-on-the-floor.

4. REWARD: Mark (click) the desired behavior, and then toss a treat. Proceed into the house.

What we can do, before we actually find ourselves in this pickle, to make it likely that when we stop, watch, and wait, the dog will offer a previously learned behavior we’d like to see more of, instead of another one we don't like?

One simple thing we can do is to make sure our dogs have a big, fat repertoire of other, frequently and recently reinforced behaviors to call upon. Teaching simple acceptable behaviors and reinforcing them regularly in a variety of contexts, with a variety of reinforcers, will make it more likely that the dog will go to one of these when another behavior isn’t working. Orienting to the handler, sitting, lying down, and settling on a mat or bed are behaviors that a dog can offer in many situations to the delight of their humans. The more reinforcement we provide for these behaviors, the more situations in which we provide reinforcement for these behaviors, and the more different reinforers we teach that these behaviors are good for, the more likely the dog will be to try these behaviors when another behavior is 'ignored' or otherwise made ineffective.

To help give your dog lots of good alternatives, one thing you can start to do is pay attention to all the acceptable behavior you don’t explicitly teach or ask for. Many times behaviors we like are happening right in front of our noses, while we’re absorbed in something else. Meanwhile, behaviors we don’t like rarely fail to get our attention. The dog walks on a loose lead near us for five steps—a completely unreinforcing activity by many dogs’ standards—then pulls ahead, which is when we call him back for a treat. What behavior is he probably going to do more of? If instead we notice and give a treat for those five steps, we will get more like them. When the dog pulls ahead, we don’t go along—but should the dog check in of his own accord, we have something else we can reinforce.

We can also sometimes rig the environment to make the right choice more likely and the wrong choice less so. Take the jumping dog in Caryn’s example above. We don't even have to wait for him to jump and then wait for other behaviors. Placing a gate between the dog and the door could prevent both jumping and reinforcement of jumping by family members or visitors who pet the dog when he jumps. It's also easier to watch for preferred behaviors and reinforce them when you're not getting jumped on.

After all, humans respond to the laws of behavior just like dogs. You can make the right behavior easier for yourself, too.

Teach Your Dog to Wait at Doors

Anthony starting to learn to pause and check in when the front door is opened. (Note: the front yard is securely enclosed, or else I'd be holding the leash.) 

One of the first things I learned as a new dog owner was that I should never let my dog go out the door before me, lest she think she was the “alpha” in our “pack.”

This rationale is still quite prevalent, despite debunking across multiple disciplines. And unfortunately the corollary that you must prove that, no, you are the alpha leads to some pretty unpleasant ways of teaching and enforcing doorway protocol, among other things.

But let’s not throw the puppy out with the bathwater. There are a lot of perfectly valid reasons to teach your dog how to behave around an open door. Especially in the urban environment, there’s endless trouble a dog can run into by darting across the threshold before you’ve had a chance to scope things out. Every dog who lives in an elevator building, for instance, ought to learn how to wait before entering the car.

Fortunately, it’s easy to teach a dog what to do instead of dashing through an open door.

Start your lessons with a door that doesn’t lead anywhere dangerous or incredibly tempting. Put your dog on leash if you need to work at an exit that goes to an unsecured or particularly fun area, but keep the leash slack—think seat belt, not reins.

Open the door just a crack, or even simply touch the door handle, click or mark with a "yes," then toss a small treat your dog really loves on the floor behind the dog. Close the door and wait for the dog to eat and reorient. Repeat.

If you’re working at an elevator, push the call button, walk back 10 feet, and simply start feeding the dog just as the elevator door opens. Don’t walk toward or get on the elevator; just continue to feed until the door closes, then stop abruptly when it does. Repeat.

If your dog likes the treats you’re using, he’ll quickly start to make some associations:

• The door opening predicts treats, and
• Those treats will come from my human’s hands and/or appear a few feet behind me.

The treat delivery will start to change what your dog does when you open the door, or when the elevator opens. In most cases, he’ll start to plant his front feet, shift his weight backward, and/or look at you as the door opens.

Observe what he does that you like—whatever’s incompatible with running through the open door—and begin to mark it with your "yes" or your click before delivering the treat. The more specific you can be about what you mark, the faster the training will likely go.

When your dog has confidently offered this lovely behavior four or five times in a row, begin opening the door a little bit further. As the response becomes reliable at each new level, open the door incrementally wider.

If at any point the dog walks through the door, don’t click, don’t treat, and don’t head out for a walk. Simply invite the dog back inside to try again. If the dog fails once more, back up your criteria a little, use better reinforcers, or both.

When, as you open the door wide enough for the dog to move through, he chooses to plant his front feet or look at you instead, you can add a verbal cue, such as “wait.”

You don’t really need a verbal cue if you only want this behavior when you open a door—the door opening will become the cue to wait. But adding a verbal cue lets you quickly generalize this behavior to other doors, thresholds without actual doors, car doors, curbs, and other locations. You can even use it to stop your dog in his tracks with no doorway in sight—say, if he’s heading for a dropped item on the kitchen floor.

Pretty quickly after teaching the wait, you can also teach the dog that there’s a cue that means it’s time to go through the doorway. (I use "Okay!") Say the cue, then prompt and reinforce the behavior of moving out of position. At least initially, I use a treat or play as well as access to whatever’s on the other side of the door.

Here’s a video of Stella, a border collie mix, a former client of mine through Animal Behavior Training Concepts, responding to “hold up” and release cues taught earlier in the same session at an interior doorway. Because the release cue is an opportunity to earn the treat, giving the release cue reinforces the wait, and the click/treat that follows the release strengthens both the release behavior and the wait.

If your dog doesn’t pay attention to treats when there’s a chance to go through a door, that doesn’t mean this method won’t work for you. Reinforcement value is relative, and for Stella, when we took her “hold up” to an exterior door, the chance to go through the door trumped any food or toy we had to offer. So we used the reinforcers she told us she wanted—a win-win for dog and human.

Want Reliable Behaviors? Create Reliable Cues.

Ever wondered why your dog only seems to recognize his own name half the time, but will come tearing from a different floor of the house any time you rustle a resealable bag?

Both the dog’s name and the rustle of the treat bag are cues. One you may have taught on purpose—though the dog may not have learned what you thought you were teaching. The other you probably taught by accident—but you did a better job than you know.

Some definitions:

• A cue is a signal in the environment that tells the animal reinforcement is available for a certain behavior or sequence of behaviors now. “Commands” from you can be cues, but all cues are not commands. In fact, the great majority of your dog's cues come from the environment, not you. A dry mouth might cue the dog to walk to the toilet. A closed lid on the toilet might cue the dog to walk to the water bowl. An empty water bowl might cue the dog to bang the bowl with a paw.

• A reinforcer is anything that, as a consequence of behavior, increases the future probability of that behavior.

What most people want their dog to do when they call his name is for the dog to look at or come to them. So ideally, for the dog, the name should predict: “If you look/come here, you’ll get something or get to do something you really like.”

But how often is that true? What percentage of the time does your dog’s name predict a treat, play, access to the outdoors, petting of a sort your dog genuinely loves, or other great reinforcers?

What percentage of the time does your dog’s name predict the end of play, the end of digging, losing sight of a squirrel, being grabbed abruptly by the collar, kennel time, departure time, a nail trim, a squirt of ear cleaner, petting of a sort your dog doesn't like, or just nothing in particular?

Estimating these ratios will give you a pretty good picture of the current reliability of your dog’s response to his name. And you can apply this same math to figure out how reliable any other cue is. The "math" is a crude version of the Matching Law, which essentially says animals exhibit behaviors in proportion to how much reinforcement has been available for those behaviors in the past.

Now: About what percentage of the time would you say the aforementioned rustle of a bag predicts the dog will get food?

How often does it predict anything other than food? (If your answer is anything less than 99%, BTW, you're a sadist.)

So what can you do to increase the chances that your dog will respond to a his name the same way he does to the rustle?

Make sure your cues predict an outcome that your dog will really look forward to. And make sure they don't start to mostly predict outcomes your dog wants to avoid. This is a common problem with recall training: owners teach it briefly with great stuff, but then start to practice only when they need it. This means that every time the dog responds, he will be giving up something he wants. People also start to get stingy with the reinforcers because they think "he knows what it means," but what he is learning is that this cue means the cost is not worth it.

More broadly the answer is to ensure your cues predict enough reinforcement to make the behavior "worthwhile" under a variety of conditions—be that reinforcement cheese or avoidance of an electric shock. But ethical trainers try very hard to teach dogs using stuff they will work to get, and using stuff that evokes joy has the additional benefit of creating joyful associations with both behaviors and the cues that signal them. Does your dog just mechanically walk over when you rustle the bag? Or does he bound over with soft eyes and a broad tail wag and his mouth lolling open, maybe a drop of drool on his tongue? When you give your recall cue, you want that look to come over his body as soon as he hears it.

When you establish a strong predictive relationship between the cue and the outcome, behavior often evolves naturally as a by-product of the association. If you teach a dog what reliably signals that you are going to produce something he loves, and then you give that signal when you're not standing right next to him, he will figure out what behavior to do to get where the good stuff is. He already knows how to run. (See also: The Dog Already Knows How.)

Already have a problem? It's often best to simply jettison cues that have poor predictive value, that have been weakened by overuse or poisoned. Replace them with new ones that are more reliable predictors of reinforcement.

You probably don’t want to change your dog’s name—I don't either, though frankly I'm human, and so it's my least effective way to get her attention. But do be aware of, and try to bolster, its relationship to reinforcement, and then maybe teach another cue, a fond nickname or a "secret password" that you’ll use when you need a more reliable response.

Even then, though, there are still obstacles to reliability. Let’s take one of our own strongest behaviors: stepping on the gas at the sight of a green light. For experienced drivers, it feels like the most "automatic" of responses. But it's still a choice, and there are still times when we will choose to do otherwise.

First, you have to be able to perceive the cue—which you might not if you’re texting (stop texting!), squinting into the sun, or trying to retrieve the Cheez-It you dropped into your crotch.

What’s more, there may be competing cues in the environment—say, an adorable dog on the corner, or a witless pedestrian in the middle of the crosswalk.

When you call your dog’s name, and he doesn’t respond, it could be that he isn’t sure what it predicts, or there are competing cues in the environment, or both. Hey, Dad’s calling my name over there, which could mean a biscuit, a bath, or nothing at all, but the strong scent of rabbit poop right under my nose is heralding the taste of rabbit poop, so . . . no contest.

Such hurdles can be largely overcome by anticipating and building tolerance for various competing cues into your training. If your dog can respond enthusiastically to his name at home, master it in the yard. If you’ve mastered it in the back yard, work the front porch. Take it on the road, and move it on down the street. Work it far away from rabbit poop, and then work incrementally closer.

Remember too that there are often multiple cues working together to evoke a given behavior—not just your word. Example: Ella's dad started teaching recall in their local meadow from an early age. He paired the cue, "come," with frozen liverwurst chunks, crisped salmon skin, and other delights, and frequently after she came, she was turned back out to play with the other dogs who met up in the field every morning. By the time she was in adolescence, she hd a stellar response to the cue in the field. But at home in the back yard, not so much. Why? When she came to the same cue there, she was shut inside and given a biscuit or some kibble. She likes both of those things, but not as much as she likes being outside.

To remedy this, we taught her a new cue, "inside." With Ella just outside the back door to start, we yelled the word, then scattered freeze-dried turkey hearts around the mudroom. When she was done eating, most of the time we sent her back outside. Then we gradually increased the distance she needed to travel. Here's the result:

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Finally, the point of training a recall cue is to be able to call your dog off a potentially life-threatening distraction. But during training, train—don't test (a mantra I came across while reading an article about gundog trainer Mike Stewart a couple years ago and immediately stole). Set the dog up to earn reinforcement over and over again, because (remember our definitions?) it's what strengthens future behavior. Don’t bother giving the cue when you won’t be able to make it pay off for the dog; don't turn your cue into another signal that means "maybe she will, maybe she won't." And reinforce most generously when looking at you costs the dog access to something else really great.

This post was originally written for One Tail at a Time. It has since been revised and updated multiple times.

Why Dog Training "Tips" Often Fail: Puppy Biting Edition

When I began apprenticing as a dog trainer, almost a decade ago, I had a million questions for my new mentor, Laura Monaco Torelli, and most of them started with, “What do I do when . . . ”

I imagined any professional dog trainer would just have a mental catalog of predetermined responses for various situations: When the dog does this, you should do that. If he does that, you do this.

But instead, the answer to almost all of my questions, to my frustration, started with some variation on “Well, it depends.”

It turns out this answer is so common in dog training that it’s sort of an inside joke—at one seminar I attended, Nicole Wilde joked that she should just have a T-shirt made.

It would be a couple more years before I really understood this answer, and I’m not sure I truly, deeply grokked it until my interest in dog behavior led me into the broader field of applied behavior analysis.

That’s where, finally, I learned that what we think of as a single behavior—let’s use puppy biting as an example today—can actually be many different behaviors, and that each one must be viewed in context of its environmental conditions.

Two main kinds of "conditions" are:

Antecedents: signals in the environment that tell the animal a given behavior is likely to produce reinforcement now.

Also, broader conditions that influence how likely the consequence is to be satisfying at this time; e.g., if your puppy has been resting for hours, consequences involving access to a potty area, chewing or shredding opportunities, or play with you might be more valuable.

Consequences: outcomes that make the behavior more or less likely the next time the same circumstances arise. Behaviors that produce desired consequences will be repeated, and antecedents that predict desired consequences for a given behavior will become cues for those behaviors.

To change behavior, we have to adjust these environmental conditions.

This is why dog training “tips” and even whole “methods” sometimes fail. General advice, by nature, cannot take into account the specific context in which a behavior occurs.

Yeah, yeah, you say. I get it in theory—but my puppy is biting my hand right now, and it hurts like a motherf@#%er. I have to do something, don't I?

First, let me make one thing clear:

Most puppy biting is normal and developmentally appropriate. It will happen. If you don't screw things up too badly, it will usually diminish with age. This is when good general tips do come in handy, like making sure your puppy is getting enough sleep, getting them comfortable in a crate or pen so that you and they can have a break, giving them lots of legal ways to use their mouths, not sitting on the floor with a puppy who's not sleepy, etc.

But you can do all that and still end up teaching your puppy that it's really fun to bite your sleeves or feet or that biting makes you get off your phone or stop trying to futz with her toes. This goes for behaviors like barking too--also normal, a behavior that comes with the "dog" package, and also one that dogs can easily learn lots of uses for if you're not teaching them other ways to get their specific needs met.

The good news is that with some practice, assessing why a behavior might be occurring--what need is being met--and figuring out what to change doesn’t have to take long.

First, identify the behavior you're wondering about. Be specific--not "attacks me," for instance, but "puts her teeth on my arm."

Then, as if you were examining a filmstrip frame by frame, look at what typically happens immediately before and just after, in similarly objective terms. For example:

ANTECEDENT: Holding a leash in my other hand, I move my hand toward the puppy’s collar.

BEHAVIOR: The puppy puts her teeth on my arm.

CONSEQUENCE: I pull my hand away.

Now we can make a hypothesis—an educated guess—about whether, if these conditions are repeated, the behavior is more or less likely to happen again next time. It can be helpful to rephrase the above terms as “when,” “if,” and “then”:

WHEN Holding a leash in my other hand, I reach toward the puppy’s collar

IF the puppy puts her teeth on my arm

THEN I pull my hand away.

PREDICTION: When I reach for the collar, the puppy will continue to put her teeth on my arm in order to get me to pull my hand away.

Then we might do some closer investigation:

One, what other behaviors is the puppy doing at the same time as putting teeth on your arm? Is the puppy bowing, wiggling, jumping, stiffening, freezing, growling? Is the tail tucked or spinning like a propeller? Growling in this type of context is often used to create distance, but if it's combined with a wiggly body and propeller tail, it may be part of play.

To figure that out, let's look at that consequence more closely: how does your hand get pulled away? For instance, is it whipped back in a way that resembles a tug toy flying through the air, which might provide a purpose for chasing with the mouth?

Then, what does your puppy do next, and what's the outcome of that behavior? Does she chase and jump at your retreating sleeve, causing you to flail your arm around like the aforementioned tug toy? Or does she shake off as if wet and walk away from you at the first opportunity, attaining distance or maybe avoiding something that the reach predicts, like you fumbling to find the D-ring with your leash clip or the loud firework sound she heard last time you went outside? These contextual observations may give you more clues as to why your puppy is biting (and doing the other behaviors) when you reach toward her.

The specific information you have gathered should inform your next moves. If the issue is loud noises outside, you may need help from your vet, a professional trainer, or both to make a plan to help your puppy get mmore comfortable with loud noises.

If the puppy has learned that biting your arm produces tug or stops your groping clumsily at her collar, you can start to teach a simple alternative behavior for her to do so that you can put her leash on without all that annoying fumbling and then go do fun things.

Here's one way I like to do that:

WHEN I reach toward the puppy’s collar

IF she looks forward

THEN I give a treat

PREDICTION: The puppy will increasingly look forward more when I reach toward her collar.

The beauty of this is that she can't look forward and bite my arm at the same time.

Usually I teach the forward look by pairing my reach toward the collar with a treat that appears where the dog would be looking if facing forward, repeating until my reach prompts the dog to look forward in anticipation of the treat. (For the nerds: you can think of this as a classical conditioning procedure performed with an eye to what operant behavior is likely to emerge--and get reinforced--between the reach and the treat.) Then I add in attaching the leash between the forward look and the treat, so that the leash attachment is also paired with the treat. Ultimately the forward look can become a way for me to gauge if the dog is prepared for me to attach the leash.

Here's an example (done imperfectly and refined since, but still probably helpful):

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There can be lots of nuances to this simple procedure. For instance, if the puppy is extremely uncomfortable being reached for, we might have to break it into super small steps, only reaching partway toward the collar at first, or even only slightly moving that hand. The treats in such a case might also need to be something this particular puppy receives with great joy, not just something that came in a bag labeled TREATS that they'll eat if nothing else is available. The timing of the food is important too--it should appear after the little bit of reaching. If we're using food to lure the dog in but then reach too abruptly, we may make the puppy suspicious of food.

If we do it right, in addition to the forward-looking behavior getting reinforced, the puppy’s motivation to make my hand go away in the first place is probably going to get weaker. I'm no longer fumbling, and my reaching or leashing, or small steps toward it, now predict a favorite treat. If the puppy's motivation was tug, we can add play with a toy after the leash goes on.

And over time, the puppy is likely to learn that me reaching for the collar predicts me clipping the leash on, which predicts a walk. Once the routine is learned, treats for looking forward during leashing can usually be faded out in favor of the naturally occurring reinforcers related to walking.

Now let’s look at another puppy biting scenario that commonly occurs when people are advised to "redirect" the puppy to a chew or toy.

WHEN I am working on my computer

IF the puppy bites my arm

THEN I reach for a toy

PREDICTION: The puppy will bite my arm more often when I am working on my computer.

The first time your puppy bites your arm here, she probably isn’t requesting a specific item. But behaviors that start with one function can easily acquire another. Sitting is not the behavior dogs naturally do to get food. Yet most pet dogs, even if you’re barely making an effort to train them, will somehow learn to sit to acquire food. Think about that—what animal, in the wild, sits to get food?

Your solution should acknowledge that a puppy needs lots of legal stuff to do with her mouth. So you can still direct her to a toy, but timing matters: Take your arm out of play right away, without a lot of fuss, and then watch for a moment or two of some other behavior that you like better. Then present the toy so that it not only satisfies the puppy's need to chew or play but also reinforces that bit of more desirable behavior.

But then, try not to get in this position again! Give your puppy the toy as soon as you sit down at the computer. Anticipate and meet the need or desire before she has to “ask.” (For more, see my blog post Redirect or Preempt?)

Limit the ways in which she will be able to "ask." For example, you could confine her to an exercise pen near you during computer time, with plenty of legal options for chewing and play, but zero access to your pants. Think of the pen as training wheels: she can ride the bike, but she can’t fall over. When she’s developed good riding habits, you can take the training wheels off.

From there, you can teach easily your puppy something like:

WHEN I am working on my computer

IF you sit next to me

THEN I will give you a toy

Note: This is a place where standard "tips" can really go awry. The behavior here doesn't have to be a sit—and maybe it shouldn't be. Sitting might be hard for your individual dog, because it hurts his hips or because he's too excited or because the surface near where you use your computer is slippery. Standing, lying down, or doing an adorable head tilt might be acceptable or even preferable ways of making this polite request. For more on how to select alternative behaviors, see my blog post Training With the Grain.

There are as many behaviors as there are reasons to behave. Figure out what need your dog is expressing, and teach her the easiest way to get it met.