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TEMPORARY ‘PLAN B’ TO AVOID REHEARSAL OF UNWANTED BEHAVIOR
I’m currently staying with a friend named Connie. One of her dogs, Cheeky, gets wildly excited at mealtime and she has begun to bark and growl in the hopes of speeding up food delivery. Currently, Connie feeds her on a porch off her kitchen so she can close her in there while her other dog, Rockett, eats his meal in the kitchen at his leisurely pace. (Cheeky has displayed some resource guarding toward Rockett over food.)
As Connie begins to cross the threshold to the porch, Cheeky’s arousal levels spike, she may vocalize, her teeth chatter, and her body gets more animated. She is required to SIT and WAIT while Connie puts the bowl on the floor and not go to the bowl until released. But despite this final step of the sequence requiring her to control her body and behavior, Cheeky is not learning a more globally calm response at mealtime.
Last night, we broke the sequence down, rewarding generously for Cheeky’s calm/quiet behavior every step of the way toward the porch. It took a few minutes, but she did really well and we’re sure she’s going to learn this new behavior pretty quickly. The problem is that Connie doesn’t always have the time to do these training steps and we don’t want Cheeky to continue to rehearse the overly aroused behavior at mealtime. So, we came up with a ‘PLAN B’ where Rockett will temporarily be fed on the porch and Cheeky will simply have her bowl placed on the kitchen floor after it’s prepared.
What ‘Plan B’ have you put in place to temporarily block the rehearsal of an unwanted behavior in order to give you some time to implement a training plan?
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