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    Solving Dog Behavior Problems Like A Professional
    Solving Dog Behavior Problems Like A Professional
    Solving Dog Behavior Problems Like A Professional
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    Solving Dog Behavior Problems Like A Professional

    By James O'Heare

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    About this ebook

    Solving Dog Behavior Problems, book 2 in the Dog Behavior series, provides dog guardians the tools to solve dog behavior problems. It explains why dogs exhibit the behaviors they do and how the guardians can assess any kind of problem behavior situation and devise a plan to change the behavior like a professional would. Though examples apply to dogs, the methods described in this book would easily be applied to cats, parrots, horses. and in deed humans. This book would be appropriate for a dog guardian who seeks to be able to understand and resolve just about any kind of problematic behavior that may arise or t the beginning professional looking for a scientifically sound introduction to understanding an resolving problem behaviors.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCompanion Animal Science Institute
    Release dateJun 1, 2019
    ISBN9781617812675
    Solving Dog Behavior Problems Like A Professional
    Author

    James O'Heare

    James O'Heare is a Behaviorologist who has spent over 25 years researching animal behavior and animal rights. He lives in Ottawa, Canada.

    Read more from James O'heare

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      Book preview

      Solving Dog Behavior Problems Like A Professional - James O'Heare

      well.

      Chapter 1. Review of Basic Principles of Behavior

      Readers should be familiar with most of the basic principles of behavior from book one in the Dog Behavior series. This chapter provides a concise review of the basic principles of behavior that underlie the strategies and procedures discussed in the following chapters.

      Basic Terms, Categories, and Relations

      There are two fundamentally distinct kinds of behavior. Operant behaviors are behaviors that are maintained by consequences. Examples of operant behaviors include sitting, walking, and talking. Respondent behavior is reflexive behavior and is insensitive to consequences. Examples of respondent behaviors include salivating when food is presented, blinking when a puff of air or dirt touches the eyeball, retracting the hand when touching a hot stove, and emotional behaviors.

      The ABCs of Behavior (or, the Three-Term Contingency)

      The best way to begin understanding what causes behavior is by using the ABCs of behavior (also known as the "three-term contingency"). The three-term contingency is the basic starting point formula for analyzing episodes of behavior. This basic formula is used to understand all operant behaviors, whether we plan to train a behavior, want to eliminate or reduce one, or simply to appreciate why any given behavior happened, be the subject is a dog or some other animal, including human.

      The three-term contingency is made up of three term positions (the events) and two functional relations (tying them together) between the terms. A stands for "antecedent," which means before the behavior. B stands for behavior. C stands for consequence. Both A and C represent stimulation (i.e., something that can influence behavior) and B is, of course, the behavior in question.

      A contingency can be composed of two or more of these terms and one or more functional relation (the arrow) tying them together. For instance, these are all contingences: A → B; B → C; and A → B → C. By understanding what (A) evokes a behavior (B) and what reinforces (C) the behavior, we understand why the behavior occurs and this helps suggest how to change the behavior.

      The three-term contingency is depicted this way in a general/generic way:

      A → B → C

      Once it is determined that A really does evoke the behavior, we refer to that antecedent stimulus as an evocative stimulus. Here is an example of an actual three-term contingency:

      Sit → Jake sits → Treat(+R)

      Take note that contingencies are immediate events. A stimulus will evoke a behavior right away and not later, and if a consequence occurs after within a couple seconds of the behavior, it will not influence the rate of that behavior. Any time you propose a contingency, check it for immediacy principle (or what behaviorologists call "contiguity.")

      Conditioning

      Conditioning is the biological process by which behavior changes as a result of experience. There are two fundamentally different kinds of conditioning which correspond to the two fundamental types of behavior.

      Operant conditioning is a behavior change process whereby a behavior becomes more or less likely to occur as a result of the consequences that the operant behavior has generated. In the example above, providing a treat as soon as Jake sits, might result in sitting behavior becoming more likely thereafter when someone says sit. Some kinds of consequences result in an increase in the likelihood of the behavior occurring again (like the above example, indicated by the superscript R) and some result in a decrease in their likelihood. An example of such a contingency might be as follows:

      Walking on leash → Jake walks ahead → Collar tightens(+P)

      In this example, yanking on the leash and tightening the collar around Jake’s neck when he walks ahead might result in Jake not walking ahead when on leash, a decrease in the likelihood of the behavior (indicated by the superscript P).

      Another, different, kind of operant conditioning involves failing to follow a behavior that has been reinforced in the past with that reinforcer, resulting in a decrease in the likelihood of that behavior. This is called operant extinction. For example, if Jake readily sits when someone says sit because on several occasions in the past when he did so, a treat was provided, but now no treats are provided when Jake sits, so the likelihood of him sitting when someone says sit decreases. Think of your own behavior when you put money into a vending machine (your behavior) and it fails to generate the food item (the reinforcer). A vending machine will evoke coin depositing behaviors when you are deprived of food and a history of getting food has reinforced this behavior. If a machine stops delivering food following this behavior, the behavior becomes unlikely.

      The different types of operant conditioning are explored below in greater detail. The key component of operant conditioning is that the likelihood of the behavior changes as a result of consequences it has generated in the past.

      Respondent conditioning is a behavior change process whereby a stimulus that previously did not elicit a respondent behavior is paired with a stimulus that does, and as a result, that neutral stimulus also comes to elicit the respondent behavior. "Pairing" refers to presenting the two stimuli almost simultaneously. Respondent conditioning does not involve consequences making a behavior more likely, but rather the expansion of what will elicit the respondent behavior. An example of respondent conditioning that you may have heard of is that of Pavlov’s dog salivated when food was placed in his mouth. This happens without any conditioning. A bell does not elicit salivation at all. So, Pavlov rings a bell and then puts food in the dog’s mouth and the dog salivates. After several of these pairings (bell and then food), the bell alone comes to elicit salivation without the food being presented at all.

      Our emphasis is generally on operant behaviors as these are most commonly the behaviors we seek to change. However, understanding how emotional behaviors are conditioned can be useful in appreciating some operant contingencies, that is, how respondent emotional behaviors can influence these contingencies.

      Analyzing Episodes of the Behavior

      In this section, each of the three terms that compose the ABCs of behavior are discussed separately as they relate to your analysis of behavior episodes. This analysis will be the basis for your assessment of problem behavior and the plan for resolving it.

      Antecedent Stimulus

      Any number of stimuli might occur before a behavior, but not all them will necessarily evoke the behavior. Some have no influence over the behavior in question ("neutral stimulus"). Some set the occasion for the behavior, but don’t evoke the behavior (for example, a sandwich might evoke eating behavior, but only if you are hungry, or a fire alarm lever might evoke pulling behavior, but only if you see flames or smell smoke). These stimuli are called "function-altering stimuli." Although consideration of function-altering stimuli is useful at times, the antecedent stimulus category of most interest in the analysis of behavior is the evocative stimulus. The evocative stimulus is the stimulus that evokes (i.e., roughly, triggers) the behavior. It occurs immediately before the behavior. All operant behavior is evoked, even if it does not always seem obvious what stimulus evoked it.

      The evocative stimulus is often, but not always, obvious. For example, someone approaches the dog and he cowers or growls and snarls, and then if the person approaches closer, he snaps at them or bites. Or, thunder occurs and the dog begins to tremble, pace, and whine. Or, the dog is left alone and he or she begins to pace, dig at door jambs, howl, and bark. Or, the dog sees a garbage can and digs through it to find food. Or, a person comes home and the dog jumps up closer to the person’s face to greet them.

      In most cases, as the contingency is repeated, we can

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