Most people seeing training as a solution for a specific problem. If their dog is jumping on people, they want to train their dog not to jump on people. They ignore all of the other issues or try to only work on one issue at a time, not believing their dog to be smart enough to learn more than one thing at a time. The issue with this? Your dog becomes confused about what he is or is not allowed to do.
Why is allowed to jump on you but not allowed to jump on strangers? Why is he allowed to bark at other dogs through the fence but not allowed to sit on the couch? This kind of breakdown in his understanding of your expectations can leave him feeling anxious and cause even cause him to act at more. Bad behavior certainly doesn’t mean a bad dog, but trying to address just the most annoying behavior (like barking or jumping), won’t solve the underlying problems. Training has to be comprehensive. It has to address all of the issues with your dog.
For example, say that your dog is terrible on a leash. Every time he sees another dog, he tugs and barks. It’s impossible for your children to walk him because they are not strong enough to hold on to him if he yanks the leash. Yes, the problem is solved by teaching your dog how to walk on a leash. It does help. But just this one simple piece of the training puzzle will not fundamentally solve the problem. It might solve that problem, for a while, but as he is continually allowed to get away with other bad behaviors, he will revert to pulling on the leash, too.
This is something about training a dog that few people understand. It is not about just suppressing bad behaviors. It is also about creating a well-adjusted, balanced dog who understands why he is being asked to do what you are asking him to dog. Only when you have all of the pieces of the puzzle in the right arrangement will you have a dog that you can truly rely on not to act out.
You cannot expect your dog to just get better. Even if you have an extremely intelligent dog, they rely on patterns and repetition for their clues about what you do want them to do and what you do not want them to do. This is why we stress consistency and repetition in our training sessions. The same principle applies here. You have to be consistent across the board when it comes to all of the behaviors that you want your dog not to do. Instead of working only on walking properly on a leash, you will need to address every single bad behavior that afflicts your dog. This creates the balanced state of mind that every dog needs to be happy.
So, if he is difficult to walk on a leash, is jumping on people, barks at the door and fence, or is exhibiting other behaviors that annoy or frustrate you, all of these behaviors need to be addressed, not just the one that feels the most pressing to you.
