Punishing the Barking and Lunging Makes it Worse

On-leash reactivity. That’s the fancy term for dogs who bark, lunge, growl, snarl, snap or otherwise over react during walks or other on-leash adventures. At Koinonia, these episodes are known as “meltdowns.”

Although a fairly common problem in our part of central Texas, on-leash reactivity is still embarrassing and limiting. Instead of enjoying time with your dog, you worry what other people must think and fear getting pulled down or your dog getting loose. You really want him to get enough exercise, though, so you make courageous efforts to take him out despite the hysterics.

Unfortunately, the meltdowns themselves and punishing the dog for them only make things worse in the long run.

Practice Makes Permanent

Why are the meltdowns more than just irritating and embarrassing?

Repeated behaviors become habits. The more meltdowns your dog has, the more meltdowns he’s going to have and the longer it will take him to learn to remain calm. Good training is not about the perfect technique to correct bad behavior; it’s about preventing the bad behavior from happening in the first place and then teaching good behavior.

Depending on the severity of your dog’s reactivity, he may be able to continue neighborhood walks with the addition of helpful techniques like Engage/Disengage OR he may need to stop traditional walks until he’s ready for that challenge.

Associations

Why does punishing the dog for meltdowns make things worse?

Punishment makes the dog to feel worse about something he’s already worried about.

If the dog’s collar is yanked to tell him barking is wrong, the discomfort is associated with more than just the barking. He’s meant to gather, “every time I bark, I feel pain, so maybe I should quit barking,” but he actually learns, “every time I see another dog, I feel this pain in my neck. Now I really hate other dogs because they make my neck hurt!”

This happens because dog training is both a scalpel and a sledgehammer. I can communicate very specifically with dogs, but the associations being formed as I communicate aren’t nearly as tidy.

Punishing a dog is less like precisely cutting out the bad behavior with a scalpel and more like hammering away at it with a sledgehammer—there’s a lot of inescapable collateral damage and contamination.

You’ve probably already seen this sort of contamination happen at the vet. As soon as you walk into the office he might begin to show signs of anxiety like panting, drooling, quivering, or hiding. You don’t actively punish him at the vet, but the procedures are unpleasant and the whole environment has become contaminated—even if you don’t even go back to an exam room.

Where do we go?

So if the meltdowns don’t help and punishing doesn’t help, what does?? Stay tuned for Part 2!