What to do if my dog is misbehaving?

If your dog is misbehaving, you’re not giving him enough exercise: If you’re gone 12 hours a day, and your dog’s walk consists of a quick dash into the backyard, you’re not providing your pet with adequate opportunities to use up all his energy. As the old saying goes, A tired dog is a good dog. You haven’t trained him enough: It sounds like a no-brainer, but if your dog’s training stopped after he learned to sit, lie down, and go to the bathroom outside, you need to up your game. Try to introduce a new command a week, and practice old ones with him. Besides being able to understand what you want him to do, the mental work involved in him learning commands will tire him out as well. You’re reinforcing his bad behavior: If your dog is barking for attention, how do you respond? Think about what your dog is trying to accomplish when he’s misbehaving and don’t allow him to be rewarded for it. Instead, give him an opportunity to succeed. Being firm and consistent with your training will help establish boundaries. One great way to introduce your dog to better behavior is getting him involved in Canine Good Citizen, which will make him a more well-mannered dog and you a more responsible dog owner!

You see, in addition to being adorable -if occasionally infuriating- dorks, dogs have nearly supernatural powers of observation. They spend every waking hour watching and learning, figuring out the best way to get what they need. This is a double-edged sword, it makes it easy to teach them to do really cool things, but it also makes it easy to accidentally train them to do things we really hate. Make sure your dog only gets rewarded for behavior you want. Reward your dog for doing nothing, to a bored dog who spends most of her time alone, even being yelled at for barking is more exciting than being ignored. The moral of the story: the trick to preventing and fixing behavior problems is in controlling the reinforcement, it’s all about giving your dog appropriate ways to get what she needs. If you like it, reinforce it, if you don’t like it, don’t let it get reinforced. Try not to punish your dog for doing exactly what you said.