How to work on your dog's impulse control?

Impulse control doesn’t come naturally to dogs, but with a little bit of training and positive reinforcement, you can help your dog to stay calm and learn self-control. Giving your dog mentally stimulating activities that are of low arousal will help to engage their senses and increase their overall level of calmness. There are some useful behaviours you can teach your dog to help them stay calm and learn self-control rather than reacting impulsively. We recommend teaching ‘sit’, ‘down’, and ‘wait’. Once your dog can do a ‘sit’ and ‘down’ on cue, you can practice holding these behaviours for longer periods of time. Slowly increase how long you wait when they perform a behaviour before you mark and reward them. Gradually Increase Distractions Once your dog can comfortably hold a sit or down and wait, you can begin to introduce distractions. When asking for this behaviour in a more distracting environment, you may need to go back several steps and build up the duration of the behaviour again to make it easier for your dog to understand.

To teach impulse control, it’s a good idea to start by teaching a few basic behaviours first, such as sit, so that our dog has some idea of behaviours that often “pay” well. Behaviours such as checking in with us, sitting or lying down are all behaviours we would often like our dogs to be doing instead of many impulsive behaviours we see. If our dogs have a reinforcement history for these behaviours, they are more likely to try offering them when we start our impulse control training. The next important thing to remember is that we need to make it REALLY easy for our dogs to get it right. Another factor of impulse control is that we aren’t going to cue our dogs – if we ask our dogs to sit, stay etc then we are managing them; the goal of impulse control training is for our dogs to be managing themselves. We need to always reward our dogs for making good choices. One fun impulse control exercise you can get started with is “Mousey Mousey!” Another simple impulse control exercise includes teaching our dogs not to dive in when they see food fall on the floor – this is a really tough challenge for many dogs but is also a great life skill for our dogs to have!

Start impulse control dog training early, ideally when your puppy is a few months old. Puppies are more receptive to learning during their early developmental stages. Basic Obedience Training is necessary, your puppy should have a basic understanding of commands like “sit,” “stay,” and “leave it.” Use Positive Reinforcement, use treats, praise, and affection to reward your puppy for good behaviour. Teach “Leave It”, the “leave it” command is essential for impulse control, start by holding a treat in your closed hand and letting your puppy sniff it. Practise “Stay”, teaching your puppy to stay is another valuable exercise for impulse control, start with short durations and gradually increase the time your puppy needs to stay in place. Gradual Challenges, as your puppy becomes more proficient at “leave it” and “stay,” introduce more challenging situations. Play Impulse Control Games For Dogs, incorporate impulse control into games, for example, during fetch, make your puppy sit and wait before throwing the ball. Consistency is key in teaching impulse control, use the same commands and rewards consistently, and ensure all family members are on the same page with training.