An expert in canine behaviour has revealed that people often make a really major mistake when taking their dogs out to places like the pub.
Canine behaviourist William Atherton explained that dog owners often make a big mistake which was ‘coming from the right place’ but leading to the wrong result.
He laid out a number of scenarios, including taking your pooch to the pub and things kicking off because there’s another dog around leading to the animals barking, pulling on their leads and trying to get at each other.
Atherton explained that the error people keep making is holding their dogs close, getting them to calm down and stroking them in order to get their pet to settle.
According to the expert this big mistake dog owners make lies in reassuring animals which leads to reinforcing certain behaviours.
He said: “Our human nature is to always reassure the people or things that we care about when we can see that they’re in any kind of distress.
“The problem is we cannot reassure dogs, they do not understand our language let alone our communication psychology.
“The owners may believe they’re trying to reassure the dog and help them understand they don’t need to be worried, they don’t need to be fearful, they don’t need to be anxious.”
“What they’re actually doing is reinforcing those behaviours. Reinforcing behaviours is the basics of dog training. What we believe to be reassurance is actually rewarding that behaviour.
“When the dog is next in that situation they’re going to repeat that behaviour, and not just repeat the behaviour, that behaviour will happen quicker and most likely happen in a more severe fashion.”
Basically if your dog does something and you try to reassure it then they’ll probably just keep doing it, so attempting to smooth things over at the pub can lead to it becoming a problem place for people’s beloved pets.
As for the solution, Atherton explained that commanding the dog ‘down’ and ‘stay’ was much more effective.
Once you’d got the dog to stay down and not move until you tell it to, you could then reward that behaviour with treats, reinforcing the kind of behaviour you want to see from your canine companion.