29/05/2026
How do you stop your dog’s “bad” behaviour? Most of us don’t want our dogs to destroy things, pull on the lead, jump on or nip us for example, but what most of us resort to is getting frustrated and yelling “no”. And I’ve been there too.
I referred to this briefly in yesterday’s post, and wanted to go into more detail today. We’d all expect training to be part of the How, but something that’s equally important is preventing dogs from doing the behaviour in the first place. This means that they get less practice at doing the “bad” thing – because the more they practice, the better they get at it, and we don’t want them to get better at destroying, jumping etc!
Trainers call this part of the process Management, because we’re managing the dog’s environment to prevent them from doing the thing, while we teach them what we want them to do instead.
Some people are happy to just manage their dog’s behaviour without teaching them an alternative, but if you want to train them to behave differently, management measures may not be in place for long.
Here’s some examples. Some are really obvious ones, but it’s surprising how difficult it can be for us to get into good habits too…
• Stealing. If your dog’s a thief, put away the things he steals. Keep temptation out of the way. A really obvious one this, but it’s not always easy, making the effort to put everything away. My first dog Dan stole a pack of butter from the back of the work surface – I’d pushed it to the back thinking he wouldn’t be able to reach it, but a dog can turn into a slinky when he wants to! I didn’t make that mistake again.
• Jumping on guests. A few options here:
o Pop your dog behind a baby gate or in their crate, preferably with a fun toy or chew to keep them occupied, and more importantly calm, while visitors arrive.
o When your visitors are seated and there isn’t the excitement at the doorway, bring your dog in on lead so they can’t jump up.
o Often, once the initial excitement has worn off, dogs will calm down and can be let off lead.
o Exercise pens are handy for containing smaller dogs and puppies – think of an expanded roofless crate.
• Pulling on the lead. This could be a post on its own, but one tip here, especially if your dog pulls to get to the field where the good stuff happens, is just to drive there. They don’t practice the bad behaviour, you don’t end up with sore hands/back/shoulders, and nobody’s frustrated. You can do the training somewhere they can be calm and focused.
• Won’t come back to you. Use a long lead or a secure field instead – great for giving them freedom and play, but you can use it to practice your recalls too.
• Barking at people/dogs/cars passing the window. Some ideas to try:
o Close the curtains or blinds
o Put opaque film on the part of the windows the dog sees through
o Restrict access to the windows that look onto the street
• Reacting to sounds. Mask the noise - you can use radio or TV (and there are often special doggy channels to use), white noise, ask Alexa to play calming doggy music (simple classical, soft rock and reggae are said to be particularly calming for dogs)
As you can see, there’s lots of ways of preventing different behaviours, either permanently or while you’re teaching something else; you don’t have to feel overwhelmed if you can’t start training yet. But if you are feeling overwhelmed, or just need some support, get in touch to get started.
And something else to think about, the less your dogs practice these behaviours, the weaker those behaviours tend to get, especially if you’re training something that they can do instead – because if they get lots of practice at the “good” behaviour, that becomes the go-to instead.
