By Pat Miller

"Demand Behaviors" in Dogs

How to eliminate your dog’s “demand behaviors” (such as begging, whining, jumping up, or nose-nudging).

Missy sidles up to me as I type and nudges her nose under my arm, lifting my hand off the keyboard. “I want you to pet me, now!” she says. As much as I’m reluctant to reinforce demand behaviors, her rakish one-blue-eyed, one-brown-eyed expression is irresistible. My hand drops onto the soft fur of her head, and I scratch briefly behind her ear before asking her to go lie down. She obliges, curling up under my desk. I laugh as Scooter, our recently rescued Pomeranian, stands on his hind legs in front of the sofa and waves his front paws at me. “I want up, now!” he says. Because he’s cute, and because I want to reinforce his affiliative social behavior, I reach down and scoop up his furry little body and deposit him next to me. These are “demand behaviors,” often frowned upon in the dog training world. Yet, from another perspective, they are simply my dogs’ way of communicating their desires to me. There’s a grey area between acceptable communication and unacceptable demand behavior; what’s perfectly appropriate to one dog-person may be annoyingly inappropriate to the next. Who gets to decide what’s acceptable for your dog? You do. A dog’s mission in life is to make his world work for him to get good stuff. His goal is to get as much good stuff as possible, perhaps including a safe, predictable environment, lots of attention from his human, opportunities to herd sheep or chase rabbits, plenty of bone-chewing time, hikes in the woods, running after flying discs, sailing over flyball hurdles, or a soft bed upon which to lay his body. Recognizing that those with opposable thumbs are more able than he to open doors, throw tennis balls, and operate can openers, a dog spends a good part of his time figuring out how to manipulate his humans into making good stuff happen. Although he’s never studied B.F. Skinner and the science of behavior, he knows exactly how operant conditioning works. He repeats behaviors that make good stuff happen or those that make bad stuff go away, and controls himself from repeating behaviors that make bad stuff happen or ones that make good stuff go away. (See “Operant Conditioning,” next page.)