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Page Three of a twelve-page article:
A Detailed Examination of the Process of Bark Training a Dog

The Formula for Changing Behavior:

• Component One: reinforce an alternative behavior that is incompatible with the response you want to eliminate

• Component Two: abruptly remove the reinforcers for the behavior you want to eliminate

• Component Three: always punish the behavior you want to eliminate

Component One: Reinforcing an Alternative Behavior that is Incompatible with the Response You Want to Eliminate

At any given moment, either a dog will bark or make some other potentially irritating noise, or he will be quiet. A dog can't both bark and be quiet at the same time, so we say that barking and being quiet are incompatible responses.

Bear didn't bark every minute of every day. He was quiet sometimes. I just needed to increase the amount of time he spent being quiet. If you want to increase the frequency with which someone makes a given response (like being quiet), you need to provide them with something rewarding, either while they are making the response, or immediately afterward. If that reward is sufficient to cause the person (or dog) to make the response again, then the reward can be properly called a reinforcer.

Part of my plan, then, was to make it rewarding/reinforcing for Bear to be quiet. I just needed to decide what kind of rewards I was going to use as reinforcers.

If you have been in frequent physical contact with others throughout your life, you may not be aware of the profound longing that comes from years of isolation with little opportunity to touch or be touched, but certainly Bear was in that condition. He was starved for affection. Beyond a doubt, he would have gladly been quiet if silence brought him companionship and physical contact. But up to that point, being quiet had brought him only isolation.

Clearly then, I could use my physical presence and my gift for dog massage as reinforcers. The plan was to wait until Bear was quiet, then I'd take a minute to go out and give him a rub down while I brought him up to date on my school work.

Separating the two properties was a chain link fence several feet high, but the top of the fence was not secured to the supporting posts. Bear found that if he reared up on his hind legs and pressed his front paws against the upper-most part of the structure, he could push the top of the wire fence steadily forward until it was leaning at a nearly horizontal angle. Bear was a very lonely dog, so when I came outside he would press the fence down and scramble on top of it to get closer to where I was standing. That put him on my property and made it possible for me to make physical contact with him without trespassing.

Massage and conversation are powerful reinforcers for a lonely, deprived dog, but for someone who is hungry, food is by far the most powerful reinforcer, and Bear rarely got enough to eat. He was thin. So thin, in fact, that I called the humane society to see if anything could be done about it. They said they could only step-in if Bear was literally starving and, as far as I could tell he was not actually dying from lack of food, he was just very, very thin. Unfortunately, there is no law against having a skinny dog.

Starving or not, Bear was always plenty hungry and I knew he would gladly be quiet if I greased his paw with the occasional dog biscuit. He longed for companionship, but for Bear, food was the ultimate reward.

Of course, rewarding Bear for being quiet wouldn't stop him from barking, not that one thing by itself anyway. But it would provide him with a reinforcing alternative to sounding off. For the first time he would be in a position to be rewarded for not barking. With a good alternative in place, it is easier to change the old behavior, and it also makes the new way of doing things much less upsetting to the one whose behavior is being changed.

Component Two: Removing the Reinforcer for the Behavior You Want to Eliminate

You may recall that a reinforcer is the thing, or things, that comes during, or after a response is made, and serves as an incentive that causes the response to be repeated again. For example, you eat some ice cream, it tastes good, so you eat some more ice cream. The good taste was the reinforcer for eating more ice cream.

Bear found that if he made the response (barking) in the presence of people, they would sometimes react by spending a little time with him. The result was that he began barking every time he saw people. That's how his barking got started, and that's why it continued.

To eliminate a problem behavior you must eliminate the reinforcer that supports it. The reinforcer that made Bear bark was the opportunity to interact with people, which meant that, to stop Bear from barking, I had to stop people from reacting to his barking by petting and socializing with him.

Component Three: Punishing the Behavior You Want to Eliminate

Loosely defined, an aversive is anything that a person (or a dog) would rather avoid. If you want to cause someone to make a given response less often, you need to present them with an aversive every time they make that response. That process, where you cause someone to do something less often by presenting them with an aversive after they do it, is called punishment. An aversive is also called a punisher. It's important to note that a punisher need not necessarily be harsh. It can sometimes be something as mild as a disapproving look, or saying "No" in a disapproving tone.

Another part of my plan then, was to make it aversive/punishing for Bear to bark. I just needed to decide what kind of aversives to use.

I knew it wouldn't work beforehand, but it's usually best to begin by trying the most obvious intervention, so early on I experimented with using the word "no" as a punisher. Bear would bark and I would storm out and say loudly "No! "No! No!" He looked dumbfounded. It was obvious that I had given him something to think about and he thought about it for several seconds before he resumed barking. After a few such episodes he didn't even pause to take in the show. He just kept flapping his lips.

I remember years ago walking across dew-covered grass with my German Shepherd, Steel, who was off the lead at the time. A nearby cat suddenly broke from cover and sprinted for the fence line. The dog reflexively took off after the cat and I shouted, "No!" Steel tried to slam on the brakes but he was moving so fast that his sudden attempt to stop sent him sliding across the wet grass. He thrust his front legs out before him, locked at the elbows, and set his rump down on the ground so that he might maximize his stopping power. He skidded across the lawn several yards in that position, sitting down, while careening out of control like an automobile hydroplaning with its brakes locked. When he slid to a stop I got my laughter under control enough to call him over and give him a quick rub down as I praised him in lavish tones. I was pleased with him, so he was pleased with himself.

Steel stopped whatever he was doing when he heard "no." It always worked out well for him when he stopped on command, always. Without exception, good things followed his compliance so he was always happy to comply. But I always made things unpleasant when he didn't stop on command, always, every time.

The word "no" had two meanings to Steel. One of those meanings was: "Stop what you are doing immediately." He knew that just a split second after he heard the word spoken in that tone of voice, that either something pleasant was going to happen or something unpleasant was going to happen, depending on what he did next. Being a party dog, and not into punishment, he always stopped right away and seemed delighted to do so.

Bear saw things differently. For him, the word "no" didn't have any meaning at all. He barked, and then I ran outside. From his perspective that was perfect, because then he had company. Not only that, but there was still a chance that the people he was barking at might yet come over and join the party. From his point of view it was a wonderful turn of events. For Bear, barking was working out well. He didn't care if I was standing there shouting. At least someone was there with him which, outside of the opportunity to eat, meant more to him than anything else in his universe. Obviously then, at this early stage of the game, I could not control Bear through verbal commands or spoken threats.

If he had been my dog I would have simply followed the word "no" with a two fingered smack on the nose, delivered lightly enough so as not to hurt him, but hard enough to cause him to prefer that I not do it again. If you do that after every bark then soon the barking will stop and the dog will come to understand the meaning of "no." That plan wouldn't fly here though, because I needed to train Bear without going on to the neighbors' property, which meant that I could not walk over to where he was to dispense the aversive. If we were to have physical contact then I needed him to cross the property line and come to me.

Imagine this scenario: Bear barks and I rush outside and call him. He comes to me and I smack him on the nose for barking. Bear would view the smack as punishment for coming when called. Then, the next time he barked I would rush out and call him and he would refuse to come. After that I'd be right back where I was before, except that instead of watching me shout "NO!" from a distance, he would be watching me call him from a distance.

Bear would come to me to be petted, fed or, in general, rewarded, but he would not come to be punished, not for long anyway. So, the option of using a nose-smacking aversive was out of the question.

Punishment takes two forms: you can give your subject something he doesn't want, like a smack on the snout or a misty spray of water to his face, or you can withhold something he does want. Obviously, I was going to have to go with the second option.

The first component of the formula for changing behavior consists of reinforcing an alternative response that is incompatible with the problem response you are trying to change. In Bear's case, that meant that I would massage him, speak to him, and feed him dog biscuits as a reward for being quiet. Once he came to expect those things and, indeed, to count on those things from me, I would be in a position to punish his barking by withholding them from him.

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