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Owning a dog is an enjoyable experience, though at times there can be challenging moments along the way. Some of these challenging moments can be when you need to redirect a dogs behaviour. I first wrote this article for my own blog, though once I thought about it I knew many more dog owners like you would benefit from learning these simple techniques, and so I have passed this article on to this blog to help you learn how to redirect unwanted behaviours problems from your four legged friend.

If you do not know what redirecting a dogs behaviour is for or why it is done, hopefully you will enjoy this post. At times we have to redirect behaviours to get a better behaviour than the one that your dog may be performing at that moment.

Over time a dog may do individual behaviours as it learns it can gain attention from its owner like mouthing and nipping your body. Now if you were unable to offer any attention at that time to your dog when it mouths or nips you, and you try to keep it happy with a toy instead, your dog could then in fact learn that mouthing and nipping the owner brings the response of toys appearing to play with. This in then turn may cause an increase in the mouthing and nipping from the dog and any other unwanted behaviours that quicken the chance of bringing a toy out.

Now let’s look at this again. You are occupied and unable to give attention to your dog. Your dog then mouths or nips you for attention to get a reaction from you. Your response is then redirecting the dog to the toy, which makes sense but unfortunately this way is accidently reinforcing the dog that mouthing and nipping you brings toys!

To stop this through using simple dog training techniques,  redirect unwanted behaviours like this:

If you are busy and unable to give attention and your dog is showing unwanted behaviours to gain your attention, just ask for behaviour. The behaviour you will ask for is going to be incompatible with the one it is doing. So if you are being mouthed or nipped, ask for a sit and then a down. Once you get the behaviour you want, count to about 5 seconds and when your dog is calm and relaxed, then redirect to the toy.

Now from this the dog then learns that sitting calmly and lying calmly brings attention, or can bring about toys to play with, and that mouthing the owner does not bring any reward at all. A dog mouthing and nipping/biting can be unpleasant but is easy to resolve with this method, just be patient and calm to see the results.

It may take a few attempts to get the timing right with this dog redirection technique, but it can help create a calmer dog around you and it is well worth trying. There is other ways of solving the above problem, but this is a simple way without removing yourself from the room.

If you have found this post useful you can find more simple tips by searching Facebook for Simply Dog Behaviour. 

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