Expert: Alan J Turner, SATS LL1 - 11/17/2006

Question
My pup Maverick is just over 7 weeks old.  He's a siberian husky and we've had him for 3 days.  Yesterday he started to hump my leg and the corner of the couch.  He does it whenever he's receiving attention, or when he's over excited, or sometimes for no reason at all.  I removed him, put him on his fours and tell him NO in a firm, low voice.  I understand that he's a puppy and that NO probably doesn't mean too much to him right now but I'm wondering why he does this.  Isn't he too young to be doing this?  Any info would help, I can't raise a dog that humps people's legs!

Thanks
Sarah

Answer
Dear Sarah,
Thanks for the question. I've just got to say, Maverick is a neat name.  This is the second time I've heard the name today. My first dog, a beagle mix was named Maverick and yesterday I spoke to a client with a Jack Russell Terrier named Maverick. I haven't thought about him in a while.

I wouldn't worry too much about Maverick's behavior. Mounting by Maverick is a form of play. He's not sexually mature and won't be until he is around 6 months of age. The behavior has nothing to do with reproduction. It's a social play behavior.

Say, let's discuss the NO thing. Some dogs and pups will discontinue their current behaviors when we say NO and some dogs just get more wound up. It depends on the individual dogs' personalities and the situation at hand.

More confident pups might translate our low or loud voices as a playful challenge. It’s nothing more than and an invitation for them to escalate their activities! Less confident pups become frightened when we become stern and they stop in fear.

NO can be an effective interrupter, a good tool to interrupt unwanted behaviors. Interrupters are temporary. When our pups or dogs discontinue their current actions after we say NO, we've really only temporarily interrupted a specific behavior for the moment - haven't we? Without some sort of additional information or intervention, the dogs repeat the exact same behaviors in a few moments, or proceed to perform another unwanted behavior – don’t they?

Interrupts do fulfill the very necessary temporary goal of stopping behaviors. Perfect, we need some of this! Even the best trainers and the most observant dog owners are presented with behaviors that should be stopped immediately!

When used alone, interrupters do nothing to teach animals which few of the finite number of specific behaviors are acceptable. Used alone, interrupters only give animals information about one of the infinite number of behaviors that are unacceptable.

Even if we successfully extinguish a specific behavior forever (not likely with interrupters), the animal may replace it with another undesirable behavior.. .  we extinguish the new unwanted behavior and wala... here comes another unwanted behavior, and so on. It's much more efficient to spend our time teaching the animal a few wanted behaviors than spending our time extinguishing an infinite number of unwanted behaviors.

The best trainers use interrupters an immediately follow the interrupt with additional information. This additional information tells the dog exactly which behavior should be performed (in that particular circumstance) and exactly where he or she should perform the behavior. This is called a Redirect. And the best trainers follow the Redirect with rewards to increase the new, replacement behavior. This is called Praise.

So now you know the perfect method or the three step teaching process! Step 1 is Interrupt. Step 2 is Redirect. Step 3 is Praise.

Happy Training!
AT