Doing the Math: Formulas For Changing Behavior - a podcast by Ty Brown

In this post, I want to talk about mathematics—specifically, addition and subtraction. I like to give formulas to my clients and break them down into easily-digestible, bite-sized chunks. When it comes down to it, everything we want from out dogs fall into addition and subtract: there are things we want to add to our dogs, and things we want to subtract.

Addition is usually a proactive thing. We want our dogs to come when called, heel when told, and sit nicely to get dinner. Sometimes subtraction almost seems like the opposite: we want to subtract leash pulling, jumping, peeing in the house. We treat addition and subtraction in different ways, we communicate those concepts in different ways

Subtraction is oftentimes the easier of the two to fix. When you want to subtract aggression that’s not as true, but “subtracting” something like jumping or chewing or digging is usually easier to fix. I normally look at two things. First, is the dog being fulfilled properly? Does it have what it needs? It’s frustrating when I speak with an owner who complains that their dog is chewing up stuff, yet I know that the dog in question is seven months old, untrained, and left loose in the house while they’re at work. That dog isn’t getting the supervision or exercise that he needs. So it makes sense that he would chew up your things. The first thing to look at is whether your dog is getting what he needs to be happy, healthy, and safe—things like obedience training, structure, and supervision. If he is, there’s usually less to subtract.

Now, if your dog is getting what he needs but is still misbehaving, then you typically don’t need any more than a simple correction. If you've watched my videos or read my books, you’ve heard me talk about this so many times. Many people believe that correcting a dog makes it hate or fear you. That’s utter nonsense. We can absolutely correct a dog for jumping, nipping, or chewing. In fact, it’s healthy to correct our dogs so they understand what’s right and wrong, because many of these issues are related to safety. A correction might be a spray bottle, a tug on the leash, an e-collar, or many other things. Generally, if you need to subtract even after you’ve ensured that your dog is being fulfilled properly, it’s a case of not correcting them properly.

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