Why do you need to know these ABC's?
Learning is a continual process from the moment a dog wakes until they next go back to sleep (in fact even in their sleep they are consolidating everything they’ve learnt while awake and those behaviour patterns are strengthening). Whether we like it or not, dogs are always ‘behaving’ in some way or another, and there is always consequences driving that behaviour and antecedents triggering the behaviour into action. Not sure what those are? I’ll be explaining all of that below so keep reading.
Whether you would like to see MORE or LESS of a specific behaviour, in order to change that frequency you need to look at the whole picture and not just the behaviour itself. It's easy to get wrapped up in what our dogs are doing and how that makes us feel, and often people attribute unnecessary labels like 'trying to be the boss' or 'stubborn' when these are actually going to hinder your ability to make any real progress with your dogs behaviour. Take a step back, and look things from a different lense.
Brief definitions of ABC's
Antecedents – This is anything that happened directly before the behaviour, factors leading to the behaviour being preformed. This could be a cue you give to your dog, or something that changes in the environment.
Behaviour – What the dog does in response to the antecedent. Try to be objective and descriptive, “the dog was excited” or “the dog was happy” are not that helpful. Instead, “the dog jumped on the person”, or “the dog stared at the strange dog for a few seconds and then barked continuously while pulling on the lead”.
Consequences – What happened immediately after the behaviour. These could be occurring naturally in the environment (the dog put it’s paws on the counter and knocked down the plate, and is now enjoying some tasty food), or they could be consequences strategically delivered by the human to either increase or decrease likelihood of behaviour (dog approaches with 4 paws on the floor, so the human drops some food on the floor and bends down to give some affection and attention).
Remember to bear in mind here that THE DOG chooses what is reinforcing and punishing to them. An example would be why so many dogs still jump up at guests or owners even though they are 'told off'. Look at it from a science lense, if that was actually punishing to the dog they wouldn't continue to do it, in the majority of cases any attention (even negative) is still reinforcing to the dog.
Your Training Plan
So now you know what each of the ABC's mean, how do you figure out where to go from there? Something to bare in mind before I carry on: every case and individual is going to be different, it doesn't matter if you have the same breed of dog that you've seen in TV or Youtube being trained, it doesn't matter what you've read online or been told in the pet shop. YOUR DOG is an individual and you need to know their likes, dislikes, and how to read their body language. Speaking on a universal level, there are a few things to look at when coming up with a strategy. The first is if you can alter your antecedents (called antecedent arrangement). If you dog goes nuts at the doorbell, put a note saying don't ring please text me if you're here, or put an external post box on your front gate. Sometimes in dog training, arranging the antecedents is literally enough to keep the peace and you don't need to do much work on the training side. However, most of the time you do. So arranging the antecedents is to help stop your dog going unnecessarily over threshold, causing stress, and to stop them practicing unwanted behaviours. Next lets look at the behaviour part of the equation - you can teach alternative behaviours (these need to be very strong, in order to work over an already established behaviour). An example of an alternative behaviour would be teaching a solid recall so your dog doesn't run up to strange dogs. You can also redirect behaviour, when it's already started or you're noticing signs of your dog about to do something you don't want to, you can redirect their attention onto something else. An example of this would be if a dog comes unexpectedly round the corner, and you know your dog isn't ready to train under this circumstance, you can redirect their attention onto a game of find the treats. Consequences drive behaviour, so these need to be really looked at. Write down notes of what might the dog may be getting reinforced by. As I said above, it's not what YOU think is reinforcing or punishing, but what's actually happening for the dog. Write a list of all the things your dog enjoys and you can use these as reinforcers to create associations between the behaviour they do and the outcome they achieve. WTF - What's the function?
Every behaviour has a function, and although we can look at the above and think about how we can either increase of decrease behaviour occurring by arranging the antecedents and focusing on the consequences, the underlying function of the behaviour is equally important. Let's use the jumping on guests example, the function of this could be a mix, but the primary one might be Attention. You can try to use food, toys, praise and teach alternative behaviours for the dog to preform, but if your plan is to not allow your dog to greet your guest at all by way of teaching them to ignore guests, you're likely to end up with a very frustrated dog who will likely not find the food, toys and praise as rewarding as you might think. If instead you teach alternative behaviours, set up the scenario with your guest that still involves your dog learning to gain access to attention but in alternative ways (bringing them a toy, sitting for attention, petting for four paws on the floor, laying on a mat next to them), then you're likely to have more success.
Distant Antecedents and how important are they?
Distant antecedents are something I have personally found to be one of the most important aspects of behaviour change and training. If there was an underlying need not being met in your life, or chronic stress, pain etc; then always being on top of things and being the best version of yourself is so difficult. We have ALL experienced this in our own lives, but for some reason we think dogs should be in tip top form and behave at all times the way we expect or desire.
We went through immediate antecedents above, which are things that happen directly before behaviour. Distant antecedents are things that happen before the before. If your dog has a history of jumping up so this pattern of behaviour is already well established, AND as an individual has a high social drive, but hasn't seen people other than yourselves in weeks; then it's going to be difficult for your dog to listen and practice the new training because they will be overcome with desire for attention to fulfil their social needs. If your dog is socially sensitive and copes by barking and lunging to get other dogs away, even if you've been practicing all the correct skills and drills, if your dog is trigger stacked (link HERE) and dogs keep invading their space time and time again, they won't be in an emotionally good place to learn.
One last example is you need to look at your dogs breed needs, are they getting opportunities from preform breed specific behaviours appropriately? If you don't give your dog appropriate outlets, then they will come out in inappropriate ways.
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