Training & Behavior

My dog, a cheerful idiot of a spaniel, used to mount every visitor's leg like it was a greeting he'd invented and was proud of, and the first time it happened in front of my mother-in-law I wanted the floor to open, because there's no dignified way to peel your dog off someone's trouser leg while apologising, and the dog thinks he's being friendly the whole time, which somehow makes it worse.

It wasn't dominance, the books say that word too much, it was excitement with nowhere to go, a dog so wired by a new person that his body did the oldest available thing, and telling him off only wound him tighter, which wound the habit tighter, because the attention, even the annoyed kind, was a reward he'd take. I'd been punishing the symptom and feeding it at the same time, the classic loop, and the guests kept getting mounted.

The fix was to give the excitement a job, a toy he'd only see when people arrived, a thing to hold and shake that spent the energy the leg had been getting, plus a sit for a treat before the guest got close enough to be a target. It wasn't instant, he tried the leg twice more out of habit, but the toy was more fun than the trouser, and the sit paid better than the hump, and slowly the greeting became a shake and a sit instead of a launch and a scramble.

What I'd missed was that the habit wasn't about the visitor, it was about the dog having no outlet for the burst, and a creature with a burst and no outlet will use whatever's nearest, which happened to be a shin. Give him the outlet first, before the door opens, and the nearest thing stops being the target, because the energy's already spent on the toy he was given for exactly this.

He still gets excited, he's a spaniel, excitement is the whole personality, but the leg is off the menu, and guests can now enter without bracing, which my mother-in-law, at least, has noticed. The habit got something else to do, and the something else stuck, because it paid better, and a dog will always take the better-paying option if you hand it to him before he picks his own.

The toy lives by the door now, a rubber thing with a squeak he only gets when the bell rings, and the bell no longer means mount, it means job, and the job is shake the squeak and sit for the biscuit. A dog with a better offer won't take the worse one, and the worse one, it turns out, was only ever the one I'd left lying around unguarded.

My mother-in-law, who'd been the unlucky leg that first time, is now the one he runs to at the door, toy already in mouth, because she's the person who reliably produces the biscuit for the sit, and the apology I owed her has been quietly paid in treats and good behaviour. The spaniel didn't learn manners so much as he learned a better game, and the visitors, once braced, now get a dog with a squeak toy and a sit, which is the greeting I'd have scripted if I'd known the script was mine to write.

My mother-in-law, who'd been the unlucky leg that first time, is now the one he runs to at the door, toy already in mouth, because she's the person who reliably produces the biscuit for the sit, and the apology I owed her has been quietly paid in treats and good behaviour. The spaniel didn't learn manners so much as he learned a better game, and the visitors, once braced, now get a dog with a squeak toy and a sit, which is the greeting I'd have scripted if I'd known the script was mine to write.

The toy by the door has become a kind of peace offering the whole house understands, the thing that turns a burst of guest-energy into a trick with a payoff, and the leg, once the default target, is now just a leg, unmolested, as legs should be. A habit with nowhere to go will go anywhere, and the squeak toy gave the habit somewhere good, which is the whole of the fix, and the mother-in-law, at last, can visit in peace, which she deserves more than the dog will ever know.

The toy by the door has become a kind of peace offering the whole house understands, the thing that turns a burst of guest-energy into a trick with a payoff, and the leg, once the default target, is now just a leg, unmolested, as legs should be. A habit with nowhere to go will go anywhere, and the squeak toy gave the habit somewhere good, which is the whole of the fix, and the mother-in-law, at last, can visit in peace, which she deserves more than the dog will ever know, the unlucky leg that started it all now the first lap he runs to at the door.