The fastest, easiest, most effective approach is to recreate the bad behaviour in a controlled setting, and correctly use sound distractions with praise to stop it.
Dogs can learn or unlearn almost anything in four properly conducted repetitions.
Taken to it’s extreme, these four repetitions should be performed in four different places, or with different people, dogs, or whatever the “props” involved may be. Understanding how dogs think, learn, and process information is a stretch of the imagination for most of us. It is obvious that they know more about psychology than we do.
They think, have a sense of humor, communicate, tease, lie, steal, etc. just like any one else. But, they don’t think human.
Dogs are limited to thinking like dogs. It’s your responsibility to think things out from their perspective and try to use good judgement.
Be consistent. Dogs get confused if you’re not consistent.
Now that you are getting familiar with teaching a command through conditioned reflex, you can use similar techniques to stop or break any behavior whatsoever.
Using the cans, or any other source of sound, so long as it is brief, and so long as it can be presented from different directions on each consecutive instance, are all that you need to do to break any behavior.
Simply create the sound, and follow through with praise!
It’s that simple.
Any behavior can be stopped or broken, simply by creating a sound, and praising immediately.
The secret is, to allow the undesired behavior to begin again, and simply present the sound from another direction, and follow through with praise.
Of course you have to understand how your dog thinks and learns in order to successfully achieve this.
Each time you create a sound to stop or break a behavior, you must praise him for as long as he refrains from continuing such behavior (at least until he no longer thinks about that instance, usually ten or fifteen seconds), and be prepared to create your sound distraction and praise as soon as the behavior begins again.
This is the sticking point with so many trainers.
“Why should I praise this critter if he’s not even doing what I want?” Remember, dogs do not think in human terms.
Most behavior problems are simply a failure to clearly communicate.
Of course, you may continue correcting your dog forever, as most trainers do. We do not understand why a trained dog needs correction.
Seems that if he were trained, that would be the end of it.
That would imply that if a trained dog makes a mistake, that this mistake is probably not an accident, but rather, a challenge to your authority.
Perhaps this is why so many trainers seemingly enjoy correcting their dogs forever. I guess the real reason it is so difficult for us to share the Wits’ End Dog Training Method with other pet professionals, is because we take all the satisfaction out of “dealing with” and obstreperous dog.
The problem is, that corrections do not teach new behavior.