please stop licking me!

[Brattina88]

I just have one basic rule of thumb that works across the board. If you don't like a certain behavior, don't reward it. In addition you can offer an incompatable behavior in place of the bothersome behavior and reinforce that. Soon the behavior you don't reinforce will fade away. It really doesn't much matter whether the dog is being "dominant" or "submissive" or pushy for attention. Reward pushy and you get pushy. I ought to know. ROFLOL. I have a couple of little pushy behaviors going on here. Gee wiz. I must either be reinforcing them or they don't bug me enough to bother with.

*nods* That's usually my way to go, too. If you knew Missy, however, you'd understand why that wasn't working. I ignored the behavior for quite a long time. The thing is, she just doesn't stop! I tried putting her in a sit/stay, or a down/stay, but she would just change the location of her licking. If I walked away, ignoring her she would literally follow me all around the house. She licked a spot on my arm raw and it got to the point to where I was like "This is enough... I need to teach her what I want!" because she clearly wasn't getting the message.


Just an update... I wanted to thank Red again. Missy no longer licks me or company excessivly unless I give the command that okays it ("Kisses" of course). I still allow a couple licks before I say "enough" and she quits Thanks!!!

 

[Doberluv]

That's usually my way to go, too. If you knew Missy, however, you'd understand why that wasn't working. I ignored the behavior for quite a long time.

One flaw here: Remember, reward doesn't necessarily have to be actively coming from us. In this case, the licking in and of itself was rewarding....(self rewarding behavior). So the behavior was still being reinforced....same with barking. You can't ignore certain behaviors because there may still be something in the enviornment which is reinforcing. Say, you ignore a dog jumping up on the counter to steal food. Well, of course that's not going to discourage that behavior because the food is reinforcing. So, when ignoring doesn't seem to be working, or better yet ahead of time, assess what possibly, even remotely could be reinforcing or rewarding to a dog engaged in some behavior. Licking might mean that yummy taste of salt on our skin or that hand lotion we have on. It might be rewarding becuase the dog just gets a good feeling from it. So, sometimes we have to actively teach something like, "enough." LOL.

 

[Brattina88]

I'm confused... lol... I only posted that as a reply to your post about ignoring for licking regardless of dominence or submission...

Ah well... we have success regardless

 

[Doberluv]

LOL. Sorry for the confusion. I'm just too detail minded I guess. When you wrote that the ignoring didn't work for Missy's licking, I thought I would cover all the bases and remind about how ignoring only works when the pay off for the behavior comes from us...or from our attention. (since ignoring is sort of the opposite of attention) But when a behavior is rewarded not because something we do, but because it's a self rewarding kind of thing, (like even licking might be) then that's why ignoring wouldn't work. They're still getting some sort of satisfaction from the licking even if we do ignore them.

A-r-r-g-g...sometimes it's so hard on the Internet to make sense. ROFLOL.