Lynne S. Gots, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
Using a Competing Response to Break a Habit
By Lynne Gots, posted on March 18th, 2014.
Entertaining can be stressful for me—not because I worry about cooking an excellent meal or making the house look spotless but because our Australian Shepherd Freddie is a handful when strangers are on his turf. And to him, everyone except the very immediate family is a stranger with dubious intentions.
Recently our neighbors were over for dinner. As usual, Freddie barked. A lot. I gave him a bone to chew and sent him to his crate to quiet him. After awhile, he’d settled enough for me to let him out to lie by my feet at the table.
Dogs are very put off by direct eye contact. They find it threatening, especially if they’re fearful, like Freddie. So I always instruct visitors not to look at him.
But telling someone not to do something often has a paradoxical effect. Just think about the last time you told yourself not to eat dessert, or not to check your email, or not to send a text to someone you desperately want to hear from.
So of course as soon as I told my neighbor, “Don’t look at him!” he immediately turned and locked eyes with Freddie.
After the frenzied barking had subsided and Freddie had gone back to his bone, I was able to think clearly enough to realize my approach had been all wrong. Instead of saying, “Don’t look at Freddie” I should have said, “Look out the window” or even, “Close your eyes!”
The idea of replacing one action with another is a behaviorial strategy used to break habits. Substituting an undesired behavior (such as nail-biting, smoking, hair-pulling, or skin-picking) with a benign one is using a competing response to short-circuit the habit.
An effective competing response should be: 1) readily available, 2) inconspicuous, and 3) incompatible with the undesired behavior. For example, someone with trichotillomania (hair-pulling) might keep a fidget toy on the desk to use while working at the computer at home but might prefer to clench her fists to ride out the urge to pull at work. Or a smoker trying to quit might chew gum instead.
Trainers use competing behaviors all the time to stop dogs from barking and jumping up. When Freddie and I are out for a walk and see another dog across the street, I tell him to “Heel” and “Watch me” to divert his attention and keep him from going into overdrive. When he and Baxter greet me on my return from a day at the office, I throw toys for them to fetch so they won’t get muddy paw prints on my work clothes.
Come to think of it, I should try the “Watch me” command the next time we have company for dinner. Unaware I’m talking to the dog, the guests will look at me instead of making eye contact with Freddie. Problem solved.
Tags: competing response training, dog training, habit reversal training, trichotillomania
Posted in Dogs, Techniques |
My Dog Is Too Smart for His Own Good
By Lynne Gots, posted on May 27th, 2013.
It’s Memorial Day, and (CBT cognitive distortion alert) I “should” be using the long weekend to do some work. There are blog posts I could be writing, but they’d require research and more thinking than I feel like doing right now. So instead I’m going to put the CBT-relevant pieces on hold and just relate an anecdote of no particular interest, possibly, to anyone but my family and me.
(Then again, isn’t that the nature of many blogs? I’m drawn to the food ones featuring detailed accounts of the blogger’s daily meals, complete with mouthwatering pictures. They always inspire me to cook oatmeal—which somehow I keep forgetting I don’t particulary like—because it looks so appealing served up in earthy crockery with colorful garnishes of fruits and nuts.)
But I digress.
My anecdote is about my dog Freddie. I’ve talked before about how challenging it is to watch TV with him. He barks at everything that moves on the screen. So when he’s resting quietly, we relish the rare peaceful moment and try our best not to disturb him.
Such was the scenario last night. We were watching the Richard Linklater film Before Sunset, the second in what is now a trilogy (the 3rd, Before Midnight, will be opening here next week) following over the course of a few decades the same characters, Celine and Jesse, played by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. To say there isn’t much action is an understatement. There’s a lot of walking, talking, eating, closeups of the couple exchanging flirtatious glances—and not much else. No shouting, explosions, fighting, or sudden movements. In other words, there’s nothing to excite Freddie. Perfect!
So Freddie slept for most of the 80-minute film, and we enjoyed the illusion of having a mellow dog just chillin’ at our feet. That is, until a scene towards the end of the movie where Julie Delpy is taking Ethan Hawke to her apartment and spots her cat in the road.
“There’s my kitty!” she says. “I love my kitty!”
At that, Freddie shot up, ears pricked. We knew immediately what was about to happen. He dashed up to the TV and started barking just as the cat appeared on screen.
I have no idea how the word “kitty” penetrated his sleeping brain or why it caused him to react. We don’t have a cat. I don’t recall pointing out any cats to him on our walks through the neighborhood. So how could he have known “kitty” was something to get worked up about?
To test if his reaction was a fluke, we waited for Freddie to lie down again, turned off the TV, and said, “Where’s the kitty?” And again he bolted up and ran up to the screen, barking madly, aroused by the mere threat of a feline sighting.
So I have no explanation. This is one situation where science fails me. But it sure makes for a real life “shaggy dog” story on a lazy holiday weekend.
Tags: dog behavior
Posted in Dogs |
Lessons from a Dog: Accepting What You Can’t Change
By Lynne Gots, posted on December 4th, 2012.
My Australian Shepherd Freddie has much to commend him. He’s loyal and loving to his family. He doesn’t chew up underwear, move pillows from room to room, or snatch sandwiches from the kitchen counter like my Golden Retriever Calvin used to do. He’ll turn on a dime and come when he’s called, even off-leash. He walks jauntily by my side without pulling. And he’s incredibly smart—bilingual, in fact. The repertoire of commands he understands both verbally and by hand signals alone includes not only the useful basics (sit, stay, heel, come, leave it, down) but also many tricks I’ve taught him to keep us both busy. He can spin (clockwise), twirl (counterclockwise), sashay sideways, shake, salute, wave, march in step with me, backup, roll over, play dead, speak, play peek-a-boo, balance a treat on his nose and catch it, grasp an umbrella between his paws, weave through my legs, jump over and crawl under a bar, fetch a toy from another room by name, and take a bow.
But Freddie’s intelligence (along with an acute hypervigilence, endemic to herding breeds like his, to every sound and sudden movement) also makes him hard to live with at times. He barks. At everything. Incessantly.
Most annoying is his reaction to the TV. It’s impossible to watch a show when he’s in the room because he runs up to the screen and, in his most menacing big dog voice, tries to scare off the intruders. He gets really worked up when he sees fighting or hears raised voices. And since my husband and I favor shows like Breaking Bad, Dexter, and Homeland, with plenty of violence and bad guys, Freddie is always on his guard.
You’d think I’d be able to train him to lie at our feet for the duration of an episode. Believe me, I’ve tried. I tell him to “chill” (which he’s been taught means “stretch out and rest your head on your paws”) and toss him treats for being quiet. It works, for a while. But as soon as the plot heats up, so does Freddie.
The problem has gotten much worse since our Black Friday purchase of a 55” TV. It’s twice as big with a far sharper picture than our previous model. If the escalation of his barking is any indication, Freddie feels even more threatened by the outsized images on the new screen.
I wish he would curl up and sleep peacefully next to me on the couch like our other dog Baxter. Wouldn’t it nice to be able to kick back and relax with two warm, furry, quiet canines at my side? But since exciteablility is part of Freddie’s temperament, I doubt I’ll ever be completely successful in training him not to bark at the TV. So I’m coming to terms with not having the dog of my fantasies and learning to live with the real one in my house.
When you’re stuck dealing with a situation or person you’re not entirely happy with, the best option is to find a way to accept it. Jon Kabat-Zinn describes this as “the challenge of mindfulness.” Rather than trying to force your experience (or a difficult spouse, coworker, or pet) to be different, “be present for your experience as it is.”
I can’t quite muster the equanimity to tolerate Freddie’s barking throughout a TV show. It’s just too hard to hear the dialogue over the noise. So I’ve come up with a way to accept him and also enjoy my TV viewing.
I put him in his crate with a bone to occupy him. It works for both of us.
Tags: acceptance, dog training, mindfulness
Posted in Acceptance and Mindfulness, Dogs |
