You’ve probably had this moment: your dog does something frustratingbarks at every passing dog, pulls on the lead, ignores you completelyand you don’t know why. Or maybe you’ve tried to fix it, and nothing seems to stick.
Here’s the thing: most of us are trying to change the wrong thing.
We try to change our dog. But behavior doesn’t work that way.
In behavior analysis, every behavior follows a simple formula: something happens, the individual responds, and then something happens as a result. That’s it. Antecedent Behavior Consequence. The ABC model.
What makes this framework so powerful is what it tells us about change. You cannot directly change a behavior. What you can change is what happens before it (the antecedent) and what happens after it (the consequence). Those two things are what actually drive behavior.
Once you start seeing the world through this lens, everything shifts. Your dog isn’t ‘stubborn’ or ‘dominant’ or ‘bad.’ They’re responding to their environment and to the consequences their behaviors produce. Just like you do. Just like every living being does.
Here’s where most people get lost: there are four types of consequences, and they’re not all created equal.
When you add something to increase a behaviorthat’s positive reinforcement. This is where we want to be. It builds trust, creates lasting learning, gives the individual a sense of control and mastery, and reduces stress. It’s also deeply rewarding for the trainer. Everyone wins.
When you add something to decrease a behaviorthat’s positive punishment. It might suppress the behavior in the moment. But it erodes trust, reduces initiative, creates stress, and often means the dog (or person) stops trying altogethernot because they learned something better, but because they learned to be careful.
The difference matters enormously. A dog that walks nicely on the lead because it’s reinforcing is a very different dog from one that walks nicely because pulling was painful. One is a dog that wants to engage with you. The other is a dog that has learned to be cautious.
One of the most practically useful ideas in behavior analysis is deceptively simple: stop using labels, and start describing behaviors.
‘My dog is aggressive’ is a label. It’s a box. It implies something fixed and internal. But ‘my dog barks and lunges at other dogs on the lead’ is a behavior. It’s observable, measurable, andcruciallychangeable. You can look at what happens just before (another dog appears), and what happens just after (the other dog moves away, which is actually reinforcing the barking). Now you have something to work with.
This isn’t just about dogs. The same logic applies to how we talk about ourselves. ‘I’m bad at this’ stops change before it starts. ‘I haven’t had the right training or the right reinforcers for this yet’ opens a door.
This is exactly what we explore in the webinar The ABCs of Learning thorough, practical introduction to behavior analysis and the ABC model, with real examples from dog training that translate to every living being you’ll ever work with or live alongside.
If you’ve ever wanted to understand not just what to do, but why it worksthis is where to start.