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The Best Dog Training I Ever Did Do.
Replacement habits are a core concept in habit coaching.
When I found our dog Eloise, she was a stray wandering through an Arkansas RV park.
She’s now 110lbs, but even back then, malnourished and abandoned, she was still a big dog. At her first vet appointment, she weighted in at 76lbs.
What I liked about her was how much she liked people. Our previous dog liked us, but didn’t like visitors to our house, and so he made socializing more work than we wanted. Eloise was the opposite, and that’s exactly what we were looking for.
In Eloise’s journey from camp to camp at the RV park, she insisted on saying hello to every single person. She didn’t seem to want food, just attention.
The way she asked for attention was with her paw. At first people would think she had the world’s best shake command.
But she’d keep pawing at you and pawing until you’d given her all the attention she needed. One guy in that RV park came away with a deep, bloody gouge down his forearm. She’s a big dog with big paws and even bigger claws.
Eloise was a dangerously friendly dog and that’s the habit I wanted to train her out of. It’s classic habit breaking and really isn’t all that different than from when you and I want to…
