But there’s a silver lining. For any animal—including people and dogs—old habits may die hard, but creating new habits can be almost instantaneous in the right circumstances. You may solve some problems virtually overnight once you step back and look at the bigger picture. You may notice pieces of the puzzle that you hadn’t considered, and open up possibilities for change. When you discover how to use other factors to your advantage—especially those in the environment—you’ve got a second chance at learning. Our ability to make new choices and learn new strategies is far more than just a matter of rewards and punishments. For humans, dogs, and everything in between, game-changing conditions can create game-changing opportunities for behavioral change.

Awkward Impulses

So here you are, ready to embrace the window of opportunity provided by learning, excited to show your dog how to make better choices and build more practical habits for your life together. But we all know that we can’t entirely escape the influence of our past. Before you start working on that list of dog behaviors you plan to change, you are going to need to start with a critical reality check. No matter how hard you try, how perfect the conditions inside and out, there are inherent limitations. You have to accept him for what he was born with—those habits far beyond his control. There are things he can’t change. There are actions he may not be able to stop, and new habits he will be unable to acquire.

Why would your dog turn in multiple circles before he lies down, bedding and perfecting the imaginary grass that isn’t there, on the living room rug? Why would he use his nose to bury his bone on the sofa with dirt that clearly isn’t there? As you just learned, the answer is that it runs in the canine family.

These genetic, learned impulses are like potential energy just waiting for the cue from life to engage—a behavioral software program ready to run at the click of a mouse as some environmental trigger stimulates that primal lizard brain. A great many modern dog behavior “problems” arise when this happens for our pets. Out of their original context, these once-useful impulses can wreak havoc in our homes or have serious consequences for a dog’s mental health if they are suppressed altogether. When a naturally meaningful sensory signal (i.e., a huntable animal) stirs a behavioral key for your dog (to hunt it) and he is unable to engage with a fitting outlet (always on a leash, nothing else to hunt), he becomes frustrated. If this happens repeatedly or chronically, your dog’s behavior can become dysfunctional. The behavioral habit has nowhere to go.

If an impulse continues to fold in on itself in frustration, it can become neurotic in expression. That’s right—dogs, just like people, can develop neuroses. And just like us, these kinds of dysfunctional behaviors are frequently the indicators that our genes have found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.