She has learned. She has learned well. In fact, she’s got escaping from a crate down to a science—because she was left for excessive periods of time in a crate at her last home, and she perfected her skills. In her previous home, chewing things up apparently continued to bring people back; and it relieved a great deal of frustration after ten hours of confinement in a box. Jumping all over the humans upon their return gets a response: the undivided attention she’d been craving for hours in their absence. Just because she is in a healthy home with you now—crated only for short periods of time, exercised extensively, spoiled with chew toys, and indulged with attention—does not mean that these habitual responses to being left alone will simply vanish.

Replacing the Ritual

THE SITUATION: Your dog goes crazy, jumping and shrieking, at the front door every time you have guests over.

WHAT YOU DO: Keep your dog behind a baby gate when guests first enter your house and give your dog a long-lasting, exclusive “visitor bone”. Eating scrumptious butcher bones can totally redefine the meaning of company and may finally break the cycle of craziness at the front door. After several times of experiencing this, your dog will begin to associate visitors with the anticipation of receiving a yummy goody.

WHY IT WORKS: Through your actions, you dam the old habitual mode of behavior with the baby gate and encourage a new mindset with the golden chewy, and voilà—you have a new behavioral path for your dog to take when a friend comes knocking. Eventually, he will run into the kitchen and wait for the super “visitor bone”.

Long after she relaxes into her life with you and her anxiety falls away, she still breaks out to find a chosen object to chew while awaiting your dramatic return. These behaviors have become habitual to her; sequences of behaviors chained together, they arise in a given scenario—watching through the bars of the crate as a person walks out the front door. These behaviors are now a part of her routine. They may not be intentional, or even conscious.

It’s important to recognize when our dog’s past experience has set the stage for those very resilient habits we observe and wish to change. Becoming unduly offended or personalizing the actions of our canine friend creates resentment, false judgment, and even premature hopelessness about the relationship. Many habits can and will change with the right approach; new neural pathways can be carved out and the old ones effectively dammed.

If we are understanding about the power of habits, we may patiently cultivate new substitute habits, gradually rendering the old ones meaningless. We can be realistic about the amount of time it takes to carve out a new course of action in a mind where the old course has been well traveled for so long. We can be creative about the introduction of new game-changing learning that is spontaneous and powerful, shifting other factors in critical ways for the benefit of the relationship.