There is so much conflicting and confusing advice out there on how to tackle your dog's behaviour, but one of the biggest things I hear dog owners asking is:
"Am I rewarding the behaviour"
"If I feed them while they're barking, will I reward it?"
Let's get into it.
Rewards and punishment are ways of increasing or decreasing the likelihood of behaviour happening. We learn that as children, if your parents ever sent you to your room for being naughty (punishment), or promised you something if you did the thing they asked you to do (Reward).
But, that was when you were actively thinking about cause and effect. The outcome or the consequences of your actions. This is the same for dogs too. They do things, we give them feedback for the things that they do, cause and effect.
I'm not going to talk more about punishment because it's not an area that I operate in. I understand that it works but I don't use it because it's not something I believe to be ethical.
Cause and effect works when we are not actively thinking about how to get rewards too! It can happen passively.
Cause:
My dog sees some food fall onto the floor when I'm cooking, they go and eat it.
Effect:
They will loiter while I'm cooking on the off chance that there is food they can get.
The loitering will be reinforced by them occasionally getting food.
The cause is the food dropping, with the effect being that they do the behaviour more.
So let's now put this into an emotional context. By that I just mean... Lets think about times when emotions and feelings are running high, or things are feeling stressed/frustrated/anxious.
Let's first think about a dog with separation anxiety. Lots and lots of behaviourists, going back decades are guilty of recommending a "crate and a kong" approach. Contain them so they don't destroy your house, give them a kong to make them feel better/occupy them.
But
I put this to you, taken from Malena Demartini Price's insightful separation anxiety book:
If I'm feeling scared, worried, stressed about something and I eat a pint of ice cream, (Ever been through a break up and downed your sorrows in chocolate and ice cream??), I'm not sure that that is going to actually make me feel better.
Or more importantly... it's not going to make me want to feel sad or worried more often... in order to have ice cream.
So we can then turn this into something that relates to our dogs with reactivity:
Our dogs are for the most part, making emotional decisions when they react to things. They are not actively thinking "omg look a dog... I'd better bark".
It can be a tricky one to get our head around, because there are definitely times where the dogs learn that barking means food is coming, but when they are truly reacting from a emotional place - frustration, anxiety, fear, conflict - then we have a dog that is not using their brain to make conscious decisions on what consequence that will have.
Ever just lost it at someone and had an emotional outburst?
If someone had given you some more of that ice cream... would it have make you want to have another outburst?
So... why do we use food at all with our reactive dogs?
Well.. when our dogs are not reacting, when they are thinking, it can be an incredible tool that facilitates learning... that cause and effect really does come into play.
See the dog, have some food.
See the dog, have some food.
We create a clear structure that allows them to learn and develop strategies to cope with triggers. Of course taking into account all factors and how we implement it.
If our dog's are too close, they're over their threshold and have lost their ability to learn, then that cause and effect structure isn't having the effect that we think it is.
Giving/offering food is merely something that can either... help them feel better in the moment - draw their attention away - or is an annoying thing we are making them do when they are really focussed on something else.
So will rewarding/feeding our dogs while they are reacting make them do it more?
In certain special situations...maybe.
But in most... almost certainly not.