Extinction burst, aka it’s going to get worse before it gets better

An extinction burst occurs when a previously reinforced behaviour stops being reinforced. That is, something that worked for the dog stops working.

Remember, dogs do what works, they are getting something out if it. So when faced with problem behaviours that have a likely inadvertent reinforcement history, to stop the behaviour we must stop the reinforcement.

BUT the dog will get frustrated. And they will try harder. Leading to a BURST of the behaviour before it stops completely, or goes EXTINCT.

For example, say jumping up is rewarding for your dog because they lick your face or you put your hands on them to push them down (any attention is good attention, right?). If you turn your back so they cannot access your face and you are not putting your hands on them, they are no longer getting that reward. So for a time they will try to jump more often, higher, and with more urgency to try to get the same reward.

It’s important to be aware of this extinction burst because it’s really easy to feel like you’re not getting anywhere with training, or that you’re going backwards. You may even think your dog can’t be trained or is just stubborn. However, if you “give in” and, using the example above, put your hands on the dog to push it down, the burst of behaviour was successfully rewarded – this can set a new benchmark for the behaviour, or at least will make the next attempt harder.

I know it’s hard. These behaviour bursts can be quite dramatic, and include vocalising that is much harder to tolerate or bothers the neighbours. As humans we totally want to take away our dogs’ frustrations. It’s important that we remember the bigger picture, and work through the extinction burst and frustration to ultimately live better with our dogs.

Call me, I can help.