Challenging Behavior

Hey all,

I was hoping someone might be able to give me some advice on how to handle a situation with my 1 1/2 year old coonhound mix, Logan. 95% of the time he is great, he seeks a lot of attention but all in all a great dog. He has this annoying habit only with me and never with wife or son. This started out pretty rare but now it is multiple times a day. He will sort of challenge me and we can't figure out how to curb this behavior. An example is i'll be sitting on the couch watching tv and all of a sudden he'll come up, look at me and just start barking/pawing/nudging me with his nose. If ignore him, he tends to bark more and get more aggressive until I either leave the room or something else distracts him. I've literally sat there for over 20 minutes ignoring him while he just carries on (just to see how long he would go). We have no idea what provokes this (this morning I came down the stairs after waking up and before i got to our kitchen he had already started) or how to prevent or stop it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Don't worry! This is a very common behavior :)

First step- Identify what the dog wants. He's annoying you for a reason. Does he want to sit on the couch? Does he want you to pay attention to him? Find out WHY he's doing this.

If you really want to get rid of this behavior once and for all, you have two options:

Option 1) Ignore him until he stops. Because you've given in to him so much, his incentive to annoy you will be very strong. In other words, you've been inadvertently rewarding his annoying behavior up until this point. Ergo, he will go through an "extinction burst" (http://www.shirleychong.com/keepers/archives/bursts.txt). In other words, because experience has taught him that the reward will come eventually, he will bark louder, paw harder, whine with more intensity, etc, because he knows that you will give in eventually. However, you MUST ignore this completely and outlast him. This will take some time and patience, but, when you outlast him, his annoying behavior will quickly diminish by itself.
Option 2) Introduce an aversive every time he performs this annoying behavior. For example, a loud angry "AH!"/"NO!". Then, give him an appropriate behavior. For example, lay down in your crate, play with your toy, chew on a Kong, etc.

My suggestion? Use both methods to really hit this behavior at the core. For example - ignore him completely and allow him to go through an extinction burst. Then, every time he annoys you after the extinction burst, introduce an aversive. Then, give him an alternate, appropriate behavior. And, voila, the behavior will disappear!