The Grateful Dog LA Blog

Reading Behavior: “BF Skinner: The Man and His Ideas”, by Richard I. Evans

2026-06-02T03:40:00Z

If you’ve ever tried to wade through one of Skinner’s books, it can be a bit daunting without a formal education in behavioral science. Typically I find myself stopping every few sentences to google a concept, or chase footnotes and references to better understand the content. But this book shows a much more approachable side of BF Skinner. That’s not to say it does not give us some very insightful and memorable quotes that easily apply to our behavior as humans, and the behavior of our dogs.

How We Shape Our Dog's World

We often talk about a dog’s “personality” as if it’s set in stone, but Skinner suggests that even “awareness” is shaped through interaction with the social environment:

“Society makes the individual observe himself—he has no reason to do so otherwise. There is nothing in a nonsocial environment which would ever generate awareness. Awareness is a reaction to a part of the environment—like any other behavior—but it happens to be a part of the environment contained within the organism itself.”

In your dog’s life, you are a major part of their social environment. Your routines, reactions, and patterns of attention help shape what your dog learns to do and what outcomes those behaviors produce.

This thought, inspired by a quote from Anthony Biglan, is relevant here: If you have a dog, you know how important your attention is. The reason it is so important is that your attention is the gateway to every other form of reinforcement you provide: food, comfort, activities, toys, access to outside, and so on.

Actions Speak Louder Than Thoughts

Once we recognize how much of our dog’s behavior is shaped through the environment we arrange, it becomes less useful to spend our focus on guessing what is happening inside their head. Every dog owner has had a moment where they look at their dog and wonder: Are they doing that on purpose? Do they know how their behavior affects us?

“It doesn't make any difference to me whether things are conscious or unconscious; the causality of behavior does not depend upon awareness.”

This relieves some pressure for the human side of the leash. It means we don’t need to be mind-readers to be great dog owners. We don’t have to know whether a dog is conscious of a rule to help them succeed. Instead of thinking our dog “ignored” their recall cue at the park, or jumped on that specific neighbor “out of spite,” we can look outward to the environment for answers to the question, “Why?”

By focusing on what the dog is doing, and how we set up their environment and build their behavior repertoires, we can make success more likely. Instead of worrying about what’s going on inside their head, we can focus on the whole picture: What behavior under what conditions? We then construct a path where the behavior we want is easier, clearer, and more worthwhile for the dog.

Mind the Gap

When our dogs don’t listen, it’s easy to get frustrated and use labels like “stubborn,” “spiteful,” or “dominant.” But Skinner suggests that these labels are often placeholders for information we’re missing:

“If I can’t give a clean-cut statement of a relationship between behavior and antecedent variables, it is no help to me to speculate about something inside the organism which will fill the gap. The gap is in my data. It is something that I must eventually fill by improving the analysis, not borrowing from somewhere else.”

One of Skinner’s most popular quotes is “The rat is always right”. In other words, the animal is doing the behavior that makes sense under the conditions their environment and history have arranged.

The “gap” is not inside the dog as a character flaw. The gap is in our analysis. That may put more responsibility on the human to look carefully at their own behavior and the dog’s environment, but it also removes a lot of the blame and frustration we may feel toward our animals. We can now approach these setbacks with curiosity and hope.

Learning by Doing

Training shouldn’t feel like a chore or a classroom lecture. It’s a lived experience. Skinner believed the best way to learn was to come into contact with the subject matter directly:

“I prefer to bring my students into contact with the subject as quickly as possible... Give a young psychologist some equipment and a behaving organism, let him explore ways of manipulating behavior, and he won’t need a formal method. He will soon be discovering things which are quite valuable, and abundantly reinforced for doing so.”

Observing your own “behaving organism” and collecting data can help you understand your dog’s behavior-environment relations. I am willing to bet that in every case, you will be surprised by how many behaviors bring you joy. You will also likely pick up on earlier cues your dog is already giving you. You may even start to notice ways your own behavior is influencing your dog that had previously gone unnoticed.

You become partners in a game of discovery, finding out together what makes this relationship with your dog so unique.

A New Foundation for Your Partnership

By focusing on what your dog can do and arranging the environment for success, you build a foundation of trust and clarity. You don’t need a rigid, one-size-fits-all method to have a well-behaved dog. You need to stay curious, keep an eye on your “data,” and enjoy the process of discovering how much you and your partner can achieve together.

'Reading Behavior' is a series of our reflections on books, papers, and interviews that have shaped how we think about behavior, training, and lives with our animals. We hope to encourage curiosity and hope regarding your dog's behavior by providing our insights on the passages that stayed with us, the questions they raised, and how they connect to building better lives with our dogs.

Beyond Impulse Control: Building the Behavior We Want to See

2026-05-28T22:44:00Z

There is something real being described when we say our dog lacks impulse control. It is a reflection of the frustration and desperation we may feel when our dog behaves in a seemingly unpredictable way that disrupts our lives.

When we explain the cause of the behavior as “lack of impulse control”, it then becomes easy to start thinking the problem lives inside the dog; A defect that needs to be fixed or corrected. This is what Israel Goldiamond referred to as a “pathological approach”, which “considers the problem in terms of a pathology which, however it was established or developed, is to be eliminated or overcome.”

Instead, Goldiamond urges us to “help construct new ways of producing these critical consequences by means which are accompanied by satisfaction rather than distress”. This leads us to ask what the dog is getting out of the behavior, and what behaviors repertoires would I prefer?

But before we decide what the dog needs to learn, we need to understand what the behavior is doing for that dog in that situation. While we may have an idea, until we assess the situation, we can only guess.

For example, jumping may be a way to get interaction and attention from humans, it may be to get the person to go away, or it’s just become part of their behavior repertoire for greeting people. Different dogs can do the same behavior for different reasons. And different behaviors can sometimes serve the same purpose.

That is why assessment matters. We need to look at what happens before the behavior, what the dog does, and what happens after. In other words: what sets it up, what does the dog do, and what does the dog get out of it?

A constructional approach starts there. If a dog is jumping for attention from the human, instead of asking, “How do we stop this dog from jumping?” we ask, “What would we like the dog to do when people come in, and how can we make that easier to learn?”

To paraphrase Goldiamond “The organism is always right... The responsibility rests with the [human], not with the [dog].” It does not mean that we just have to live with whatever behavior our dog is doing no matter the cost. It means the dog is doing the behavior that makes sense to them under the current conditions. The environment is telling them what to do. Their history supports it. The outcome has mattered in some way.

Our job is not to blame the dog for responding to the occasion in front of them. Our job is to understand the occasion well enough to build something we like better.

The dog is already learning from the situation

When a dog jumps on a visitor, it may look like the dog is “out of control,” but the behavior is often more organized than it looks:

The doorbell rings, the dog perks up. Their human stands up, the dog follows. The door opens, the dog wags his tail and does a “play bow”. The guest walks in, the dog launches into jumping behavior on the guest. The dog is engaging in the behaviors that are cued by their environment. It is a behavior-environment interaction.

From the dog’s point of view, jumping may be the behavior that fits. It has worked before. It may have produced touch, eye contact, laughter, talking, pushing, or a very interesting reaction from the person. Even when people say “off” or push the dog away, the dog may still be getting a lot of interaction.

This is why “he knows sit” may not help when guests come over. The dog may know “sit” in the living room, with one person, when nothing exciting is happening. That does not mean the dog can do it at the front door, with visitors, movement, voices, and a long history of jumping. Changes in the context mean a change in the behavior-environment relation.

The dog is not being “stubborn” or “spiteful” or “lacking impulse control”. The behavior is just telling us that their environment is arranged in a way that permits the behavior, and we need to adjust that environment to teach the behavior we prefer.

The goal is not a dog who wants people less

In addition to issues with explaining away behavior due to an “inner mechanism”, another reason we caution against using terms like “impulse control”, is that it does not give us a clearly defined goal to work towards. We don't just want the dog to stop behaving completely (otherwise we might as well get a stuffed animal).

Most people would be happy to let their dog greet guests, as long as specific repertoires occur. So let’s define it using Goldiamond’s BBQ (Basic Behavior Question):

“What behaviors under what conditions?”

That might mean approaching with four feet on the floor. It might mean going to a bed while the person enters, sitting in place until the guest approaches or checking in with the handler first.

The point is not to suppress the dog’s interest in greeting people, but to build greeting behaviors “which are accompanied by satisfaction rather than distress”.

A better question than “How do I stop it?”

When we find ourselves thinking “My dog needs impulse control!”, we can use that as a reminder to ask better questions:

What is happening before the behavior?

What is the behavior?

What changes after, or how do I typically respond?

What would I like the dog to do instead?

Instead of getting frustrated or angry, get curious: make observations, assess the behavior-environment interaction, and define your goals.

Source Notes

This post was inspired in part by Tromplo’s two-part series, “Impulse Control: Mindset Matters”, and Murray Sidman’s “Reflections on Stimulus Control”.

The constructional framing comes from Israel Goldiamond’s work, especially the shift from eliminating problem behavior to building useful repertoires. I first came into contact with the constructional approach from the non-profit organization CAAWT.

Choosing the Right Collar, Harness, and Leash for Your Dog

2026-05-19T18:08:00Z

Harness vs. Collar

For most dogs, a harness is the best option for walking.

Harnesses distribute pressure across the dog’s body rather than concentrating it on the neck. This matters because the neck contains sensitive structures such as the larynx and trachea, which can be irritated when pressure is applied repeatedly through a collar.

Harnesses also allow us to guide the dog’s movement without putting pressure on the throat.

That said, collars still have a role. Some dogs who are prone to slipping out of equipment may benefit from a martingale-style collar or slip lead as a safety backup. Another option is clipping the leash to both a harness and a martingale collar so that if the dog slips the harness, the collar provides an additional layer of security.

For dogs that walk comfortably without pulling, a martingale or slip lead may also work well.

Why We Prefer H-Style Harnesses

Not all harnesses are built the same. Our preference is an H-style harness.

This style has straps that run:

around the collarbone
around the ribcage
with a connecting strap along the chest and back

This design has a few advantages:

No pressure on the throat or larynx
No restriction of the front legs
Allows full shoulder movement

A dog’s shoulder anatomy is different from ours. In humans, the shoulder blade connects to the skeleton through joints. In dogs, the shoulder blade is largely free-floating and connected by muscle. Because of this, pressure across the shoulder area can restrict movement and create discomfort.

Harnesses that run straight across the chest or shoulders can interfere with this natural motion.

Novelty “No-Pull” Harnesses

There are many harnesses marketed as “no-pull,” “easy walk,” or “redirecting” harnesses. These designs often use a front leash attachment or strap placement intended to turn the dog when they pull.

In many cases, these harnesses work initially because they create frustration or awkward movement, which interrupts the dog’s pulling behavior. Over time, however, dogs frequently adapt to the sensation, and the harness simply becomes part of the background.

When that happens, the original pulling behavior tends to return.

Another consideration is that many of these designs place pressure across the front of the shoulders or forelimbs, which can interfere with natural movement. This can add tension in situations where the dog is already excited or stressed.

For these reasons, we typically recommend focusing on comfortable equipment and training, rather than relying on novelty harness designs to solve pulling.

Choosing the Right Leash Length

Leash length should match both the environment and the handler’s comfort level.

A 6-foot leash is the most versatile option for everyday walks. It gives your dog enough room to explore while still allowing you to shorten the leash when navigating:

narrow sidewalks
crowded areas
busy crossings

For open spaces such as parks or hiking areas, long lines can be a great option. They allow dogs more freedom to move and explore.

However, long lines do require more handling skill, since excess line can become tangled or create safety issues if not managed carefully.

A Note on Prong Collars

Our preference is to avoid prong collars whenever possible.

However, there are situations where handlers may feel they need additional control, particularly when:

the dog is very large or strong
the handler has limited strength or mobility
safety is a concern during the early stages of training

In these cases, a prong collar may sometimes be used as a temporary management tool while training focuses on building new leash-walking skills. The long-term goal is to shift toward equipment that allows the dog to walk comfortably without relying on corrective pressure.

Our Favorite Harness and Leash

After trying many different products over the years, our favorite harness is the Blue‑9 Balance Harness.

In addition to the H-style design described above, each strap on the Balance Harness is fully adjustable. This allows the harness to be customized to the individual dog’s size and body shape, which can make a big difference in both comfort and fit.

Our preferred leash is from Mountain Dog Products.

These leashes are made from high-quality rock climbing rope, which makes them extremely durable while still being comfortable to handle. They also come with a lifetime, unconditional guarantee, which speaks to the durability of the product.

The Bigger Picture

Equipment alone does not teach leash skills. The leash, collar, or harness simply sets the stage for communication and safety.

With the right setup and a thoughtful training plan, most dogs can learn to move comfortably alongside their person while still having the freedom to explore the world around them.