What is Redirection?

by Bailey Coldwell

A term that you have likely seen time and time again here at Baxter & Bella is “redirection”. But what exactly does this mean and when should you try to redirect your dog?  What are some ways that you can attempt to redirect your dog? What do you do after your dog redirects? What happens if your dog is not redirecting? Stick around to find out. 

Redirection in dog training is when we encourage the dog to do a different behavior than what they are currently offering. Some examples of when redirection is recommended: 

• If the dog is play biting.

• The dog is jumping on a person or an object, such as the counter. 

• They are digging in the yard. 

• The dog is chewing on an item in the home that is not a dog toy.

• If the dog is fixating on and/or barking at a trigger such as another dog, person, sound, etc.    

So, what can you do to try to redirect your dog? One way to redirect a dog is to use a cue you have already taught them. For example, if your dog is biting their leash and your dog understands the “drop it” cue, you could try this. You want to make sure not to use cues or words that your dog hasn’t been taught, as it would be equivalent to someone trying to speak to you in a foreign language.

Another redirection option is to make a quick sound or action to try to grasp the dog’s attention. This could be a kissy noise, snapping your fingers, shuffling your feet, saying “uh uh,” or trying to yelp like a puppy. You can try to redirect a dog by using a toy. If the dog is chewing on your table leg, for example, show them a toy and try to replace the table leg with it.

Body blocking can be used to redirect a dog. If the dog is excited when a guest comes to the door, move between your puppy and the guest to try to prevent your puppy from making inappropriate contact and to help encourage the puppy to look up at you instead. Another example of body blocking is if a dog tries to eat something or dig at the ground. Step where the dog is focusing, and then keep moving. Your foot distracts the dog from the area on the ground,d and the movement encourages the dog to keep moving with you.

Regardless of how you try to redirect your dog, you don’t want to seem angry. You want your dog to want to focus on you or focus on a different activity that you are providing. If you scare the dog, this could cause the dog to be more hesitant to redirect towards what you want them to. Try to remain collected and carefree when attempting redirection.  

Let’s say you try to redirect your dog, and it works. The dog stops doing the unwanted behavior and focuses on something else instead. Do we reward the dog at this point? We want to be careful about immediately rewarding the dog. For example, if the dog is play-biting, we say “uh-uh”, and the dog lets go, don’t immediately give a treat. Instead, see if the dog continues to offer good behaviors. Go into a training session or give it a few seconds to see if the dog continues to be good. If the dog continues to do well, we can then reward them. If the dog goes right back to biting, we want to give the dog a break in a crate or a pen to decompress. We do this because we don't want to get in a repetitive cycle where the dog bites, we redirect, we reward the dog, and then the dog bites again. The dog then learns that to get a treat/reward, they first need to bite us. If your dog does redirect from the unwanted behavior, it is still a good start. In the future, try to prevent the behavior before it happens so that we don’t need to redirect. Back to the biting scenario, try to provide the puppy with more naps, reward more good behaviors, and keep the puppy out of zone four.

What happens if you try to redirect your dog and it isn’t working? We then need to take an extra step to stop the behavior. I find that dog handlers are often trying too hard to redirect. If you try to redirect your dog and they continue the behavior or start to do more unwanted behaviors, we want to then interrupt the dog. Sometimes puppies are already overstimulated and are unable to redirect at that point. If the dog is digging in the yard, we want to try to redirect 1-2 times or for 5-10 seconds. If the dog continues to dig, we then want to interrupt the behavior by using a leash to encourage the dog to step away. We want to get the dog away from the hole so that they aren’t able to continue doing the unwanted behavior. We only want to attempt redirection a few times because otherwise, the continued digging can be a reward for the dog.

It is normal for dogs to experiment with unwanted behaviors, especially throughout puppyhood. Don’t be discouraged if a new behavior arises. Create a game plan to help teach the dog what to do instead. Try to prevent the behavior from happening. If the unwanted behavior does occur, hopefully, this blog post has given you some tips on how to attempt redirection. If the dog continues to do the behavior, take the next step, an interruption. As always, contact our team of trainers for any additional support.