Management
If you work with me you hear that word a lot. It is a part of any behavior modification plan.
What do I mean when I refer to management? Basically it means setting up the environment so as to prevent your pet from 
practicing behavior you don’t want practiced. A proactive way of looking at it is setting up the environment to make the preferred behavior more likely.
A scientific description for this is Antecedent Arrangement. Antecedents are environmental factors that occur BEFORE a behavior set the ball rolling for the behavior to occur. Examples of antecedents: proximity to a new person for pulling on a leash, barking, jumping, or even growling or lunging; sound of a dog barking for more barking, growling, running away or running toward; humans sitting at a table for pawing, whining, barking; proximity to wooden chair legs for chewing on the legs.
Since we know that each time a behavior helps to get the animal something it values – whether that is attention, sensory stimulation, physical activity, or something else – management is very important to training success.
This photo of a client’s dog is one example. When his human mom or anyone else sits on the couch, he immediately jumps up and begins incessant attempts for getting attention. Pawing never ceased the entire visit with him. She would like to possibly take him to work with her, but also to just be able to sit on her sofa without his constantly trying to get pets.
Settling in a crate is not something he has been taught yet (we may do in the future) so another alternative is to teach him to lay on the ground when cued instead. To do this, we first needed to teach him to lay down and stay for small durations in other areas where the lesson would be more successful. Then practice it in different areas, and then when it came time to practice in the hugely difficult place next to the sofa, we needed to add in a little ‘management’ to help the process be more successful. Now that he was already laying down and staying down in the kitchen and other parts of the living room, before practicing when we moved to the sofa, we tethered him to a piece of furniture so that he could not physically get to the sofa. Because he already had a history now of being reinforced for laying down, when he could not reach the sofa, that is what he chose to do. That decision could then be reinforced with treats to make it even more valuable for him. And then, his owner will be spreading out the time between treats.
Other example of management include:
Baby gates for preventing dogs from having access to spaces where unwanted behavior is likely to occur
Crates for preventing puppies (and dogs) from pottying inside, chewing on furniture or grabbing shoes, getting overly bitey when overly tired.
Window clings for preventing dogs from seeing moving things outside that may trigger barking, panting, and/or pacing.
Boards placed around furniture, electric cords or floor length drapery (which I had to do when my Dawson was younger) to prevent your puppy from pulling or biting on it.
Ensuring that shoes and other objects you do not want chewed are kept out of reach of your dog or puppy.
The list can go on and on. Just remember, before you can effectively teach your pet want to do a different behavior, you have also got to come up with a plan for finding a way to keep your pet from practicing (and getting reinforced) for doing the behavior you do not like.
