You will see why a behaviour that had gone comes back, what a sudden worsening means, and in which cases the best decision is to do nothing at all.
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People talk about unlearning the way they talk about wiping a board. Brains do not work like that, and this misunderstanding is what makes most efforts relapse.
When a behaviour disappears, the old learning is still there. What has been built on top is a second piece of learning, more recent and more fragile.
The more recent one wins as long as conditions support it. As soon as they slacken, the old one becomes available again.
That is not bad news, it is a maintenance instruction: what you built has to be kept up, like anything recent.
A behaviour that used to pay off and suddenly stops paying off first gets stronger. The dog insists, louder, for longer, sometimes with frustration in it.
Plenty of people give up at exactly that point, concluding the method does not work. Giving in at that precise moment pays for the amplified version of the behaviour, and that is the version that stays.
Knowing this phase exists does not make it pleasant. It does at least let you decide before starting rather than halfway through.
A behaviour extinguished in the living room reappears in the kitchen. Extinguished at home, it reappears at someone else's house. Context is part of what was learned here too.
It also comes back after a stretch with nothing happening, with nobody having done anything wrong. A reappearance is therefore not proof that everything has to be redone.
The right response is a short return to the work, in the place where it came back, rather than concluding the earlier effort failed.
Walking through a door first, getting on the sofa, eating first: these were read for a long time as a bid for power. Current veterinary references have dropped that frame.
Its main fault is not that it is wrong in theory. It is that it stops the enquiry: once the label is on, nobody looks any further for what the dog is getting, what frightens it, or what has changed for it.
A dog that gets on the sofa has learned that the sofa is comfortable. That is less flattering for everyone, and you can work with it.
A bin moved, a door closed, a worktop cleared: these gestures settle in a minute behaviours people have been trying to correct for months.
They get treated as cheating. They are nothing more than the removal of the opportunity, and a behaviour that is never repeated does not get stronger.
That is not an admission of laziness. It is the only lever that works while you are not there to step in.
A young dog changes a great deal within a few months. Part of what worries you at a year old settles with time, provided nothing has been built around it in the meantime.
Doing nothing is not deciding nothing. It means carrying on with rest, predictability and walks, without launching a programme for a problem that may not be one.
One important reservation: a behaviour that appears abruptly in an adult dog that was doing fine is not a training subject. That is looked at on the health side first, with a vet.