React! Don’t Do It….

Hello Dog Owners!

Although you wouldn’t think it, Summer is on it’s way.

Perhaps I should say… The months that should be Summer, are on their way.

Time will tell.

There seems to be a lot of reactive dogs out there and they seem to be on the increase.

I train a few reactive German Shepherds and a couple of clients have reactive dogs that they are working with and not a day passes by without a reactive dog or three lunging, barking and snarling at the dogs that I am with.

I was having a conversation with a very nice lady in the coffee shop early the other morning with my first coffee of the day, about her Romanian rescue dog which she rescued when it was around 2 years old.

She was asking advice on reactivity, as the dog has been fairly reactive after it had settled in.

We went through a few things that she could focus on and then I asked her how long she had had the dog.

“4 Years”, she responded.

I was gob-smacked. “Four Years?”, I clarified.

By the way she was speaking it sounded like she hadn’t long since taken the dog in. But 4 years living with a reactive dog and not addressing things?

Wow!

So, seeing as reactivity is in the air, I thought that those of you with reactive dogs may benefit from some of the things that I suggested this lady could do for her dog.

This one’s gonna be a big’n.

So make a cuppa, dig in and here we go!

WHY PEOPLE THINK YOUR DOG IS AGGRESSIVE

Owning and living with a reactive dog can be a task.

A very big, life-changing one in some cases.

When our dog reacts and is on edge it is easy for us to be on edge too.

Feeling a little overwhelmed, embarrassed and a fair bit frustrated.

Just like our dogs’ reactivity levels, our emotional state can escalate very quickly indeed, especially if we feel powerless to prevent, or stop, the situation from happening.

It therefore doesn’t help when somebody states something along the lines of:

“You’re dog is aggressive and should be wearing a muzzle!”, or helpful and sympathetic statements similar to these.

We end up thinking that we need to explain ourselves to people who have an opinion, to somehow try and offer a reason for why our dog behaves the way it does.

In reality, we don’t need to explain anything to anybody.

In actual fact, by trying to spend time explaining to people why your dog is doing what it is doing, you can lose some crucial training time when your focus is not on your probably very highly stressed out and reactive canine companion, doing the poor little boy or girl a very big disservice.

People always have an opinion, whether you ask them for one or not.

But we have to remember that it is just their opinion and most of the time it would be better if we just ignored their rantings and focus our attention on the task at hand – our dog.

The long and the short of it is, that the majority of people haven’t even got a clue about why a dog can be reactive, for if they did they would completely understand and would probably be able to offer some advice, assistance or just simply give us the space that we need.

But alas, they are largely ignorant of such matters and instead like to point fingers and pass blame.

I know it’s hard, but my advice would be to just ignore them, politely saying “Thank you” and immediately turn your attention to where it’s needed.

It is because of people such as this that agenda’s are formed and the fingers of blame are pointed towards certain breeds of dogs, and personally, I really don’t like it.

Instead, I think one of the better ways to deal with people such as this, is to be a bit stoic about things.

Let’s face it, if somebody hasn’t been directly affected by your dogs reactivity and have an opinion anyway, then it is possible that they are just trying to get a reaction out of you to satisfy their ego.

Rather than react to this type of person, it would be better to just ignore them and focus on your dog.

If your dog has reacted towards them or their dog, then you can quickly apologise and then continue with your training escapades.

I would refrain from getting into an involved or heated discussion, which could not only make you reactive, but could also put your already stressed-out dog in a worse position.

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THE TWO MOST COMMON FORMS OF REACTIVITY

A lot of people think that if a dog reacts to something, especially if it’s another dog or a particular type of person, that they are aggressive.

This isn’t true in the least.

There are two common forms of reactivity that so many dogs seem to suffer with – Fear Reactivity and reactivity borne from Anxiety.

You may think that these are the same thing, but for me they are quite different.

Anxiety-Type Reactivity

A dog that is anxious of certain triggers and situations may come across a bit on the nervous side in these situations.

They are generally happy to go almost anywhere and may show that they are a bit anxious when they encounter something that they are unsure of.

Otherwise, they are OK most of the time, but can be a bit whinny, restless and want to keep moving.

Loud and unexpected noises may easily surprise an anxious dog and unless the noises are persistent in nature, they can quickly recover from this stress and return to usual activities.

Dogs that exhibit deeper levels of anxiety can tend to take longer to recover from these surprise situations and situations where they become anxious.

Certain types of breeds, due to their breeding, can operate with a base level of anxiety which can complement the activities and duties that they are expected to perform.

Notably Border Collies, Huskies, German Shepherds, Spaniels and Belgian Malinois breeds inherently carry a degree of anxiety, helping them perform at higher levels than some other breeds, which is why they are chosen for specific work.

Fear-Based Reactivity

For a dog that comes from a place of fear, the World seems like a dark place indeed, with threats coming from every direction imaginable.

The body-language of a dog behaving from fear is a lot of time fairly stiff and alert, as they are always on the lookout for something to defend themselves from.

The World is a dangerous place for a dog that is acting from fear and every time they step out into it, they have to be prepared to fight.

This doesn’t make the dog aggressive, it is just extremely fearful.

Typically to keep people away so that it doesn’t have to feel the effect of the presence of the threat, the fearful dog often learns that lashing out through lunging, barking and biting makes the threat go away.

Conditioning does the rest and as the person, dog or object retreats, the dogs behaviour is reinforced, making it more likely to exhibit that behaviour again the next time a similar threat comes to their doorstep.

Although the anxious dog may have experienced some form of trauma in their life that has made them that way, it is highly likely that this dog has had some form of life-changing experience – and not from a good perspective, although this may not always be the case.

Socialisation is a large part of a puppy’s overall development of their temperament and if in the first 14 to 16 weeks of life it hasn’t rubbed shoulders with every single situation it needs to encounter throughout its entire life, then their experience in specific situations may come from a place of fear, as they have never encountered that specific situation before.

Men, with beards, and hats, and walking sticks, maintenance men in fluorescent work wear, hunched over old women, children..on bikes, scooters..screaming, shouting and jumping all over the place, cars, lorries, helicopters, motorbikes, trains, people walking in the dark…with the hoods up or a hat on with their mobile phone lighting up their faces, sunglasses that obscure the eyes, gun shots, fireworks, water, somebody shouting, a plate being dropped….. the list goes on.

If a puppy hasn’t had the experience of all these types of things, plus many, many more, then it is highly likely that when they are suddenly exposed to them later in life it can be a fearful and traumatic experience for them, that they can find difficult to get over.

So, be warned if you have a puppy.

Take it everywhere, all of the time as soon as you get it.

Carry it if you are worried about putting it down on the ground and let it experience the human world before it’s too late – that time limit is 16 weeks, when the puppy’s temperament is now set.

Basic training needs to be done by this time also, so that those behaviours become part of the puppy’s core being.

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HOW PEOPLE JUST DON’T CARE

While writing this I was trying to be fairly diplomatic.

Being a more straight-to-the-point kind of guy, diplomacy has never really been a strong point of mine.

However for this section I have to be real, as living with a reactive dog – especially a large breed dog – can be a challenging task and it is important that you are aware of people, how they think, their reactions, considerations and expectations.

Furthermore and to set the scene a little more, if you have a dog that is or isn’t reactive and you haven’t trained it to tolerate screaming little kids that run around in-front of it and even run up to it at speed, to touch or cuddle it, then it will always be your fault if your dog reacts, jumps, barks or goes to nip.

Where children are concerned, it doesn’t matter if the child purposely stamps hard on your dogs tail (as was the situation with my little lad just yesterday), kicks it, throws something at it, screams in it’s face or jumps up-and-down in-front of it.

If your dog jumps up, chases or turns to nip out of surprise or self-defence, in other people’s eyes the dog will always be in the wrong and likely to be put down if it causes injury.

Dog owners are expected to train their dogs from a very young age to tolerate these types of situations, but the same somehow isn’t true of parents that should be training their children not to do such things.

Instead, they create and encourage this type of behaviour by getting the child excited when it’s young each and every time it sees a dog.

“Ahhh, look. A cute little doggy!”

By the time the child is walking, it wants to go and touch every single dog it sees.

A dog is expected to have 100% recall and be kept on a leash all the time, and yet a child can be free to run up to our beloved pets and are not required to be restrained in the slightest.

It doesn’t seem fair somehow.

Once again, if your dog reacts to a child running up to it – think prey/play drive – and jumps up knocking the child over, it will always be the dogs fault.

So, with the stage now set, let’s continue.

Ignorance of Colour Codes

Colour-coded collars and leashes are a brilliant idea – Green means Friendly, Yellow means Nervous, Blue means Service Dog (that’s another discussion for later), etc., but they do have a few immediate problems:

1. They are made simple and tend not to be padded
2. They can be uncomfortable for a dog to wear for long periods.
3. You can’t see what is embroidered on them from a distance.
4. If you are unaware (ignorant) of what the colours mean, then it’s pointless.

We are really informing other dog owners who are aware of what the different colours mean, to please give us a little more space.

But, if those dog owners aren’t aware of what the colours mean, they’re not going to do that for you, even if they can see that you are struggling with your dog or going through a training process.

Similarly, it is very unlikely that non-dog owners will be aware of what these colours mean and even less likely to have trained their young children not to engage a dog by staring at it, running near it, shouting at it, screaming near it or touching it.

In most situations you are likely to be the loser, where the dog gets put in situations that it feels it has to react to.

This in turn makes you feel stressed not only at the other people, but also because you have to handle a reactive dog.

All this commotion then makes the dog feel more stressed as it now knows that you’re stressed and you are likely to be telling it off, making it feel more anxious that it now has to worry about you, as well as the original issue that it reacted to in the first place!

Lack of Appreciation of Space

All reactive dogs need space and loads of it.

Well, more than the average well-rounded dog would need anyway.

Do people give you that much needed space?

You guessed it – on the whole, no they do not.

No matter if you ask people: “Could you give us a little space please, he’s scared of people.”, they won’t.

They may move a foot or two further away, but not anywhere near far enough away to take the pressure off your dog.

If you try to explain to them that your dog is reactive, not only does your concentration defer to the person you are talking to and away from your dog (where it should firmly be), many a time the response you get can be something along the lines of…

“It should be wearing a muzzle then!”

This is because, once again, the majority of people are ignorant as to why dogs are reactive.

All they see is a dog lunging, growling, barking and pulling it’s owner frantically on the leash and they interpret all of this activity as aggression.

In all likelihood, letting go of the leash may end that behaviour.

(please don’t just go and try this without knowing exactly what the source of your dogs reactivity is and knowing how to safely handle this type of situation)

This is because a lot of reactivity occurs on the leash as the dog feels like it can’t get away, so it feels that it has to stand and fight – which equates to making itself look vicious by barking, lunging and growling.

Fight or flight – Survival Mode – Dogs will try to flee first and if they feel that they can’t get away because they are tethered to their owner via a leash, they chose option 2.

This is known as Leash Reactivity.

I’m Faster than You!

I had a situation this very week where I was walking through the park along the pathway behind another dog.

Seeing as my little lad is excitable and tends not to heel properly if he is too close to another dog and because I’m conscious that another owners dog may be reactive, I kept a decent amount of space behind.

Just like on the motorways – Keep 2 Chevrons Apart!

Everything was going superb.

The guy’s dog in front wasn’t worried about a dog too close behind and my little lad was walking nicely by my side.

All of a sudden, my dog quickly looks around as he detects something behind him.

Approaching me at speed, with his dog trotting by his side, was a man in a “sporty” mobility scooter, coming unannounced to pass close on the side that my dog was walking.

How inconsiderate.

I announced to the guy to please keep his distance as I can’t walk as fast as he was travelling, but this request fell on deaf ears and instead he said “Morning”, as he whizzed passed at speed.

I don’t need to share that my dog broke his heel position as his prey-drive was triggered by this guys dog passing him with less than a foot’s distance.

But worse than that, he did the same to the guy who was walking his dog nicely in-front of me.

Sure enough, the guy who had previously been walking lovely with his dog, lost control of his heel-work also, as his dog reacted by bouncing about trying to chase the guy on the mobility scooter and his dog, as they speed past without a care in the World, oblivious to the inconvenience he had just caused for 2 dogs and their owners.

People are inconsiderate indeed.

Off-Leash Everywhere

These days most dogs are effectively off-leash.

Either they are:

1. Off-leash in an off-leash area – which is appropriate and acceptable.
2. Off-leash in a park setting where it states that dogs should be on leash – not acceptable.
3. Off-leash along the street – not acceptable and likely to cause an issue with drivers.
4. Off-leash in and around the town – again, not an acceptable environment.
5. On a 45-foot extendi-leash and let to run everywhere, so they may just as well be off-leash!

People are not considerate and as long as their dog is OK, that’s all that matters to them.

They don’t consider how a dog running around – controllably, or more than likely uncontrollably – can affect a reactive dog.

A reactive dog can see that dog as a threat that will come hurtling toward it at any time.

It can incite the prey-drive of an excitable dog making it want it to go and play, pulling, tugging and jumping everywhere.

It can make the anxious or fearful reactive dog feel more unsafe as it already does and if their owner isn’t stepping up to take control of things, then the dog will feel that it absolutely has little choice but to deal with the situation itself.

People of non-reactive dogs generally, really haven’t got a clue and really don’t want to take the time to understand what the owners of reactive dogs are going through, which in itself can be an absolute dark and disturbing, lonely, nightmarish place to be.

Isolate – Keep Away

There are loads of situations such as these and far too many to mention in this short(?) newsletter, but you get the gist.

The downside of all this carry on, is that the owners of reactive dogs tend to stay away from all other dogs.

They may feel insecure themselves and not know how to handle things.

They more than likely feel powerless to change things too, after all, their beloved pet has been like this for months or years and there hasn’t been any improvement in the slightest.

The distressed owners tend to take their reactive dogs out late at night when less people are about (apart from other reactive dogs owners!!!!)

They may take it out during the day, but will keep their distance from other dogs and other people.

And, if they are put in a situation where they have absolutely no option than to pass another dog closer than they wanted to, they tighten the leash so tight that it triggers the dog to react, as now it really can’t get away and feels the fear from their owner.

And so, it goes on and because of the owners actions through their fear, the dogs insecurity is exacerbated, increasing its fear and potentially increasing its reactivity.

It becomes an habitual behaviour, unconscious, and now it’s just they way it is.

But, it doesn’t need to be that way!

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OUTLETS: SHE’S GONNA BLOW!

All dogs should have an outlet.

An activity of some kind that can get the frustration and pent-up energy out of them and enable them to decompress.

One of these outlets should be an off-leash session with other dogs, in my opinion.

“How can I let my dog off-leash with other dogs, after all she’s reactive!”, I hear you scream.

I can understand this question and it’s a valid one to ask, but hear me out.

How do you relax after a hard week at work?

A stressful court battle that’s gone on for months?

Financial insecurity that makes you feel under pressure day-in, day-out?

Christmas stresses, children bickering at home seemingly around the clock, or a tense and stressful intimate relationship that isn’t really going that well?

How do you decompress from those types of situations that can be extremely stressful?

Go on holiday maybe?

Spend some time with family and friends?

Maybe you’re into sports and you go and kick out your frustrations doing martial arts, football, cricket, squash or go for a workout down the gym, then a few pints in the pub with your training buddy on the way home?

Do you prefer to be on your own to decompress from these types of stresses or do you prefer to do things with other people?

After all you can’t play football on your own.

But we expect our dog to be able to decompress on their own and isolated from any friends.

In actual fact because of their reactivity they probably aren’t allowed to have or make friends.

Sure, reactivity can be tough, but giving your dog a life that they enjoy can actually help immensely.

All dogs should be able to run free, off-leash and get out the frustrations of being locked at home within those 4 walls that have become their comfortable prison-like place to be.

They should be able to break free of the confines of that leash that they are tightly tethered to that restricts their every move.

Should they not be allowed to relax while out on walks rather than have contraptions that squeeze their noses so hard that they pull up and push against their eyeballs?

How frustrated would you be to be this restricted when you went anywhere?

Would you enjoy your walk – that brief time of so-called freedom when you are allowed to escape the 4-wall prison that is your home, tightly tethered to a leash that pulls around your face?

I’m really not having a pop any anybody here, I’m just trying to get you to see it from the dogs perspective.

Because of their reactivity and because their owners don’t know how to deal with such a thing, the dog isn’t given any freedom at all – just the illusion of freedom.

So what can we do to help our dogs decompress and start building a relationship with them that will go some way to calming down that reactive behaviour and restoring trust?

Here’s some ideas to consider.

Controlled Off-Leash Social Groups

Just like you need to get out with your friends, let your hair down and have a blast, so does your dog.

Building a small group of trusted doggy friends for your dog to hang around with can work wonders for both their confidence and their stress levels.

You could find that just a run around once a week with a few close friends is all that your dog needs to keep them happier, less stressed and less reactive.

Unless your dog already has a group of close friends to hang about with, choosing the right type of friends and dogs that yours will get along with can be a process.

After all, you don’t like everybody you meet do you and I would bet that you would hate to be pushed into a room for an hour with somebody that winds you up, just because that’s what you’ve been told you must do.

How would that help your stress levels?

Just like on the human World, we need to help our dogs choose their friends wisely.

Scent-Work

A dog’s primary sense is smell.

They live the majority of their existence by their sense of smell.

It comes as no surprise then, that if they were given the opportunity to use their primary sense to do something that they would enjoy it may go some way to helping their reactivity.

Although I can see the logic in this as they will pay less attention to what is happening around them, but for me this type of solution is successful in another way.

It simply gives your dog something to do that it enjoys, helping it to relax and decompress from the stresses of everyday reactive life.

It empties their cup a little bit.

Dog Sports

Some form of dog sport such as agility, working trials, obedience classes, tracking, toss and fetch and even protection work, can work to help de-stress your canine companion.

After all, you can’t chase and catch a Frisbee, find and subdue an attacker or jump over 12 hurdles, run through a tunnel and over a see-saw at speed, attached to a leash, can you?

FREEEEEEDOOOOOOM!!!!

Your dog will love your for it, I’m sure.

Find Something You Both Can Enjoy

… and do it together.

I’m the biggest advocate for building a trusting relationship between dog and owner and it is this that will go a very long way indeed, into dealing with reactivity.

Working on something together, over time, will create a strong inseparable bond and a relationship that others would die for.

A companion dog isn’t just a dog, it’s part of the family and a reactive companion dog isn’t just a nightmare, they are part of our family that’s just finding life a little difficult to deal with and they are coping the best that they can.

Let’s help them live a better experience and a more fulfilling life.

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TIPS, TRICKS AND STRATEGIES

There are a whole host of things that you can do to help your dog with their reactivity issues.

Some of them are all about them and others all about you!

Whether we know it or not, the way that we interact with our reactive companion can make them feel either more secure, or more insecure.

The more insecure they feel, the more reactive they can become.

Similarly, if they feel that they can’t get out of a situation, then they will be more prone to react.

Then there are of course habitual behaviours to consider.

How long have they been practising this type of behaviour?

How long have you been practising this type of behaviour?

There can be a lot to unpick with regard to reactivity.

We shall continue discussing some practical steps you can take in the next edition of DOT News, but for now we will choose just a few things to help start thinking differently about reactivity.

Become a Leader

More specifically, become the leader that your dog needs you to be.

Dogs are pack animals and the nature of the pack is that there is a Pack Leader.

The pack leader keeps everything ticking along, keeps everyone inline and watches and alerts for potential threats.

It’s a tough job being the pack leader and it goes with a high degree of stress.

In the modern world with our dogs as a pet, they still need a leader.

After all they are still a pack animal and will look for a leader to take on the burden of keeping the pack safe.

However, if there is not definitive and clear leader, then they will take on the burden of that role with all the stress that comes from being in that position.

So how then, do we become the leader that our dog needs us to be, rather than what we think it should be?

An Air of Confidence

It is important when in the presence of your dog, in play, in training and on your daily walk, that you exude an air of confidence.

Walking purposefully and confidently, knowing where you are going, dictating the speed at which you walk and the direction of travel.

When approaching situations you need to show that you have no fear and even if your dog shows that they are wary, your confidence needs to carry them through, rubbing off on them and helping them cope.

“Exude an Air of Relaxed Endeavour When in the Presence of Your Canine Companion.”

If another dog reacts towards yours, you need to take charge of that situation immediately and ideally before it even begins. Letting your dog know that you’ve got this so that it doesn’t feel that it has to step up and take charge.

Living by Rules

Within the pack there are rules.

One example is that the pack leader has first refusal – of everything – the bitches, the bed and that meaty bone and once they have claim upon it, they then get to choose who can have it next, if anybody.

These rules helps each dog in the pack feel safe as it knows its place in the hierarchy.

As pack leader we need to establish rules.

At home your dog will have it’s own bed and you yours.

You will eat before you feed your dog.

It settles down where and when you say it does and it doesn’t chew things, urinate everywhere or barge through doorways!

On the walk you stipulate the route, when your dog sniffs, where and when it can pee and poop, when it gets to play and when it gets to go home.

Within play the rules are there too and if the ball doesn’t get returned or the tug isn’t released when you say it needs to be, then the game stops.

Within training it’s the same.

If their butt doesn’t hit the ground when you ask them to Sit, then they don’t receive a reward from you.

Once they do what you ask, they get their reward.

Everything that we do with our dogs should be encased in a set of rules.

These rules help to create confidence in the dog, as it looks towards the leader that it feels safe to follow.

It is important not to underestimate the role that we play in The Pack and if our dog doesn’t see or feel that you are stepping up, then it will decide that it has to do that job instead.

Be an Advocate for Your Dog

It is highly likely that a fearful dog that is unsure of people will want people staring at it and going to stroke it.

What can a dog do if it is approached by somebody when it doesn’t want them to?

There is only one answer for this question:

It can’t flee as it’s on-leash and restricted. This would have been it’s first port of call.

So, first it will Growl.

If that signal is ignored and the person still comes towards them, then it will likely stand up and Bark to signal that it is uncomfortable with the situation.

Body posture will go stiff as it prepares to fight.

If that signal is ignored, then there is no alternative (in the dogs eyes), it will have to Fight!

It will Lunge towards the threat, or source and likely Nip& Retreat in an attempt to get the threat to back off, or go for a full-on Bite.

From the person approaching’s perspective, it usually follows a similar pattern to this:

1. First they will look at the dog, staring at it straight in the eyes. This is a “No-No” in the dog world and signifies bad manners and a potential challenge if the dog doesn’t look away. An adult dog will correct a younger dog for this behaviour. People don’t look away, they just keep looking and staring at the dog without any knowledge that they are making the dog feel uncomfortable.
2. Next, the person will start talking to the dog and towering over the dog, making the dog feel vulnerable and still with that full-on eye contact. If the person is wearing a hat, has a beard or is wearing glasses, this can make things even worse. If the dog growls at this stage the person usually starts laughing a little and speaking to the dog and continuing that threatening eye-contact. The dog is warning them to Back-Off!
3. Even so, it is likely that the person will ignore the dogs warning and come in closer to touch them. The dog has shown them that they feel uncomfortable, threatened and has sufficiently warned them. The person has ignored these indicators and they have also ignored the verbal warning. What choice does the dog have now?

Have you advocated for your dog and told the person to back off, or are you passively looking on and waiting until that reactivity takes place at which stage you correct the dog? Who was the instigator of the entire situation? And yet the dog is seen as the one at fault.

Why would a dog owner put their reactive and non-reactive dogs through this on a daily basis, setting it up in a situation that makes the dog feel threatened and likely to have only one outcome?

Not knowing is one reason, but once they do know are they likely to change their entire convenient routine to ensure that their dog doesn’t feel threatened?

I wrote an article for the website (prior to doing newsletters) about Advocating for Your Dog covering situations similar to these that may be worth a read.

Teach Them a Way Out

As our little (or large) reactive companions learn to handle life the best they can, they learn that they can never get away from the “fearful” thing that confronts them.

They learn that in all cases they must literally fight things head-on.

One of the worst things that dog owners can do is to encourage dogs to meet in passing.

Personally I am not a fan of this approach as it encourages reactivity.

What makes things so much worse, is that they encourage dogs to meet face-to-face which is certainly not the way that dogs would naturally meet.

So now our reactive companion walks towards another dog head-on.

The other dog stares at him for a little too long and Boom!

In reaction the owner pulls on the leash and Boom! Boom! Boom!

It’s too late and the dog is in a full-blown reactivity phase.

Now the owner starts speaking to them inadvertently praising their reaction – all is now set for a repetition next time.

Instead, as you and your dog approach another dog, use the Draw-Back Recall approach as soon as your dog spots the other one far in the distance.

Make a plan on how you can give your dog – and the other dog that may also be reactive – enough space to pass.

Engage with your dog using distraction techniques.

Let them see the dog approaching and then gain back their attention in an repeated interactive game of Engaging with what your dog sees as the threat and then Disengaging from it and reinforcing with a high-value reward when they turn away and focus on you.

It is very, very important not to inadvertently reward the reactive behaviour with the reward, so you need to pay close attention to what it is that you are actively rewarding. Otherwise you will likely be rewarding the reactive behaviour ensuring that you get more of that, rather than the disengaging behaviour.

If your dog starts to build too much to the point where you can no longer get its attention, quickly change direction and go somewhere else, showing it that there is another way out and it doesn’t have to confront its fear.

It doesn’t matter if you get to this stage and you cannot get past the other dog. This is not the goal at this stage.

The goal is the training prior to that point, that helps it desensitise and learn that it doesn’t need to hyper-focus on the subject that it determines is a threat.

Praise, reward, move, run, play and shake off the stress of a job well done!

One day, you will get past the dog.

Desensitisation Training

This method of training does exactly what it says on the tin.

It progressively desensitises your dog to the triggers that they are reacting to and it’s a very good method to use when desensitising the presence of other dogs.

The first port of call for this method is to find the distance at which your dog reacts to another dog or specific trigger.

This could be 10 feet, 50 feet, a hundred feet or more.

Once you find this distance, imagine you and your dog at the centre of a circle that extends around you, with the radius being the distance between your dog and the trigger.

This is the Radius of Temperament.

Now, extend that circle by a few feet until your dog stops reacting to the trigger and listens to you once again.

This is the distance at which you will be doing your work with your reactive friend.

The second port of call with this method is to have something to do.

Usually this can be obedience of some kind, such as position work and basic routines which the dog knows are superb, or if their radius of temperament is less than 10 feet or so, then a working trial class or agility may be the order of the day.

The idea is to make something else the focus while the perceived threat is present just at or slightly further than the trigger distance.

With regular repeated training the distance to the perceived threat can be reduced bit by bit, as your reactive canine companion learns that the threat is no longer a threat and it’s more important to interact with you and have a lot of fun!

I love this technique as it not only keeps the distance between the dog and the trigger, helping both the dog and the owner to relax and have fun, it almost forces the owner to interact, work and build the relationship with their dog.

All good stuff!

Make Things Part of Their Routine

Another technique is to make the things that the dog is anxious about, part of their daily routine.

This technique can work for a fearful dog if treated carefully, but works phenomenally well for the slightly anxious dog.

If your dog is anxious of traffic, then plan your daily route to interact with traffic.

If it’s people, then plan your route where there is more people.

Now, you have to be sensible here and you must do this in incremental stages.

DO NOT FLOOD YOUR DOG! (i.e. Expose it to everything it’s scared of).

Sure you can flood little puppies under the age of around 14 weeks with everything that they need to cope with in life, but after this time, if you try to do the same with an under-socialised adolescent or adult dog, then you will definitely make their fear exponentially worse.

Baby steps are the answer after the 14-16 weeks of age and each situation needs to be addressed individually.

Going back to traffic.

Let’s say that your dog is scared of certain types of traffic, or even all traffic.

Maybe it’s fine if the traffic is light and along quieter roads, but as soon as you get anywhere near the main road your dog panics.

All you need to do is plan your walk to end up somewhere that your dog knows and can relax – say the coffee shop.

Starting at a time of day when the traffic is not as busy as rush hour, head down to the coffee shop and plan your route so that you need to just cross a main road.

Don’t plan a route that requires you to walk along the main road for a while, as this may be too much for your reactive friend to handle.

Just nip out of a side road or lane, cross the busy road and immediately disappear to safety down another quieter side road that comes out near the coffee shop.

Your dog may be a little stressed, but soon enough they will be able to decompress in the familiar surroundings of the coffee shop while you sit and sip your early morning coffee.

Stop Making a Big Deal of Things

The final thing we are going to cover here is how you react to things.

We have covered about being a leader for your dog and this is another element of that.

How you react will have an impact on how your dog reacts.

If they react to a situation and you go full-blown nuclear, or start shouting at them, tugging them and getting all frustrated, angry and flustered, then when your dog looks at you for guidance and leadership, all it will see is it’s owner having a full-on meltdown.

If however, it sees that you are calm, confident and in control of the situation, then it may be less likely to react so much, will calm down much quicker and over time won’t react so much in the first place.

It is therefore important for us not to make a big deal out of things and to remain calm.

“Yeah Right! With a 60kg dog thrashing around on the end of the leash!”, you say.

Yep! Exactly that.

At the very least, say nothing when your dog reacts and completely turnaround and walk another way.

Don’t say a word.

Don’t yank the leash, don’t get angry or wound up in the slightest.

Just turn and walk away.

What has your dog just learned?

I’ll leave that with you and bid you farewell for this massive Reactive edition of DOT News.

Thank you for bearing with it and reading this far. I hope you have learned a thing or two.

We’ll be having some more reactive strategies coming in the Next Issue of DOT News – So Stay Tuned!

Until next time…

Happy Training!

To Achieve the Impossible; It is Precisely the Unthinkable that Must be Thought – (Tom Robbins)

– Stuart