Excitement When Meeting Other Dogs

[poodlefan]

The fact that you all say it is so easy is what gets me "15minutes" really? maybe for the first 15 till he gets bored of you.

Here's an approach you can try:

- put a well-fitted martingale or whippet collar on him (not a sloppy fit)

- put his harness on him

- clip the leash to the harness and walk for 10 minutes, find somewhere quiet and without too many distractions

- clip the leash to the collar and work on loose leash walking for 2-5 minutes

- go back to the harness and walk how you normally walk

- repeat daily, building up the amount of time you do loose leash walking on the collar

Make a rule for the rest of his life - if the leash is clipped to the collar, you are going to do consistent loose leash walking training. At all other times, use the harness instead.

If the dog is too small for a Whippet collar, Blackdog make a smaller version for Italian Greyhounds.

[Jetty]

I use a normal chain check collar which fits well I have the chain go though on the left side of his neck. He cannot get out of it as when he pulls it gets tighter. I suggest you try it.

[Aidan]

THe dog needs manners and to settle anxiety. Not create a jeckyl and hyde situation. My Malinois will pull like a freight train on some equipment and behave lovely on the other. Can be a PITA sometimes I dont see how this will fix his anxiety around other dogs

You've missed the point. C&S expressed concern that his dog wasn't getting enough exercise when being trained to walk on a loose leash, this gives him an option for walking and working on his loose leash walking. It does not directly address his excitement around other dogs, but C&S will no doubt see the difference between his "loose leash dog" and his "harness dog" and make his own decisions, having had some success and hopefully a boost to his confidence.

The collar and harness become discriminating stimuli for both of them. It's a bit like having a SchH dog in front of a helper and then off the field. Not a problem at all.

[Aidan]

Could the OP not build up to walking on the martingale with a line or second leash fixed to the harness for backup same way as you might use a martingale for back up on a prong (in case it pops open).

It would seem easier to give corrections on a martingale than a harness, I would think the harness just gives more consistent traction for the dog to pull.

OP is struggling with the belief that he can even teach this dog to walk on a loose leash for more than a few minutes and that, due to the short duration of this exercise, his dog won't be getting enough walks. He doesn't mind his dog pulling into the harness, it is front attaching so the dog self-corrects to some extent.

I'm giving him an option where he can walk his dog this way for as long as he wants, but at the same time he can build up duration of good, consistent loose leash walking on a collar at whatever pace he can manage. No pressure, when he can't maintain the consistency required to keep walking on a loose leash he can just clip the leash to the harness and go back to bad habits in that equipment, without stuffing up the loose leash walking he has worked so hard to achieve on the collar.

I did that for a while, I found it really difficult to walk with other people having to stop and back up or change direction every time the leash went tight so I would use a head halter. When she became reliable walking on a loose leash on a collar, I stopped using the head halter. It can become a crutch if you let it, but even abused it's still progress.

[Nekhbet]

No pressure, when he can't maintain the consistency required to keep walking on a loose leash he can just clip the leash to the harness and go back to bad habits in that equipment, without stuffing up the loose leash walking he has worked so hard to achieve on the collar.

sorry thats a cop out. If the process is that tedious and slow and ineffective then change method. My point is you cannot allow a dog to sometimes exhibit a behavior then other times not. The dog needs quality exercise not just rabble along then have a set training session. The dogs attention is low because I think the owner gives in a little too easily or the current method has taught the dog little.

It does not directly address his excitement around other dogs

It should. The loose leash walking should directly be anxiety lowering as well as encompassing strategies to help cope with the fact other dogs exist in the world. Frankly the loose leash is a couple of minute work for even some of the most stubborn dogs, the dog problem will take longer but really I think the OP just needs to try something different with a different trainer. If the dogs behavior is NOT changing then no, your method is not working and you need to try something different. Your timing and voice might be right you're just not using it in a method that ends up making permanent changes to the dogs behavior.

Edited November 24, 2009 by Nekhbet

[Aidan]

My point is you cannot allow a dog to sometimes exhibit a behavior then other times not.

I can think of millions of examples where this is a perfectly acceptable, normal thing to do.

Do you think a personal protection dog should ALWAYS engage a person, even if that person is not attacking? Should a dog who has been taught to heel never do anything but heel again any time you have a collar and leash on it? What about mushing dogs, can we never teach them to walk on a loose leash because we can't allow them to sometimes pull and sometimes not?

It's a good, CLEAR discriminating stimulus. Much better than starting off with good intentions then getting a little bit lax when everything is going well. We all do it to some extent.

And who's saying the process is slow and tedious? Only the OP. Once he gets on with it consistently he might be surprised.

Edited November 24, 2009 by Aidan

[Nekhbet]

Do you think a personal protection dog should ALWAYS engage a person, even if that person is not attacking? Should a dog who has been taught to heel never do anything but heel again any time you have a collar and leash on it? What about mushing dogs, can we never teach them to walk on a loose leash because we can't allow them to sometimes pull and sometimes not?

That's completely different and you know it. This is not a performance dog it's a pet.

All dogs need to learn to walk on a loose leash. When you clip a leash on any dog I train they know that means loose lead walking, I teach it as a fact of life and the discussion ends there. If you want performance that is commanded by the owner, heeling is a different behavior from loose leash walking. Don't excuse a cop out with proper controlled training examples.

The dog needs to learn to overall be less anxious and you want to let it do what it wants because it's easier. That solves nothing and in fact the dog will learn the behavior is becoming acceptable by the owner. Is this how you deal with too hard baskets? So if the dog was biting the owner would you 'oh let him bite you sometimes and we'll deal with it in small bursts'. No - high anxiety that is turning into menacing behavior towards other animals or people should not be allowed at all and there are ways to stop it dead.

[Quickasyoucan]

No offence to the OP either, but you have to not only want to change your dog's behaviour, but moreover believe you can.

If every time someone offers a tip you say, yes but my dog is special so I can't do that, that's not admitting you see the possibility of change, that's limiting yourself before you even try.

Whatever people's belief in methods I think there is general agreement about the role of the owner in either subconsciously (or consciously) influencing a dogs behaviour for the better or for the worse.

Until you change your own mindset, not much is going to work for you whatever advice you ar given.

Obviously some things are not within the bounds of possibility, my nearly 7 year old staffy x is never going to be an agility or obedience champion, but loose leash walking and calm behaviour on walks or towards other dogs shouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility for any pet owner - and I am an average pet owner.

[Kavik]

No offence to the OP either, but you have to not only want to change your dog's behaviour, but moreover believe you can.

If every time someone offers a tip you say, yes but my dog is special so I can't do that, that's not admitting you see the possibility of change, that's limiting yourself before you even try.

Whatever people's belief in methods I think there is general agreement about the role of the owner in either subconsciously (or consciously) influencing a dogs behaviour for the better or for the worse.

Until you change your own mindset, not much is going to work for you whatever advice you ar given.

Completely agree

This anecdote is performance related and not general pet behaviour but demonstrates anyway. There is someone at agility who is having real issues with her dog and the seesaw. The dog is very small. I can sympathise as Zoe is not keen on the seesaw, and when I was training her in agility I did not understand how to teach it properly ( now that I know how, I am planning on trying to retrain her seesaw even though she will not compete. Will be interesting to see if I can retrain a 10 yr old dog on it). The dog won't go on the seesaw now and is balking at the dogwalk too because it thinks it may be a seesaw. The owner is convinced her dog will never be able to do the seesaw and is negative about any suggestions to fix the problem, so the owner is part of the problem.

[poodlefan]

Dogs are remarkable in their ability to live up or down to our expectations of them.

[Aidan]

Do you think a personal protection dog should ALWAYS engage a person, even if that person is not attacking? Should a dog who has been taught to heel never do anything but heel again any time you have a collar and leash on it? What about mushing dogs, can we never teach them to walk on a loose leash because we can't allow them to sometimes pull and sometimes not?

That's completely different and you know it. This is not a performance dog it's a pet.

They're all dogs. The laws of learning apply to all of them equally, pet or performance.

What the OP is doing right now is a cop-out. What I have offered is a compromise, he can take it or leave it. We can't force him to deal with loose leash walking, he has been conditioned to believe that "this dog is special" and until someone proves otherwise that's what he'll continue to believe.

Here's the thing: if he can get his dog walking on a loose leash for 1 minute, then 2 minutes, he'll believe that 2 minutes is possible. If going from 1 minute to 2 minutes was possible, maybe 3 minutes is possible and so on. It's just applying the laws of learning to the human end of the leash. You can't collar pop someone over the internet and force them to follow you, but you can break things down and make it simple for them.

[corvus]

Well, for what it's worth, I've found default sits to be incredibly useful, both in training loose leash walking and in dealing with high excitement on walks. It doesn't take that long to condition a sit or down to be so strong your dog does it even when they are very excited. Erik was offering sits to get out of his puppy pen when he was a moment earlier jumping up and down yelping in excitement three days after I got him. Given, he was a puppy and didn't have any bad habits to break, and he's also very clever, but with enough work around low distractions you can do it with an older dog as well. Strengthening known commands is pretty easy stuff, and even with a dog like Kivi who meanders through life with his head in the clouds, they do pick it up pretty fast. Especially if you reward the crap out of it all the time.

I say don't be afraid to use a really high reward rate if your dog is losing interest in something. Some dogs don't tolerate frustration well, and if you don't relieve the frustration of training by working them up to longer periods without rewards by first rewarding them as fast as you can, how do you expect them to learn to like working with you? To make it easier, count in your head when you ask him something. If he does it, reward after a second. Next time, reward after two seconds. Next time, three. If he can't wait that long, go back to one. You gotta read your dog and work them up in baby steps if you want to succeed and if you want them to be good at something.

As far as the excitement (and LLW) goes, like I said, I like rock solid sits. They often seem to work when nothing else penetrates. Kivi was going through a period about a month ago where he was jumping up and down barking when he saw another dog while he was on leash. It waited it out a couple of times until he was able to do a sit, and then he was offering sits spontaneously when he saw another dog. The brilliant thing about that is that when they are in that sit, you have a decent chance of keeping them from losing their minds AND getting their attention back. I used default sits as a stop-gap measure while I worked on Kivi's heel. At the moment, he can sit until the dog is within sniffing range, and he can heel past a dog on the other side of the street. When I started, the dogs on the other side of the street were what really got him going. I leaned on sits while teaching both my dogs LLW in much the same way, but my boys aren't really natural pullers, so I don't know how well that would translate to a seasoned puller (if at all).

I am in favour of the harness most of the time and the martingale when you're training LLW. There's a method called Silky Leash that does the same thing. Dogs are excellent at differentiating, because they pick up cues that we often don't, because unlike them, we are good at generalising. Kivi knows weekend mornings are an acceptable time to jump onto the bed with us, but weekday mornings are not. He does not know what day of the week it is. He just knows that when my partner lets him out and then goes back to bed, cuddles are on.