Dog Has Become Extremely Reactive To Other Dogs

[dee136]

Sorry in advance for the long post, trying to give as much info as poss.

Prior to April I lived in an inner city suburb with a very popular walking track along a river, it took 10mins to walk to this track. On a usual hr long walk we would encounter at least 15 other people walking dogs as well numerous bike riders, joggers and people kayaking. We would do this walk once or twice a day, my dog would look around a bit but his main focus was on me & just sniffing the air & trees. Once or twice a week we also did a 30min walk around residential streets, again with no issues.

In April we moved further out to a lower class suburb where the usual daily walk now involves only residential streets with a few main roads. I have a problem with 1 of my dogs who now pays little attention to me & has become very reaction to other people/dogs. We now only encounter a handful of people on our walks, when other people walk nearby he gets very excited, wagging his tail & pulling on lead but the main problem is his reaction to other dogs. If someone has a dog with them he will begin to snort, the pulling becomes more intense, he still wags his tail but will also have a few awkward sounding growls.

It seems that in this area there is a large number of dogs in yards who will bark, growl and/or charge fences when we are still a few houses away which causes my dogs reaction to be worse, he will not bark, but pull trying to get to them, snort & have a few growls, usually with tail wagging. As we have now lived in this area for awhile he knows where noisy or aggressive dogs live and has begun to exhibit this behavior when we are a couple of houses away even when it appears the dog is not there (ie no usual noise or fence charging) if nothing runs at the fence & he doesn't hear the usual dog the behavior will stop after a few mins.

One house we go past has very secure colourbond fencing & the dog that lives behind it only ever has one small bark & does not charge the fence, out of curiosity towards my dogs behavior I let him get a bit closer to this fence, he sniffed it for a few seconds, his behavior stopped & we continued on our way. Obviously I can't let his go up to every fence & I also don't think I should be dropping notes in the letterboxes of all the houses with aggressive fence charging dogs but I need a solution, our walks are no longer relaxing & enjoyable, they are stressful for me, my partner & our 2 dogs.

I have tried avoiding houses where I know there are noisy or aggressive dogs, only to find new dogs at other houses.

Have tried using distraction, ie using my voice & running & clapping prior to reaching a certain house to try to hold my dog attention. Have tried using food to distract & crossing the street only to have my dog walk backwards across the road, all attention still on the dog in question. I'm pretty sure his behavior is a mixture of excitement & aggression.

The dogs that are grabbing his attention are anything from snarling snapping swf to growling rotties throwing their bodies up against gates. If a dog simply has a short bark my dogs behavior isn't as unmanageable as normal & I can usually get his attention back.

Bit of background:

My dog is a very strong nearly 4yr old malamute who weighs 39kgs so his pulling & snorting is a big problem. I realise mals are often DA, moving away from the river with all the stimuli while he was still young couldn't be avoided. He is extremely food driven, a sook; aside from these incidents he watches me constantly & loves to be around me. He is not very aware of his size & is a bit clumsy,He has always had a short attention span & is a bit dopey, very excitable & loves to please me. He reminds me a fair bit of a friends male lab.

He has quite a few dog friends who he gets along fine with, little grumpy if he's laying down & gets stepped on or has to share toys, otherwise no issues. Although when meeting new doggy friends his initial reaction is the snorting, growling etc, that settles after a few mins & the dogs are carefully introduced with no further issues. Once he has met a friends dog he is more than happy to roll over, show off his tummy & have a play.

I also have a 3yr old sibe who pays no attention to any of this & have coped with the move just fine.

Any explanations or advice please?!?!

Edited January 17, 2011 by dee136

[Cosmolo]

I think your best bet would be to see a trainer who can help you with these issues. No one online can tell you why these issues are occurring and so any advice given would be prety hit and miss.

[sallyandtex]

Agree, but may I ask, has the behaviour started when you moved, or since. Might be a case of changed environment and stress.

Can you take a drive somewhere more serene to walk the dogs? Just to see if the same thing ocurring.

[dee136]

Agree, but may I ask, has the behaviour started when you moved, or since. Might be a case of changed environment and stress.

Can you take a drive somewhere more serene to walk the dogs? Just to see if the same thing ocurring.

It didn't start as soon as we moved, maybe a couple of months later. My partner surfs so we often go to the beach, now when other dogs approach I have to remove him, either by walking further away from other dogs, or if they are off lead by taking him into the water where he can't get any footing and is easier to control. We have also been back to the river since moving with horrible results, had to leave within 10mins of being there.

What kind of professional do I need to be looking for?

[Mrs Rusty Bucket]

What kind of professional

A dog (owner) trainer with good knowledge of dog behaviour and motivation, who can figure out what is triggering your dog, how he is being rewarded for his behaviour (do you yell at him when he goes off?), and what to do to change the behaviour to something more acceptable. Particularily what the owners can do to help the dog behave appropriately.

Personally, I'm working on being consistent with my dog when she pulls on the lead too hard, I stop and then I call her back to me and she must return before I can move on. I know if I keep walking while she is pulling my arm off, I might as well invest in a cart for me so she can tow me to the park.

[Tralee]

My dogs all went through this stage.

Teach 'leave' and use food distraction.

I also use sit and drop if it reoccurs.

Some dogs just get their shackles up.

They grow out of it.

[jesomil]

If left unchecked, this sort of behaviour tends to escalate and the dog wont just grow out of it.

Get a good trainer in now to show you how to manage this behaviour while it is still very manageable.

[corvus]

What you're seeing is, I am guessing, emotional conditioning. It sounds like your Mal has been unsettled a few times by dogs running at fences as he goes past and this has got him aroused. Arousal in this sense just means more excitement, which means a higher probability of more active behaviours. For example, at low arousal he might just whine, a little higher he might bark and dance, and higher still he might lunge and appear aggressive. So after a few times where dogs at fences have got him unsettled and aroused, now he is ever ready to be unsettled about dogs at fences so much so that he gets himself into that unsettled emotional state and high arousal before he even sees a dog. He is preparing for a stressful situation that he expects is coming.

To combat this, you will probably have to address his emotional state. When he acts out, that's a sign to you that he is too close to the trigger (the fence that may or may not have a dog behind it). My guess is he doesn't show much interest in the food because he is ALREADY over threshold. That basically means he will be very difficult to teach and will probably show a strong bias towards learning about negative things. If he gets scared in this state, it may well make him worse. What you're looking for is the point where he starts looking at the fence, but before the ears go forward and he starts pulling. My guess is you will have more success if you stop at this point and start working on getting his attention. What you do from there is best decided on with the help of a professional, I think. There are a few options, but ultimately you want to keep him below that threshold where the fence starts demanding his attention. He wants to look at it because he is worried by what will happen next. The aim is to allow him to learn in tiny little steps that he needn't be worried about it and can therefore afford to pay attention to you. For that to work you can't allow him to repeatedly get worried about it. The usual approach is to counter-condition, which means giving him food so that he learns to associate the scary fence with good stuff. Another approach is to take an operative approach and actively teach him to display calmer behaviours, rewarding those behaviours by taking him away from the scary fence. Or there are the shortcuts, where you teach him a simple incompatible behaviour, like to look at you, or Leslie McDevitt's Look At That game from Control Unleashed, for example. None of these are likely to work unless you keep him below threshold, though, which is why it's best done with the help of a professional. They can help you read him.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is you need to dedicate some time to helping him. The longer you let him practise the behaviour the longer it takes to undo it, as a general rule. Sometimes these things can be addressed surprisingly quickly with the right approach. I've been watching Grisha Stewart's BAT dvds, and she says some dogs are turned right around with just a couple of setups and some work on walks. She uses the functional reward approach, where she walks the dog towards the trigger, but stops when the dog is still under threshold, then rewards the dog for looking at the trigger, then looking away by then walking the dog away. In that way she gradually decreases the distance between the dog and the trigger until the dog is comfortable walking up to it or past it.

[dee136]

My dogs all went through this stage.

Teach 'leave' and use food distraction.

I also use sit and drop if it reoccurs.

Some dogs just get their shackles up.

They grow out of it.

I have tried food distraction which hasn't worked even though he is very food driven usually. As he pays no attention to me when this is happening there is no way I could get him to drop short of forcing him to the ground which I don't think is a good idea. As this is a new behavior & he is nearly 4 I don't think it is something he will grow out of, I feel it is more likely to get worse.

Anyone know a good trainer in melb south eastern suburbs I can try?

[dee136]

What you're seeing is, I am guessing, emotional conditioning. It sounds like your Mal has been unsettled a few times by dogs running at fences as he goes past and this has got him aroused. Arousal in this sense just means more excitement, which means a higher probability of more active behaviours. For example, at low arousal he might just whine, a little higher he might bark and dance, and higher still he might lunge and appear aggressive. So after a few times where dogs at fences have got him unsettled and aroused, now he is ever ready to be unsettled about dogs at fences so much so that he gets himself into that unsettled emotional state and high arousal before he even sees a dog. He is preparing for a stressful situation that he expects is coming.

To combat this, you will probably have to address his emotional state. When he acts out, that's a sign to you that he is too close to the trigger (the fence that may or may not have a dog behind it). My guess is he doesn't show much interest in the food because he is ALREADY over threshold. That basically means he will be very difficult to teach and will probably show a strong bias towards learning about negative things. If he gets scared in this state, it may well make him worse. What you're looking for is the point where he starts looking at the fence, but before the ears go forward and he starts pulling. My guess is you will have more success if you stop at this point and start working on getting his attention. What you do from there is best decided on with the help of a professional, I think. There are a few options, but ultimately you want to keep him below that threshold where the fence starts demanding his attention. He wants to look at it because he is worried by what will happen next. The aim is to allow him to learn in tiny little steps that he needn't be worried about it and can therefore afford to pay attention to you. For that to work you can't allow him to repeatedly get worried about it. The usual approach is to counter-condition, which means giving him food so that he learns to associate the scary fence with good stuff. Another approach is to take an operative approach and actively teach him to display calmer behaviours, rewarding those behaviours by taking him away from the scary fence. Or there are the shortcuts, where you teach him a simple incompatible behaviour, like to look at you, or Leslie McDevitt's Look At That game from Control Unleashed, for example. None of these are likely to work unless you keep him below threshold, though, which is why it's best done with the help of a professional. They can help you read him.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is you need to dedicate some time to helping him. The longer you let him practise the behaviour the longer it takes to undo it, as a general rule. Sometimes these things can be addressed surprisingly quickly with the right approach. I've been watching Grisha Stewart's BAT dvds, and she says some dogs are turned right around with just a couple of setups and some work on walks. She uses the functional reward approach, where she walks the dog towards the trigger, but stops when the dog is still under threshold, then rewards the dog for looking at the trigger, then looking away by then walking the dog away. In that way she gradually decreases the distance between the dog and the trigger until the dog is comfortable walking up to it or past it.

Thanks, very interesting post.

Makes sense to distract prior to his reaction, I never even considered that. I'ld been trying to combat it once it happened. I'm going to go for a walk alone & take note of all the houses we have trouble with then take him with me, be on the opposite side of the road (which usually causes a lesser reaction from him) & try the food again. I can quite easily pick the moments before he reacts, he usually is very relaxed on walks & not very observant so as soon as I notice he is focused on something I will distract then in the moments before his behavior occurs.

He is quite easily to train as he loves to please me & I'm usually his only concern/focus so hopefully it works.

Still willing to call in the professionals if I can't sort it out but would like to try other options first, as I said he is usually easy to train so if I can find out what I should be doing it may just work.

[Monah]

My dogs all went through this stage.

Teach 'leave' and use food distraction.

I also use sit and drop if it reoccurs.

Some dogs just get their shackles up.

They grow out of it.

Hackles, not shackles...

They dont grow out of it.

[megan_]

dee136 - I have sent you a PM with a recommendation.

The game that Corvus describes is often called the "Look at That" or "Who's that" game. I use it with my girl with some success. If you search this forum you should be able to find more info on it (I *think* Corvus even started a thread called "reactive dogs" that has a lot of useful info in it).

I'd still recommend that you get some professional help though, as you need to figure out why this is happening.

Gook Luck!

[Cosmolo]

The problem with trying a number of different things yourself is that if they don't work, you can make the dog more resistant to future training efforts.

We train in the south east, website is in my signature.

[Steve K9Pro]

K9: I agree with Cosmolo, you don't get an unlimited amount of chances to rehab some behavioral problems, if your local to Underdog, make an appointment ASAP. This is not a DIY problem.