Exercising Reactive Dogs Thread

[grumpette]

BCC you and Stella are doing brilliantly. Mega impressed with the ability to do selective meet and greets. Fantastic work. And such dedication. The constant exposure and continued positive experiences are resulting in enormous progress, and much better outings for you both.

Edited May 23, 2015 by grumpette

[BC Crazy]

Oh grumpette thank's so much for your kind words. Very much appreciated

Stella is an amazing girl. I just adore her. Extremely bright, fast, loyal & loving. My "special" girl, she is a tonne of dog. Owning her has been a huge learning curve for me. She has made me step up to the plate in every way imaginable.

I've never owned an unhappy puppy & right from 12 weeks of age Stella was just that. She was so very anxious, noise phobic & very agitated most of the time. She was a fierce little resource guarder & DA. She hardly slept nor rested. Then finding out she is Epilepsy effected & that her seizures seemed to be triggered by her anxiety. I mean her list of issues just kept getting longer & longer.

Now 4 years later with loads of TLC & a little chemical help Stella is so happy with life she could burst. She is gaining confidence, learning some social skills all the while I'm trying to keep her under her emotional threshold. Her positive progress lately is something that has really made me smile, on the inside.

I'm so very proud of her. My sweet girl

We are in this together all the way...

Edited May 24, 2015 by BC Crazy

[Better Late]

Oh BC that is so wonderful to read, you've done so well and worked so hard with Stella and its a credit to you that she's come so far :)

Had a win with Bonnie today, my partners aunt was in town and stopped by for coffee and cake. We told her to just ignore the dog, act like she didnt exist at all and don't look her in the eye. I was a bit tentative as the last person who visited is selectively ignorant with our instructions and has been growled at/cowered away from after doing the opposite of what we've asked.

Bonnie was great with this visitor though, she only gave a half-hearted growl once and I just put her away to allow her to relax. After about half an hour I let her out and she was super happy just to sit on her mat, right beside our visitor, and chew on her rope toy & throw it around playfully while we chatted. It was so wonderful to give her that choice and let her work it out for herself. She was super super playful after the visitor left and we had a huge play, she's now conked out on my partners lap and has never really been a lapdog.

Very happy indeed.

Edited May 24, 2015 by Better Late

[BC Crazy]

Thanks so much Snook & Betterlate. Too kind ????

Snook I have always admired your strength on your journey with dear Justice. And your so right. You only need a glimmer of improvement in our troubled dogs & it gives you a sneak preview of what could very well be. Oh & the tears. I've cried me a river over Stella but last friday all the tears were happy ????

Actually this thread has been a dogsend for me as I have found owning a reactive DA dog is very isolating in all honesty. Suddenly you have this out of control,reactive, DA & very sad puppy that you are fumbling your way through with... You keep well away from others with dogs. You can't walk with others with dogs & no one wants to even stop & have a chat if your dog is barking her head off. I found I couldn't even hire anyone to help us. Nobody ... so I could just pop onto this thread & share all your ups & downs with theirs. Also the victories no matter how small. Feel well, not so alone & helpless as sometimes you may well be. So very grateful & thank you to everyone.

Had to edit as I re read BetterL post. Well done with Bonnie ???? she sounds a bit like my girl. She is very territorial at times & along with being reactive & nervous. It is just not a happy mix. Especially with visitors coming into what Stella or Bonnie perceive to be "their" home ;)

Building Bonnie confidence up slowly may help. Also if you prep your friends with treats before walking through the front door so as when/ if they are approached by Bonnie she is showered with treats. There is one of Mr . BCC's work college's that Stella simply doesn't like. She has never liked him in the house. And she would flick him the bird at every opportunity ????

Just my 2 cents worth & please ignore if you are already doing so LOL

Edited May 25, 2015 by BC Crazy

[hankdog]

Jake will take a dislike to the odd person, normally those who are intent on interacting with him to prove they can handle him because they have those Magic dog powers. I have found it pretty hard to distract such people as they will wait until your back is turned and then do a sneak attack. It's better to just put the dog out of their reach. Some people cannot be reasoned with.

[Better Late]

I'm the same as both of you, it really is very isolating feeling like you're in this little separate bubble with your dog. I'd even considered making a facebook group and sharing it here so we could reach a wider Australian base and share photos and the like...something probably exists already though I'm sure.

BC we're slowly building her confidence, its taken us a little while to get a handle on her behaviour around strangers as we live two hours away from all of our friends and don't know anyone up here, so we don't get people in our house super regularly. But now we understand and the other day made serious inroads, I was so happy with her! Its all been a serious learning experience haha

Our Emily Larlham dvd arrived today and I binge watched while I was sick in bed, took six pages of notes in the first hour, and have learnt SO much already. I cant wait to keep watching. I'm attending a dog aggression seminar in August, heading up to see K9Pro in September because we're super interested in their Training In Drive program and the behavioural psychology aide of things that will no doubt help us massively. I also can't wait to meet Steve as I honestly look up to him a lot, he is part of the inspiration behind me enrolling in the NDTF Certificate in dog behaviour and training. I've learnt so much in the past five months that I really want to help others with their dogs. I'd love to work with a rescue organisation and help dogs that come through with behavioural issues on their path to being rehabilitated, meet with potential adopters and let them know there's a plan in place and they have my full support as clients if they choose to take the dog on. I also want to offer a service where I can go with people to pounds/shelters and advise them on the type of dog that would suit their lifestyle, and what kinds of dogs to pretty much avoid unless they're experienced, as if I knew then what I know now I wouldn't have come home with Bonnie. But you live and learn!

That's my little thesis, I feel like I've found a new...I guess, calling in life? I have a long road ahead of me but plan on getting a heap of hands on experience through volunteering at shelters/obedience clubs, doing as many courses as I can and going to lots of seminars. My life would be so empty without my little doodlebug and I want others to see the hope there always is and help them achieve their goal of even just walking down the street without an exploding dog :)

Edited May 25, 2015 by Better Late

[BC Crazy]

That is just so sad for both of you ????

Poor boy must be so fearful,he couldn't get back to the safety of the car quick enough.

Hope you both were able to regroup once Justice was felt safe again.

It is so heart breaking to witness your dear dog in such a fearful state. Very upsetting. Hope Justice can get past this snook.

Edited May 25, 2015 by BC Crazy

[BC Crazy]

Better late, Bonnie is going really well. Rescue's always have that air of uncertainty around their behaviour cause you just don't know what their previous home was like or what may have happened to them.

Building Bonnies confidence will happen but it is a slow process. Routine & consistency is key IMHO. Set Bonnie up to win so to speak.

[dididog]

I haven't been here for a while (been reading though!) Glad some of you have been making in roads, sorry to hear Justice has regressed though Snook

Didi is... Didi

I think the best thing to ever happen to us was to drastically rearrange my expectations and what I want out of owning a dog, my dog is never going to be everyone's best buddy or the type of dog I can take anywhere but she is still enjoyable to own and we have plenty of fun without needing to interact with strangers. It was hard at first because Didi was such a friendly lovely dog with everybody and everything but as soon as she hit adolescence she just got so put off by a few (pretty minor experiences) and became a lot more protective/territorial. She's still like that, if she has a bad experience with something she DOES NOT FORGET.

I cling to the fact she is still awesome with other dogs and try my best to make sure that never changes.

Her reactivity/fear aggression is not that bad and very easily managed, we can take a walk down a very busy inner city street and unless someone were to do something really intense/threatening she is fine. Doesn't like it when people hold intense eye contact but she will deflect and slink closer to me rather than getting grumpy with them. She has come a long way with not hating bicycles, not that cyclists are at all helpful and love to sneak up on me on the footpath (which are for feet!) so I have no time or preparation to redirect her. But unless we get sneak attacked she is fine. Still hates all other wheels which is something I am slowly working on. When she's freaked out (because somebody has really loud shoes or a child is riding on their parents shoulders) she flicks to flight response pretty much every time. If she feels I am being threatened (approached in the dark or yelling) then she will flick to fight which isn't necessarily bad I suppose and its all just noise on her end.

Properly introduced house visitors go over a treat and she loves most of my friends. At the dog park or at obedience training she will seek out pats and actively enjoys it but I still monitor her very strictly and don't let her offlead somewhere I've never been before or somewhere that has a lot going on.

Being restrained by a stranger is definitely not a thing that will ever happen in the foreseeable future but that's fine, we can skip stand for exams at obedience training and on the odd occasion she goes to the vet she is muzzled. She's fine at the vet, in the waiting room and even being patted by the vet but as soon as the vet tries to use an implement on her she gets really distressed.

So yeah we haven't made dramatic progress and I'm not sure we ever will BUT I am not as down about it as I used to be and being vigilant and managing her behaviour is second nature to me now and she is the best dog in all other aspects so I still love owning her.

Not going to lie this experience has put me off rescue a bit, I know I probably wasn't perfect but I put a lot of work into her as a puppy and didn't monumentally screw her up so I think there's definitely a genetic element to her weak nerve (other pups in the litter have problems as welll).But I've learnt SO much from Didi and I'm sure will do a lot better with the next dog (who I will not be playing the genetics lottery with and getting from a breeder with rock solid dogs!)

[BC Crazy]

That sounds like an excellent game plan Snook. Best to get Justice some professional help if he is so fearful. Poor boy. I know it's $$$. I paid that amount for a Vet/Behaviourist consult with Stella. Good luck with him.

Volatile dog's on Facebook. Want to look that up. Sounds interesting.

Edited May 26, 2015 by BC Crazy

[BC Crazy]

Poor Justice So upsetting to see them so fearful. Good luck with him Snook.

Here,have a big cyber hug for support from Sonny,Stella & myself :)

[dididog]

Had a super great walk today!

We walked down our busy shopping strip in the after school rush and along lots of main roads and you would never know that several months ago that sort of walk would've resulted in a blow up and her growling/lunging at something. My heart nearly stopped when we got caught off guard by a lady with a pram, small child AND a dog coming round a blind corner and nearly colliding with us. Didi did jump out of her skin in shock but instead of reacting and freaking out she just waited for me to make the next move. Of course what you can't see is all the micro-managing and risk calculations going on in my head but still I'm super happy with the progress :)

We also had 3 bicycles ride past us on the narrow path today, one of which came out of nowhere and did not ring their bell but Didi didn't show even the slightest inclination to lunge after the bike or growl which again even a month or so ago would have been the case.

Good thing she isn't reactive to other dogs though as I purposely went to an ON LEAD oval to do some obed work and we'd been there for 5 minutes when an offlead Samoyed with 0 recall charged over enthusiastically wanting to play. Didi didn't care but was trapped on the lead trying to play with this dog and got her neck yanked around a lot. Lady finally ran over and got her dog laughing and saying sorry. Told her it wasn't an offlead park (there are literally 2 huge offlead reserves a 5 minute walk either way from this oval!) and she said it was fine, lots of people let their dogs off here. I told her it wasn't and she should at least have a reliable recall if she's going to break the rules. She looked a bit stunned and left thank god... thinking of getting my cranky pants on and emailing the council about these two ovals I regularly try to use to do obed work since I don't have a yard. They are on lead only but so many people just let their dogs off and run up to us while we're training and I can imagine must make it really hard for people with reactive dogs to find anywhere to walk in our suburb.

But anyway how's everyone else doing?

[hankdog]

Good update Terry. I have the same problem. I don't go to the off leash park at the end of my street but then I do get cranky if I'm trying to do obedience work in an on leash park that I've walked half an hour to get to. People will tell you it isn't fair they have no off leash near them....tough make that part of your decision when you get a dog or house.

The Tubster has been in kennels for nearly ten days as I'm in uruguay. I'm getting home Friday and having a consult with our very own Nekhbet on Monday????????????. Looking forward to meeting the crazy maligators and seeing what Jake makes of them.

Edited June 16, 2015 by hankdog

[hankdog]

Oh that's a good out come Snook. Jakes reactions are very phobia like and the Prozac has been our savior. Every time I try reduce it I realise just how effective it is.

Lynette was remarking the other day how the stuff that is effective with Jake is so contrary to traditional reactive dog training techniques and I do believe it is because his reactions are based on a qualitatively different phobic type fear rather than a Rational fear response. Justice does at least have one dog friend so that's great he has that interaction.

It is going to be hard to accept him not going back to being the way he was, it took me a very long time to wrap my head around Jake never having a dog interaction and a tiny piece of me still hopes one day he will. It is something that I eventually accepted, (99 percent).

The Prozac does slightly alter Jakes personality and he loses some fun aspects as well as the bad bits and that does make me sad. You may need to juggle the dose to get the levels right.

Big hugs to you two.

[dididog]

Glad to hear you got some answers Snook and a plan on how to approach his phobia, hopefully the medication works to lower his anxiety. Those pictures at Gruflife's property looked great... I really need to befriend somebody who owns acerage, I'm sure Didi would love it.

[Better Late]

Just need to vent here, pretty annoyed and disappointed but I'm trying to work through it

So I've been mostly a shut-in for the last week or so due to having the flu and it being cold as bollocks up here, about -5 to -1 in the mornings when we usually walk the dog in the forest, so I've been staying at home so as not to exacerbate things. We've been doing really well with Bonnie lately, managing her so she doesn't get the chance to rehearse her unwanted behaviours but today just set us back a ways I think. My partner while I was dead to the world woke up and took her to the local showgrounds to do some recall work in the fully enclosed oval and give her some off-lead time, but there's been a circus there recently and he just didnt think ahead.

Apparently while she was running off leash in the oval, two men appeared outside of it, walking their little dog. Bonnie made a beeline for the fence, slipped under it and went for the dog. According to my partner, there was a bit of sniffing, and then snapping and barking and it looked like Bonnie was trying to mount this other dog, throw her front legs over the other dogs back when she was standing side on to it. I asked my partner again and again if she had grabbed the dog and tried to shake it, or even bitten it at all, but he said he didn't really know as he was in damage control and was trying to get there as quick as he could. Eventually the little dog ran off and Bonnie ran back to my partner who had now reached the fence and had jumped over it and was still calling her.

What really has annoyed me the most about this is that he said "I had to pull her by her harness as the lead was on the other side of the oval" WHY was it there!? I'm really trying not to blow my stack at him over that, I would have had it with me at all times and I expect nothing less from him, I'm just so disappointed now.

He said there was no blood spilt, which I'm glad of, but it was just a horrible situation, even if she didnt make contact, but we will never know for sure. She will now not be off-leash at all except inside our house and will be muzzled if we need to walk her in any place where there are people and potentially dogs. We were doing so well, and now a lapse in judgement has made me want to crawl into a hole and not come out for a while. September with K9Pro cannot come soon enough

[Jemmy]

@Better Late - I'm so sorry you've had this happen, I know it's tough to deal with these types of encounters. A muzzle will certainly give you some piece of mind, I also use a long line rather than have Luna off lead entirely. She gets some space to make her own decisions, but if I see she's on the brink of making the wrong choice I can reel her back in. September will be here before you know it!

[Better Late]

@Better Late - I'm so sorry you've had this happen, I know it's tough to deal with these types of encounters. A muzzle will certainly give you some piece of mind, I also use a long line rather than have Luna off lead entirely. She gets some space to make her own decisions, but if I see she's on the brink of making the wrong choice I can reel her back in. September will be here before you know it!

Thanks, Jemmy. Yeah we do use a long line as her regular lead for the reasons you mentioned, but she'll just be on lead entirely now. We're wanting to move to a bigger place with an actual backyard next year so that will be good for her to have a romp in at least. Counting down the days!

[Jemmy]

While I'm here, an update on us. Luna is doing well, I'm currently working on some impulse control with her. At training she is no longer reactive in a barking style, however she's swung too far the other way and now wants to play with the other dogs

We went to the million paws walk and she was an absolute superstar, we didn't stay for the whole walk as I could see the crowd was starting to get to her once we were walking near a road (she is not a fan of traffic). She did have a couple of barks at the walk when everyone was milling around before the start - one was at a dog who wasn't being watched by it's owner, and it was just running up to other dogs faces if they were within leash range. Luna told him she wasn't interested - and I moved us out of his range so she could chill out. Other times we had barking was when she showed interest in meeting other dogs - I would ask their owners and if they were ok with it, we would let them have a sniff. She then barked a bit in frustration when I recalled her back from her face sniffing.

All in all I think she's made some really positive strides. We haven't seen any unknown dogs on our walks recently, so I'm not sure how she is in 'the real world' at the moment, but in the situations I'm deliberately putting her in she's been excellent.

[hankdog]

Wow that's amazing she could go to a group dog event. If be giving out bones with big red ribbons for that.

Better late Im the only one who handles Jake because my boys just don't get it. I don't know why but they somehow come up with weird ways to deal with Jake. He's never allowed outside unsupervised and because he's Jake,master of getting into stupid trouble, I don't leave a collar on him. I left one of the boys in charge of him for an hour, when I got home he was in a collar tied to a verandah post with no human in sight. Apparently he was crying (sep anx) at the front door so they decided he would be better waiting outside. Now I tie him on a longline when I'm gardening but he's always within reach of me and on a harness. Why they thought that was a good thing to do is astounding but I just figured that it's better to not let anyone ever handle him except me.