Exercising Reactive Dogs Thread

[hankdog]

Well in contrast I thought I'd post my tail of woe. Had a good week last week, read the Brenda Aloff book and been paying attention to minutest bits of doggie info and working from the beginning through the protocols. Had 2 lovely sessions in the park with other dogs training on the other side of the park... real progress.

On Saturday decided to go with my daughter for a long walk in the neighbouring rather posh suburb, very good for Jake as all doggies are behind solid brick walls and nice to look over and admire the beautiful houses. Started back to home without incident and then absolute disaster.

A lady opens her gate and lets her spaniel cross out into the street, it makes a bee line for us across the road. My daughter volunteers to shoo the hound and I make off at some speed. She grabs the dog and calls to the watching owner for help. The dog struggles free and sets off after us. My hinkey knee decides it's a fabulous time to give way and down I go on the sidewalk. Jake is now barking hysterically, I'm hanging on round his neck with both arms and the dog keeps coming in faster. So terrified Jake backs up over me (thanks buddy) and there I am lying looking at the dog about half a meter from my face. At this point it dawns on the owner that her dog might be about to munch someone and she turns up and drags him away. So in terms of convincing Jake I am the way, the light and he should defer to me in dealing with other dogs... EPIC FAIL.

So I expected Sunday to be a complete dog- hunt but somehow he recovered well and even my daughter remarked how well behaved he was on the walk. Loose leash the whole way and only minor infringements with the local fence barkers. Maybe he thought "Well despite how useless my owner is I didn't get bitten and hiding behind her was great cover so hey it's all OK!"

Anyway I'm feeling pretty confident after reading all 425 pages of Brenda Aloff so this week I'm starting at the beginning of the protocols and we're going to work through and perfect every single one.

[nawnim]

...

Edited June 1, 2012 by padraic

[Guest Arcane]

DeeDee told me she would like an extended play date with Justice some time soon ! At least I'm pretty sure that's what all the snuffling & tail wagging meant when I said "where's your boyfriend? "

[hankdog]

If you read through these threads it seems a common "feeling" amongst owners is that our dogs don't want to feel pressured to meet other dogs, I know that we shouldn't anthropomorphise our animals but I do think as we spend time with them it is valid to consider they do have feelings and if we can respect how they "feel" it must certainly make it easier for dog and handler.

I'm working through the Aloff protocols and have come to the bit about training attention/involvement. If you had asked me a month ago I would have said Jake gave very little warning just straight into bark when he saw a dog and wasn't worried about anything else... how wrong I was. Basically when walking he is alerting on pretty much everything except me. He used to do what I term "catapult heel", he would stop until I was a step past him and then come bucketing past and wrench my shoulder. Of course that's because he was alerting on something and then catching up when the leash tightened. It really wasn't a problem of training walking at heel but an attention problem. So now I am waiting him out when he alerts on something until he voluntarily looks at me, (stared at men unloading a van for a good 5 minutes this morning) and then treating him for any voluntary eye contact while walking, it took about 3 days but he seems to have worked it out now. I think he's making contact, he probably just feels a bit hungry but hey ,it looks like the same thing!!

It's a bit daunting because I feel like the more training I do the more I realise just how much there is to do. Anyway I do think this whole "involvement" thing is going to be key to helping him and I have an appointment in August with a good behaviourist so hopefully if we have got these basic things under control we will be able to do some more tricky things, like actually seeing a dog.

[Kajtek]

I've also discovered a fantastic way to give Justice free reign in off leash areas so that he gets to have a huge run and sniff lots of great stuff. It seems that if you go out when it's raining on and off no one else is stupid enough to be out in that kind of weather so there's no other dogs to worry about....

My Honbun can be a bit reactive when introduced to a new dog. I've started walking her (off leash) at 5am - she gets to read all the news (aka sniff) and run at will without anyone else bothering her. Maybe very early mornings are an option for you Snook

[Erny]

I've also discovered a fantastic way to give Justice free reign in off leash areas so that he gets to have a huge run and sniff lots of great stuff. It seems that if you go out when it's raining on and off no one else is stupid enough to be out in that kind of weather so there's no other dogs to worry about.

Lol - advertise it too loudly and widely and you might find everyone catches onto this idea ..... and before you know it you could find yourself in a park on rainy days with a bunch of reactive dogs.

Edited June 8, 2012 by Erny

[hankdog]

Took Jake out in the rain the other day, british bulldog part of him thought it was marvellous. Thing is other reactive dogs are the best to be around, Jakes best park buddy, at a distance of 100m that is, is a reactive pit-bull type dog. He doesn't want to play just as much as we don't so we can happily ignore each other.

Editing my post so I don't look like a post hog. Today we threw a street party because Jake is officially the smartest dog on the whole planet!! We were waiting to cross the road and a group of people were waiting to cross towards us. In what seemed like slow motion the people in front of the group stepped aside and revealed a dog. We were standing about 6 meters away from an oncoming dog. Jake looked at the dog and then LOOKED at ME, I was still working out how I was going to cope with the impending tantrum so he made his own decision, turned 90 degrees and started running up the street away from the dog. Wow!!!

Edited June 9, 2012 by hankdog

[ChristineX]

I have found a way to walk Duke with no sign of being reactive .....

go walking in cyclonic conditions :laugh: !

We had a reactive rover class during the 'storm' that hit Perth the other Sunday - trees upturned over roads the works.

Duke was as happy as a pig in mud and NOTHING fazed him. Not even Coco (white with red patches) who usually sends him into hysterical orbit, or the new rottweiler who couldn't keep still (these days normally brings out "big brother" is about to bop you side of him).

Okay, that means going walking in public - what - twice a year in Perth?

I think that there is way too much Irish in my Irish Terrier!

this week we are going back, but it currently looks like a calm, sunny day and I will be waiting with held breathe to see how reactive he is going to be.

[ChristineX]

Yes, I can confirm it. If Duke is walked during a cyclone, he is not reactive. Otherwise,we are now at the stage where if the other dog is calm, he copes. If the other dog is not,or has 'attitude',Duke still looses the plot.

Nevermind, I have the rest of his life to keep working on his reactivity.

[hankdog]

The crazy things we do with our crazy dogs...last week I was at the local homemaker center. I looked around realised there were no cars because it was the lowest floor of the carpark and midweek and no chance of any dogs. Not the prettiest walk but I let Jake out and we had a good half hour of sniffing, and galloping around. No dogs and no rain what more could you want.

Edited June 26, 2012 by hankdog

[SammieS]

Hi Everyone! I haven't written in here for a while but have been watching everyone's progress

I think I've had a small break through with Asti our reactive female Frenchie. Since Christmas we have been visiting a dog chiro as we noticed she didn't have the movement in her legs that our puppy did (Asti is 3.5 and Angus is now 10 months). The chiro informed us that Asti basically had a miagrane for all her life and suffered from bad siatica (sp?) pain up both back legs... I was devasted and felt like I'd let her down as her owner... so for the last 6 months we've visited the chiro many times and more recently seen a holistic vet who also did some stretching and gave us some chinese herbal medicine which has done the trick! So, now I can say that she is feeling 100% better and she actually comes over to us and wants cuddles now! Its amazing how you don't recognise behaviours drop off but you notice when they come back... (like laying on her back, doing the "i love you stretch", laying with both legs out the back like a frog).

Anyway, the reason for my post in here is because you guys will understand how significant my afternoon walk was. Today we tried something different and I went to a local park which has a winding path and I managed to help Asti walk past a large brown dog which was pulling its owner, past kids on noisy scooters, past prams, we walked towards a jack russell who was miles away that started growling and carrying on with its owner, then past two little fluffies fence running who were very vocal! and then we did the same walk back past all of that to get home!!! I was so excited at how well she did that I couldn't contain myself!!! I just about skipped the entire way home from the park!

So my thoughts are that Asti is no longer in pain so when i direct her with the lead when she see's another dog there is no pain so she doesn't associate the sighting of another dog and pain, today I used a harness instead of her normal collar (we haven't used her harness for about 2 years as her reactivity got quite bad), we walked along a winding path today and I criss crossed over it depending on where my obstacles were so she was concentrating on the environment and me talking to her more than the people around her (normally we walk on a straight path where you can see the dogs coming directly at you from a long way away) and finally, I was wearing a walking belt which means I didn't touch the lead once! so she couldn't feel my tension and i had to work hard to talk her through it and remain calm myself! The whole walk I managed to keep her below threashold and it was such an enjoyable walk!!!!

We still have a long way to go like managing her fence running and sensivity to fast changing environments and strange noises but I think we might have hit a milestone! I could almost yell it from the rooftops!

Its slow progress but I wanted to share with my fellow reactive dog owners who know how big these little changes really are (if that makes sense :p)... thanks for reading :)

[megan_]

Great work SammieS!

We had a little victory today too. Checking Lucy out of the hospital the resident lab wanted to say hello. I called her and we walked around while he followed us and she didn't react at all. The vet nurse finally removed him.

[hankdog]

Yay for Lucy and Asti. My old boy had acupuncture for his arthritis and it also made a huge difference to his mobility, we are lucky enough to have a local vet who does this for dogs, very effective and would last about 6 weeks and then he would start losing his ability to sit and then I'd know he needed a top up.

I've been working through the Aloff book and although it's very hard work and sometimes I just want to go for a walk, I don't want to care about eye contact or involvement, it has been hugely effective. To date if certain dogs are training in the park we can go in and train at the other end. If we see another dog out and about then he will most likely start barking then look at me, go "ok I have to go down now", will easily drop and stay there while getting treats. Once the danger is passed he recovers reasonably quickly and will walk on. I also taught him "run away", if the other dog is too scary- other reactive dogs or the local rottie who can jump up and put his face and front feet over his fence. Jake loves 'run away' and even stages his own fake dog attacks, a few barks, quick direction change and run like the wind!!!Surprisingly fast for a bulldog. :D

How are the reactive rover classes going Snook, I have hope that one day soon we might be able to go to one.

[SammieS]

Thanks everyone for your replies! Its nice to know that you appreciated how wonderful the times are when our reactive dogs actually seem normal and it makes you realise all your hard work is finally paying off!

I wish we had a reactive rovers class near us, we have been to something similar but there isn't any walking between other dogs or anything like that, we sat at the back of our class because being placed in the middle pushed Asti over threadshold too easily (although by the end of the 5 weeks we were sitting closer and closer to the rest of the class who used to look at me like a freak when Asti lost her brain but it was because their dog was eyeballing Asti but no-one see's that!).

Snook - thanks for your kind words!

Megan__ yay for Lucy!

Hankdog - how did you teach "run away"? I noticed that Asti has converted from fight to flight now when other dogs are barking at her as her pulling is now away from them!

Edited July 10, 2012 by SammieS

[hankdog]

Hey SammieS funny you should ask because it was a remark you made about Asti not wanting to feek pressured to meet other dogs that made me think Jake felt the same way. Basically I walked one set route on a busy road with lots of parked cars for a month. This way I could use cars to shield us from other walking dogs and also people tend to not let their dogs stray up on the busy roads so minimal chance of off-leash encounters. Every dog we saw in a garden I would just say run away and go tearing up the street. After a while this was just his response to every dog on the route so my thoughts were that hopefully running away would become his default reaction to any dog rather than barking and it would be easier to replace a flight response than a fight response. Anything associated with dogs he learns very quickly and he loves running so it only took a week and we were galloping away at the smallest hint of a bark.

I then asked him to slow down a little bit shorter each time after a non threatening dog, so most of the labs that don't seem to bark and the little poodles. Now we can walk past all the non barkers and if his 2 little poodle girlfriends who jump on the back of a couch in front of the window and hammer away with their paws don't come to the window, he will give a little bark and want to wait till they turn up. I give him lots of treats if he doesn't bark and he knows to expect them. Lots of the dogs are pretty scary so we run past them and always will. After about three weeks he started instigating fake dogs, barking and going off for a run.... he always seems to stay one step ahead of me. Anyway just this week I've started walking different routes. He seems to be an anxious dog because he is on hyperalert as soon as we turn off our regular walk but he does seem to have decided blond labs are ok and today managed to walk past 2 that were out for a walk, on the other side of the road and being given lots of treats. I just make a judgement call as to how he's reacting if he looks like he will lose it I prefer run away and it's probably less stressful for other dogs and owners too.

Edited July 11, 2012 by hankdog

[marly]

:)

I wish we had a reactive rovers class near us,

Hi there SammieS, have you tried doing BAT? It is a great technique.

There will be a 2-Day seminar introducing Behaviour Adjustment Training BAT

For Aggression, Frustration & Fear given by Grisha Stewart MA CPDT – KA

When : 3rd & 4th November 2012

Where : Smithfield High School, Cairns

http://www.dogtrainingseminarcairns.com/

Have a go if you haven't already done so,

it will really open things up for you,

it did for me!

Cheers

Marly

[Skye GSD]

I would be concerned that the running away is feeding your dogs insecurities and if you came across a loose dog that has prey drive, it would initiate a chase. Skye is reactive and prey-driven and over the last twelve months we have worked hard on this problem with so much success that we are now back in to training in a class situation. We could not walk past dogs without her lunging and barking, even if the dog was across the other side of the oval. To desensitise her reaction to fence runners I would use them as training sessions and show her that I was in control of the situation with a "leave it" command and heaps of praise. Take your dogs favourite toy or food treats and use them as rewards. I know that our first reaction is to run from a scary encounter but I personally believe our dogs need to know that they can count on us to protect them and if we can project calmness and confidence then it will project on to our dogs. To turn and walk calmly away would be more beneficial to your dog than running - but that is just my experience with my dog.

[SammieS]

Hi there SammieS, have you tried doing BAT? It is a great technique.

There will be a 2-Day seminar introducing Behaviour Adjustment Training BAT

For Aggression, Frustration & Fear given by Grisha Stewart MA CPDT – KA

Have a go if you haven't already done so,

it will really open things up for you,

it did for me!

Cheers

Marly

If only I could visit Cairns for a holiday! I'll take a look at the website when I get home Marly :)

[hankdog]

Yay field trip to Cairns...don't think I could sell that one. I have read the book and did find it unlocked some concepts as to how ratbag might be thinking.

I hear what you're saying Skye and prior to owning Jake would not have thought running away was the way to go. He is a really great, earnest, cuddle bunny at home, he has learned to leave the two cockatiels that roam the house (one seriously plagues him) and after one $350 encounter with the rooster learned to not retailate, so my reading suggested, and getting to know him made me believe, that his fight response was because his natural flight response was being inhibited by me hanging onto his leash.

He is only about 40cm tall but weighs 22kg so when he gets upset it's like being chained to a bouncing cannonball, he has slighly longer legs, being and australian bulldog so can leap as high as my hip. Our first behaviourist spent 45 minutes showing me how to feed treats etc but when she saw how he went off with another dog she basically said PTS or never walk him out. Any treats you could shove in pretty much get barked straight back out. He didn't have a threshold, he didn't actually have to see a dog, he could go off at a spot where he once saw a dog or where dogs had once been, he would lose it at the dog waterbowl in the park. So running away is not really my final goal, it's a default behaviour to replace the fight response. I guess a really large man or a more experienced trainer could manage his tantrums but bottom line is I can't. I physically cannot subdue him and I don't believe he is by nature aggresive so my logic is, and it seems to have worked, that if he knows he has an escape option then his whole walk will not be about looking for the next dog and he can relax and start to enjoy himself, and I can too. If he trusts that I will allow him to flee then we can start to negotiate and not panic.

He learns tricks very quickly and so once we have escaped a dog I stop him and we do tricks and I then am not rewarding him for fleeing but he does get a reward shortly after seeing a dog. On most of our training dogs, the reasonably passive fenced dogs, we have reduced our run to a few quick steps and can do our tricks in sight of the dogs. Tricks include doing a down stay and looking at me whilst the dog is behind me so he's pretty much looking at the dog. I really just feel he is so afraid that it borders on a phobic response and so trying to negotiate with him in full fight mode is a waste of time and does neither of us any good.

Yes we have been chased by two dogs, both cocker spaniels and I tore my ACL trying to kick away one!! Little monsters, but pretty scary with teeth bared and leaping at you, on both occaisions Jake hid behind me... little help buddy

Anyway probably not a conventional approach but it has now given us a threshold and he loves running away so that on 2 of the dogs we still run past he actually starts running when we turn onto their street, so for the first half of the street we are actually running towards them. They are two nasty little terriers, I don't speak dog but I suspect they are shouting insults that start with " Hey, your owners so ugly she..."

Edited July 18, 2012 by hankdog

[BC Crazy]

I would be concerned that the running away is feeding your dogs insecurities and if you came across a loose dog that has prey drive, it would initiate a chase. Skye is reactive and prey-driven and over the last twelve months we have worked hard on this problem with so much success that we are now back in to training in a class situation. We could not walk past dogs without her lunging and barking, even if the dog was across the other side of the oval. To desensitise her reaction to fence runners I would use them as training sessions and show her that I was in control of the situation with a "leave it" command and heaps of praise. Take your dogs favourite toy or food treats and use them as rewards. I know that our first reaction is to run from a scary encounter but I personally believe our dogs need to know that they can count on us to protect them and if we can project calmness and confidence then it will project on to our dogs. To turn and walk calmly away would be more beneficial to your dog than running - but that is just my experience with my dog.

I have been following this thread with great interest & I too have found that this method you use with Skye is really working for Stella & myself. I am seeing real improvement with her using the "leave it" command when

approaching/passing other dogs. She used to go off her nut, lunging, growling & barking but now she is much more settled usually. If she does happen to get upset, she settles much more quickly than she used to. I used to avoid

anything that I thought would set her off but when I thought about it all I was doing was feeding her fear so I had to get more confident & tackle some of these situations as her reactions used to really unnerve me & I think in

turn making her panic more.So we have been off walking & see an approaching dog on a lead, I just act like it's all o.k. & keep going at a steady pace & I actually find she is looking up at me for direction,I ask her to "leave

it" I then treat / praise if she is behaving & the dog has passed us & then we continue on. I am also making sure I take a deep breath, walk confidently & be calm. We aren't ready for any class training just yet but I am hoping

some day we may be :)