Reactivity

[Mary & Madison]

Madison just turned one and she is a doll. One serious problem- reactivity to other dogs when she is on leash or in the car and we pass a dog. Horrible barking and lunging to get away. Think she wants to play but I can hardly control her. Help!!

[Sam&Bella]

I know what you mean!  Bella has calmed down when she sees one when we are walking, but still barks once or twice. But when we are in the car, she goes nuts! I just kind of give her a stern "No" and take her off the seat.

I hope that that helps!:)

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

I have a six year old Doodle who has been reactive since he was about 7 mos.  We have had a few trainers and are still working with him to control the reactivity to other dogs.  In the car, I always give him a down/stay command.  It took awhile, but now he does it consistently.  I can't tell you how many times I had to pull over to the side to get him back in his "down".  That eliminates most of the problems in the car, as long as I never have to actually stop in a place where he can see other dogs.  We practiced in the Petco parking lot for months...I would sit in the back and give him treats when he did not react to dogs coming and going.  I really think that helped as well.  Distance to other dogs seems to be key with my Murphy.  He has a "threshold" where he has difficulty controlling himself.  I pretty much know what a safe distance is now and I will turn to avoid having him get too close.  I never walk him in places where I could get "trapped" and have to walk by another dog at a close distance.  We drive him to parks and walk where there is a lot of room to maneuver.   If I do get caught, I turn him and put him in a "sit/stay" and keep giving him cookies as long as he is relaxed (I always walk with treats in my pocket).  I worked for years actually trying to train him to comfortably walk past another dog, but I eventually realized that it's just too much for Murphy.  Even when he listened to my commands and didn't react, I could see how upset he was by his body language and finally decided it wasn't worth putting him through it any longer.  Some dogs can be trained to stop reacting and I was hoping that would be the case with Murphy, but I eventually realized that he is reacting out of fear and I no longer wanted to continually have him have to deal with that fear.  Now we control his environment and 99% of the time he is a sweet, calm boy.  Good luck...I know it can be difficult.

[Jenn and Bogey]

I would look into a trainer. Bogey just turned one and we started seeing a trainer around 10 months because he was lunging and barking on leash. It has gotten a lot better, he sometimes still reacts. When we first started we practiced a lot of different ways to distract him or avoid the trigger all together. It was important that he didn't go over his threshhold. To distract him we practiced "touch." I would stick my hand out and tell him to touch and he would touch it with his nose. He'd then get a treat. Then I would move my hand somewhere else and tell him touch again. I'd practice it inside first where there are no distractions. Another distraction technique is "find it." I'd toss a bunch of treats in the grass and tell him to "find it" That way whatever the trigger is has enough time to walk by or out of sight and my dog is distracted by the treats and so won't react. It was a lot of baby steps and building each week to get his reaction area smaller. When we first started he'd bark when he saw someone down the street. Now a lot of the time I can walk past someone in the park without a reaction. He used to also bark in the car. But without specifically training for that the other exercises has helped with that too. I highly recommend a trainer. I know I couldn't have gotten as far as I did without the help and feedback of one. She has helped so much and gave me the confidence that I was on the right path.