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My Rhodesian Ridgeback is Very Reactive

By Ed Frawley

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Customer Question:

My 3-year-old Rhodesian Ridgeback is still reactive to most dogs on-leash. From 8 weeks old, she has been like this and despite every type of training, nothing works.

I have had luck training reactive dogs in the past but nothing works with this dog. She has continued to be a challenge.

She walks well on the lead right up to the point that we encounter another dog.

As a puppy, I briefly used a prong to calm her down and it worked wonders. That taught her to walk well on the lead. I only used it for 1 month (basically illegal in the UK) so I moved to a haltie, front clip harnesses and slip leads instead. She is now fine on a flat collar now.

I have taught her 'watch me', walked 180 circles when she sees another dog , trained "leave it", lead jerks, redirect bribery with food.

She is incredibly well-behaved with everything else.

If I stay 100% focused on her, she will leave the other dog. However, no one else can do this and after 1 year of this method, she still has not learned to stop being so reactive.

I can manage this behavior, but I cannot stop it. Do you have any ideas?

Our Answer:

We have a course specifically on leash reactivity, I'd highly recommend it. This course may possibly give you some ideas or techniques that you haven't yet used before.

One thing about dogs that tend to be excited or reactive, it's something that is not always possible to eliminate 100%.

With this dog, it sounds like it will need some level of maintenance training for the life of the dog.

If we had the dog, we would find places and times of the day and week to walk the dog. They are always on leash in a sterile environment, meaning no other people and dogs.

We would also use a dominant dog collar (DDC) on an adult dog like this, not a prong collar.

If you choose to use a DDC collar, my advice is to learn how to use it. DDC's are not designed for a leash pop. Rather, remain calm and simply lift up on the leash until you get a behavior change.

How hard you need to lift will depend on the dog. Some dogs need very little pressure while others need stronger upward pressure that takes awhile to get the behavior change. Remember this is NOT a jerk or pop! It's just upward pressure. You will find that once you have conditioned the dog to it, the amount of upward pressure gets less and less as they respect the DDC.

Too often a prong collar will over stimulate a reactive dog and the behavior will escalate or turn into aggression that is then redirected into the handler which means the dog bites the handler.

Customer Response:

Thank you for your reply, Cindy.

It is interesting to hear that this may be a lifetime thing as it really seems it's going that way. I have never come across a dog that is incredibly smart but so reactive, Especially with years of working on it. She just doesn't seem to care about any correction and/or redirecting.

I will note that I have NEVER let her actually get to another dog through this behavior, so it has never been reinforced even as a puppy, making it yet even more confusing.

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About Author

Ed Frawley

Ed Frawley is the founder of Leerburg. He has been training dogs since the 1950s. For 30 years, Ed bred working bloodline German Shepherds and has produced over 350 litters. During this time, Ed began recording dog training videos and soon grew an interest in police service dogs. His narcotic dogs have been involved in over 1,000 narcotics searches resulting in hundreds of arrests in the state of Wisconsin. Ed now solely focuses on producing dog training courses with renowned dog trainers nationwide. If you want to learn more about Ed, read about his history here.