I've been using operant conditioning and "very little" physical correction (punishment) with my 8 month working line pup.

She was socialized early with people and other dogs.

However, due to the winter season, she has not had much contact with other dogs lately (since about 6 mo. of age).

After several recent club training sessions, I wanted to see how she would do with other dogs present.

With other dogs present, she was like a "Wild Beast"... totally out of control, non-stop lunging, barking (with tail wagging) and frothing at the mouth. She wanted to play.

She is a "hard" pup and physical correction w/ prong collar only made her more intense / excited... no matter how hard.

I'm not averse to hard physical correction when needed (used it for years). But with this pup, I wanted to avoid it as much as possible. And, I know that she WILL improve with more frequent contact.

Any other suggestions? Has anyone else seen this type of response to the presence of other dogs?

Dave why don't you let her play and get it out of her system. It works for me. Later on I could put her in a sit stay or down stay with no problem.

Milt

Usually every dog with strong fight/play/protection drives will over react to another dogs in puberty. Especially if you could not socialize her during winter season.

Prong collar will be enough for most dogs, anyway I use a lot gentle leader for basic obedience - never use gentle leader with play drive/ protection training.

Go back to basic obedience, but train your dog with distraction, go to your club, keep a safe distance from another dogs and stay long enough to calm your dog. When I have this kind of trouble, I walk with the dog for time enough to tire him, and correct every time for misbehavior against other dogs. Some dogs you should walk for up to 2 hours.

Its useless to train anything else but basic obedience until you have this problem solved. Other training like bite work excite a lot your dog and she can react to dogs nearby and you could loose control.

If your dog is exposed to other dogs, misbehave, and you for one reason or another get out, and you dont correct your dog properly, next time he/she will react the same way or worse.

I work a lot with operant conditioning, I think great to reward/praise a lot the dog, but the only way to solve this problem is correction.

Try Gentle leader with this dog. For this specific problem is great. When you calm down her, go back to prong collar. ( only one dog I failed to correct this: a two year old american stanfoshire terrier, extremely agressive to other dogs, any way, the gentle leader was the only way to get control and force him to sit and keep sitted in the street)
good luck
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Distractions are introduced in a step by step level based procedure. Every dog reacts differently to a situation and you have to readjust for every dog. Obviously your dog sees working in the presence of other dogs as a high level distraction, which he is not prepared for at his level of training. Take a step back and work your way up to that level.

Ok but ... IMHO this is NOT primarily an obedience problem. Its an over stimulation problem.

No obedience of ANY kind was possible because the dog would not stop lunging, barking, jumping for more than 1 second. The dog responded as though someone with a sleeve was agitating it...

Sit, down, no etc.... forget it... the dog was "bonkers"...only had one thing on its mind. The 2 other dogs were down at the other end of the pole barn (where we train in winter).

To rephrase my question, how can I best REDUCE the stimulation/excitement produced by the presence of other dogs?

Milt suggested letting the dog play... which I would like to try as soon as I can find someone that isn't afraid to let their dog be around my 8 month "wild beast."

Dave;
Try taking her somewhere with a wire fence. Keep her on one side and try to put an old, good natured male dog on the other...one that will show very little reaction, then go and lay down, etc. Just leave them alone to safely sort it out if you can.

Hopefully she won't try and bite through the fence (tough on teeth) or jump it (most dogs will not attempt to go over chain link, etc. because it is difficult for them to gauge the height, but this is certainly not true of all dogs).

If you can let her off leash, I think it will be better and allow a faster calm-down. If not, try a loose long line or a flexi. My bitch can be very dog agressive on leash or in her crate...less so on a long line...very mildly so when loose...go figure.

Dave,

I do think this is an obedience issue. If the dog is so distracted that it ignores the obedience commands, then it is an obedience problem. The 2 things I would suggest are:

1- Find the distance that the stimulation isn't too much and start working obedience and slowly move in. Just desensitize the dog to working around other dogs.

2- Rather than using non-movement commands (sit, down, or Stand) use motion commands (heel). Lots of heeling and with a lot of frequent unpredictable turns. As the puppy calms down move in to walking sits/downs with a recall to heel. Once those are stable you can move into normal obedience.

Richard, here is why I disagree that this is FUNDAMENTALLY an obedience problem:

Is poor obedience the SOURCE of the excitement/stimulation? No.

The obedience problems RESULT from the over stimulation due to lack of socialization and possibly other issues.

Of course doing obedience at a distance.... will work... eventually... it may take months with this pup due to the extreme nature of her response.

But, in my opinion this solution adressess the problem INDIRECTLY. By addressing the distraction directly... "desensitizing" the pup to other dogs... it SHOULD (theoretically) take less time.... only 1 way to find out.

Dave,

I look at obedience a little more globaly. As a result, to me, reaction to a distraction (any distraction)is an obedience problem. The thing that the dog needs to learn is to work in the presence of the other dogs. We have had better luck with distance and movement in dealing this type of problem.

Thanks everyone for the input. Richard, I'm not sure what you mean by global obedience.

The problem is that the dog is "losing its head"... its an automatic, emotional response... not a rational response. This automatic type of response is WAY TOO intense to expect much at first.

Just like I wouldn't expect a puppy to obey if it were drowning or on fire... I don't expect a puppy to think clearly when its emotional state is frantic as in this situation.

My focus was on the "desensitization" conditioning issue. Thats why I posted this under the "clicker" section, instead of puppy obedience etc.