Quote: Patti Neelans

... I once again expended her energy and she had absolutely no negative dog reactiveness at all. .... i guess as the old saying goes a tired dog is a good dog!

Absolutely! Like with almost any reactivity (or other unwanted excited behavior), draining off some frustrated energy is always beneficial.

Flayre is doing great. We had her out training yesterday (straight out of the crate in the morning). She was focused even around other dogs walking by. Even when she was crated in the car a man walked his dog close to my car and she didn't make a peep.

I am now wondering if some of the behavior i was seeing was age related and the fact that she was in heat (out for about 2 wks now).
What I didn't say was that I have had a problem with her not wanting to train. She would completely shut down on me. All my training with her has always been positive food motivated type of training. i have never been hard on her. I was frustrated with her not liking to train. It was difficult to give her something else to do when she just didn't want to do it. But suddenly within the last couple of days she has turned on, is eager to train and willing to engage me.
I think that is why she was NOT dog reactive yesterday. She was focused on training and when a couple of dogs walked by she glanced at them but immediatly (her choice) came back to focus and train. She has something else to do that is MORE fun than reacting to other dogs.
Needless to say I am very excited about her change! Not quite sure what switched in her little brain. Maybe it was just posting to this site that made her universe change! :-) I will keep you posted on her progrees.
I am also reading the book that was suggested "Control Unleashed". Can never learn too much!

Hi

I have a very dog reactive dog too, although she is much smaller (a toy fox terrier - most likely our dogs would be freaking out on eachother if they ever saw eachother!)

I do the"watch" command a lot too. I have had her for a bit over a year now (she was a rescue), and still have not resolved the issue, have worked with 4 trainers now, but have some good techniques to go on.

I live in a city so it is easy to hid behind cars if she is in a especially crazy mood.

otherwise, i do NOT leave the house without treats! I have recently started using a clicker, and I swore i would never use a clicker, but I have actually been seeing progress! I click when she looks at the dog. I make her look at the dog. I don't want to distract her all the time, I want her to look and NOT react. that's the point. and I click and click and treat while she is looking. She has started not reacting while on the other side of the street (we are still crossing the street at this point). She is better with some dogs than others (she mostly can not deal with dogs that are hyper too, jumping around, etc). I always have my eyes open. I see when a dog is coming, and if I don't feel like dealing with it, I go another way. but you shouldn't have to avoid dogs all the time! Otherwise, I will make her sit, get real close to her and hold on to her leash (attached to nylon choke) very close so she can't go lunging. then we watch. click. treat. (even throw treats at her in her face and on her if needed) and repeat! eventually, when she looks at the dog, she will immediately start looking back at me for the treat instead of reacting. i use cheese and hotdog.

We also go to the dog park, outside the fence (we used to go inside because she is actually a lot better off leash), but we watch through the fence, and depending on the other dogs' temperments, we can actually go up to the fence and she will say hello through the fence. and she is FRIENDLY! lots of click and treat!

I used to the alpha rolling thing too, and it just plain does NOT work. none of the heavy corrections things work for her at all, just aggrivates more.

sometimes though, if she is being especailly out of hand, I will pull up on her choke until her fron paw are off the ground, and try to get her into a sit (can't touch her because she will redirect the aggression onto me and bite if i am not careful), then if i can get her into a sit, i do a "watch" click, treat.

These things have been working well so far to an extent. there is progress, but it is slow, and it takes a lot of time and effort. I try not to walk around in fear anymore. be confident. act like you don't give a damn.

one last thing. if you can find a calm submissive dog to just SIT down while you slowly work your dog up to him/her, clicking and treating while you get closer and closer, then when you get close enough, let the leash LOOSE (stop pulling, only makes it worse!) and let her up to the dog to say hello. this has taken me a long time to get to that point, but if i could find calm dogs to sit while we tried this, i think it would definitely help.

hope any of this might have helped!

Hi Jenn,
yes i have done a lot of what you have done (except without the clicker). The biggest break through I saw with her was when I expended her energy BEFORE taking her around excited dogs. I used the lunge whip toy which she is CRAZY for! She behaved beautifully even around a dog who was playing an excited, very vocal game of tug with it's owner.

She also stayed in a down while another dog approached her and sniffed her. now of course this dog was calm and quiet. if this dog had approached with a lot of nervous, excited, energy it might have been different. She seems to be more triggered by hyperactive, nervous, excited dogs (and of course quick movement). She does have high prey drive.

This girl in the past has never liked training. She would completely shut down on me, even to go so far as lying down and rolling over on her back. That seems to have changed in her too. She is now more focused and seems to enjoy training even for food, although play seems to keep her more "up". In the past any kind of pressure seemed to make her "shut down". This seems to have changed in just the last week or so. She now seems to have "turned on" to training and seems to enjoy it and is more focused. I am not sure if a lot of this was a phase she went thru or???? Because she is now more in to training the focus on other dogs or dog reactivness seems to have diminished.

She is a work in progress, but i can say I am having a lot more fun training her now and we have even started working on some agility jumps (the tunnel is already an obsession!).

Maybe expending your dogs excess energy like I did with her will help. Maybe then she will be too tired to be so reactive and therefore the rewards can be more frequent since she will be less likely to fire off. it seemed to work for us. let me know how it goes.

Patti that's great!

I do agree, getting all the energy out is a help. I have to find some more creativity in this though, because i live in a small apt, and all the outdoor areas to take her are either filled with dogs or not fenced in well enough that she could run out (she is not a big fan of tug of war either although she does like to play fetch with her squeaky).

i do live on the 4th floor though, i guess i could run her up and down the stairs a bunch of times. she does have quite the never-ending energy though!

Do you have a place that you can bike her? Sat a local park or bike path? My boy is my biking buddy and we would hit the bike trails and do several miles and he loves it! I want to do that with Flayre and the rest of the dogs too, but I have a hip injury that I am facing surgery on and i haven't been able to do squat lately! Pedaling a bike really sned my pain level into orbit.
But once I am well.....bike trails here we come! :-)

 Quote: Patti Neelans

Do you have a place that you can bike her? Sat a local park or bike path? My boy is my biking buddy and we would hit the bike trails and do several miles and he loves it! I want to do that with Flayre and the rest of the dogs too, but I have a hip injury that I am facing surgery on and i haven't been able to do squat lately! Pedaling a bike really sned my pain level into orbit.
But once I am well.....bike trails here we come! :-)

When you bike, how do you keep the dog at the right distance? I am picturing a couple of my not-so-brilliant dogs tangling up in the spokes, crossing in front of me, and generally causing a total disaster ....

 Quote: jenn verrier

I do agree, getting all the energy out is a help. I have to find some more creativity in this though, because i live in a small apt, and all the outdoor areas to take her are either filled with dogs or not fenced in well enough that she could run out

The release of energy seems to help improve all problems. An idea to consider for exercise, is early morning at a playground; for the most part you can have them to yourself until at least 8AM and pretty much all day if it is raining or very cold.

You can turn it into your own agility course. Dennis Jones posted a great video of doing just that. You can take a look at it for ideas.

http://leerburg.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/251781/page/0/fpart/1

I'm with Connie on the biking. Never mind the dog; I'm a disaster on my own. It's really bad falling when you're an adult. Why does it take so long to hit the ground and where do all the weird sound effects come from? ooo, ugh, wo, aw, oof and finally contact: *@$% THAT HURT! Patti you are very brave.

I bike with my JRT when I go visit home. He has always naturally kept a good distance away from the bike; not too far or too close. Of course a leash and some vocal cues help. I usually slow down before turns and such and have never really had a problem with him getting in the way - it's been a fairly intuitive experience. That being said, he did have to be taught not to try to take off after a distraction. Even that came along pretty quickly. There are also bicycle attachments now that keep the dog a distance from the bike and help absorb some of the impact if they pull.

 Quote: jenn verrier

I do agree, getting all the energy out is a help. I have to find some more creativity in this though, because i live in a small apt, and all the outdoor areas to take her are either filled with dogs or not fenced in well enough that she could run out (she is not a big fan of tug of war either although she does like to play fetch with her squeaky).

The biking idea is great if you can do it. I know people who use these bike leashes with some success. It sounds like off-leash is not an option.

I live in an apartment too, and so I rely heavily on public places to exercise my dog as well. In addition to a long walk in the morning, I usually take my dog to the park. I try to use a mostly fenced in little league field with an e-collar and 20' line (leashes required) on my dog, and play fetch with a chuck it or flying squirrel until he's pooped. If the little league field isn't available, I have a 50' line that I use (you can see it in my sig pic).