advice needed asap.

catkins

krlyr wrote: »

Impractical or not, it is a very important to try to achieve it, because the dog really does need some downtime after reactive episodes. Also, the more a dog practices a behaviour, the more ingrained a reaction it becomes - so the more OP is bumping into other dogs, the more Scampers is learning to bark and lunge at other dogs, and the harder she will have to work to recondition his behaviour.

I do agree but I know from experience it can be difficult if not impossible.

I tried with my dog reactive dog. At weekends we could go further afield as my husband drives. We tried loads of different places - woods, footpaths, fields, long beaches (we tried walking along them for ages), large parks.

My pup now gets too excited when he sees other dogs. I know I have to try and keep him under threshold of excitement but it really is difficult. We see so many dogs on a walk. Yesterday I was walking along the pavement and saw a dog ahead so I crossed over only to see there was a dog close on that side so I quickly ducked into one of the walkways but, of course, there was a dog ahead coming towards me there. I seem to live in dog central.

I am also trying to practice recall but, again it is almost impossible as I cannot find anywhere to practice where there are no other dogs even when I go out really early or late

neveranymoney

My husband has been off for the last fortnight and goes back onto a week of dawn starts and then a week of lates, which often include weekends and I don't drive, which was one of the pros of getting a dog when we were discussing it as I walk everywhere!

We will have to see how that side of things gets managed when my husband returns to work as it will be tricky, my children are at two seperate schools with two different home times and I am completely in the same boat as catkins, you can't open the front door without tripping over other doggys.

My husband, (God love that man) took scampers out to a field behind out local leisure centre at the crack of dawn and there was only two whippets, on lead at the complete other end of the field and scampers barked and hopped about, more so than he has previously done at bigger dogs and at such a large distance. The whippets were barking too, so my husband did the whole tasty treats and talking lovingly whilst the dogs were in scampers field of vision and he says that scampers did stop long enough to take the treat but then continued on his behaviour. Is this ok? I agree with krlyr that scampers is going to have to manage seeing dogs at some point and the fact these other dogs were leashed and far away is really the best scenario.

If it goes as well as it did last night, I am going to record my wee son wandering up and down the living room with a handful of the bestest rewards (tiny ham and cheese cubes that only my son gives him or are used for seeing other dogs - the rest if us hand feed him his kibble) as it was FANTASTIC to watch. Scampers politely but very alertly followed him, sat on command and beautifully took the treat from my sons fingers only when he was told to do so. We were all making a right meal of it, aren't they great boys and scampers is my sons brother from another brother and my son was elated and I was taking him to bed telling him he was probably going to be an animal trainer he was so good. The things we do!

neveranymoney

Another mother, even. God damn you iPhone spell checker thing!

krlyr

Ideally in such early stages you would want to try to avoid Scampers reacting at all. This is why I think a couple of days without any walks would benefit. However, if it's the best you can do then it is certainly better than having dogs running over to you.

I would make sure the treats he gets on these walks are very, very high value - he seems pretty reactive so the reward needs to try to trump the desire to react. Really smelly cheese, roast chicken/beef, bits of garlic sausage - a little bit 'naughty' is OK as you only want to give it in little amounts, you just want it to be really special to grab his attention.

catkins

Just back from a 55 minute walk and we met 16 dogs! Neveranymoney, I know exactly what it is like for you.

neveranymoney

Has there been a dog popularity explosion or something?! Poor demon dogs walks are no longer that long sadly, so we have been out playing, feeding and just getting him to sit, basic stuff instead. Matters are not helped as the people directly behind me have a poor lab that is kept outside and goes bananas every time we go out. I am going to do the lotto tonight, hopefully win it and move to a rural retreat.

krlyr

I know exactly what you mean with the neighbour's dog, we've had some issues ever since moving in. Initially they had a very curious pup and a section of fencing was just chainlink so every time pup was curiously having a peer, it would set Casper off barking. However, although it wasn't ideal, I used it as a great training opportunity - Casper could see pup but not reach her (except one time they moved something on their side of the fence and it exposed a puppy-head sized hole she proceeded to try to climb through! Thankfully this was after a fair bit of training and Casper didn't pay too much attention to it!) so I could work on acclimatising him to the sight of a dog so near. I initially made it easier by propping things in front of the fence and rewarding him from recalling away from it when he tried to investigate. Once he improved I removed the props and he was rewarded from recalling away from the sight of pup. Then he would get rewarded for looking towards the fence but not approaching it, and things like that.

Neighbours have since got 2 more dogs, which are much more vocal than the first! We have since upgraded the fence to 6' panels, but one of the new dogs paces up and down the other side barking at my dogs. Again, another good training opportunity - mine originally retaliated by barking back, but by making the dog's barking a positive thing (every time he would do it, I went out and scattered treats on the grass) their mindset became less "return the favour by barking back" and more "dog is barking, I'm going to find mummy for my treats" and now they'll often trot back into the kitchen to make sure they get their reward!

I think this kind of desensitisation in the home environment helped with their behaviour on walks too, I noticed they're much quicker to ignore dogs that yap as we walk past the window or garden gate (they still get tons of praise for doing so though)

So although it might give you a headache, teaching Scampers to ignore the Lab could help his behaviour towards other dogs somewhat. Making garden time a fun time despite Lab going nuts (or even making it more fun because Lab is going nuts) could be a good opportunity to teach him to focus on you and ignore a dog that's barking at him.