After you have Management in place, it’s important to understand what you bring to the table. Dr. Patricia McConnell’s book ‘The Other End of the Leash’ explores this topic in depth. The key point is that your feelings, beliefs and attitude have a significant impact on the dog’s behavior. You might be contributing to the dog’s reactivity. Making changes to your own habits can be a huge benefit.
Everyone is different. Here are a few questions that may be helpful to your situation. What other questions can we consider?
Expectations:
- Are you anticipating bad behavior, perhaps making a self-fulfilling prophecy?
- What do you expect from your dog in this situation? Knowing who the dog is, is the expectation reasonable? Any dog can improve, but we need to work with the dog’s personality and genetic traits, not try to completely alter who s(he) is.
- Does your dog understand your expectations? Does it know what it is supposed to do?
- Is it a normal situation or is it something you only encounter intermittently? Do we just need more practice?
Emotions:
Dogs pay attention to emotion first, then body language and physical cues… lastly, (maybe) words that they’ve learned. Pay attention to your emotions. Negative experiences can give YOU a conditioned negative emotional response, and you must master your own reaction to help your reactive dog.
- Do you feel anxious when you first see the trigger? Do you tense up?
- When dealing with your dog around other people, do you feel self-conscious or embarrassed?
- Do you become frustrated with the dog’s reactivity? Why can’t he/she just be normal?
If you are feeling stressed, most likely your dog will also feel stressed. Intentionally relax, take deep breaths, and use mental imagery to calm yourself. As you practice these techniques, you will gain confidence. When you do, your dog will also feel safer and more confident.
Energy
Consider what kind of energy would benefit your dog the most.
- Does your dog need encouragement right now, or does he or she need to decelerate and have a more relaxed energy?
- Does your dog require your full attention, or would it be better to soften your gaze and allow him to process the situation on his own?
- Are you being too harsh? Are you nervously chattering at the dog? This is a coaching moment, so it’s best to stay calm and communicate clearly.
You can deliberately adjust your energy to either speed up or slow down your dog’s energy. Think about how you can use this to help the dog be successful.
Beliefs & Actions
Are your beliefs helping the dog move forward and improve, or not so much? There are many beliefs in dog training that run from one extreme to the other. Be open-minded.
- Without delving deeply into training philosophy, different techniques work for different dogs. Within an ethical framework, if what you are doing is not working, be open to trying a different technique.
- Tool use is another long conversation, but in a nutshell, the form of restraint to use on the dog in front of you is the one that a) keeps you both safe and b) reduces conflict and frustration to the greatest degree. Always remember that a tool should be a safety net WHILE you are training the dog to keep pressure off (in other words, loose leash).
- Anthropomorphism: Dogs are intelligent, emotional beings. And they are not human. They don’t think or perceive things the same way we do, they don’t dwell in the past or worry about the future, concepts such as spite or grudges don’t apply. They don’t lie. They are family and deserve affection. Being a “pet parent” is wonderful, as long as one fulfils the needs of the adult canine. It is a disservice to treat a dog as a surrogate baby.
Onward to actions: Are there things to stop doing, that contribute to or enable reactove behavior?
- Do you alert to the trigger and stare at it, standing squarely facing it, or do you keep your gaze soft, and turn obliquely to it?
- A common aspect of reactivity is leash frustration. When you see a trigger, do you keep tight pressure on the leash? A better tactic is to use pressure and release to get your dog moving in another direction.
- On the other extreme, are you allowing your dog too much leash, enabling the dog to consider you irrelevant? Does he or she ignore you?
- Are you aware or distracted? Are you present with your dog or looking at your phone? Does your inaction enable situations to happen? Do you get surprised by situations when your dog is already reacting?
- When a situation arises, do you communicate that you will handle it, or does the dog tune you out; does he feel he must deal the situation?
Leash Handling
You want a connection with your dog, but you want it to be a conversation. If you’re dog is way out ahead of you, you’re not relevant to the dog; he or she is in their own world. Sometimes that is okay, but you want to be able to call him near to you when needed. Conversely, if you are holding a tight leash, you are upping the stress of the situation. If you and the dog don’t have great leash skills, give up on “walks” for now. Practice these in a quiet area away from any triggers:
- Heel: Reward a position near you (standing and in motion). It can be either side, but pick one and stay with it for now. If you already have this on cue, great! Practice. This doesn’t need to be a formal heel, but should encourage the dog checking in with you regularly. When you allow the dog out in front, also practice asking for and rewarding their return to your side.
- Pressure Awareness: Be aware of when the leash becomes tight. What do you need to do to encourage it to become loose again? A left turn, a right turn, or a U turn will leave the dog behind and encourage him to “join up” with you again. You can encourage him to follow and praise him when he’s back with you.
- Yielding: If your dog has a lot of opposition reflex (pulls hard), do specific lessons in yielding to leash pressure. In a quiet area, put gentle pressure on the leash. Wait. If the dog yields, praise and treat. If s(he) doesn’t, call or lure him. After you get a reliable yield, put it on cue and practice until s(he) knows the cue (such as ‘easy’).
Faith In Handler:
In the presence of a trigger but under threshold, start practicing advocating for your dog. These are the steps:
- If your dog is not near enough to you, calmly bring your dog into a heel.
- Make a gesture to show that you are aware of the trigger. For practice, you may do a “stop” hand signal toward the trigger and say, “Please stop, we’re in training”.
- Do the Step in Front (see previous page) to place yourself between the dog and the trigger. Pause for one or two seconds to let that sink in.
- If this is a planned setup, your helper can now turn and hurry away. This is impressive to the dog and builds his confidence in you.
- Complete your turn and calmly walk your dog away.
Your-End-of-the-Leash Homework:
- Confidence: Model the Expectations, Emotions and Energy you want to see in your dog.
- Beliefs and Actions: Again, reactivity training should be unobtrusive and calm, maybe even a little boring. Energy involved should not be confrontational. Training should never feel unpleasant. It should be something you feel no qualms about doing in public and should feel like a coaching or teaching moment. If you start feeling uncomfortable, frustrated, or upset, it’s important to stop immediately.
- Accelerating and Decelerating: Notice what tone of voice and mannerisms make your dog more excited, notice which ones encourage calmness. Think about when you want to accelerate your dog (such as just AFTER turning away from a trigger) and when you want to decelerate and project calmness.
- Work on Heel and Yielding to pressure. Practice the Faith in Handler moves.
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