KerryCampion

I'm trying to help my anxious dog be more comfortable around certain objects that make her nervous. One big one is these new types of backpack/suitcase combo that all the kids have here. Basically one time a girl nearly hit her in the face with one and since then she can be reactive when she sees one. I've heard teaching the dog to target can help with fear of objects? I'd love some feedback on my plan to help her overcome this fear: Teach her to target the object but start slow - reward for first looking at it, getting closer, sniffing it etc until she's eventually comfortable touching it. Classical conditioning: walking around the house with it and feeding her in its presence. Not just me, my husband and daughter but eventually my nieces and nephews also. Also decreasing the distance with which she watches them walk around the garden with it and work our way up to seeing them run with it without reacting. Periodically bring it out at home and give her high-value food like chicken when it comes out and stop when I put it away. Is there anything else I could do? Does this sound OK? She barked at a girl today who had one and the poor thing was scared but thankfully I explained to the mum that she wasn't barking at the girl herself but actually at the suitcase and she was OK.

Update! Kira is slowly but surely improving. Yesterday I was so proud of her she saw three dogs (and two were quite close and in motion!) with 0 reactions. She still has her bad days but she is definitely improving. I think a big thing is also my energy, I'm much calmer now and just need to continue to demonstrate that calmness around other dogs. The biggest improvement I've seen is being able to bring her attention back to me (thanks a lot to the "look into my eyes" game) and when she looks back at me I reward her. If I see that maybe we have to hang back a bit and let the other dog walk on before we can continue our walk I'll usually get her into a sit and ask her to "watch me" while holding a treat. Then when the dog is gone or we have enough space for her to be under threshold we continue.

Thanks so much for this detailed plan! It's great and I'll take some time to really go over it this weekend 🙂 she does respond relatively well to the smacking sound and now is getting better and better and responding when we are outside, whereas before she struggled a lot to tear herself away from the environment. She's not massively food motivated so I want to up the ante a little with the food and mix in some freeze dried liver with her regular kibble to get her a bit more motivated! I've also found that having a secret Kong on me filled with frozen meat pate is also a great jackpot treat for her, especially when she doesn't expect it haha. I love the idea of the Schutzhund turn! Just like you say I think it's more engaging for the dog and for us training them. I'm going to practice this because I can see how useful it can be. I'm trying not to expect too much too soon from poor Kira but she does enjoy these types of drills and I think we'll have a lot of fun learning it. Great idea about the speakers hadn't even considered that. We have Google home so I can play them on there 🙂 What's good is that she can hear our neighbour's dog barking and doesn't bat an eyelash.

Hi everyone! This is my first post. I have an adopted 3 year old German Shepherd who, unfortunately, is reactive with other dogs, especially on leash. She does have two doggy friends so I try to make sure she gets lots of time with them. She has never injured another dog but I think I know where her reactivity comes from. Her old owner was once physically attacked by a boxer and Kira (my GSD) had to come to her owner's defence. I was so happy when I read about pre-LAT training being important because I had this idea but thought maybe it was silly. Here's how I'd like to tackle it - am I missing anything? Play a recording of dogs barking while she is having her meals or we are doing obedience drills with lots of positive reinforcement(especially big, loud barks because she is much more reactive with big dogs) I think this will go quite well because she doesn't get too reactive when hearing another dog bark, even if they bark at her! Weirdly she's LESS reactive with barking dogs (?!) I'm going to ask 3 people with 3 dogs to let me borrow something of theirs (blanket, toy etc) that will smell like the dog and reward Kira for sniffing it (how often should I be repeating this?) As for walks, we live in a city and I walk her early in the morning for 1 hour when very little dogs are around and a shorter walk at midday (20-30 mins) then we go to a empty pine forest for some good, off-leash exercise where she usually never sees other dogs (and if she does she reliably comes back to me when called and can control herself). When we see a dog on our walk I try the Jolly routine and say "Yes!" and give her a higher-value treat than her usual kibble (she's not too motivated by her regular food). I then continue feeding her in quick succession when she isn't being reactive and praise her constantly. I've managed quite a few times to get her from eye-balling another dog to a sit-stay-and-focus to attention heeling. Unfortunately, sometimes we're caught off-guard and she will get reactive. In those moments I try to remain calm, let the other person walk past and when she's calmed down a bit I get her into a sit and redirect her attention back to me. I reward her with a treat when she looks at me and try to get her to continue looking up to me for longer periods of time. When I see she's got that tongue-lolling-ears-upright-happy look we continue walking again. My logic here is that while we've lost a reactivity battle I can at least calm her down before walking again which means I'll be more likely to get her attention back to me if we run into another situation. I'm also going to start work with an in-person trainer which I can't wait to start but I want to do as much work as I can on my own too. One of the biggest issues I face is that she is HYPER vigilant of the environment around her and it's difficult to get her to focus on me. The jolly routine helps but are there any other tools etc that might help just to bring her back from guard dog mode?