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@joannad Sure! Ideal choice if safe is to try waiting him out for eye contact checkin. He pulls, it doesn't work, and eventually he looks back at you to see what your problem is. You mark, say Go Sniff, and move towards the bush fast enough there's no leash tension on the way there. You may have...

@fernando1999 The other thing that helped us that I can't recommend enough is Kathy Kawalec's Brilliant Partners Academy. She's doing some cutting edge stuff with coregulation and attachment parenting as applied to dogs. She presents it in a sorta hippy-dippy way but it's got good science...

@joannad I am not super familiar with over-socialization, but I have seen cases where a dog has developed an expectation of greeting every person or dog he sees, and trying to change that can be really difficult because you get a sort of tantrum-y behavior because the dog has no idea what to do...

@renejceternity Recommend YouTube's kikopup videos on capturing calmness. You have conditioned her to be extremely excited by your very presence 100% of the time. Now it's going to take some real time, effort, and patience to teach her to calm down in your company. Because the demand barking...

@fernando1999 I did this, including the 5 hour drive. Totally worth it. She was a whiz at meds and even helped me balance out some of his lupus med interactions in addition to trying out new head meds my primary vet wasn't comfortable with. She gave me some insights into his behavior, and his...

@joannad I don't hold any professional credentials, but I was an animal keeper for about a decade before I switched to dogs 12 years ago and I have taught quite a few dog training clients and volunteered with many dogs in a shelter. In general, I recommend carefully vetting a CPDT trainer, but...

@joannad I save my clicks for when the trigger does something stimulating. If the cat stood up from lying down, I would click and treat that. Counterconditioning is classical conditioning so you are in essence treating for a condition of the environment, not a decision of the dog like in operant...

@roman_k It may help to consider that all this shelter worker said was way less about you and way more about being burnt out from how hard that job is. Burnout goes for the empathy first. They weren't justified in taking it out on you and I am sorry they made this horrible decision even harder...

@alexachavez For walking you want something the dog can pant in, because that's how they cool themselves when they get hot. I like Baskerville brand but I have heard of dogs occasionally biting through them, so they aren't absolutely guaranteed.

@joannad Sounds good. My tip would be: teach the dog to back up one step in response to leash pressure before you release tension on the leash. I learned this off a service dog forum and it helped a TON, because it teaches a response to leash pressure instead of just not pulling. Just slowly and...

@alexachavez I did this with my first dogs too--I introduced them to other people in the first couple weeks and I should have let them settle in quietly first! Give Brian plenty of time to calm down before he has to be a visitor again. Since you got the warning fang at first, Brian was feeling...

@dardan Per this description I agree with the other comment that this is absolutely a rehomable dog. Definitely keep looking at breed rescues, get her posted on Rescue Me and Petfinder with the best pictures you can take. Dogs playing with toys are more attractive to adopters. If you can get a...

@laceflower Wonderful! I am sending you positive thoughts :-)

@laceflower You will need to work the crate time in the same way as the alone time so that it's always less time than it takes for her to feel upset. If she's scratching at the door, whining, howling, trying to get out of the crate, etc she's over threshold and you should be practicing at a...

@laceflower First, I have a concern that you are teaching her a stay-ish behavior while you are away, in that you are rewarding stay and not rewarding breaking the stay on her place cue. I worry that a sensitive pup could feel stressed knowing that you want her to stay in her place the whole...

@laceflower You are not an asshole. You are having emotions and you can't control those either! I am a trainer, and I also have had a good deal of psychotherapy for myself. You don't want to be ACTING mad at her but you can feel mad at her. So it's just about noticing when to take a break or...

@voraces I have bartered decoy time for my dog for free dog training lessons. Worth it!

@voraces Find other reactive owners (through trainer) and barter decoy time for each other. It's such a valuable experience and my absolute least favorite thing to try to arrange.

@mheppell Here's an example of when they are in conflict: A human toddler is having a tantrum in public. If you as the parent take an operant conditioning approach, you don't pay attention to the toddler until they have calmed down and can use their words again, and then you pay them lots of...

@pastorjustin One of her Emily's dogs, Wish, is a service dog washout due to reactivity. Wish gave me a lot of hope because she had ideal breeding and raising, developed anxiety during adolescence like my dog, and was able to go on to live a cautiously normal and healthy life. She never shows...