German spitz with aggressive bark towards random dogs/people while walking

[betaninja]

Hi there, I've been directed here from the r/Dogtraining subreddit.

I have a 1.5yr old German Spitz which we had since he was about 9 weeks old. I would say it's a smart dog which effectively learns things extremely quick, he stopped peeing in the house with 2 or 3 times showing him he has to do this outside. He sits, lays down, stays, rolls over...

We could litterly teach him anything at this point. He doesn't act aggressive for food, even the cats are allowed to take it, he would even take a step back.

Regardless of all this when we go out for a walk (alone, without other dogs) he barks at other dogs and people randomly, one dog is perfectly fine and he'll just plain ignore it. Other dogs are seen as dangerous to him I think?

It seems he wants to protect me against them, and starts barking extremely aggressive, at least that's what it sounds like. Because if I would let him off his leash he would just run towards this dog and act enthusiastic and try and play with him.

Now when he is in this state of mind of barking aggressively there's no possible way to get him out of it, unless I pull his leash extremely tight which seems like an extremely bad way of interacting with him, and usually doesn't even bother him all that much. Even food is not interesting at this point.

Distracting him before he sees the dog works, lets say 25% of the time. But he spots the other dogs a mile ahead before I can even see them.

All tips/tricks are welcome on how to prevent this behavior and how to correctly handle situations when he is in this state of mind.

Edit: Added a video:

 

[martijn]

@betaninja Sounds like your pup could have some issues with leash reactivity! It’s pretty common, doing a little bit of googling can give you a ton of tips and tricks on how you can turn that behavior around. Most of it involves redirection and distraction and keeping a close eye on his body language to catch his subtle cues before he gets too far into the behavior. Having a friend that would be willing to work with you on it with their dog is also helpful and they can walk towards you and away from you as needed to slowly build up to being able to walk past without any aggressive reaction.

 

[michelerd]

@martijn Can I ask a follow up question? This poster describes my dog exactly! My question is what to do while she's reacting?

So, as far as distance/threshold, she can be about ~8-10' from the other dog (on leash with owners) before she starts to lash out (barking and lunging). We can usually get her to stop reacting with chicken, and she'll keep eating as long as we keep walking her away from the other dog using chicken. She'll pop her head up sometimes and try to react but will quickly turn her head back to the chicken as long as I shove it right in front of her as we're walking away. We've also taught her "look at me" with a point to my nose and she does it perfectly when there aren't dogs. She's about 70-80% successful with other dogs. Using chicken is far more successful.

If we can avoid, we usually do by turning around or going away from the potential trigger, but sometimes there are instances when we are surprised by another dog (e.g. coming out of our condo bldg and another dog/person is walking by the door). She's come a long way since we got her 5 months ago, because her threshold was like 20-30' away.

So Is it okay to keep feeding her chicken as we lead her away even though she might be reacting a little bit? Thank you for reading this!

 

[martijn]

@michelerd It’s kind of a hard call to make, it sounds like it’s going to be very situational. You don’t want to reward her for the reaction, so try to make sure when you’re feeding her, it’s immediately after she responds to another cue like “look at me”. Or when she stops making eye contact with the source of her reaction if she can’t get all the way to a command in her state. Have you tried clicker training? You could start to separate the timing a bit and mark the exact moment that she looks away and at you and pauses her reaction. It sounds like you’re on the right track, and improving the timing could help push you a bit farther.

 

[michelerd]

@martijn Thank you! That is very helpful.

 

[betaninja]

@martijn This is exactly what I've been attempting so far. And like I've said above seems to be working 25% of the time. But I'd like to know how to handle the situation if I fail to distract him, do I punish? do I ignore or do I just keep walking and ignore the behavior, I seem to be finding conflicting information online.

 

[martijn]

@betaninja This isn’t a good time to punish your dog, then you are just confirming that the situation that he is reacting to is negative, stressful, and likely will just make him more fearful of those instances. Generally, you walk away from the situation if he gets too worked up, and then once he is calm and you can get his attention, ask him for a cue like Sit or Down and do a heavy reward. Distracting my dog by having her perform obedience tasks that she knew very well as soon as I started to notice her become more alert would work well.

Edit: My bad, I didn’t see this was from r/reactivedogs would have gone into a bit more detail

 

[betaninja]

@martijn I see, feel free to go into detail. The entire reason I posted this is to gain knowledge on how to correctly solve the problem and understand my dog.

 

[shinsull]

@betaninja Once he is barking and lunging he is over threshold and it will be very difficult for him to learn, so just get him the heck out of there.

The goal should be to work on the training behavior before he hits threshold, it sounds like your dog - much like mine a few months ago needs the dog to be reallllllly far away that will be easier to accomplish with controlled set ups vs practicing on dogs you have a chance encounter with on walks. If you have the financial means to do private lessons with a positive reinforcement training I would definitely recommend it, it has made a world of difference for Ren and I.

If you can't hire a trainer I would start with 2 things

1. While you are training you need to as much as possible keep your dog out of situations that will out him over threshold, that might mean less walks, or walk at less popular times, and when you do encounter other dogs you'll want your dog to have a really strong u turn. Practice u turning all the time, so it's second nature to your dog.
2. This where controlled set ups will be helpful, if not through a trainer try to enlist a friend with a dog so you have control over how far away is and play the engage disengage game

 

[betaninja]

@shinsull First of all, thank you for the info!

We are already looking for a private trainer nearby to follow a few lessons, we've done this before with random people/dogs and it seems that once he has met a dog/person it's no longer an issue. A new encounter which seems to be triggering him.

Another fun fact: If we walk in a group, he's pretty tense the first 5 minutes but then he simply calms down, walks with the group like he's done hundreds of times. We can even cross other random dogs/people now without him responding.

The video below is from 2 hours ago were I passed 4 fishermen, without any hassle whatsoever the 5th one was suddenly too much I assume? He was pretty stressed out from the two people walking behind us, he kept looking behind us, so I made him sit and lay-down .... U'll see below

I'd say the video below is average. Sometimes it's even worse. He does have the tendency to "bite" me if I correct him, but it's more like nipping (Don't really know how to describe it)

 

[michelerd]

@betaninja We have almost the same dog! Except my girl is a little 13lb chih mutt who's small yet fierce.

What's worked for us, for the most part, is treating every interaction the same, regardless of distance. Lots of boiled and then shredded chicken (or hot dogs, a really really really high value treat you never feed otherwise is super important) to totally distract her when she sees the other dog.