My 1 year and 3 month maltipoo continues to be reactive to dogs. He’s great off leash at dog parks but when he’s on leash and a dog walks close by he lunges and barks. He’ll usually start off with a slow walk as if he’s preying and then sometimes runs or hops over to the dog. If he can’t greet then it’s lunging and barking. It’s not polite at all. I’ve seen two trainers now and they say it’s frustration from not being able to greet the dog. I’ve ended on leash greetings.
I already do the whole watch me, leave it etc with clicker training and high value treats. None of it matters when he sees the dog. How can my treats compare with a juicy dog right in front of him
I know everyone preaches positive reinforcement but are there any actual success stories out there? My trainer said it took 3 years with positive reinforcement for his dog. I’m trying to be patient.. it’s been almost 8 months and I’m not seeing progress. Help please!
@lunabeam With R+ methods an important distinction to make is between management and training. Good active management can lead to positive behavior change, but in general it’s important to recognize what is a training moment and what is a management moment.
To simplify it a lot: If you are close enough that your dog may react, it’s probably time for management. If there’s enough distance where they won’t react, then that can be a training moment. Oftentimes if you treat management moments as training moments, your dog will end up reacting, which makes it feel like it’s not “working.”
@joshuawithmartin I have the same issues with my dog and this distinction made a lot of sense to me. Haven't thought about it this way before, thank you
@lunabeam Yes I have had really good luck, but it’s taken a long time and it’s not perfect. Allowing leash greetings has probably kept you from seeing quicker progress and it’s something that can be challenging to undo. My boy is just shy of 2 years and it took a solid year for us to get to a point that he didn’t really react. By about 18 months he could ignore people without prompting, although I will still give him a treat if he looks at me to acknowledge he didn’t react. He still wants to react to dogs. He’s a frustrated greeter who thinks every interaction is for fun and play.
We still give other dogs a wide passing distance and if the other dog doesn’t react to him then he generally doesn’t react to them. If the other dog makes noise or pulls to get closer to him then he will want to engage. If the other dog is calm then I can usually call him into a heel, give him a couple of treats and he’s on his way. The hardest are when he sees dogs he recognizes even if he’s never interacted with them.
I’ve never allowed leash greetings, except in one specific situation. Occasionally I’ll see a friend out with her dog. If he sees them he loses his mind. I’ve kind of accepted that this is how it’s going to be in that specific situation. At this point I carry regular “boring” training treats and they are good for him. At the worst of it I carried small pieces of chicken or hamburger because those hold his attention.
@lunabeam Your definition of progress might be off. If you are in a position where you don't have any moments where you think "he wouldn't have done that 8 months ago" then that's a problem. If you are thinking "he still can't do this!" Then it might be an expectations problem.
For me a big realization was when I had a really bad walk, I got home and cried but realized I hadn't cried in months. Before I started extensive training I cried at least once a week. Now my initial reaction after the bad walk was to think we haven't made any progress but actually going from a bad walk once a week to once every 3 months (without changing the times or location of my walks) is huge.
@lunabeam I have personally watched, oh, maybe a dozen dogs improve dramatically in the six-week reactivity class I'm attending at the moment (having brought one dog through the protocol already). The class is a LIMA-based class with almost entirely positive reinforcement-based training, and the dog who most often sits next to me is actually also a Maltipoo I think about your dude's age, maybe a bit older.
Stuff I see in your post:
leash greetings are definitely making him think MAYBE I can GREET; it sounds like you have a classically frustrated-greeter situation. I would end all leash greetings forever: it helps to take away the overwhelm at MAYBE I'M GOING TO GET TO SAY HI if, well, you know you're not going to. I might include a possible exception for known dog friends after human releases him, but never before.
If your treats aren't good enough, slow down and back up! The class I'm talking about starts all dogs behind tarps on ~4ft X-pens, then gradually moves the dividers back so that dogs can practice looking at each other calmly, then slowly practices watching one another walk. Week 4 was last night and was the first time we practiced walking directly towards one another (never within ~12 ft). Less is more, I promise; he'll make much more headway if you intervene before he melts down than if you wait until he's realizing that GREETING NOT HAPPENING NO I AM NOT TIRED. (Envision a toddler walking past a lollipop lying on the ground. It's yucky, and there is no universe in which the toddler should be allowed to have the lollipop--but toddlers sure don't know that, and they get real mad when you say no.)
good job noting the slow walk and intense look--this is an important piece of the puzzle, and it's great you had the chops to catch that on your own. well done! That's the point where you should be trying to catch his attention, the moment he starts sliding into that really focused demeanor. He may or may not be able to hear a "watch me!" in the moment--sometimes the blood pounding can make listening hard--so it may be helpful to wave a nice stinky treat under his nose. That is way harder for folks with little dogs to pull off, so--do you know the spoon trick? You get a long wooden spoon and you smear peanut butter or spray cheese on it, and you put the spoon in front of your dog when he's earned a reward and gets a lick. You can use this just like you would a cookie in the hand for a taller dog. It feels kind of weird to be walking with a peanut butter spoon or a can of spray cheez, but it definitely feels better than dealing with a reactive episode.
It's been 8 months and you aren't seeing any progress, huh? That is super frustrating. Some of that is probably that your dog is a teenager and is still developing, but even given that you should see some progress moving forward. This isn't going to be an immediate fix kind of thing, but you should still see incremental improvement--even if it tends to happen slowly enough that you don't notice it until you take stock of what things were like two months ago.
some things we do:
non-optional sit and a lot of sit/stay work, so the dog is in the habit of listening when you say "sit" (non-optional sit is a variant where if they break sit, you immediately return them to sit using whatever method works for you--I usually simply cue a sit and do not reward);
practicing quick about-face turns and just getting out of the situation fast if we're over reaction threshold;
practicing just looking quietly at other dogs in exchange for cookies at a distance or from the car;
spending the majority of walks in a heel position with the dog's head just at or slightly behind handler's leg; "invisible box". if dogs break through the box, you're intended to practice pivoting around and stepping into their space quickly, then back off--startling them for a moment away from forging ahead. LOTS of practice also at heeling and listening to handlers with a leash on.
relaxation protocol; again, practice lying quietly and not reacting to stuff
@lunabeam It took one year for a client of mine. Her dog was a 5 yo JRT mix rescue who was very reactive to dogs and joggers. After working with this client for approximately 1 year, the dog can calmly walk past a house with two barking, charging dogs who are behind an invisible fence in the front yard. The dogs bark and charge to the end of the front yard, and her dog will just stop, look at them for a moment, then look up for a treat and walk past easily on the opposite side of the street.
However, we did not use “watch me” and “leave it” for this. We used LAT and DS/CC. This will also work for frustrated greeters.
@primrosehill Look at That, a pattern game by Leslie McDevitt. I believe she covers it in all of her Control Unleashed books. IIRC, there is a book specifically for reactive dogs.
@lia1234 I try my best to, we walk on the opposite side of the street where there’s a lot of distance (he still reacts) and sometimes there are narrow roads and it’s hard to avoid it
@lunabeam Forgot to add my main point: if you’re constantly putting your dog in a stressful situation that they have proven to you countless times that they cannot handle, things are not going to get better. If you have Instagram I would highly recommend looking at all the posts of @dogminded and @sailorjerrithedogtrainer they are amazing and use slightly different approaches but with the same mindset. I’ve learned so much from thwm
@lia1234 I completely agree with this as someone with a car/bike-reactive herding dog. Trying to take our dog on walks just made things worse because we would often run into sudden situations that she wasn't ready for -- and since her reactions are self-rewarding, her behavior became more intense quickly.
We've cut off walks altogether and have been working on her issues in more controlled environments. We wish we had done it sooner because now her intensity is a harder hill to climb. Looking into alternate ways to give your dog exercise while you work on things might be wise.
@lunabeam I hear you, it’s hard! My dog also will still either react or get very nervous when we are in the neighborhood and there is a dog across the street. I think part of the reason is because in the neighborhood is where he has had the majority of his reactions; dogs form very strong associations, so I think he started to associate neighborhood walks with increased arousal, therefore a distance that he would normally be fine with (such as across the street but at the park) he can no longer handle in the neighborhood. to him, the neighborhood is stressful and allows the habit of reacting. For this reason we drastically cut down the number of neighborhood walks and instead do a morning DS/CC session at the park where I can create as much distance as needed depending on how he’s doing that day, and then a more fun activity in the evenings. The goal is that this will help him lower his stress when we do walk in the neighborhood again. Maybe something you could try?
@lunabeam Can you drive him to a park or something where you have more space?
It sounds like you're walking him on a street or neighborhood or something where you absolutely won't be able to make any progress because of his trigger distance - he's going to be over threshold any time he sees a trigger and your training needs to be done under threshold. You need to put him in a situation where he has enough space that learning can take place.
We drive our very leash reactive dog out to a large nearby park at the quietest time of the morning. We know his trigger distance is about a football field (100 yards) and work from that distance, doing things like engage/disengage and LAT and slowly closing the distance week by week, month by month. If he reacts, we back up even further. We're constantly on the lookout for potential triggers and keep space between us and them. If he gets triggered by anything under 30 yards, and you're walking him on a street where the maximum distance you can get from someone walking the other direction is 10 yards, you're not going to make any progress and you're just repeatedly putting him into scary situations that are going to make things worse.
@lunabeam It can work if you work the dog at a distance it won’t react at and gradually close the distance over time as it improves. This can take a lot of time and availability of the right situations. Even if you have all the time and available situations, marker training requires precision and skill. Most people don’t have all that or multiple 1000s to spend on trainers over the course of a year.
