Hey, guys! I’m in an almost year long reactive dog raising, and one of things my dog trainer has said - it’s very important to let know your dog you’re taking charge of situation dog feels uncomfortable, scared, reactive.
I’ll ask my dog trainer about my concerns, but I’m looking for support and advice from this community, as I’m feeling growing frustration. It feels like I’m doing everything as calm as humanly can (including other important parts of reactive dog training, i.g. walking away, counter conditioning etc.) but my dog still won’t trust me in many fearful situations and still will try to “solve the problem” on her own, even though I’m practicing the best I can to help her.
Aforementioned methods are:
1) Standing in front of dog and trigger. If lunging/barking, taking dog by the harness and simultaneously blocking it + not letting the dog get closer to it. If this doesn’t work, then start pushing dog backwards thus creating distance with the trigger.
2) In case reactive behaviour is more automatic, learned, rather than pure fear based, use voice (“stop”, “by-uh”), and if dog doesn’t acknowledge the sound, use louder, sharper voice (bark-back, so to speak, as dog parents would do) to signal - this is not how we do things.
3) Be as calm and collected in the process and show according body language.
My issues are, that once I block my dog (1), she’s desperately trying to escape my block and tries to look past me, which defeats whole purpose. Also, it seems sometimes, that it doesn’t matter how confident or unsure I feel. (3) and it’s not clear to me how to communicate calm, collected body language in a way that’s clear to my dog.
Have you had any methods, approaches to tackle this, or any other luck?
I’ll ask my dog trainer about my concerns, but I’m looking for support and advice from this community, as I’m feeling growing frustration. It feels like I’m doing everything as calm as humanly can (including other important parts of reactive dog training, i.g. walking away, counter conditioning etc.) but my dog still won’t trust me in many fearful situations and still will try to “solve the problem” on her own, even though I’m practicing the best I can to help her.
Aforementioned methods are:
1) Standing in front of dog and trigger. If lunging/barking, taking dog by the harness and simultaneously blocking it + not letting the dog get closer to it. If this doesn’t work, then start pushing dog backwards thus creating distance with the trigger.
2) In case reactive behaviour is more automatic, learned, rather than pure fear based, use voice (“stop”, “by-uh”), and if dog doesn’t acknowledge the sound, use louder, sharper voice (bark-back, so to speak, as dog parents would do) to signal - this is not how we do things.
3) Be as calm and collected in the process and show according body language.
My issues are, that once I block my dog (1), she’s desperately trying to escape my block and tries to look past me, which defeats whole purpose. Also, it seems sometimes, that it doesn’t matter how confident or unsure I feel. (3) and it’s not clear to me how to communicate calm, collected body language in a way that’s clear to my dog.
Have you had any methods, approaches to tackle this, or any other luck?