My GSD is good, then he is not

[aceaxes]

TLDR: I have had a 3 year old German Shepard for 6 months, he was raised on a large - middle of nowhere- property, he was not reactive with other dogs until he was ambushed 3 times by a few dogs in a non off leash area. He is also reactive with squirrels. He has days where he is great on walks, then days where he is terrible on walks. It is very stressful & difficult to manage sometimes. Looking for support.

I have a 3 year old German Shepard. My husband and I got him early December from a middle age couple that were going through serious health complications, they lived a 2 1/2 hour drive from us in the middle of nowhere, so my GSD grew up on a isolated 1 acre property. Now he lives with us, in a more suburban neighbourhood.

He was very well house trained and still is. He doesn’t bark, leaves the kitchen when asked, is not hyper at the door when we come home, doesn’t jump on the bed or couch unless invited, doesn’t rip up anything that’s not his… He is excellent in the house to this day.

The past few months, he’s reactive towards dogs, rabbits, and squirrels. He will do everything from pull, bark, lunge, or scream/whine in frustration of not being able to get to them. Sometimes his scream is so loud and concerning-sounding that people stare, or come out their house to see what’s going on. He also obsesses over sniffing certain areas, to the point of pulling with his full weight.

On his good days, he is able to ignore the squirrels, and if he sees a dog, he pulls the leash to get away faster, or ignores the dog for the most part.

We reward good behaviour often even if it’s small. We bring treats on walks, and give him lots of pets and hugs when he is good.

When he is misbehaving, we try to stay calm, get him to sit, breath, treat, before we move on. Sometimes this can take a couple minutes. If he’s pulling we stop walking, or turn around so he knows to follow us. In general we try to avoid his triggers by distancing ourselves from others, staying in open areas like fields, parks.

He will have 3-4 really good walk days, then he will have terrible walk days for a couple days, and it’s like we have to retrain him every time.

He wasn’t always like this, especially not with other dogs. He did seem scared and timid around other dogs when we first brought him home, but he wasn’t reactive until he got ambushed about 3 times by off leash dogs in a non off leash park. Those were visibly traumatic for him. He also gets seizures, which thank god it’s been months since his last one, because he’s on medication now. But I’m not sure if he has a neurological issue as a result of that, stress, and his massive life change.

It’s stressful and embarrassing to have a large dog that misbehaves like this in public, and some people don’t care, they see he is reactive and they walk towards us with their dog.

Yesterday this man had his pitbull laying on his front lawn, being calm, my dog saw and barked at him. The man said “your big dog should not have that problem”. I didn’t respond but I was angry, frustrated, and all of the above after that comment. I think it’s great that his dog isn’t reactive, but it’s not his place to tell me about my dog because he has his own history & background.

I’ve done a lot of research on training, and I understand the patience, and maybe he will never fully over come this fear / issue… But my god is it stressful, especially since we walk him 4-6 times a da for around 40 minutes/walk. If I had my GSD from a puppy, I would have absolutely socialized him, and nipped those behaviours in the butt. I’ve done it successfully with previous beloveds before.

Anyway, any tips, words of wisdom, similar experiences? Please share, I could really use a community.

 

[poptart717]

@aceaxes Look up trigger stacking, some days your dog is "good" as you put it because hes struggling but he's just below his threshold. He might not be feeling neutral when he sees other dogs or squirrels etc but he can hold it in. Then the next day, he might have one additional stressor (a loud noise in the night, a dog walking past your home, an itch in his ear etc. - maybe something seemingly insignificant you're not even aware of) and it tips him over the edge.

My dog used to be okay walking past some dogs, and then would randomly snap at others. I was looking for a common denominator before I met my trainer and she explained that by the tenth dog she sees, she basically can't hold it in any longer. Her stress has stacked up and she's unable to hold it in.

Maybe try to reframe the behaviour from good/bad to struggling/able to cope.

Some useful terms for you to look up:

1. Trigger stacking
2. Counterconditioning and behaviour modification
3. R+ training/positive reinforcement training
4. Thresholds in reactive dogs or stress buckets
5. Managing environments for reactive dogs

Good luck! You're in the right place for community and advice here

 

[aceaxes]

@poptart717 I really appreciate your caring, thorough and detailed response. I’m going to definitely look into your recommendations. My dog is important to me, and I care about his triggers, stress and how he experiences life so your recommendations are again, valued. Thank you.

 

[poptart717]

@aceaxes You're welcome - can tell you're a great owner because you're seeking help we all start somewhere, and it can be an incredibly rewarding journey to own a sensitive dog. Good luck!

 

[mjr88]

@aceaxes As counterintuitive as it sounds, you should walk him less. As aforestfruit said, he’s likely trigger stacked. Replace the walks with mental stimulation and calming activities. The behavior is stemming from him being over threshold and being unable to control his emotions.

Sniffing, licking, & chewing calms dogs. Try feeding him by scattering kibble across your lawn or hiding kibble throughout the house. Or use puzzle games, Kongs, snuffle mats. We take Nosework classes and practice at home.

Instead of walks, switch to sniffaris. Go to someplace a bit isolated where you’re unlikely to encounter triggers - field, office park after hours, cemetery are good options - and just let him sniff to his heart’s content. If he’s scanning around instead of sniffing teach him to sniff by scattering treats or kibble on the ground.

We got our pup a treadmill so she can exercise without going out around triggers. She loves it and will now put herself on it when she’s feeling anxious and needs to jog off some stress.

Source: Parent to a 3 yo dog reactive working line GSD

 

[aceaxes]

@mjr88 You know what I’m going to give this a try. I really appreciate your suggestion. He loves to sniff around, I think it could actually be his favourite part about his walks- aside from hanging out with my husband and I Thank you x 10.

 

[joshuamotari]

@mjr88 I live next to a large cemetery, it would be a great place to walk my dog because of the lack of other dogs, buses, cyclists, etc. that get him worked up.

Unfortunately he likes to pee to mark his territory quite often. I feel like it would be too disrespectful to allow him to do that in a graveyard. I can walk him down the middle of the paths so he doesn't pee on any actual graves, and of course I would pick up BMs as always. Do you think that would still be disrespectful just for the fact that it's a cemetery?

 

[mjr88]

@joshuamotari Mine is a girl so luckily doesn’t mark. I have her pee & poo off to the side of the graves when we first get there, then we go walk. That being said, I’ve kind of gotten over the “disrespectful” part of it after walking in the cemetery for a while. Most of the graves have lots of goose poop and other wild animal poop on them. I figure I’m at least picking up the poop.

 

[mfhorn]

@mjr88 I'm raising a 9 mo puppy that is running into problems with reactivity being a frustrated greeter. This is the first time I'm hearing about this trigger stack thing and makes all sense now. Some days I swear it seems as if we never did any training at all, despite the hard, dilligent work for months.

Now a question... Is doing less walks applicable in the same case? And if so, how being exposed to the trigger less often helps with de-sensitization to it if I need them to apply the usual reactivity training? (LAT, etc) .

Also I've read somewhere that puppies his age don't need a ton of walks because the adolescency period exacerbates everything regarding reactivity, but I'm not sure how much is too much. Currently I do one hour walk at 6am, one hour at 5pm and 30min at 9 or 10 pm. On Weekends, the afternoon walk may be up to 2 hours so we can explore more distant places (I don't have a car, but my city is very pedestrian friendly).

 

[mjr88]

@mfhorn Im going to preface this with the disclaimer that I’m definitely not a puppy raising expert - if I were, our pup wouldn’t be reactive. Our dog was our first ever dog and we got her at 8 weeks old.

Looking at your schedule it does seem like your puppy may be over exercised and over stimulated, and it might be exacerbating the reactivity. What I was told was up until a year I shouldn’t exercise her more than 5 min per month of her age to avoid joint development issues.

Looking back, I think I over socialized our pup. Every day I took her out to shopping centers, busy parks, stores. I let everyone pet her and give her treats (like the books told me to). I literally had a checklist that I followed - different ethnicities, different sized people, different clothing, different hair. Every day was an exciting adventure of some sort.

What I ended up with was an adolescent dog who didn’t know how to self calm and considered everyone a treat dispenser. She would get super frustrated if she couldn’t meet them.

If I had to do it over again I would have taken her out half as often and to quieter areas. Instead of having people pet and feed her we would have just sat quietly and watched the world pass by. And I would have rewarded her for staying calm and neutral.

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@aceaxes You seem to be doing everything right. I do have a question though…when does he decompress? Walking at human speed, focusing, and trying to follow your commands are all stressful, how does he destress? When does he get to run full speed off-leash, sniff whatever he wants, etc? We have a few massive off-leash park near me and I take my GSD as often as I can.

 

[aceaxes]

@imagebeastmarkbeast Good question. TLDR; he does not get much off leash time die to his reactivity. We have toys and puzzle toys at home that he enjoys but when he is outside, given the situation we keep him close on a leash.

It can be difficult to provide him this more often given his reactivity. My husband and I will take him to a fenced area at the school and let him off leash, but it isn’t a dog area, so we can really only go after school hours & during non busy “dog” hours , in my area this is usually between 5pm -6:30pm.
Before he became reactive, I got a bike specifically to take him for runs to exert his energy. He loved that, but that was before the ambushing incidents.
So I’m terms of outdoor decompressing & giving him more freedom on a day to day, this would look like, walking him in a field/park/large grassy area, having him on a longer loose leash and letting him sniff, most of the time he will feel calm enough to sit or lay down on his own.
I would love to take him to a dog park, but he is scared of other dogs. My father has a Doberman, well trained, we try to practice socializing my GSD with him but he barks, hugs my side and has his tail under him and generally has a fight/flight response.
At home, he is fantastic, he has his bone, and I make him a “peanut butter pineapple” from time to time, so I cover his pineapple chew toy in peanut butter and Greek yogurt, freeze it and he loves it. Otherwise he has other chew toys but he’s not much of a chewer. I also have a puzzle bowl for him too.

 

[citfield]

@aceaxes Petsmart sells 20' and 30' long leads ($25-30). I like to D-ring ($6 Harbor Freight) two together and that way I can play on-lead fetch and still have control. I tie loops into the leads so I can have control at different lengths.

 

[aceaxes]

@citfield Thank you for this