Our guidance to House Visitors with our reactive dog. Yes we ask them to read before they come in

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@hakatz I adopted a reactive dog who is particularly scared of men and at the beginning everytime my parents had gests he would bark and be extremely stressed for like 20mins. One day, a friend (male) of my dad's visited us, I told him to ignore the dog until he calmed down, and he just decided to look at my dog straight in the eyes and yell "NO, STOP, NO, STOP IT". You know like the cliché of men thinking they can assert dominance over a dog to make him obey. No need to say my dog absolutely did NOT calm down lol. I fucking hate it because it's always men that do this. They just won't listen to what I say because they know better even though they are absolutely ignorant on dog behaviour.

 

[dlmlady112]

@imagebeastmarkbeast Staring a dog down to assert dominance is how you get your face bit.

 

[kalven_j]

@imagebeastmarkbeast Yeah what is it with this? It's either that or they're like "Dogs love me" and go in for the pets after you've told them not to.

 

[deepthink]

@romans82 How do you know my aggressive asshole sweet heart protective rescued reactive baby boy angel dog?

 

[romans82]

@deepthink

 

[ruoungoaithanhnien]

@romans82 Um hello this is getting printed out and hung on the fridge bc . This sums up everything I try to tell people about interacting with my dog PERFECTLY

 

[flyingsquirrel256]

@romans82 We have these rules for our reactive greyhound and we are very strict with visitors. It’s totally changed how she interacts with people at home now. She has her own ‘section’ of the lounge (she has her bed, water and food inside a kids playpen which has a gate) so when the doorbell rings, she trots into her ‘room’ and she waits patiently to calm down before we invite her to join us.

We had to start somewhere - she bit a visitor (my sister) in the face when we first got her, so now we are VERY strict when guests come over. I truly am rooting for Fletcher!

 

[romans82]

@flyingsquirrel256 Awwwww thank you!!!!

 

[pedrocosta]

@romans82 I really hope your guests are willing to do that. My boyfriend's old boss always ignored our requests and encouraged our dog to jump on him while we were training him. Infuriating. You sound like great parents!

 

[niclint]

@romans82 I love this and will be using it! Thank you! Side note, we know this is a lot of work and we get the look from some guests of "really", but has anyone seen improvement to where guests don't have to throw treats anymore? How long did it take your pup and how severe was their initial reactivity?

 

[romans82]

@niclint I found that the people who are willing to do it, we had success within minutes sometimes, hours. But always successful. The people who were unwilling, or skeptical, took longer or we had Fletcher in a different room. We had one friend over that thought he should stare Fletcher down until he “submitted”, even when we explained the why. We don’t ask him to come over anymore. Interested to hear others experience!!!

 

[niclint]

@romans82 We had someone try to do the stare down and it was not good.

 

[romans82]

@niclint . I don’t get frustrated when they don’t know better. But i lose my shit when we explain it and they disregard and do it anyhow.

 

[niclint]

@romans82 Oh same, you can't get mad if they don't know. But this person unfortunately knew

 

[niclint]

@romans82 We had someone try to do the stare down and it was not good.

 

[patrickcen]

@niclint We do this, and only started doing it about 5 months ago. We still do it but it takes significantly shorter time! So sometimes we do it with a bit less structure. Either way the human ignoring dog is key!

 

[niclint]

@patrickcen Thank you! It's nice to hear how it has worked for others.

 

[montexss]

@niclint We follow this method and, for my dog, once or twice is enough. Once your in with him your in for life.. you could come over whenever after you’ve met him properly and he’ll love you for life. If us humans mess up the first greeting, same thing goes…. He remembers for life and will hate you forever.

He accepts people after about 5 minutes and calms down completely after about 30 minutes. He would growl, jump up, and try to knock visitors over to the ground and pin them there if we don’t do this, pretty scary to say the least.

 

[romans82]

@montexss Yes! This. They don’t forget either way. I bet getting knocked down by a CC is a little scary! I absolutely love them— they’re an incredible breed.

 

[voraces]

@romans82 Wow. This is great and I’m jealous if you have people that are so willing to do this. I truly don’t know if anyone in my life would take this seriously or even have the patience to do this which makes me so sad. I’m a single female and I also think my girlfriends would be scared by this and get anxious and not want to do it, and if they did they’d be weary and give off anxious vibes to my dog. Not their fault at all but it’s like a warning before entering lol.

I’m saving this though, great plan and each step are all things I have blurted out to someone in an intro at some point. Good luck and thanks