What’s the next step in my SO’s dogs and my dog meeting? I’d love suggestions! Details in post!

[delanor]

Yesterday I took my female 2 year old reactive/fear aggressive dog to my SO’s house. He has two older male dogs, one is very old and calm. The other only reacts when instigated.

We put a baby gate up in between the living room and dining room—dividing the house.

My dog, Harlow, and I met my SO outside (she knows him and likes him) and we all walked in together.

Harlow has met an older male dog through a baby gate and we were able to remove the gate almost immediately because they were both fine. And she also gets along with my neighbor’s dogs (she’s known them a while, and got to meet the new puppy they have by smelling it’s butt, so that calmed her immediately).

So I let Harlow go smell the dogs by the gate, but she got scared and barked and lunged at the gate towards the dogs. I moved her deeper into the living room until she was comfortable enough to calm down. We did counter conditioning. She looked at the dogs and I treated, she was calm—I treated. She heard them move around, and I treated.

We were able to have Harlow, and the other two dogs all laying down just a few feet from the gate, calm in each other’s presence.

There were a few times where Harlow would out of no where lunge and bark at them again. So we never ended up removing the gate. We just practiced getting comfortable and making it a safe and yummy place.

I know we’ll probably just need to keep doing this and increasing the time. (We did it for about 40 minutes yesterday)

I’m wondering what the next step will be—when we actually let the dogs meet, how do we do that??

Any suggestions would be appreciated! Just trying to figure this out!

(I don’t really want to walk the dogs together, parallel, Harlow is way too reactive to be walked anywhere with other life)

Thank you in advance!

 

[greatisyourmercy24]

@delanor not sure what the issue is with walking your dog is - what do you mean by “other life”?

walking the dogs outside is usually so much easier than introducing them at home (closed space, resources, etc). take two dogs at a time, bigger distance at first, closer later.

if outside is not an option maybe just work with two dogs at a time. or maybe a dog park would work at a time where you would be alone there?

 

[delanor]

@greatisyourmercy24 By other life, I mean anything living scares her—actually lots of non-living things too: cars, weird shaped garbage cans. Being outside would elevate her stress way too much.

Honestly, it’s almost like we were working with two dogs only. His eldest dog is so old, he just laid down in the other room and didn’t really bother with us.

Thanks for your reply!