No headline

First of all, I appreciate everyone who reached out for help via my email address, askdogtrainersteph@gmail.com. I am reading all of them carefully and plan to address each concern as we move along. Feel free to send me an email if you haven’t already done so. That being said, a recurring issue I am seeing is reactivity on walks, and I want to cover the first steps to remedy this.

Because dogs have been “man’s best friend” for so long, it is easy to forget that they are living in a world that wasn’t designed for them. Very often we buy or adopt dogs, bring them home, and expect them to acclimate, but dogs weren’t meant to live behind walls and tied to leashes, and they usually struggle when we don’t offer enough information and structure.

How does this apply to reactivity? A dog that is reactive in the home, on walks, in the car, or just in general, is acting on impulse and instinct. They are handling the situation like dogs, which unfortunately, leaves us with less than desirable behaviors to deal with. Because we understand our human lifestyles so much more than they do, we need to take the time and teach them how to fit in.

The first step to fitting in is observation. In dog training, we call it co-existence. If your dog can’t co-exist with people, dogs, cats, etc., they will certainly never learn to interact with them. In order for us to teach dogs to be successful in complex situations, we need to start at the very beginning, and the very beginning is much more basic than we think. It starts in the home.

When your dogs are home, try slowing everything down. Slow down how they eat, how they move around the house, and how they interact with you and your guests. A great way to do this is to leave your dog on leash, not a standard leash, but something 1 to 2 feet long that has no loops or knots. (Leashes should never be left on if your dog is not being supervised). With the leash attached, you can direct your dog whenever their energy starts to escalate. You can direct them to their bed if they are feeling anxious, direct them away from the window if they are barking, direct them away from guests if they get too excited, etc. (Slowing dogs down does not mean we take away all fun. It means we teach them the right time and place for excited energy.) Once we have taught our dogs to slow down and be calmer in the home by offering consistent guidance, we can start addressing the walks.

Our dogs are smart cookies. They figure us out much faster than we think, and they know very early on that if we cannot control things and offer tangible guidance in the home, we have no value on the walks either. To start our walks off right, we need to extend the calmness and order we have taught in the house. That starts with leashing the dog. When dogs train with me, the leash doesn’t go on until they are calm. Sometimes it’s a matter of just waiting and sometimes I need to interrupt an excited dog with a poke or two to help them calm down, but the leash doesn’t move until the dog is calm. This concept extends to the front door and every step after that. Calmness is the ticket to moving forward.

Sometimes our dogs are just too intense and calmness isn’t an option to wait for. These dogs need more guidance. If the dog wants to barrel out the door no matter how long you wait, then that morning’s walk time should be nothing but going in and out of the doorway until the dog is no longer excited. This may take several repetitions, but stay consistent and TEACH your dog how to be calm through the doorway. Once your dog learns that excitement through the doorway only leads to 200 trips through the doorway, they will be more relaxed during the process.

When the walk begins, I strongly suggest doing everything in slow motion. It’s tedious, I know, but there is no way to teach an excited mind. We must slow the dog’s mind down and then fill it with information. While we are teaching these early steps, keep walk time simple. No big distractions, no heavy traffic, very few people and dogs. Walk up and down your street and neighborhood and TEACH your dog to be relaxed. Once you have these fundamentals underway, you can slowly add different triggers.

•••

Stephanie Vichinsky is the owner/head trainer of United K9, LLC in Post Falls. 208-964-4806.