Episode #4 Reactivity

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Hi, I'm Amy Jensen and this is the Puppy Training Podcast Episode #4: Reactivity. This  podcast is for people looking to train their own dog, either as a companion, therapy, or service dog. This is the Puppy Training Podcast, and I'm your host, Amy Jensen. 

Hi.  Today we are talking about reactivity, and there's a couple different ways that your dog could be reactive.  We're going to focus specifically on the least reactive dog. So, this would be a dog who barks or lunges at other dogs or other triggers while on a leash.  Barking and lunging are the most common behaviors that dogs react or exhibit, but there could also be others such as whining, growling, salivating, biting. Sometimes your puppy might spin or turn around or hide between your legs, something like that.  Sometimes to me this is a very embarrassing thing. 

If I'm out walking a dog and its pulling me down the street lunging or  barking at a neighbor walking by or another dog walking by now, it could be a really embarrassing thing. So I really like to get reactivity under control as soon as possible, and I know that there's a lot of people out there because when I drive through town in my car I see this a lot with other dogs. They see another dog and get overly excited or they might be fearful of them. Maybe they're too close to an animal that they're not comfortable around. And so the lunging and the barking behaviors come out and then you can see that the person is really trying to do their best to control their dog.  But maybe they just haven't been taught what to do. So I know this is an issue for a lot of people, and so I thought I would do a little podcast on it today. 

Okay, so why are dogs reactive? What causes this? There are a number of issues that you know or reasons why your dog might do this. The first reason would be the fight or flight instinct.  When your dog is on a leash it might feel trapped.   It can't flee or run away if something it sees is making it nervous and can't really fight back because its on a leash.  Because the leash is there a lot of times it does cause this reactivity issue because there's this trapped feeling that your dog has where it can't fight or flight. Another reason might be that they have the mindset if I get you before you get me. I've seen this a lot with the little dogs. I have a little dog that I worked with who was attacked by a bulldog when it was little and that has stayed with him for his entire life thus far.  We have tried working with him to rehabilitate him but he has this mindset--I will get you before you get me, and he tries to attack the other dog before the other doubt dog attacks him. 
 
Another reason might be its shyness. Your puppy just might not be as social as other dogs and that's okay. We create a lot of problems just by walking down sidewalks where dogs are faced head on with one another and so this can cause some issues.  We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute.  It could be that a previous experience has gone wrong.  That's kind of back to that I'll get you before you get me mindset where we talk about the previous experience going wrong. 

Another reason is that there's a direct approach sometimes forced on sidewalks. So we mentioned that one just barely where dogs don't greet each other face to face. They generally circle each other.  So when you're on a sidewalk and they run right into each other, sometimes that's a lot of pressure for the dog and they don't handle it very well. It could be the opposite that your puppies overly excited to see another dog.  Maybe its super excited and it can't contain its excitement to the point that its lunging and barking and acting crazy. 

The last one is the association between seeing a trigger and the tightening of the leash. It causes tension.  Your puppy could see something and it doesn't really necessarily know what to think about it. But then it feels tension on the leash and that creates an association like a negative association between what it just saw. Sometimes these things become a trigger for your puppy.  What can we do about it? 

Most dogs who react with a lunge or bark aren't even aware there is another option.  This is a really good point because I think sometimes we see our dog doing this and why does it do that? Why won't it just stop? And it could be, honestly, that it just doesn't know what else to do. That's just a very natural dog behavior to lunge or to bark.  They get excited when they see something.  They wag their tail and they are going crazy.  It just can't handle itself.  It has never been taught how to handle itself more appropriately.  To the puppy, it is handling itself and doing exactly the way a dog should do it.   So, remember that they just haven't learned a better way, and that's where we come in. It's our job to teach them a better option and to help them make a better choice.

Today I'm going to talk to you about two great options if you have a leas reactive dog.  Number one is auto watch and the second one is the U turn.  The goal is when your dog sees a trigger it will look at you automatically, and that's what we call the auto watch.  The U turn we are going to use if your dog is surprised by a sudden appearance of a trigger.  When I mean a trigger this could be another dog, a human, or whatever it is that your dog is reacting to.  If it's surprised by the sudden appearance of a trigger then it could possibly go into a reaction right there then we would have you make a sudden you turn.  You will turn your dog 180 degrees and walk the other way.  These are both very useful. I would suggest you use the auto watch as much as possible.  But in an instance or scenario where you are surprised by another dog then I would employ the U turn.
 
I'm going to quickly describe how you would train an auto watch. It's actually pretty simple, but it does take time. So you're going to put your puppy on a leash and I would keep it to about a 4-6 foot leash, and then I'm gonna bring high value rewards. Now this is the good stuff; we are talking chicken, salmon, roast beef from last night's dinner, hot dogs, string cheese. This is not where you want to bring out their dog food and expect them to take their attention off of their trigger and look at their dog food. It's just not going to cut it. So, make sure you bring something that's very high value, and then you're going to choose a walking path where you know your puppy will react to someone or something. 

Hopefully at this point, if you know, your dog is reactive you will really need to identify what is its trigger.  Is it a person? Is it people in general? Is it just kids?  Is is only big dogs or only black dogs for example?   Dogs are very specific in what they are fearful or are excited towards.  So, we really have to identify what the trigger is for the puppy.   I would begin walking and the second your puppy sees a trigger I'm going to give it a treat.   The timing is really important.  We want to make sure that we give the treat before our dog starts to react by either the barking, lunging or pulling.  If you give it a treat as its doing those behaviors essentially you're rewarding those behaviors and so the timing is really critical.

This is where we talk about threshold. You need to figure out at what point will your puppy not react to the trigger that it sees?  For instance, you're walking down the street and it sees a trigger.  It immediately starts barking or lunging--whatever the crazy behaviors are that would be, you know, past threshold.  If you back up five feet, would it be able to see the trigger and not do those things? Maybe it it's ten feet back would it be quiet and just look at it. You need to really experiment and find at what point you know where the line is for your puppy.  We want to make sure that we identify that line.  We call it the threshold and then we want to make sure we work under threshold as we first teach the auto watch.

So again, you're walking down the street. Your puppy sees the trigger, you're gonna stick that piece of yummy food right down by his nose so he can eat it before he does the crazy behavior. And then we're going to repeat that hopefully ten times or more.  I would circle my dog back around. We're going to walk to it again.  It sees the trigger, it gets a treat; it sees the trigger, it gets a treat. We're going to keep doing that, making sure that we're not rewarding the reactive behavior, that we're keeping him under threshold. Then what you want to do after even enough times is as he sees the trigger just wait 2-3 seconds before giving him the food and see if he looks at you. He should look at you if he's played the game well enough thus far. But he'll say, Hey, I saw my trigger I always get food when I see my trigger. Where is it? So he's looking to me like, Hey, where's my food? That's what we want. As soon as he looks at you, we mark Yes and we give him a treat. 

So now instead if he sees the trigger he gets food, he's going to see the trigger and we're gonna wait until he looks at us. We mark Yes and we give him the food.  Now he's getting the marker Yes when he looks at us because that's the behavior we're looking for.  He's getting the reward for looking at us.  This is how you you shift him automatically looking to you, and that's when you've done it. You've successfully taught him the auto watch. Okay, so that's going to take some time. It's not gonna happen in a day or an afternoon. It might happen. You might be able to get the start of the auto watch your first session which would be awesome, but it's going to take practice in different locations to really generalize that for your dog.  When you're comfortable to the point with the auto watch then you can start with the U turn. You can also do them simultaneously, but if you're overwhelmed, just start with one. 

When you do the U turn the first thing that you need to do is to decide a verbal cue that you want to use.  Pick a word it could be Turn, Wow, or whatever you would say when you get surprised by something that might trigger your dog and then just be very consistent and use the same cue every time. Let's say our word is going to be Turn. You're going to start in a quiet calm area. In fact, the U turn is really effective to teach in your home first. Find a small room or a long hallway.  It's really nice to do these U turns in because he has to stay right by you as you turn. There's only so much space in the hallway, so I really do recommend hallways.

To start with, you're going again to have some high value rewards. This could be food or it can be toys. Some dogs are highly motivated by a game of fetch or a simple game of tug. Whatever engages your puppy and whatever you can get his attention with is what I would use. I'm going to put my puppy on leash and I'm going to start walking forward. I have my puppy on my left side but you can have them on either side.  As I'm moving forward I'm going to say, Turn, in a happy voice and I'm going to use the food or the toy to lure my dog around in 180 degrees so that we're now facing the opposite direction and we're walking forward. I want to mark the second that my puppy is now walking in the opposite direction. As soon as I have lured him around me and I've turned and we're now facing the other way that very first step of walking forward again, I would mark yes and I would either engage him in a game of tug or I would give him the treat or whatever he followed you around with in that turn. I would reward him at that point. 

All right, so here's a few final tips and tricks as we go over this.  Again, this is kind of a short little recap of how to address the reactivity issue with your dog. Number one, I would put the treat or lure right on my dog's nose. As you're trying to make those U turns, don't be holding that toy or treat so far away that he's not really interested in it.  Literally, it needs to be right by his nose and very exciting to capture his attention. You can also use sounds in the beginning if it helps to capture your puppy's attention to get him to look at you or to to go  into that turn effectively. Just be careful that you say your cue first or he'll start to associate with sound as the cue and then you'll always have to be kissing or whatever noise you're making. That will be your new cue. Just be careful where you put the sounds in, and then I like to phase out the sounds. I only use them in the beginning of the brand new puppy who's maybe a little distracted. So try to use the cue and the lure and be careful how many sounds you use.

Another thing that's helpful for your puppies with the U turn is body language. So as you go into that turn, if you bend your knees your puppy will be more likely to turn or they'll recognize oh she's bending her knees it's time to turn.  Perfect the turn inside with zero distractions before trying it outside with distractions and triggers.  This is a movement that we want our puppy to have down almost like a heel on a walk.  We want to perfect it inside.  Once we have it perfect inside we can start to generalize it outside, but be patient. Remember to stay under threshold and then use the auto watch when you can and the u turn in emergencies.

Alright you guys, that was a really short recap. If you need more help with this or if you have a reactive dog, check out our site, www.BaxterandBella.com.   We have a complete Online Puppy Training curriculum there, including live access to me. I'm here to answer your questions. I'm just a phone call away. You can schedule a video chat with me. You can also send frequently asked questions to my inbox and I reply within 24 hours. So I really do want to help you get your dogs under control. If you have a reactive dog, don't hesitate to reach out to me. I would love to help you train them.

You guys have an awesome weekend and happy training. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other puppy training question, visit my site, BaxterandBella.com to contact me.