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fearful/reactive behavior

gkarlkvist's picture
Posted June 21st, 2009 by gkarlkvist
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I have a 14 month old Chesapeake Bay Retriever mix that I rescued when he was 8 weeks old. The first 4 months he was fine--showed no signs of being fearful of friends and strangers entering our house. At about 5 months of age, he started to be fearful of people barking and growling at them and when I took him to dog training, lunging at the other dogs. After about 3 months I stopped taking him to training because it was way too stressful for him even though the trainers kept on telling me this is what he needed, that he would get over it. On walks he also would lunge at other dogs. I also have an 11 year old CBR and the two of them get along great. Since then I have read many, many books on reactive dogs and calming signals. I implemented some of the strategies and he has gotten somewhat better when people enter our home, barking at first but then settling down a bit. By the way, he has never bitten another dog or a person. I have, however, stopped taking him for walks the past several months to "calm" him and not put him in a stressful situation. Am I dong the right thing? Please help. Thank you. Gaby

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re: fearful/reactive behavior

Aidan's picture
On June 22nd, 2009 Aidan says:

Hi Gaby, I run classes over summer for reactive dogs. I set up controlled situations that I know the dog can succeed in and learn new responses to other dogs or people or whatever the problem is.

During that time, I recommend that contact with other dogs (or strangers) is kept to a minimum so that the only experiences with other dogs are good ones, where the response we want to reinforce is given instead of the aggressive/fearful/excitable/etc response that we are trying to replace.

I used to believe that this was necessary, that we could EXTINGUISH the unwanted response by not reinforcing it, but now I believe that this is possible, but not probable. The most effective part of what I do is to reinforce more acceptable responses through controlled set-ups.

Obviously, if people are taking their dogs out and they are being reinforced for being reactive (and this will happen often regardless of what the owner does in an UNcontrolled situation), then it will be very difficult to replace this response with the new behaviour/s we have been working on. So I still recommend that exposure to UNcontrolled situations is minimised or, even better, that you try to put some control around those situations.

If you can find places to walk where the other dogs are on-leash, or where you can get a suitable distance from the other dogs and strangers, then take advantage of those places.

I am not one to eliminate stress. For me it is all about controlling the level of stress so that the dog can learn to deal with stressors appropriately. If the dog is completely overloaded, then a period of rest would be advised, but this is not usually the case unless you have rescued the dog from a very toxic environment.

Make the most of controlled set-ups. Have friend over to your house, have them enter and leave the house repeatedly while you reinforce appropriate behaviours. Arrange to meet other dogs owners on-leash somewhere you can walk in parallel at an appropriate distance. The more controlled set-ups you use, the better your results.

Regards,
Aidan
http://www.positivepetzine.com

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