Reactive Dogs

teaching puppy to relax about people coming to house

Hi,
I've invited a friend over to start filou getting some practice relaxing about having people in the house. And to test out his barking training
My plan is have my friend to ring the bell, come and ignore the dog.
I'll have Filou on a lead and will hopefully be able to be successfull with shush. He does it very well for me otherwise, and to get him down as often as possible
I was going to give my friend some very special treats that she can drop on the floor around her, still without saying anything to him.

Miss Molly

I have a 5 year old Lancashire Heeler, who is to say the least a madam! She had always been a protective dog but recently she has become more aggressive. She constantly barks at everything and anything. She attacks the post which comes through the letter box, if someone comes to the house she bites their feet.We have always shut her in another room when someone comes to the house then after a few minutes we let her through and she used to be fine with people, but now she is very aggressive towards people.

She is also starting to be aggressive towards us if we don't let her do something or stop her from doing what she wants then she growls at us and has even snarled at us and gone to bite us.

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Update on Calm-O-Meter

If you haven't read my original blog entry about the Calm-O-Meter, click here. (Will open in a new window).

I've been using the Calm-O-Meter for a few weeks now so it's time for an update. When we started, Sabella was a consistent Grade 6 or 7 before we did anything exciting like go for a walk. She can still peak out in certain situations, but has learned to quickly regulate herself.

So I'm working towards a consistent Grade 4 now, she is demonstrating Grade 5 consistently right now (in the trained situations, new situations will always require a looser criteria/higher grade).

I would definitely say that she is learning to self-regulate. Sometimes she gets really excited, but when she remembers to pull her head in she quickly drops to a Grade 2 or 3. I think that's a great result, but I'm not getting ahead of myself. I just work towards one Grade at a time.

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The Calm-O-Meter!

On Saturday morning I went to take my dogs for a big walk, sort of an attempt to make up for a lack of good walks during the week. Sabella was really amped up to be going on a walk, and was whining (she is a reactive German Shepherd) and quite frantic.

I leashed up the dogs, but didn't want to open the kitchen door to leave until Sabella had settled down. Why? Because leaving with her in this state would reinforce her frantic, hyped-up behavior. I at least wanted a period of no whining so I could click and open the door.

As it happened, I had run out of treats so Cath offered to cut some more treats up for me so I could do some training on our walk. This meant that Sabella had to wait longer. If left to her own devices, this would probably see her get more and more anxious to leave - but I didn't leave her to her own devices. I rewarded her when she was calm.

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