Navigating dog reactivity makes me ramble 2000 words, I'm sorry

The most exciting parts of dog training are at the beginning when they just start bonding with you, looking genuinely proud when you’re happy, when they first learn their name and how to do those first few tricks. Everything is treat-based and you are just luring them around into positions you want and feeling positive and successful. You tell all your friends your going to quit your job and become a dog trainer... is that just me?

Some of the defeating parts are tackling the annoying, ingrained behaviours, especially when adopting an adult dog, or, when, your dog has started to learn the mistakes you make and to recognize the things they can get away with.


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Pierre with his friend, Joey Bats

Pierre’s most challenging behaviour has long been learning how to navigate his excitement levels and his dog reactivity.  When we first got Pierre, the vague impression I had heard about him was that he was, “dominant with other dogs and will not be good in dog parks”. The people who gave that information  weren’t wrong at all, but the picture is much bigger than that.

It took a long time for me to understand what was making Pierre react aggressively to some dogs and play extremely nicely with others. The growing list of situations that trigger his aggression are things like:

•  being on leash and being approached and pestered by an off-leash dog  
• extremely submissive dogs
• in-tact males
• other dogs making “scary sounds” when they’re wrestling with each other; he has a referee complex.
•  dogs who nip/growl while playing 

He is a peach in almost every way, I trust him around tiny human babies already, but it’s almost like he has dog social anxiety. My biased human speculation is that he gets overwhelmed easily and confused by dog social cues; he’s extremely sensitive. He loves running so it’s important that I can take him to off-leash areas in the city, since I don't have a backyard, so I’ve been working hard to teach him how being a social dog works. I think dog parks are a fantastic tool and resource for dog owners in the city. Most dogs need a place to run, socialize, and play safely. I’m not going to go into detail about the huge issues with dog parks and how most dog owners approach them, but at this point in my dog owning life, I’ve recognized that it’s really important to be mindful of how our dogs “feel” about dog parks.

The park we go to is set up in a way that it’s inside a little valley between hills. The dog park is at one far end of the rectangle, there’s a baseball diamond, and then a long grassy field. The field is always used as an off-leash park, and has been for decades. It was only in the last couple years that the city actually made a fenced in, designated leash-free zone. Most long-time community members don’t use this zone and it’s often people who are newer to the area or new to having a dog.

I’ve been thinking a lot about sitting down and keeping a detailed log of his dog socialization progress but it’s a tedious task. Only now am I motivated to actually push through my attention span resistance this time, because after WEEKS of exponential progress, he’s having a hard time once again. Let’s co-opt a term for other kinds of challenging behaviours and call it his relapse.

With Pierre, I started slow. We worked on our bond and his attentiveness. Practiced with dogs I know and in parks he’s familiar with.  Long leash work in a variety of parks. Practiced with my parents’ dog who is perfect. Visited friends. Went on pack walks. Went to the park ONLY between 7-8 am when there are the same 1-3 dogs. He slowly but surely learned that, a stern, “Hey!” from me, means, “don’t you fucking dare mount that dog or we’re leaving”. He used to mount dogs a lot when he got overwhelmed, and then it would turn into a fight because he was already overwhelmed and couldn’t do anything rational.  I haven’t seen this behaviour in over a month. Phew.

Since I’ve been practicing his recall and manners as much as we possibly can, we got to a point where I trusted him off-leash outside of the fenced-in area, as long as there was a good group of dogs that I was familiar with.  To clarify, this is all only in the mornings; we don’t do afternoon dog park crowds.  He was doing amazing. We were getting a lot of compliments on his behaviour and attentiveness. He was checking in with me regularly and responding reliably. I could say, “leave it” and he would turn away from dogs that I knew would trigger him. I could call him back from almost anything. He was really enjoying playing chase with other pups and slowly becoming comfortable wrestling, even with new dogs! It was great!

And THEN, he probably got bored. This is where he started pushing boundaries. On one occasion, he wandered up one of the side hills to greet a dog even though I told him not to. I think that’s where we lost it. He was far enough away from me that he recognized, “oh, yeah you can’t do anything about this”. It just escalated from there because it was self-reinforcing.

The next time we came back to the dog park, maybe the next day, he realized that he could wander up the hills and that there were more things to smell up there and that I didn’t have any treats. He started ignoring me. I fucked up by not having any treats so I used the fenced-in dog park to motivate him to come over. I opened the gate, the sound of which makes him excited, so he ran over to go with me into the enclosure. He was a bit too excited though once inside. Probably over-threshold but I brushed it off because I was just relieved and actually breathing again after he had been ignoring me in an unsafe way.  He played with a couple dogs. Pranced around like a confident asshole. And then, to make things worse, someone brought in her extremely rambunctious young lab. Pierre lost it and was chasing the dog in a way that wasn’t playful, in a way that was like, “you better stop running or I will destroy you”.  The woman took this opportunity to tell me that her dog wasn’t neutered and that most males don’t like him. Fucking great.

Pierre caught up and snapped at this dog. He was so upset. I did my strategy where I just put myself in front of Pierre so I can grab him mid-lunge and prevent any damage to the other dog. We left the park.

My dog behaviour mentor, or let’s be honest, muse, suggested months ago having him lie down near the park after any dog arguments he got in. This was REALLY hard initially. I found out we had to go across the street to another park and then relax there or he wouldn’t be able to calm down/would keep getting approached by off-leash dogs.  On this “relapse” day, we tried this. I can’t remember the result to be honest. Probably took a really long time for him to calm down and was annoying for both of us..

Next day, we didn’t do the dog park. We only did regular walks, training, and back-pack walks. The day after that, we did the same I believe. I think it was only 3 days later that we went back to the park, really early in the morning, for a brief time. Pierre did great. Okay. Next day, another un-neutered male came into the enclosure when we were in there, and neither Pierre or I noticed until the dog started getting rambunctious. Pierre got mad but we left before it escalated because I noticed his expressions. 

All this is the past week or so, to clarify. So we’re currently navigating this. The enclosed area is a really huge part of the problem. The nature of the dogs in there, the owners, and the fence itself all contribute to his reactiveness.  I’ve known this for a while but his selective hearing lately made it unsafe for us to be outside of the fence. He behaves MUCH better in the open field area, on a whole.
I knew I needed to step up my motivation game because I need to find a way to over-ride the fun stuff at the top of the hill. So, I brought chicken one day, when the park was emptier, and had him on the long leash. This weekend before work, I also took him to a school field to practice long-leash recall and responding despite outside distractions. In this way, I was trying to work towards better recall.

Today, I brought him back to our regular park, the field part specifically. I waited an extra long time to let him off and made sure he was listening and sitting nicely as I took his leash off. I brought his kibble with me in my pocket and rewarded him like crazy. I was just a treat-dispenser. He was pretty good. He didn’t go up the hill but had a hard time coming back to me after he realized there were a ton of dogs within the enclosure. He waited at the doors for me to let him in. We didn’t go in. I didn’t keep calling him. I just waited for him to be finished, because there’s no point repeating myself if he’s not going to listen. Once he was a bit distracted, I called him over and rewarded him with many consecutive treats.  A jackpot reward.

At the end of our time at the park, he started getting over-stimulated by two super submissive labs. He was being pretty respectful, though. I gave him verbal praise. He checked in a few times. It was going well.  Another dog got loudly sassy with one of the labs, which is again, one of Pierre’s many triggers. I caught Pierre by his hips before he had a chance to run over and enforce his rules. He growled at me in shock but regained his composure once he was on the leash.  The MAGICAL part of today was that when I brought him over to a quieter part of the park for some nice smells (rewards for leaving the park with me), I decided to try to ask him to do a combo sit + down. He did it! First time! To have him lie down after getting a bit over-stimulated is HUGE and is a great improvement.

I’m going to make more of an effort to continue to practice his recall in a variety of places. I think my biggest mistake was originally falling into this routine where his recall is only truly tested in the valley of the same park every morning. Once he noticed there was a world outside of that park, his recall went out the window. We’re still learning, but I do know for sure that the enclosure is really not a good time for him. I need to respect that instead of being lazy and just wanting him to get running exercise without doing the recall work.