WORKING ON YOUR DOG'S REACTIVITY?

Are your foundations strong enough? . . . Are they really?

For most of us it’s way too tempting to jump straight to working on the problem once our dogs have a basic understanding of the skills we need them to have. But, it takes hundreds of repetitions at each stage, building on duration, distance and distraction before a skill is really solid.

📌 Here’s what you need to be working on before you expose your dog to other dogs (or moving objects, men in hats, etc):

• Crate training

• Thresholds

• Place

• Down stay

• Loose lead walking

• Recall

• Leave it

Not just a basic understanding, but a solid one.

✅ These foundations create the right mindset and relationship for dealing with reactivity and they need to be solid. If you are still struggling with reactivity, take a step back and work on these skills.

For each skill, make a list of low, medium and high challenges (distractions), with seeing another dog (or whatever they are reactive to) as the highest challenge. Don’t even think about testing your dog around other dogs until you have ticked each of these off as being at least 95% reliable.

Remember – reactivity is a symptom. You must treat the cause.

To deal with reactivity effectively, your dog needs to have:

• Impulse control

• The ability to calm and self soothe

• A high level of engagement with you (listening skills)

✅ Set your dog up for success by taking the time to set sound foundations first.

Check out a couple of our other blog articles for more insight: Reactivity: https://www.thedogworkshop.net/…/how-you-think-about-reacti… Don't go straight to the end goal: https://www.thedogworkshop.net/…/don-t-go-straight-to-the-e…