Let Focus Replace Reactivity, Pt. 2

A continuation post from this weekend, today’s topic is going to be addressing how to deal with reactivity in dogs.

On Saturday, I discussed here about shifting your concept of negative behaviors like reactivity. Today, I’m going to be discussing how to work through these behaviors. Keeping in mind that that reactivity on the walk is usually a patterned behavior, we can take these steps:

1. Repattern good behavior. Start in the house. Properly introduce necessary tools. Work on walking around your kitchen while a family member tries to distract your dog. If you don’t have good behavior in the house, you certainly won’t get it outside.
2. Build a bond with respect, not love. Of course we want our dogs to love us. But without respect, our dogs will not have any reason to follow commands or work on positive behaviors. Have the foundation of your bond be respect, and then top it off (like a roof!) with love AFTER that foundation is solid.
3. Shift the focus onto you. Your dog will learn to look to you when there’s a trigger or other situation in which he doesn’t know how to respond to. Have yourself be the authority, and encourage your pup to zone in on you to learn what to do next. If the dog slows down and focuses on you, they won’t be in a frenzy and react.

Following these steps will lead to effectively negating the reactive behavior in dogs. We follow this program with all our client’s reactive dogs and find easy success with it. If you are struggling with reactivity in your dog, fill out our application here and we’ll give you a working gameplan to help get rid of those negative behaviors.