Over the next few weeks I am sharing the most frequent advice I gave over the year.
Unsurprisingly, over-excitement/reactivity was the most common reason for families to reach out over the year. Many dogs will bark, lunge, jump, or vocalize about something in the environment such as people, dogs, cars, or wildlife. Some of the dogs are afraid and others are inappropriately excited.
We do training activities to teach dogs to turn away from distractions, skills that can be done in the face of distractions, and to teach dogs better ways to get attention. Initially these are very artificial sessions, then we make it more realistic as the dog advances. These skills can take some time and we need to stop rehersals of the unwanted behavior today.
Window film for a small dog. Raise blinds to decrease damage/danger if he puts his paws up.
During this training time we are focused on avoiding any situation where the dog many encounter the problematic “thing” in the environment.
- If the dog barks out of windows, we put up window film or prevent access. We don’t want the dog to rehearse vigilance at windows or rehearsals of barking at people all day.
- If a dog is pulling and barking on walks, we alter the time of day or walking location (temporarily!) until the dog is more advanced.
- If a dog is exploding with joy when someone comes in the house, we take him outside on leash to hang out with the guest before going into a smaller space indoors. Or if the guest is over for a quick kitchen-repair, the dog might be crated in the bedroom with white noise and delicious chew objects.
- When we have dogs barking out car windows then a crate covered with a sheet might be used.
While we usually won’t use the strategies forever, we do need a way to immediately not let the dog continue rehearsing the vocalizations or lunging. Once more training is in place, then we can get back to real life.
Letting a dog rehearse inappropriate behavior during the training progress will slow progress, stall progress, or may result in no progress being made.
Tip: If there’s a behavior you want to change, avoid rehearsals now. Even if you aren’t up for a training project at the moment, preventing your dog from rehearsing the behavior will make training easier once you are ready to start.