What is going on when a dog can stay responsive on their walk, UNTIL another dog comes around?

I’m back with another solo episode, where I break down this scenario and help you better understand why your dog cannot respond to you, and what you can do about it. I cover:

• Proofing behaviors and why you probably haven’t prepared your dog as much as you think you have
• How to be more effective at teaching your dog to respond to you around distractions
• How to understand the criteria you are setting, and how to be fluid in any given scenario
• The dance between criteria and thresholds
• And so much more

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Transcript

Jessica: [00:00:00] I am Jessica Wheatcraft, and this is Rethinking Reactivity, A podcast designed to educate, empower, and equip the modern handler of reactive dogs. Whether you have a reactive dog or you help people with their reactive dogs, you’re in the right place.

If you’re a dog trainer looking to elevate the way that you work with reactive dogs and make a bigger impact in the lives of your clients, I want to invite you to join my next leash reactivity mentorship for professionals starting this September 7th.

In addition to going through my comprehensive course, you’ll also get to meet with me live every single week for 10 weeks, along with a cohort of other students where we’ll deep dive into all things leash reactivity.

You’ll also have the opportunity to get guidance on your own cases, and I like to give my students a really personalized experience, which is why I cap registration to 15 [00:01:00] spots so be sure to register before it sells out.

Check the show notes for the link or head on over to jessicawheatcraft.com. Let’s get to the show.

I.

I am back with another solo episode, and today I want to talk about the number one thing that I hear from my new clients, which is this. I can get my dog to respond to me, but the moment another dog comes around, everything goes out the window.

I want to unpack the sentiment today so that we can go over what I look for when I’m assessing what is actually going on in these scenarios, and I also want to give some suggestions about what I have found most helpful to address this. First, I want to say that if you have a reactive dog and you’re in this position and you’re feeling frustrated, I understand where you’re coming from.

You’re probably working really hard with your dog, and you’re wondering why you’re not making traction. I think that by the end of this episode, you’re gonna get a lot of really helpful takeaways.

And, I [00:02:00] might have some people listening who think that they are putting in a lot of work with their dog and they might not be.

So by the end of this episode, you might have a realization that you need to put more work in to get the results that you’re looking for, but I’m hoping that I can help you learn how to work smarter, not necessarily harder.

So when we’re looking at this issue of a dog being responsive at points of the walk and then suddenly not being responsive at points of the walk, specifically when there is another dog around, the first thing that I wanna highlight is that distractions are not created equal. So just because you can get your dog to respond to you around one type of distraction, does not mean that somehow that’s going to translate to another type of distraction. So one thing that would be really helpful for you to do is to write down [00:03:00] the different things that your dog gets distracted by and rank them.

Jessica: What does it actually look like? What are the things that your dog sees in their environment when they’re out on walks? How do they feel about those things? And how difficult would you guess that it is for your dog to be around that type of distraction and still be able to respond to you? I think by doing that, you’ll have a clearer picture about types of distractions for your dog and that some of them are naturally going to be easier for your dog, and some of these are going to be harder.

And this really comes down to the individual dog. If I could give my own dog as an example, he is not distracted by people at all. He could go right past somebody on a bicycle, he could go past somebody on a skateboard, he could go past somebody that is, running right past us on the same path literally would not bat an eye. For him other dogs, I would say are a little bit harder, but not that [00:04:00] hard. Things that are more difficult for him. Cats, that’s one thing. And the hardest thing for my dog is food. That dog can find food from a hundred yards away and his nose will pick up on that, and he will immediately wanna go and find where it’s coming from so that he can go eat it.

So for my dog, that’s a much bigger distraction for him than everything else that I listed. And for your dog, it’s probably going to include a different list. So start with your list. Write out the different kinds of distractions that your dog gets distracted by in the world and see which ones are easier and which ones are harder.

Now there are some other factors here that are gonna play into why a distraction is going to be harder for your dog. A couple of obvious things are how your dog feels about them. For a lot of my clients who have dogs displaying leash reactivity, it’s because their dog isn’t comfortable with the thing that they’re coming [00:05:00] across.

Jessica: Maybe it’s a person, maybe it’s another dog. They don’t feel comfortable being in close proximity to those. So of course, the proximity in which you are from that distraction is playing into your dog’s ability to respond.

Now we’re gonna get to a point where I’m going to tell you something that you probably don’t want to hear. The reason why your dog is unable to respond to you when other dogs are around is because you haven’t prepared them well enough to handle that situation. Now I know that that can sound a little bit harsh because I know so many of you are putting in a lot of effort with your dogs.

So you might be wondering, okay, but what does it mean to prepare a dog? Let’s unpack this. When your dog can respond to you with some distractions, but not others. One of the biggest reasons that I tend to find with my [00:06:00] clients is that they do not have a strong enough foundation of training to respond around those greater levels of distractions.

In other words, it means that you haven’t proofed your training. Proofing your training means that you have a behavior that you have taught your dog. You are starting to teach your dog to respond to that behavior in a whole variety of circumstances. But when you’re really proofing a behavior, you need to teach them to respond to that same cue no matter what else changes in the environment.

And this is where a lot of my clients’ training falls short. There’s a lot to this that I want to break down. But I think the most powerful way for you to understand what I’m referring to is to take me up on a little challenge. I’m gonna share how to do this, and then maybe press pause on this podcast go do the challenge, and then come back. Okay. So what I want you to do, I want you to bring your dog into your living room or whatever space [00:07:00] in your home that you have done a lot of training in, and I want you to ask for the behavior that they know best. This is something that is very, very well rehearsed.

You know that your dog is going to respond to you, and I want you to ask for this behavior however you normally would and see how they respond. So let’s say if we’re just gonna throw a behavior in here that most dogs know, it’s sit. So you’re in your living room, you’re asking your dog to sit, your dog looks at you like, okay, this is really easy.

Done. Okay, now I want you to do the same thing, so stay in your living room, but this time I actually want you to get on the ground, so you, the human. I want you to sit on the ground, and now I want you to ask your dog to sit again. Okay. How did your dog respond? Did they immediately go into this position?

Did they look at you like you are speaking a whole nother language? Did you feel like you had to ask them to do it four or five times in a row? Did you have to get a lot [00:08:00] more exaggerated with your movements or your visual cues to get them to really understand what it is that you’re trying to say? If so, it means that you haven’t quite proofed your sit, and specifically you haven’t proofed it so that your dog understands, oh, okay, this is the same cue even when something else is different in my environment, which is my human being seated on the ground versus standing up.

I think that this example is always freely enlightening and really helpful for people to see how changing just one variable, which is the position that you are in when you ask your dog to do the same behavior in the same environment, completely changed your dog’s response. So now imagine you have your same dog and now you’re out and about on a walk, which is an environment with a lot of different variables that you maybe have not made a point to train around, and it’s probably no wonder why they can’t respond.

So what I’m getting at is that you’re probably gonna need to [00:09:00] spend more time building your dog’s responsiveness with a lot of other distractions besides other dogs.

I would say that this is a really common mistake that my clients will make. They will assume, okay, well my dog has problems with other dogs on walks, so this is gonna be the only time that I’m going to ask them for this behavior.

Jessica: And by doing that, you’re setting your dog up to fail. You’re asking them to work with you only when something is around that is the most difficult distraction for them to respond to, but also potentially something that they are not comfortable with to begin with. And that doesn’t exactly help your dog feel particularly motivated to want to respond in these scenarios.

So let me walk you through what I do with my clients when we are working on their training and building their behaviors. The first thing I do when I’m working with my clients is I start by training inside of their house. I’m not saying [00:10:00] that I don’t do any training with my reactive dog clients outside. I do. I do a lot of things with them outside, especially if I think that their dog can handle it. But I very, very rarely have a client who comes to me with this issue of my dog responds to me completely Fine unless another dog is around. And then I don’t find holes in their training process. So for that reason, I start the majority of the training in a more controlled environment and usually when the dog is familiar with, such as being inside of their home first.

And I want to make sure that this behavior can be fluent in that one environment if it is not, the dog’s not ready. And what I mean by being fluent, I guess the easiest way for pet parents who are listening to this to think of is you want this to be easy for your dog to respond to, that you give the dog the cue, they can respond to it very easily and very quickly.

Jessica: That is the kind of degree of responsiveness that you are looking for from your dog. From there when I get that response in one area of the [00:11:00] house, I then start to practice in different rooms in the house, and this might seem a little bit silly, but as part of my client’s homework I send them to practice in all different rooms in their house. I want you to be in the living room. I want the kitchen, I want the bathroom. I want your front porch. I want your backyard, I want your garage. There’s a lot of other spaces in your immediate living space that you probably haven’t thought about training in.

And these are perfect examples of ways that you can start to build your dog’s training and help them generalize that you happen to do this behavior everywhere. Because even just being in a different environment, that in and of itself could be what we might consider a distraction to the dog.

Once we have this in place then I’m gonna start adding other distractions to the environment. So not only is it being in different locations, but now something in a specific location is going to change. And here’s where I’ll usually use things such as myself.

So my clients are working [00:12:00] with their dog, and what I’m doing is I happen just to be moving around the environment a little bit. The dog is taking note of me, but then going back to working with their humans. You could do things like find something kind of innocuous, like a dish towel. Go ahead and pick it up and drop it on the ground and start asking your dog to respond to you after they’ve taken note of that.

That’s another thing that you can do where your dog is learning. Hmm, something interesting just happened in my environment and I’m still able to respond. Another favorite distraction of mine would be a bag of sealed treats. Now most dogs are gonna be interested in this bag of sealed treats, so there’s a couple of tricks that I want to give you.

First, make sure that the treats that you are asking your dog to ignore are a lot less interesting than the ones that you have that you are going to reward them with. The other thing that I would recommend doing is to have the food be less accessible to your dog at first. So I usually start with a bag of treats on the edge of a [00:13:00] table.

That way it’s not on the ground floor. The dog can be aware that they’re on that surface, but because it seems less accessible to them, then they’re less interested in it. So if I’m practicing some training around the sealed bag of treats and it’s on the table and that’s looking really good, I then try to find a bit of a middle ground, which usually involves a chair.

Then I’m gonna put the bag of treats on the chair and see how the dog responds. Now, here’s where proximity is going to come into play. Proximity is important here because when something like the bag of treats goes on the chair, for many dogs, that becomes more interesting to them because most of the time people don’t have bags of treats on chairs, and it’s more accessible to your dog.

So naturally they’re going to be more interested in it. So here, having your dog on leash could be really helpful because then you can control the proximity to the treats. And what you’re looking to do is that you’re [00:14:00] maintaining your dog’s fast responses to you, meaning you are able to have your dog notice that distraction, but they’re still able to respond to you.

And here’s where you’re gonna get information about whether something is too easy or too difficult for your dog. If your dog’s responsiveness becomes really slow, or they’re showing too much interest in the treats that are on the chair Start practicing around the same distraction, but just at a further distance. It’s one of the easiest ways that you can help your dog be more successful.

Get several successful repetitions in, then come a little bit closer and continue this process until your dog can be right next to that bag of treats and still respond to you. And then when you repeat this whole process all over again by putting the treats on the floor, you’re gonna need to back it all the way up again.

Meaning if the treats throw on the floor, that’s probably gonna be a pretty big deal to most [00:15:00] dogs. So that means even if they’re on leash, and even if they were just successful with the treats on the chair. 30 seconds prior, it doesn’t matter because it looks different to your dog. So this means in order to set your dog up for success, that you need to bring them further away again, and then cycle through the same exact process.

Of course, when you change anything, meaning having the treats from the table and then putting them on the chair, that is a big change for most dogs. So initially their response might be a little bit slower.

That’s okay. Stick with the same degree of distraction. And what I mean by degree, it means treat, stay on the chair. The proximity between you and the chair also stays the same until you get your dog back to that really fast response that you are accustomed to seeing.

If I was gonna add in one last level of difficulty and using the bag of treats as the same example of the distraction, what happens if you pick up that [00:16:00] bag of treats and you toss it a few feet away?

Jessica: What does your dog do when that happens? Even with just the example that I gave of the bag of treats you can see how many variations of the same exact distraction that you can create. The more that you start to rehearse your dog’s training around these lower level distractions, the easier it becomes for your dog to be able to respond around greater levels of distractions. I want you to expand this same process to other distractions in your environment.

The other thing that I really like to do with dogs is practice by the front door. The reason why door work is so important for dogs that are reactive on leash is because for so many of them, the moment that door opens and they cross that physical threshold, their behavior immediately changes.

And if we could start your walk with your dog by being more calm, by not having such a big response to the door being open and walking out, that will actually set you up for more success on your [00:17:00] walks. And I really like the timing of it too. Wouldn’t it be nice if before you took your dog out for your walk that you already started working with and engaging with your dog inside of the home where you had more control over the level of distraction?

And when I’m doing door work, I am going to practice this very similarly as I do with the bag of treats. What I mean by that is perhaps I’m gonna have my dog on leash and I’m going to just crack open the door. And if you keep your dog right next to the front door, it’s probably going to be really difficult for them.

So I often bring the dog much further from the door to begin with again. The closer you are to a distraction that is relevant to your dog, it also makes it more difficult for them. So it’s always a better idea to start further from the distraction and then work your way up. And the nice thing about using distractions that are not living things such as a bag of treats and your [00:18:00] front door, is that it makes it really easy.

You can take all the time in the world that you need to practice this with your dog, and you have total control over how close you are going to get to any one of these things with your dog. Now, one little caveat that I do wanna throw out when it comes to doing some door work, there are some dogs who have really big feelings about getting their leash put on, and they immediately associate that with, okay, but now we’re gonna go out for a walk.

And then when we start to change the picture for those dogs by not going out on a walk and then expecting them to do training with us, that can make them feel really conflicted because they have some competing motivators going on. They want to go out on this walk because they are used to this routine happening.

If you feel like your dog is going to get really conflicted about getting their equipment on and then not going for the walk.

I have a couple of tips for you. One of them could be that you start to practice this when you come home from the walk. That way you’ve already done your walk with your dog, but you keep them on [00:19:00] leash and then you start to practice.

The other thing that you can do, which I think would be a really good idea for all dogs to learn, is that sometimes they just wear their equipment in the house, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re gonna go for a walk.

So maybe you’re gonna do something a little bit more fun with them, like you’re gonna put their equipment on and you’re gonna go out in the yard and you’re gonna do a little bit of play, and then you’re gonna take their equipment off.

So helping your dog understand, just because I have my leash on, that is not necessarily the cue. That means we’re always going to go outside on a walk. By helping your dog be more flexible with getting their equipment on and not having certain associations built in, that is going to make your training easier because you’re gonna be able to practice around a lot of different distractions inside of your home. Another suggestion that I give to my clients is to use different equipment when you’re training inside of your home compared to equipment that you use when you are taking your dog outside on a walk. I also find it helpful to put that equipment on in a different context.

Maybe you put the leash on in your bedroom rather [00:20:00] than when you take your dog out on a walk, you’re leashing them by the front door. So those small changes in environment as you’re putting this equipment on your dog can help make a big difference in how they perceive what is about to happen. Okay, let’s get back to some of the door work that I was talking about. One of the things that I love about front doors is that you have control over how far you open it. Now, granted, the wider that door is open, the more of the outside world comes into your home, and for most dogs, the more distracted they become.

This is a great distraction to practice around because as I said, you have control over how close you get to the front door. You also have control over how far that door is open, so it makes it very easy to see at what distance from the door, is your dog most successful? And in addition to proximity, the intensity of the door, meaning how far is that door cracked open compared to how much is it closed?[00:21:00]

There’s a degree of intensity there that your dog is perceiving that when your door is cracked further open, of course the distraction itself becomes more intense or more interesting to your dog. And you’re going to be able to keep tabs on both of these variables. If you have the door open too far and you’re too close to the door, your dog is not going to be able to respond to you as quickly.

If you are perhaps further away from the door, maybe that’s going to help your dog be more successful, or maybe it has to be both. Maybe the front door can’t be open quite as far and you need to be further from the door, and that is the point in which you are going to see that success that you are looking for with your dog.

I want you to experience this with your dog in your living room so that you have some more experience under your belt to see what does my dog look like when they are able to notice a distraction and respond to me really quickly?

What does my dog look [00:22:00] like when they are unable to do that, and what variable is influencing this? Is it proximity to the door? Is it how intense the door is to my dog? Is it both of those things? And what can you do to make that easier for your dog? I can’t emphasize enough why this type of door work is so valuable for my clients.

And if you have not done this type of door work with your dog, this is one of the easiest and most low hanging fruit that you can start to grab from. So from there, when my client’s dogs. Can get success with the door. Then I gradually start to apply these same principles to when we’re outside. Now, when you’re outside on your walk, again, there’s a lot of variables in that environment, right?

You don’t have any control over what you’re gonna come across. You’ve got a lot more sounds. You have a lot more smells. You are probably in motion with your dog, so you’re also crossing new ground all of the time. [00:23:00] So naturally, that environment is going to be more distracting for your dog. Even if my client’s dogs can do pretty well with distractions inside of the home, I try to make a point that when we start to translate their training out on their walks, that I don’t practice when I see something else in the environment.

Meaning if there’s a person or a bicycle or another dog, I actually try to avoid those types of distractions first. What I want to do is see, can the dog even respond when we’re in a different location? No other distractions going on just simply by being outside because. Simply being outside is a distraction.

Can you do it on your driveway? Can you do it on the corner of your street? Can you do it when you are halfway down the street? So just the environment itself, changing that part up, not necessarily when there’s distractions around.

When that part looks good, then we know, okay, now we’re ready for lower levels of distractions. And this is where you’re going [00:24:00] to get your little list. What is a distraction that’s easier for my dog? How am I gonna rank this? For most dogs, things like cars or bicycles, or maybe a person walking on the other side of the street that is going to be easier than when another dog is on the other side of the street.

So first we start to build your dog’s responsiveness around those kinds of distractions. And then later we’re going to start incorporating dogs. One of my favorite distractions to practice around are people because you’re almost always gonna see people when you’re out on a walk and people are one half of the equation to a dog walker.

And if you can get your dog to respond to you when people are around, both at a distance and also when they are closer to you, and also when they’re more interesting, such as when they happen to be jogging past you, then when that person eventually has a dog, you’ve at least started to train one half of the equation.

Look at your environment as a world of opportunities of distractions that you can practice [00:25:00] around to get your dog to be more responsive to you.

Now, I know I just talked about a lot of different scenarios to be practicing with your dog. Believe me, it is not as hard as it sounds. If you are diligent, and especially if you’re already gonna take your dog out for a walk, you might as well use that time to work with your dog. For most of my clients, I don’t actually have them spend a whole lot of time training their dog outside of their actual walks themselves.

So let’s say you’re out on a walk with your dog and you know that another dog is getting too close and you know, well, they’re not gonna be able to respond to me. And now what do I do?

I don’t want you to leave your dog hanging. In those moments that’s where management can be really effective. And when we describe management with dogs that are reactive on leash, a lot of times we’re describing strategies that can help prevent a reaction.

So think of this as a little bit more of distracting your dog. We might also think of it as your dog might be none the wiser when we implement some of [00:26:00] these strategies. None the wiser meaning maybe they didn’t even notice the other dog that you saw because you were really effective at distracting them in that moment.

So some things that you could do would be simply move further away, and if there’s a visual block around like a car or you can go behind a building, that can be super helpful in that moment. Wait until that other dog gets further away and then pop back out. That would be one way that you could do that.

You could also just distract your dog with food. You could have a handful of treats by their nose. You can move them along so that they don’t see the other dog that’s going by, and then you can feed your dog the treats. You could also just scatter a bunch of food on the ground for your dog to eat as another dog goes past.

And again, they are none the wiser or they’re so distracted eating the treats that the other dog that goes by is not really relevant to them. Making sure that you have your management strategies in place are really important because when you have a dog that’s reactive on leash, it’s going to take time to get them to be able to respond to [00:27:00] you when other dogs are in closer proximity. And until you get to that point, you need to have something else in place to be able to prevent your dog from reacting.

And it is okay to use management. There’s nothing wrong with that. So I don’t want you to think that you need to hold your dog to a certain type of criteria when you haven’t trained for it and you have not prepared them for that.

And this brings me into the next piece of why your dog can respond to you when there isn’t another dog around. But the moment another dog comes around, everything goes out the window. Another really common thing that I tend to see is that my clients have a behavior that they have taught their dog, and they hold them to the same degree of criteria no matter what else is going on.

I will give an example here. It’s very common for some clients of mine to have already practiced on their own and they have taught their dog to look at them when another [00:28:00] dog is around and they tell me, okay, well my dog can do it. I’m queuing watch me and they’re doing it. But then if the other dog gets too close or the other dog is perhaps barking at them, then they’re not able to look at me and then they think, okay, well because the dog wasn’t able to look at me, then everything just went to shit.

Okay. I don’t know if I can put that in this podcast. If my rating is gonna go from clean to using bad words. I don’t know. So maybe I should change that. Um, then everything goes out the window, okay. If your dog is not able to respond to a behavior that you have set and that you are asking them to do, it does not mean that we have to abandon your training completely. And I want to talk about how you can lower your criteria. You might be thinking, okay, I don’t know what you’re saying when you’re using the word criteria.

When we think about criteria and what it means in training, think of this question. Has the requirement for reinforcement been [00:29:00] met? In other words, you might think of this as, did my dog respond in the correct way in order to get this treat? And if we’re gonna really think about that, who is the one who’s determining whether your dog should get a treat or not?

That would be you.

Now, if your dog is unable to look at you, but they could do an alternative behavior that also doesn’t involve reacting at dogs, wouldn’t that be good enough?

It should be. So if you’re getting too stuck on keeping your criteria the exact same, you’re not being fluid enough with your dog. When I see this with my clients, I don’t find that they’re trying to be really strict with their dog for the sake of being strict. I find that they just don’t understand that you’re allowed to have different criteria.

You’re allowed to have some easier versions of behaviors that your dog can be more successful at. You don’t have to hold your dog to the same standard throughout their entire walk, no matter what they come across. There are no [00:30:00] rule books for that in dog training. So let’s lighten up. Let’s come up with lots of other ways that you could help your dog be more successful.

If we are using the example of your dog having to look at you when another dog is around, what if your dog could just notice the other dog and not react? That would be actually one of the easier behaviors for your dog to do because all they have to do is just notice they’re allowed to watch the dog go by.

I would say for most dogs, the ability to just notice the other dog go by is often an easier behavior for them than having to take their eyes off of the dog to then look at you. There’s nothing wrong if your dog needs to just watch the other dog for a little bit, and then perhaps when that dog is farther away, then they’re able to shift their attention off of that dog and check in with you.

This is a really, really common scenario that I find specifically when other dogs get in closer proximity to the dog I’m working with, or if the other [00:31:00] dog is showing a lot more interest in the dog that I’m working with, it becomes much harder for the dog to take their attention off of it. And because that is harder, we need to find something to make it easier for the dog if you cannot get more distance from the other dog. And this is going to happen, right? You are on a sidewalk and let’s say there’s a bunch of houses to your right and there’s another dog on the other side of the street that’s walking past you and you can’t really get more distance because otherwise you’d be walking up onto someone else’s property.

So maybe distance is not an option for you there, and yet you still have this dog that’s across the street from you showing a lot of interest in your dog. And your dog can’t take their eyes off of that dog, okay? You can simply just lower your criteria in terms of what requirement for reinforcement you are asking for.

And maybe it’s just that your dog notices that other dog, you feed it and you just keep moving on. That is okay to do. [00:32:00] You do not need to keep your criteria always the same.

And when we think about whether we are going to lower criteria, another way of thinking about this is making it easier for the dog or helping them be more successful. And a way that we can measure that would be, if you did not lower your criteria for the behavior, would your dog start to react? I think that’s a good measurement of starting to figure out is this too difficult for your dog?

Another thing that this also leads into is your dog’s threshold, which we are gonna talk about that in just a moment because in these scenarios there’s often a lot of things that are overlapping. You’ve got proximity, which is starting to get right when your dog is becoming uncomfortable. They are over a threshold at that point, but maybe they’re not at a threshold where they’re having a full on reaction.

In those moments making reinforcement easier to acquire for your dog is one of the [00:33:00] ways that you can prevent a reaction. So instead of holding them to a behavior that’s difficult for them in that moment where they’re not able to be successful at, make it easier for your dog. Now, this does not mean that you always need to keep your criteria really low, because I’m gonna argue that sometimes we don’t ask enough of our dogs, or at least we don’t try to ask enough of our dogs. I have always been really surprised by the dogs that I’ve worked with, where sometimes I’ll just think, Hmm, well, I’m just gonna see if the dog is gonna be able to give me this.

And I am actually surprised by the amount of times that the dog is able to give me more. And so I play around a lot with lowering and raising criteria all within one session.

And I think this is where it could get really muddy for pet parents is that maybe you’re used to reading an article or watching a YouTube video and it says, well, when this happens, then you [00:34:00] do this.

And it’s almost like this really rigid recipe. When it comes to reactive dogs, I want you to throw the recipes out the window. I want you to burn them to the ground. That is not going to help your dog. You need to learn how to be fluid. You need to learn how to reinforce easier versions of behaviors for your dog. And you also need to learn when you can ask for more from your dog.

The last component that I want to go over is the concept of thresholds. If you have not listened to the podcast episode with Sarah Shapiro Ward called nerding Out on Thresholds, I want you to listen to it as soon as you’re done listening to this episode because we do a whole deep dive on thresholds, different types of them and how we are constantly adjusting what we are doing with the dog.

So when I have clients who tell me, my dog is able to respond to me unless another dog comes around, we cannot ignore the fact that your dog’s [00:35:00] thresholds are changing in that moment. And that is also having a big impact on their behavior.

So we need to take this into account. How comfortable is your dog in proximity to that other dog? Maybe they have other things that they need to tend to besides responding to you. Maybe they don’t feel safe, so they feel like they really need to keep their eyes and attention on that other dog to see where it’s going to go. Or let’s say you have a dog who’s actually quite social with other dogs and really wants to go say hi to that other dog. So when your dog is having a greater emotional response to another dog on a walk. That is also a time where you need to make sure that you are lowering your criteria.

Your dog might be over threshold for many different reasons. It could be because another dog came along and they were just really, really close in proximity to you.

Your dog might also be the type of dog [00:36:00] that when they’re exposed to multiple dogs on the walk time and time and time again, that they have a really difficult time starting to recover from the stress response and therefore their thresholds continue to get lower then if they had only seen one or two dogs on the walk.

So these are some things that we need to pay attention to and why you need to understand your individual dog and what the different thresholds look like for them.

As a general rule, when we’re looking at dogs who are going over a threshold, specifically a threshold where they look as if they are going to tip over into barking, lunging, or having another type of more intense behavior, you need to make sure that you are lowering your criteria, especially if you’re not able to increase more distance for your dog.

And then on the flip side, if you can see that your dog is actually quite comfortable with being in the presence of another dog, then you can increase [00:37:00] your criteria because their thresholds are higher in those moments. But if you’re ever not sure, the golden rule is just to lower it. Just make it easier for your dog. It’s hard enough being a reactive dog out in the world. So let’s tie this together. I talked about have you actually prepared your dog? And what I meant by that was have you proofed your dog’s behaviors? Have you actually put the work in with your dog and taught them how to respond to you around a wide variety of variables and scenarios?

If you haven’t, you need to do that. We also talked about understanding this dance between criteria and thresholds, how you might set certain criteria in some scenarios and lower it in others because it’s really important to be fluid. And then what also has a really big influence as to whether you would raise criteria or lower it is your dog’s thresholds.

Where are they at? How relaxed is your dog?

When we incorporate all of [00:38:00] these things, we are able to make more informed decisions.

I think if you were gonna get anything out of today’s episode, I hope that you understood that there is never a hard and fast rule with reactive dogs. Modifying a reactive dog’s behavior out in public takes work. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is lying. If there was some sort of magic solution that would change leash reactivity in one week, I would be doing it and I’m not because such a thing just doesn’t exist. I know that this can take a while for some dogs, but we can’t push them through these types of processes without addressing all of the things that I laid out for today.

Hey listeners, I want to hear from you. If you have a suggestion for a topic or a guest, send me an email at podcast@jessicawitchcraft.com. Or if you have a question about reactive dogs that you’d like me to [00:39:00] answer on the show, you can leave me a voice message. Be sure to check the show notes on how to do that.

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