Reactivity and the Surprising Truth

[Owned-By-Hendrix]

Years have past by since I last updated this forum on Hendrix's adventures. Sad to say while we have conquered human "suspicion" problems and have come to accept he is not the social butterfly everyone wants but rather a reserved, sweet boy, we have always been fighting the annoying label of "reactive" towards dogs.

Over the years Hendrix has been jumped by many off leash dogs. Despite my best efforts to protect him and get in-between, it sometimes doesn't work out the way I want. We've done all the behavior therapies and modalities. We finally got to a point where he could focus heal past dogs without incident but... Hendrix did not enjoy life. He was still anxious and worried.

So, as we approach his 10th year in life, I said screw all. Leave my ego as a trainer behind, let's start new. Try everything again for the billionth time. I found an R+ clicker trainer near here who was starting a reactive dog class. She seemed great - 23 years and most of it with reactive dogs. Reactivity was her passion. We entered a small class, armed with the familiar clicker, my own internal scoffs, and a dog who could perform but was nervous.

Well, I had my ass handed to me guys. At the end of 6 weeks my stubborn, hard headed drive-y dog is following along the trainer's behaviors and ENJOYING life. He passes dogs with a look then stares at me. He IGNORES other dogs on walks. I'm in shock. All the years of doing the EXACT same things, reading body language, using a clicker or marker word, and 10 years later he is succeeding.

So what did I learn?
1. Getting the dog to THINK is the hardest part. Sometimes you have to start at the very back of 2 acres and work in feet or inches towards the trigger, not yards. Setting the stage with simple behaviors to fall back on and practicing listening in all environments was something we do as part of training, but when tackling reactivity it's your life line. It cannot be a compulsion. It must be a willing game. We failed on that aspect.
2. It may be hard, but take them out. Set them up for success. If you head to a park and can only be there for three minutes before they start to hit threshold, so be it. You are a bit at the mercy of life and the dog in this case and this is hard as we are trained to head into sessions for 5-15 minutes with clear success goals as trainers. "I want to see this behavior" or "I want to see the start of this". Most of the time when we did this is was hard because I was expecting reactivity. I didn't want to leave when he was on the edge because I saw it as failure. I could only do 1 minute here! But I had to put on a new lens. Even if we did 1 minute trips... he got better. I saw it in the way he moved, his ability to focus, his joy to be out working. I had been slowly robbing him of a life he wanted to live because I was tired of the reactivity. Well, he was tired of me not listening to him.
3. You have to break down the pieces so much farther then you think. As trainers we're used to isolating behaviors, chaining them, putting them together. But reactivity is a bunch of mico-pieces that create 1 behavior... without the stress of the environment. You have to practice so much more in so many environments to start to see success. It gets tiring. But then suddenly you start seeing a behavior that is the result of all those practices. And that's when you realize it's working. You're just too far in to see the macro results.

I post this as mainly a story of success for anyone else out there with reactivity. Hendrix may not be super social because he is just a reserved dog, but the fact that after 10 years of practice in reactivity he is able to go out and work with 30% less nervousness is mind blowing. But what is the surprising truth I mentioned? It's that reactivity is stupid simple in terms of training behaviors... it's just chance and emotions that make it so complex to solve.

[centrop67]

Powerful message. Thank you for sharing, and it is good to see you back after a long hiatus,

[Jean512]

Wow, thanks for sharing! My boy is still just a puppy but I'm hoping to avoid reactivity by learning everything I can. And kudos to you for setting aside ego for your dog. I've always admired people who have lots of experience but are still humble enough to put themselves out there and keep learning.