1:17 | Mary Remer - Hi Vince - she sounds like a wonderful dog. I'm going to guess that you learned some management tools in your class. One of the things that you might want to try is getting her to sit when she sees another dog and paying her with five star treats for that behavior. A lot of times if we can find a very mellow dog, we will set up parallel walks so as to give the uncomfortable dog an opportunity to relax. Dogs walking towards each other on leashes "street walk" is a very unnatural way for dogs to approach each other. For sensitive dogs, this approach can cause them to be extremely reactive. When you're walking down the street, try and walk in serpentines and circles so that she doesn't have a direct approach. Also, handlers tend to tighten the lead as their dog tenses when another dog is approaching. This will further escalate reactivity so we try and find mellow dogs for parallel walk opportunities and set up other leash walking in a different way so that the approach is not as direct and the handler does not have to tighten the leash at oncoming dogs and rewards can be earned for appropriate behavior. This is definitely a skill set that you might want to get professional help on. |
