The Dog Trainer’s Dog: A Training Plan
About two years ago, I decided that I wanted the experience of living apartment life before moving into a house permanently. Two at the time was the fewest number of dogs I’ve owned in years and the way I saw it, it was my last chance to live that dream. It’s been a year and a half now, two different apartment buildings. It’s not for me permanently, but I do love it. Of course, Phoenixville and now King of Prussia both seemed to have a very similar common theme with dogs in general, but in an enclosed building and running into late night bathroom breakers the issue has been a big one. Getting bum rushed by dogs in Town Center or on Bridge Street previously, and even more so as we’re waiting to leave the elevator, has been a regular occurrence. Most dogs just reactive, but some scarier occurrences where I was thankful that I could drop my dog in a stay and catch an off leash aggressor.
For Roach, who was just rushed by a large an off leash male Rottweiler that I had to scream at to keep away few days ago, he has interpreted this as “I see obnoxious dogs, I wait for toy to magically appear”. He’s been a trooper and hasn’t once made any issues worse, which I’m always so impressed at him for knowing his true love for a good scrap. It’s nice knowing that your dog will hold a stay when you panic and tell him to “wait”, a word that he hasn’t been taught, and lug a dead weight dog by its collar back to its owner.
Journey on the other hand has been a bit more reasonable about the whole situation, to our dismay. She has high anticipation as the elevator doors open, fortunately all excitement, but she loads herself up and is ready to explode if she sees a dog. I’ve worked on this with her and if we see a dog, I can cue her to wait and she’ll sit quietly, maybe trembling a bit if the other dogs are blowing up. Scott, my partner, isn’t a dog person though and alas, she is *his* dog. He’s had a tougher time being consistent with setting her up for success. He’s had a lot fewer reps and he freezes when other dogs blow up. Every dog trainer has had clients like this, we’ve likely been there ourselves at some point, it’s human. Nine out of ten times, they go out at eleven PM and it’s a rushed, tired last potty break, amped up already by the “do you wanna go outside” dance, not a single perfect rep in their history between them because unless you’re prepared every time, reactions never happen the one time you’re ready to deal with it.
As it always goes, he faced the three flammable Yorkies a few nights ago and said “this is it, we need to fix this”. Predictably, nothing really changed during his following outs with her. It’s genuinely human to want to push problems off for when we really feel the pain of the issue and hope we don’t in the meantime. It works 95% of the time. Unfortunately for him, he lives with me. Being a dog trainer doesn’t mean that my dogs are perfect. What it does mean, is that I know how to best prevent issues, how to address them efficiently when they happen, and what will happen if we don’t do those things.
Journey is very easily manageable with me because I know how to handle her and we have a lot of good reps. Her reactivity WILL get worse with him if it isn’t addressed.
I have two options here as a dog trainer. I could do what a lot do and belittle my “client” for lack of commitment and foresight, just getting frustrated at them for not following the plan and making no changes for anyone, I typically don’t do that to my clients as a trainer, but I especially can’t do that in my relationship. That leaves me with one option. I can figure out why the plan isn’t being followed. In this case, it’s hard! It sucks to have to put on the right equipment, grab treats, and be ready when most likely, it will just be a five minute bathroom break where we don’t see any dogs. If we do though, we’re losing a training opportunity or even taking steps back. If we can manage to really commit for a few weeks, his life will be a lot easier. I know this first hand because my walks with Journey are so peaceful, I grab some treats occasionally but I’ve all but forgotten she was ever reactive until he brought up her behavior with him.
I know that setting my clients dogs up for success starts with setting their owners up for success, so here’s what Scott and I are doing to make every lazy, late night rep the best it can be. .
Leash and prong collar by the door, a BUCKLE on the prong
Journey does best on a prong with Scott, her leash reactivity is just about her only quirk so it wouldn’t make sense to incorporate her e-collar (which we only use for off-leash safety at this point) into this. Note that regardless of the tool, we are NOT correcting reactivity with the prong. For Journey, little leash turns to keep her focused can be helpful for her. She’s a dog that needs very little pressure if any, but it makes Scott’s life easier handling her and she thrives on clarity. Any tool needs to be effectively conditioned to be helpful and is not a magic fix for reactivity, without appropriate conditioning, prong collars can make reactivity worse.
Treats by the door
I do not want to show the picture of using a treat pouch for this, it’s okay in the beginning, but can become a crutch that influences your dog’s behavior long term. This means that I need to have treats ready that are high value, but will not be disgusting in pockets. No hot dogs or cheese! I keep Saint Rocco’s on hand for these instances, they’re a great treat for when you know you’ll want to be slick about rewarding the odd good rep during a quick outing without making your dog go into “training session mode”. For this scenario, I know we’ll need lots of small treats to give Journey a bunch one by one, so I do cut them up or break them apart in advance. For some outings, it’s nice to just have a strip to break as you go (I’ll put one in my waist band for a board and train outing, eww), but for this, we want to make sure we have minimal work to do on our way out the door or when we see a dog. The reward will need to be instant for our first few reps!
Bags by the door
Okay, this isn’t really relevant to training, but it is! Get your bags off your leash. If you have a bag holder or hand sanitiser or any weird thing hanging off of your leash, your dog hears it clicking around when you tense up your leash (that’s not a good habit either, but one step at a time here), you’ve probably whacked them in the head during a reaction driving their intensity up more, and you just can’t handle a leash the way you’re supposed to with those things on the end of them. Grab a bag (or two, Journey is a double pooper) on your way out and just stick it in your pocket. Ditch the bag holder.
That’s it, that’s half the battle right there! There’s an interesting exercise that I do with my clients that makes a world of a difference with their success on walks, it feels dumb, but hear me out. Look at your current setup. How long it takes to get your bags, grab your leash and equipment, and treats. Leave your dog out of it right now. Go stand next to them and set a timer if you’d like or just feel it out. It should take less than fifteen seconds to grab your leash, equipment, bags, and treats. If it takes longer, you will be fighting an uphill mental battle to have all of that stuff ready before you get out the door.
I instruct my clients to make a walk station as close to their door as possible for these supplies. Be consistent and set yourself up for success every time until you are no longer seeing the issue, then still occasionally bring some treats and reward good behavior! Having treats on hand with the collar set up every time probably sounds like a lot, but if you do it right it takes less effort than putting a jacket on.
Now, here’s what I’m doing to ensure that this process moves quickly.
If your training plan is just “wait to see trigger, try to work through it successfully” you are going to have a hard time. Life just doesn’t happen that way.
Instead, here’s what’s going through my mind as I create a training plan. Journey will ONLY react when Scott is handling her and typically her reactions are centered around the elevator. No matter how much more work I’ve tried to do with her, it makes no difference, he has to put in the reps. He doesn’t have a lot of free time and his only elevator outs with her are either first thing in the morning before I’m awake or late at night when we just want to get it over with, this means we have to get creative to address this.
First, we’ll spend a couple days polishing up their elevator routine. I want them to leave the apartment calmly, walk to the elevator in a loose, but calm heel, rewarding that behavior occasionally, and practice keeping Journey in a sit during the elevator ride, waiting for permission from him to leave. This is exactly opposite to Roach’s chaotic, fun, way loose leash elevator routine, or Tofu’s do-whatever routine, every dog is different! After they’ve gotten that habit down, we’ll move forward. This step is a little pre-school for them, but they’re out of the habit and we always want to start with baby steps that we can nearly guarantee will be successful.
Now to the nitty gritty of it, for the first step here, we’re utilising “fake triggers” so not only can Scott get successful reps in and build some confidence in his handling, but we can schedule these reps at our convenience. A fake trigger is something that seems like a trigger to the dog initially, but isn’t, so you can work incrementally rather than only trying to work through big blow ups. For a more realistic example, think practicing the doorbell ringing when no one is actually at the door. If your dog can hold place or go to place when the doorbell simply rings, then they won’t be starting already amped up when the doorbell rings and you’re flustered when someone is actually there, because the doorbell has been practiced as a fake trigger.
Our first reps of fake triggers, knowing Scott and Journey, she’s seeing this as three different scenarios.
The elevator door opening as they’re in it and a dog is sitting outside
The elevator door opening while they’re waiting for it and a dog is coming out
Either scenario, but the owner isn’t paying attention and the dog rushes toward them.
Our fake trigger will simply be me playing the role of the stranger and one of our other two dogs being the trigger dog. Scott’s first question, obviously, was “won’t she just not react toward our dogs?” which is what most clients would ask! The interesting thing is though, she WILL initially with Scott holding the leash. When our dogs are amped up waiting for something to react to, they’re not thinking. She’s going to see the door open and see a dog, that is ALL she is going to comprehend before she’s thinking about reacting. In a few seconds she’ll realise it’s me and Tofu or Roach and the rep would be a moot point if we just left her to react and figure it out, but we’re using this as a learning opportunity for the mechanics of addressing the reaction and softening the anticipation, not just to prevent the reaction itself. If we catch her while she’s thinking about reacting (but not over threshold, this is why we’re starting with predictable dogs), and reward heavily, she’ll learn in a state of mind that she can operate in that seeing dogs as the door opens=jackpot reward. We will phase out rewards later, but this is what we want her learning now.
As we rehearse these fake triggers in progressive difficulty, it won’t take long, we’re focused on showing Journey the picture that we want her to practice long term. Calm walks to the elevator, sitting or laying down in a heel during the ride down (this isn’t ideal for every dog, this works best for Journey), and 🎉 marking 🎉 and rewarding the second she sees the dog appear.
The third fake trigger is where things get interesting. This is something I practice heavily in my group class, I want my dogs to learn (safely) that if a dog rushes toward them they can stay where they are and I will make the dog go away. This was critical for roach with that off leash Rottweiler, Roach has had enough demo reps of this to think that when an off leash dog approaches, it’s a game with the objective that he waits, I make the dog go away, and he gets a reward. This is more important for Scott’s skills as a handler as well, and there are some major safety components to be aware of, so I’m not going to dive any further into this or recommend that you practice this step on your own.
In about a week from now, after we’ve practiced those fake trigger reps randomly throughout our week, we’ll move on. This is where having a trainer handy or being friendly comes in clutch. Remember, just be nice and the worst people can say is no! Best case, you may make a new dog friend.
Recently, as I was in the elevator with Journey, we ran into someone with a dog that is also working through some elevator excitement and reactivity. Both of them behaved beautifully thanks to their prepared handlers, btw! I put Journey into a secure common area of our apartment for a moment so I wasn’t bombarding them with a question and a dog, and then hit them with the “weird question, buuuut”. I briefly explained that Journey is working through elevator excitement and noticed that their dog might be as well, and asked if they’d be willing to coordinate a couple run ins so we can really set our dogs up for success. Miraculously, they were awesome and said yes!
What I was looking for before I asked them was a few things:
Are their dogs under control? We’re not going to ask the Rottweiler’s or the flammable Yorkers’ owner, or someone who will risk setting us back for the sake of a session, that’s counter productive. Absolutely no judgement, just not what we’re looking for.
Are they aware? Plenty of people have dogs who are perfectly behaved but will let their dog wander toward yours to “say hi”. Look for people who intentionally give dogs space and seem to be mindful with their handling.
Could this benefit their dog? If you’re going to ask a complete stranger, maybe opt not to ask someone with a 12 year old lab that just wants to sniff daisies. If they say no, nbd, but at least try to ask with the intention of the set ups being mutually beneficial.
Remember, quality over quantity. I anticipate that if we can coordinate a few random (to our dogs) run ins, Scott and Journey will be golden. This isn’t about fixing the problem entirely, just getting them to a point where they can manage on their own when the random encounters present. The biggest component here is Scott developing the muscle memory and response time of seeing a dog, rewarding Journey, and asking them to give space to pass if theirs are reactive. It sounds easy, but in the moment that freeze will keep happening unless we practice it. After a few weeks they’ll likely be able to phase treats out most nights, but I’ll still recommend that he still rewards sometimes when the door opens or when they see a dog. Unfortunately in this environment, we will have more stressful experiences with other dogs so this will be something that we just casually work on in the background until we move out. Regardless, you’d be surprised how quickly you and your dog progress when you’re learning through controlled, planned reps, rather than panicked, random freak-outs.
If you have a reactive dog in the King of Prussia area and would like to chat about customising a training plan to your dog and moving past their reactivity, we should chat!
