We have a lot of reactive dogs in the academy this year so we are going to be talking about ways to work on things with a reactive dog. Since we have a lot more time to work we are not going to race through the modules, but rather spend some time putting a more solid foundation in place so that when you are working on reactivity you have a LOT of skills in your tool box.

Now the beautiful thing is, even if you don’t have a reactive dog all of these skills are super helpful for any dog to learn! They help with just excitable dogs, with worried dogs, help your leash walking, recall and stay foundations. So while these are framed in the concept of reactivity, I teach these skills to all of the dogs I work with.

If you attended the live class this weekend you will see we are starting with three key foundations:

• place training

• target touching your hand

• Emergency u-turns

PLACE TRAINING

Shape using the same techniques we used for the box game so the dog offers place instead of you having to make them go to their spot.

• Have treats and clicker ready (can use marker word if you don’t have coordination to hold three things at once

• Hold your place mat

• Set mat down and immediately reward the moment your dog looks at or steps on the mat

• Follow the shaping techniques explained in the video to shape your dog to offer a sit or down on their spot

• start with dog on place

• release dog to come to you

• feed 4-5 treats in steady pace to hold their focus the entire time

• end by having dog place again

• Place a treat between thumb and palm

• Present open palm

• Mark when dog’s nose touches hand

• Give treat

• Repeat

• Add Cue when dog is reliably touching open palm with nose, add cue as dog touches at first and then move cue earlier as they continue to succeed

• Fade lure by sometimes having food between thumb and palm and sometimes not (when you do not have it there, still mark and feed.

Find more written instructions on Reactive Dog Module 2

For small dogs you can also teach them to nose touch a physical target that you could then use to shape them to touch your shoelaces or your pant leg so you don’t have to always bend over. I have trained several smaller reactive agility dogs to touch their owners shoelaces as a game, so they sit waiting surrounded by other dogs and are nose bonking their handlers shoe without caring about the dogs surrounding them.

EMERGENCY U TURN & TAP AND TURNS

• Put out or toss out a distraction you can move towards

• When your dog is not focused on you, stop

• Extend your hand with a treat in it towards your dog

• Give a verbal signal (do not use come)

• When your dog looks at you back up drawing them to you with that extended hand

• Feed and have a fun party when they reach you

We can teach the same game also adding in a physical cue for those moments when our dogs are struggling to hear our voices. This is NOT something you do during a reaction or when your dog is over threshold as physical touch at that moment could spark a redirected aggression if your dog feels something unexpected. So this is just for when your dog is staring and needs a tap on the shoulder to hear you. Your tap should always be gentle! This is not a hard poke. It is like you would tap someone’s shoulder to get their attention.

Work as above, but you add the touch on their side or hip with the verbal cue as you stop

This is the same game focused on using it for recall training. If your dog is not reactive you can use the “come” cue.

In the weeks to come we are going to be talking a lot about how to set the scene for great reactive dog training. Please keep working on the engagement exercises from last week. The key to great training is an engaged connected dog with a solid relationship with our available reinforcers.