@Poshjock she's the same, she's big and excited and little dogs dont like that so they are aggressive to her but we've made really good progress with introductions by walking with good dogs, I dont let her close until shes calmed a bit so we just walk with them, then when shes ready I direct her to the back end of the dog and she sniffs and shes doing amazing at being close to dogs that are well behaved.
Its passing dogs on the street. The thing is, most of the dogs she reacts to are dogs that are doing the exact same thing and worse, barking lunging, dragging their owners about, running into roads. Shes good with well behaved dogs, but she obviously anxious while we're walking that we're going to bump into an aggressive dog and no amount of avoidance fixed that. I tried it for 18 months and it just got worse, because turning back when a dog we see is reactive is teaching her to run away, its teaching her that dogs are bad. Whereas now, we pass them anyway, and she IS learning that actually, nothing bad happens, yes they chat shit, but they dont actually hurt you. When we kept our distance she didnt know they couldn't hurt her. So that method of staying away from dogs or distracting her from dogs with food so she doesn't see them works when it works, but made the problem bigger so when we couldn't get away from dogs or when the dog reacted she was so much worse and it made her world tiny and her frustrated. She couldn't go hiking, couldnt go to the park etc because we had to constantly avoid dogs and her distance just got bigger and bigger.
Honestly, the vast majority of the advice we've already tried for a long time, and I dont mean that nastily, I mean I haven't gone straight to the easiest answer, I've been trying for years, we've been doing positive only and avoidance for over a year and gone backwards, and not just reactivity but she was a mess, walking was constantly her looking for dogs and trying to avoid them, it just taught her that dogs were to be avoided, it doesn't work for her, I started this a few months ago with a new trainer and already made progress.
And I understand that punishment makes dogs hide their emotions, I can see her body language, I know she's less anxious than she was when walking, I can see when she's getting anxious and dont push her deliberately to her limit, but we dont walk away now, we cross over and walk on the other side, I slow down so there just happens to be a car in the way at the closest point, we walk in an arc past the dog, she's not avoiding in her eyes, she's just walking past a dog. The point of tugging her back isn't a physical punishment its shes going in the wrong direction, "look forward, walk with me" and I either say her name, or "this way" it's just redirection, that actually reaches her when the smell of sausage didnt. And with the collar she's looking ahead, where she's walking, or at me, with a harness she's looking everywhere. No dog trainer ever recommended a harness for her, it's always a tight fitting collar high on the neck.
She does have great obedience, she sits at the road, she sits for her dinner, she doesn't eat anything until she's told she can, she comes when I shout her in the house and any enclosed space. Shes not some wild dog running riot, she is literally a diamond, I worked so hard on her obedience, until a dog barks at her, and then her brain just disconnects from me, she cant hear me, cant see the treats in my hand she's just gone. But in the past few months that has totally changed, she gets by most dogs, and the ones she doesn't she lunges once then looks at me and we walk on. It is working.
I just had a massive confidence knock because I'd never be nasty to her and then someone told me I was abusing her and it's like, either this is ok or I accept that my dog will always be reactive, I've tried the other way, it didnt work for her, and if I were to put her on a harness without fixing the reactivity I would never be able to walk her, I would not physically be able to hold her, few people could.
And I feel awful that I now have a dog that I physically cant handle on a harness, I see people being dragged about by their big dogs and think, if you cant handle the dog you shouldn't have got him, but i worked so hard, I studied the breed, I trained her from the day we got her, she grew at the perfect rate, I cooked her food from scratch to make sure she got the exact right balance of nutrient to grow her joints properly to prevent hip problems, she was so good, I focused so hard on training and socialisation, yes i forgot walking to heel because we had open spaces, but she was so good, and now, because other people let their dogs run across a field and attack her, I lost that easygoing dog I could just let off and play with a group of dogs and its heartbreaking. I'm just doing the best I can for her to play with dogs again.
I've bought her a "coat" that says training on it so we can go the park instead of walking round here, hopefully it'll help with people not letting their dogs run straight up to her