Stories of reactive dogs who got better?

[nomoresun]

I have a fear reactive dog. One who used to love doggy daycare, love playing with other dogs but who was leash reactive and couldn't really be walked. During lockdown we took him out of daycare but his reactivity got worse. This morning he jumped on the head of another on lead dog and possibly bit his ear. No harm was done to the dog, everyone was on lead and was pulled away quickly. It was a total error of judgment on my part. I'm absolutely heartbroken.

I really don't know what to do. I'm not sure I can keep him away from other dogs permanently. I'm also not in the U.K. there's no rehoming or appropriate rescue & shelter. I need happy stories of dogs who got better. Because I have to keep believing he is going to get better.

We've tried meds, specialist vets and trainers. Muzzles are the next only thing we've not tried because it's hard to find one so small , our dog is a Maltese he's only 6kg. I'm just totally heartbroken for him. He's such an anxious dog, with separation anxiety, he had knee surgery last year and now with this I don't know what comes next. He was my foster fail dog from a puppy mill rescue, not that I need to explain I didn't buy a puppy mill dog but this is all to say he's from a difficult background.

It does get more manageable but takes times and training.
And you do have to actively avoid other dogs.

Basically every time your dog sees another dog you need to give him loads of treats until the other dog is out of sight.
If he is reacting and not paying you attention or taking the treats, then you are too close to the other dog and need to make sure you don’t get that close.

Start by going to a relatively busy dog area but sitting quite far away from any dogs. Have a big bag of tiny pieces of high value treats (cheese, sausage, chicken).
Every time you see a dog, say ‘look at me’ and give him lots of treats. Repeat.

You can then practice this whilst walking along, but still giving yourself lots of space from the other dogs.

Eventually you want to get to the stage where when your dog sees another dog, rather than reacting, he looks at you for a treat.

Google the ‘look at me method’

I’ve gone from not being able to be in eyesight of another dog, to being able to walk past 1 metre away (with treats)

Have you tried a calming supplement, worked amazingly on our reactive dog, A-OK9 Calm, give it a try tis brilliant.

Combine this with look at me or lets go command.

Thanks @ArcherDog we've been doing that sort of counter conditioning for 2 years.

We've tried all sorts from herbal to prescription anti anxiety meds. Nothing has ever made a difference

Nomoresun, there will be one to suit your dog. Our behaviourist said that all supplements do not suit all dogs. Aok9 are very good though, worth a try if you haven’t used,nothing else worked for our dog.

DDog hates motorbikes - which is tricky in a big city with Deliveroo et al. For a time, he'd redirect a bite onto my lower legs out of sheer fear, and drew blood on a few occasions. He was just out of his mind panicking at the time.

We've done lots of counterconditioning work and he's now happy if they zip past and will look at me for a treat, but will still bark if they stop in front of us (eg when the lights change). It's a vast improvement though, even if he'll never love them, as it means we can now walk down the street in a relatively civilised manner.

He also has a much hated breed - but a few weeks ago and much to my surprise his dog walkers sent me a photo of him being very polite to a dog of that breed. No idea what's happened there tbh!

It is possible to do counterconditioning in subtly bad ways - one common pitfall is inadvertently teaching the dog that a treat appearing predicts a dog, not that a dog appearing predicts a treat.

One advantage of COVID is that most behaviourists are now doing video consultations. You may like to consider checking in with a UK-based (APBC or CCAB qualified) behaviourist to check you're not doing things subtly wrong.

We have a really anxious and nippy greyhound. The thing that really calmed her down was getting another greyhound - a super chilled out one. She's now so much happier and trots along happily with him. We've had him about 18 months and she's like a different dog these days.

We also found getting another dog helped, now we can let our reactive dog off the lead around other dogs and she just ignores them.

Should caveat that by saying we did lots of work with a behaviourist beforehand as well, so it could have been a combination of the two.

Thanks @DeathByWalkies we've done plenty of video consults with top vet behaviourist New York when we were living there last year. I've seen every specialist who we could. We paid for so much training but with lockdown and video training I'm not sure it did much good. I understand counter conditioning and have taught him to ignore other sounds and things but I can't seem to make any progress on this huge issue.

I'm clearly doing something wrong as ddog has no safe distance from another dog anymore. We've stopped going for walks totally but this weekend we were in a house with a garden and the other dogs walking past took him over the edge over and over again. I thought because he used to have doggy friends and he stopped barking at one of these dogs from the neighbourhood who ddog saw twice a day everyday that he would be ok with a controlled meet but it wasn't to be. Ddog is usually all noise no bite even with his favourite people he barks at them before happy jumping all over them. I thought maybe we'd misjudged him and he really just wanted to play with other dogs but he jumped straight at the other dogs face. Thankfully everyone was unharmed but it shook me.

I just want to have a normal dog. We can't get another and I'm tearing my hair out carrying the weight of his training, meds, rehab etc. All with a baby under 1. Thankfully he's great with people and even got swarmed by neighbourhood kids and was mostly chill except for excited jumping.

My Grandparents dog was attacked by two off lead, much bigger dogs when she was around 6, and became reactive.

They had to walk her at ridiculous times of the day in order to avoid other dogs. She would either shake and urinate in fear or growl/lunge/go for the other dogs. But was fine with humans, so wasn’t a huge deal.

She never really got any better (died aged 14),

We are going to find s new behavioural vet and try different meds. I will not give him up but honestly we are exhausted by managing him. Yesterday he hurt my mum trying to get at another dog and there's a general "bad feeling" around the dog atm.

I feel totally exhausted by his issues. We love hiking and walking which is why we thought a fog would fit into our lives but it's miserable having a dog you can't take out.

Our dog is almost 2yo and has suddenly got much better around other dogs, he pretty much ignores them now. I still wouldn't trust him with another on lead dog so will always put him on lead around other on lead dogs and give him space but off lead he's fine.

All I can say is keep on it with the training, we worked on it every single walk, we got him to focus on us using high value food (chicken) and lots of rewards for ignoring other dog's.

It's taken a while and I think it's a combination of training and the fact he's hopefully coming out of the teen phase!