Dog behaviour

[FairyLightPups]

Hello, so DP and I have two dogs, one I've written about before but one I haven't. We're having some issues with her and we're not sure how to help her, any advice appreciated.

• sometimes she gets jealous of our other dog if she's having a cuddle, we have figured out her triggers around this and she does calm down well when we say no but is there anything we can do to stop the incident from happening altogether?

• when she's out on walks and sees bigger dogs (she's a collie/terrier) she gets very upset and barks at them a lot. She seems to be ok after a cuddle but again we'd like to stop this behaviour before it happens. Her dogwalker walks bigger dogs and she's fine with them, it's when she's on a lead and big dogs aren't or are but are too close that seems to be the main issue. How can we help her here? I should say we live somewhere very quiet where we don't see many people or other dogs so this only happens when visiting family who live in a town

• she gets very upset when people come to visit and barks a lot, unless she's met them 2+ times. She's fine with family now but barks the whole time there is someone over for example a plumber or food delivery (although she doesn't bark when the door goes, just when she hears voices inside). We think this is because she's a lockdown puppy (rescue) and we've tried everything suggested for lockdown puppies but it's difficult and she's not responding that well. We also live quite far away from friends and family so we don't have people to visit often which won't help. We're moving closer to people soon.

Any advice on any of the above? Thank you!

All the behavoiurs sound fear driven. So building on her confidence will help, also increasing distance and giving her more space in all the situations mentioned. When people come to the house give her a safe space to be where she does not have to interact with them.

Work on giving her a calm space in the house she is happy with.

Getting some 121 help will give you specific details on how to handle each event you have mentioned.

often if you ask people what dogs they like don’t like, they’ll then say their dogs don’t like them either. What are your feelings about big dogs? Do they make you nervous?
I ask because you say they are fine with the dog walker so it might mean your dog is taking its cues on the interaction from you.

Thank you, this is really useful ☺️

Nah DP and I are fine around big dogs, our other DDog is a lab/husky/massive collie mix and she's huge. So def not a projection thing

Having said that DP is struggling with social anxiety at the moment so our dog might be picking up on that?

It sounds like fear/anxiety to me also.

One thing I would say is that if you cuddle her after she’s reacted to another dog she will be seeing that as a reward/reinforcement. ‘I bark at a dog, mum cuddles me’.

One of the best ways to work on reactivity towards other dogs is to try and stay at a distance that she’s comfortable with and keep her focus on you. Teach the command ‘watch/look at me’ so she knows it really well in a low distraction environment first. You can then use this on walks and if she begins to react do a u turn and walk off in the opposite direction without making a fuss (just say ‘this way’ and turn). You should gradually be able to get closer - it worked quite well with one of ours that was reactive.

I’ve never dealt with the barking issue at home but I imagine if you try to build her confidence up things should improve. Research games based training and enrichment activities for dogs. We do things like finding treats in cardboard delivery boxes filed with shredded paper, put little treats in egg boxes or kitchen roll tubes. Lickimats, Kongs, Toppls are also really good.

Thank you, this is a fantastic idea - we'll give it a go!