Question for dog aggressive/reactive dog owners.
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Anonymous
| Were you ever able to get to a point where your dog stopped being reactive towards other dogs? What did you do? How old was your dog and how long did it take? We have a dog reactive/aggressive dog that is 16 months old. The reactivity has been a problem since about 6 months old and we have been working with a trainer since then. What I want to know is if it will ever get better? I know dogs go through an adolescent/teenager phase right around 18months where they are testing alllll the boundaries. But with reactivity/aggression, is it something that you can actually train out, or will we always be needing to manage it through avoiding triggers (other dogs)? TIA! |
Anonymous
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It is very, very hard to "cure". I have become very adept at managing it to where it is second nature to cross the street or walk up a driveway and stuff cheese in her mouth, and it no longer raises my stress levels like it did early on. It's definitely improved too over the years, but it is not cured. We got to the point where if she sees a stimulus coming she turns her head to look at me and ask for treats instead of defaulting to lunging and barking, but if i don't have treats on me I have about 10 seconds to get the hell out of dodge before she loses her brain.
My girl is leash reactive (absolutely fine when off leash, not so much as a bark or head turn). She is 16 now. When she started to go deaf at 14 it really lessoned the reactivity because she didn't have as long to ramp up to stimuli. |
Anonymous
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Mine is 14 and is still reactive. Really paying attention to his triggers, and then training and consistency (and about nine months of doggy Prozac) helped, but didn’t completely eliminate it.
Meaning, if I catch it early, pull over into the grass, and put him in a sit/stay looking at me, the other dog can pass. But if he sees the other dog first, he yanks on the leash and it takes a few seconds to redirect back to what we were doing (ambling down the block because he is quite elderly). The other problem is that he is mostly blind and deaf, so sometimes he is surprised by another dog, so the reaction is the same old reactivity, plus adrenaline from the surprise. But when we first got him, people couldn’t come to our door without me locking the dog up first. Now people (service people, friends, neighborhood kids) come and go without a fuss. He also has a handful of dog friends that he is ok to play with (after a careful introduction). It’s really stranger dogs, and mostly leash-related reactivity that we still struggle with. |
Anonymous
Thank you. It is very stressful, and not at all what we envisioned life with a dog would be like. We have middle school aged kids and thought we’d be taking the dog everywhere with us - camping, hiking, to the beach, etc. and we can’t take it ANYWHERE because of the reactivity. And like your dog, ours is fine off leash, on leash is when problems arise. |
Anonymous
+1 to everything in the first paragraph. My dog is 4 and we have been working at his reactivity HARD for about 3 years. He is much better than he was because he knows what cues of ours to follow and to look to us for help, but the biggest change is the fact that we are now seasoned reactive-dog owners who know exactly how to manage him. At the same time, despite all of our and his progress, I would be deluding myself to think that he will ever be a normal dog and that we will ever have to stop managing him. We know what situations he can handle, and while I sometimes mourn the fact that he will never be the dog that we can bring to the busy park during the summer while we have picnic, I know that we are giving him the life that is best for him. |
Anonymous
| Op here again. A new and recent development has been reactivity to small children. It’s only happened a couple times, and I’ve though it was because they were “dog sized” so don’t necessarily want to label it people reactive/aggressive, but wondering if anyone has experienced that and what you did about it? |
Anonymous
Dog trainer here. Little kids are unpredictable, loud, and behave in “odd” ways to a dog—running indoors, jumping on things, etc. It’s not uncommon to be overstimulated/over aroused by young kids. The best thing you can do is keep them separate. Put the dog away when children come over, and train kids not to approach your dog. If you think it’s more than overarousal, I’d hire a professional. If you want help managing it and can’t afford in person consults, this is a fabulous online resource. She wrote the book on reactive dogs and how to rehab them. This isn’t her “fix it” class, it’s management, but still really good. https://www.fenzidogsportsacademy.com/index.php/courses/7467 |
Anonymous
This probably isn’t what you’d like to hear, OP, but we were never able to get the reactivity to go away. We spent 3+ years working hard on it with trainers, Prozac, avoidance techniques etc. Ultimately we had to rehome the dog when the reactivity turned to our own small child. |
Anonymous
I’m not the pp you responded to, but so sorry to hear this. Who came first, dog or child? If dog, how old was the child when the dog started having problems? |
Anonymous
This is what I’m afraid of 
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Anonymous
| Try medication. Prozac or Trazadone |
Anonymous
| My dog (beagle mix) is 50-75% less reactive the rest of the day if he gets his three-mile brisk run in at dawn when there are only a few dogs out. |
Anonymous
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Extensive work with a certified veterinary behaviorist is the way to go.
https://www.dacvb.org/search/custom.asp?id=4709 |
Anonymous
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In our experience, no, it is unlikely that you will be able to train the dog out of it. We had a reactive aggressive dog. We spent thousands of dollars (yes, thousands) trying to step him down with a highly experienced behavioralist who specialized in aggressive dogs.
Eventually, we had to re-home him. We were lucky enough to have someone experienced who could take him and lived out in the country. It was either that or we would have had to put him down. |
Anonymous
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My dog that was reactive (on leash) to other dogs never improved to a point that it wasn't a problem. It got manageable. I would ask her to sit and stand between her and passing dogs. IF I did that she wouldn't (bark like a crazy dog, snarl, snap, nip, pull my arm out of it's socket, lunge, growl, bite if possible). She never got to a point where an off- leash dog running up to her was a good idea (while she was on leash). Off leash she was fine but never a possibility for a regular occurrence in my busy neighborhood. This particular dog was just fine with adults and children. A bit shy, but a child could run up and grab her and I'd be confident that she'd just sit there or at the most, look irritated at me.
Current dog is "reactive" or "aggressive" to children (not other dogs, not anything else that I've noticed). She's very afraid of small people because they are unpredictable and toddle around. She had a lot of pain early on from hip dysplasia and isn't thrilled by people who might fall on her, run around her like banshees, or pet her not-so-gently. For her, the answer has been that she lives with me (I have no children) instead of my brother (has two and their little friends come over). When we are around children (visit brother for weekends regularly) she has a pen (baby playpen gate thing) we put up to make her a safe space. If she is not in the "safe space" she is 100% supervised with the kids. The six- year old is just starting to be responsible enough to be alone with the dog. She LOVES him completely but if she's startled or hurt, it could go badly. The six-year-old is just starting to be able to control himself enough to behave carefully/nicely towards her 100% (Your six year old may vary). Last weekend, he tripped over her while she was asleep and I gasped and dog looked up with a pissed face and then put her head back down. They've been building a relationship for a long time, so I think she didn't get super upset. But just to say, the fear is still there for me (I can't imagine my nephew hurt. I would be crushed if my dog hurt someone.) and I do continue to supervise carefully. He is a particularly careful six year old and I will still supervise for a while until I'm 100% certain it'll be okay. The two year old has learned to feed the dog treats and close her in the pen. He enjoys giving her a treat once she's in the pen and closing the door. The dog likes her pen because it's her own little space and she's got her water, food dish, and a couch there. All are content with this. I can also say that I've been working with her for 3 years now and last year, a random child ran up to us and "hugged" her (she is super short and cute - not a corgi but looks a bit like one) - I was terrified, but dog just looked at me with the pissed face and when the kid let go, she ran behind me. Training can help. Not in all cases, but in my dog's it did. I also manage her pain very carefully. She takes 2 medications per day and she's had two surgeries which have reduced her pain substantially. Without the training though, I'm sure she would still be worse. TLDR ; A combination of management, training, and time. But it's never 100% gone. |