Tips to Help a Dog With Some Human and Dog Reactivity Issues

For this Omaha dog training session we were called in to help Chino, a 5 year-old Pitbull mix who has human and dog aggression issues.

Chino is one lucky dog. Many people surrender dogs when they show signs of aggression or the people are in denial; hiding the dog away, failing to meet its needs then complaining the dog’s aggression isn’t getting better.

Not Chino’s guardians, they reached out for help multiple times and found a dog walker named Zach who is working with them to build a relationship so he can help by getting Chino much needed exercise and stimulation. Zach deserves some props for this as many dog walkers simply go on to the next, “easier” dog. But Zach has been a consistent presence, patiently working with the dog and family. The world needs more people like Chino’s parents or Zach.

Because of how reactive to people he is, we spent the session exclusively working with the humans as Chino was too reactive to participate. When a dog is reactive, its a dog version of hysteria and they are not going to learn anything. In Chino’s case, the humans are in the best position start the process of modifying the dog’s aggressive behavior. I recorded a medley of tips in a video for everyone that you can watch in the video below.

In addition to those dog behavior tips, there are a number of exercises the humans can learn and teach that dog that will help.

• Teaching Chino to be calm instead of excited for things he likes. This is a great way to develop self control. Training a dog to stay calm when being leashed up is a great exercise for this.
• Teaching a dog to be calm before letting it out of its kennel is another great way to develop some self control.
• Training Chino to wait for permission to go through an open door is another wonderful control-building exercise.
• Teaching him to leave it is a very utilitarian command that Chino’s humans can use to direct him to ignore or move away from things on his own.
• The other side of the coin is to teach a dog to drop things it already has taken possession of.
• Teaching a dog to get off furniture on command will also come in handy.
• The Out command is another helpful thing that will come in handy.
• This exercise will help motivate Chino to use the dog bed his parents got him (that he never uses).
• Rewarding Chino for looking at things he normally disagrees with is a great way to stop a dog from acting aggressively to things they don’t like.
• Here are some creative ways to exercise Chino.
• For dogs, a lack of rules confuses them into thinking they have the same rank and authority as the humans. Introducing and consistently enforcing rules is a great way to help a dog see its humans as leaders.

I want the guardians to practice the above exercises for the next month or so before we discuss if a follow up session is needed. Most of these things are things specific to the humans Chino lives with. In many cases, once the humans change their contributing behaviors, the dog follows suit.

That said, its common for dogs with aggression issues to need a follow up visit or plan to extinguish the root cause of the aggression. If Chino is still acting aggressive to new people in a month or so, we may need to start some Behavior Adjustment Training (BAT), but time will tell..

To help the humans remember all the Dog Psychology tips we shared in this in home dog training session, we recorded a roadmap to success video.