Help a Dog Stop Getting Excited for Walks

For this Omaha dog training session we worked with three year old lab mix cayenne; sharing tips to help a dog stop getting excited for walks.

Many people confuse excitement for happiness when it comes to dogs because they open their mouth wide her to breathe in deeper and we see that as a smile. Bit happiness is not the same as excited. And just like humans, a dog is going to have more difficulty listening or performing when they are over stimulated and excitement certainly falls into that category.

In our first couple of sessions we worked on some dog training fundamentals like introducing marker words, the importance of celebrating desired behaviors and some creative exercise tips like feeding out of a snuffle mat.

The guardians also wanted to work on Cian’s  reactivity to other dogs but after seeing this dog get super excited when they tried to put on the harness or a leash, I knew we need to work on that first.

Many dogs get super excited when we pull out the leash or put them on a harness because of a classically conditioned response. We only pick those items up right before a walk, so the dog starts getting excited. As we continue with the process, the dog excitement grows until finally the dog is so worked up at cannot listen. That’s why is super important to help a dog stop getting excited before any activities we need them to listen.

So if we dont address the excitement, then go ahead and take them out for a walk, its easy to get frustrated when they demonstrate that they are too stimulated to listen. The secret to helping a dog calm down is actually a two-part process; desensitization and counter conditioning.

How to Help a Dog Stop Getting Excited for Walks

If you have a dog that doesn’t behave on the leash or is reactive to other dogs because they are too excited, you’re actually dealing with multiple issues; reactivity, excitement and lack of training. Its our responsability to teach and train dogs how we want them to act. If we dont, its hard for them to guess what we assume they should already know.  But if we help a dog stop getting excited fist, we can make a lot more progress, much more quickly.

I knew that we needed to work on each behavior separately in order to make the best progress. In this case, we needed to teach the dog to stay calm when we go through the process of attaching their leash or putting on their harness.

If you have a dog that gets crazy excited before walks, you’re definitely gonna wanna watch this free positive dog training video below.

By breaking down the process into small steps and practicing each one over and over without moving onto the next step, we were able to make great progress. This is the easy way to teach dogs to stay calm before a walk. In fact you can use this technique for anything your dog gets excited about.

I was quite pleased to see the progress we were able to make it this short video above. Of course once we got outside, it was too much for Cayenne but we shouldn’t expect to be able to fix a dog problem in one session.

I spent a few minutes with the guardians going over their homework. It will be important for them to practice this tip to stop dogs from getting over excited multiple times a day aI spent a few minutes with the guardians going over their homework. It will be important for them to practice this tip to stop dogs from getting over excited multiple times a day without going for a walk.

The guardians will need to systematically work on all of these individual items before we can start working on the dog reactivity

• Calm when the harness is put on
• Calm when the leash is attached
• Calm when walking to the door
• Calm while opening the door
• Practicing basic obedience outside

What’s the guardians or successful with the above five categories, I asked them to give me a call so that we can schedule a follow up session or two to teach Cian not to be so reactive to other dogs.