How To Stop Dog Reactivity When Out for a Walk

In this Omaha dog training session we worked with Pepper, a three-year-old Australian Cattle dog, who needed help to stop dog reactivity and get along with other dogs.

After I arrived I sat down to chat with Pepper’s guardian about his main dog behavior concerns. His main concern was that while Pepper got along with a few select dogs, she didn’t get along with most dogs which stopped him from being able to bring her many places. When working with a dog reactive dog we want to try to allow the dog to be in as much control as possible while keeping everyone safe. I introduced the basics of the Behavior Adjustment Training method or BAT which you can watch below.

As you can see in the video we made the most of our environment to find dogs while out for a walk. This gave us the ability to work in the most natural environment possible with Pepper. The guardian will want to continue to take Pepper out for walks and work on the exact same behaviors that we did in this video, to help her overcome her reactivity to other dogs over time. He can also set up intentional dog training sessions with friends or family members to introduce Pepper to new dogs slowly.

By the end of the session Pepper was able to walk calmly on the leash and successfully move away from dogs that she initially reacted to. To keep up with this good behavior her guardian will want to work with Pepper as often as he can to get her comfortable around a variety of different dogs and slowly work up to bringing her to dog parks and inviting dogs into the home. We wrapped up this dog behavior training session with Pepper’s Roadmap To Success video, which you can watch below.