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How to deal with over-excitement around other dogs?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Hey! Best of luck to you here as this is definitely going to be a journey. I have a rescue husky that also deals with this issue.
One of the main things we have been working on is being able to just acknowledge that other dogs exist. This is helpful if you have a friend with a dog to work on this task.
You need to find his trigger point, basically how close can he get to the other dog before he starts getting excited? Once you have a baseline of how far away you need to start you can really start working on this. My dog and I play a distraction game (i.e. "find it" - throwing small treats in the grass) before he gets over threshold. Mind you this is still like 20 yards away from another dog, but you just have to do this and slowly work on getting closer.
Redirection is what Ive heard it called.
This is what a trainer suggested and we are working on that. But once we are close enough he is out of control. How do I get him to interact more calmly with other dogs?
Thank you for sharing your work flow with your dog, this helps!
This is the hardest part, you have to find his threshold point. It might be a football field space away from the other dog. Playing games like "find it" help, or if you have your dog trained to "look", because then you can say "look at the other dog". Once he will look and not react you walk away and then next time move.slowly closer.
Acknowledge the other dog exists and reward him when he doesn't react.