I was feeling rather hopeless about his reactivity issues a few days ago. A little, yappy poodle came out of a building right in front of us, another dog was right behind us, and in his frantic desire to eat the poodle, Tom actually clawed opened scratches into his muzzle, trying to get his halti off.
I certainly wouldn't advocate using a halti on a dog that is that uncomfortable with it, however, he doesn't mind it whatsoever when there are no other dogs around, and also I feel like I have much more control over him than I would with a harness, and in the city I feel like I need that amount of control over him.
Anyway, I kind of felt like until Tom goes to his forever home, it's just going to be a cycle of me working with him until he's comfortable close to other dogs, he'll be pushed over his threshold, and we'll start all over.
However, we've made a lot of progress in the past few days and so far, nothing's happened to set us back. Even today, a jogger with a small dog ran up behind us, really close, and Tom noticed, and pawed at his face when I ran him across the street, but he stopped with a vocal correction and regained his composure almost immediately.
We have been doing the "Look at that!" game from Control Unleashed. (Available at www.cleanrun.com).
The look at that game is a training game designed to desensitize dogs to stimuli. You start with things that are "interesting" but not necessarily upsetting or frustrating, (ie. something the dog displays a lot of interest in without trying to run to, pull towards, bark at, etc). So they should be staring and engaged, but not reacting. Things we like to do this with are: people, birds, blowing leaves or litter, cars, sirens, etc. With Tom, we're using wheelie suitcases, people with brooms or shovels, and people with rustling paper bags.
To do this, your dog must be able to recognize a marker (this is most commonly a clicker, but can be any vocal or noise cue, like a whistle or word). So if you haven't begun clicker training, now is a good time to start (or "load" the clicker).
It's fairly simple. When your dog notices a low-level stimuli, you mark and reward. You want to mark BEFORE you produce a treat from your pocket, the bag, or wherever you keep your treats. Eventually, your dog will learn "something interesting = reward is coming" so they will turn towards you after recognizing the interesting thing in order to get their reward. The dog's neural response towards stimuli will start to change through classical conditioning, and it will be easier for them to relax when they see something intriguing.
Tomorrow, we're attempting to go to an Adopt-A-Thon. I say attempt because our carpool consists of two beagle puppies, and if Tom wants to eat them, that won't be happening. He rode here okay in a crate next to another big dog, though, so we'll see. If he doesn't do well, I'll go alone with pictures and hopefully find someone interested in taking the big wiggly lapdog off my hands.
