Jasper the Reactive Border Terrier

I’ll be honest, I could have got away without posting about Jasper today. Although we stuck to the shade, he was a bit too warm to train, so we quickly called this off.

In the short time we had, though, we had some nice results.

Dogs react more when their lead is tight, it causes tension and restricts their options to run away if needed.

For most reactivity cases, our first step is to remove tension by using a long line, then setting the dog up to make a good choice, which is looking at the other dog, then looking back without reacting. We then reinforce this choice, and other dogs start becoming positive predictors of goodies, rather than scary stuff that they need to make go away.

Remember, this type of behavior is driven by emotions - so change the emotion and the behavior goes away. A lot of trainers will change the behavior with force, then tell you the dog is fixed - it’s not. Your dog isn’t fixed until happy.

So anyway, Jasper is doing fab and there were plenty of opportunities for him to react today and he chose not to.

Go Jasper!

If this case sounds like your dog and you are having a similar issue, or a different issue entirely, book a FREE assessment call with us by clicking HERE.