Nahla the Reactive German Shepherd

We’ve just started working with Nahla the German Shepherd puppy who is reactive towards people and dogs.

She’s over excited by dogs and anxious around people, however I believe she actually enjoys reactivity, like a lot of German shepherds do given their breeding.

There is 4 reasons that a dog does any behavior:

• Access

• Attention

• Escape

• Sensory

For most reactivity cases, it’s either escape, access or attention from the trigger. In this case, the reactivity is for attention from her owners. Although I don’t see this too often, I had 2 cases this week that are the same.

Sadly, Nahla had another trainer that thought that the way to fix this is just slap her across the face when she reacted. It isn’t, and her owners knew this which is why they came to me.

This week, we set up to for success, allowed her to process the environment and make the right choices which her owners can then reinforce and give her the attention that she wants.

Her reactivity distance is pretty big, but we halved that this week with me and since our session, she hasn’t reacted to anymore people or dogs. This is always our goal, stop the behaviour issue there and then and retrain back into the desired environment - it’s a win win for everyone involved!

Nahla will do great, as she already is

Well done

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