Question For Behaviourists And Trainers Options

[Hieronymus]

Hi Folks

I'm going to be working with a dog this week who appears to have developed dog reactivity from one negative interaction with two small dogs behind a fence. The dog is 10 months old.

Mt question is this, based on your experience, do dogs who generalise negative behaviours very quickly take longer to retrain than dogs whose generalisation takes place much more slowly?

I'd be interested to hear opinions

[Lindsay]

I think the thing with "aggression" is that (according to James O Heare) it's the one thing that does tend to generalise very fast with dogs. If only it didn't, but it does.

Just wondering if the dogs behind the fence are dogs the dog you will be working with still has to see/be near/pass by?

Re your question I'd probably say No but, as Sarah Whitehead says, "it depends"!

Lindsay
x

[nikirushka]

I think Sarah has it right It's practically impossible IMO to say one way or the other - it all depends on the individual dog. My boy generalised VERY quickly from an isolated incident with one other dog (and a pretty mild incident) that all entire males and all boxers of both sexes were a threat - but it took very few encounters after that with the right approach for him to get past the issue (time-wise it took two years, but about 3/4 of that time we were living somewhere with almost no entire males or boxers). He's a very confident dog, but a more nervous dog might take longer.

Indeed my last dog who was very nervous/stressy, took about 3/4 years to get comfortable enough around other dogs that she could be trusted to come back on cue so I could have hold of her, and then meet them safely.

It's all down to the dog in question.

[KB Merlin's Mum]

It only took one incident to turn Kes from a nervy lad in to a dog who barks and lunges.

Pre incident he was OK to walk past dogs and see them out and about.

Post incident, he would suddenly decide that a dog was scary and shout and lunge at it to make it go away. This partially extended to people as well.

We are getting there slowly now. I've had more days of no reaction since Christmas than I care to count
Don't want to jinx it.

We had a thorough vet check, then a behaviourist visit in June last year and have seen a trainer since then for specific help with BAT stuff.

I would say that the incident just tipped him over the edge.

Good luck with this one.

[Annieskel]

Hi Folks

I'm going to be working with a dog this week who appears to have developed dog reactivity from one negative interaction with two small dogs behind a fence. The dog is 10 months old.

Mt question is this, based on your experience, do dogs who generalise negative behaviours very quickly take longer to retrain than dogs whose generalisation takes place much more slowly?

I'd be interested to hear opinions

The dog you are going to work with is in his second fear period, as we know what happens and how it is dealt with can be with the dog for the rest of his life during this period. If this had happened at another time in his life he may not have been so frightened or this fear transferred to all dogs.

There are a lot of factors involved with turning a dog like this round, the first thing is for the dog to feel safe and know that his owner will protect him, only then can training work. How long it takes depends on this trust.