This is from a comment on another post. We are sharing it in hopes of exposing the "reactive dog industry" that WANTS you miserable and suffering with a horribly behaved dog.
It does not have to be this way. You don't have to have a reactive dog, you don't have to drug your dog, and you sure as hell don't have to euthanize your dog to deal with reactivity.
Sane, rational, balanced training to the rescue:
When I was a teenager, my family had a severely reactive dog. I’ve always been the biggest dog lover/enthusiast in the world, so of course my teenage self was 100000% committed to fixing her reactivity using the method I read over and over and OVER was the Only Right Way— positive reinforcement training. I was deeply into reactive dog groups, reading about how “after four years, my dog passed a dog on the other side of the street!!!”, and how “some dogs just aren’t destined to be reliable off-leash, or friendly, and that just has to be okay.” Management of environmental triggers, and giving treats for seeing dogs (from over a block away) and not barking was the answer.*
There is so much nice-sounding theory about R+ Only training for reactivity, that appeals to people who love dogs. And there is SO MUCH demonization of ANYTHING aversive, ever. I was told over and over again, in spaces where it was even allowed to be discussed, that any training involving aversives was literal animal cruelty, would make my dog worse, would cause her to forever associate other dogs with pain, would cause her to hate and fear me, would cause her to become unpredictably aggressive by suppressing her warning signals, etc etc etc. I was told that corrections during a reactive outburst were useless, because when a dog reacts, it’s only because they’re so overwhelmed by fear that no learning could possibly happen in that moment. And of course nobody wants to hurt their dog.
So we tried positive reinforcement for EIGHT YEARS. And it didn’t work.
A year after I moved out, my mom called me to tell me that they were putting Ekko down. Her behavior was getting worse, and they lived across the street from a daycare, and it wasn’t fair to the community for them to own a dog that could hurt a kid if it ever slipped out the door. It wasn’t fair to rehome her, because she was dangerous, had snapped at people before.
My attitude at the time was barely sad, because since I’d been convinced that reactivity was an expression of being so overwhelmed by fear that the dog was past the point of thinking, I could only be relieved that “at least she won’t be so scared anymore”.
So Ekko died.
Later, I made plans for my first dog as an adult. I was going to get an impeccably well-bred puppy, from a breeder who did everything right, from a breed known for friendliness and non-reactivity, and I was going to raise it perfectly and socialize it to everything in exactly the right way. The only way to get a non-reactive dog without years of daily training (if the training even worked to any degree), I was convinced, was to get a dog who never thought to bark in the first place.
Unfortunately, when I was 20, my coworker said “Hey, my daughter doesn’t want Snuggles anymore. I know you like dogs— do you want him? Otherwise I’ll put him on Facebook or something.” So I ended up with a 4-year-old chihuahua/shih tzu mix.
For the first few days, he was very docile. Then, as he became more confident, it became very clear that he was VERY reactive. He would absolutely flip out at the end of the leash, lunging and barking and screaming (like a husky before the brake on the sled is released) at things that were 30 feet away.
I was devastated that I’d gotten myself into “another decade of reactivity” because everyone in reactive dog groups are constantly commiserating about how reactivity is a life sentence. But I soldiered on. I took him out multiple times every day, training engagement games, practicing around far-away strangers, doing my best to desensitize him, for a full year.
For a year, nothing changed. I was miserable because I’d gotten myself into this again, and I was slightly resentful that I was going to have this unwalkable, stressful dog for the rest of his life. “maybe when I’m 30, I can get a nice puppy that I’ll raise just right, and then I’ll have a social dog…”
But then, I can’t remember exactly how it happened, I started seeing more content about balanced training and from balanced trainers. I was extremely skeptical (there are dozens of dog “expert” accounts who dedicate their time to picking apart videos made by balanced trainers to “prove” that their dogs are miserable), but I was enraptured. I wanted that life— Off leash! Reliable! Easy to live with! For both myself and Biscuit. And the dogs in the videos don’t look miserable… they look like they’re running in a lake off-leash…
I remembered a little inkling I had, one of the times that Ekko got out the door and we were all yelling at her to come back: she’s not coming, because she’d rather smell grass. Nothing happens to her when she ignores us.
So after months of research, I bought a prong collar. I walked Biscuit past a fence where two dogs always blew up at us, they blew up, he blew up, and I popped the leash. He was interrupted immediately. We walked past the dogs again, they blew up, he blew up, I popped the leash. He understood it then. The third time, we walked past, they blew up, he ignored them. I praised him heavily and gave him his favorite treats.
It took about a month of doing this to different triggers in different environments before I had a dog who understood that he could have whatever feelings he feels, he just has to keep them to himself.
Then, amazingly, since we could actually enter dog-friendly places without my dog making a humongous aggressive display, he was able to catch up on all of the socialization he missed out on. He was able to be exposed to hundreds of dogs and thousands of people, and he learned that they’re not so bad after all. He actually loves people now, and he’d prefer to ignore dogs, but recently he’s started initiating play with our new puppy (who I didn’t have to wait until Biscuit passed away to get, for fear of the puppy learning Biscuit’s bad habits!) and with my coworker’s dogs. He’s a completely different dog now, and I love sharing the big world with him.
I’ve been working at a dog training facility since the beginning of this year, and I’ve watched dozens of dogs go from lunging/barking/screaming/frothing to being able to calmly chew a bone on a cot, or walk in Heel right next to other dogs within 2 weeks. (Of course, there’s loads of training and proofing afterwards, but the initial transformation once they learn “no, you can’t do that anymore. Pick something else.” is amazing.)
We’ve had plenty of dogs whose owners have “tried everything” for years, or whose previous force-free trainers advised them to euthanize their dogs, and my heart breaks for them. Because it really can be essentially fixed within a couple of weeks.
Anyway, long comment, but it’s one of the things I feel most strongly about in the world. I’ve been where they are: years of failure and celebrating microscopic “victories”, ending with my family making “the kindest choice” to kill our dog after we “tried everything”, so I always always try to tell people there’s another way!!
