Our Aussie puppy is almost 9 months old now and for the past 4 months has gotten increasingly more reactive to dogs on walks. He's not scared or anything, he just want to say hi so badly. Anyway, when he was a puppy when never allowed on-leash greetings, he never really cared about dogs on walks, we started puppy course at 4 months old and he was really the one puppy who could just sit next to us calmly and mind his own business. But then progressively he started pulling or barking at dogs. Not all the time at first, not at all dogs. Not on all days. Then it went to "if he sees a dog, no matter from how far he will have a meltdown". He also got barky at bikes and joggers for a couple of weeks but he seems fine with it now 80% of the time, even if they pass right next to him.
Nowadays if the dogs are somewhat far away he can potentially pass it if we react immediately by calling him, distracting him and keep moving. He will look back and stare, then run to us, look back and stare, come to us etc. Some days we can pass a dog on the other side of the street that way, some days he can't. We really can't predict what kind of day it is, so for now, until the storm passes a bit (we have read that at his age mpulse control is basically offline while arousal is peaking and that is very very obvious with him) we focus on prevention and management to avoid him rehearsing the behaviour. We had done passive training before it got too bad, and we will do again when he's a state when he can handle that but right now he really can't. We are very proactive about it, we choose locations that are quite remote, at quite times, and change route anytime we see a dog, before he can see it, or distract him as best as we can if he has had time to see it, and 70% of the time we have walks without problems, but even with all our efforts to prevent encounters, it still happens. I get so worried that he still get to rehearse that and that it will become and issue we will have to actively work on later on and for some time but I don't see how we could avoid 100% of the dog all the time…
If you have been through the same struggle, how did you manage? And did it get better?
submitted by /u/Elixiane
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