A message to all my concerned friends with reactive dogs.
Hello, I also have a large dog, he weighs around 30 kilos, and like all of us who have reactive dogs, I’m searching for anything possible to help him harmonize with the world and, in a way, be a “normal” dog.
From my experience, what I’m understanding is that my dog, in any situation, always gets excited—he’s not calm. I take him out for a walk and he gets really happy, jumps all over the place, and it’s hard to put the leash on him. When we go outside, it’s the same around other dogs. I usually take him out at night, so he builds up energy throughout the whole day. When I get home from work, he also gets very excited. You start to notice his pupils dilate and that he makes very abrupt movements. Just paying attention, you can tell he’s not calm.
However, I know that when my dog is calm, it’s much easier for him to interact with others. So what do I mean by this? It’s a real challenge to maintain his calm state, but I think what I’m aiming for now is precisely to encourage calmness in any situation.
There’s something trainers do called desensitization, which means that all the triggers, for example the leash and things like that, you gradually wait for him to get used to them and calm down on his own. For instance, when he sees the leash, he goes crazy. But if I pick up the leash and don’t take him out, it might take some time, but sooner or later, after a while, he’ll become desensitized to the leash.
And that’s the day we go for a walk. So it seems to me that’s the path. However, I’m in the same situation as all of you—it requires a lot of energy, and I also think that maybe taking him somewhere else or sending him to some kind of program could be an option.
But at the same time, I really want my dog to be well and to feel good. So it’s very difficult. I have to see whether I have the conditions to handle it—that’s something I always ask myself. But I see that here, in this forum, we all have the same concerns, and I trust that it’s possible, but it really takes a lot of energy. And in fact, they also teach us not to react to their reactivity. So it’s quite a dilemma.
Im from argentina so i use the traductor