This week in our reactivity workshop we are going to cover what skills you as the human need. We want to be sure you feel prepared with your training skills before we bring your dog into the mix.

First things first, we need to define what your dogs triggers are. What is it that causes your dog to have a reaction? Some common triggers are other dogs, people, bikes, squirrels, strollers ect. Make a list of what your dog reacts to and what the reaction looks like. For example: Larry reacts to other dogs on leash and people with umbrellas. When Larry has a reaction his ears perk, his body stiffens, he begins barking, growling and lunging towards the trigger. Having a list of what your dogs triggers are and what their reactions look like will help you to navigate what you need to look out for.

Next we want to find out what kind of food your dog is motivated by. I always like to chose something of the highest value, human grade food, we are talking chicken, hot dogs or cheese. I find it helpful to chose what ever your dogs absolute favorite is and make that snack exclusive to reactivity training. For example Larry only ever gets chicken when we are out on a walk and he sees a trigger from a safe distance. Chose what this extra awesome food is for your dog, and always have it on hand to use exclusively for leash reactivity training.

It is extremely important what when we are working with our leash reactive dogs we do not put them in a place where they will not be successful. We always want to prioritize our dogs emotional well being, in order to do this distance needs to be our friend. At this point you may not be in a place where you can walk on the same side of the street as another dog and that is ok.

We want to try our best to keep our dogs under threshold. What is threshold? Threshold is defined as how close you can get before a reaction happens. In order to break down how threshold looks I like to explain this in green, yellow and red zones.

A green zone is going to be anywhere your dog is calm, relaxed and able to learn easily. Your dog is under threshold here. This is usually in your home, perhaps on an early morning walk when less triggers are present or maybe a certain area you know there are less triggers. This zone is a great place to work on easy things like leash walking, basic behaviours or tricks.

Your yellow zone is going to be when there is a trigger present that your dog sees but it is at enough distance that your dog is not having a reaction. Your dog should still be under threshold here but they may go over if we don't manage this zone correctly. In this zone you will likely see some changes in your dogs body language as they see the trigger. For some dogs they may see a dog from across the street or for others you might be 2 blocks away from the trigger in a yellow zone. The distance a dog can tolerate is different for every dog. This is the zone where we want to do our counter conditioning exercise we will get into next week.

A red zone is going to be when your dog has gone over threshold. They have gotten too close to the trigger and are having a reaction. Unfortunately this will happen but we want to do our best to avoid getting into red zones. Use your environment to take distance and create barriers from a trigger such as taking a uturn or hiding behind a car. You want to avoid red zones at all costs because unfortunately no learning will happen here.