Are you a reactive Dog owner?

If the answer is yes, then I feel for you. 

I know EXACTLY what it’s like. 

When all other parts of your life are awesome you go and land yourself with a Dog that’s reactive and now you find yourself spending all of your time trying to find out how to resolve it.

The problem is, nothing seems to be working. You’ve seen trainers, invested financially and spent hour after hour training but you just can’t replicate what you’ve been shown or maybe, no trainer has managed to even show you!

Well, I’m here to tell you that the answer to solving reactivity is actually quite simple.

If I owned your dog, within a few days I’d have it under control and we would be enjoying a mutually beneficial relationship together.

How come? Because I’ve spent year after year working with reactive Dogs.

17 Years to be exact, that is when I owned my first reactive Dog. He was reactive to literally everything. Cars, bikes, dogs, animals, people….the list went on and on. He made my life a misery until some Five Years later when I finally found a trainer good enough to help me. You see, Dog trainers aren’t all created equal. Just like you get good mechanics and bad mechanics you get Dog trainers who can, and dog trainers who can’t! Most of them can’t!

The problem for dog trainers is that you aren’t as good as they are. The reason that’s a problem is because unless you can behave like a dog trainer you won’t get the results that a dog trainer gets.

The problem for you is that most dog trainers aren’t good enough to teach you in a simple and effective manner how to replicate what they do and if they can’t do that, they can’t get you results.

I’ve spent the last 11 years studying how the average dog owner untrains a fully trained dog, working out what it is they are doing differently to me that means the dogs behaviour deteriorates so quickly and then reverse engineering my findings to help you get very good very quickly.

You see, it’s not the dog that is the problem. It’s your ability to effectively communicate with each other that keeps your success at bay.

So, what are the keys to solving reactivity? I’m afraid there are too many to list here but let’s talk about the biggest one. TIMING!

You will have heard many times before that you need good timing to train a dog, but how many trainers have taught you the skill of good timing? The fact is, you already have great timing. You just need to know how to apply it to your dog and how that can then help you solve your reactivity issues.

The reason I say you have good timing is because if you can drive a car, your timing is as good as mine. If we were driving, side by side towards traffic lights and they turned red, we would both hit the brakes at around the same time. You may even be faster than me.

The reason your timing in that situation is very good is because you are anticipating the lights changing and if you knew what you were looking for you could anticipate your dogs reactive behaviour also. By having better timing when handling your dog you have a dramatically improved chance of success.

To help you understand how to see what I see and how to anticipate your dogs behaviour, I want to explain the behaviour chain to you.

Every single problem behaviour has a behaviour chain and by understanding it you can immediately improve your timing.

It’s a 10 step process. Number 1 is the start of the problem. Number 10 is the bit you want to stop. The earlier you interrupt the chain, the easier it is.

In the case of reactivity;

1=dog spots the distraction 2=pupils dilate 3=Ears lift 4=body tenses 5=pauses 6=leans forward 7=steps forward 8=engages rear legs 9=lunges 10=barks/growls etc

The red line surrounding steps 8,9,10 shows where you react to your dogs behaviour.

The green line surrounding steps 1,2,3 shows where I react.

By reacting earlier I have a much higher chance of interrupting the behaviour chain thus helping my dog not react and take another step towards completely solving a reactivity issue.

I keep telling people that dog training is really simple. What isn’t so simple is training dog owners to do the things that skilled trainers do and how to think the way that skilled trainers think. I’d place money on the fact you are sat there thinking about how much sense this article has made. 

Now, there is more to it than this but I hope you get the idea. If you would like to know how to interrupt your dog earlier, what technique to interrupt it with and every other important concept and technique which we use to help owners across the World transform their dogs behaviour and subsequently their quality of life I have just launched a video of a training session worth £695 showing each and every step and you can get your FREE copy by following this link 

Now, there is obviously more to it than this but I hope you get the idea. If you would like to know how to interrupt your dog earlier, what technique to interrupt it with and every other important concept and technique which we use to help owners across the World transform their dogs behaviour and subsequently their quality of life I have just launched a completely new Ebook which explains the whole process from start to finish. You can get your copy now by…