Reactive Dogs - Part II

After Tuesday's events, I figured Iris would be a complete bitch in class on Wed. Not so! I'd say she was pretty average on her scale of reactivity.

For the last couple months, we've been going to a reactive agility dogs class. The emphasis is on getting your dog to work around other dogs without exploding. Not an easy thing for a certain red dog! The class we're in now is usually 3-4 dogs - a very little Poodle, a Border Terrier, and a Bernese Mountain Dog.

The class starts with everyone walking the dogs in a circle around the room. Heel position isn't important, just loose-leash walking. It gives the dogs a chance to settle in and see the other dogs moving around a little bit. Even this is hard for Iris. When we started taking the class, I was tossing treats on the floor pretty much every time Iris took a step. "Hey, you just took one step without exploding! Cookies rain from the sky!" She's gotten better and will usually take treats from my hand. We switched classes a few weeks ago, so the dogs in class are relatively new to Iris, which means Iris got worse again. Not horrible, but if either of the other dogs moves too quickly (in Iris' opinion) or make any noise, she'll get in a couple woofs.

Next, the dogs spread out around the room and they all do one obstacle each simultaneously (everyone is on leash). Carolyn has been having all of the dogs do a jump first and then everyone switching to something else, usually a contact obstacle. Moving dogs, especially if they're doing something that makes noise (like running across the dogwalk), are the biggest trigger for Iris. This part is HARD for her. Getting her to go over one jump while there's a dog on the other side of the room going over one jump is not easy for her. She has a tendency to walk through the jump if she's trying too hard to watch the other dogs. This is BY FAR the most difficult thing we work on in class.

For the last couple weeks, we've worked on having one dog off-leash doing one obstacle (last week it was the dogwalk) while the other dogs lay down on matts nearby. Iris actually does better with this. She has no problem with working while the other dogs are laying down quietly (which is close to what she's used to for agility class anyway), and she does pretty good about laying down while the other dogs work. She's not really relaxed, but she's not exploding either. I end up doing sort of a combination of asking her for attention and playing the "look at that" game while we wait.

The biggest accomplishment of the week is that the events of Tues did NOT seem like a major setback for Iris. She wasn't any more reactive in class that she usually is, and she's certainly still less reactive than when we started the class. Big sigh of relief!