One of the aggressive or reactive behaviors we discussed was leash aggression or leash reactivity. This behavior is usually seen when a dog is on leash and either lunges or barks or otherwise negatively reacts to a stimulus – most typically a person or another dog – but would ordinarily not react this way off leash. So, going back to our initial question: can a dog such as this succeed at doggie day care or overnight care and how can that happen?
In short, the answer is yes. There are two ways to think about this issue in the context of pet care: do we just want to keep everyone safe when moving the aggressive/reactive dog to and from playgroup or the lobby or do we want to try and mitigate the behavior? The answer dictates the “how” the pet care facility needs to perform.
Problem Avoidance: If the goal is simply to safely transport the dog while on leash, then the doggie day care/overnight care facility starts with managing the dog’s environment. In most dog day care facilities, there are options when it comes to paths of travel. For dogs that are leash reactive/aggressive, taking the path of travel with the least number of interactions with other people or dogs is the first course of action. For particularly high-risk dogs, alerting all other people working in and around that area (with or without other dogs) to avoid your path of travel is an additional effective step. A dog day care or overnight care facility caring for such dogs should have appropriate tools for internal communications, such as walkie-talkies. Lastly, because not everyone may know the proclivity of a leash reactive/aggressive dog, the dog’s enclosure (suite, room, etc.) should be clearly marked as should the dog him or herself. At Pet Camp, for example, dogs that need to walked to and from play group by themselves have yellow break away collars as distinct from the white, red, blue, or green collars we use on other dogs (yes, we have almost everything color coded). Using these tools, a dog can be safely moved from place to place within a pet care facility.
Behavior Mitigation: If the goal is to modify the behavior (in addition to keeping everyone safe while the dog moves about the pet care facility) additional steps are required. First, as with all dog training, go slow! Even if you are going to allow the dog to be exposed to stimuli, you want to proceed slowly and with care to avoid over stimulating the dog.
First, make sure that the dog knows the “look,” “watch-me,” or “name recognition” command. We teach this command as part of Pet Camp’s Camper Cadet Level 1, and this is critical for allowing you to get the dog to re-direct attention away from the negative stimuli and towards you. Next make sure you have high value treats ready to go – you want to make the reward of looking at you and getting these treats more important (of higher value to the dog) than reacting to the stimuli. Third, anticipate the reaction. Now because this is taking place at a pet care facility and not just out-and-about, you can both limit the negative stimuli and control when the stimuli are administered (i.e., when the dog does and does not see another dog). By using all three of these steps, even a leash reactive/aggressive dog can often be both safely moved and begin to become desensitized to the other dogs while on leash.
To sum up, a leash aggressive/reactive dog should be able to successfully attend both dog day care and overnight care at a pet care facility. With trained staff, the pet care facility should be able to successfully move the dog to and from play group or other areas of the pet care facility and depending on the aspirations of the pet parent even work on training such that the dog’s aggression/reactivity is lessened over time.
Thanks for reading.