Managing Reactivity

Grey in his TTouch body wrap. Totally crashed out last night after we got home.

Grey has been really reactive to traffic again. So we've had to go back to basics on dealing with this. I'm going through a process of getting him to look at me and engage with me when he has seen a van or lorry come before he starts to stiffen and react. I'm thinking of ordering Control Unleashed as a lot of what I'm trying to do sounds like it's covered in there. Yesterday I had a horrible walk with him in the evening where he was basically very tense and totally alert. When stopped from charging around he started lunging and barking at everything. I managed to calm him down eventually and did some more TTouch on him.

We'd been out to see a lady called Jacqui at the weekend who is a TTouch practitioner. She was really lovely and Grey really liked her. We have some techniques to work through and the body wrap which I just use a horse tail bandage. The names of the TTouches we're using are: clouded leopard, raccoon, mouth touch, ear touch, belly lift, tail touch. There is another we do that I can't remember the name of. I took heart from the positive stories I've heard from Jacqui and another couple of friends who have worked through problems with reactive dogs and they have come through it.

More info on TTouch:
UK TTouch Team
http://www.ttouchtteam.com/
TTouch on Youtube

Today has been a much better day. I did small training walks in front of the house. Just hanging out on the corner puppy style being calm near the traffic. Then in the park (once traffic had died down and it was quiet) I've long lined him so he's not been charging around. We pottered around and did a bit of scentwork. I'm going to work up to letting him off in the next few days. He was fine on the walk home and we managed to get back on the flat collar by clickering him increasing 1 step at a time 300 peck heeling all the way home.