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.

Back to the old neighbourhood

Well, back to the hood for me and the other half, but it's always an adventure for Grey. We also got to realise how much of a micro-climate we live in here in Thanet, because we left misty cool breezes and arrived in London humid heat. We had the aircon turned up for Mr Grey in the car. The other half went boxing after picking up our load of toilet seat, hob, tap and sink. Grey and I got off the busy Hackney Road and headed for Haggerston Park and the shade. I was amazed how much it's been developed there. Really nice football pitch, tennis courts and woodland walk. Very nice. Grey stayed on the lead and we managed to mooch around in the shadows under the trees and sit on the grass. It was Grey's first five a side football match and he didn't seem too impressed. So we did some nice clicker training on eye contact and also I paid up for passing people, vans, bikes etc with nice calm acknowledgement and a look back to me.

We headed out to our old neighbourhood in London Fields. AMazing how full of people it is now. The park has definitely been recaptured by the community. It was absolutely packed full of people and picnicers. Lord knows what Grey would have done if he had been offlead in that situation. He would have probably ramraided a few and gone off with his booty.

While we were off to get some chips down Broadway Market we bumped into a vizsla and his two owners who I've met before when I'd admired him in his smart Hurtta harness with the handle at the back. It turns out this is Hamish and he know's Anna's Ziggi. Grey was quite enthusiastic about meeting Hamish, but eventually settled to lie down on his side. We strolled off our separate ways. Then we bumped into another Vizsla, Vigo and her owner who had already heard there was a slovak in Hackney. How could anyone miss Grey? He was shouting his head off outside the offlicence at the entrance to London Fields when L had gone in for some water. Funny, because he's stopped shouting like that in Margate. Grey I mean, not L! Must have been the excitement of being in London town. It made me wonder what it would be like to live back in town with a dog like Grey. I suppose we'd adapt and do more at weekends. We'd probably miss the beach and more free running.But then I don't know, I'm sure I'd find a new environment.

So we're very happy to have met some more blogging dogs. Very sorry to hear of Radio's passing, Andrea. It looks like an awful condition to strike at a young dog like that. We had a similar experience with losing both our maine coon cats, Rock and Clark at 4 years old to feline HCM. Our breeder has screened for it now. Losing a young animal like that is heartbreaking.

Back to today, we had some lunging at traffic in Hawley Street this morning. We'd started to head home from a leadwalk to the beach where we found the tide in. Boo! He seemed more on edge today. It was probably my fault that the walk turned out longer and with no offlead run first, he found it hard to deal with the traffic. It's a real trouble road for us to cross there as it is busy and we have to wait to cross. This seems to be a trigger if it is going to happen. If I keep him moving, it doesn't seem to trigger him. Once he's set off about a van, lorry or cycle, then he'll often start on all following vehicles. So still lots to do on this.

LLW and fear

Perhaps they have to be treated as too separate things? We've got the reactiveness to traffic on the road and the LLW. I've seen progress session on session in being calm when we go out on the front step and just sit and lie there on the blanket. He's got so much better and we can get down the steps to outside the house. When I add LLW on top of that it falls to pieces, so it seems like it is too much.

He is better at LLW when we go out of the side door and sort of slide onto the street. So that's something positive to work on. We had a little session getting in and out of the new car yesterday, so that was also good. Perhaps round my house is just far too busy so the best option might be for me to take him on a short drive to a quiet place like a car park and work round that. I won't jump straight back in to drive = offlead running.

We've had a carpenter in the house all week taking windows out and generally banging around. He was scared of dogs and Grey was scared of him and all the banging. So unfortunately there was a lot of barking at the beginning of the week. But by the end of the week, they were in the same room together. grey was wagging lots and then also calming down.