Is she normal? (semi-long)

I agree with another poster about barrier frustration, or "leash agression". It is very possible that her bad experience with the neighbor dog has caused a generalized fear of other dogs. This happened with my pup Maddie when she was about 8 months old, and now she's 1 1/2 and slowly getting better.

I believe 6 months is also round about a fear period. Again, my dog went through this stage where she refused to walk - I ended up dragging her and that was not good. Luckily she will work for food, so I rewarded each step forward with a treat. Within a few weeks she found her courage again, and now she pulls!

As for barking and chasing everything, I can tell you what is working for my dog. I tried treats, but she was already at the peak of her excitement, so the treats only added "fuel to the fire". I tried verbal corrections, which she completely ignored - like a kid having a temper tantrum. I finally resorted to a water pistol, and voila! It was like magic. 3 or 4 reminders (squirt in the face) seemed to snap her brain out of her manic panic. I have only used this method within the house, for cat chasing, vacuum attacking, and door barking, and now after only a few reminders, I do not need to use the squirt bottle at all. It is a negative reinforcement, which I try to avoid, but for Maddie it was the only thing that worked. I paired the squirt with a verbal correction, and now I only need the verbal correction. Your pup is young and these issues will take time. Sounds like you are on the right track. Try tackling one issue at a time.

Just another suggestion regarding walks - have you tried exercising her BEFORE your walk? When I do this with my pup, I notice a BIG difference in her reactivity. She doesn't pull nearly as much, and just seems overall a lot calmer. When I walk her WITHOUT exercise, she is like a racehorse out of the starting gate.
 
Dr. Shelli,

I love the peanut butter idea when they bark but would that not reinforce the barking? I see rereading is that you get them quiet and then praise. Zak is pretty good except when he hears something to bark at and I have not figured out his off switch yet. Spraying water will not work as he will lick it. LOL Have not tried the penny can with him, that worked great on Maggie and to this day you just mention the penny can and she stops.
 
Welcome to the forum !

I'm a huge fan as well regarding Controlled Unleashed and continue with my two year old Snap in a CU group once a month. It has really helped.

One thing you can perhaps carry with you on your walks in an urban setting is a tug of some sort, whether rope or a "padded stick" type. I find that they come in handy to use to divert attention from something else to you, build relationship, and momentarily stop the barking.

If all else fails on my walks with Snap, as it occasionally does, I simply do a U-Turn and / or pick him up and remove him from "the situation".
 
One thing that we did in my training was "arching."

When dogs normally meet, they want to sniff each others rear ends. They naturally arch their body. It is unnatural for them to go head on into something that they have anxiety about. Think about if a knife wielding man was walking the room and your partner was covering your eyes, restraining you, trying to distract you....it just isn't going to work.

How you do the "arching" with the dogs, is if you see an obstacle in the road in front of you, you walk "around" the obstable. Ie...if you see a runner coming at you, cross the street (if it is a busy road), or walk off the sidewalk and into the road if it is a quiet one. The distance that you arch away from the object should be exactly when the dog relaxes. The more practice you get, the closer to the scary objects you can get.

Here is video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY7JrteQBOQ
 
Dr. Shelli,

I love the peanut butter idea when they bark but would that not reinforce the barking? I see rereading is that you get them quiet and then praise. Zak is pretty good except when he hears something to bark at and I have not figured out his off switch yet. Spraying water will not work as he will lick it. LOL Have not tried the penny can with him, that worked great on Maggie and to this day you just mention the penny can and she stops.

Actually Pike's barking got worse with spray bottles, shake cans and other aversions that other trainers told her to do because it was a stress response. It morfied into this low quiet yip. It was constant yp yip yip his eyes would dart around, he would duck and you could tell he was looking for the correction that would make him stop but he couldn't. Since he was never quiet you couldn't praise him for being quiet. The more he got stressed the worse it was. The PB gave him something else to think about. Plus when scary things showed up so did PB, it associated bad things with good so his would relax and look for the PB. It was classial conditioning like Pavlov and his bell. Then we associate the word quiet with the behavior and the reinforcer via operative conditoning and problem was solved. I doubt he would have ever stopped barking unless he shut down with other methods.
 
The shaking can did the same thing - made Deska bark worse, and now he barks at drink cans! As for the water pistol, we tried that for the car chasing but he was already so hyped up it actually made him attack the car. So be very careful using these techniques.
 
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