Too excited around other dogs, help?

PreciousSheltie

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With training and daycare, Precious's quiet/reserved shell definitely broke and she was able to come out and show how excited, goofy, active, jumpy she could be.

However, I see this transcending outside of the daycare facility and she has a tendency to get over excited when she see's an approaching dog - Jumping up on two legs and hopping around, pawing to get closer to the dog with her front two paws while barking and spinning to get closer TO PLAY. She's perfect when it's just regular people and can just walk by them but with dogs she wants to run over and play with them.

Barking and lunging at cars was easier to handle (as they drive in straight parallel lines.. but with other peoples dogs that I have no control over, that walk up to me even when I'm training outside and not knowing any one with a dog I trust to help me with obedience in a calm manner... it seems I just let this go and go and haven't really attempted to fix it.

I guess her problem is she gets too easily overexcited outdoors and doesn't really know how to settle and ignore/leave things and focus. She becomes really vocal with the increase of her excitement as well. She becomes 'deactivated' when she's at home or in my arms and becomes tired and groggy and just.... becomes motionless. But in contrast.. as soon as she's out, she's a bold, barky, excited, active doggy. And I'm not sure how to better control that so we can have CALMER meet and greets with other dogs without having to in the end, drag her away.

For example, if its me and 20 people in a room, she won't care about the people and will come to me and listen to her obedience runs as we show people her tricks and quirks. But flip it and it was training class and it was me and one dog on one end and another person and a dog on the opposite end. It's always impossible for Precious to ignore the other dog because of her want to sniff and play with them. On a leash it seems worse because she knows she CAN'T greet them so starts barking and stressing herself over it. I remember at training too, the other dogs would all lazily just flop on the ground, disinterested in Precious and in everything else pretty much (some were older dogs so perhaps more mature) while Precious was the only one still, an hour later, barking and making a fuss and not being able to calm down.

What ways could I approach this problem.... Is this a 'focus'ing problem? Does she need to be enforced "leave" it better? Does she need to learn how to "settle" down better? She had a few days when she'd jump up at my friends whenever she saw them approach (as a practice run to attempt to fix it) so I told them to make sure she sat and settled down calmly in a quiet sit and let them pat her without her jumping everywhere before playing with them. It's worked and she's a lot calmer around people and only plays excitedly when given the okay to after the initial calm meeting. But with other dogs, it's a completely different story. It's impossible to get her to listen to anything, to calm down, to ignore, to leave it, to anything. Why can I do next to help this? She's never aggressive, but crazy barking and spinning and uncontrolled FRIENDLY dog outdoors sometimes is a bit embarrassing and scares the more timid/quiet dogs that are calm.. Wish I could more easily control her over excitement.
 
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It's simple. If she's good, she gets to approach another dog. If she jumps up and paws the air, she does not get to go to the other dog. In fact, she has to go the other direction. Rebuke her firmly if necessary, or distract her as you walk away. Most other dogs don't appreciate this crazy puppy behavior either, and it can really get them in trouble with an unfriendly dog.

A lot of this is just you being firm. Most people are OK if you just say, "We're in training." Or you can lie and say your dog is not friendly - my friend does that one if someone she doesn't know approaches her dog. If it's someone I know I sometimes pick up Buffy while saying hi or just wave. (Picking up Buffy is her "settle" command.) She doesn't get to greet and do the sniff-sniff unless she does it nicely.

You'll see later why this is so important. Very few people appreciate your dog jumping up, especially not kids or old people. It can eventually lead to worse behavior if she gets away with it. They do grow, and while having a puppy jump up is cute, it's not nearly as cute in a grown dog. I let Buffy jump up on me, but not anyone else. She occasionally sneaks one in, but generally she will bow instead of jump.

BTW I don't agree with that thing where other random dogs have to teach your dog what is right. It's your responsibility to teach your dog the right behavior. It's like with kids. I certainly don't trust other dogs in the dog park, city, or park to socialize my dog.

Edited to add: Another idea is to socialize Precious with an older, friendly dog that you know and trust. Supervise them the whole time and give commands as you can. We did this with Buffy and a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy. He already outweighed her 30 lbs to 13 lbs when they met, but after putting up with a little crazy puppy behavior she bitched him out (arf arf ARF ARF growl ARF!) and he snapped right into line. Then he followed her around like she was his hero for the rest of the day, it was so cute.
 
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I know you will get much better training advice because I am still so new to this but we were having the same problem with Mikos. I will stop, make him sit, and say leave it when a dog is approaching and then release him and keep going when the dog has passed. It's taken a few tries but he has become much calmer with approaching dogs. This has not been as effective if a dog comes up behind us.
 
Oh yes, definitely sitting is a good idea. I just take Buffy through her commands if I want to distract her. Sit, down, watch, etc. I do her strongest, easiest ones with high-value treats.
 
It's simple. If she's good, she gets to approach another dog. If she jumps up and paws the air, she does not get to go to the other dog. In fact, she has to go the other direction. Rebuke her firmly if necessary, or distract her as you walk away. Most other dogs don't appreciate this crazy puppy behavior either, and it can really get them in trouble with an unfriendly dog.

A lot of this is just you being firm. Most people are OK if you just say, "We're in training." Or you can lie and say your dog is not friendly - my friend does that one if someone she doesn't know approaches her dog. If it's someone I know I sometimes pick up Buffy while saying hi or just wave. (Picking up Buffy is her "settle" command.) She doesn't get to greet and do the sniff-sniff unless she does it nicely.

You'll see later why this is so important. Very few people appreciate your dog jumping up, especially not kids or old people. It can eventually lead to worse behavior if she gets away with it. They do grow, and while having a puppy jump up is cute, it's not nearly as cute in a grown dog. I let Buffy jump up on me, but not anyone else. She occasionally sneaks one in, but generally she will bow instead of jump.

BTW I don't agree with that thing where other dogs have to teach your dog what is right. It's your responsibility to teach your dog the right behavior. It's like with kids.

This one is definitely a lot easier said than done. I already know 'how' to fix the problem (we've applied this same approach when she started showing hints of over reacting when greeting people on the street, now she sits quietly while people pet her) from reading a ton of training books over several years but I guess I still wanted to ask, incase I could get any revelation.

If I can get Precious to calm down and IGNORE a dog, aka walk the other way.. Then, like greeting people, is it to say that we should try to accomplish letting a dog walk by while sitting calmly without barking (we move over to the grass so we're far enough away from the sidewalk, more distance helps) but then what happens after that? If I give a release command and she AFTER CALMLY SITTING continues to be too excited and repeats her behaviours.... in your opinion, should I do the "pick up" and walk away? To let her know that it's always not okay to overall behave like she is??

I definitely already know it's important as I've definitely tried to deal with a lot of her reactivity. But it seems pet owners around here... aren't the brightest and sometimes makes me feel like I am overreacting?? People don't understand why I pick up Precious or why I ask her to calm down or why I try to avoid having the dogs meet because we're 'training'. They encourage that they're just being a puppy, or that she's so cute when she acts like that or makes it seem like I'm a bad owner for trying to "stop" her. You say some people don't appreciate it.... but here, they don't notice her at all and actually encourage her to bark (which frusterates me). I guess I just needed a sanity check as well to make sure I was doing the right things. Thanks Diana and Nancy
 
Also, any tips on how to progress with this?? Training wise. Aka I know for cars, we sat down near a bus stop that had those waiting huts and sat there and made Precious sit calmly while the cars zoomed by, many times a day. It's definitely helped.

With dogs though, should we like.. perhaps do training runs on a bench and have her sit everytime a dog walks by or something?? There's no way she can ignore a dog if we're on a narrow sidewalk and being too close to the owner, they never listen to my wishes to not have the dogs meet because I feel like that's giving Precious the yay, I got to meet the other dog while still behaving like this. So I want to do it where we're still far away but can see dogs walk by. I'd love to be able to have her socialize with an older calmer dog but again, as I said, I don't have any close friends/any one I personally know that have dogs at all. =/
 
She sounds like she is being a precocious teen to boot.

I would try a couple of things. Start on NILIF to get her to focus more on you at home so this should hopefully carry to outside home. It's a good approach generally for adolescence as it gets them to think and focus more - which their changing brain needs.

When you see another dog I would not stop and treat her. You will just be rewarding her exciteable state. Even if you have her in a sit position you are likely to be rewarding the highly excited state around other dogs. I agree with Diana on this one - walk away. As soon as she starts the behaviour she gets taken away from what is making her excited. I wouldnt say a word until she calms back down again. You may be doing a lot of backtracking, adolescents seem to take longer to learn lessons. I would actually keep doing this until she passes out of this adolescent phase, even if that is months, as you don't want this behaviour carrying into adulthood.
 
When you see another dog I would not stop and treat her. You will just be rewarding her exciteable state. Even if you have her in a sit position you are likely to be rewarding the highly excited state around other dogs. I agree with Diana on this one - walk away. As soon as she starts the behaviour she gets taken away from what is making her excited. I wouldnt say a word until she calms back down again. You may be doing a lot of backtracking, adolescents seem to take longer to learn lessons. I would actually keep doing this until she passes out of this adolescent phase, even if that is months, as you don't want this behaviour carrying into adulthood.

Hmmm so do you mean more like avoid those `kinds`of situations all together?? Aka avoid dogs until she matures?? And if she does have a run in with a dog and gets over-excited again, simply don't talk to her (as this could be rewarding her unwanted behaviour) and instead, quickly take her away from the stimulus by dragging her away or picking her up and walking away until the dog is out of sight? And then remind her to calm down if she still seems excited. Then reward her from there?? How would socilization take place then? Or I should just not until I can get Precious under control?? Should I avoid doggie daycare then??? Sorry for all the questions, I just want to make sure I can CHANGE this and change it in the right way. Precious's never been bad but I can surely see it slowly getting out of control around other dogs. I want to have things change now than later for both our benefit.
 
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Those teenage months can be VERY stressful!!!! By turning her away, you're re-directing her attention and teaching her she WON'T be able to greet and play if she's bad. I usually put mine in a SIT,STAY till the other dog passes. I don't allow mine to play with strange dogs until I'm sure BOTH dogs behavior is acceptable.
 
One answer- Gentle Leader. You dog get too much reinforcement from environment, you need to control it.
Borrow the book Shaping success by Susan Garrett, has lots of good info there.
You walk, you see the dog, your pup is ABOUT to lunge/ now that is where you are proactive/ you are doing U turn, if needed catch the leash under the clip and turn pup's face towards you, walk 6 steps back. Then Its your choice game- your dog has a choice to look back or walk nicely with you... wrong choice.. step back 6 more feet... repeat...
 
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