REACTIVITY PREVENTION & REHAB

There's no going it alone to teach calmness, prevent reactivity, find balance, and build trust and confidence. Every dog-handler team needs other dogs and handlers to help teach and rehearse calmness in the world.

Welcome Dogs Helping Dogs Members,

Dogs Helping Dogs (DHD) is just as the name suggests...dogs help each other through training setups to remain calm. Teaching and rehearsing calmness skills significantly reduces reactivity in all of the dogs in the group, including fear-based lunging/barking, over excitement to see other dogs, anxiety, and even the zoomies. DHD handlers gain knowledge and confidence in their handling skills, which brings a sense of calm to the handler and the dog when faced with challenging environmental triggers. These handling skills enhance a dog's ability to cope with the stresses they face every day, and therefore, improves their quality of life every day. In reality, these are basic skills for every dog for every day.

Dogs Helping Dogs works on calmness skills with loose-leash handling, desensitization exercises, and training setups with an established training group to help handlers and their dogs better manage their emotional response to the environment as a team. Once the handler and dog have these calm handling skills, they can incorporate them into daily training walks and maneuvering through the world.

Reactivity is typically defined as an over reaction to people or dogs, resulting in lunging, barking, snarling, which can lead to frustration and aggressive behavior. However, if we consider all behaviors that reflect dogs over emotional threshold as reactivity, the definition of reactivity can be expanded to include excessive timidness, submissiveness, anxiety, general overexcitement, and even the over-exuberant, happy zoomies. All of these unstable behaviors should be treated the same as typical reactivity because other dogs will attempt to neutralize these seemingly non-aggressive behaviors or the dog may lash out and harm another dog or person. Therefore, it is critically important to address all behaviors above emotional threshold so that dogs can approach the world in a more balanced state to keep all dogs and people safe.

Dogs Helping Dogs (DHD) meetups include training setups and handling skills to either prevent the development of reactivity or rehabilitate dogs with reactivity. When we treat all behaviors that lead to a dog not being able to listen to their handler or calm down as reactivity, we recognize the difference between reactivity and calm, neutral behavior.

A calm, neutral, and stable response to the environment promotes mutual trust between dog and handler. Handlers build trust in their dogs to react appropriately, and dogs gain trust in their handlers as their advocates and leaders. The end result of rehearsing calmness is dogs learn to defer to their handler's guidance when faced with known triggers and novel events.

Reliable calmness comes from recognizing when our dogs are approaching their emotional threshold with distractions or triggers, and working to build calm tolerance for longer periods of time. Teaching calmness amidst triggers is key; teaching the art of doing nothing as the world passes by is an essential skill to help dogs remain neutral and balanced.

Training to prevent reactivity should begin in puppyhood so that young dogs and handlers gain the necessary skills and exposure to prevent the onset of reactivity. Prevention of reactivity is so much easier than rehabilitation, and should start at 8 weeks at home, and in public after the puppy is fully vaccinated.

Here's to helping the dogs that cross our path! Giving the gift of calmness to a dog and their handler is a gift for life. My hope is that our meetups create a pay-it-forward mindset so that no dogs are isolated in their reactivity. It's a tough way to exist for dog and handler.

Dogs Helping Dogs find calmness - - one dog , trigger, exposure, and setup at a time,

Sara Shorin
and my awesome helper teams!