Seven steps to solving your Terrier's reactivity

The seven steps to solving your Terriers Reactivity

Do you wish your Terrier would stop barking at other dogs or people. OR maybe they kick off at kids, cyclists or other triggers. Here is the formula you need to work through to help them overcome these issues.

Step One

Make sure your Terrier is medically well. While it might not feel connected, undiagnosed medical problems can really contribute to reactivity and overall stress in your dog. Imagine if you had a constant niggling pain and then someone you didn’t like started to push your boundaries, or if you were worried to have a dog come near you because playing with dogs previously had always led to pain.

The most common issues faced by Terriers are luxating patellas (the Terrier skip) and gut health issues, often leading to skin itch and ear problems.

Step Two

Optimise diet, sleep and exercise. Much like people dog’s will always be less stressed and able to perform better on a good diet, when getting enough sleep and getting plenty of exercise. 

I’m not here to preach about certain forms of diet as being better than any other, neither am I qualified to do so. But it is my experience that getting your Terrier on to a diet that suits them and is of the best quality possible be in itself a big game changer for your dogs reactivity and mood. Sleep is also a big part of the picture. If you’ve ever been sleep deprived you’ll know how grumpy that can make you quite quickly!

Good exercise is also really important. Dog’s were made to move their bodies and Terriers although small are working breeds with the endurance to match and almost always benefit form doing more exercise when they are struggling with behaviour problems. Get those good endorphins and hormones pumping and lift your dogs mood as much as possible.

Step Three

Reduce exposure to triggers and calm the nervous system down. For a time before you start training your dog to help with the reactivity it will help a lot to stop the problem from getting any worse. IF you think of every reaction as a step towards the problem getting worse then halting them their tracks is a good way to go. The best way to do this is to avoid the problem for a while. It’s not a long term solution but it will reduce stress levels for you all overall and set you up in a better place to tackle the reactivity with a proper plan.

Step Four

Provide breed specific outlets to meet your Terrier’s basic needs. There are multiple ways to achieve this, scent work, play and or a suitable dog sport are just some of the ways. A combination of them is probably the best way to go with play on the top of the list. Working out what your Terrier loves and building a strong bond of being a provider of positive things rather than the person who is often saying no to them is a foundation that will pay dividends later in the process.

Step Five

Build motivation to earn reward from you. It’s ideal to have motivation for lots of rewards in the long term but for reactivity training, food is the top of this list with play a close second. For a proportion of Terriers it may actually be the top reward. If you don’t have the motivation part before you start to train it is likely that your training will fall flat and this crucial step is one often missed by people.

Step Six

Teach some new skills. Although this is step six, it can be going on all the way through the process. Yea re looking for your dog to have a very strong alternative behaviour to perform in the place of their current barking, lunging or chosen reaction to their triggers. This behaviour needs to be taught and then tested against all sorts of self created distractions before it’s used in the real life reactivity situations.

So can your dog do their alternative behaviour around food distractions, around toys, around friends calling their name or other high level distractions like wildlife. If they can making the leap to doing it around other dogs they want to bark at will be easier.

Step Seven

Take your newly trained and tested behaviour back to your dogs triggers with a plan. Short training sessions at a distance, gradually reducing it over time until your dog is able to focus on you around those triggers at ever increasingly levels of difficulty. As you get more and more success with this you can reduce the amount of support you offer your dog and gradually use less and less of your alternative behaviour to be around this triggers.

This formula will set you on the road to recovery for the large majority of dogs, you might need tweaks here and there and every dog will have its ups and downs but stick to the process with consistency and you can get the large majority of dogs to the stage where they can pass other dogs with no problems at all.