The 2 a.m. Dog Walker Club

Barking, pulling, growling, lunging. Does this sound like your dog on a walk? Do you ever drive to remote areas just so you don’t have to deal with your dog embarrassing you? What about walking at ridiculous times just to avoid anything from happening? Well, I’m here to tell you, you’re not alone. A lot of us here at the Cochrane & Area Humane Society have reactive dogs. We understand the frustration, embarrassment, tears, and thoughts of giving up when having these types of dogs as a part of your family. Believe me, we’ve been there!

From personal experience, having a 70 pound, fluffy, unique looking dog who is reactive to almost everything, I understand the awkwardness when friendly people come up and want to talk about your dog, but your dog has other plans. The lunging, barking, carrying on can be quite overwhelming even for the owner and the look of shock and sometimes fear on others’ faces can make you feel judged and ashamed – such a wonderful feeling, isn’t it? Well, it’s taken me a while, and it’s something I continue to work on, but we need to stop worrying what others think. We need to be our dog’s voice even if that means telling people they cannot pet our dog, blocking those who do not listen, or walking on the other side of the street to make sure you are at a distance your dog is comfortable with. We need to watch our dog’s body language to see when he/she is no longer comfortable and remove him/her from the situation or redirect his/her attention to something more positive – treats are your friend here.

It can be difficult to understand why your dog is reacting. Things we feel are normal can be extremely frustrating or scary to our canine companions. The dog walking down the street, the child on a bike, or even a plastic bag blowing in the wind can be a trigger to our dog. Typically leash reactivity is caused by two factors: frustration or fear. Our dogs can be frustrated that the thing they want to investigate is being thwarted by the leash – think about when you are stuck in traffic and you are already running late. The other factor, fear, is your dog feeling trapped and unable to move away from the situation so they bark and lunge to make the scary thing move away.

So what can we do about this? There are many different management techniques including keeping on leash interactions short and sweet; avoid mixing on leash and off leash dogs; changing your gear to a no pull chest/head harness; maintaining social skills with regular off leash access to other dogs – provided your dog is not aggressive off leash; and making an emergency u-turn if your dog does react to increase the distance between you and the trigger. Avoid yelling or physical corrections to punish the reactive behaviour as this can lead to an association between the trigger and the punishment and can make the reactivity worse.

To all my fellow 2 a.m. dog walkers, let’s start supporting our dogs through their meltdowns and help them learn we’ve got their backs. Stop overthinking things and be your dog’s advocate. We can do this! To those who see us increasing our distance from you or distracting our dogs, we ask you to please respect their space and know we are not being rude, we just want the best outcome for our dogs.

If you need the tools to start helping your dog with his/her leash reactivity, we have a Canine Reactivity seminar taking place November 19 at 6:30pm, Leash Lungers dog classes and private consultations. Please visit our website www.cochranehumane.ca for more information.