# Ole touched noses with other dogs today.



## davewis (Jan 7, 2020)

As people who have been on the forum for the last two months know, Ole and I have been working on our reactivity towards dogs. Today it was as if a switch flipped in Ole's head.

Last week I stopped using 'leave it' if he fixated on another dog.

Instead, I rewarded heavily every time he voluntarily looked back to check in with me. If everything was going well at the check-in, I immediately let him go back to what he was doing while giving him 6 more inches of leash. Randomly every 5-15 seconds, I used his name as a verbal cue for him to check in with me. If he checked-in within 1-2 seconds I let him go back to what he was doing. If he didn't check in, we walked around a small picnic area to give him a chance to settle his nerves.

We practiced this just outside the dog park fence once a day all week for about 30 minutes a day. The laps usually meant about 10-15 seconds of work near the distraction dogs followed by 45-60 seconds to complete the Lap.

By this afternoon Ole was checking-in so well that several times he was able to walk all the way to the fence and greet another dog face to face for several seconds without reaction before we started another lap. A face to face meeting resulted in the tug coming out and we had a party. I am pretty sure most of the dogs inside the park would have rather been outside with us

The fascinating thing was that sometimes as we neared the other dog he showed fear. His tail would drop for a second or two and he would take a step in towards me. In the past 8 weeks, I had never seen him show fear or unease. He would flip immediately from calm to reactive. By standing calmly and giving Ole enough leash to create some distance for himself he pretty quickly worked through the fear and stood calmly at my side.

Tomorrow might be horrible again.... But tonight I am going to celebrate by going to a coffee drive-through to get a nice camel drink that contains more calories than I am normally allowed to have in an entire day.


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## IllinoisNative (Feb 2, 2010)

I am so excited for you! That’s great!


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## dogma13 (Mar 8, 2014)

Excellent!Extra shot of caramel for you!


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## choka162 (Jan 26, 2020)

Yay!! I love hearing about you and Ole and your adventures!


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## davewis (Jan 7, 2020)

Thanks for the support. There were several of those 20 degree and cloudy days when I definitely thought about staying home. The encouragement and occasional leash pop from this forum got us out the door and training 6 out of 7 days per week

@dogma13, yes I did go with a Caramel Frappuccino. Grammarly suggested camel


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## GSDchoice (Jul 26, 2016)

Ha, thanks for the explanation! 
I was thinking "camel", like, "camel milk?"

Great news on your progress!! 
You are helping Ole to have positive associations/positive attitudes towards other dogs.


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