Practicing calm amidst chaos...
A car horn/alarm going off, dogs barking in a house beside us, encountering a reactive dog.
These are just some of those real situations where life throws a whole lot of crazy our way!
So this can happen to anyone, and it’s almost always unexpectedly and the most important things to remember are to create space and slooow down. A lot of us tense up and try to rush through which dumps way too much pressure on the dog too quickly. What I like to do in these situations is walk up a driveway, onto someone’s lawn, or even into the street to make space. Slow my roll, so that my dog has time to process the information I’m giving him via his remote collar so that he can make good choices and not panic. And if there is nowhere to go, I will sit my dog off to the side and allow everyone else to pass us by. Whatever is the case, most importantly help your dog remain calm by creating space and also correcting any scanning, fixating or staring at any of the craziness around him. A dog can ignore distractions like this as long as he feels protected by his handler and also held accountable for his choices.
Slowing things down...
Being reactive, tuned out, and impulsive are much easier choices for a dog when his world is moving really fast. Fast walking, fast scanning, fast thinking can all lead to reactive and impulsive choices. But if we hold our dogs accountable for existing at a much slower pace then their minds tend to follow suit. (Think about driving in crazy rush hour traffic where people are stressed and frantic versus a leisurely Sunday drive up the coast.) And when our dogs’ mind stops racing, they are in a better space to process information from their handler and think about the choices they are making (rather than just reacting to things they see/smell/hear). By slowing things down, we can create an opportunity to ground reactivity before it ever takes off because reactivity needs a few common elements to happen... it needs a lack of information/direction from the handler, it needs a lack of accountability for impulsive choices, and it needs a fast and adrenalized setting to unfold into. So if we first slow things down enough to de-escalate the intensity in the dogs mind then we create the leverage we need to give our dogs direction/information BEFORE they make a reactive choice. Notice how I’m talking about intervening and communicating with the dog BEFORE any reactive choices have been made... that is the key.