Elizabeth Resolves Her Dogs’ On-Leash Reactivity

April 14, 2015

Elizabeth came to CPT concerned about her Goldendoodles, Cooper and Lilly.  She had difficulty walking them together on-leash because of their reactivity (barking and lunging) whenever they saw another dog.  In addition, Cooper frequently began guarding access to Lilly when unfamiliar dogs approached Lilly at the dog park.  Consequently, Elizabeth stopped taking her dogs to the dog park and became wary when walking them on-leash.

However, after just two behavior modification lessons with CPT, Elizabeth now looks forward to walking in the neighborhood and returning to the dog park.  During the first appointment we worked with Cooper and Lilly individually.  Everything went so well that we worked in tandem during the second appointment and even included CPT “surround dog” drills, where we use multiple volunteer dogs simultaneously.

Cooper and Lilly excelled with CPT’s clicker-based leash walking and focused attention drills, whereby they quickly adopted the replacement behavior of looking at Elizabeth, while abandoning the former behavior of barking and lunging.  They did so well during the second appointment that we allowed them supervised off-leash time with both of our volunteer dogs.

Finally, we rewarded them with a photography session.  They are certainly quite photogenic!

If your dogs misbehave on-leash, email CPT (MarkCPT@aol.com) or give CPT a call (404-236-2150).  A trained dog is a happy dog and belongs to a happy owner!

(Sandy Springs, GA)