Lumi can be reactive, but doesn’t bark and lunge at every dog in every situation. She doesn’t always take treats when outside. And not just for reinforcement, but in general. She is toy and play motivated.
Reactivity doesn’t always mean aggression.
When we arrived at the park there was a field full of Canada Geese which she immediately spotted. There was also one leashed dog that I spotted and one off leash dog we both spotted.
Lumi is a social dog who has dog friends she plays with regularly. But I don’t know the dogs at the park – and the purpose of our visit wasn’t to make new friends.
Normally I bring some toys with us, either a herding ball or flirt pole, but I left them in the car. The reason being is there were too many dogs around, now at least two off leash, and I didn’t want them to become any more interested in us than necessary. I usually have a tennis ball in my bag, but I forgot it. Oops. I did bring some Happy Howie’s treats.
What’s happening in the video:
Lumi was watching the geese and the other dogs. And some point the geese started moving towards us. I didn’t know if that would make Lumi want to move closer to investigate, or were they about to take off? And how much was that going to wind her up? So I initiated some play to distract her and she eventually moved on to following her nose.
Redirection without treats and without intentionally causing discomfort to not do something. In this case chase geese.
You will see the leash occasionally tighten up a bit. She was on a 30ft leash and I wasn’t giving her the full length.
In the next video I was continuing to move her across the park away from the geese. There is a section she really likes to sniff at and where she also likes to watch the kids from the boating center located at the park go by on their paddle boards.
At some point one of the off leash dogs runs into the field causing the flock of geese to take off. It took her a few seconds to disengage from the action and I could tell she was getting excited – so when she did I took the opportunity to initiate some chase to get her to move with me.
On our way back to the car she decided to stop and play with a tree root. At about 33 seconds she notices a small leashed dog walking on the path towards us. I called her away, again initiating some play to encourage her to move with me, and we made our way back to the car.
No treats. No toys. No intentional punishment to gain obedience.