Dutch Shepherd Forum

The Collared Scholar (Meagan Karnes) is running a pilot reactivity workshop starting this week, and out of 600 entries, Radar and I were chosen among a few.

I know that online training can be difficult, but I feel like it can't hurt, and I will be able to bring information and results to the members of this site.

Reactivity is one of the most common questions on this site and others. My own experience with this subject has been documented here. We have managed it by avoiding reactive scenarios altogether - a nearly impossible task.

I hate to say that my expectations are low in eliminating the behavior altogether, but if there's any improvement or a path to improvement, I am willing to go all in 100%.

I'll keep you all posted.

thats great !

We had our first workshop yesterday. It was more of a discussion and preparation for what's coming in the next 30 days, but when it was over, I felt a lot more enthusiasm about the potential results.

First of all, the common (and my own) thoughts on addressing reactivity have been based on desensitizing, distracting, and holding focus. Apparently, the workshop approach will be different. I can easily get on board with that because years of attempting distraction as a method have led only to tiny successes, but ultimately no consistency.

More to come...

Interesting

Distracting is hard because they have such hard focus. that was the hardest with the decoy. It takes A LOT of work for distracting. I found focusing on me an easier way to keep them on me.

I hate to admit that I am a 2 days behind on the exercises, but I plan to work the steps slowly. I am not going to attempt to catch up, because I know it's important to build slowly on the behaviors. I will just be 2 days behind.

There's a lot of other folks in the workshop trying to jump ahead, and I believe that's a mistake. Each step is meant to build on the next, so if you rush it, you may do more harm than good.

The first week of work was on relaxation training, and upcoming steps will be on nose work. I am actually very excited, because I am seeing signs of improvement already.