In a previous post, I explored barrier frustration and barrier aggression so that you could get to grips with why your dog becomes a barking furball of craziness whenever they see another dog if they’re unable to get to them. Today, I’m only focusing on dogs who’d like to greet (not eat) another animal, particularly those dogs who can’t seem to handle it when they can’t go running up to say hi. You know, like the black dog in the photo above.

You know these dogs. I’m sure one or two of you own them!

These are the dogs who go nuts when they see another dog. You know, you’re blithely walking along and suddenly your Bernese Mountain dog almost pulls you off your feet. Just as you grab the lead in time, they’re barking like maniacs, pulling, frenzied and drooling.

“Sorry!” you shout and you make a mental list of another place you just can’t take your dog.

Or you know that your dog is 99% friendly, but they’re big and strong, plus they look like Cujo on steroids when you’ve got the lead on them and they see another animal. So you just let them off lead because it’s easier than trying to hold on to them, it’s less embarrassing and most of the time it works out, even if the other dog (cat, horse, cow … add the animal of your choice!)

You know these dogs. I’m sure you’ve seen a car with a frantic maniac of fur barking in the back seat, practically eating the window to get out and say hi.

I’m not, by the way, talking about dogs who want to chase or attack other animals. They just want to say hi!

It always makes me laugh as I remember seeing another trainer’s video of her doing great work in a busy park with her spaniel, then along comes a huge German shepherd, off lead of course, followed by a plump Northern lady. “Don’t worry!” she says. “He’s friendly. He just wants to say hi!”

My worst nightmare.

You see, i know why that lady had her dog off lead… because he’ll have been too strong on it and too frustrated if he didn’t get to gallop up to every other dog in the whole wide world and “say hi!”

So instead, she lets him do what he wants, regardless of whether that’s acceptable to other dogs. For my three that’ll depend. Flika is whimsical. If she thinks you’re polite, she’s fine. Heston is a bit full on Tarzan but he’s a sticking plaster dog himself (rip it off and get it over with kind of greetings). Lidy will bite your dog in the face without even checking to see if he’s a real dog or not first. We’re working on it. Quite clearly, i am a responsible person and she’s muzzled in public and never off lead, but let’s be clear – in those situations, SHE’s not the one doing the bad stuff.

Greeting every single other dog is a bad habit. It’s false ‘dogness’. Dogs literally don’t do this in street groups or in village groups. They don’t do it when working. Guide dogs don’t do it. Search-and-Rescue dogs don’t clock off to say hi to a Pomeranian over the hill. Your trusty Grand Pyrenees doesn’t desert his sheep brethren to go say hi to the collie on the next farm. We encourage it, in my opinion, with puppy socialisation, where we teach young dogs that you get to meet 100% of the dogs you see and 100% of the time it’ll be super cool good fun. We encourage it with our ‘say hi!’ behaviour and our innate desire to socialise with other dog people (and more importantly, their dogs). We do it because we’re all Ricky Gervais at heart and we all think dogs in our community are as much ‘our’ dogs as their owners. We make a bee-line for dogs when we’re dog people because we’re all slightly nuts. I mean, if you’ve ever seen me with a strange Belgian shepherd you know I have to practically blindfold myself not to ogle them, go in for a massive cuddle and end up giving them a kiss on their great, bemused, nose. You know, that bit right above their great, bemused bitey old mouth.

Let’s face it. Dogs, like humans, are a social species. In fact, few species (any?) are more social than humans. Yet do we go down the street kissing everyone we meet? Saying hi to everyone? If a strange bloke said ‘hi’ to me in passing, I might get the Mace out. If he slipped me the tongue, you’d need to muzzle me, let alone my dog.

Yet this is what I think we’ve taught our dogs to do. We teach them “hey dude, you get to meet hundreds of dogs, stick your nose up their arse, maybe hump them a bit, chase them round and round, it’s going to be great.” We go on social walkies and we “socialise” them and we take them to our friends’ houses or dog parks.

And then we go to a park and WE know that our dogs won’t be welcome to do that so we try to put them on the lead and our dog goes bananas.

You see, THEY don’t understand the rules. They don’t know that in real life, you don’t get to say hi to 100% of dogs. In fact, you probably won’t say hi to any dogs. Sometimes, I’m going to take you to the vet, and I’m going to make a decision that the pointer in the corner might not like to say hi, so I’m going to sit with you and ask you not to engage with a dog 2m away. You might be in a room with 10 other dogs and not be allowed to say hi to any of them. Just like people on the morning train, you’re going to be sandwiched in and I’m going to expect you not to acknowledge any of them, especially the one who smells of pee and seems to be in the middle of some kind of mental breakdown.

And that goes for cats, horses and cows too, dude.

Teaching a dog who thinks it’s 100% respectable to say hi to every moving thing is not easy if they’ve not grasped that fundamental concept that most of the moving beings that we will see, we not only don’t have the right to say hi to, we don’t need to say hi to them either. A dog who feels the need to say hi to every other thing with a nose is a dog with a pathological behaviour that is going to spill out in frustration. Hence the low level whining that turns into a bark (reminds me of a time I was observing a lesson in school and one 16 year old lumpen teenage ne’er-do-well spent most of the lesson trying to attract the attention of his friend, a certain Mr Gibbons, by whispering “Gibbons… Gibbons… Gibbons…” in a crescendo, not understanding that Mr Gibbons could see I had my beady eye on the pair of them) Low level whispering that turned into coughs and other big behaviours to attract attention… just like our dogs do. The lumpen teenager knew full well it was inappropriate to have a conversation across the class with your mate but dogs don’t understand those strange social and cultural customs we do.

What you need is two-fold. The first is to teach your dog how to cope with frustration. Like toddlers, some dogs don’t understand how to cope with frustration. Teaching concepts like patience, disengagement and tenacity are really useful. Food toys, games like flirt poles, programmes like Leslie McDevitt’s Control Unleashed, Fenzi Academy focus games and all manner of other great programmes can help you with that.

The second thing is a carefully planned habituation and gradual desensitisation programme. This is where you make a plan like the one I did here about chasing and you work through set-ups to prepare your dog to cope. In the meantime, no more dogs/cats/horses/goats until you’re ready.

Like all things, you need to start at the most easy level. Dogs, we know, can see 400m away. Some even 900m. Plus they have a nose. They KNOW there are dogs, even if they can’t see them. That’s why you might need a behaviourist as a critical friend to help you read your dog so that you know when he’s alert but able to disengage.

You also need to make a plan. I usually use a 6-month SMART plan. That in 6 months, I expect my dog to be able to wait in the vet with 6 dogs and pay them no mind.

And then I work back from that goal. In 3 months, I think that’ll look like being in a Sports Hall sized room with one other boring dog over 50m away and pay them no mind.

In 12 weeks, that might look like being 100m away from three or four boring walking dogs when we’re outside and paying them no mind.

In 6 weeks, that might work back to being 200m away from a boring dog who’s in sight for 5 seconds and paying them no mind.

In 3 weeks, I want to be 400m away from a boring dog who’s in sight for 3 seconds and paying them no mind.

In 10 days, I want to be 600m away from a boring dog who’s in sight for 2 seconds and paying them no mind.

In 5 days, 800m from a boring dog who’s in sight for 1 second.

You can see there are lots of goals I’ve not put in there, like the length your dog will see the other dogs for, raising the excitement level and number of the dogs and so on and so on. I didn’t want to bore the pants off you with my over-zealous goal-mapping. Confession: former marathon runner. This is how I trained. Dullsville.

But be mindful of the 3Ds… Distance, duration and difficulty. When you decrease distance, make sure you decrease duration and difficulty too.

You’re going to need an irregular but fairly frequent supply of animals and you want them in view. I like to be able to control the sightlines, as you’ll see from my post about chasing stuff, so I think of that set up a lot. I’m a big fan of big box pet stores… big car parks, I can be right at the back and set up screens using parked cars if necessary. I’m also a fan of sitting outside vet surgeries at a distance if you can find that space. They have a steady stream of clientele. Groomers, doggie day cares, dog parks, people parks and shelters are also great places as long as you are far enough away and your dog is under threshold. Please get yourself a copy of Grisha Stewart’s BAT 2.0 if you haven’t already: this is essentially that.

When you have a clear plan, you need also a taught behaviour. Often, dogs start to fixate in the absence of other guidance from you.

I don’t mean “Stop that!”

That is not guidance from you. Guidance from you is a thing to do instead.

I mean a behaviour you want them to do instead. Some people play engage/disengage, or ask for a look at me! I play “Where’s the dog?” (I do this with dog-aggressive dogs too – a bit like Where’s Wally?) which is just my cute version of “Look at that!”

Lidy is a big fan of Where’s the Dog? and we do it with a U-turn as what’s reinforcing for her is to create distance between her and the dog. But if your dog’s problem is frustration, that’s not necessary. Really, you just want them to get used to dogs being about who they don’t have the right or the need to interact with – I want them to be able to walk through a dog show like I do – saying hi to if I know people but ignoring virtually everyone else.

Normally, I try and give the dog a replacement behaviour that has the same function and reinforcement. So Lidy wants space and is reinforced by security. You can’t do that with frustrated greeters. They want to decrease distance and be rewarded with a new dog friend. All I’m doing is teaching them, “sorry dude… not on lead!” or “not unless we say so!” – so what you are doing is inoculating them, little by little, against frustration. You’re using very small amounts of tolerable frustration to get them used to it.

Now some may say that this isn’t what they want for their dog. Their dog shouldn’t have to get used to frustration. They might even think that this is not “Force Free” or “Purely Positive” training. Frustration is an unpleasant state and our dogs should not have to feel it.

The trouble with this view is that it’s so massively ego-centric, and not even thinking of the dog’s welfare. Flika likes to chase cars. One day she will get biffed in the face by one and I will cry. I don’t let her chase cars. She also likes to chase cows. One day one will kick her i the head and I will cry. I don’t let her play with cows. I understand that it’s frustrating; I want her to feel as minimally frustrated as possible. But I have a responsibility to other beings, including those dogs like Lidy who find it an affront to their very being to have some great lummoxing dog race up to say hi, and to those cats, cows, horses and other creatures.

Life has its frustrations.

I do like to teach other behaviours too.

I do a “Let’s go!” as well. It’s lucky I did when Heston and Flika ran into a bunch of over-excited cani-cross dogs on Sunday.

I don’t use a clicker – just a word. Less to manage. You don’t need a clicker if you feel it’s cumbersome or if you haven’t used one before.

But the thing to remember is that practice makes perfect. Don’t expect your dog to control themselves if you haven’t trained them to. I was never so glad I’d done this stuff as the day someone brought their goat to the vet. Having the best behaved dog in the vet made me so proud, especially when I know how full on he can be. Most importantly, the goat didn’t have a dog whose intentions he had no idea about. Your dog isn’t just frustrated themselves: they make you embarrassed or upset or angry, and they turn other dogs into the Lidys of the world: over-reacting to any acknowledgement whatsoever by stabbing them in the stomach.

Set a time-table, sit down and write your goals. Plan your set-up zones, be prepared and remember, if it’s frustrating for you, it’s frustrating for your dog too. On the other hand, you don’t want to risk your dog becoming antisocial, so teach them how to greet nicely too. Jean Donaldson’s book Fight! has some excellent guidance on that. And yes, I mean on-lead greetings as well as off-lead ones. My dog needs to be versatile to cope with what life throws at them.

So don’t feel like you have nowhere to go with this, or don’t feel you need to use punishment (fastest way to turn frustration into fear and aggression). Use a harness and a long line, learn how to read your dog’s body language and keep an eye on their behaviours. Forgive yourself (and your dog) the occasional mistake or slip-up and remember that you can do it. Go back to basics and work up through your plan again. It’s boring, it’s meticulous. It’s Dullsville, but it works 100%.

TLDR; it’s all about adaptation and compromise – from you!

I make little apology for the sparsity of posts recently. I’m trying to finish off an 18-month learning journey about dogs and their humans culminating in a 10,000 word dissertation on shelter dogs. And just because I don’t do things by half, I adopted a new dog in December.

Say hi to Lidy, number 3 Belgian Shepherd in the WLTM household.

I planned on taking Lidy way back in September. So why did it take me 12 weeks to get around to it? A lot of it comes down to psychology.

Our actions are underpinned by two things: capacity and motivation according to psychologist Fritz Heider. He said capacity was ability + environment, and motivation was intention + exertion. Well, I had the intention and maybe the ability, but the environment needed a bit of exertion.

The reason for that is that I have two other dogs with some complex needs of their own. The first is 15-year-old Flika, who has separation anxiety, is destructive if left alone and who is set in her ways of wake up – breakfast – nap – walk – lie outside in garden pretending to guard it – refuge – dinner – sleep.

I knew that Lidy and Flika would never be able to live together. Flika is generally tolerant of about 70% of dogs but Lidy would attack any female dog without even asking questions. Worse still, she’ll sometimes seem fine but then ‘bam’ – and I’m not talking a common-or-garden scrap where no blood is spilt, I’m talking a fight that would end up with dogs staying at the vets and needing multiple stitches for multiple wounds. Killer queens indeed.

So that needed me to build a Lidy garden and have separate sleeping arrangements, to fix doors and fit locks, to set up airlocks. I always remember in The Others, Nicole Kidman talked about having two locked doors between her and the scary stuff. That’s what I needed. Dog trainer Michael Shikashio, an aggression expert, talks about two levels of security. Baby gates and secure locks, tables across doors. Sounds extreme, I know, but let me just be clear, Miss Butter Wouldn’t Melt who has just arrived has complex behaviours often involving her teeth.

She is very lucky we have each other. Having worked with her for such a long time, I know all her problem spots and she has ways to tell me shit is about to hit the fan, but being muzzled on a lead in the street is not the same as living with the bitches from hell 24/7

You’d think it’d get easier with lovely handsome Heston.

And it kind of is okay – and it will be okay – but Lidy has predatory behaviours around dogs having a fit (nearly dug her way out to get a beagle who was having a fit outside her kennel) and Heston has epilepsy. Mostly it’s when he’s sleeping and it’s well-managed, but Lidy will never, ever be unsecured in a room where Heston is sleeping so I needed to set up the environment to allow that, as well. Also, following his starting on medication, he was one of that small number of dogs on phenobarbital who go nuts. He decided that every time I left, I was going for a walk, and became a crazed dementor. The house would be wrecked when I returned. That also needed addressing, unless I intended to spend the next 7 years taking him everywhere with me (I do this mostly with Flika – it’s not fun, believe me!)

When maligator genes conspire with a limited learning experience when growing up, when you’ve got extreme predatory behaviours, dog-dog aggression with all female dogs, fear-based “bite first and ask questions later” biting behaviours, dog-to-dog aggression with 90% of all other dogs, stranger danger, redirected biting from frustration, possessive aggression, protective aggression and territorial aggression, you’ve not only got to have the right environment but also the ability to both manage it and minimise it. Excuse all the labels, I just wanted to show that it’s not just some randomly easy adoption where the dog just turns up and goes to sleep in their new bed. Dynamite with a laser beam, Miss Malou.

The first thing I needed was ABILITY.

That’s a lot about what my clients need. They’ve never encountered anything like the problem they’re dealing with, or their strategies for dealing with it in the past aren’t working any more. A lot of the time, they just need to know more. They have the INTENTION and they are prepared for a little EXERTION.

In fact, when working with clients, one of the first things I ask is how much they intend to keep the dog. And if they can’t see anything good, or it’ll be impossible to give them the capacity as quickly as they need it, then their intentions will never turn into actions. If they’ll never have the environment or they aren’t prepared to put in any effort, it’s not worth it either. The only way I can help is to write them a good adoption advert and pray for the best. Love doesn’t conquer all, I’m afraid.

So when first shelter dog arrived here and had a massive scrap with Heston, I needed the ability. I had the intention and was prepared for the effort. One crash course in behaviour and Amigo and Heston lived peaceably for the next four years, following their very rocky first four months.

And that’s what I hope my blogs do – give you a little bit more of the ability and the capacity.

So when Miss Maligator 2019 arrived here that took all of my ability. No matter how much you know a dog before you take it on, you can’t predict everything. I didn’t predict that she also would have some anxiety related to me leaving her. Cue three dogs who can’t be left for various reasons, and two who only want to be with you. Multiple moving parts always make for more interesting problems, don’t you find?

That meant a lot of training about how to be on their own. It meant suspending absences and getting in dog sitters. It meant taking it easy until they were ready to be left for longer. It meant being respectful of their needs and not just saying “oh they’ll cope” when they clearly weren’t. I had to compromise and adapt. Now I’ve got one who accepts she has to be on her own all night (and it kind of breaks my heart to hear her playing by herself, or crying if she’s startled but the only time she’ll sleep with me is after Heston and Flika are gone). I learned that she hates being outside but is calm inside. I videoed everything obsessively when I wasn’t here. I moved from her accepting that doors close between us to accepting my absence for a couple of hours. I learned that sometimes there’s a mess, but it’s easy to clean up.

It took a lot of engineering. I use food toys daily. I spent a lot of money on chews. I cried at the pharmaceutical bill, as I had two dogs in Adaptil collars, Pet Remedy plug-ins, Anxitane, Zylkene, Valerian and melatonin plus usual medications for arthritis and epilepsy. I went through my body weight in paté and spreadable meat pastes. I bought a lot of new toys and feeders, from Nose-its to Kong Wobblers to lickimats to snufflemats. An occupied dog is a dog who’s not resorting to other behaviours. That was the EXERTION bit. And management to stop wars…

Those are things I never needed before. And they’re things I need less and less as time goes on. As long as I can get out of the door, Heston seems to remember I go out without him from time to time. as long as Lidy has stuff to keep her busy and she gets a couple of hours cuddle time with me in the morning and evening, she is coping with what are, no doubt, very hard periods where she can’t see me or get to me. A lot of this was just having the capacity. That’s where trainers can be invaluable.

But it takes effort. There are no magic bullets. No remedy I bought stopped Flika chewing through doors. No remedy I bought helped Lidy stop her compulsive circling in the garden. And new problems rear their heads. Lidy hates gunshot and lightning, fireworks and loud noises. That means I will need a solution for those stormy nights. It takes planning and a calm head. There are times I can’t tell you about where I thought “I can’t do this!” with three filthy dogs and the washing machine running all day. I can’t even think to the future, about needing to move to a smaller house and how I’ll cope with that, let alone trying to put the house on the market. Those are bridges I’ll cross when I get to them. But they’re bridges I know are coming.

Ultimately, you may take on an easy pooch who settles down in minutes and is part of the family in days. You may take on a dog who seems like the dream companion only for all of these behaviours to emerge in the weeks that follow an adoption. You may take on a dog who you know is going to be a bit of a handful. So many of us do. It’s testament to our ability that we create environments to suit our dogs, often involving a lot of exertion or expense. But our dogs cope better for it. Before you adopt a dog, though, think about your ability and your environment. What have you the capacity for? On what are you prepared to compromise?

And, as one of the lovely people I interviewed about shelter dogs reminded me… she was out walking him at 6am when he first arrived. No more lazy lie-ins, so she thought. 6 months in and both she and the dog were still in bed at 11am. Dogs will follow your lead, but if you adapt to their needs first and give them time to meet you in the middle, you’ll find you are both adapting by the end.

You can’t plan for everything. I’d planned for a jumper, a digger, a fence smasher. I’d planned for a bird chaser and a lizard catcher, a dog with complex pathologies. I’d not planned for a girl who cried when I left and ran round in circles barking. But you can plan for a lot of stuff and anticipate problems dogs might have. A bit of ingenuity is often all that’s needed (no more laptop research at 5am for me… I’m in bed with Lidy Malou reading books on my Kindle and Flika is happily working her way through a Kong instead of shouting for me and Heston is wherever he’s happiest).

But if you choose a relationship with a dog – be they a pedigree puppy from Crufts’ lines or a hoary old one-eyed shepherd from a shelter, know that it will fall on you to compromise if you want your dog to settle. You may hate it and think your levels of effort or expenditure will always need to be the same, but they won’t. You’ll get there as long as you plan for it to take some time. 5 weeks in and it’s not been all smooth sailing (not least the fact I’d locked Lidy’s room from the inside, snapped the door handle off the main house door and had dead-bolted the outside door from the inside too) but those days when I thought “I can’t do this!” are further between.

What absolutely won’t work, though, is expecting the dog to compromise and adapt to you without a single real concession on your part.

Just remember, if you have adopted a new dog, don’t just think that time and love are all that are needed. Your own capacity is vital. Don’t be embarrassed to contact a trainer or behaviourist if you feel like you don’t know how to move forward, even if you really want to. There are many good networks of trainers, from the Pet Professional Guild to the Pet Dog Trainers’ networks (Europe and the UK). If you’re based in the UK, the Association of Into Dogs can also help you locate someone near to you. Six years ago, when Amigo joined me, I had no concept of how I could ever move forward. None of us know everything. I’m still excitedly finding my own ability.

Be mindful that anyone who suggests coercive methods has not got your dog’s welfare at heart; anyone who suggests there are quick fixes needs you to make a quick exit. That said, from my perspective, I think 5 weeks is a reasonable “quick fix” and i know I haven’t spent more than I would have on a kid’s birthday party! Coming back to my own research, what was abundantly clear was that the most straightforward adoptions are the ones where the humans had insanely low expectations and were incredibly flexible. As I said, adaptation and compromise may well be needed, but if this is what you really want, then I suspect that you’ll find your motivation in there somewhere.