Play Your Way Through!

Whether we've adopted an older dog or selected a puppy, the daily neighborhood walk can either be a much looked forward to event or a real hassle if your dog is reactive to other dogs or humans. Astrid can be reactive (le gasp! who knew?) to a certain, very few dogs in the neighborhood, so I've tried just about every solution I could find on the 'net. Nothing works as well as the idea of 'playing our way through' difficult situations.




Playing our way through means that Astrid is focused on me and only me no matter what the distraction. Of course, we never could attempt this play if I wasn't able to get her undivided attention, so when beginning to train, the first step was to get her to focus on me when asked. The best way I found to teach this was, while holding a treat straight out to the side, calling her name and clicking and treating everytime she focused on me, looking away from the treat. If I hadn't decided on clicker training, I could have just used a "good girl" each time we had success with her focusing on me.


Getting Astrid's attention was half the battle. To apply the 'play my way' through difficult circumstances principle, I had to have some fun activities for Astrid to do after getting her attention. One of our favorites turned out to be the step game. Astrid loves the step game and we do it often and use it when passing a dog Astrid may be reactive to or simply as a way to make our walks more interesting. Basically, from a stop/sit position, I'll say 'let's take three steps'. Walking our three steps, Astrid is told to sit. In an upbeat voice, I'll say 'let's take two steps'....we do, and again Astrid will sit. Then we'll do just one giant step followed by another sit. This is great fun for Astrid, is interactive for both of us and further cements my bond with her. You'll notice in the accompanying video, that Astrid returns her focus to me after each 'segment' of the game.


Playing our way through things is a lot more fun then the tougher, stress filled ways I formerly dealt with difficult problems that arose.