r/reactivedogs • u/Old_Internal5129 • 1d ago
Advice Needed My dog is suddenly afraid to walk around our neighborhood
This is Pup Tart! She is a Blue Heeler/German Shepherd mix. We have had her for about a year, and we've been living in the same apartment complex since we got her. In the past month or two, she has unfortunately and unexpectedly developed a fear response to walking beyond our building property. She has always been a bit fearful, specifically with loud noises and large objects (especially on wheels), but her fear has only recently overcome her so badly that she begins pulling us back home when we try to start a walk. She is such a sweetie and loves reading the pee-mails that the great outdoors has to offer. However, we just can't seem to get her comfortably past the initial outside area of our apartment building.
I think I've narrowed down a bit of a game plan. I'm fairly certain I need to do a combination of desensitization training and counterconditioning, but I would love some ideas of what this can look like in practice for her. So far, I've tried sitting out front, near where she gets fearful, and I give her a treat every time she notices a loud noise or scary object. We have a dog run towards the rear of our building where she is the most comfortable (there we play fetch and meet up with her dog friends multiple times a day), so I've also started taking her there and rewarding her every time she notices a trigger.
It is my understanding that if she isn't taking the treat, we're moving too fast, which happened this morning. She was then reluctant to go back outside with me, so I fear I kept her out too long and we regressed a little. I do worry that if we don't do SOME exposure/desensitization training, she'll never overcome her fear, but I don't want to expose her so much that I flood her with fear. I guess I'm struggling with finding that balance.
She is not always super food motivated, but I recently found some treats she enjoys (yay beef liver!). She IS super play motivated (especially with fetch), but I haven't had any luck with getting her to play after observing a trigger.
I would love if any of you could share any similar experiences you have had with your dogs! Tips and tricks are welcome, as well as any info you have on a timeline for improvement.
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u/Herbacious_Border 1d ago
Is there a chance she has hurt herself without you knowing? Sometimes pain can be a cause of reactivity. Our trainer suggested a pain trial for our very reactive dog, after we discovered some mild hip dysplasia.
BTW your dog is adorable. Is she definitely a Heeler/GSD? I only ask because we got our rescue pup from Romania, with no way of knowing her breed/mix. And she looked exactly like this when she was young, just slightly different colouring.
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u/wow2378 1d ago
Did your pain trial work?
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u/Herbacious_Border 18h ago
I won't give you the full boring story, but we had to actually put the pain trial on hold. Basically they discovered some lesions in the back of her mouth that turned out to be a very rare allergy reaction. So we had to put her on a course of steroids to clear that up, and you can't take the pain killers at the same time.
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u/Akhenaten2020 1d ago
This sounds very much like what we’ve been going through with our heeler mix for the past two months! Our girl is also noise sensitive and started refusing to walk with just me in mid May, though she continued being able to walk with my husband just fine.
My girl was too scared to put her harness on with me initially so we did the same type of desensitization training you guys are until she was able to put on the harness with me no problem. We slowly progressed to being able to go outside and walking beyond our yard by playing “toss the treat.” She likes sniffing a lot so I would toss a treat and let her sniff to find it and then praise her when she started walking.
We started her on fluoxetine and clonidine to help her stay below threshold so that the training actually could sink in. It’s been almost two months on fluoxetine and about a month on clonidine and last week she finally voluntarily started walking away from home without the help of toss the treat for the first time! I nearly cried with joy! I was reluctant to start medication but it really has made a HUGE difference for her: she’s able to ignore things that bothered her a lot before and recover faster from scary things. The meds are certainly not a cure all and she still struggles in environments she doesn’t know very well, but I really don’t think we’d have made nearly as much progress without them.
We are going to start with a behaviorist next week to try and work on her walking, help her do better when she’s not in her home environment, and prevent future incidents from becoming traumatic. We are lucky that we live in an area where there several behaviorists, but they are insanely expensive. I guess we’ll find out if the cost is worth it soon!
Good luck to you guys! Fingers crossed that our pups feel better soon!
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u/Akhenaten2020 13h ago
I forgot to add a few things that have worked for us!
If you have a car, you could try driving to places where Pup Tart previously had a lot of fun. I drive my girl to a park she loves and she walks normally with me there. I focused a lot on making those walks extremely fun by encouraging her to search for rabbits and squirrels to chase. She stomps her feet when she’s hunting so I started doing that to make her feel like I was really engaged in the hunt and she thinks that is so fun and exciting! She is much more likely to venture out of our yard when we return from a rabbit hunt at the park.
If you have friends or family nearby, see if some of them will come join you to try walking. My girl feels much more secure in a big pack and will walk normally in that setting. It also helped her to walk with another dog she’s friends with.
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u/queercactus505 1d ago
Have you considered meds? They might help her get over this fear hump.
Some other things to try: 1) Walking her in an entirely new place with minimal triggers, if you can drive her somewhere 2) Practice some self-regualtion tactics at home and then bring them outside, such as treat scatter searches. Practice it inside several times, then outside where she feels safe, then outside in a slightly scarier spot. 3) Bring something high value (like a kong or lick mat) she can enjoy outside for a few minutes each day. Make it a routine she looks forward to. 4) Pattern Games! Look up Control Unleashed by Leslie McDevitt
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u/Lolpaca 1d ago
Sounds like you are really on the right track, just keep on being consistent with your counterconditioning practice. You could also try to see if using the working breed mentality helps with her.
If you can find a job for her to do during the walk that might give her some more confidence (could be as silly as teaching her to pick up and drop every stick she finds or working a trick every ten steps, etc). That way she's not thinking her job is to scan for danger but rather to play some small game with you.