Name: Rory

Age: 15 weeks

Breed: German Shepherd x Border Collie x Labrador Retriever.

Neutered: No

Issues:

• Severe reactivity to other dogs

• Pulling on the lead

• Poor recall

Background

Rory came to me in October 2022, after a couple of sessions with another local behaviourist due to his unusually strong reactivity towards other dogs and severe lead pulling.

Other Dogs

During our initial assessment, we identified that the most likely causes of Rory's reactivity was leash frustration (frustrated greeter), uncertainty & fear. To start with, we changed the type of lead he was walked on from a short lead 2 meter lead to a 5 meter longline, this allowed Rory to have more freedom and gave him the ability to choose if he approached dogs or not.

The next step was to help him overcome his fear of dogs, which was extreme for a puppy. To do this, we used a training technique called counter conditioning that allowed us to make other dogs predictable and positive. We then took this one step further and taught him a predictor cue, which told Rory when a dog was nearby, this reduced the amount and intensity of him becoming spooked.

Finally, we carefully introduced Rory to Tywin. This took a little time but eventually Rory became confident around Tywin and we met up for some walks. Tywin was able to teach Rory that other dogs weren't scary, which really helped Rory. We also found a suitable day-care to further help Rory around other dogs, thanks Camp K9.

At the time of writing this post (November 2023) Rory is doing exceptionally well around other dogs.

Lead Pulling

To say that Rory was a bad lead puller would be an understatement!! The first step was to identify what motivated Rory, at first we tried food but he wasn't remotely motivated by that. So we then tried a ball and bingo!

Once we found out the ball was the key, we gradually taught Rory that looking at his owner was how he got the ball. We then changed the rules and made it so that walking next to his owner was how he could get the ball.

The final step was to regularly train when walking to the local park. This took some time and patience but eventually Rory figured it out. His owners are now able to enjoy their walks to and from the park.

Poor Recall

Due to the progress we had made, we turned our attention to Rory's recall. After some experimenting with various rewards we found that Rory really liked investigating his owners when they stopped moving (typical herding dog behaviour) and he loved hand signals!!

To begin with, we kept Rory on a longline to prevent him running off. We then began to reinforce every time Rory looked at his owners, this was done by tossing him a treat to find, carrying his ball and stopping for him to investigate. Very quickly, Rory was regularly checking in with his owners to see what reward was coming.

We then added in a verbal cue and also a hand signal (raised arm) to indicate a random reward was on offer. By adapting the recall to meeting his needs, we managed to improve Rory's recall over a couple of months.

Summary

Rory was a particularly challenging case due to the nature of his behaviour. It appeared that a big part of the problem were his genetics, there were a couple of incidents when around other dogs, within a matter of seconds we would see the weariness or the German Shepherd, then the friendliness of the Labrador and then the aloofness of the Border Collie. All of this made it crucial that we made other dogs predictable for him.

It was also crucial that we gave Rory the ability to learn from a calm, older dog. That is where Tywin came in, thankfully this worked a charm and to this day both dogs love bumping into each other on walks.

Overall, I worked with Rory and his owners for over 6 months to resolve these issues but it was worth all the hard work and chats as Rory is a lovely dog to know.

Client Testimonial

Anthony has been fantastic with our dog Rory. He was a very difficult puppy and had a lot of complex issues due to his unique mix of breeds (GSD, border collie and Lab) and it was difficult to work out what training techniques would work and Anthony was fantastic and had such deep knowledge of things that would work with a dog like Rory. We went from a dog who would bark like crazy any time he saw another dog from a mile away, to a happy confident dog who has very little reactivity issues now. Not to mention Anthony helped us crack lead walking which was a feat in itself as our dog was the worst lead puller I had ever seen and nothing seemed to work, but Anthony knew so many good things to try and we eventually got there! Anthony just went above and beyond, continuing to help and train even when our training package ended and has been an invaluable resource in helping Rory.

Kaitlyn & Rory| GSD x Border Collie x Labrador