Guide on how to read the rules

TL;DR We’d love any and all recommendations for BK trainers specializing in reactive & anxious dogs!

Hello! I know this has been asked before for NYC, but looking for dog trainers in Brooklyn that work with reactive dogs. Our girl is ~3 years old and we adopted her at 4 months from St Lucia. She has since lived in Brooklyn with us and is very scared of the city. She will not walk outside, so we mostly do “look at that!” type training; sitting outside of our building and she gets a treat when someone walks by, there’s a loud noise, a dog walks by, etc. We do this every morning and we feel like we aren’t making much progress.

We’ve worked with a couple trainers but nothing super consistent. She does go to a doggy school twice a week (she loves it!) where she does basic obedience and desensitization training. However, we really need help at home, and we’re looking for someone we can work with long term to help her feel more comfortable and confident - even getting her comfy to walk to the corner of our street would be a huge feat!

We take her out of the city when we can so we can walk her in nature and she’s a lot more relaxed. We find it difficult to get her exercise in our small apt without being able to walk her on the street. Ultimately, she may do better in the suburbs or a quieter place, but we love her deeply and want to do what we can to give her a good life with us in Brooklyn.

I’ve heard a lot of people say that one of the keys with leash/fear-reactive dogs is that they need to trust that you will handle situations and that they don’t need to take on that role themselves. I see people say that working on that with their dog helped reduce their reactivity. I never have any clue what people actually mean by that. How do you get your dog to trust you in that way? What does that actually look like?

My girlfriend and I adopted a 7 year old German Shepherd 2 weeks ago. He was a stray before he was put in the shelter. We have two resident cats that we’ve been keeping locked in a spare bedroom with all their essentials since we got our dog. We’ve been doing the typical routine for introducing them, such as letting them smell each other through the door and swapping smells. Today we tried to introduce the younger cat, as she’s more brave than our older one, and followed all the tips and tricks, giving her the high ground, letting her look from afar and keeping our dog leashed. They both were doing good with the initial introduction so we put her on a cat tree. She got curious and got closer and we allowed him to do the same, still keeping a couple feet between the two. He then started pulling, whining and barking very aggressively and attempting to lunge at her, scaring her into running away. I feel it should be mentioned that it wasn’t his usual whining/barking for attention. It was much louder and rougher and felt more like ‘I need to chase this thing’. We took her back upstairs gave her some time to calm down, and he continued to bark and could not calm down. We tried again and the same reaction happened. We even took him off the leash when she was locked back up and he bolted upstairs looking for her.

My girlfriend has been doing training with him since we got him, as he is also reactive towards any dog he sees. She took him to the vet a few days ago and he jumped on a woman who walked in holding her dog, then started nonstop barking at this dog to the point where my girlfriend did not know how to control him and started sobbing in the lobby, and any time she has taken him on a walk in the neighborhood he gets frustrated that his leash prevents him from getting closer to other dogs, so he starts barking at them and has a hard time calming down.

We love him, but we’re really worried about him biting/chasing our cats just due to his size and his prey drive. I feel bad having to keep our cats locked in a room, as well as keeping him locked up if we were to let the cats roam the house. We’ve had the cats for several years and they take priority to both of us, but we are also worried about the morality of surrendering him even though nothing major has happened yet.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I have a 5yr male neutered borzoi and we welcomed a female borzoi into the family in May. She is 5 months old and today it’s been 2 months since she’s been with us.

My male is normally great with puppies but when she first arrived he was too much energy for her and she was very scared of him. Within a few days of having her, she was licking his face, he showed his teeth (no growling) and then bit her on the face. After that, we kept him muzzled around her for a while and they got better.

Today he was walking by her and she got in his face which resulted in him getting her again on her face (pics attached). The big line seems superficial (mainly hair loss) but she’s got a puncture on the top of her upper lip by her nose. I have cleaned and treated the areas. He’s now back in his muzzle anytime she’s going to be around.

Is this over correcting? Should I get a trainer involved? He didn’t grip on and like shake but it was more of multiple chomps on her muzzle in a split second. He ran off but then came back when she started screaming and I put him outside.

I have two other dogs. One he gets along great with one who we brought into the family as a puppy as well. They did great with him growing up but he was also like 2ish when we brought that dog into the family. My other is a senior who we keep fully separated from each other because of the borzoi going after him since he turned 3 and started to test dominance.

I want to have hope they will be ok and this is just them having to figure each other out/set boundaries but I’ve never had to deal with this before.

Looking for advice about our 3 year old border heeler mix. We rescued him at about a year old and did not get any background information on what his life was like with his previous owners. Over the past two years, we've had multiple incidents where he's shown aggression towards people and dogs, and it's making it very hard for us to keep both him and the people around him safe and content.

He bit me about a year ago on the thigh when I caught him chewing on something he wasn't supposed to (he very rarely does this) and I began to sternly tell him no, and he turned and bit me, breaking through the skin but not causing me to bleed. I realized I had clearly caught him off guard and should have redirected his attention to something else rather than approaching him in that manner, and so I defended him for doing that.

Twice, he has nipped at toddlers (not really biting them but sort of latching on to their sleeves). I again defended him, feeling like the environments we had been in both times were stressful and I should have known better than to allow small children into his space.

He has bitten my husband a couple times, though less severely than when he bit me, and I have always found a reason for why he may have done so (being territorial or reactive towards something).

He's been in several scuffles with other dogs. I say scuffle because there has never been blood drawn on any of the dogs. I believe he is particular about other dogs entering his space and can easily get defensive, and so we've tried to avoid him being around other dogs at all when possible.

He's become very reactive towards cars or other dogs when we've been on walks, to the point where we avoid walking him at all and just try to get his energy out at home through fetch, a herding ball, and interactive games/puzzles.

We tried to get him groomed once, but he nipped at the groomer and was too defensive to work with. He hates the vet, and recently minorly bit a vet tech who tried to take a blood sample. The most recent scare we've had was at the boarding place we take him to, he badly bit the girl that tried to take him back to his kennel. He's now no longer allowed to board there.

All of this to say, despite our efforts it feels like he's getting worse and more reactive overall. I'm now pregnant with our first child, and I fear for our child's safety once they are old enough to be walking and running around. We keep him crated when guests are over because we're worried about bites. I've just never dealt with anything like this, and it only makes it harder that he is the sweetest dog 95% of the time. Can we ethically rehome him? Are these issues severe enough for behavioral euthanasia? My brain can't even think about that. But I don't know what other options there are.

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping someone recognizes this because we’re running out of ideas.
Our intact male White Swiss Shepherd is about 15 months old. He’s a wonderful dog in many ways, but he completely falls apart indoors.
Outside, he’s generally calm. He can spend a long time sniffing around the garden, lie down by himself, and just exist. The moment he’s comes inside, it’s as if he cannot regulate himself.
His biggest issues are:
Constantly seeking interaction.
Pacing around the house.
Demanding attention.
Jumping up at us.
Grabbing and biting clothes, arms and legs when frustrated or overaroused.
Becoming impossible to disengage once he’s over threshold.
The biting isn’t fear-based or aggressive. It seems much more like frustration and complete emotional dysregulation.
Interestingly, if he’s alone in the garden he’s relaxed. If I walk outside while he’s there, he often starts jumping and biting me instead.
He currently gets:
Fluoxetine 60 mg daily.
Gabapentin 600 mg twice daily.
The medication reduced the behaviour somewhat, but it certainly hasn’t solved it.
We’ve worked with trainers, management, enrichment, decompression, structured routines, enforced naps, licking mats, chew items, sniffing games, relaxation protocols… you name it.
The only place where he consistently relaxes indoors is his crate, where he happily sleeps for hours.
I’m mainly wondering:
Has anyone had a dog that couldn’t regulate themselves indoors?
Did it improve with age?
What ended up making the biggest difference?
Did you ever discover an underlying medical, orthopedic or neurological issue contributing to it?
At this point I’m less interested in general training advice and more interested in hearing from people who have lived through something similar. It has been an incredibly frustrating journey, and I’d love to hear both success stories and cases where the eventual cause turned out to be something unexpected.
Thank you.

Started doing this almost by accident — after a bad walk I’d think back and realize there was a vet visit or loud storm the night before. Now I try to notice it in the moment: “okay, we had guests yesterday, groomer this morning, let’s keep today low-key.”

Not sure if this is common knowledge here or if I’m late to figuring this out, but it’s changed how much I blame myself for “bad days.” Do you track this kind of thing, and if so, how? Notes app, memory, spreadsheet?

My beagle of eight years bit my face when he was seven, and it taught me that betrayal is possible within the purest of souls.

I was petting his ears as I always have, he was sitting infront of me, there was no warning growl, no show of teeth, only a blur and blood. He then acted like normal, following me around and wagging his tail as I cleaned myself up to go to the hospital.

He had bit one of my brothers in the face before too, and had bit my other brother's hand, a few months/weeks before my bite. Before those happened he has had stroke like events of aggressive shaking where he seeks one of us for comfort and we hold him until he stops. Our vet didn't believe us on multiple occassions when we said we thought they were strokes, he just looked at our videos and said "he is just scared."

The days after the bite, I started cuddling with him again after a while, allowing him in my bed, kissing him. But that faded away, I could no longer be around him after my scars healed and the event had time to settle in my head.

No matter how hard I forgive him, I have lost the confidence I had petting friends' pets, I only pet him with the tips of my fingers when I used to wrestle with him. It has even affected how I see my relationships with loved ones.

A play growl is violence in my ears, the smallest of grunts is a warning, my heartrate shoots up and my hands shake for minutes as my body enters flight.

As I typed this, crying, he came over to check on me, sniffing close and wagging his tail, but I am so scared of him being near me that I sent him to my room as I sit in the living room. It destroys me.

He has growled angrily at me several times after the incident, chased me before stopping suddenly, and bit me again and my bestfriend when we tried to help him when he got a thumb claw stuck on his collar. This had happened once or twice before with no bite.

Age has made him quick to reaction, whether is has a reason (pain, discomfort) or non at all (he once had just woken up, got on top of me for pets, I didn't pet him, he walked away and started growling before turning around sharply to chase me). It is my biggest heartbreak.

My mother mentioned euthenizing him, but never went through with it. I have had breakdowns after his episodes, begging for him to be taken out of our home.

I will most likely never have another pet. I don't know if I can ever grow to trust one again. I am paralized on what my next move should be.

We've just brought home a new labrador (9 year old male, neutered) to our border collie (5 year old male). I understand while getting used to the new home he may be boisterous and nervous, but the trying to mount our collie/constant nudging and attempts to nip him is a slight problem.

Is there anything besides correcting behaviour and praising when he behaves I can do? It's only his first day here so I'm not too worried about it for now, but if anyone has any advice thankyou!!

This is my dog Luna.. she is about 3-4 Great Pyrenees and Anatolian Shelard.. and we got her from a rescue that found her roaming the streets of Detroit sick and skin n bones. We nurses her back to health and she's been a pretty good dog for the most part.. today we had an issue tho.. I have an 18 month old son.. and 2 other dogs.. we keep everyone separated with baby gates n what not.. sometimes Luna and my son are on opposite sides of a gate and he dropped his bottle over the gate and when he reached for it she snapped at him and started growling a lot and scratching and the gate n just kind of went nuts like she was trying to hurt him.. this is too close of a call for us.. we have rearranged our whole house to accommodate her and we trully try to work with her and her resource guarding but it doesn't seem to be helping much and I fear I may be at the end of my rope.. I cannot risk her hurting my son and I do not know what to do.. there was a other issue one night when she threw up and I woke up and tried to get her away from it so I could clean it up and she bit me.. not a hard bite..but she definitely got my hand.. so she has a history of biting and snapping at young kids and adults..

Honestly she is such a great dog..99.99% of the time.. the absolute sweetest dog ever.. but introduce the smallest amount of food.. or puke and she wants to fight over it.. I have reached out everywhere around me and nobody will take her and the rescue we got her from just told us where to go to put her down. So I keep trying to work with her or do I just bite the bullet and put down a sweet dog that MOGHT note someone.. I really think of I could find her a home where she is the only dog and no kids.. she would thrive! She would do so damn good.. I don't want to give up on her yet but dammit.. I cannot risk her hurting my 18 month old son..

Howdy. My 9 year old chiweenie is a small 17 pound reactive dog. He’s great with people he knows, but snaps at strangers. He’s made contact at least once, but is generally very anxious and doesn’t walk well. He pants and pulls, and generally doesn’t do well outside the home since Covid. We’ve just let him be, but it’s frustrating not being able to travel.

In the past we had a family friend that loves him and he’s very happy to be watched by them, but they’re not available anymore as they are caring for an elderly family member.

We’ve researched kennels that specialize in reactive dogs, but in general I have some concerns about liability; I know that homeowners insurance does cover some liability, but since we’ve reported his reactivity to our vet, is it possible they would deny a claim? There’s never been a police report or the like.

If we recruit a kennel or Rover person, how does liability work if we fully disclose his behavior up front and they accept the dog?

Any other advice or recommendations?

when i first got her she was lush loved cuddles soo much and learned everything instantly, at around 5 months she started becoming extremely aggressive towards me to the point it was hard to take care of her. i was told to crate train her which i did and then it got better. then was really good till 1-2 months ago she started resource guarding and now she has just started attacking me multiple times a day. there’s no cause to it i can just stand up and it happens, she can walk up to me, if i come through the door, if i stop petting her she will attack. i’m covered in cuts and bruzes and i genuinely don’t know how to get her to stop. i’ve tried everything, telling her firmly no and stop but when i react to it she gets 100x more aggressive. and it’s so much worse now the weather is hot as im in shorts and tshirt so my skin is bare meaning i get more hurt. i just cry everyday, i really don’t want to end up having to give her up. she means a lot to me, i got her after my best friend had taken her life and she gave me the will to live and get better but i cannot live like this anymore. does anyone have any advice- i have reached out to trainers but i don’t want to spend thousands of pounds and it not working considering she behaved like this before, or for it to work but then she go back and by that time she will be older and less likely to be adopted. i also want to add i live on my own, but my mum comes over when she can work from home and my dog does not attack her or if she tries anything she listens to her when she says stop.
her daily routine is-
wake up- between 6.30-8.30
toilet outside then breakfast
then play for abit and chill
lunch time- toilet break and have a frozen kong toy
then she normally chills or naps round the house, if she lies on my bed but keeps getting up because she hears something i’ll put her in her crate for 1.30-2hr for a nap

wake up -go toilet, play
dinner & walk
bed in crate- 9-11pm
btw i’m currently home all day not working until i get my car back.

please any advice appreciated 🩷

When I brought my little guy home as an ~8 week old puppy I didn’t know what to do with him. He was terrified of everyone, and he was aggressive to our family dogs, mainly due to resource guarding. Before him, I absolutely would have told you that puppies cannot be aggressive. It was eye opening for me. And he’d trigger shift what he was guarding: food, doorways, toys, stairs, hallways, etc were all fair game. If he so much as saw another animal when he was protecting a resource he would attack with barely a warning. It was an extremely alarming sight.

In that first year, he improved massively, and has been on an upward trajectory since. His only trigger now is his actual kibble, so I pick it up when he’s not eating. But even with that, he gives warnings and his threshold isn’t “within eyesight” anymore but about 1-2 feet or less.

Picture is of him watching (begging) while I eat a chicken salad sandwich. As I ate, my cat climbed up onto the couch, sniffed my plate (my cat is rude as hell), and laid down next to my dog. He didn’t care one bit.

I’m very proud of my little guy.

I’ve been feeling really defeated with my almost 3 year old German Shepherd’s leash reactivity and could use some perspective from people who have been through this. I worked with a behaviorist over the internet (used the diplomat website to find them). After assessing her they found her to be leash/barrier frustrated. She doesn’t have aggressive behaviors with dogs she’s around in appropriate off leash settings. She told me to go to places where there will be triggers and reward for that. We did it for about 6 months but she still She fixates on other dogs, then lunges and barks, and now my other dogs are starting to whine or bark when they notice her fixating. I stopped letting her go on outings with my other dogs and now walk her separately so they don’t get her bad habits.
We’re enrolled in a reactivity class, and there have been signs of progress at times, but my last class was one of the hardest yet. She had several episodes where she lunged and barked nonstop, and I ended up crying afterward because I felt embarrassed, discouraged, and overwhelmed. I asked my trainer whether I should consider rehoming her, and they told me that if I don’t like the reactivity, someone else probably won’t either, and that she’s already very attached to me. They told me to keep repeating the course as many times as I would like to expose her to other dogs. That made me feel even more conflicted.
I love this dog so much and I know she loves me, but I’m honestly exhausted. Part of me wants to keep fighting because I know she’s trying, and part of me wonders if I’m capable of managing this for the next 10+ years while raising a family and caring for my other dogs. Has anyone else reached this point? If you did, what helped you decide whether to keep going, and if you did keep going, did it eventually get easier?

I’ve owned reactive dogs for 5 years now. My first dog passed away a couple months ago - he had frustration-based reactivity (he’d whine, sometimes escalating to a sort of scream, at any living thing). Before I had him, I didn’t even know what “reactive” meant, but got obsessed with researching how to train him and we actually made tons of (slow) progress in the 4ish years I had him. Never got professional training as I really didn’t want to spend the money on it.

I just adopted another dog 2 weeks ago who I love but he is leash-reactive. His manifests as barking and seems to be fear-based. So I thought ok, I know a lot about reactivity after my last dog, but I really want to start off right with this dog so I’ll hire a professional.

I spent $60 on a 30 minute consult with a positive-only trainer and basically my only takeaway is that my hundreds to thousands of hours of reading and watching YouTube videos has already taught me everything that this trainer suggested. Unfortunately the trainer also seemed quite dismissive because he basically thought it was too early to tell if my dog is actually reactive since he’s only been with me for 2 weeks (my dog is definitely reactive).

Anyway, I left feeling a weird mix of empowered that I’ve self-taught a lot, but also a little discouraged. My main fear in paying for a trainer was that they’d just tell me what I already know, and that’s exactly what happened.

Pic tax of the sweet guy. He actually loves everyone he’s met despite his scary barks on leash.

Anyone else have a similar experience?? Was this just a bad trainer? He came very highly recommended so I’m just very discouraged.

ETA: the main thing I wanted from a trainer is to learn about what my dog’s motivations are for his reactivity, because reading body language is where the theory that I’ve self-taught breaks down. I want a professional who has worked hands-on with tons of dogs to watch my dog react and tell me why he is reacting. But I spent $60 to just sit in a room and have this guy hand me printouts to read about thresholds and LAT and engage-disengage…

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.

My partner and I moved in together 10 months ago. For context, we have 4 children, 2 cats, and a small dog in addition to the Husky (my partner’s dog).

Since we’ve moved in, I have been stressed about this dog.

At one point around Christmas, he bit me hard enough to break skin when I came up behind him and touched him on the back, attempting to get his attention after calling his name multiple times - we needed to get him away from our dining room table during dinner.

I demanded then that my partner rehome him out of fear that he would bite and kill one of my children or one of their friends. We do not have the capacity to monitor a dog 24/7. I recognize this reality and wanted this dog to be in a home where people have the capacity and knowledge to care for him.

I was told by my entire family I was overreacting.

I will admit I am now scared of this dog. His stares, growling, and the way he will whip around with his mouth open when someone surprises him (even on accident) - it all terrifies me.

The most recent incident happened today. He and our smaller dog were left alone in the kitchen with treats and the Husky attacked the smaller dog (10 lbs). This smaller dog is now bleeding from the soft part of his skull, the tip of his nose, and from his eye.

I have once again told my partner we need to rehome this dog before he kills someone or another one of our pets. I was immediately met with excuses for why the event happened.

And no, my partner has done nothing to train his dog or mitigate these behaviors. I have no time to train a reactive/aggressice dog and didn’t sign up to live with one.

Am I overreacting? Where do I go from here?

Here’s Ellie. We’ve been working quite a bit on her various hang-ups, including noise sensitivity, separation anxiety and leash reactivity. We are working with our vets on her meds (she takes fluoxetine everyday and clonidine as needed). We are also working with a behaviorist/trainer specifically on separation anxiety and leash reactivity.

I wanted to get some advice on this - from day 1, she is more attached to me, than my husband. For awhile, she would still go take a walk with my husband or play with him, but it’s clear she just prefers me, if I’m around.

One day during the winter, my husband went on a walk with her, they encountered a big snow plow truck, backing up, making alot of noises. My husband took a turn to create distance but unfortunately the truck followed.
Since then, ellie refuses to go out anywhere with just my husband. She will stare at me or will run towards me. When I’m at work (my husband work from home full time), she will just stay in her crate or one of her other beds, and ignore my husband.

We’ve slowly been working with her to get over her fear of truck backup alarm (those beeep beeep noise truck makes when they are backing up). We live behind home depot, so this is a common occurrence. She can now walk around the neighborhood with me or both me/husband, without bee-lining back into the house and crate everytime she hears the noise. But she still refuses to go out with my husband only.

Any suggestions and advice?

We now have two Britneys spaniels. We adopted a Britney spaniel about 1 year old named Tulip. Tulip was found in indiana with no chip or collar. Then brought to a britney rescue where we adopted her. Not much is known about her background otherwise. The last few months have been great with strangers and children in the family. We have had our nieces and nephews over about 6 and 7 years old and have had no issues.

My wife took Tulip to the bike store and pet store with no issues.

However, walks and children seem to be a problem. We now twice have had children ask to pet Tulip. Each time we've said yes. Tulip will sit and look pretty then lunge and do what appears to be a warning bark or bite (never actually bit a child either of those times). Hard to tell because shes panting and has her mouth open if it is a bark or bite during the lunge.

Tulip has been a great dog. Super cuddly and affectionate and haven't had any issues in side the home with food.

Not sure if she is territorial with walks or if shes having some type of reactive leash anxiety because I keep her closer when the child approaches. Im not sure if this is a me problem with how I handle a child approaching or a Tulip anxiety problem

I’m not sure I’m looking for advice, to vent, or what… but I feel like I have failed my dogs and like a bad mom.

I have two rescues, Kodi (5) and Phoenix (4), both shelter rescues pulled from the euthanasia list on their last day.

Kodi was originally a foster with my now husband; Phoenix was originally a foster with me. At the time we had just began dating and lived separately.

A year or so later, we moved in together. We spent like 6 months slowly introducing our dogs who are now brothers.

It has been about 2.5 years since then, and we are so tired and defeated. I don’t think the dogs are happy, either. We have even started wondering if they’d be better off living elsewhere. And they might. But we also feel like now it’s too late — that they’d end up back in the shelter system for months or even back on a euthanasia list.

Phoenix has bit 2 people - not breaking skin, but left a bruise. He will lunge at strangers if his signals of wanting space aren’t corrected. In addition to this, he reacts to all sounds from 8am to 8pm. And I mean any sound, outside or inside. He is tense 24/7, listening for anything at all, and then barks as if there is an intruder or attacker. He doesn’t enjoy walks and is frozen the entire time. I feel really bad for him and have recently realized that I don’t think he has a single moment of relaxation, peace, or joy. His inner life seems dominated by hyper vigilance.

Kodi on the other hand, loves other dogs, and I suspect people, too. He is a frustrated greeter, has fence frustration/reactivity, leash frustration/reactivity, and resource guards his food. He has attacked Phoenix around 4-5 times since living together, sadly. Kodi eats in the garage now, and Phoenix eats upstairs. There hasn’t been an incident in over 6 months. Kodi is also completely unable to settle, even inside the house. If me or (especially) his dad so much as stand up, Kodi jolts up too. He has to be next to my husband 100% of the time, and is either jumping all over him, or chewing on his clothes as he is wearing them.

It also seems like they’ve picked up each others reactivity, anxiety, and stress.

We’ve tried many things over the years… which are all still in effect:
- positive reinforcement training
- counter conditioning
- exposure to triggers without going over threshold
- white noise machines throughout the house
- box fans throughout the house
- baby gates throughout the house to create safe zones
- pheromone diffusers, thunder shirt, ear muffs
- calming cookies with l-theanine, magnesium, etc
- going on walks separately
- taking them to the back yard separately

There’s so much more actually, but it’s to a point where all of the above is not working. After 2.5 years we are defeated and also feeling traumatized, ourselves. Which we feel bad about feeling this way.

We can’t have guests. They can’t even so much as see another person near us without absolutely losing it. We live a very isolated life which is making me feel depressed. We also don’t get to spend any meaningful time together because we are constantly managing a high-reactivity household.

We’re trying Prozac now. I hope this helps our boys have an easier existence and find calmness, even joy. I’d love to hear your experiences with this.

Are there any trainers in Austin, TX, who is able to correct behavioral and cognitive r e a c t i v e n e s s. I have a 6 year old, 8lb chihuahua who spend every walk lurking for things to attack and bark at. She is willing to commit self-harm to lunge and attempt to hurt things.

She has so far bitten 2 people and badly attacked another animal, 2 out of 3 incidents took place while she was on sedatives.

I have called some trainers, but theyve quoted me.over $6000, but advise that she may be this way by nature so training may not stick. There's one who told me they wouldn't train her unless she's on her medication, but that defeats the whole purpose since she can barely stand on her meds.

Given her past, her vet gave me the option to do training and also said it may not stick, or to... put her down.

I'm heavily conflicted because this dog is sooo sweet, and has so much potential. She was an older rescue with heartworms, and I took her home so she could have fun and just live her life.

But she doesn't want to have fun like other dogs. She wants to search, attack and hurt things.

Im absolutely furious about what she did to that poor, and it's been so hard to pretend like it doesn't bother me.

I've tried my own methods, trainer videos, did consultations.