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.

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.

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?

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!!

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.

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?

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 🩷

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?

For more context, I live on a land with two small houses. One belongs to my "roommate", one to me. We, together, have dog school, dog hotel etc; generally, we both do things with dogs and share land and responsibilities together. We also share a passion to the same breed type, which is herding dogs. The difference is, I like mine spicy he likes their... Nice, let's put it that way. He owns borders and border mixes, I own aussie and mudi.

The point is, mudi is usually a hard-time dog until it really reached its maturity. Mine is, by now, mostly reactive on leash at other dogs, also can grip people but only when he's really surprised like he went outside and somebody he doesn't know was there. He usually barks and if the person does something that might scare him, he will grip them like a cow, so it's not really a bite, and that's it. He's ten months old now, so I'd say he's amazing for his breed anyway - no weird fixations, excessive barking, amazing indoors (when he's indoors he loves people tbf, even when it's like a mall or so, he's really nice and chill to everyone, have problems outside only).

We are both also dogfrisbee competitors, and I think that's where the issue started. My roommate is very fixated on his breed; he won't acknowledge any bad things that borders do (and if so, he will say it's the genetic line breed badly or that his doesn't do that), but they are all matured! His youngest is the bordermix which is nearly 2yo.

My mudi rather hates most of his dogs, as they are disc-fixated and hard to communicate with him; basically very competition-dogs, that rarely even play etc. None of em will fight or so, but I think he just gets annoyed at their "stiffness" and corrections when he does playbows or so.

But, to the point, as we have my life context. My rommie usually doesn't comment at my mudi at all, never acknowledge any of his success even when I sent him, yet loves to brag about his borders. I don't have a lot against it, because I know how it is to just love your own dogs and their success, but it always sting me a little. Recently my mudi started to really shine in discs, and I even consider to take him in two months for a competition, and since I mentioned that, he started to be just... Rude to me.

Today he gave me TWENTY MINUTES literally twenty minutes brag about how bad my dog is, how terrible he behaves with that barking and gripping, and even said that this breed is absurd to him, because if you pay for dog and then need to do so much work around him, then it's better to just adopt a mutt and do it. Then mentioned that my mudi is like one of his dogs he doesn't like, but at least his dog have physical skills (I guess it was a "your doesn't have anything" type of sht), and generally it was terrible sht talk. Had so much more of them recently, just because my dog is a young dog acting accordingly to the breed, but he can't comprehend it. And it really sometimes makes me feel like a terrible owner, like I don't do enough or that maybe he's right, maybe it's just a bad dog. And I feel awful with it..

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.

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?

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

I have a 4 year old GSD, who i’ve become scared of handling him. I’ve reached out to a trainer who is willing to come and see him to help, but i’m so anxious. He hates any type of pressure, getting a collar on him is a nightmare as well as a leash and muzzle. He starts growling and attempting to bite and it’s getting increasingly hard to be comfortable in my own home. He can be a very good dog but everyone in my home is uncomfortable around him (rightfully so). I don’t let him out of the room for extended time and we spend a lot of time outside. My fear is failing him but if he hurts me, i know that’s the last resort since no one else can handle him. He’s very attached to me. I just don’t know what to do at this point. Getting him to a vet is a challenge because of the leash and muzzle thing. I think I’m way over my head. He has already bit a few people in my home, one severe and the other a warning. He lunges at another person in my home. I attempt to keep him separated but the house is small and it’s so hard. I don’t know what to do.

A little over a week ago my mini american shepherd was watching the neighbors out the window when they set off a firework while he was watching. he got super spooked and ran to hide under my desk. he went to bed and I was hoping he would get over it after a night's sleep but he still is acting spooked around that Window. he usually lounges on the couch and watches out the window all day but now hes been sleeping in his kennel instead of his usual couch spot and he wont sit and hangout with us while we watch TV. ive been trying to build positive associations with the couch/window again by giving treats by the window and i stuck a lick mat to the window with peanut butter and he enjoyed it. ive also been sitting with him there and gently insisting he stay with me there but he will always eventually slither off the couch and go lay somewhere else. i even tried shutting his kennel because he was spending SO much time in there but he just finds other spots away from the window to lay down, which i guess is not a problem but he always enjoyed looking out there and it makes me sad to see him so spooked by it now. any advice?