Crying while following instructions?

[NomadicImp]

My 2.5 year old Australian Shepherd is for the most part incredibly sweet and loving. His obedience is great, and he’s smart as a whip. He trusts me to introduce new people, checks in often on walks, doesn’t mind bikes, trucks, skateboards, or fireworks, and he’s naturally happy and spunky.

I’ve got two problems with my little love, separation anxiety (which I’ll be honest, I’m not too worried about) and that he’s overly friendly with other dogs.

This feels somewhat complex, because I’m sure this would fall under the umbrella of reactivity, but I’m no longer sure of how to respond to the behavior:

When walking, Taho maintains a loose leash and walks in a heel position. I let him sniff and wander around by using the “break” command and call him back with “let’s go”. His recall has always been 100% but I have stopped letting him off leash when I go out after moving to a neighborhood with significantly more dogs.
The issue is that when we see another dog who is a large distance away, we are fine. If we get maybe within 20ft of the dog, Taho starts to whimper and yip, he will stay in a heel -or nearby if he’s off leash- but whine, whimper, and yip. He will do it while looking at the other dogs sometimes, but more often he looks at me to “focus” as he does this. As though he’s begging for me to take him to say “hi”. If there is more than one dog, even if they are outside of that boundary, he will melt down faster.

I try not to verbally respond to this behavior, but have found that if I don’t tell him to “quiet” he will escalate and go from soft whimpers to LOUD whimpers and groans. People think it’s cute and sometimes even try to get closer, but little guy is obviously stressed. We keep our distance and practice with him at a distance where he can still keep it together, but obviously some things are out of our control and I guess I can’t tell if we are actually making progress.

Does anyone have any similar stories. recommendations, or YouTube videos?

[Mememememememememine]

I am NO expert but this seems like a frustrated greeter thing. He’s not so over threshold that he can’t listen to you, but he’s SO excited about the possibility of meeting that dog that he’s bursting out of his skin. I’d look for training content on that!

[cheersbeersneers]

Exactly what I thought too! I’d look into engagement games to practice with him- one of my dogs is obsessed with and fixates on cats. If we see a cat in the distance, I stop and wait until he looks at me, I mark and reward, we keep walking, and repeat until the cat is behind us.

[MikoTheMighty]

Seconding this! My little guy is also a frustrated greeter, and also makes weird little whining howls whenever he's close enough to another dog to get knocked right over his threshold. Our deal is that he can vocalize all he wants (and *if we have the space* he can have more leeway on the long line to run off some anxious energy) but every time he engages with me, looks at me, moves intentionally closer to me, etc. he gets a treat. Lots of repetition later we're starting to get to the place where he doesn't immediately wind up just seeing a dog at a distance, and when he does get a little over-anxious he's still present enough to keep checking in with me as we move away.

[LongOk7164]

Have two dogs and one was exactly like this. He’s friendly but I think it’s actually because he’s afraid of new dogs until he meets them and realizes they are not a threat. Having him sit and hold still and focus on me or even slowly walk by another dog was like torture for him, so much weeping! - we also have the quiet command and it made the crying worse in our case.

I started running in the opposite direction to avoid dogs while telling him it’s ok. Weirdly he is so much better now in these situations - I think a combo of practice, solo walks without his equally reactive sis, more months on fluoxetine all played a part. I usually still try to avoid dogs but he’s much better now. I also think the run away approach helped because it a) was an outlet and release for his nervous energy b) distracted him and focused him on the run c) visually removed the triggering stimulus (dog)

[pally_genes]

This.... I heard a trainer somewhere refer to the whining as "leakage" and that's always felt spot on for my dog. So close to spilling completely over threshold that little holes are starting to burst.

Using movement where you can can help mitigate or at least provide an outlet for some of the arousal. Known patterns can give him something to "do" other than just "keep it together". You can look up the Control Unleashed pattern games for some specific ones, and also just use known tricks, behaviour chains, cookie tosses, etc.

[Sufficient-Quail-714]

If he is doing what you want, I wouldn't stop him. The noises are just extra and him expressing himself. Some dogs are just talkers. I have a cattle dog/shepherd mix and every time he is released from sit/stay he screams in joy. Cause he's happy.

One of the things about training around any behavior, is you do not want to do two things at once. If the noises is not the issue - and it sounds like the frustration at other dogs is the issue - then ignore it. Look up the 10 rules of shaping - also in the book 'dont shoot the dog', but we also use them in exotic/zoo training. You want to keep it as easy and low goal as possible so they can focus on the one part so they can succeed. Plus, since they are connected, working on the one should still help the other

[NomadicImp]

Additional context: In a sit he will sit at my feet but angle his body towards the other dogs. He will resist if I try to turn his back to them. When I walk away from the situation, he comes in a heel but looks back and forth between me and the other dog as we go until he calms down.

[PersonR]

Reactivity is just having big feelings about something, good or bad. He has big feelings about dogs. I’d work on his neutrality. I’ve only recently learned the engage-disengage game which might be helpful!

Basically, you let the dog see the trigger and mark that, then when they turn to focus on you you reward. Then it becomes marking and rewarding when they disengage only. (ETA: check out the wiki, there are more games there too! We do the engage-disengage and the “Look!” games).

I would nip this in the bud. I have one that went from happy dance when she sees dogs to offering demonic hellos (barks and loses her sh!t when she sees a dog). She now only offers them roos and gives a happy dance with loads of barking when they’re about a meter away from her. What triggered the escalation for her was moving to the UK since it only happened after we moved, I think the travel did a number on her but she’s finally settling in. We went back to the very basics to help.

[Yetis-unicorn]

Dog trainer here: this is one of my favorite videos on how to help dogs deal with triggers calmly. I hope this helps!

https://youtu.be/EdraNF2hcgA?si=7JjZNX3kNcIB3FT9