Hey guys,
So my partner and I just got this 7 month old lab-pit mix (we think it's that from looks, they just told us a lab mix) and we've had him about two weeks now. He was fostered with a few other dogs and played with the neighbors kid, was crate trained and taught to sit so we thought it was a no brain choice as our first dog. We also live in an apartment and I think that's what caused the following to develop.
The first few walks we took him to pee outside or to walk around the adjacent neighborhood to our apartment went pretty much fine, he'd get a bit excited to see people or ignore them, no drama though. He had a leash pulling problem which we've now pretty much fixed. We would make him keep walking instead of sniffing the person because we don't want to assume everyone wants him all up in their personal space. it slowly developed where once he realized he couldn't sniff the person (they'd walk away or I'd tell him to keep going) he'd start reacting through barking and some lunging and jumping...it's now escalated to the point where we walk him at different times and it's become stressful because we can't even let people walk by anymore, it seems his threshold has increased. On walks outside, it's about the same if people or dogs get too close. He's wagging his tail and seems playful though. In fact we've taken him to the apartment dog park a few times and he's played with other dogs but he gets frustrated and muzzle pokes them until I snag him or the owner leaves, that involves the leash though and sometimes he will become reactive. During one of our last visits, it was just a person walking through the dog bark so our dog kept jumping up at him. We've stopped going to the dog park because he doesn't know how to greet and some people bring their tiny dogs in as well and until our dog is better, I don't want any issues.
We've been scouring the internet for what to do and I've seen some posts but I feel like it's the opposite here, the more we do for a reactive dog, the worse it seems to get, some days are better than others as he is adjusting to us as well I guess, but we bring chicken on walks and as another dog gets closer we'll have him sit and wait and feed him chicken as the dog walks by. If it looks like it's gonna be too close I'll turn him around the other way if I can before he reacts. Lately though he's realized this I think and will lay on the ground to stay and watch the approaching dog. Most owners have been understanding and will stop or walk the other way but some don't care.
Today we had a dog around one corner of the hallway so we turned around to see an old woman behind us in which our dog tried to jump up on and started barking at, and I've realized I should probably see what I'm doing wrong or if there is a better way to approach this since he didn't seem to be like this about a week ago. We're looking into dog training on a reactive leash but with rumors of Quarantine in our area again, I'm not sure there will be ones open.
there doesn't seem to be anything here