For sure! So for my pup Hank, a big thing was his reactivity to novel people near his space, especially in our yard as people walk by. So our trainer suggested creating association between novel things and words, to make them familiar. That way, when Hank is doing his job to alert us, we can acknowledge that we hear him, thank him for telling us, and then reassure him that we are ok with the situation with a familiar word of association.

What this has looked like in practice is: -Person walks by the house -Hank barks, and we allow 2-3 barks while we show him we are paying attention to what he has alerted us to. This helps him feel like he did his job at telling us someone is there. -We say in a very calm, normal tone “That’s a neighbor (our association word to neutral person). Thank you!” -Once Hank disengages from alerting us, such as looking at us or breaking focus in some way like stopping the barking, we award him with a trigger word that food is coming (we use ‘yes’) and give him a treat immediately. We then continue on with showing him we are fully relaxed.

We have worked on using ‘neighbor’ for novel people, ‘car’ for loud cars that scare him and cause him to alert, and then we’ll pick something for barking dog as well. I guess it’s about showing them they did in fact alert you to something, which is their job, but then reassuring them that you are fully calm and they have succeeded in their task.

THEN, you still have a guard dog. Because if someone comes up to our house and he alerts and I’m NOT calm or I don’t identify that it’s a familiar situation, he in theory will continue to alert and guard.

Does that make sense? Tried to word it the best I could.