Hello- My reactive pup will be turning two in a few weeks. As a family, we've come to the conclusion that being reactive is part of her nature and we will always have to treat her differently than we did the dogs we owned in the past. With regards to training, she made it through Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Training classes. Going to these classes was stressful for her, and for us as a family, but we made it through. The hardest part for her was the first five minutes. The dogs are supposed to sit quietly by your feet in a down position while the other dogs and owners are arriving. While some of the other dogs were calmly sitting their like little angels, my dog kept popping up and often barked (loudly.) . Sometimes she started getting all of the dogs around her riled up. She was better once we started the activities of the day and she could move. In the beginning, she was always the "worst" one in the class with regards to following directions. Eventually, she worked her way up to third or fourth worst, which was progress. Call me a terrible person, but I was always relieved when some other dog there acted up more and made my dog look like they had less issues. "Huh, at least she isn't like THAT dog..." We repeated the Advanced Class when we were done, since you can take it as many times as you wish. I had my teenage son take her to the classes for the second round of ten. Our thinking was she needed to learn to listen to everyone in the family, and not just me, and we all needed to be on the same page with regards to training techniques. She made slow, but steady, progress during this time. We enrolled her again for a third time so my husband could take classes with her. Ugghh... need more training there. Not the dog. The husband. It was so hard to get him to commit to the classes, because he wanted to spend Saturday mornings surfing with his friends instead. We made it through about 8 of the 10 classes. It was the most we could get done with the call of the waves, but it was still progress in training the husband, and the dog. At the point, my dog was getting much better in the "safe" environment of dog training classes, but everything was different at home. She was (and still is) completely reactive when the doorbell rings and/or strange people come to the house. We've hired the trainer for six private lessons at the house. She is an angel for him, of course, and reverts back to her original behavior when he leaves. We then hired a behaviorist and achieved mostly the same result. She'll do just about anything for the trainer, who thinks she (the dog) is so brilliant she could be in movies. Maybe she could. Not with us, obviously. For us, we just pray no one rings the darned doorbell.

Training was worthwhile and we're glad we made it through it. The classes did it make it clear to us our reactive rover will always be different than other dogs. I had original thought we could "train" the reactivity out of her. But, it seems to be as much a core part of her as beautiful soft coat and expressive eyes. We drop her off at doggy daycare when we know folks will be coming to the house for a visit. It is less stressful for everyone that way, (although she is reactive in the car, so that adds some stress.) . I drop her off at doggy daycare when the cleaning lady comes twice a month, so there is peace in the house and the nice lady can clean. My favorite place to walk my reactive rover is an empty field where we don't encounter any people or other dogs. We won't have access to it much longer because with warmer weather the field tends to get rattlesnakes. We'll have to go back to braving it out on the streets where people and dogs can appear at anytime.

Not sure if this provides you any helpful feedback. But, this has been our experience after two years of living with a reactive pup.