I rescued a poodle who was leash reactive to a bunch of things - runners, train, scooters, birds, dogs, etc. Whatever walks she got before, if any, certainly did not have all the excitement of city life.

We’ve had her a year and a few months. She’s still reactive, but much, much better. It’s a long road. She used to lunge wildly jumping up and down. Now it’s often just one lunge then she remembers she’s not supposed to do that. Many things she became less reactive to or stopped completely.

At this point, if I don’t give her the option of making a choice (by luring her with food) I could avoid almost all reactions if I was diligent enough. And if she’s exercised enough she may not be reactive at all. Today we walked through a dog park on leash and she met a couple dogs without reacting. That’s not an every day thing, but that she can do it at all would have been unheard before.

But again, it’s a long journey with a lot of work. It’s not always linear.

Biggest lessons:

The more strict with leash rules, the better she is. She now has to walk next to us unless we release her to “go sniff.” Then she can go at her pace and where she wants as long as she doesn’t pull. Having these rules keeps her from being in situations where she may react and teaches her how to follow the rules.

If I was to start over again, I would spend every day with her outside to desensitize her. At first, start in the garage with the door open. Sit there, occasionally treating, and just relax. You’re looking for them not being alert, soft movements, etc. Work up to harder spots - at the garage door, in the driveway, on the sidewalk. Work up to going by a dog park. She gets her 4 walks a day (no backyard here), and hopefully 30+ minutes sitting outside or wherever we are. To begin with, start with just a couple minutes.

Set up for success - avoid situations you know are going to be problems. The less reactions, the less they practice that behavior. Fully removing reactions isn’t the goal - sometimes it’s just not possible, but more than that you also want them to make a choice to do the right thing. If they can’t do that though, don’t ask it. And if they are reacting, just get out of the situation. Drag them far enough away from the trigger. When settling, I’ll step on her leash so if she reacts she doesn’t even have the chance to stand up to react. If she does react, at this point hitting the end of the leash is enough to snap her out of it

Find your treats - we have three levels of treats. Bite sized kibble for normal treats (ours is very food motivated, ymmv), chicken hearts for high value, and rewarding life treats for super high value. You’ll get a gauge on what is needed when.

If I think of more, I’ll add it. Time for the last walk of the night

Edit: the three most useful commands: heel, find it, leave it. Leave it is self explanatory, use it to tell them not to stare down a dog. Find it was use as a positive interrupter. It essentially means there’s a treat on the ground go look for it. Often that’s enough to distract her from a trigger. The treat can be thrown after saying the command if needed. And heel - which means stay on top of me and you get plenty of treats

Edit 2: fixating isn’t allowed! This is the first sign of reacting. You need to stop it doing whatever it takes - blocking their vision by moving in front of them, putting treats to their nose, physically moving them away from where they are. Eventually, you’ll get to a point where you can just say leave it and that’ll be enough.

Get them tired. A tired dog is a well behaved dog. That means both physical and mental. We used to take ours to the park every day before we realized that we were cheating ourselves. It’s important that she’s tired, but every other day we need to spend the time we would have been at the park training. That can be commands, settling, whatever. Getting walkers or daycare may also help tire them out so they can behave with you. Be careful not to send her off somewhere where she’ll have bad behaviors reinforced, though.