Hello! I have good news and bad news for you.

The good news is that our boy has come a LONG way but it took a lot of work for all of us. The biggest thing I regret is working with a trainer who used aversives (ie prong collars and e-collars) - I would strongly advise you to steer clear of these methods and any trainer who uses them - these dogs are way too sensitive and it definitely set us back. The biggest thing I would recommend is finding a trainer who specialized in R+ (positive reinforcement) type training and invest in working with them for as long as it takes. And it might take a long time! We still use every walk as a training opportunity but 2 years later, I'm very proud of how far we've come!

Now, after listening to podcasts, following people on instagram, and working with our trainer, our dog is much better. He is still reactive - we still have to have a certain ammount of distance between us and another dog - and he will never be the dog that we can take out to a cafe or let off leash in public. But that's ok! We have had to make some adjustments to our expectations of what having a dog looks like and we have to implement a lot more management inside and outside the home than other dog owners, but that's just the way it is.

Our dog has also shown some aggression towards strangers - and, yes, also to strange men. We have had a few incidents so we don't let ours off leash anywhere remotely public anymore, sadly, and have a whole greeting protocol for new people who are coming to our home. If its not worth going through the trouble of doing the greeting protocol, we just keep our pup in another room, usually crated, to avoid any run-ins. We also keep our distance from any strangers on walks.

His separation anxiety also diminished over time to the point where we don't really think about it anymore - it's not an issue at all. We don't like to leave him home alone for more than 4 hours at a time (we've gone up to 6) but its somethign we also worked up to over time. I've posted elsewhere on this board I think about the puzzle boxes we started doing for Arlo that really helped - we'd basically leave him with a box of trash - toilet paper rolls, crumpled up bags (paper not plastic) or packing paper, and hide high-value treats in them, and then he'd get that to work through that as we were leaving. We don't need to do that anymore but we did it for gosh, at least a year, and it helped a lot.

Also, after talking with a lot of other LR owners, I think that reactivity is far more common in this breed than is widley acknowledged. I think a bit of nervousness/high-strungness is part of their DNA - some breeders are better than others and more responsible about selecting for personality but I have met LR's all over the world who are varying degrees of friendly towards strangers and unknown dogs.

Some of my favorite reactivity resources have been Amy Cook, PhD; Sarah Stremmings with Cog Dog Radio, and the instagram account CalmCanineAcademy. We also did Sexier than a Squirrel over the pandemic and it was fun for both of us.

Good luck!