Reactive dog training is one of the most frustrating and rewarding types of training you can go through. Although you have regressions and obstacles to overcome you will feel amazing when you actually succeed. Let's get you started now!

This episode is a masterclass in reactivity training. If you master these 3 secrets you will be able to transform your dog's life and make it easier for you wherever you go.

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00:01:41:04 - 00:01:59:04
Michael J. Accetta
I'm talking about reactivity. The three main things you need to do in order to have a successful training plan when it comes to reactivity and kind of set you up for success. You can have a training plan in general and you could start doing stuff with your dog. But if you don't have a system, if you don't have an organized way to do it, then it's not going to work.

00:01:59:14 - 00:02:15:04
Michael J. Accetta
So I want to talk about three main points here, and then I wanted to dove in a little bit more on some of those points. The first thing that I want to talk about is called threshold training. If you have a reactive dog if you have a dog that barks at people, they lunge at other dogs, they're dragging you down the street.

00:02:15:04 - 00:02:31:26
Michael J. Accetta
If you have a dog like that, then you need to understand threshold training. Whatever you're doing with your dog, no matter regardless of what kind of training you're doing. There is a fine line between stressing them out and continuing the progress and pushing them to where they fail. You don't want your dog to fail. You want them to succeed.

00:02:32:10 - 00:02:51:05
Michael J. Accetta
So we have to find that fine line. And there are three main ways that we can do this. We can control the threshold training. Number one is management. If you're going out with your dog, you need to manage their entire environment, their entire life, essentially, even if it's not reactive. If you're talking about something else, your dog's destroying the garbage.

00:02:52:01 - 00:03:11:24
Michael J. Accetta
Your dog is chewing up the couch, your dog's jumping up on people. You have to manage things. But when it comes to reactivity, you need to control the environment as best as you can. So that means having eagle eyes and looking out into the environment as far as you could possibly see and recognizing what might stimulate your dog and trigger them to become reactive.

00:03:12:13 - 00:03:30:15
Michael J. Accetta
Okay. Your dog is people-reactive. That might mean don't go into areas where there are a lot of people that's probably not the best place to go. Instead, go to a park where things are a little more relaxed, and a little calmer, and then you can reward your dog heavily there. Now, you cannot control everything so you also have to have a backup plan.

00:03:30:16 - 00:03:46:18
Michael J. Accetta
What happens when my dog loses their mind? Where could I go? Oftentimes I have my clients go to the park in their car and they can just jump right back into the car if something happens. Right. They stay right there. They don't go for a walk. They stay right near their car and they practice. And if they have to, they can jump back into the car.

00:03:47:09 - 00:04:09:18
Michael J. Accetta
But your goal is to observe the area as best as you can and stop your dog from being put in to situations where they're going to have problems, where they're going to freak out, where they're not going to be able to think clearly or progress in training efficiently. Now, number two, I want to talk about different variables just because we're talking about sight when it comes to managing the environment, right?

00:04:09:19 - 00:04:30:05
Michael J. Accetta
Your dog sees another dog, they lose its mind. We also have to consider, smell and sound. So when you're trying to keep your dog below the threshold you don't want your dog just be okay with seeing another dog or seeing a person or seeing a squirrel or a cat or whatever it may be. You need them to be okay. With hearing it as well as smelling it.

00:04:30:20 - 00:04:53:19
Michael J. Accetta
They need to become desensitized to all of those things. Oftentimes, I'll even have my clients work on those things separately. Right. So if a dog is way too stimulated by the sight of something, then we might just work on the sound. The dog is way too simulated, stimulated by the sound of something. We might just work on sight. See how we can kind of break that up and we can even control the different levels within that.

00:04:53:22 - 00:05:19:03
Michael J. Accetta
So sound. Is it lower or is it higher? Is it more in their brain like, oh, my God, I can't figure it out, right? Because of how loud it is? Or can we make it softer? Can we make it easier for them? Same thing with sight. Closer, further away movement is involved. There are a lot of variables you got to play with, and if you have a reactive dog, it's your job to kind of pinpoint all of the things that make your dog lose their mind.

00:05:19:19 - 00:05:38:09
Michael J. Accetta
Right. So if you've found out what makes them lose their mind, you can then dial it back and make it just a little bit easier for them. That is the finesse of really good reactive dog training and trainers. That's what they get paid a lot of money for. It's that ability to break it down and keep your dog successful that whole time.

00:05:38:11 - 00:05:53:14
Michael J. Accetta
So if you can do that, you're going to save yourself thousands of dollars in training as well as hundreds of hours in training. Right. Like you're not going to spend as much time because they're progressing faster. The faster your dog progresses. The faster they can move on to the next thing. And we can encourage them more with build more confidence.

00:05:53:20 - 00:06:11:21
Michael J. Accetta
And it keeps going like that. We kind of just build on everything as they go now. Now that you understand the different variables and how to manage everything, you can start dancing with pressure. This is what I call dancing with a cha cha cha. Right? Act little. Was it? I don't even know. I do a little dance, make a little move.

00:06:11:21 - 00:06:35:16
Michael J. Accetta
Get down tonight. So you want to dance under pressure? If I can add a little bit of pressure and I can make it just that much more stressful. Just a little bit. And then I can take the pressure back off. Instead of my dog getting used to working at one level, I can stress them out, create a little bit more of a challenge for them, and then reward them by taking the pressure off.

00:06:35:22 - 00:06:55:04
Michael J. Accetta
And encouragement with rewards, toys, treats, that kind of thing. Praise. They'll actually progress that much faster. I did not push them to the point where they freak out and they fail, but I pushed them just past what they are comfortable doing. It's like people, right? If you want to learn how to play the piano, yes, you have to learn the scales.

00:06:55:04 - 00:07:12:25
Michael J. Accetta
You have to learn all the mechanics of it. But then if you want to get good, you kind of have to play faster. You have to play without looking. You have to create these challenges that make it easier when you don't have those challenges. Think about someone in a sport, right? They play football instead of pushing against a £300 guy in football.

00:07:13:02 - 00:07:33:28
Michael J. Accetta
You practice pushing against a £500 thing in practice. That way, when you're in the game, it's easier for you to push against the £300 person. That's what you need to do for your dog. Just in a controlled way. You're going to add a little bit just enough to where they're stressed. They didn't freak out yet, and then you bring them back, you relieve them, and then in real life, things become easier.

00:07:34:14 - 00:07:51:21
Michael J. Accetta
Now that's just the first secret, that threshold training. That's the first secret when it comes to reactive dog training. I'm going to go over the next two in just a minute. But if you're excited about this, you're like, Oh, wow, this guy's got a lot of information. I made it super, super easy for you to learn how to do all of this, and I'm actually going to demonstrate it for you.

00:07:51:21 - 00:08:14:07
Michael J. Accetta
If you just go to Matador canine dot com forward slash reactivity, I created an entire course, and if you just put rescue in the coupon section, you get 10% off. That's my gift for you, man. Barking uncommon slash reactivity get 10% off by using the coupon code. Rescue all caps in that. Now, the second secret is a solid foundation.

00:08:14:27 - 00:08:35:01
Michael J. Accetta
Solid foundation. I mean, you have to have such a strong fundamental understanding and your dog has to have that fundamental understanding of what they should be doing. Doesn't need to be everything, doesn't need to be everything. But you should at least have one thing and that's going to be a recall or name recognition. Recall, right? Say my dog's name.

00:08:35:01 - 00:08:50:28
Michael J. Accetta
They come to me. Name recognition is just saying your dog's name and having them respond to you. Since we're working on reactivity, maybe you're going for a walk, or maybe you're going to the park. You're probably still going to have your dog on a leash, which means you don't need as far of a distance for a good recall. But it will help when your dog is closer.

00:08:51:01 - 00:09:06:12
Michael J. Accetta
Right. Just like I just talked about with that challenge, if your dog is able to do a 100-foot recall and you get them two feet away from you, the odds of them responding to you are much higher Name recognition is the exact same thing we're just not doing at a distance. So I say my dog's name HAWK turns towards me.

00:09:06:12 - 00:09:28:01
Michael J. Accetta
Good. I can reward him if your dog understands name recognition and recall when you need to use it, that means you're out for a walk and they see something else and you say their name. They should turn back and you should be able to reward them. That is going to start becoming an automatic response for them. They see the thing that triggers them and they turn towards you expecting a treat.

00:09:28:13 - 00:09:47:24
Michael J. Accetta
Super simple, right? But if they don't know that first, then you can never use it in that heightened state of awareness. When your dog is stressed, they're not thinking as clearly as they usually do. If you take them out to go do something and they're stressed by a dog, they're stressed by a person, they're trying to chase the squirrel up the tree and you call their name.

00:09:47:25 - 00:10:05:08
Michael J. Accetta
Odds are they aren't going to turn to you. That's a problem, right? That's a whole it's whole emphasis of reactive dog training. We want our dog to engage with us as opposed to everything else. And so if they don't even know what the fundamentals are, then how am I going to be able to do it in a stressful situation?

00:10:05:08 - 00:10:28:00
Michael J. Accetta
It's just not going to happen. Now, the other things you might want to teach before you jump into reactive training are obedience and manners to a certain level. Right. I want my dog to be able to sit now at my dog, able to relax and maybe walk on a leash without anything else going on. Again, it's going to make it easier for me to transition from a less stressful environment to this new stressful environment.

00:10:29:11 - 00:10:46:25
Michael J. Accetta
Right? There's no way for my dog to know those things in this stressful environment unless I've taught them somewhere else. It's like getting into the pilot's seat of a plane. There's no way you can fly a plane. I mean, people do it all the time and it does happen. But there's a school to learn how to become a pilot.

00:10:46:25 - 00:11:08:06
Michael J. Accetta
There's a reason you have to go through all this training in these hours of practice because when you're in the actual seat, holding the steering wheel, steering wheel of a pilot, I guess the steering wheel, it's not a wheel I don't know what it's called. The steering wheel of a pilot. When you have the steering wheel as the pilot, there's a certain amount of stress that overcomes you.

00:11:08:17 - 00:11:22:14
Michael J. Accetta
And you can't necessarily be thinking about learning all of this new stuff. You just have to do it. Same thing with your dog. If you teach them obedience in the manners that they should know, eventually they're going to have to know. They're going to have to know how to stay. They're going to have to know how to down.

00:11:22:17 - 00:11:44:18
Michael J. Accetta
They're going to have to know how to walk on a leash. If you can teach those things and get a pretty good amount of success when you do add in these stressful situations like people like dogs, like cats and squirrels and bicycles and noises, and once you start to add those things in you have something, at least something maybe it's not perfect, but you at least have something to kind of bounce back off of.

00:11:44:25 - 00:12:02:02
Michael J. Accetta
You have something to go off of and fall back on in case your dog freaks out. My dog's freaking out. I get their attention. Good. Now I got to tell them to do something because if I get my dog's attention, they've recalled to me, I've said their name, they turn and then they go right back to reacting. I'm just having them practice doing circles, and that's no good.

00:12:02:13 - 00:12:20:13
Michael J. Accetta
I want them to react, turn to me, and now engage again. So maybe I asked them to sit. Maybe I start teaching them tricks. Maybe I get them to settle. Maybe we then walk in another direction. All of that is what you need to do in reactive training to help guide your dog through the process of being like, Okay, it's fine, everything's going to be okay.

00:12:20:13 - 00:12:48:13
Michael J. Accetta
I don't need to worry about them. I just need to focus on whoever's walking me. Right? So we call name recognition. Those solid fundamentals are what's required. And then the last secret, the last secret to perfectly training your dog through reactive training is repetition and reward schedules. The 2 hours repetition of reward schedules, repetition. You've got to practice every single day over and over and over every single day.

00:12:48:13 - 00:13:08:13
Michael J. Accetta
You've got to practice when you go for a walk, when you go outside, you go to the backyard, the front yard. You got to be practicing something related to reactive training. Whether it's sharpening up the solid fundamentals, whether it's practicing more of the recall at a distance. So it's easier when they're closer or starting to implement all those sounds and smells and sites we discussed.

00:13:10:01 - 00:13:38:24
Michael J. Accetta
That's the whole point of reactive training. Your goal is to then get more people into the circle, right? Either people or dogs, more people involved, too, where your dog goes, Okay, I can be around more people, I can be around more stressful situations, and that's that repetition. And then we move into reward schedules. So reward schedules essentially say, if my dog is doing well, every single time they see somebody at 100 feet, now I'm going to wait.

00:13:39:00 - 00:14:05:02
Michael J. Accetta
They're going to have to see somebody three times at 100 feet in order to get the same reward. We're going to stretch their capabilities of how much they're willing to work in order to get the same level of reinforcement that that is what's going to create longevity in the training, not just success, but longevity, because then your dog goes, Okay, I can look at that person three times and not be accustomed to getting a treat every time.

00:14:05:20 - 00:14:26:09
Michael J. Accetta
You're going to cut down on treats. Your dog's not going to get fat. It's going to make it easier for you. And secretly, if you miss an opportunity to reward your dog it's okay if I don't see that my dog saw somebody and then turns towards me. It's okay because I can still reward them for the second or third, fifth, or 10th time they saw somebody, and then again that becomes easier.

00:14:26:09 - 00:14:49:14
Michael J. Accetta
So if that was 100 feet becomes easier. Now I can jump two to 75 feet, and 50 feet and make it easier that way. Every single time you train your dog, you have to be focused on one of these reactivity kinds of methods, one of these kinds broken down into those three secrets. Which 1 a.m. Am I going to focus on today as the only way to be successful when it comes to training your dog?

00:14:49:14 - 00:15:10:05
Michael J. Accetta
Number one, threshold training management, different variables and then dancing with pressure. Number two, is solid foundations. Does your dog have a recall? Do they know their name? Do they have any level of manners in obedience? You need that and then number three, repetition, and reward schedules. I need something that I can rep out over and over and over again.

00:15:10:21 - 00:15:31:18
Michael J. Accetta
Maybe I have a friend come and they guide me right at a distance. Rather, I'd guide them at a distance and make sure that they stay still. I control the environment. I get to practice what my dog needs to practice those solid fundamentals around the person that maybe makes my dog reactive. That's a perfect training plan right there.

00:15:31:18 - 00:15:55:19
Michael J. Accetta
There's a perfect training schedule, and you just ripped that out over and over and over until your dog's not expecting a reward anymore. And then you increase the pressure. You increase how difficult it is for your dog to get a reward. That is the secret to effective reactivity training. If you want all of this laid out for you made it completely simple for you.

00:15:56:01 - 00:16:12:17
Michael J. Accetta
Everything's laid out. You get a video demonstration, you get a workbook to guide you along the process. Head over to Matador Canine e-Comm Forward slash reactivity and you can get 10% off by putting in the code rescue Matador Cain Icon Forward Slash Reactivity Coupon Code Rescue