Dog Training Today with Will Bangura for Pet Parents, Kids & Family, Pets and Animals, and Dog Training Professionals. This is a Education & How To Dog Training Podcast.

Calm Your Reactive or Aggressive Dog with "Look at That" Training

• Will Bangura, M.S., CAB-ICB, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, FFCP is a World Renowned Dog Behaviorist, Certified Dog Behavior Consultant, Certified Professional Dog Trainer, and a Fear Free Certified Professional with over 36 years of experience with the most difficult • Season 6 • Episode 176

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Certified canine behaviorist Will Bangura shares a powerful force-free approach to help dogs with reactivity or aggression without using corrections or punishment.

• Understanding that reactive behavior stems from anxiety, stress, and fear
• Why corrections and punishment only suppress behavior without changing emotional states
• The "Look at That" (LAT) training protocol developed by Leslie McDevitt
• How to properly condition a marker for precise timing and communication
• Working at the right distance where your dog notices triggers but remains calm
• The critical importance of working "below threshold" where your dog isn't stressed
• How counter-conditioning changes your dog's emotional response to triggers
• Why progress requires patience, consistency and temporarily managing your dog's environment
• Setting realistic expectations for a process that may take weeks or months
• Gradually decreasing distance to triggers as your dog builds positive associations

Visit my website for the detailed Training Guide on How to Train out Reactivity and Aggression with (LAT) Look at That Dog Training  

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Speaker 1:

Do you have a dog that's reactive, or maybe even more so, your dog's aggressive, you know, do you ever go on walks and your dog sees another dog or sees another person and starts flipping out on the leash? Or maybe somebody is passing by your house and your dog is looking out the front window, absolutely flipping out. Looking out the front window, absolutely flipping out. Or how about do you have a dog that when it's in the car and anybody goes by, it freaks out? Maybe when you're walking and your dog sees a bicycle or a skateboard or a scooter go by, it starts barking and lunging and absolutely losing it. Well, we're going to talk all about how to fix that in 60 seconds. Don't go anywhere.

Speaker 2:

Raised by wolves with canine DNA in his blood. Having trained more than 24,000 pets, helping you and your fur babies thrive, live in studio with Will Bangura answering your pet behavior and training questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host and favorite pet behavior expert, will Bangura.

Speaker 1:

Would you like to go on? Are y'all ready for this? Good day? Dog lovers, hey, thanks for joining me for another episode of Dog Training Today. I'm your host, will Bangora, a certified canine behaviorist and certified behavior consultant. Certified trainer, force-free certified yes, I've got all kinds of alphabet letters after my name, but that was not always the case. I was a balanced trainer. I used to use aversives, prong collars, choke collars, electronic collars, but now everything that I do is positive reinforcement.

Speaker 1:

And one of the biggest areas that a lot of pet parents and even a lot of trainers think that they have to use correction, they have to use punishment, is when a dog is reactive or aggressive, and that's completely opposite of what we want to do, opposite of what we want to do. Most dogs, if they are reactive, most dogs if they're aggressive, it's because they've got anxiety. They are stressed out about a particular trigger. Maybe they're fearful of other dogs or other people. But maybe you've got a dog as I was saying in the opener that is highly reactive to things that zip by really fast, like kids on skateboards or scooters or bicycles or joggers. Maybe your dog gets a little bit possessive, a little bit territorial when anybody walks by the property. Maybe your dog's outside barking at everybody through the fence, Maybe your dog's in the house looking out the window or the door and doing that on a daily basis. Well, those things not only are stressful for your dog, but it's frustrating for us pet parents, isn't it? Well, today I'm going to talk about how we can deal with reactivity, and it doesn't matter what your dog is reactive to it could even be a sound, but typically the technique that I'm going to be talking about is done with visual triggers.

Speaker 1:

And what I want to talk about today have you heard about look at that dog training? Yeah, look at that. Or some people just abbreviate it L-A-T, lat. Well, look at that. Dog training, or LAT, was developed by Leslie McDevitt, and if you want to really learn a lot about how to help reactive dogs, how to help dogs that are reactive and aggressive, that goes through in depth, in detail, step-by-step instructions. There's three videos. One of the videos 45 minutes long. The other two are pretty short. They're about five minutes long each, but you can find that at phoenixdogtrainingcom.

Speaker 1:

Go to my blog at phoenixdogtrainingcom. Look for the article on Look at that Dog Training. Look for that training guide. I'll go ahead and I'll put the link in the comments, the description for this podcast, but before I get into how we actually use Look at that Dog Training to help reactive dogs, can you do me a huge favor? You know, one of the things that always surprises me is that the vast majority of people that listen to this podcast on a regular basis have not subscribed. Please subscribe so that you never miss an episode of Dog Training Today. And also, if you love what we do, if you like the information here, please hit that pause button, take a second, give us a review. The reviews are how this podcast will rank higher, how more people then get this information to be able to help dogs that are struggling and suffering with reactivity and aggression.

Speaker 1:

All right, let me get into the meat of today's podcast Now. There's a couple things that we need to do to get ready to utilize this protocol for dogs that are reactive and aggressive. The first thing that we need to do is we need to have a really, really powerful, positive reinforcer and in most cases, this is going to be very, very highly palatable food rewards like little tiny cut up pieces of chicken, little tiny cut up pieces of hot dog or cheese. What you want to do is you want to find what your dog absolutely loves the most, and we want a bunch of those, but they need to be small, about the size of a pea. You're going to want a treat pouch also.

Speaker 1:

Now, once you've got your high value food rewards, once you've got your treat pouch, the question then becomes do you have a marker? Do you use markers in your training? Now, for some of you, you don't know what a marker is. Now, for some of you, you don't know what a marker is, and some of you have heard about, maybe, clicker training. Well, a clicker is just one kind of a marker. Right, instead of that click sound, we could use a verbal marker.

Speaker 1:

And let's say that we use the word nice. Right, nice doesn't mean anything to the dog. I say nice. Well, the dog doesn't understand what that word is. It has no value, it's neutral, just like the sound of that clicker.

Speaker 1:

But what we want to do, because timing is so critical in training dogs, we want to pair and associate our high-value food rewards, our positive reinforcer, with a marker like the word nice or with the sound of a clicker, and what that does once the food has been conditioned to the marker, whether it's the word nice, whether it's a thumbs up right A visual marker If you've got a deaf dog, or whether you're using a clicker right A visual marker If you've got a deaf dog, or whether you're using a clicker. What a marker does, once it's paired and conditioned with food, over and over it is a signal to the dog. When you say nice, when you click the clicker and again, anything can be a marker, but you just have one for this particular exercise. But it's a positive, reinforcer marker, it's a bridge to the food and what it does is it signals to the dog immediately that you're getting a food reward, because it might take us a couple seconds to get the food out of the treat pouch and actually get it in the dog's mouth. You know a lot of people are training with food but the dog has very little understanding that the food is related to any particular behavior or the food is related to any kind of emotional response. And that's because of timing, of timing, you literally have about one to two seconds max to get the food in the dog's mouth for them to connect the dots when you're trying to pair that with a behavior you might like or an emotional state where the dog's more confident and less fearful. And communication is absolutely key, and the better our timing is, the better our communication is with the dog. So how do you create a marker? Well, you're going to want about 30 tiny little pieces of this high-value food reward.

Speaker 1:

Now, whether I'm using the word nice or whether I'm using a clicker, the process is going to be the same. I'm going to click, give the dog a treat, wait for the dog to finish that food reward, click again, give another treat. Click again, give another treat. Click again, give another treat. I'm going to do that about 30 times in a row. Click treat, click treat, click treat, click treat, click treat, click treat. Or, if I'm using a verbal marker, nice treat, nice treat, nice treat. You get the idea we're going to repeat that over and over 30 times in a row and we're going to do that for about three days.

Speaker 1:

Now, on day four, after you've gone through three days, of what we call marker conditioning, associating and pairing the sound of the clicker to the food or the sound of your verbal marker to the food or your thumbs up visual signal to the food. If you've got a deaf dog, once you've done that conditioning, we need to know does it signal the dog when it hears the marker, whether it's the click or the verbal marker, nice. Does it signal to the dog that it's getting a high value food reward that it absolutely loves? We need to know. Did it work? And the way that we do that on day four, when you're just hanging out with your dog, your dog's not doing anything. It's got to be awake, not asleep, and your dog's got to be close enough to you that it's going to hear either a click on the clicker or your verbal marker Nice. I'm just using that as an example. But what you want to do on day four, when your dog's not expecting it, you want to click the clicker or you want to say nice, or use whatever marker you're using. Now what you're looking for? Does your dog come running to you looking for the food reward? If your dog does, you know that you've been successful in conditioning your reward marker. If your dog doesn't come running to you and it could hear the click or it could hear your verbal marker, if you're using a word but it doesn't come to you, well, you haven't done enough conditioning or your timing of conditioning was poor.

Speaker 1:

When you click, you've got to give the treat right away. The sequence is important, though. Click, then grab the food, give it to the dog. Don't have food in your hand. Don't start reaching for the food. Don't start putting food in your dog's mouth before you click it's. Click, grab the food quickly, get it in the dog's mouth. Click, grab the food quickly, get it in the dog's mouth before you click it's. Click, grab the food quickly, get it in the dog's mouth. Click, grab the food quickly, get it in the dog's mouth 30 times in a row.

Speaker 1:

Day four you're going to test it Now. If your dog comes running to you on day four when it hears its marker, now you're ready to start doing the. Look at that. Or LAT dog training for dogs that are reactive and aggressive. Okay, all right. Now what we want to do is we are going to have a controlled setup for a training session. Okay, you have to know what your dog's triggers are, and we want to work one trigger. We don't want to do what's called trigger stacking.

Speaker 1:

Don't put your dog in a situation where there's four or five or three or even two things that your dog is nervous or fearful or reactive or aggressive towards One thing. So, as an example, let's say that you have a dog that is reactive to other dogs, have a dog that is reactive to other dogs? Well, anybody that has a reactive dog will tell you there's a distance that your dog can be far enough away. Where your dog notices another dog but really doesn't care. There's no reactivity, your dog's not stressed, your dog can focus on you, listen to you, your dog will take a food reward. But then there's a distance when you get too close where your dog won't take food, where your dog won't listen to you, where your dog can't focus. And if you keep getting closer, your dog's going to get more and more stressed out and then your dog has a meltdown and becomes reactive on the leash right.

Speaker 1:

When we're doing this training, let's say I'm using that example, I've got a dog that is reactive towards other dogs. I'm going to have a helper with the dog. Help me. If I can't find a helper, then I might use a very realistic looking fake dog, a stuffed dog. Always better if I can have a helper and have a real dog. But you can do the work with fake dogs, with stuffed dogs. Same thing if your dog triggers on people, if you can't find a human helper, you can use a mannequin for a while, because what we want to do is we want to find the distance. We want to find the distance where we're far enough away from the trigger, where your dog notices it but really doesn't have a care in the world. If your dog is stressed out, you are too close. You can't do the work. When your dog is stressed out, when they're reactive, when they're stressing out, they're not in a place where they can learn, they're in fight or flight and their memory and learning is going to be compromised. Find the distance, the safe distance, and this is the process.

Speaker 1:

I'm just going to break it down in its simplest form. If you want more details, like I said, go to my website at phoenixdogtrainingcom it's one of them and go to my blog. Find the article on Look at that Dog Training, where it's a very it's more of a training guide than an article and there's several videos there as well. But, in a nutshell, what we want to do is have our dog at a safe distance where it really isn't stressed out, isn't going to care about the trigger. Whether it's a dog trigger, whether it's a person trigger, whether it's a kid on a bike or a skateboard, doesn't matter. We set that up, we're controlling the situation with a helper. We know when that trigger is going to come into view.

Speaker 1:

Now what I like to do with my helpers is talk to them on speakerphone and I'll say okay, we are ready, I've got my treats, I got my treat pouch. My dog, it's got its harness on, I got the leash, we're at a safe distance. And when I say we're ready now, my helper comes out with the dog, but at that safe distance. And when I say we're ready now, my helper comes out with the dog, but at that safe distance. And the dog is going to notice the strange dog. And as soon as your dog notices or even begins to look in that direction, you're going to click your clicker.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you've done a good job conditioning your dog with the food, if your dog loves the food and you found something really palatable, because you're at that safe distance, as soon as your dog hears that click, or if you're using a verbal marker like nice, your dog's going to turn away from the dog. It was just looking at and look to you for the food. Sounds really simple, doesn't it? Almost too simple. Trust me, this is magic. It really works.

Speaker 1:

Your dog looks at the dog. The trigger click the clicker. Your dog looks back to you. Give the food reward. Your dog looks again back at the trigger. Click the clicker, give a food reward. You're going to do that over and over and over. I like to do it for several days to a week, right. And when I'm doing these training sessions I'm doing it for about five to seven minutes. They're short but I'll have the trigger move out of view. And when there's no trigger, there's no clicking, there's no food rewards. But all of a sudden the trigger comes into view. As soon as the dog looks at it, I click or I say nice, give my verbal marker, whatever kind of marker I'm using, but just make sure you're consistent with one marker for this.

Speaker 1:

In this case I'm going to use the clicker. The dog looks at the trigger, click, dog looks back to me. A reward. Rinse and repeat over and over and over. What I'm doing is I'm conditioning a response in the dog, number one that it starts to learn and it becomes a habit, it becomes predictable. The dog learns.

Speaker 1:

When I look at another dog, I'm going to get a food reward. I'm going to get the click and I'm going to get the food reward. I'm going to hear my marker and I'm going to get my food reward. This is a pattern that I am training into the dog. I want the dog to have that expectation no-transcript. And I'm going to change the process just slightly after I've conditioned that.

Speaker 1:

So here I am week two, and it might be three weeks, I don't know. But I go back to this situation where I've got another staged controlled training session. I've got a helper, the helper's out of view. I say we're ready. Helper comes into view with the dog at a safe distance. The dog looks at the trigger, but this time I don't click. And when you don't click and the dog had the expectation hey, when I look at this other dog, I'm going to get a click and a food reward. Well, when that doesn't happen and your dog is used to that happening, your dog looks at the other dog. There's no click. Pretty soon your dog's going to look back at you like, hey, where's my click, where's my food?

Speaker 1:

That's exactly what I want to happen, because now the way I'm going to do it is when the dog looks at the trigger, I'm waiting for the dog to look back to me, and now that's when I'm going to click my clicker, that's when I'm going to signal to the dog that it gets a food reward. So now I've changed things up a little bit where the criteria is you look at the dog, you look back at me, then you hear your marker and you get your food reward. So there's a couple of things that are happening. I'm giving the dog something very specific to do when it sees a trigger, and that's look back to me. I reward that behavior, I click my clicker, I give the dog the food reward. I do that over and over and over again. These sessions are short. They're about five to seven minutes. I have this happening five, four, six times a week. Yeah, it's okay to take one or two days off a week if you need to, but you've got to do this at least four times a week for it to be effective.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now, in addition to teaching the dog a different behavior than lunging and freaking out when it sees a trigger, we're teaching the dog to hey, you see a trigger, look back to me and good things happen. But we're using principles of counter conditioning. Counter conditioning is just a fancy phrase for pairing something positive with a trigger that the dog didn't like to change the dog's perception association and change the dog's underlying emotional state from one of oh, that used to be scary, now I can't wait to see the strange dog because I get high value food rewards. Now, if you're doing this too close to the trigger and your dog is stressed out, this is not going to work. And this is a process. This can take weeks, it can take a month, it could take two months, but gradually, systematically, as your dog begins to have positive experiences. It sees the trigger, it looks back to you, we click, we give it a food reward. But when the trigger is gone, there's no clicking, there's no food reward. But up here comes the trigger Dog looks, dog looks back at me. I click, I reward. What we're doing is we're changing the dog's underlying emotional state.

Speaker 1:

The dog was stressed out, fearful, reactive, aggressive. But if we're too close, we're going to get that same behavior and here's what everybody's doing wrong. You think the way that you're going to deal with this is your dog gets reactive and aggressive. You're going to correct your dog and listen. Correction is just a nice word for punishment aggressive. You're going to correct your dog and listen. Correction's just a nice word for punishment. If you're yanking on the leash or yelling at your dog, no, all that's doing is suppressing that outward behavior. Now your dog might stop being reactive for a short while, but you've done nothing to change your dog's underlying emotional state. Your dog still views that trigger as something scary that it feels like it's got to go into fight or flight. It's trying to communicate hey, back off. If that's happening, you are too close too soon.

Speaker 1:

You always want to work at a safe distance where your dog doesn't have a care in the world. We call that working below threshold doesn't have a care in the world. We call that working below threshold. If your dog is nervous, if your dog is anxious, if your dog is not completely relaxed in its body language, if your dog won't respond to cues and commands, if your dog won't focus on you and listen to you, if your dog won't take food rewards, you are too close. You need to back up food rewards. You are too close. You need to back up. Get to a distance where you can do this work, spend a couple days, spend a week, spend a couple weeks at that distance. What you're doing is you're creating this new positive association with the trigger. And once you've got it at that distance and it's solidified and it's conditioned and conditioning means repetition over and over and over then try moving five feet closer. If your dog stays relaxed, if your dog can listen to you, if your dog can respond to cues and commands, if your dog will take food, great, you've gotten a little bit closer. But you haven't gone over a threshold. Because if you go over a threshold, well, you might be able to recover that training session, but a lot of times, well, you've got to call it the end of the session until the next one. We don't want your dog.

Speaker 1:

The whole goal is for your dog not to be reactive and it's not about correcting outward behavior. It's about changing the association and the underlying emotional response your dog has. Because, listen, once your dog doesn't have anxiety, stress and fear towards triggers, once your dog views those triggers as something wonderful and positive, that reactive and aggressive behavior goes away, it melts. There's no need for it because the dog isn't feeling stressed out. Well, gradually, systematically, over time, you're going to go closer and closer and closer, but do this in very little increments.

Speaker 1:

Don't get greedy. Don't go from a distance where your dog is calm and relaxed and then move up 100 feet. That's too much, too soon. Anytime you're doing this work and your dog becomes reactive, or your dog, like I said, starts displaying some stress signals in its body language, or it won't take food or it won't listen, it won't look back at you. Your dog's over threshold. You've gotten too close too soon. This is a process. How long is it going to take? Well, every dog's going to be a little bit different. Now, while you're working this process, now, while you're working this process, while you're trying to modify your dog's underlying emotional state, to modify its behavior, you can control the environment. You can get your dog at a far, safe enough distance where it doesn't care, so that you can do the work. Listen, if, while you're trying to do this training, your dog keeps having intermittent reactive episodes, you're fighting a losing battle. That's like trying to fix a broken water pipe without turning off the main water valve. Listen, avoiding the triggers. That's not the fix, but it's the first step to the fix. Because if your dog keeps rehearsing these behaviors over and, over and over again. They just get more and more habituated, more and more ingrained, more and more conditioned and that makes it more difficult to condition out.

Speaker 1:

I was talking. Let me give you a little story, a little anecdote. So I was working with a client and their dog was highly reactive to other dogs. And look, I get it, you want to walk your dog dog needs exercise. But while we were trying to do this work, the pet guardian was taking their dog for daily walks every day, twice a day, and each walk the dog reacted and had a meltdown about three different times for every walk. So think about it, you know, three to six times a day, two walks, the dog's having a bad experience and having a meltdown. And the same pet guardian was doing about four or five training sessions a week doing this using look at that dog training LAT.

Speaker 1:

By the way, I don't know if I mentioned this, it was developed by leslie mcdevitt. We need to give her credit. Fantastic woman, leslie mcdevitt, you're going to see a 45 minute video in the training guide if you do go to phoenix dog training and you go to my blog and you find the article on look at that dog training. She's got a 45 minute video that I've got embedded in there and, like I said, I've got two other five-minute videos from a couple other trainers that are fantastic. So that it's not just you hearing it with this podcast, it's not just you reading it in the guide, but you're also actually seeing it work hands-on. Because I'm telling you, if you've got a dog that's reactive, if you've got a dog that's aggressive and I don't care what it is, whether it's a person, whether it's an adult, whether it's a kid, whether it's a dog, whether it's a bicycle, whether it's the mailman coming this works fantastic.

Speaker 1:

Now, it's not going to happen overnight. There are no quick fixes. Anybody that tells you they got a quick fix, I guarantee you it involves punishment and that just suppresses outward behavior. Nothing changes truly with permanence and reliability of change. Until that dog has a different underlying emotional response to the trigger, wonderful things happen and it elicits these wonderful emotions, that behavior, that reactivity, that aggression. It just melts away. It just melts away. Well, folks, that sound means we are out of time. I wanted to do just a quick 30-minute podcast here. Do me a favor, like I said, if you love what we do, give us a five-star review. Make sure that you share this with other folks on your social media. Share it with friends and family, or anybody that you know that has a dog that's reactive or aggressive. Make sure that you subscribe, make sure that you like our podcast. This is a labor of love. Until the next podcast, until we talk, happy training. Have a good day. I'm out of here. Bye.

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Will Bangura M.S.,CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, FFCP

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