COUNTER CONDITIONING Dog REACTIVE German Shepherd

Calming Signals....

.. stress relieving signals, appeasements signals, whatever you want to call them, are the little things dogs do, before they explode and react.

It could be, looking a dog and quickly looking away, it could be looking at a person and yawning, it could be looking at a cat and it’s nose is twitching where it’s trying to sniff, there are so many.

Problem is we often ignore these little things and then the dog explodes.

A dog will give warning signs.

For instance if the dog is walking relaxed, then it starts to tense up, because it sees something it doesn’t like, often this can be followed by a reaction. However if you communicate with your dog at this moment, you will often start to see the dog offer a calming signal.

Now if you ignore the calming signals, often the dog goes straight back to getting tense and often will react.

You should acknowledge and reward these calming signals and the reason being is as follows.

1. The dog is more likely to offer you these, the more you reward them, thus reducing the chances of the dog reacting.

2. If a dog looks at a certain trigger they find stressful and react, they quickly get stressed, but if you reward calming signals it creates a feel good response, thus changing the dogs emotional response to that trigger.


Now the dog in this video would go mental when it saw a dog, it would drag the owner into the street and she was terrified of walking the dog. Helping the owner understand these little things, builds confidence. Knowing the little signs to reward and when to correct, can help keep her in a confident manner.

Rewarding calming signals is a game changer. Ignore them, don’t acknowledge then your dog will explode.

Now if your dog does react you will need to do something to bring them back down to reality but it’s a clear sign you want to take a step back and repeat the above steps.