|
Location: UK
Joined: Oct 2010
Posts: 1,096
|
|
Unfortunately there can be a real catch 22 in this situation.
You cannot let them practice inappropriate behaviour, but the more you restrain them the more pent up energy and frustration develop, but you cannot allow uncontrolled interaction, both for safety and for behavioural/training reasons, so you have to keep him on lead,when he gets frustrated etc, etc.
It is not always easy to arrange but ideally you want to regularly meet up with someone with a suitable dog, who won't be scared by his antics, or wind him up too much, so he can have lots of time to settle with it and to get over his initial excitement and you can spend time with it and gradually have him interact with it as he calms, e,g. starting with parallel walking, building up to allowing a little sniffing if possible and moving away before he gets too excited, or too full on, so he learns the way to have contact is to be calm.
The other dog needs to be not too silly, too nervous or too aggressive itself, of course.
It is easier said than done but it sounded as if you possibly still need more control to achieve this, or you will have no chance of controlling his dog to dog interactions which could not only set him back, but could also have a negative effect on the other dog.
In most park meeting between unfamiliar dogs, if you are dealing with dogs with social ineptitude, the whole thing has happened and is over before they have a chance to settle so e.g Dex, is getting to the excited, agitated stage but he doesn't have a chance to realise he could earn contact by settling down a bit e.g walk towards the helpful dog but turn away as soon as he reacts and gradually reduce the distance as your control increases so he only gets nearer if he is calm.
You tend to need someone and their dog to help with this as it takes time and it helps to use the same dog or he is likely to get re-excited with each new dog.
Doing recall and leave exercises with with toys, and building it up so you can practise using his "off/leave" switch effectively, and having him refocus on you not the thrown toy, food or whatever, even when he is increasingly excited can help build control for the dog situations.
If you can let him run somewhere safe, if may be easier to try to introduce him gradually to a dog after you have tired him out a bit.
There are rarely short cuts with these things, which can be frustrating for the owner