Do you trial with him? Can you outline how you worked with him? I'm still struggling to find the right approach with Nyx. Is Petie no longer fearful or is the fear just not showing or does he just have better ways of expressing himself when he's in fear?
Absolutely we trial............He has won many conformation classes in JRTCA/JRTCC. Therefore being comfortable enough to approach Judges and have them do a hands on inspection including spanning. He is very showy and up in the ring.
He is also a muliple JRTCA/CC Racing Champion.
He is a JRTCA/CC Trailing and Locating National Champion (off leash Tracking).
He has muliple Titles in Agility up to Masters.
I recently entered him in his first Rally O fun match, scores of 187 (he was a bit distracted) and 195 in the second class.
Wow, where to start on what I did with him lol.
As a pup he was fear aggressive of strange dogs and strange people along with being non confident (not surprising since those often go hand in hand).
With people I never forced him to approach strangers and I always approached that person and would shake their hand, that cued him that I accepted them which always had him relax, the hackles would go down and he would stop growling at them, at that point I gave him a reward.
For gaining control over his over-stimulation, that happened when I started training him for agility and it branched out to other areas of his life.
When we started in agility 7 yrs ago, he would scream when he saw the agility equipment, if on leash he would leap up and grab my shirt, forget about any kind of stay lol. I had to quit agility classes because the 'trainer' had us doing to much to fast and I had no control of Petie. I got my own agility equipment and I had to start gaining focus on me and control AWAY from the agility equipment but within sight of it. We could be at 300 ft of the agility ring and he wouldn't scream and he could somewhat listen to me, so we worked at that distance on regular obedience, watch me's and fun games. Then we moved a bit closer etc. it took me 3 months before he was able to lay quietly in the agility ring, completely relaxed and able to focus on me. It was then that I started to actually do agility training again with him.
He was never corrected and I always used a clicker and/or positive reinforcements with him.
To be honest, I didn't do much in the way of training him to deal with his dog aggression/reactivity until about 3 yrs ago, before that I just managed him.
Then I finally got smart and trained him, lots of focus work with a clicker.
I applied everything that I had done with the over stimulation to his reactivity with other dogs. Started at the distance that he could control his reactivity, lots of 'watch me' and rewards for looking at another dog and then focusing back on me etc. He progressed quickly and within a couple of weeks at trials, he could walk through the 'gate' area of a trial and not even look at other dogs. Strange dogs could brush past him and he was fine. He could lay flat on the ground with other dogs walking past and not respond.
At the last trial we were at, we met two strange dogs at a doorway, a surprise nose to nose encounter. In the past that would have made him react but all he did was look at them and not respond I of course gave him a jackpot of rewards.
Now having said all that, he can regress where strange dogs are concerned, but that is only if another dog has scared him by running up behind him or leaping into his face on literally jumping on him. But he does recover quickly and the effects of those bad encounters certainly don't last as long as they use to.
-He is no longer fearful of people.
-He is confident and bold.
-He can still be reactive to strange dogs but is greatly improved.
Btw, teaching him a solid 'off/leave it', also was a great benefit.
Hope this makes sense, if it doens't, just let me know. Or if you need more detail, let me know.
Lynn