The Story of My Reactive Dog · Dog Training Community

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The Story of My Reactive Dog

I've been helping a lot of you with your reactive dogs recently and it got me thinking back.

When I was 15 I got my first dog. A yellow labrador called Chester. Everything went wrong. I struggled to toilet train him, he ran away on walks, he pulled on the lead, chewed things up... and eventually became reactive to dogs.

This is when I first started to learn about dogs, in order to resolve these issues. At the time Cesar Millan was at the height of his fame and I became a devotee. I read all of his books, saw him live, watched every episode, posted on his forum - I even had a t-shirt.

I definitely have came a long way since then but to be fair it really gave me a spark. I trained my dog every day. Local people began to recognize this and even would ask me questions about training their own dogs. Quite strange for a teenager.

Some people even called me 'The Dog Man' in school. I'm not sure why man, rather than boy but there you go.

A lot happened in the following years. I studied Canine Behaviour at University, trained the dogs for Amazon Prime's The Pack & have trained dogs professionally for around the last 12 years or so.

I did eventually resolve Chester's reactivity and he spent many years helping me resolve other dog's reactivity as a stooge dog. Sadly he died of cancer in 2020 at 12 years old.

Anyway, the point of all of this is to say I have experienced having a reactive dog (and many more issues) first hand. Plus, the thousands of dogs I've worked with since then.

I have a lot of empathy for all of you dealing with it and always enjoy helping you speed up your journey by learning from my mistakes! 🙏

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