Barking and lunging at the pet store
Jake, Kousa and I went down to Portland last weekend (we missed Pia very much!). Traveling is easier with Kousa every time we do it. When we go to Portland we almost always stay with a dear friend who’s home is tucked away right by a beautiful dog-friendly nature preserve. This setting is very ideal for decompressing, and it allows us to venture into the city for a couple hours at a time during the day.
Anyone who knows us might remember that Kousa is a * mostly * reformed reactive and aggressive dog. We have gone from barking, lunging and growling at dogs about 200 feet away to being able to walk by them successfully without making it emotionally challenging for us all. As other reactive dog owners might know, things usually go a lot better with dog-dog greetings if your pups are off-leash. And this is because of something trainers refer to as “barrier frustration”. This is when a dog feels restricted or held-back, either by a leash or behind a door or gate. I imagine this to be potentially similar to the feeling of being cornered. Dogs with barrier frustration usually ends up expressing this frustration with aggressive displays of behavior.
Kousa and Hank on a walk the first time they met.
Hank (the Aussie) does not experience strong barrier frustration, and has had mostly very good experiences while being on a leash and seeing other dogs.
Keeping him leashed while Kousa was unleashed helped Kousa feel safer during the interaction because he had plenty of opportunity to get away from Hank (who is a much bigger dog) if he felt scared.
Anyway, since Kousa is mostly “good” now, and since we never allow other dogs or people to greet him while he’s leashed, we decided we were brave enough to enter a pet store to get him some treats. Kousa had a blast sniffing all the goodies, and he even helped us pick out some chews. We passed some beautiful Spanish Water Dogs very successfully, and I was feeling pretty good about the situation. At the checkout counter was a beautiful dog behind a baby gate. He was much larger than Kousa, but oh-so polite. I anticipated that Kousa might not love getting close to the dog, but I clearly did not stand back far enough - Kousa lunged and barked at the sweet dog who did not react at all to this.
I had forgotten to factor in potential trigger-stacking. One thing on top of another, and Kousa flipped his lid. We were in an unfamiliar city, in a store with other dogs, tasty treats to worry about guarding from them, and finally, a dog behind a barrier who was bigger and much closer to the counter (which the treats were on) than him. Of course this was the last straw that broke his back. And so his “threshold” for barrier frustration -in a normal circumstance, say, 1-2 feet- changed due to the trigger-stacking (to about 4 feet from the dog and the barrier).
Anyway, it all worked out. I moved away to decrease his proximity to the other dog (distance is your friend) and grabbed the food off the counter, so he had less to worry about. I do want to emphasize that this was not “small dog syndrome” (which is not a real thing), or him trying to “dominate” the other dog. This was Kousa being really worried that the other dog would get to enjoy treats he thought were his, coupled with the feeling of being held back by both a leash and a barrier, on top of a stressful and hard few days of traveling. I don’t blame him at all! Next time, I will do better to support his (and my) rest and feelings of safety.
I realise that had Kousa been much bigger, this would be harder to brush off. I am writing about this because living with a reactive (and/or aggressive) dog, no matter the size, can be hard. Just when you think you’re in a good place after all the hard work of training you’ve put in, things like this happen. I remember these moments. I am embarassed by them. I am troubled by them. I worry about them happening again. If you have a reactive/aggressive dog, I want you to know that I know how you feel.
Even old dogs like to chew.