18/07/2025
** Client Shout Out **
Sadly, I didn’t get a video before or after as I was handling Jac throughout this session. Meet Wilf, the most loveable golden retriever with a very strong working brain. As a puppy, Wilf mixed with lots of dogs and was mostly walked off lead, which left him with some quite severe lead frustration.
When we starting working with Wilf, he would have pretty huge reactions including baring his teeth. Unfortunately, due to his breed, people don’t always respect that he could be reactive, so would just let their dogs run up to him. Due to this, Wilf had more bad interactions than good and it left his owners nervous and confused. He is still very good at mixing with dogs off the lead, but add a lead into the mix and that frustration takes over, leading to a reaction. His owners have been working hard over the last couple of months and have seen so much progress.
Wilf has all the characteristics of a working retriever, so is always desperate to have a ‘job’. This can lead to demand barking at his owners, which is something we are working on. As such a clever pup, we have to be careful not to accidentally reinforce anything, as he will happily carry this on. Everyone sees golden retrievers to be laid back, lazy and chilled 24/7, but Wilf certainly doesn’t fit that, which makes him an incredible dog!
In yesterday’s session, his owners said that they were still a little worried about when dogs get right in his face without warning - after a reaction with a similar neighbouring dog. Because Wilf’s playing style is quite boisterous, it can sometimes look scary to other people, so we are working on him and tolerating dogs in his space if they don’t want to play. We used Jac as a stooge dog as we could safely practice bringing a neutral dog into Wilf’s space and retracting at the correct time. We had a few amazing interactions with the dogs coming nose to nose and then walking away from each-other calmly, with no reactions in sight. Just to make it more challenging, both dogs are intact males!
We’re so proud of Wilf and all of his progress and can’t wait to see him grow even more ❤️
If you’re struggling with a reactive dog and want to see progress like Wilf, then please give us a message 💌
