How Not to Socialize Your Anxious, Reactive, Rescue Dog.

And What To Do Instead

(Accept, Practice Slowly, Repeat)

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Porter in the yard with his dad.

What Not To Do

Okay, so, I blew Porter's dog-on-dog socialization. In my defense, I did the best I could with the information I had. I am try-hard, so I took the information and tried really, really, really, really hard to get it right. I tried SO HARD that I got it wrong. So, if you would like your anxious, reactive furbaby to remain semi-calm in social situations, let me tell you exactly what not to do.

Once my dog Porter and I got the basics down (exercise, routine, rest, kibble, basic obedience, etc.), socialization was next up on the training docket. Porter needed to get used to other dogs. When we walked past a dog on the other side of the street, Porter would lunge, bark, and make a huge scene that would cause me to hide my face in the closest shrubbery. If a dog dared get too close, Porter would snap at them, leaving me clutching my pearls in shock. What in the bitey bitey-ness was THIS!?!??!?!?!?! I had only owned perfect labs and Golden Retrievers before this--literally dogs training to be service dogs--so this snappy McSnappy behavior from my first rescue was all new to me. Because I had read every damn book in the library about dog training, though, I knew he needed to get around other dogs or this behavior was going to get worse. Easier said than done. There is an art to socializing dogs who are past their 12-week socialization window, and I am no artist.

I did with Porter what would have been great for an outgoing, confident puppy: I took him on different walks every day; I took him up to the dog park a few times a week; I took him to breweries after long hikes; I signed him up for doggy daycare. Great, as I said, for at amiable puppy.

But Porter was not an amiable puppy; he was an apprehensive adolescent. I felt like I was working tirelessly to socialize Porter, only for him to go backwards.

When I finally hired a trainer to help me, he came over to the house and sat on the couch across from me while I clutched Porter's leash in my hand, using sheer force of will and my death grip to keep Porter from snapping at this new, friendly stranger.

Part of the conversation went something like this:

Trainer: Tell me about your weekly routine with Porter.

Me: IN THE MORNINGS WE WALK AND THEN I TAKE HIM TO DAYCARE. OTHER DAYS WE WALK IN THE MORNING AND THEN I TAKE HIM TO THE DOG PARK IN THE AFTERNOON. I TAKE HIM ON DIFFERENT WALKS EVERY DAY. ON THE WEEKEND I TAKE HIM TO HIKING AND TO BREWERIES AND TO ALL DIFFERENT PLACES....SOME WEEKENDS I TAKE HIM CAMPING AND----

I was saying all of this out loud to the trainer. I was thinking I was giving the trainer an A+ answer and I wanted a gold star for said answer because I like gold stars. And I wanted a gold star for all the work I had been doing. I had read the training books. I knew I needed to get Porter out and about or he was going to become a baby eating demon monster, and I was doing just that. But the trainer cut off my response. The look on his face was saying: "You poor, helpless nerd."

He broke the news to me bluntly, as seasoned and jaded trainers do: "Porter is an anxious little guy. He doesn't like new places. He doesn't like dog parks. He doesn't like daycare. He doesn't want to visit your parents on Long Island. He doesn't want to go camping. He especially doesn't want to go to breweries. He wants the same routine, or some small variation of it, over and over."

WHAT!?!??!! My head started racing. This trainer wants to fight me! Did he not just hear me say that I wanted his help training my damn dog to be social and do fun things?????? Did I just give this trainer HALF MY PAYCHECK for him to tell me to RESPECT PORTER'S BOUNDARIES!?!? What the hell?

Man, oh man, was I sour, and for a while after this, I went through the mental wringer. I continued to drag Porter to places the trainer explicitly told me not to go because screw the trainer and his low expectations. Porter would EVENTUALLY get just have to used to it?!?!? Right? RIGHT? Wrong. I moped and checked Petfinder for new puppies. Like a parent who desperately wanted to raise an athlete and got a theater kid instead, I kept trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

 It took me a long time to get used to the idea that Porter had limits and preferences that were separate from mine even though I see this mismatch all the time in my real job as a teacher: A kid is one thing, the parents don't accept it, conflict ensues. Every time I observed this dynamic between a parent and child I never understood it. Why couldn't they just accept their kid as they were? And yet here I was, with the closest thing I had to a child, doing just that: not accepting Porter for who he was, at all.

During this early time with Porter, I was really depressed with my job and other things and I didn't feel a lot of joy. I was clinging to this idea that if I could just train a therapy dog and and recreate the magic I felt when I did it in high school with my Golden Retrievers, others would feel happy. I would feel happy. I would pop my head out of this depression for moment. The idea of it had been a life raft for me. Now that hope was squashed.

I had pinned a lot of responsibility for my happiness on Porter, which was unfair of me. When I saw that he wasn't a very social guy, I pushed him harder to fit into the mold I envisioned for him and he pushed back by getting more and more reactive. I still didn't give in and instead called a trainer to help me turn Porter into a Golden Retriever, and now this trainer was telling me that Porter was the one being wronged and I had to chill the fuck out (not in those words, but that was the message). At least now I understood the parents of my students now. Letting go of what you hoped your dog would be and accepting them for who they actually are is...just not easy. It's not easy.

What To Try Instead

I did not want to be those one of unaffirming parents, even if my child was a dog. And so, resigned a bit, and still not accepting, I tried to listen to the trainer's advice. I reluctantly started scaling back Porter's activities based on the body language he was displaying. If he was telling me he didn't want to do something by running away or hiding or flattening himself on the floor, or going boneless (a classic toddler move), I didn't do it.

Here is the day I stopped taking him to doggy daycare:

I stopped dragging him to dog parks and doggy daycares. I made sure to stick to a routine. My husband and I walked him around the neighborhood where he felt comfortable over and over and over again.

I felt we were going backwards, but now that Porter was relaxing, the real work could begin. The "real work," so to speak had to start with me. I had to accept Porter for the dog he was, and build from there.

We started with leash work. The trainer taught me how to handle Porter's leash. We switched back to the Martingale instead of the harness so that I had more control. The trainer taught me what he called "Open Bar/Closed Bar" for when strangers came into the house or for when we passed dogs during our neighborhood walks. I would carry a can of stinky cat food with me and give Porter a bite whenever another dog walked by. As soon as the dog was out of sight, the cat food went away.

Stinky cat food that I used to give to Porter when we walked by other dogs.

The trainer taught me to walk him through different environments, each increasingly distracting. We kept things predictable and ratcheted up the difficulty slowly, which calmed Porter down a lot.

One of our training sessions in Old Town, Alexandria

The trainer recommended that I keep Porter in a crate when we had company over so that Porter could get used to people milling around the house from a safe place (instead of being out and nipping at their fingers or pants when they tried to innocently move around the house). The trainer also recommended that I bring the crate camping so that Porter could be put away for a nap when he started to get overwhelmed and snappy. These things all helped.

We bought a soft crate similar to this one that we would take camping.

After a while, I asked this trainer to help me desensitize Porter to other dogs so that we could decrease our passing distance on walks. He said that he did not do that, so I hired another trainer to help me. (More about that in my next blog post, "Desensitizing my Dog Reactive Rescue Dog to Other Dogs.")

In Conclusion

Learning how not to "socialize" my anxious, reactive, high-strung rescue dog took many years, and we couldn't make any progress until I accepted what was in front of me and built from there.