Christmas lights walks with a reactive dog

The second half of December turns quiet neighborhoods into foot traffic. In Cypress that means the lights streets in Bridgeland and Fairfield, the drive-through displays out toward Tomball and the crowds along the waterway in The Woodlands. Families walk after dark, in groups, with dogs, past yards that inflate a twelve foot snowman every night at six. For a reactive dog it is a month of triggers. It can also be the best month of training the dog ever gets, if it is done on purpose.

Why December is hard

Reactivity runs on distance and surprise. In December you lose both. The sidewalks are full, so the other dog is fifteen feet away instead of fifty, and the corner you have walked a hundred times now has an inflatable dragon that moves. Add the dark, and the dog is reacting to shapes before it can identify them. Our trainers hear more December calls about a dog that suddenly got worse than in any other month. It did not get worse. Its environment did.

The plan we use

• Walk the lights streets at half past four, before dark and before the crowd, for the first week.
• Find your dog's distance: the point where it notices a trigger and can still take food. Work there, not closer.
• Every trigger gets the same routine: see it, get a sit, mark and pay the calm, turn and walk away before the dog decides to.
• Use the inflatables as training partners. They are the same every night, which makes them the only predictable trigger you will get.
• One structured walk in the dark on your own street, ten minutes, every night, so the skills exist in the dark before they meet a crowd in it.

What not to do

Do not take a reactive dog into a crowd to get it used to it. That is flooding, and it teaches the dog that the leash means panic. Do not let strangers' dogs approach, however friendly; the other owner cannot read yours. Do not walk with a phone in one hand and a leash in the other. And do not let the dog rehearse the explosion. Every lunge that works, even once, is a deposit in the wrong account. If it happens, add distance, finish the walk short, and try again the next night from farther away.

The month after

By early January the streets are quiet again and the dog has either learned to cope or learned to react. If it is the second one, that is the moment to book. Reactivity is what our team does most. Platinum is three weeks for $3,750 and includes behavior modification, daily exposure at the right distance in real public places, and unlimited private lessons afterward, which in this case means we can walk the lights streets with you next December. A dog that arrives in January is home and walking calmly before spring.

Written by

Best Dog University Team

Board and train trainers in Cypress, Houston. 16+ years, 900+ dogs. About our team