#dog behavior

Today's gifts so far:

Dog reactivity is when a dog overreacts to certain stimuli (e.g. other dogs, animals, loud noises, etc), usually by barking and/or lunging. It's an umbrella term that encompasses fear, aggression, and excitement based responses and can vary in severity. All dogs can exhibit reactivity with the right stressors, but true reactivity is when there's a noticeable pattern of behavior.

Anon is curious how many dog owners actually know about reactivity and how much is their own echo chamber.

–

In other news, Mr Flynn got a new winter jacket last week... It's warmer than his other jacket & he seems to approve! Such a smart boy!

Also, a brave boy!

Flynn's only been confident enough to allow me to put a coat on him at all for the last couple of years & his previous jackets were the simplest designs I could find, whereas this new one is more fiddly. He pokes his head through the neck hole, then I have to take the chest strap through his front legs, pull 2 straps around his sides & also, to keep it from sliding, pick Flynn's back legs up & poke them through little elastic hoops.

For most of his life, Flynn would've found the process of having a jacket like this put on to be unbearably scary, even if I'd offered very high value treats. This is a dog who for a long time used to completely panic & lash out if he thought I even might try & reach out to just *pat* him... Now, when I reach for this - still very new to him - jacket off its hook, Flynn wags his tail & comes over to calmly, trustingly stand while I put it on AND afterwards, I can give him a scritch behind his ears & he'll lean into my hand & close his eyes in happiness.

MORE OF DOG ABBOT !!

MDNI.

Jack is so needy and so attached to you that it sometimes takes away from him all sense of a proper behavior. Sometimes he sits on the bed in silence while watching you get dressed for work, containing the whining and complaints about how you don't need to do this, how you can't abandon him like that just to hear you ordering him to shut up and he, without even thinking twice, always obeys. But his sorry puppy eyes never stop being expressive and you known that if he had a tail, he would be swinging it restless, upset.

One time everything went a little over the line when you two had an argument before you started getting ready for a company party. You had invited Jack to go, he had denied it and made a scene about wanting you to stay at home. The fight was ugly and at some point you thought it could even get violent, that at any moment the dog you call husband would bite the hand that feeds him.

A few minutes later you were clacking your shoes on the floor in a terrible mood, but when you left the room Abbot was there, kneeling in the middle of the livingroom like a trained dog waiting for his owner — He crawled to your feet, his eyes wet and his face red as if he could cry at any moment, begging you to forgive him while kissing your shoe and clinging to your legs like a needy pet, once again asking you not to leave him.