Advice on teaching an older to dog to get on with other dogs

[dern]

Afternoon. We just adopted a 7 year old male lurcher who had been at the dog's trust for over a year. He's been with us for nearly a month now. He's house trained, he's fantastic with people, makes a lovely family dog, can sit on command (if he wants to ), stops when you ask him to on a walk, goes to bed (his bed, not ours) when you ask him to and plays a mean game of fetch. In short he's a lovely dog and we're really lucky to find him.

However, when we go for a walk and happen upon another dog being walked he can be a bit noisy. He barks and pulls at the lead if he doesn't like the look of the other dog. It would be awful lot less embarrassing if he understood how to behave with other dogs. There's been a couple of occasions when puppies who know no better approached him and they ended up sniffing each other and he was pretty relaxed so I know he can do it. I wonder if he's had an incident with a black dog at some point as he's worse behaved the darker the coat of the other dog.

Does anyone know how we can get past this? I have friends with dogs and I'l like us all to go for a walk together but if he takes a dislike to their dogs I'm concerned that this impressed of them would stick and would rather resolve it prior to making the introductions to friends dogs.

Peculiarly he's perfectly ok with horses. He's interested in them but doesn't look scared or bothered even when they pass within 2 or 3 feet. He's completely uninterested in sheep and cattle.

He does hate cats but c'est la vie.

Any ideas on how to get him used to other dogs? I want to some thing positive rather than just control him or distract him when he meets another dog.

He wears a light basket muzzle when he goes on a walk which the dogs trust advised us he would have to wear because of his behaviour towards other dogs just in case he did get away from us. We'd really like to get to the point where he didn't have to wear it.

In a perfect world we'd like to let him off the lead in the park to play fetch as he has really good recall in the garden unless he sees something he wants such as another dog, a cat, a rabbit, leaves, etc and then he's gone like a missile.

Thanks,

Mark

[Erasmia]

Our dog is an ex-stray who used to try and attack any other dog she saw. We don't know her history but suspect she had been attacked at some point. We've worked with several behaviourists and what worked for us was starting at a distance and when she looks at the other dog we say yes and give her a treat. Over time we have got closer to other dogs. It takes patience but the idea is she get reconditioned to think seeing other dogs is positive. Good luck and if you try this use high value treats like liver cake!

[Jasandjules]

This will take a lot of time. Do you have lots of people you know with friendly dogs? CALM dogs too.

[dern]

Thanks for the feedback and the encouragement. Maybe we're just going in the right direction then. He does seem slightly better with some dogs than others which is slowly getting better over time and we do reward him for not getting worked up. I guess he just needs time and more exposure to other dogs.

Cheers,

Mark

[Jasandjules]

One thing you can do (assuming he is very reactive) is to find his favourite food/treat (i.e. organic cheese) and then as soon as he sees another dog, give him some of it. Then keep shoving it in front of his nose and letting him have some the whole time he can see this other dog (you will need to reduce his other meal sizes to account for this).

The idea here is that whenever there is a dog near him he gets something nice. Total positive association.

IF he goes mental and won't eat the food, walk him the other way until he relaxes and will take the food. Then back you go.