A Perth dog trainer explains why high-drive breeds like German Shepherds become reactive when confined to suburban life without proper outlets. He used a three-step protocol with a reactive dog named Umbra: fulfillment through high-drive games and off-leash freedom with an e-collar, plus clear communication with just two markers. Her reactivity vanished once her genetic needs were met.
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Do you have a cattle dog, a Kelpie, a Malinois, or a German Shepherd? In fact, do you have any working breed? Are they lunging, barking, and reacting to everything that moves? If the answer is yes, then you're sitting on a pressure cooker. If you just try to fix the issues by suppressing the behaviour, by just yanking on the lead and yelling no without giving them an outlet, that pressure cooker is probably going to explode. I see this constantly. People buying these dogs because they look cool or because they want a guard dog. Or because they saw one in the movie, but they have absolutely no fucking idea what they're dealing with. These dogs are bred to work. They're bred to chase. They're bred to bite. They're bred to run all day long. When you take a dog with those genetics and you stick them in a suburban backyard in Perth and you only walk them around the block on a bloody harness, you're creating a monster. That energy doesn't just disappear. It has to go somewhere. And if you don't give a constructive outlet, it will find a destructive one. It will turn into fence fighting. It will turn into destroying your furniture And most commonly it will turn into severe reactivity. Let me tell you a little bit about a German Shepherd that I work with. Her name was Umbra. Umbra came to me because she was severely frustrated and highly reactive. She was lunging at dogs and lunging at people, and her owners were at their wit's end. They couldn't walk her, they couldn't have guests over. Their entire life was dictated by the reactivity. When I assessed Umbra, the problem was very clear. She'd never had a real outlet for her genetics. She was completely deprived of being able to be off the leash. She didn't know how to play properly, and she had absolutely no real communication system with her owners. Her owners loved her, but they were trying to treat her like a bloody golden retriever. They were trying to suppress her drives instead of actually channeling them. Now let's be honest, the dog training industry is a complete fucking mess, especially here in Perth. On one side you've got the force-free crowd. They'll tell you that you should never tell a dog no. They will tell you that you should purely rely on positive reinforcement to fix difficult behaviors. They will tell you just to feed your dog cheese when they see a trigger and just hope for the best. If you If you try to fix a severely reactive, high-drive German Shepherd with just cheese and a clicker, you're probably going to get bitten. It does not work. You can't bribe a dog out of genetics. On the other side, you have the old-school compulsion trainers. These are guys who just want to slap on a prong collar, yank them into submission, and physically dominate them. I'll be honest with you, when I started out, I tried to stay away from what I first experienced as a dog owner, but on difficult cases, I found myself falling back on the heavier correction-based training. It was what I knew from my own experience with my first German Shepherd, Floyd. I saw trainers who instilled the wrong style of training, but I knew it wasn't the whole picture. It wasn't until I connected with Jacob and the team at Yorkshire Canine Academy that my eyes were really opened to the correct way to train aggressive and reactive dogs. The middle ground, the balanced approach. To fix Umbra, we didn't start by dragging her around other dogs and correcting her. We didn't start by throwing her into the deep end. We started by building a relationship. Here are the 3 steps that I use to fix Umbra's bad behavior once and for all. Step 1: I put fulfillment first. Before we asked anything of Umbra, we gave her an outlet. We taught her how to play. We engaged her in high drive games of tug and fetch. We gave her a job. We allowed her to use her mouth to chase, to bite, and to win, but it was on our terms. We channeled that genetic energy into a constructive game. Step 2 is we gave her off-leash freedom. A working dog needs to run. I don't care what anybody says. A walk around the block is an insult to their genetics. So we use an e-collar to give Umbra off-leash fulfilment. We took her to quiet beaches and bushwalks where she could actually be a dog. The e-collar wasn't used to punish her. It was used as like an invisible leash, an insurance policy that allowed her to have freedom safely. Step 3 was clear communication. Once Umbra's needs were met, we established a clear communication system We didn't use dozens of commands. We used two markers, a positive, yes, and a negative, bad. We taught her exactly what yes meant and exactly what bad meant in a low stress environment so we could use this correctly when faced with the real world. Once Umbra's needs were met and she understood the rules, her reactivity literally just disappeared. We took items off the menu. Lunging was no longer an option because she understood bad, but engaging with the handler was highly rewarding because she understood Yes, and she loved to play. If you're feeling guilty about your dog's reactivity, then I'm here to help. You're not a bad dog owner, you've just been fed the wrong information. But fear no more, that knot that you get in your stomach every time you grab your dog's leash, let's fix it. We've put everything that we know into a completely free programme and it's going to help you solve absolutely all of your issues. Did I mention it was free? So click the button below and get access right now. Stop trying to suppress your working dog. Stop trying to treat them like a house pet. Respect their genetics, fulfill them, Communicate clearly and the behavior that you want, it will just follow. If you have a working breed dog in Perth that is driving you absolutely crazy, then don't wait until they bite someone. Click the link in the description, book in a call with Perth K9 Academy, and let's get them sorted.
