Well You Must Not Know My Dog! Life With a Reactive Dog
by Christy Caplan
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November 8, 2015 
Sherm at his sweetest!
“Well you must not know my dog” (from Best in Show): Living with a Reactive Beagle Mix
I was with a client last week and a customer came into her store. Without a lot of detail, her dog was aggressive towards someone after a very stressful move… my client recommended some outstanding behavior specialists which reminded me of this story and my first meeting with Denise, a masterful trainer, who I met many years ago and someone I see at Nosework trials as she judges them throughout the year.
So about 8-ish years ago – Shermie entered our lives, he’s a Beagle-Basset mix as many of you know. Our older dog, Sandy and Bruiser were already part of the Caplan pack.
Yes, I did see Sherm on Petfinder and then someone else sent me his picture and all of a sudden I was at Oregon Humane Society (OHS) putting “a hold” on him and bringing the other dogs to the shelter for a meet and greet. My husband’s version of the story is slightly different… Sherm had a small “book” talking about his history as a broken dog and I looked it over quickly not thinking too much about what was happening. A third dog?
We started out our relationship by administering eye drops as he had cherry eye surgery among other small health issues. He didn’t seem to mind the eye drops at first but quickly grew tired of me muzzling him and tackling him to get them in 3 times a day.
Life with Sherm in the short term was pretty easy. Then I realized he was a hot mess on leash with other dogs.
I had no idea what living with a reactive dog meant until Sherm joined our family. Lunging on leash, screaming at other dogs, losing it all together. Sherm is so loud as a Beagle mix so when he screams bloody murder some folks actually leave their homes and make sure he’s OK.
We immediately hired a trainer that specialized in hard to manage cases, Denise Mullenix, showed me we were going to be fine.
Later on we took a few classes at Synergy Behavior Solutions and those were fantastic -at that time they were called: Reactive Rover classes and Sherm did much better.
Resources:
I will see the world differently from here on out. My dog has zero confidence. As long as I manage him with treats we can enjoy long walks together and I’m so happy I invested time and energy in the positive training classes as they made a big difference. Setting up Sherm for success makes a big difference.
