Calm in the Chaos: The Building Blocks
If you haven’t yet read Part 1 of this HHN service dog series, catch up here!
Around this same time, Lady Priscilla started showing signs of dog reactivity. Not aggression. But BIG feelings. She’d bark and lunge and throw herself 6 feet in the air. Not exactly ideal for a service dog in training. So we brought in a professional, a trainer with a strong background in both reactivity and service dog training.
That trainer did some work with first a realistic fake dog and then a real demo dog. She also confirmed that the leash reactivity is excitement, not aggression. She confirmed that we were fine to continue service dog public access training and gave us a relaxation protocol: A series of progressively more challenging exercises that had me clapping, jumping, yelling, and running circles around the dog like a mad woman while she remained in a calm down stay. We didn’t have the experience to know at the time just what an absolute gold mine that would be for service work.
Enter Jenny
Next up was group reactivity class. After all, if she was going to be a service dog, she’d have to be around multiple unpredictable dogs sometimes, not just one incredibly chill one. Jenny must have been sent directly by God, or the Universe, or The Council of Dogs That Have Seen Things. The two hour drive each way, every Sunday morning, was absolutely nothing compared to what Jenny did for Lady Priscilla, and for us. In just 3 short weekly sessions, Lady Priscilla learned that other dogs are allowed to exist, and even to come reasonably close to her, with no freakout required. She even began to put her relaxation protocol into action, calmly laying down to survey the scene.
Then Jenny announced her maternity leave. Okay, now what?
Among the last things Jenny said to us at the end of that final reactivity class: “She’s not all that reactive, and the best thing to do for her is group classes. Just get her around other dogs.”
That proved to be easier said than done, as we had some fits and starts due to scheduling issues. She did officially test out of Obedience 1 in a group setting, showing off her Stay and Recall skills like a champ, off leash, in a room full of dogs…only to have the Obedience 2 class indefinitely postponed!
Eventually we ended up at Zoom Room, where she gets to take lots of different drop-in classes with lots of different highly unpredictable dogs. It’s still a work in progress, as she loves nothing more than to announce her presence in a big loud voice whenever she enters a “dog space.” Interestingly, she never, ever barks when entering a “human space,” even a crowded and chaotic one. But she likes to let other dogs know that she is on her way.
Not bad for a dog who used to cower in the corner, trying extremely hard not to exist.
That transformation — from uncertainty to structured confidence — eventually became the foundation of what we now call The Lady Priscilla Method: a philosophy rooted in emotional growth, trust-based training, and deep respect for the inner lives of dogs like her.
Continue to Part 3: The Training We Didn’t Know Was Training
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