Now that you have a good understanding of your dog's reactivity and how to manage your environment, are you looking for more training skills that are especially good for helping with reactivity?

You've come to the right place. Here you'll find certified professional dog trainers and Dogly Advocates share the foundational go-to's in force-free reactive dog training in step-by-step guides. Each training technique and skill is great for every dog and exponentially helpful with reactive dogs.

Here's a quick overview of each of the guides to give your dog skills to feel comfortable and confident in reactive situations...

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Reactivity Force Free Training Guide 1: How to Practice No-Stress Training with Your Reactive Dog

When you're working with your dog on learning new ways to feel and react around triggers, it can be especially challenging training since, by definition, it involves things that are stressful.

How can you lower the stress so your pup is open to learning? A favorite trick of professional positive reinforcement trainers is to use a life-like stuffed dog to play the role of the "other dog" for dogs who react to other dogs on walks or anywhere. In this guide, certified positive reinforcement trainer and Dogly Advocate Melissa Dallier explains and shows how to use a "decoy dog" with your reactive dog and why it works.

What you'll learn in this force free training guide:

4 ways using a stand-in, almost-real other dog helps your dog

Melissa takes you through the why and how of 4 key ways using your fake dog for training can help your dog:

1) Makes it easier for you to learn to read your dog's body language & reactions

2) Puts you in control of your always-top concern: safety

3) Takes advantage of the beauty of the dog that never barks back

4) Makes it easier to gauge & control distance

Pro tips on managing your dog decoy for best effect:

You'll learn how positive reinforcement dog trainers manage the not-real dog, how to set it up, etc., for the best impact on your real dog's training.

How to teach the "look at that" game using force free dog training

Melissa shares how to make the highly versatile "look at that game" part of your dog's repertoire to help you get through all kinds of potentially reactive situations:

• 3 simple steps to teaching "look at that" to your pup - starting with using your fake dog as a trigger
• why it works to keep your dog in his/her comfort zone
• how to practice and how to troubleshoot when you hit a bump in your dog training or real life

As dog parents, it's easy to feel the same stress our dogs feel when another dog comes into view on a walk. And it's hard not to send our own stress through the leash to our pups. Training with a fake dog can help your dog and you have a predictable window where you control variables and practice where you feel safe and comfortable. Meanwhile, you both can learn good responses that become second nature when surprises pop up in real life.

Jump into the full guide here for all the details on putting your fake dog to work supporting your pup's reactivity dog training. Next up: learning counter-conditioning to train your dog to expect good things around triggers.

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Reactivity Force Free Training Guide 2: Expert Dog Training Tips To Help Your Reactive Dog Using Counter-Conditioning

The first thing we all learn about our sometimes-reactive dogs is that it's about how our dogs feel around a trigger. It's an emotional reaction, sometimes it's logical and sometimes not, but either way, it's a real emotion your dog genuinely feels. To help your dog, you have to teach him/her to have a different, positive emotion around the scary thing.

How can you teach your dog to expect all good things when your pup sees a trigger?

That's where counter-conditioning and desensitization come in.

Earlier in the Reactivity Channel you learned how to use "management" of your surroundings to set up your dog for success in potentially reactive situations. Now we're ready to get into helping change your dog's emotional response with the two tried-and-true ways to help reactive dogs go from a fearful, negative response to positive and calm one.

First, certified professional dog trainer and Dogly Advocate Tressa Fessenden-McKenzie focuses on counter-conditioning in this step-by-step force free training guide. Desensitization has its own dedicated guide next.

Let's jump into counter-conditioning...

What you'll learn in this force free dog training guide:

• What is counter-conditioining? The short version is it's changing your dog's emotional reaction to a trigger by pairing its presence with really desirable things. For most dogs that means food or yummy dog treats.
• Why counter-conditioning works. Hint: most reactive dogs are fearful dogs, at least around their triggers.
• How to teach your dog that the “scary thing” is actually a predictor of your pup's most treasured treats with a step-by-step dog training exercise.
• Detailed timing guidance to make sure the trigger becomes a predictor of good things.
• What you want your counter-conditioning sequence to look like and what you don't want it to look like.
• How to deal with triggers that are already predictors like the doorbell.
• What counter-conditioning success looks like in your dog!

For everything you need to know on counter-conditioning to help your pup feel more at ease around triggers, find the complete guide here. Now for counter-conditioning's partner in reactivity training: desensitization.

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Reactivity Force Free Training Guide 3: How to Help Your Reactive Dog Using Dog Desensitization

Now that you and your dog know counter-conditioning, you're ready for its close cousin: desensitization. That's a big-sounding word for a simple concept in force-free dog training that helps fearful dogs learn to cope with their triggers in a more positive way.

Essentially, our dogs are unlearning their negative reaction because they are not being exposed to the trigger in a way that causes them to react by going over threshold - flooding their brains with adrenaline and cortisol.

Dogly Advocate Tressa Fessenden-McKenzie explains why and exactly how desensitization can set your dog up to replace fearful reactions with calm, "no big deal" feelings instead.

In this force free training guide, you'll learn:

• What desensitization is
• How it works
• Examples of good opportunities for desensitization (thunder/fireworks for one example)
• How it's different from counter-conditioning and how it complements it
• How, once you know both, counter-conditioning and desensitization work together to support your dog

You'll also learn...

• 6 steps to desensitization with your reactive dog + his/her triggers
• Troubleshooting for any bumps, such as a trigger appearing out of nowhere
• Pro tip: how to watch for subtle stress signals in your dog during training and why catching all the signs matters

Check out the full guide here on desensitization to teach your reactive dog that the trigger means good things are happening, not bad. And for another super useful skill to teach your reactive dog: the eye contact/check-in with you.

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Reactivity Force Free Training Guide 4: How to Help Your Reactive Dog Using Check-in Skills

Does your dog already have a history of naturally making eye contact with you? It's an amazingly useful behavior to teach as a skill you can count on when you're on a walk or really in a range of situations.

A favorite behavior of every force-free trainer, the “check-in” is a great foundation skill for all dogs, but especially if you're working with your reactive or nervous dog to stay connected and calm.

What you'll learn in this force free training guide & accompanying video:

How to teach your reactive dog eye contact and check-in skills in 5 steps...

1) Start in a quiet, distraction-free spot.

2) Stand looking at your dog and wait for your pup to look at your face, then mark (clicker or "yes!") and treat.

3) At the beginning, keep the food or treat in front of you to keep the eye contact connection going.

4) Once your eye contact connection is easy in a quiet location, take it to other rooms, back yard, etc to practice and learn how to create distance and before venturing out around triggers.

5) What to do if your dog shows any signs of stress when you try eye check-ins around triggers like other dogs.

Pro tip: When you’re ready to work with your dog’s triggers, make sure you have a sense of control over the distance and intensity so you’re able to keep your dog under threshold.

You'll also learn...

• What "under threshhold " actually means in force free dog training practice
• Where your counter-conditioning comes in
• Why and how your counter-conditioning foundation should make this all go smoothly

With the addition of eye check-in skills, you and your dog have a great set of skills and ways to communicate with each other to help navigate and change your dog's reactions to triggers.

Jump into the full guide here to get started with Dogly Training Advocate and positive reinforcement dog trainer Tressa Fessenden-McKenzie on building your check-in skills.

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Next up in the Reactivity Channel on Dogly

Once you've finished all 4 Reactivity Training guides, you should have a good, force-free reactive dog training foundation in how you can support your pup and transform stressful moments. Up next, check out the training guides to taking your pup out and about with skills for leash reactivity - starting with what it is and beginning strategies to alleviate it to the art of the parallel walk, and more, in the Reactivity Channel here on Dogly.

If you have any questions about your dog, just ask in our Community Discussion. Continue in our Reactivity Channel where you'll learn everything you need to know for your dog from our community of Dogly Training Advocates. Or hop over to the Anxiety Channel to learn how to give a massage for calming anxiety and overall health or any number of stress-relieving tips for your pup from a certified canine massage therapist.

If you ever need more personalized force free dog training guidance, get started in your dog's training plan here.