Training & Behavior

Does your dog turn into a completely different animal the second something moves fast? One minute he is trotting along the towpath being charming, the next he is at the end of the lead making a noise like a kettle while a cyclist disappears round the bend. You have tried calling him. You have tried treats. You have probably tried standing very still and saying his name in an increasingly strained voice.

The first thing worth understanding is that he is not being naughty, and he is not challenging you. Chasing is a predatory motor pattern, and it is as built-in as a sneeze.

It is a job description, not a behaviour problem

The full sequence runs orient, eye, stalk, chase, grab-bite, kill-bite, dissect, consume. Every breed we made is that sequence with bits amplified and bits deleted. Collies got a huge eye and stalk with the kill removed, which is why they herd. Terriers got the grab-bite. Sighthounds are basically chase with legs attached.

Which means the dog losing his head at a bicycle is running a program he did not choose and cannot simply switch off. It also means this is a different animal from leash reactivity, where a dog is barking at other dogs out of fear or frustration. A chaser is not upset. He is delighted, and that is precisely the difficulty, because the behaviour is its own reward. Every time he gets a good run at a squirrel, the whole system gets topped up. Nothing you carry in your pocket competes with that.

So a word on what does not work. E-collars get pushed hard for exactly this problem, usually for livestock chasing, and the fallout is grim. You are pairing pain with whatever the dog happens to be looking at, and dogs are dreadful at working out what caused it. Plenty come out the other side frightened of sheep, of children on bikes, or of you, and some stop chasing and start biting instead. Prong collars, lead corrections and the whole dominance script share the same flaw. They suppress the outside of the behaviour and do nothing about the drive that produced it.

Management is not cheating

Before any training happens, stop the rehearsal. A dog who successfully chases something three times a week is practising, and you are not going to out-train his own practice.

That means a long line, five to ten metres of biothane or webbing, clipped to a well-fitted Y-front harness and never a collar, because a forty-kilo dog hitting the end of a line on his neck is a trip to the vet. Let it slide through a gloved hand rather than gripping it. It means walking the towpath at seven rather than eight, or driving ten minutes to somewhere boring. Distance is the cheapest training tool ever invented and almost nobody uses enough of it.

None of this is admitting defeat. Management is the thing that keeps everyone safe while the slow work happens underneath, and the slow work is months rather than a fortnight.

Two things worth building

The first is an interrupter, and you build it at home with the telly on, nowhere near a bike. Make a noise, always the same one, a kissy sound or a short whistle, then post food into your dog's mouth. Do not wait for him to look. Noise, food. Thirty repetitions across a few days and the noise becomes a reflex that turns his head. Then the garden, then a quiet street, and you only ever fire it at a distance where he can still hear you. Using it at three metres from a jogger on day four will burn it, and you will need a new noise.

The second is the game trainers call look at that, which is the single most useful thing I teach chasers. Stand far enough away that your dog can see the trigger but is not fizzing. The instant he looks at the cyclist, mark it and feed. Not for looking at you. For looking at the bike. It feels backwards for about two sessions, then something clicks and he starts glancing at the trigger and swinging his head straight back to you for payment. The thing that used to launch him is now a cue to check in. Shave the distance down a metre or two per session, and go back to where it was easy the moment he stops eating.

Give the drive somewhere legal to go

A dog with this much chase in him needs an outlet, or he will find his own. A flirt pole, which is essentially a fishing rod with a toy on the end, lets him orient, stalk, chase and grab in the back garden under rules you set. Keep sessions to a couple of minutes, let him win regularly, and use a start and stop cue so the arousal has an off switch built into it. Tug does a similar job. A handful of food scattered in long grass at the end of a walk brings him down afterwards, which matters because a dog left at the top of his arousal all day is a dog looking for the next bike.

Endless ball throwing, incidentally, is not the answer people think it is. It runs the chase loop over and over with no resolution and tends to produce a dog who is fitter, more aroused and more twitchy about movement.

Now the honest part. Some dogs never become safe off lead near roads, livestock or wildlife, and pretending otherwise gets dogs killed and gets farmers reaching for the phone. A lurcher with ten years of practice is not going to be recalled off a hare. If chasing has ever escalated into contact with an animal or a person, get a vet check to rule out pain and bring in a qualified force-free behaviourist rather than working it out yourself. A long line for life is not a failure. It is a dog who gets to sniff, run and stay alive, and most of the dogs I have worked with would take that deal happily.