How can I stop my dog from chasing bicycles?
My dog is fairly small and not scary at all, but he lunges at bicyclists and frightens them. I'm always afraid one of them will crash and fall. I feel terrible about his behavior and I don't know how to stop him without upsetting even more cyclists.
Answers ( 1 )
Dogs do best with positive reinforcement and small wins in training. Our dog was notorious for barking at strangers on his walks, but he slowly began to ignore passersby. To achieve this, instead of yelling or saying "no!" when he barked, I just remained silent. Any time he didn't bark loudly but just growled, he would get positive reinforcement (usually just "good boy!" and a head scratch since we didn't walk with treats).
Once it happened a few times, he understood what was being positively reinforced, so after that I would wait until the next time when he was actively interested in the stranger, but didn't growl or bark. Then that would be positively reinforced. After a few months (we don't live in a heavily-populated area) he finally got the hang of knowing that barking didn't elicit a reaction, but staying silent did.
I used this as a guide for training him to do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3JGwI9p6_c