How to introduce a reactive dog to a dog park?

If your dog tends to bark, lunge, or act uneasy around people or other dogs while you're out for a stroll, it can be tough to see your dog feeling this way. Dogs communicate with us and each other through body language and vocalisations. If your dog feels fearful or anxious around other dogs or people, they may try to hide or get away from them. To help your dog, consistently use reward-based training methods and keep them on a lead when needed, choose quiet places and times for walks, when possible, to avoid triggers while you’re working on changing their emotions. If you encounter a trigger, calmly move your dog away, avoiding adding extra tension to the lead. Reward calm behaviour, practice focus training to help them pay attention to you, learn to recognise your dog's body language.

He has almost 0 threshold for seeing other dogs without crying, barking, and lunging but is perfect off leash and at daycare. I’m planning on using a Sniffspot so they can be off leash safely but there’s still the issue of actually getting in and out and making sure he’s not rushing them. I don’t want to feed into his frustration by introducing them on leash.

Try doing lots of “dog park TV” with the reactive dog(s) to help them prepare for a parallel walk. If at all possible, your parallel walk should take place in neutral territory. Most reactive dogs are more stressed out by meeting other dogs close to home. We want a large area with plenty of space so that the reactive dog doesn’t have to get too close to the neutral dog too quickly. Start out with you and one dog on one side of the park or street and another handler and their dog on the other side. The distance between them should be far enough that the reactive dog is able to notice the neutral dog without barking and lunging. Now, start walking both dogs in the same direction while maintaining distance between them. In many cases, the reactive dog will be less stressed out if they’re slightly behind the neutral dog. Over time as the dogs remain relaxed, start to move the dogs closer together. If one or both dogs is staring down the other dog, puts their hackles up, stops accepting treats, or shows any other signs of stress, move the dogs further apart. Keep moving! Walking is important to help diffuse tension. The parallel walk method is a simple way to introduce a reactive dog to another dog. This method can work to introduce two reactive dogs if we’re very careful and slow.