How to teach your dog to approach other dogs calmly?

Teach them a Watch Me exercise, do this randomly throughout the day, start where there are no distractions, and your dog isn’t doing something else. Say their name enthusiastically and when they look at you reward them with a high value treat. Once you can do this at home, you can progress to the garden where there are more distractions from sights, sounds, and smells. Once you’ve mastered that, you can start going out and about – but stick to quiet places where you can avoid other dogs until you and your dog are experts at this. Distract them when meeting other dogs, start off a long distance from them – beyond the point where your dog would usually react, all you want your dog to do is look at you, and you will reward this. Slowly build this up to being able to do it at closer proximity but never too close that your dog feels that they need to react to the other dog. Practice is key, remember that patience is very important when training any dog and you shouldn’t expect instant results, it is about being consistent and training each step very slowly and practising a lot. Make sure your dog still gets a chance to play and interact with their chosen doggie friends, dogs are social and do enjoy having some ‘dog time’ – and you don't want to create frustration by preventing all dog-to-dog interactions so set up play dates or dog walks with a chance for off-lead play regularly with your dog’s best friends.

It starts with developing their ability to listen to you and accept your guidance even when they’re excited and want to do something else, which gives you the ability to teach them right from wrong in any situation. If your dog won’t listen to you reliably at home, or without much distraction around, they’re never going to listen when they’re SUPER excited about another dog. The most important things to teach are: Your dog’s self-control, Your dog’s ability to listen to you, even when they don’t want to. Once you have a good training foundation, and your dog has learnt self-control and how to listen even when they’d rather do something else, you can start teaching them to greet dogs calmly close at hand. This means you can closely monitor their behaviour and step in if they make a bad choice, to teach them what is and isn’t appropriate. As they get more practice, they develop the habit of greeting nicely and eventually, you can trust them to greet new dogs politely, even without you right there. If you try and jump to the off-lead greeting stage too early though, you’ll just teach your dog that they don’t have to listen to you, because they have too much freedom to rush up to other dogs and greet them rudely, without you being able to quickly step in and help them make better choices.

When your dog sees or approaches another dog, you want him to behave in a calm, friendly, confident manner. It is natural for him to be interested in the other dog, but not to rush into the other dog’s space, or vocalize excessively, which another dog may perceive as threatening, and can result in aggression. Teaching your dog to be calm around other dogs and making meeting other dogs a pleasant experience may take some time and insight on your part, to address the underlying causes for your dog's excitement. You will need to find other dogs to help teach your dog to be calm when in the presence of another dog. Find a mature, calm, well-balanced dog to help. Have treats available to provide positive reinforcement for calm behaviors. During training, avoid letting your dog have access to other dogs when not in a training session, so that exited behavior does not occur, and is not reinforced. Provide treats for get it command and move reward, start dropping treats beside you, and then behind you, and giving the “Get it” command, so your dog learns to look for, and get his treats behind you. Introduce another dog and have an assistant with a calm dog approach you, when you see the other dog from a distance, provide the “get it” command and give treats, your dog should move behind you to get his treats, this distracts him from the other dog, teaches him a different behavior rather than getting excited.