Prong during desensitization - does this make sense to you guys?

[sheep]

Originally Posted by Chicagocanine

What was the context here? Was this in a group class where you saw the same dogs every week?

The classes that were for dealing with the reactivity were individual classes (with another dog for helping), although he would still see some other dog students coming or going at the training camp at the beginning or the end of our individual classes. Some of them we see often, some we never saw before.
Our trainer also provided a few sessions in which we walk together along with another student dogs.

Also, he would have our dog walk pass reacting dogs that are inside of fenced yards, sometimes too closely in order to train our dogs to not to react to them (which in this case I think that it's not a really good thing to do).

After seeing our dog reacting much less, and that he even showed friendliness towards some dogs in the training camp whether he had met or not (which is the product of the gradual approach as there were interactions, and not the product of forcing him sitting next to other dogs but not allowing interaction and only focused on punishing any reaction), we started group classes.

Since the training was not helping him to improve his confidence in other dogs anymore (since we've started to worry more about repressing, and then in the group classes we would do the same exercises regardless the progress of each dog), we decided to drop them. We don't agree with a lot of the trainer's ideas anyways. Now I'm contacting a positive trainer that would not need to use physical punishment and that really allows more dog-to-dog interactions, which is what he really needs and not just repressing.

[Cassidy's Mom]

Originally Posted by sheep

Also, he would have our dog walk pass reacting dogs that are inside of fenced yards, sometimes too closely in order to train our dogs to not to react to them (which in this case I think that it's not a really good thing to do).

I agree - not a good thing. It would be much better to work a reactive dog around dogs that are neutral and can be relied upon NOT to react. The only exception to that would be in a reactive dog class, where of course all the dogs would be reactive to some degree. The difference is that in a class, the situation is very closely controlled as all the dogs are actively being worked with, not just allowed to bark out of control. Trying to work on reactivity by walking past fenced yards containing dogs that are going nuts is counter-productive. Even a dog that's fine around most other dogs might react to that!