Obsessive IMPULSIVE Disorder: Huckleberry’s Road to Recovery

My rescue hound Huckleberry used to be all impulse and no control. On walks, everything was a trigger—every squirrel, fox, bird, dog, and human made her yank, lunge, leap, and bark with such urgency that people stopped to stare. I know they were thinking, “Can’t you control your dog?!” Actually, I was slowly but surely teaching her to control herself.

To build impulse control, Huckleberry needed a versatile set of rock-solid behaviors: name game, sit, watch me, and find it. Every walk became a training session, with a full menu of her highest value treats to compete with her most seductive distractions. We played the name game obsessively until she could give a “whiplash” response—an immediate, almost reflexive head turn. I also reinforced her for looking at me without being asked, so she’d check in more often. Attention is the gateway to every other behavior; if I couldn’t get Huckleberry’s attention, I couldn’t expect her to do anything else.

I asked Huckleberry to sit at random times on walks, so she’d always be tuned in and ready to respond. I had her sit and wait to be released whenever I stopped walking, especially at intersections. She also learned to offer a sit to say “please”, like if she wanted to go sniff something beyond leash-range. Sit became her default; she’d sit when she didn’t know what else to do with herself. And sitting is a great alternative to frantic jumping.  

We worked on “watch me” in increasingly challenging settings—first when Huckleberry was already sitting calmly, then while walking, until finally she could turn to me even with a squirrel darting across our path. I often followed “watch me” with “find it”, so when she was dying to chase a squirrel, she could redirect some of the frenzy toward chasing a treat instead. “Find it” distracted her from other dogs, too. Plus, with her nose down in a sniffing posture, she sent calming signals to fellow canines. And getting treats when dogs appeared changed Huckleberry’s emotional state from stress to delight. At first, the other dogs had to be pretty far away for all this to work, but over time the thrill of chasing hot dogs started to override her reactivity to real dogs.

Huckleberry and I are still training each other, but we’ve both come a long way. So if you have a zany kook like mine, take heart: all those clicks and treats add up and pay off over time. The first time someone stopped to stare at Huckleberry and declared, “What a well-behaved dog”, I could barely control the impulse to do a little victory dance. Instead I stepped hard on her leash, just in case Huckleberry couldn’t yet control the impulse to give her fan a big sloppy kiss on the face.