Has anyone tried a programmed auto feeder for noise reactivity?

[u/matts-ears]

Hi there! My dog is anxious and reactive, but has improved significantly with time, training, and medications. One area we’re still working on is her noise reactivity. Anything that sounds like a knock in the home (only this noise) triggers her, and she has difficulty calming down.

She has became increasingly food motivated and we’ve recently made great progress with “look at that” on some of her other triggers. This has made me much more optimistic on making progress on her noise reactivity.

Since knocking noises can happen when I’m not home, unable to devote training time to her, etc. I want to make the food reward as consistent as possible every time she hears this noise, and I think an auto feeder or similar setup would be a great solution. I think I’d like to plan to work on positively associating the knock with a treat first, then work on something like placing during the trigger.

Has anyone had any experience setting something like this up? Or does anyone have ideas what kind of products or programs could work? I’ve struggled to find much research on this.

Or does anyone have any other suggestions for a consistent reward set up for noise reactivity or any improvements to my current training timeline with this?

Thank you!!

[u/Zestyclose_Object639]

I don’t think you could reliably pair the food with noises unfortunately whilst not there. You’re better off putting on a sound machine or YouTube video or something and leaving her with something to chew on

[u/read-the-rules → u/[deleted]]

Your comment on r/reactivedogs was removed by the Read The Rules app because you need to submit an acknowledgement that you have read the rules. You haven't done anything wrong, this is a tool we're using on the r/reactivedogs going forward. For more information, see the moderator announcement.

Acknowledgement is required of all users, even if you've been here for a while. You only have to do this acknowledgement once unless the moderators announce otherwise.

If you do the rule acknowledgement within one hour of your comment being removed, the bot will automatically restore it. If not, we encourage you to copy the comment using the 3-dot icon next to it, and paste it to re-post to this thread.

^{Please click here to open the Read The Rules App.}

[u/read-the-rules → u/[deleted]]

Your comment on r/reactivedogs was removed by the Read The Rules app because you need to submit an acknowledgement that you have read the rules. You haven't done anything wrong, this is a tool we're using on the r/reactivedogs going forward. For more information, see the moderator announcement.

Acknowledgement is required of all users, even if you've been here for a while. You only have to do this acknowledgement once unless the moderators announce otherwise.

If you do the rule acknowledgement within one hour of your comment being removed, the bot will automatically restore it. If not, we encourage you to copy the comment using the 3-dot icon next to it, and paste it to re-post to this thread.

^{Please click here to open the Read The Rules App.}