I’ve always had cats, tho, and am considered something of a crazy cat lady. However, I’d wanted a dog for years. But I had 2 elderly cats with kidney disease by the time I was in a position to have a dog, and one hated all other animals, so we waited until she was gone.

Our first trial adoption was with a dog with all sorts of issues: either dog aggressive or extremely protective of me, he drink huge amounts of water & peed frequently, but was housetrained; he wasn’t diabetic, but we didn’t have him long enough to get to the bottom of that issue. The reason we didn’t adopt him was his extreme separation anxiety. I just didn’t feel I could handle all that in my first dog (one I’d waited 20 years for!), and even then it was terribly hard to give him up.

When my elderly cats first got sick, I started to think a lot about causes, and just became fascinated with animal behavior in general. I’d always loved animals, but taken them somewhat for granted. When we got kittens, after a year, I got interested in agility and started to clicker train them!

I think it’s interesting about Kevin thinking that our dogs’ issues are ours. Certainly I think there’s truth to that.

However, we had Chester, our first dog, since he was about 10 weeks old. He’s a great dog, and while he did have separation anxiety too, we worked thru that. He’s not in the least reactive; he gets along great with all dogs (altho he’ll be reserved with a big dog til he knows they’re nice — he’s a chihuahua mix), and all people, including kids, even tho we don’t have kids.

After a year, we adopted a second dog. Lola was 10 months old when we got her. She’d been bounced around to at least 6 different homes in that time, and had absolutely no training.

She is very reactive. Oddly enough, she wasn’t when we got her. She has adored Chester from the moment she set eyes on him. She loves our friends’ Westies. And she does usually get along with other dogs off leash . . . but on leash she’s very reactive. She’d really never been walked on leash before we got her (she’s also a chihuahua), and I don’t think she was well socialized to dogs despite living in a home with a cat & a dog at one point, altho she’s extremely well socialized to humans.

I’ve worked hard with her, and she’s made a lot of progress, but she’s still reactive.

So, is it a case of nature vs nurture? As I said, Chester isn’t at all reactive; Lola is — but we had Chester from a tiny puppy, and Lola was almost an adult when we got her. And thankfully, Chester hasn’t picked up on her reactiveness, either.

They both do agility, and Lola is pretty good in class, surprisingly. I was worried about her, but she loves it and pretty much leaves the other dogs alone, rarely even growling at them. I was so pleased the day one person in class said “oh, your dog has a problem with other dogs?”.

Still, like you were with Nola, we’re not all the way there.