Every walk in an Indian neighbourhood brings the same test: a street dog sitting outside a shop, a pack resting under a parked car, a lone dog trotting toward you on a narrow footpath. For many pet dogs, that sight triggers a lunge, a bark, or a hard freeze, and the walk falls apart. The good news is that this is a trainable response, not a fixed personality trait. The method is desensitisation paired with counter-conditioning: you lower the emotional charge the street dog carries, and you replace the lunge with a behaviour your dog already knows how to do.
