Living with a reactive dog can be like navigating a labyrinth, where every twist and turn presents a new challenge, testing your patience and resolve. The stress and strain it imposes on both you and your canine companion can sometimes feel overwhelming, threatening to erode the relationship you’ve worked so hard to build. However, in the midst of these trials, there is an opportunity for growth and connection. In this article, I will be exploring the complexities of life with a reactive dog, offering insights and strategies to help you navigate this journey with confidence and compassion.
5 Strategies to Reduce Your Dog's Reactivity
Where to even start? The best way to start reducing your dog’s reactivity or aggression today is to pause your current routines that are consistently leading to those embarrassing lunging, growling, snarling, emotional mayhem outbursts. Take a well deserved break from those stressful walks and replace them with some alternative activities that fulfill you and your dog’s needs without the chaos. Janet Finlay’s recent article “The Deconstructed Dog Walk” offers some valuable insights and nice perspective shift on the social construct of walking dogs.
Once you’ve come up with a game plan for temporarily replacing your walks, prepare for other chaos inducing events such as dealing with guests coming to the house by implementing some environmental re-design strategies such as crating or creating safe zones. Block access to triggering areas such as windows, fences and perch points to prevent problem behaviours.
Break that viscous cycle of escalating reactivity by calming the environment. Take a deep breath and interrupt those pesky patterns of reactivity and aggression. You’ve got this!
Now that you have some breathing room, you can focus on implementing the following five strategies to cultivate a less reactive, calmer and more connected relationship with your dog.
Vet Check Before Behaviour Change
Schedule a veterinary appointment to rule out any underlying medical issues or pain that may be impacting your dog’s behaviour. I cannot stress enough how important this is. Can you picture being referred for counselling or treatment due to symptoms associated with a medical condition or soft tissue injury? This holds true for your dog as well! Once your veterinarian has given you the all-clear, you can move on to the next steps.
Understand Your Dog's Triggers
Spend some time carefully considering the specific circumstances, locations, and triggers that appear to be triggering your dog’s reactivity or aggression. Does it occur in specific contexts, such as when your dog is on the leash, interacting with other dogs, or when around certain family members? Now that you have scratched the surface, it’s time to dive deeper into the underlying causes.
Uncover Hidden Patterns of Reactivity
Spend some time reflecting on your dog’s social circle, taking into account the broader picture of their interactions with family, friends, and other dogs across a range of of settings. Is there a common thread of conflict or competition lurking beneath the surface, in what otherwise appear to be completely “normal” interactions. For example, if your dog reacts aggressively to other dogs on-leash but appears friendly, albeit maybe a bit wild off-leash, watch to see if they are routinely the first to close the space in these interactions. Do they jump up on you and strangers? Watch for signs of awkwardness or overzealous excitement. While these may appear unrelated, these tiny micro-level conflicts relating to personal space bubbles can in fact be a systemic underlying pattern leading to the emergence of reactivity or aggression. Uncovering these hidden ‘fractal‘ patterns requires looking beyond the obvious i.e., the reactivity itself, and peering into the hidden dimensions of dog behaviour where deep and lasting solutions to your dogs reactivity or aggression lie in wait.
Understand Your Dog's Resilience and Coping Mechanisms
Now that you’ve taken a pause from the chaos and have taken some time to understand your dog’s triggers and analyze their social network for hidden patterns of reactivity, it’s time to focus on their adaptability and coping mechanisms.
How fast is your dog able to recover from being triggered or from big emotions? Do they get triggered and then spiral out of control? Does one fearful reaction on a walk lead to a week of bad walks? Or, are they able to quickly move away from a trigger, sniff, pee and shake-off, and then carry on?
Think of adaptability, as your dog’s capacity to navigate the day to day challenges and stress of life while maintaining balance or ‘dynamic equilibrium’, much like a tree swaying in the wind without breaking. In the same way that a tree’s flexibility allows it to withstand strong gusts, your dog’s coping mechanisms enable them to handle stressors effectively. However, if these mechanisms are compromised, they may struggle to adapt, much like a tree with weakened branches may snap under pressure.
For instance, consider how an excessive focus on obedience training may have inadvertently eroded your dog’s coping mechanisms. While pulling on the leash may have seemed like “the problem” , your dog might have been trying to down-regulate to “close the loop” and restore equilibrium.. However, if this nuance was overlooked and you focused on training them not to pull, their natural coping mechanism may have been suppressed.
Similarly, traumatic experiences or medical issues could also diminish your dog’s resilience, making it harder for them to bounce back from stressful situations.
Understanding your dog’s adaptability and coping mechanisms is a vital component of permanently addressing reactivity and aggression. By growing your dog’s adaptive capacity and building and maintaining their resiliency, you empower them with a set of strategies that will allow them to thrive in their ever-changing environments.
Examining Trust: How Much Does Your Dog Trust You?
Now that you have deepened your understanding of your dog’s adaptability and coping mechanisms , it’s time for some deep reflection into your relationship dynamics. Does your dog really trust you? I recognize this is a tough question, but it’s one that always warrants deep exploration. Take some time to evaluate your dog’s trust across six key areas: Guidance, Resources, Protection, Security, Care, and Safety as illustrated in the graphic above.
Picture these dimensions as tightly interwoven threads, forming a strong knot. Just as a knot relies on the strength of each thread, trust depends on the strength of all six dimensions. If any aspect weakens or breaks, trust becomes fragile or compromised and problem behaviours such as reactivity, resource guarding or separation anxiety can emerge. In these instances, rebuilding trust in whichever thread or threads have been weakened are critical for progress.
I know that reflecting on your relationship can be challenging and disruptive, however, confronting these issues is essential for growth and behaviour change.
Need Some Support with Your Reactive Dog?
If your relationship with your dog or their behaviours aren’t quite how you’d like, our specialized reactive dog training in Calgary can illuminate a path forward even if you have already tried “everything”. These programs will help provide clarity, dispel confusion, and set you on a supportive and successful trajectory with your reactive dog. Live outside of Calgary? No problem – check out our on-demand Rover Re-Imagined Reactive Dog Program.
Got questions? Be sure to get in touch. We would love to hear from you!
References and Notes
This article is an adaptation from a collaborative piece I co-authored in August 2023 with Hudson’s Hounds, titled “Unleash Harmony: 5 Effective Strategies to Curb Your Dog’s Reactivity.” In my world, things evolve rapidly with new knowledge and education, prompting this update. For the original article, you can visit: Unleash Harmony: 5 Effective Strategies to Curb Your Dog’s Reactivity – Sheila Gunston Dip. CBST, PCBC-A, FDM
Payne, E., Bennett, P. C., & McGreevy, P. (2015). Current perspectives on attachment and bonding in the dog–human dyad. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 8*, 71-79. DOI: 10.2147/PRBM.S74972
Lee, E. D., Daniels, B. C., Myers, C. R., Krakauer, D. C., & Flack, J. C. (2020). Scaling theory of armed-conflict avalanches. Physical Review E, 102*(4), 042312. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.102.042312
Fleming, B. (2023, July 11). Conflict Scaling Analysis in Canine Aggression: The Devil’s in the Details. Retrieved from Chaos & Canines: https://chaosandcanines.substack.com/p/conflict-scaling-analysis-in-canine
Great tree metaphor in regards to resiliency. I’m also curious about the effect of multiple caregivers under the heading of “guidance”. Is there a different set of rules with each guardian? Potentially.
I’ve also observed that my dogs’ reactive moments are more subdued when there are more guardians in the mix such as on a walk. This lends itself to the “protective” component of trust and the power of pack mentality. And then things can get even more complicated when you throw some attachment issues into the mix.
Great blog and some excellent strategies going forward in the roller coaster of reactivity.