Does your dog lunge at people or dogs while on their leash? Or bark and growl at strangers during your morning walks in Tampa Bay? Growling, barking, or lunging at other people and dogs is a sign of reactivity, even if your dog is friendly to people and dogs after meeting them. In this blog, we will discuss “How do I help my reactive dog?” by discussing reactive behaviors and how they can be treated.
Fortunately, reactive behaviors can be treated through behavior modification dog training. This will help you and your dog make the most of exploring Tampa Bay and stay calm and confident when having guests over or going to the park, the vet, or grooming appointments. Let’s start by understanding reactive behaviors.
Understanding reactive behaviors
The first step in helping your dog is to correctly identify the behaviors they are engaging in. Many dogs are reactive on leash, and this doesn’t make them bad or aggressive dogs. But a dog who is barking, growling, and lunging at strangers isn’t just excited and wants to say hello. Reactivity can escalate into aggressive behavior, especially if it starts with a young or adolescent dog. Which is why it is important to identify reactive behaviors early and then treat them correctly.
To best understand these reactive dog behaviors, you should look at what the behavior has resulted the majority of the time. Unless the dog greets the person or dog while they are lunging, barking, or growling, what they typically experience is being removed from the situation or the person, dog, or trigger moving away from them.
Unfortunately, removing the trigger from the situation or leaving it can create a reinforcement cycle. Your dog will learn that barking, lunging, or growling will cause a person to keep walking. This reinforces the reactive behavior, making it more likely they will bark, lunge, or growl the next time they see a person or dog in the same context.
Another example is when your dog sees an Amazon delivery driver drop a package off at the front door. You may be annoyed that your dog (or dogs) barks, howls, or growls at them through the window, especially if you are working from home or are trying to put the baby to bed. However, this reactive behavior can be reinforced because the Amazon driver leaves every time, which reinforces your dog’s reactivity, since their behavior is always followed by the driver leaving.
Some reactive behaviors can be more severe than others
Some dogs can be reactive at a distance on leash, but not when up close to strangers or other dogs. They may be less reactive when they are in situations where they expect to see strangers and other dogs, like when a dog is on the other side of a dog park fence.
It’s not that these dogs aren’t reactive when they see strangers at a distance, or through a fence, but that they may not have severe reactivity. This is great news, but you still need to label their behavior appropriately so you can treat it properly. If you label this activity as excitement rather than reactivity, this behavior can persist and may escalate.
How do we treat dog reactivity?
Classical conditioning
Structured training is essential for exposing dogs to reactive stimuli in a controlled manner. At Beyond the Dog, we focus on classical conditioning to teach positive associations with the stimulus that triggers reactivity.
Now, what is classical conditioning? It’s the process of teaching a dog to associate one stimulus with another. We use this to create a positive association with something unpleasant (like seeing a stranger or another dog) by pairing it with something your dog enjoys, such as treats or praise.
One way to do this is to make the most of every meal and create as many opportunities as possible for positive associations. If your dog has severe reactivity toward other dogs, we would not expect your dog to eat outside of the fence at a dog park. However, even getting your dog to eat food 100 feet away from other dogs can still make a big difference.
Systematic desensitization, a classical conditioning technique, will gradually expose the dog to the stimulus at more tolerable levels, which can effectively reduce reactivity and help them feel more comfortable over time. Fortunately, we effectively treat reactivity through behavior modification, and in some cases, significant behavioral change can occur in as little as one week.
Operant conditioning
Once a trainer has reduced reactivity through pairing, then we can focus on operant conditioning to teach appropriate behaviors, including leash walking past barking dogs.
Obedience commands that we teach at a high level, include “stay”, “down” and “sit” which can effectively manage reactive behaviors. Training will first occur in less stressful environments, and once your dog can reliably perform these commands, they can progress to a more challenging environment. An example of this is practicing “stay” at home and then practicing it at a park once they get more reliable with “stay”.
We are here to help
Would you like help teaching your dog high level obedience commands or addressing reactive behaviors? You can also contact our Pet Behavior Team for a free consultation, where we can chat with you and provide a personalized recommendation that meets your needs. We recommend you check out our puppy training blog or our Tik Tok channel.
For more information on dog reactivity, our co-founder and Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist, Dr. Kristyn Echterling-Savage, has published a blog on reactivity.
Beyond the Dog Tampa Bay offers personalized one-on-one training sessions, including training at your home and local Tampa neighborhood, board-and-train programs, and virtual training programs.
We use scientifically proven training methods, backed by over 20 years of hands-on experience. Beyond the Dog Tampa Bay is led by our co-founders, Dr. Kristyn Echterling-Savage, a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist (CAAB) and Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA), and Sean Savage, a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant (CDBC) and Certified Professional Dog Trainer-Knowledge Assessed (CPDT-KA).
