What is reactivity?
Reactivity is a symptom of an underlying condition that causes a dog to overreact to certain stimuli. This will usually manifest itself as growling, barking, and lunging.
Dogs can be reactive to many different things but the most common are other dogs, people, traffic or other fast-moving objects, and loud sounds like fireworks. If you’re walking down the street and your dog spots another dog and starts lunging and barking, you have a dog-reactive dog.
Is my dog Aggressive?
The good news is that your dog is most likely not aggressive. Aggression is the intent to cause harm, whereas reactivity is just your dog's way of either telling something they don’t like to go away or a result of frustration from overexcitement.
Why do dogs react?
The main underlying issue that causes a reaction is stress. This can be negative stress caused by pain, fear, and anxiety, or positive stress caused by over-excitement. Either way, the same hormone is released. The stress hormone Cortisol can take up to 72 hours to return to normal levels in a dog after a stressful event.
Thresholds
Dogs can handle a certain amount of stress from fear, anxiety and excitement without reacting. But when the dog passes the limit of stress that they can handle, they react. This limit is called their threshold. Sometimes a single trigger can put a dog over their threshold. Sometimes it can take multiple exposures to triggers that cause the dog's stress to increase every time they see one until they reach their threshold. This is called trigger stacking.
Health
In the case of pain or discomfort, a dog with a medical issue may become reactive since they feel more of a need to protect themselves. It may seem like your dog's reactivity has come out of no where but may actually be linked to a pain issue. Regardless of whether the reactiveness is new or has been building for a while, a Vet check is always the first step. Medication may also be required in some of the more extreme cases to help your dog calm down and to give them a chance to reduce their serotonin levels so it's always good to keep your vet in the loop.
Fear and Anxiety
Fear-based reactivity is all about creating space between the dog and the trigger. Big scary noises like barking and growling, or lunging at something to chase it off, are your dog's attempts to make a perceived threat go away. The thing is, if the trigger does go away, whether it turns around or just passes by, your dog will think their reaction worked, reinforcing the behaviour.
Over excitement
When a dog is overstimulated they reach a threshold where they can no longer keep them self’s composed. A good example of this is the zoomies. They are running as fast as they can as a form of stress release and won’t listen to commands because they are just too far over their threshold. Now imagine instead that this dog is not off lead in a space they can easily run around, but instead, they are on a short leash, being held back by their owner. The lead removes the dog's ability to release their stress by restricting their movement as well as adding frustration from not being able to get to the thing that’s excited them. This results in a reaction of barking and lunging.
It is also possible for a dog to enjoy reacting. Barking and chasing something off can feel very satisfying to a dog.
How to deal with Reactivity
There are 3 main things we can look at when dealing with reactivity. Training, management, and medication.
Management
A plan needs to be put in place to manage the dog's overall well-being to give them a chance to recover.
A good management plan needs to be tailored to the dog, owner, situation and includes the following:- Recommendations from the vet for any health issues contributing to the reactivity.- How to avoid or at least limit reactions.- Rest and recovery time between training sessions and walks.- What to do if the dog has a reaction.- Enrichment to make sure the dog's mental and physical needs are met- The situations and environments that the dog is put into.
Training
Reactivity training starts away from the dog's triggers. Once the dog has reached a certain level of obedience training, is able to engage with their owner, and has started to gain some impulse control, triggers can be introduced at a large distance. At first the dog is exposed to something easy for them to handle like a toy stuffy dog. Then we move on to something a little trickier like a real but calm dog. Once the reactive dog can handle being around their triggers in a controlled training situation, real-world training can begin. The main aim when exposing a dog to a trigger is to get them to disengage. This basically means getting them to look away and ignore it. We also want to use lots of praise and rewards around the triggers to condition a positive association with the trigger.
Medication
Sometimes training alone may not be enough. Medication may be needed to help your dog reduce their anxiety, to help them calm down, or to help address other hormone imbalances and neurological disorders.
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