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Reactive Rovers
What is Reactivity?
When a dog overreacts to a person, object, dog, or normal situation by becoming overly aroused (can be seen as barking, growling, lunging, etc.). Here at Terric Canines we look at reactivity as emotional instability. When your dog is emotionally stable they can react appropriately to any given stimuli.
Why not use the word aggression to describe reactivity?
The word aggression is a very subjective word. Many people have their own definition of what dog aggression is. A dog may be labeled aggressive if they growl for example but dogs that growl are good communicators! The purpose of growling, even barking and lunging, is to avoid conflicts and confrontations. Ritualized aggression in dogs is a way for the dogs to communicate to one another. Some dog’s bubbles are bigger than others and may be more sensitive to situations and stimuli. These dogs don’t have confidence in situations and find their reactive behavior works. How it works may not be clear, but dogs do what works for them. For example, if they bark and lunge at the person walking by their house, they could interrupt that behavior as successful if the person kept walking away. The dog saved the day, and the human just continued to walk by. To the dog the behavior was successful.
What is ritualized aggression?
Ritualized aggression is different from actual aggression but usually gets labeled as aggression. It is actually a communication skill used to increase distance. Dogs use ritualized aggression to let others know they are uncomfortable and will fight, if necessary, but they would rather not have to resort to physical contact. Examples of ritualized aggression include freezing, lowering head, posturing, lip curling, growling, snarling, snapping, and even inhibited warning bites.
What to do next?
The first recommended steps for any new reactivity or aggressive behavior is a full vet check up including a full blood panel. We want to rule out any potential medical cause for the behavior. A dog in pain is less tolerant and may have a shorter fuse. Sometimes fixing the root to the problem if medical can make the issue disappear as fast as it occurred. Other times other medical intervention may be needed, including medications. Medication can make your dog have a better quality of life and not all medications will cause your dog to just turn into a zombie. These are great conversations for your vet. Be sure to keep an open mind and ask lots of questions!
Emotional instability can be hard for the pet parents to understand. The why or how this happened may never be fully clear. The only thing we can fully understand, and control is ourselves and how we react to helping them communicate the correct information to our dogs. Many times, the natural human reaction sends the wrong information to the dog and inadvertently influences the reactivity we are trying to avoid. Working with reactive dogs is not like training a new behavior. Through this therapeutic process we are changing the dog’s feelings. This takes time. Learning a behavior like sit is fairly straight forward while the exposure therapy is not. While working with your dog we want to teach you how to help your dog ride the wave. By riding the wave, we are helping keep their excitement level/stress level and emotional state from building to a tsunami. If a dog is extremely excited when confronted with a trigger, their reaction will be at the same level or more extreme. As their excitement/stress builds we have to be sure they come back down before continuing. It is more of a wave with ups and downs. We are trying to prevent stacking the emotional state into the buildup and thus outburst of a tsunami. There will be good and bad days, regression plateaus are normal. Remember during the process that baby steps in the right direction add up to big changes.
Reactive Resources
Here are some resources that can help