Empowering Your Reactive Dog: 5 Tips from a Professional Dog Trainer

Living with a reactive dog can be challenging for both of you - we know from personal experience. It can be difficult to find ways to help your dog feel secure, relaxed, and confident navigating triggers on a daily basis. From dogs that react by barking excessively to various sounds, to those who exhibit fear-based behaviours like barking and lunging at people or other dogs during walks, we have experience working with all forms of reactivity. In this blog post, we will share reactive dog training tips from a professional trainer's perspective on ways to improve your dog's well-being, enabling both of you to be in a better mindset for training and making progress.

1. Prioritizing Making Them Feel Safe & Secure

Routine & Consistency Dogs thrive with a reliable daily routine and a sense of predictability. By setting up a consistent schedule, we can assist them in feeling more secure and relaxed. This may involve fixed feeding and walking times and routes, established training sessions, and bedtime rituals in their safe haven. When our dog can anticipate what comes next, we can significantly reduce their overall levels of stress and anxiety.

Autonomy The power of giving our dogs choice when it is safe & appropriate to do so can build their confidence and bond with you - because they trust you won't force them into situations where they are uncomfortable. For example, giving our dogs the choice to not interact with a stranger, or to cross a street instead of intersecting paths with another dog on the side walk. By providing our dog with these types of choices, we are exposing them to scenarios where their fight or flight response is activated less often, resulting in fewer negative reactions overall and enabling them to make more favourable decisions.

Management & Tools

In our Reactive Dog Rehab training package, we teach our clients various management skills to build confidence and fluency when it comes to navigating around triggers reaction free. Preventing daily rehearsal of reactivity is important in order to change behaviour that has become habitual. An example of this is teaching your dog a cue to pull over to the grass and wait for an incoming dog to pass by, instead of struggling to cross paths at close proximity. Having several management skills that are well rehearsed with a clear cue your dog understands further compliments giving sense of choice and making them feel safe.

As far as tools, we recommend our clients to use a y-shape harness that is least restrictive as possible to help alleviate the constricted feeling that can exacerbate leash reactivity in dogs. We often recommend the Freedom Harness & Pet Safe 3 in 1 harness. High value treats to pair with seeing their triggers to help change their emotional response, by building a positive association (ie. boiled chicken, pepperettes, freeze tried salmon, beef jerky). Treat delivery timing is important - working with a trainer can help you build this association this correctly.

Pattern Games

Dogs memorize patterns very well, so utilizing pattern games in training can help give them a sense of predictability and a go to skill to help them navigate around triggers.

In our Reactive Dog Rehab training package we teach our clients several easy pattern games, here is video demonstration of one called Super Bowls. We share demos for different pattern games on our Instagram!

2. Enrichment, Enrichment, Enrichment

Providing mental and physical stimulation for our dogs has become increasingly popular, and we highly recommend integrating it in your reactive dog's daily routine. Not only does it help burn out excess energy (highly energetic dogs may be more likely to react), relieve stress & anxiety, but it also can be extremely soothing which is key for your behaviour modification plan for resolving reactivity. Enrichment activities that involve licking, sniffing, chewing are all naturally calming inducing (lick mats, frozen Kongs, snuffle mats). Check out our Enrichment list on Amazon for more ideas. Problem solving food puzzles is also a major confidence builder for dogs, especially those who are anxious or fearful. Allowing more time to sniff & explore is highly valuable as well, to help them gather the information they need to decide the environment is a safe place.

3. Decompression Time

Another key element to resolving your dog's reactivity is ensuring you are prioritizing decompression time. Trigger stacking is common for many city dogs who are encountering their triggers on a daily basis on walks. This is counter productive, because it makes it highly likely that they will eventually have an explosive reaction. This goes for unrelated stressors throughout the day as well. As an analogy, imagine you slept through your alarm and are late for work. Then, you don't have time to eat breakfast and get stuck in lengthy traffic. When you arrive to work you have conflict with your coworker. By the time you get home, you may be ready to explode at any minor inconvenience because of the stressful day you've had. This goes for our dogs as well!

Therefore, it can actually be beneficial to go on a hiatus on neighbourhood walks if both you and your dog are feeling stressed & constantly encountering triggers. Taking a break and returning to training with a better state of mind can make a world of difference in your progress.

4. Building Confidence & Strengthening Your Bond

Incorporating activities that your dog enjoys and thrives in can greatly increase their overall confidence & your bond with each other. When our dogs feel "accomplished" at problem solving or improving a new skill, it transfers in their confidence to navigating the world on a daily basis. Some ideas to try include trick training, learning a new skill such as agility (Amazon has great, foldable kits!), exploring new walking routes, and pup parkour (jumping on platforms, weaving through bike racks etc.,).

5. Work with a Certified Professional Dog Trainer Who Utilizes Positive Reinforcement

Working with a qualified dog trainer can be life changing for both you and your dog in making real progress. We emphasize the importance of choosing a positive reinforcement trainer, as aversive tools & methods can worsen the sitatuion and cause irreparable anxiety, fear and even aggression in your dog. We offer Reactive Dog Rehab, our increasingly popular and comprehensive training package of 5 private sessions. We customize a training plan, teach you how to understand, manage and change your dog's behaviour using positive reinforcement methods. Are you feeling stuck and ready to gain traction & see results in your training? Send us an inquiry to get started today.

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