Is Your Dog Making You Reactive?

Your dog’s ears perk up, you hear the jingle of dog tags. 

You start scanning the environment, looking for a possible escape route. Your pace quickens, your breathing quickens, the leash tightens.


Your dog is sweet, the best boy, he even loves playing with other dogs at the park, but for some reason he just loses his mind when he sees them on leash. He lunges and barks while you hold on for dear life.

You just don’t understand why he acts like this on the leash…

….meanwhile your dog is just following your lead. 

Your dog can smell you start to get stressed about the incoming dog before you even start to think about an escape route.

Your dog can hear your breath quicken, they see you scanning the environment as a cue to scan it themselves. While you tighten the leash to try to gain control the dog pulls harder into it, frustrated and confused as to why you are restraining him.

Before you even see the incoming dog, you and your dog are a mess. You hastily pull your dog towards your escape route, your dog at the end of the leash looking like a ferocious beast.

You get out of sight from the other dog. Your dog has stopped barking, but your heart is still racing. You’re embarrassed, your dog is stressed, and you are both frustrated.

Dogs communicate very differently than humans and unfortunately that leaves room for a lot of miscommunication. Dogs primarily use smell and visual cues to communicate, not verbal communication like us. They also are very sensitive to physical pressure, like leash pressure. The relationship that you create with the leash can change the entire context of a situation.

I get so many clients in this situation and they always want to know what is wrong with the dog and how to “fix” the dog. It’s rarely ever the dog who is the issue. It’s the human’s body language, decision making, daily habits with the dog, and relationship with the dog that needs to be addressed in order to stop the reactivity.

Emotional regulation goes both ways, if you want your dog to have the skills to stay calm and focus through environmental stress you must first develop the skills to do that yourself.