Why Your Dog Is Reactive on Leash and What to Do About It

When your dog reacts to another dog or a person on leash, it can become very stressful, embarrassing, and exhausting. Many of the people I work with have leash-reactive dogs, and I have extensive experience addressing leash reactivity. It does take a long time to improve leash reactivity. It's not an overnight process. There's no quick fix. If your dog barks, lunges, freezes, growls, or completely loses their mind when they see another dog or a person, that is considered leash reactivity.

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I'm Dale Buchanan, and this is Puppy Talk, the podcast that offers free advice and tips for raising a happy, healthy, and obedient puppy. For more information on this podcast, visit us online at puppytalkpodcast.com. Welcome to Puppytalk Podcast episode number 131. I'm your host, Dale Buchanan, and today we're going to talk about leash reactivity. What leash reactivity is, why it happens, and how to improve the walks with your dog. Let's get started. When your dog reacts to another dog or person on leash, it can become very stressful, embarrassing, and exhausting. A lot of the people I work with through my dog training business have leash reactive dogs, and I have a lot of experience working with leash reactivity. It does take a long time to improve leash reactivity. It's not an overnight process. There's no quick fix for this. If your dog barks, lunges, freezes, growls, or completely loses their mind when they see another dog or person, that is leash reactivity, and this episode is for you. Right up front, I want to say this. Just because your dog is leash reactive doesn't mean they're a bad dog. It does not mean that you are failing with your dog. A lot of dogs are great inside the house, but then when they go outside the house, they start getting leash reactive. It doesn't mean your dog is bad and you have to get rid of them. It means we have to start over, improve the dog's social skills, allow them to become calmer, and teach them better manners on the leash and in public. What leash reactivity actually is. Leash reactivity is not about disobedience. Most reactive dogs, they know how to sit, they know how to respond to their name, they know how to go in the crate, they're potty trained. Like I said, they behave well at home. Reactivity is an emotional response. It is a lack of impulse control. It is frustration tolerance. It's your dog saying, I don't know what to do in this situation. Either I'm fearful or I'm excited. I just don't know how to act. They were never taught how to act at an early age. With Dixie, I started teaching her these skills at 10 weeks old the first day that I got her. I taught her how not to respond to things in public and how to walk on a loose leash and how to stay calm in all social situations, and she's six now, and she does it very well. A leash reactive dog loses the ability to move away, to create space, or to make choices. They get in a fight or flight mode and they can't think. Our job is to get them to start slowing down in thinking. We don't want the pressure that can turn a manageable situation into a full-blown meltdown. And this is what happens. A lot of people that have reactive dogs, the dog starts reacting and they start giving too many commands or start doing the wrong thing and they reinforce the reactivity. And then over about 10 months or a year, they call me and they want me to fix it. And this is where the information in this podcast comes in handy. Some dogs are fine off-leash. I know a lot of reactive dogs that I work with go to doggy daycare and they're great. In their backyard, off-leash, they're great. Because when the leash gets put on them, they have a barrier. It's called barrier frustration. There are a couple types of barrier frustrations, and one is the leash, another one is a fence. You see a dog in the yard behind a fence and it's barking at something on the other side of the fence because it wants to get to it. Once you let it out and it gets to that trigger, then all of a sudden they're calm. The dog isn't bad, it's just it has that barrier, wants to get to something. Let's talk about why leash reactivity happens. This is the part most people skip. It's important to know why it happens so that you can prevent it in the future. Leash reactivity usually comes from one or more of these things. One, fear. Some dogs are genuinely worried about what other dogs are doing or what other people are doing. They bark or lunge to make the scary thing go away, so they're afraid. And fear is really hard to work with. If your dog has fear leash reactivity, that's harder to work with than the next one, which is frustration. This is the most common. Dogs who want to greet, play, or move forward towards the other dog, they can't because the owner's holding them back and applying pressure to the leash, and it builds up and they just implode, right? They go crazy. And that pressure radiates outward, and then the owner gets more frustrated, and then the dog gets more tense and starts barking and lunging more, then it just becomes complete chaos. The next reason why leash reactivity happens is lack of social skills. Some dogs were never taught how to calmly exist around other dogs. And I say this in every podcast that I've done over the last month. Bring your dog outside at 10, 12 weeks old, have them sit and do nothing in the driveway, have them sit on the front porch, have them sit on the sidewalk in front of your house and do nothing, or even lay down is better. And just watch. Take them to Home Depot, take them to Lowe's, have them lay down and do nothing, and just watch and not respond to anything. That's good socialization. Socialization is not playing with other dogs or jumping around on people. The next reason why leash reactivity happens is over arousal. These are dogs who are already running hot before they even walk out of the house or apartment. You add a trigger to that, you add two triggers or three triggers, and everything goes berserk. You want to start the overarousal phase in the apartment or in the house before they even go outside. Put the leash on the dog. If they're whining and crying and they're anxious to get out the door, don't go outside. Give them something to do to calm inside the house first. A dog puzzle, target training, obedience training, a lickey mat, a cong. Calm them down first and then bring them outside. The final reason why a dog can have leash reactivity is from past experiences. A bad encounter, being rushed by another dog, or being corrected harshly on leash can leave a lasting impression. One client of mine has an Australian shepherd, and she said six months ago her dog got attacked by a pit bull that was off leash, and it started the leash reactivity in this dog to where it thinks that it needs to bark and lunge at everything because it wants to control that interaction before it escalates into being scared from the other dog. So this is very real. There's one more that I wanted to talk about, I forgot, and here's the big one that people miss is that many dogs just never learn how to be calm in public situations. This is the most important thing. Puppy socialization at an early age is the most important thing for every dog because every behavior that you don't want after a dog goes through adolescence, which is from six to nine months old, and they start to go into adulthood after a year old or two years old, every unwanted behavior at that point goes back to what happened to them before 16 weeks old. Everyone, unless it was, like I said earlier, another dog that scared them or a situation happened. Calm is a skill that your dog needs to learn. You, as the owner, need to teach your dog that calm skill. Most dogs never learn to be calm. They learn total activity, play, always moving, always doing something. That's the opposite of what we need to do with dogs so that we can get them to not be reactive. How do owners accidentally reinforce leash reactivity? This part is a little uncomfortable. It's kind of harsh, but it's very important. Most owners reinforce leash reactivity and they don't even know that they're doing it until a professional comes over and coaches them and points it out to them. So the first thing you have to do with a leash reactive dog is stop reinforcing it. Stop trying to be the person that's going to manage your dog in those situations. The goal is to teach the dog to do it on their own. So stop reinforcing it, stop giving commands, stop trying to do things when you don't know what you're doing. That's a big problem. One of the biggest ways is leash tension. They think, well, if my dog's reacting, I ought to have more tension. They start wrapping the leash around their hand to make it shorter. That's a bad thing to do. Once you have tension in the leash, you have tension in the dog because there's tension in your body. There's tension in your thoughts. Everything's tense at that point. No wonder the dog can't relax. The second you spot another dog, your hand tightens and that leash shortens and your body stiffens. This is what happens with every single client that I work with at the beginning of our lease reactivity program. Your dog feels that right away. To them, that pressure says, something's wrong, I have to defend my owner. I have to be in a fight or flight mode. I have to show the world what's going on with me, and I'm going to bark and lunge at that dog. Another common issue is vocal stress. Repeating your dog's name is the number one thing that people do wrong. Dixie, Dixie, Dixie, no, Dixie, stop, Dixie, Dixie, Dixie. It's okay, Dixie. Oh, it's okay. Dixie, no, Dixie, sit, sit. All that stuff is just ramping the dog up. They go from a level five to a level ten right away. We want them to go from a level five to a level one. Rapid commands your dog cannot process in that moment is not acceptable. That's not a good idea. Dogs also read tone before the words. When dogs are in fight or flight mode, they're not going to hear the exact words you're saying, but they're going to notice the stress in your voice. They're going to notice that first because that's what's going to resonate with them. Comforting at the wrong time is another big one. When your dog is highly aroused, talking and touching to them at that point is most likely not going to do anything. Now, I do have some dogs that do calm down when I touch them and try to whisper to them and calm them down. But the second that I release myself, they start going back into their old behavior. So it's a band-aid and they're not effectively learning anything new, but it can stop them from being highly reactive in that moment. So comforting is not the right thing to do long term. And then there's rehearsal. Every time that your dog has rehearsed a behavior, it's getting more condition into their brain that this is what I'm allowed to do and this is what I'm supposed to do. So the first thing you want to do with the least reactive dog is do not go anywhere where there are other dogs until the dog can get some professional help. You don't want them rehearsing that behavior anymore. Every time they bark and lunge and react to another dog, it's getting worse and worse and worse. It's like compound interest. It just keeps growing. You have to make the dog learn to be calm with the other dogs from a distance first. What not to do with a least reactive dog? Do not force interactions. Your dog does not need to say hi to every dog or person on the planet. If a dog's on the other side of the street and you're walking on one side, just say, let's go, leave it alone, let's go. I do this with Dixie all the time. She wants to say hi to everybody. The world revolves around Dixie and she wants to give kisses and say hi to everybody. Her tail starts wagging. She gets excited. No, Dixie, they're not here to see you. Leave them alone. Let's go. Come on. That's it. It's over. The next thing is do not punish reactions. Don't get mad and say no and stop and start yelling and all that stuff and get frustrated because that's going to make things a lot worse. The next thing you do not want to do is try to train right next to the triggers. In other words, if your dog is leash reactive, you're not going to go two feet from another dog and expect your dog to behave. You've got to start from a bigger distance, 50 feet, 25 feet, somewhere there, where your dog has a mild reaction and you can redirect them back to you. We'll get into that in a minute. You also don't want to compare your dog to other dogs. Well, that dog does good, my dog doesn't do good. I feel bad, and you're miserable all day. Don't do that. That's that's not important right now. If your dog's having issues and struggling with reactivity, your job is to help them learn a new way, right? Help them find a way. Be a good leader is to take the dog to a place it's never been, which is calmness around other dogs, not to get frustrated over it, and not to compare your dog to other dogs. That's not important in this situation. Here's what we want to do instead. First, start with management. Like I said earlier, distance is your best friend. Space lowers pressure. Find out where the dog's threshold is. Work from that point. If your dog's threshold is 25 feet, if they start to see a dog at 25 feet and start to get a little tense and start to have a few little soft barks like then back away another five feet, get the dog to sit and watch you and calm down or lay down and relax. And then as the dog gets better at that, you start closing the distance over time. That's the best way to do it. You're not trying to put your dog in a situation where they're going to fail. You have to put your dog in a situation where they're going to succeed. And this is the only way to do it with least reactive dogs. Make sure that you're always looking out. You have to find the predictability of the walk. Always find out where the dogs are. If there's a dog to your right, you go to the left. If there's a dog straight ahead, do a U-turn. Don't put your dog in that position to get reactive and fail. You can still walk in your community with other dogs. You just have to be smart about it. The next thing is watch your dog's body language because timing is everything. You want to make sure that you're getting the dog to relax and to not react early. As soon as your dog's eyes start to get big, as soon as their ears go up, so they're listening to something, as soon as their body tenses a little bit and they stick their chest out and they lean forward. That's when you need to start creating distance and getting the dog to refocus on you. Notice I didn't say you have to give corrections because we're not at that point yet. Right now we're just working on getting the dog to be less hyper and more calm. Finally, you want to keep the leash neutral. A loose, steady, calm leash. Once the leash gets tight, your dog's getting overstimulated, create distance, or go back inside, start over working on the loose leash walking skill that I've talked about in other podcast episodes. Loose leash walking is what we want. Leash reactivity training actually starts at home with calming exercises. This part is critical. In my leash reactivity program, we do several sessions in the house with a thing called auto check-in. I have the dog look at the treats and they're sitting or laying down in front of me and they're looking at the treats because they want the treat so bad, and I don't say anything to the dog. When the dog makes eye contact with me and stops focusing on the treats, I say yes and I give the treat. And we do this over and over again, but this has to be done every day for weeks in order to teach the dog calmness in the house. Calm is not something your dog can do on their own. They have to have you to teach them the calmness. And if you're calm with them inside the house, they're going to be calm. If you're anxious and worried and bothered by something inside the house, your dog's going to be that way. And the leash reactivity is always going to get worse because they're starting off with a lot of tension and stress right from the get-go. So start calm, work at home, do place training, target training, dog puzzles, licky mats, those types of things. Teach your dog how to do nothing. Teach your dog how to lay down and chew a bully stick or a deer antler. Just teach them relaxation. It's an emotional thing that we're working on. Emotional regulation. This isn't obedience. This isn't sit down, stay calm. This is calming exercises, relaxation skills. I tell all my clients, in the house's yoga studio, they're always relaxed, they're always calm. It's a meditation place. Out in the backyard, if you have one, is their play area. This is where they go and they potty, they run around, they chase a ball, they play. Out in the front, when you go for walks or you go to anywhere in public, that's the training room. That's the training ground. This is where the dog's getting most of their training. And they go back inside the house from a walk and they decompress. They calm, they go into meditation, they're in yoga class, they're relaxed. This is very important. You want to introduce triggers the right way. When you work around triggers, start farther away, just like I said earlier. Distance is important. Your dog should notice the trigger, but still be able to think and check in with you. So the auto check-in that we did inside the house with the treats, and then the dog focusing on us without telling them what to do. We want the dog to voluntarily see the trigger and then look back at you. Voluntarily, that you don't have to tell them anything. You don't have to say, watch me, leave it. None of that stuff is important. It's okay to say that and start that at the beginning of the training, but long term, you want the dog to do it on their own. This is where the leash reactivity training often ends, when the before the owners teach the dog how to do it on their own, and they constantly want to direct the dog and micromanage the dog outside. That's not going to work long term. The next thing you want to do is keep the training sessions short. You don't want to have long training sessions. Leash reactivity training session with me and my clients and their dog is five to ten minutes at the most because it's very intense. It's very stressful for the dog to think that much and it wears them out very fast. Usually dogs will be sleeping right after a session like that. This is a slow process. Leash reactivity training is slow, so it takes a lot of time, months and months of training for a dog to go from leash reactive to calm and relaxed and confident when there are triggers present. So you want to do this over time. This is a process, not a quick fix. The next thing that's important to remember is to set realistic expectations. Remember that leash reactivity is emotional. It's not stubbornness. It doesn't mean that they hate you, that the dog is disobeying you. It means that they have an emotional response to a trigger. You're going to have good days, you're going to have bad days. And one bad walk doesn't mean that everything's over. You're going to have those. You just start over again later that day or the next day. Be as consistent as you can. Consistency is important in everything with dog training, especially leash reactivity. When to get help, it's very important to understand that you have limitations when you have a leash reactive dog and you need a professional as soon as you think there's a problem. Because if the reactions are escalating, then it becomes a safety issue. If your dog gets very reactive where they get off leash, they could have a fight with the other dog, or they can get run over by a car, or that something else bad could happen. So it becomes a liability. Have to stay calm during these situations. And if you notice yourself getting more frustrated and stressful, that stress radiates through the leash into the dog. You know things are getting worse, then you need some help from a professional. I have to teach my clients how to relax in the presence of their dog when they dog wants to react to something. I have to teach my clients how to be calm in those moments by showing them how I'm calm and the dog doesn't react as much when I have the leash versus when they have the leash. A good trainer is going to work with the owner and the dog, and believe it or not, the training here is mostly for the owners. The dog can pick up these things pretty quickly, but it has to be consistent and the skills have to be practiced regularly. The reactivity has to not be reinforced. And the hardest thing is not allowing the dog to rehearse these behaviors again because you go outside and it starts rehearsing these behaviors again and it falls backwards. In review, leash reactivity can improve, but it starts with understanding, being gentle, being kind to the dog. It's not with force. I'm not talking about using remote collars, prong collars, force corrections, all of these things are not going to be the core of leash reactivity training. I'm not saying that they won't work for some trainers with some dogs in some situations. I do use a prong collar for some dogs in some situations. If they're very big and they want to pull the owners around, it does help to control the dog, but it's not the magic tool that's going to stop all reactivity with dogs. Because, like we've said in this podcast, it's an emotional response. The dog has to learn relaxation skills first. And that starts at home. You want to make sure that you are slowing the dog down and relax and learn to go to public places where there are other dogs, people, other distractions, and learn to not react to them by being calm and staying calm in those situations. I hope this information was helpful to you. If you have any questions, you can reach me through my website, puppytalkpodcast.com. Have a great day.