My dog is reactive on leash…

“My dog is GREAT…it’s just that…he’s REACTIVE on leash!”

So many of us know this behavior! Overall your dog is great. And he even gets along with other dogs at the park, in the yard, maybe even at home UNTIL…he’s on leash!

What is the source of on leash dog reactivity?

It’s usually a long chain of events that has happened, but more often than not your dog is expressing they have some level of FEAR or FRUSTRATION. How can that be if they are out and about and get to explore and sniff? Isn’t a walk on leash the BEST thing for your dog?

Well, it depends what their experiences have been while on leash. Dogs learn through ASSOCIATION. They usually associate a person, place, object, sound, sight, smell with an emotion or an action. It’s basically operant and classical conditioning training that begins at birth. For this article, we use the leash association:

Leash = Heading outside! Adventure! Yahoo!

Chances are, your dog has already entered a highly emotional state BEFORE you even get out the door. This means they may be beyond listening or understanding what behviors you want before your walk even begins.

Strong associations make your dog predict a lot of events. And if they associate something great with the predicted event (food, a walk, play time), they may show excited behavior. If they associate something bad with the predicted event (trip to the vet, scary person, something to worry about), they may show behavior we label as “bad” or “reactive”.

So, let’s focus with leash reactivity.

The basic concept to understand is that when a barrier restricts your dog from achieving their goal, and fulfilling their emotional needs, you may see behavior that we call “reactive”. Barriers are things like windows, fences, doors, gates, enclosed areas like crates or cars and, yep, tight leashes, leads and tethers.

So, if your dog has a goal of getting to see or play with another dog, but is restricted from doing that, they may get “reactive” out of FRUSTRATION and bark and pull on the leash. Pulling on the leash can trigger their “opposition reflex”, which is essentially when your dog feels something pulling on them they simply pull harder against it. This loops creates more frustration (pulling harder, can’t get to where I want to go, frustration, bark, leash pop, pull harder, bark louder, more frustration).

Or, your dog may have a goal of getting AWAY from other dogs because they have underlying FEAR. The leash stops the dog from freely escaping the situation so that triggers more fear and you have a similar cycle of increasing fear and “reactive” behaviors displayed.

Got it. So where did this all start?

Leash reactivity can start as early as your dog’s first time on leash.

Often, as puppies, we let bring them out and about in an attempt to “socialize” our pups and have them experience all types of sites and sounds. Unfortunately, if not done properly, we are actually teaching our dogs to behave poorly. Here are a couple of scenarios that may sound familiar.

1 - Your puppy is on leash. You see other puppies. They get to go romp and play and get caught up in the leash. You don’t care because it’s so cute. They are playing! You keep a loose leash, or you drop the leash all together. Puppies play and all is okay. They had a great time. Then, the puppies grow up and get bigger. The play is more vigorous and you can’t control your dog any more. So you start keeping them AWAY from other dogs because it’s just too much for you to handle. Your dog has the underlying feeling of frustration! “Hey! I USED to be able to go play and now I’m being held back by this leash. Boo! I don’t like the leash”.

2 - Your puppy is on leash. You see other puppies. They get to go romp and play and get caught up in the leash. You don’t care because it’s so cute. They are playing! But you haven’t noticed that your puppy is not really “playing”. They are overwhelmed and trying to defend themselves. They are getting caught up in this leash and it’s scary. The leash pulls them around and they can’t get out of the situation. They don’t LIKE other dogs. Your puppy grows bigger and has learned that being around other dogs is scary and the human on the other end of the leash doesn’t get them out of the situation so instead of being STUCK, they revert quickly to “reactive behavior” faster and faster.

There are many other scenarios, but the above two show Frustration and Fear at an early age. If the “reactive” behavior escalates, humans also get frustrated and have fear and may revert to tools or training that punishes this “reactive” behavior. These are the outright abusive things like pinch, prong and shock collars, or dominate pin downs or choke holds. They can also be more minor corrections that simply don’t work like leash pops, yelling “NO!” or pulling your dog away down the street.

However, the fact is, PUNISHING “reactive” behavior generally makes the situation worse.

Why is “Reactive” behavior always in quotes?

ALL behavior is a reaction to something in the environment. It’s simply a response. Sometimes the response is joyous playing, or ignoring, or sniffing. Sometimes the response is a behavior you don’t like and can be made even worse due to how the human handles themselves in that moment (or “reacts”).

Dogs are not being BAD when they react. They are not stubborn, nasty, mean or terrible when they bark, growl or do any other behavior that humans have labeled as “bad”. They are simply having a hard time with the situation and are telling you, often LOUDLY, that they don’t have the skills to handle themself in that environment.

So, “reactive” behavior is in quotes because it’s a human construct. Dogs are responding with the skills they have to a situation they are in. And they are struggling to cope.

Unfortunately, us humans are sort of bad listeners and we think if we just put our dogs into the situations more often, they will learn on their own and become desensitized to it. The opposite is usually true. The dogs learn to respond quicker, with BIGGER feelings and behaviors, so they can control the situation.

Many dogs struggle to cope when on a leash.

If your dog has shown you that they can’t respond to a situation, appropriately (meaning they bark, growl, pull on leash, cry, hide lunge) the BEST THING you can to is STOP putting them in the situations! Ditch the outside leash walks!

Then you want to teach them other responses (skills) that you DO find appropriate, like ignoring, disengaging with other dogs, listening to you, playing a game with you.

Rather than punishing or correcting the dog for responding to a situation, you can teach them new skills to cope with their environments. This is called a “set-up” in which we train FOR a situation, not IN a situation.

You want to assess WHY your dog is reacting in certain ways. What are their emotions? What associations have they made? What is their relationship to learning? Can we turn chaos to calm?

Where do I start?

Start with a loose leash.

You want to have a loose leash on your dog. All. The. Time. ALL. THE. TIME. The moment the leash is tight and restricting movement, you want to turn around, play a game or head back inside. Your dog is showing you CLEARLY that he does not know the expected behavior on a leash. You now know your starting point!

That may seem a huge ask, but it’s real. If you go back to Step 1 and start over, you can quickly retrain your dog to understand that a walk on a leash is a fun event in which they listen to YOU!

The hardest part of us humans is to be honest with ourselves and stop making up stories about our dogs. They get us, and our dogs, into trouble.

“He’s just so excited to greet other dogs/people.”

He may like other dogs. Great! But dogs do NOT, naturally, need to run up to an pounce on another dog. If your best friend greeted you that way EVERY time you saw each other, I bet you’d start finding reasons to not hang out with them or back away before she grabbed you and picked you up to spin you around. Head on home to top up the on leash skills until he listens to you under ALL circumstances.

“But my dog is friendly!”

That is the statement that has preceeded many a dog fight. The over exuberant, “friendly” dogs that can’t disengage with their envioronment are usually the dogs to instigate a fight. Head on home to teach your dog that friendly means being calm, confident and disengaged.

“My dog gets along with other dogs off leash, but HATES them when on leash.”

That is understandable. They have probably been restricted from completing healthy dog-dog interactions because the leash is tight, or the human pops them or scolds them as they are just trying to say hello in a polite manner. If you’ve done that a few times, your dog as more than likely learned (through association) that interacting with other dogs, while on leash, is a bad event that leads to fear or frustration. Head on back inside to teach your dog what leash behavior means.

If this all seems confusing, give us a call, drop us an email and we can help!

Casa Luna Canines is your partner in dog training, human learning. Join us to learn how to be your dog’s best friend using 100% pain and fear free methods. Imagine what it will feel like when your dog chooses to behave well around you, no matter where you are!