All puppies are so cute when you first take them from the pet center. After raising them for a while, you start noticing that your dogs are quite reactive. Sometimes, they can overreact uniquely when seeing their owners or when they are in some specific situations.
In this post, I would like to share with you my experience of determining a reactive dog and how to live with it. For further explanation and professional analysis of reactive dogs, I suggest you check out the blog named DogCutiesHQ.
First, we have to distinguish between a reactive dog and an aggressive one. People are often confused because dogs can overreact in some typical ways like continuous barking, chasing a moving object behind the fence, or over lunging aggressively.
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However, not all these actions have an aggressive tendency because most of the time, dogs behave like that due to a lack of good socialization or training. A dog can become reactive because of a frightening experience in the past. However, reactive dogs do not have any intention to harm people like aggressive ones.
A dangerous type of reactivity in dogs must be leash reactivity when their reactions do not stop at lunging, braking, or cowering. Attempts to bite other animals or people are recorded with the least reactivity and the reason behind this is that they are scary when humans approach or anything that frightens them.
So what can you do when your dogs are reactive? According to DogCutiesHQ, the best method is to get a qualified dog trainer or a professional dog behaviorist who knows the right way to work with your dogs.
In case your dogs do not show any threatening behavior, you can figure out the solution at home. However, a trainer who uses a counter-conditioning method or reinforcement training is strongly recommended.
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To speed up the training process, dog owners need to determine the triggering factors that make their dogs reactive. Gradually, the trainer will help your dogs to control their emotion and respond to those triggers.
Strange people appearing outside of your house, noise, and other dogs when you are walking with your dogs are some common triggers. In these circumstances, you can try to install some blinds in your house, take a troll with your dogs during less busy times on the street, or reduce the noise. Otherwise, you can learn many efficient methods provided by DogCutiesHQ.
When encountering a trigger, do not let your dog stiffen up. Instead, try to bring them close to your body and encourage them to carefully watch the trigger. Overreaction can always be prevented when you notice some signs such as tucked tailbones or raised hackles.
Dog owners had better avoid punishing their dogs at all costs when they see this behavior because this won’t not only make them calm but even encourage them to bark, lunge, or bite. Therefore, do not push your dogs toward the stimulation; otherwise, it will change overreaction into aggressive behaviors.