01/17/2025
Let’s go one by one.
1/ On leash meetings with other dogs. By now most have seen video clips of owners attempting to create a positive social interaction with their dogs, only to watch it all go terribly wrong. Why? Leashes create restraint and cause unnatural interactions, fraught with tense, friction-filled, possibly guarding, possibly overwhelmed, possibly bullying behavior. It’s the perfect setup for pushy dogs to push softer dogs and for softer dogs to become overwhelmed and defensive… and middle of the road dogs to leave the middle of the road.
2/ Poorly supervised doggy daycare. Once again the hopes are that healthy, comfortable, and “happy” social interactions occur. The reality in many daycares? Just like with on leash meetings, pushy, bratty, dominant dogs apply unwanted and unhealthy pressure to soft, timid, and even fearful dogs. And without proper human supervision, these dynamics play out over and over — and do so in environments which the overwhelmed dog cannot escape, and the pushy dog can push over and over.
3/ Dog parks. I’m sure we’ve also seen and heard countless horror stories of dogs bullied, attacked, and even killed in dog parks. Once again we have the restricted, “I’m stuck with you, you’re stuck with me” environment. And once again the overly aroused, pushy, bullying dogs clash with the soft, timid, fearful dogs — which encourages the bullies and traumatizes the soft ones.
All 3 of these share certain dynamics. 1/ forcing incompatible dogs to interact. 2/ the dogs have no way to escape the pressure. 3/ the pushy, bratty, bullies are encouraged (by allowance and payoff) to become even more problematic, and the timid are repeatedly overwhelmed and freaked out. 4/ this translates to the pushy ones being even more pushy/bratty and thus when on walks they become reactive because it feels good to do so and they’re used to doing what they want — and the timid ones become even more fearful and defensive, and thus reactive on walks because they’re so scared, and are used to not being able to keep themselves safe.
The upshot? These environments encourage the bullies to become bigger bullies, and the fearful to become more fearful. So you create a vicious cycle where one kind of dog learns to enjoy bullying and the other loses their trust in other dogs. And just to be clear, you can have less pushy dogs who will become more so simply by experiencing the thrill of doing so. And you can have dogs who aren’t timid but are more sensitive who become fearful simply because they’ve experienced nasty, traumatic interactions repeatedly.
It doesn’t take a genius to see how if we encourage and allow these negative interactions repeatedly, building bullies and creating defensive softer dogs, that this behavior is inevitably going to surface on walks.
4/ You. You can have a dog who’s never had any on leash meetings, never been to daycare, and never been to a dog park, and absolutely still have serious reactivity issues. How? Through a permissive, unaccountable, leadership-free overall lifestyle and walk. Just by allowing dogs to behave in a fashion which is chaotic, pushy, bratty, disrespectful — or chaotic, nervous, worried, fearful — this leadership gap we create invites all manner of poor choices. Without the proper guidance, many dogs will slide into serious reactivity problems simply because no one has taught them how to properly respond to seeing other dogs. And a proper response, regardless of your dog’s personality (pushy and confident, or soft and insecure) should be a neutral one. But that only comes when owners step up, take the lead, and show their dog’s how to properly respond.
PS, even if you’ve done 1-3 and have unwittingly created reactivity issues, you absolutely can reverse these problems by tackling number 4 properly — by properly leading your dog. We do it all the time. But it’s far easier if you skip 1-3 and just do number 4 correctly.
