01/12/2025
For all those owners who allow their dogs to meet people and other dogs when they’re out and about and don’t know why their dogs go bananas when they see a person or dog, I hope this helps.
Dogs are amazing pattern readers, and easily become conditioned that something occurring predicts another thing occurring if it happens often enough. It’s why picking up your car keys, or walking towards the cupboard where their food is, or picking up their leash, or packing your suitcase, or answering the door after the doorbell goes off — causes an intense reaction.
It could be excitement, it could be anxiety, it could be sadness, it could be anything depending on what the “signal” predicts, and how your dog feels about it.
Same goes for your dog who is allowed to meet random people and dogs — and who takes great pleasure in it. If this sequence occurs often enough, it will begin to condition your dog to view people as a visual signal that predicts a party/arousal/intense emotional escalation.
You end up turning people and dogs into “doorbells”.
This is why you’ll hear almost all experienced trainers not engaging in this activity. (Of course there’s other considerations like creating negative outcomes from these interactions, but that’s a post for another day.) Most trainers, and astute owners are keenly aware that if this meet and greet activity is practiced enough, you’re going to have a dog who is struggling to hold it together when they see people and dogs — because you’ve conditioned your dog that the appearance of people or dogs predicts craziness.
Of course there are exceptions. (There are always exceptions.) There are chilled out, lowkey dogs who enjoy these interactions but who don’t lose it. And there are owners who only do this on rare occasions — and so the reactions are far less intense. But if you do this on the regular, and you have a dog who loses its sh*t when it occurs, you’re almost certainly setting you and your dog up for a lifetime of overly-aroused, reactive nuttiness when people and dogs come into the picture.
And if you don’t enjoy the behavior this creates in your dog, then I’d highly advise you change your approach, or at the very least, minimize it greatly. A doorbell that only predicts someone at the door 5-10% of the time is a far less insanity-inducing doorbell, so perhaps you can adjust your dog’s predictive powers by making things far less predictable. :)
