31/07/2023
Can you be a good owner and have a reactive dog?
Having owned a reactive dog, I always lean towards taking the owner’s side. When people shout “just train your dog” at somebody who is trying their absolute best, it infuriates me.
Because my reactive dog is extremely highly trained. More highly trained than the vast majority of dogs. She’s competed and won at agility, rally obedience, hoopers and freestyle to music competitions. She could do the basics blindfolded. She knows more tricks than I can count. The number of hours spent training her in one week is more than most dogs will receive in a lifetime. Her training is impeccable. She’s still reactive.
I‘ll stand up to people who think reactivity is due to bad ownership because they tend to be one of two types of owner:
1. The type that has been extremely lucky with their dogs. You’ve owned dogs for thirty years and none have had any issues? Excellent. Lucky you.
2. The type that is just clueless. Either their dog is literally tottering on the edge, showing every warning signal and antisocial behaviour, but labelled as “friendly” or their dog was reactive but with the right number of alpha rolls and knees to the chest, they’ve managed to suppress it enough for the dog to pass as being “fixed”.
See. Just train your dog.
And when I see or hear these comments, I can’t stand the satisfaction these people get from telling reactive dog owners how it’s because of their “fragile female mindset” or “anxiety passing down the lead” or the fact they use a harness instead of a slip lead, or any other ego trip of making the owners feel even worse than they already did.
In fact, one thing I am pretty much guaranteed to hear when I meet a struggling owner for the first time in a consultation is “I know it’s my fault they are like this”. It probably isn’t. Not everything comes down to how you raise a dog. It isn’t the only factor in their behaviour expression. Even if you do everything right, things can go wrong, and even if rubbish owners do everything wrong, sometimes the dog is still an angel.
I’ll take their side because they feel bad enough already. They feel like they’ve let their dog down. They probably feel stressed and anxious every time they leave the house with their dogs. They probably get countless unhelpful and nasty comments from people with “it’s okay they’re friendly” dogs. Just give them a break. Have some empathy.
But actually, sometimes it is how you raise them. Sometimes, you do need to just freaking train your dog. Because a reactive dog with a recall is much less dangerous than one without. Teaching a dog to settle and relax can make them less hyper, and therefore easier to manage. Giving appropriate mental stimulation alongside an off-switch can make a dog easier to live with. Not using starvation as a method of forcing engagement will likely make a dog less frantic. Not constantly throwing a ball can help prevent obsessive fixation on it.
We all make mistakes, and hindsight is an amazing thing, but there are certain things we can do that will help our dogs live their best, most comfortable lives. And certain things that impede it.
So many issues dogs have can be fixed, prevented or at least reduced with training and being raised in a gentle and appropriate manner. But even with the absolute best training in the world, some dogs are just the way they are. And some, no matter how much work you put in, are the way they are.
So maybe we did make a mistake. Maybe another dog would’ve been more forgiving of that mistake, but sure let’s say it is our fault that our dog is reactive. If it wasn’t intentional, you have learnt from that mistake and it wasn’t obvious at the time, who cares? Literally everybody makes mistakes with their dogs. Not everybody ends up with reactive dogs.
For the sake of this point, how the dog became reactive is irrelevant.
It’s what we do next that decides how good of an owner we are.
