The ABC of Reactivity

A is for Antecedent

What takes part before the “episode” often we think that the behaviour begins when our dog sees another dog and that may be the immediate trigger, but what went before this? 

If you have had your dog for a long time do you remember the first time your dog triggered in a way that made you realise that he may be reactive?

Was there something else that happened that first time? Or was there an incident the time before, a dog growled at the dog park, or on the walk, did you get a fright do you think your dog got a fright?

Was there something about that first time.

If you just got your dog and bought him home from a shelter, was he friendly and happy at the shelter? Did you take him home and settle him in? Did you decide to take him to the dog park or somewhere else there were a lot of people? What happened the you first noticed his reactivity?

The thing about the antecedent is that it may well be something that happens right then and there in the spur of the moment, but it also could be something that happened a while ago and all the triggers line up together for the reactive behaviour and Bang you are at war.

What we need to do it to check out the triggers. 

Triggers can fit into two categories seen and unseen

Unseen triggers can include:

Improper socialisation as a puppy 

Poor Diet (like red cordial for a child)

Neighbourhood noises and activities that you may not be aware of.

A poor experience as a puppy

Seen triggers can include:

A dog fight

Bad experience with someone

A car ride

A change of diet

A set of new experiences which the dog is uncertain about

Handler miscommunication

These are only a couple of the things to get you thinking about the triggers for your dog.

Just like you with a day full of experiences your triggers may not be an issue in small doses and this may be the same for your dog, neighbours dog has been barking all day , but your dog is on a good diet, he’s had a big bone and nothing new has come his way in the day. Everything is cruisey and he happy to go for a walk, he sees the big black dog down the street and his Fram of mind is ok and he walks on by.

But like you he may just tip into overload, the neiboursp dog barked all day, the house three doors down has a builder banging on the roof all day, an ant stung him and he’s irritated, people knocked at the dog 6 times and he has a stomach upset because he changed his diet, today the big black dog is going to get the edge of his tongue because he is standing to close to the pathway, his tail isn’t on the right angle, his face isn’t readable because he’s black and its hard to read the signals on a black dogs face. To top that off the handler is tight on the lead because they know the big black dog will be looking at them and they don’t want something bad to happen.

Its a bit of a story but if we can input the things that are relevant to us then what we will find is we are beginning to see the triggers and how they work. What we can do to reduce trigger stacking. That thing where everything gets too much and overwhelming. 

The more we can see the things that go before the better we can manage the stress that puts our dog over the edge. The better we can manage our own level of stress as well.

B is for Behaviour

Behaviour is what happens when the triggers erupt. What is the behaviour that we see? Only you can define this, what is the behaviour? what is your behaviour?

C is for Consequence

What is the consequence of the behaviour?  What does your dog do and what do you do? 

How do you reduce the dogs stress. Do you stay calm or do you panic? Do you feel in control or do you totally lose the plot? What do you feel when the behaviour happens? How is the dog after you have removed him from the scenario?

We haven’t gone far into the B and the C at this time but we will. This is where we think about what we actually do.

What we think we do and what we do do are sometimes two different things, and one way of finding out how we respond in any given situation is to video us in our every day routines with our dogs so that we can actually see what we do. There may be things you do really well but often there are subtle signals that we give to our dogs which reduce our ability to communicate what we want, but rather encourage the opposite behaviour. Videoing and sharing with your instructors will help us to observe and sharpen any miscommunication.