Why does your reactive dog run forward and bark or lunge at things they are scared of? If they were scared, wouldn’t they just go the other way?

Foxy, my tiny Chihuahua is scared of things, but you would never believe it. If she sees someone in the woods before I do, she looks super pleased. Her little back legs scrape away at the ground and the screeching begins. She looks like she’s having a great old time.

Your dog might be the same, they might try to approach the other dog, lunge, try to chase them away or just generally try to decrease the distance between themselves and whatever they are scared of.

It’s not that they are brave though, or even that they want the confrontation, I promise. Fundamentally scared or unsure dogs practice decreasing distance behaviour for two different reasons:

They can see no other option.

They could see no other option at some point in the past, believe that their choice worked and now it’s learned and habitual.

Often when a dog is reactive and moves forward towards their trigger, they are still worried about the trigger but well-practiced in what they believe keeps them safe.

To understand this further let’s look at the Nervous System.

The nervous system is pretty similar in dogs and humans; it works to keep us all safe. It works on a basis of fight, flight, freeze, fawn or fool around, loosely speaking. 

Depending on individual, environment and learned experiences, the choices our dogs make are not actually choices at all – they are nervous system reactions.

So let’s say that our dog is by our side, walking towards another dog. Both dogs are on lead and neither have the opportunity to curve around each other (as socially competent dogs naturally do). The approach itself is intimidating – face to face. 

Our dog now starts to feel uneasy and the nervous system kicks into action. They can’t take flight: they are on a lead. They might fawn or fool around, but it depends how worried they are, most likely this dog is going into fight mode.

Cue the reactive dog lunge, the other dog’s person assumes there’s a problem, they move their dog away and distance is increased.

Our dog believes they have controlled the situation with their own reaction, and that’s because they have. Next time they feel uneasy they will try that reaction out again, and that’s where reaction becomes reactivity.

While reactive dogs make a lot of noise, dogs who are actually confidently at risk of being aggressive make very little noise before they attack or bite. They often approach within an eerie silence and if you have seen it, you will know what I mean, there’s a posture and an intent. That’s the approach we need to worry about.

To help ourselves and our dogs get beyond the realms of reactivity we need to use distance, and proper confidence building techniques. It’s all about undoing worry and building resilience. I currently offer a bundle of books that will teach you to do just that, just click below for a look.