Reactivity, Aggression & Fear
There are anomalous dogs out there that with rare genetic traits that are just plain aggressive. They kill their litter mates and bite with no warning or purpose. In nature, these dogs do not survive very long, as deep wounds from fights are often mortal due to infection without medical attention. You almost certainly don’t have this dog, nor have you likely ever seen this dog. I see a lot of dogs, and I’ve not yet met this dog.
The most likely cause of reactivity and aggression in dogs is a self-defense oriented fear. The meaning of this fear is often not apparent to us, and we might see clearly that there’s nothing real to be afraid of, but we humans do the same thing, and it does no good to tell a person who has a phobia or trauma-induced neuroses that there fear isn’t based on anything real.
A Human Example
Let’s pretend that I was physically abused as a child. Maybe it only happened once, and maybe I don’t even remember it. You have no way of knowing about any of this. I have my back turned to you and you barely tap me on the shoulder, and I turn around and punch you in the face. There was no thought process there for me; I simply reacted. After getting punched in the face, you probably don’t care much about why I did it; you just think I’m a bad, overly-aggressive, dangerous person. If we have any future interactions, you’ll probably be wary and distrustful of me. I’m no fool and I’ll recognize that you’ve got your guard up around me, but since I don’t know what’s in your mind, I’m going to have my guard up around you too. Nothing happened here that made me less likely to punch you or someone else in the future—quite the opposite. There was never a real threat to me, but that didn’t matter. I instinctively reacted in an unnatural way, then I perceived you as a potential threat. Depending on how often something like this has happened in the past, I might not wait for you to come at me and might just put you in your place and beat you down so I don’t have to risk being attacked when I’m not expecting it.
This same sort of thing happens with dogs, and it’s the most common aggression problem that I see in dogs. We call it “Reactivity” when dogs do it. When a dog’s thinking, it’s using a part of its brain called the prefrontal cortex (to simplify neuroscience, which I only have a simple understanding of myself). When this part of the brain is running the show, the dog can understand commands, think through situations, and make decisions. It can decide whether to come to you or to stay back. We can work with the dog at this point. Reactivity is when a switch flips inside and the amygdala, the “fight or flight” part of the brain, hijacks the brain and all decisions and conceptualizations go out of the window. Again, this happens in people just the same way. Either something big happens and you “lose it”, or a thousand tiny things pile up on one another until you basically lose control of yourself. It’s like when you’ve had a really crappy day and one tiny thing at the end of it sets you off. You just react. It’s okay, don’t blame yourself. Blame the amygdala.
Desensitization
Dogs often get caught in a loop with this sort of behavior and become increasingly more susceptible to that amygdala hijacking, and they can come to react habitually. Every time it does this, those neurological pathways become more entrenched and it gets more difficult to reverse the process. The first step in doing so is usually the same thing you’d do with me in my punching you in the face example. Don’t tap me when I’m not paying attention. Get my attention a less imposing way, like calling my name. Do this a bunch of times, making sure you don’t push me past my limit until I’m so used to you calling my name and getting me to turn around that you can finally tap me on the shoulder. Once we’re here, you should be able to keep tapping me on the shoulder since I’ve become desensitized to it, and neither of us has to have our guards up. But remember, this habit is pretty entrenched. You might have gotten me to turn peacefully at a tap 20 times in one day, but the next day you give it a try and there I go swinging again. It takes slow, steady consistency, but eventually we can wear down that reaction.
She Doesn't Want to Bite
This alone isn’t going to resolve the problem. We’re desensitizing the dog and trying to keep it capable of making decisions. Feral dogs often become reactive dogs when they’re taken into homes because this takes away their ability to flee. I am absolutely not advising anybody to do this, but if you have two leash reactive dogs that lung, snarl and snap at each other on the leash, if you were to let them both off the leash from a distance, most likely they’d run toward each other, slow down on approach, sniff one another, and move on. Why? For the same reason a dog will bite someone trying to get it out of its kennel but be totally fine with them once they’re out. Taking away a dog’s ability to flee leaves it only with the option to hopefully first bare its teeth and growl to warn us, then bite if that doesn’t work, when it’s stressed and afraid.
A leash reactive dog is repeatedly reinforced in its behavior because its owner becomes nervous when walking past another dog, which the reactive dog picks up on, and then when it does react, the owner is probably getting loud and making a big fuss, understandably, which the dog takes as its owner being out of control, afraid, and confirming that walking past another dog is a big problem because of all the noise and excitement he or she made when they got close. The dog doesn’t want to react, it feels it has to. It feels its owner does not have control of what it perceives as a dangerous situation, and so it takes charge.
Obedience, Trust, and Reactivity
This is resolved with 1) obedience and 2) repairing the relationship so the dog learns to trust you to take control of the situation. The dog needs to be trained to do something (like Heel or Come), not just not do something (react), and this situation requires a high level of obedience in that task. We build the dog’s obedience in Heel through games, where obeying the command involves interaction with you, not just on a treat (which it won’t care about when the pressures of reactivity are on it), and where obeying results in a good thing—play. Then we Heel past stressors of increasing difficulty, and this time you don’t have the nervous body language you used to because you’ll have gained confidence in your dog’s Heeling obedience through the Obedience Games. Each time you Heel past something, it means you are giving a command and taking charge of the situation, and every time this happens everything works out fine. The dog has reason to trust you and no longer feels the need to react.
Additional Forms of Aggression
There are many more aggression issues, of course. Resource guarding is very common. Dominance relations (another very misunderstood facet) can cause problems, sometimes irreparably, between dogs in the same household. Some dogs have problems with children, who quite often get bit. Some problems simply can’t be solved by “fixing” the dog and must either be managed or possibly even rehomed. With respect to the Obedience Games program, in some cases, such as these reactivity issues, the problem can be resolved while we more or less stick to the plan. For others, especially when it comes to managing intra-household dog-on-dog aggression or overly fearful dogs (puppy mill dogs are notorious here), the training plan may vary significantly from the norm, which likely will result in a slower speed of obedience growth that I aim for. Root issues need to be addressed, and though dogs have trauma just like people do, they are incredibly resilient creatures, so don’t lose hope just yet.
There are anomalous dogs out there that with rare genetic traits that are just plain aggressive. They kill their litter mates and bite with no warning or purpose. In nature, these dogs do not survive very long, as deep wounds from fights are often mortal due to infection without medical attention. You almost certainly don’t have this dog, nor have you likely ever seen this dog. I see a lot of dogs, and I’ve not yet met this dog.
The most likely cause of reactivity and aggression in dogs is a self-defense oriented fear. The meaning of this fear is often not apparent to us, and we might see clearly that there’s nothing real to be afraid of, but we humans do the same thing, and it does no good to tell a person who has a phobia or trauma-induced neuroses that there fear isn’t based on anything real.
A Human Example
Let’s pretend that I was physically abused as a child. Maybe it only happened once, and maybe I don’t even remember it. You have no way of knowing about any of this. I have my back turned to you and you barely tap me on the shoulder, and I turn around and punch you in the face. There was no thought process there for me; I simply reacted. After getting punched in the face, you probably don’t care much about why I did it; you just think I’m a bad, overly-aggressive, dangerous person. If we have any future interactions, you’ll probably be wary and distrustful of me. I’m no fool and I’ll recognize that you’ve got your guard up around me, but since I don’t know what’s in your mind, I’m going to have my guard up around you too. Nothing happened here that made me less likely to punch you or someone else in the future—quite the opposite. There was never a real threat to me, but that didn’t matter. I instinctively reacted in an unnatural way, then I perceived you as a potential threat. Depending on how often something like this has happened in the past, I might not wait for you to come at me and might just put you in your place and beat you down so I don’t have to risk being attacked when I’m not expecting it.
This same sort of thing happens with dogs, and it’s the most common aggression problem that I see in dogs. We call it “Reactivity” when dogs do it. When a dog’s thinking, it’s using a part of its brain called the prefrontal cortex (to simplify neuroscience, which I only have a simple understanding of myself). When this part of the brain is running the show, the dog can understand commands, think through situations, and make decisions. It can decide whether to come to you or to stay back. We can work with the dog at this point. Reactivity is when a switch flips inside and the amygdala, the “fight or flight” part of the brain, hijacks the brain and all decisions and conceptualizations go out of the window. Again, this happens in people just the same way. Either something big happens and you “lose it”, or a thousand tiny things pile up on one another until you basically lose control of yourself. It’s like when you’ve had a really crappy day and one tiny thing at the end of it sets you off. You just react. It’s okay, don’t blame yourself. Blame the amygdala.
Desensitization
Dogs often get caught in a loop with this sort of behavior and become increasingly more susceptible to that amygdala hijacking, and they can come to react habitually. Every time it does this, those neurological pathways become more entrenched and it gets more difficult to reverse the process. The first step in doing so is usually the same thing you’d do with me in my punching you in the face example. Don’t tap me when I’m not paying attention. Get my attention a less imposing way, like calling my name. Do this a bunch of times, making sure you don’t push me past my limit until I’m so used to you calling my name and getting me to turn around that you can finally tap me on the shoulder. Once we’re here, you should be able to keep tapping me on the shoulder since I’ve become desensitized to it, and neither of us has to have our guards up. But remember, this habit is pretty entrenched. You might have gotten me to turn peacefully at a tap 20 times in one day, but the next day you give it a try and there I go swinging again. It takes slow, steady consistency, but eventually we can wear down that reaction.
She Doesn't Want to Bite
This alone isn’t going to resolve the problem. We’re desensitizing the dog and trying to keep it capable of making decisions. Feral dogs often become reactive dogs when they’re taken into homes because this takes away their ability to flee. I am absolutely not advising anybody to do this, but if you have two leash reactive dogs that lung, snarl and snap at each other on the leash, if you were to let them both off the leash from a distance, most likely they’d run toward each other, slow down on approach, sniff one another, and move on. Why? For the same reason a dog will bite someone trying to get it out of its kennel but be totally fine with them once they’re out. Taking away a dog’s ability to flee leaves it only with the option to hopefully first bare its teeth and growl to warn us, then bite if that doesn’t work, when it’s stressed and afraid.
A leash reactive dog is repeatedly reinforced in its behavior because its owner becomes nervous when walking past another dog, which the reactive dog picks up on, and then when it does react, the owner is probably getting loud and making a big fuss, understandably, which the dog takes as its owner being out of control, afraid, and confirming that walking past another dog is a big problem because of all the noise and excitement he or she made when they got close. The dog doesn’t want to react, it feels it has to. It feels its owner does not have control of what it perceives as a dangerous situation, and so it takes charge.
Obedience, Trust, and Reactivity
This is resolved with 1) obedience and 2) repairing the relationship so the dog learns to trust you to take control of the situation. The dog needs to be trained to do something (like Heel or Come), not just not do something (react), and this situation requires a high level of obedience in that task. We build the dog’s obedience in Heel through games, where obeying the command involves interaction with you, not just on a treat (which it won’t care about when the pressures of reactivity are on it), and where obeying results in a good thing—play. Then we Heel past stressors of increasing difficulty, and this time you don’t have the nervous body language you used to because you’ll have gained confidence in your dog’s Heeling obedience through the Obedience Games. Each time you Heel past something, it means you are giving a command and taking charge of the situation, and every time this happens everything works out fine. The dog has reason to trust you and no longer feels the need to react.
Additional Forms of Aggression
There are many more aggression issues, of course. Resource guarding is very common. Dominance relations (another very misunderstood facet) can cause problems, sometimes irreparably, between dogs in the same household. Some dogs have problems with children, who quite often get bit. Some problems simply can’t be solved by “fixing” the dog and must either be managed or possibly even rehomed. With respect to the Obedience Games program, in some cases, such as these reactivity issues, the problem can be resolved while we more or less stick to the plan. For others, especially when it comes to managing intra-household dog-on-dog aggression or overly fearful dogs (puppy mill dogs are notorious here), the training plan may vary significantly from the norm, which likely will result in a slower speed of obedience growth that I aim for. Root issues need to be addressed, and though dogs have trauma just like people do, they are incredibly resilient creatures, so don’t lose hope just yet.
