Reasons behind dog reactivity
Maybe you feel like you’re dealing with this problem alone, but in fact, there are a lot of dogs struggling with reactivity. I see it live on a daily basis, in my email inbox, on the Instagram — everywhere. And it looks like there are more and more people wanting to get a dog, more and more breeders with different levels of knowledge, more and more dog trainers with and without education, more and more dog owners who have no idea what kind of treatment their dog needs. There are many factors in play here, and in this article I’d like to talk about the biggest reasons for dog reactivity.
Lack of socialisation
Socialisation is a process when a dog gets familiar with this world, with their family members (I’m talking about both families — natural dog-family and a human-family where they get to live) and family rules, with other humans, animals, objects that surround us in our daily lives.
There are times in dog’s life when this process goes well because their brains are especially good in building new connections. Different scientists talk about different periods, but one of the most common referral points here is a study by American scientists Scott and Fuller “Dog Behavior. The Genetic Basis” (1965) where authors claim that the age between 3 and 12 weeks old is critical for social development of a dog. It means, that things a dog learns in this age are normally very stable and long-lasting. On the contrary, if a dog makes no experiences with the outside world (for example, while growing on a “puppy mill” with very little exposure), they tend to develop behavioral problems in the future, become overly fearful or/and aggressive in social communication. Moreover, “bad” experience is better than no experience at all.
It is common for dogs who had no experience with humans when they were young to fear people in general and sometimes to react aggressively towards strangers. It is also common for dogs who grew up in poor conditions, never being exposed to other dogs, to not know how to communicate with other dogs, and jump into aggressive behaviors quickly.
Good news is, dogs learn livelong. With enough structure and patience, there is a chance to improve your dog’s social skills at any age.
Low frustration tolerance
This is what I see in a lot of dogs coming into training. Frustration tolerance is an ability to accept that not everything goes as you wish. It’s not about sitting pretty before your human puts a food bowl on the floor — it’s about calmly accepting that you’d love to run to the dog walking in front of you but you can’t. To make it more clear: frustration tolerance is not about bribing, distracting and even obediently following a command. It’s about tolerating strong emotions and not exploding.
Dogs (and people) learn this when faced with frustrating situations. There is no nice way to teach this because you can’t learn to go through hard emotions without experiencing these emotions. Not if you’re a dog and can’t learn from a book, at least.
Territorial aggression
Another very common issue is territorial aggression. You have it if your dog reacts aggressively to other dogs around your neighbourhood but is friendly or indifferent towards dogs when you travel. Different dogs have different radius — it can be solely your garden or 3 km around your house. Also, time needed to become possessive over territory varies greatly — some dogs start protecting the cafe terrace you’ve entered 5 minutes ago, others may need weeks living in a new neighbourhood to start showing same patterns there.
light cycle aggression
Many dogs are more reactive then it’s dark outside. Normally, the reason behind this is smart genetics — hunting and territory & livestock guarding dogs were for generations being selected because they were good at this. Nighttime is usually when wild animals and all other possible intruders are active, so dog types mentioned above are predisposed to be more alarmed when it’s dark outside.
Another possible reason would be copying their human patterns. Most of people are more careful when it’s dark, more likely to be suspicious about weird sounds, more prone to be scared if a stranger appears from around the corner. Dogs feel this and get nurtured from your emotions.
Hunting behavior
Most commonly, reactivity looks like aggression, but sometimes it is, in fact, hunting behavior (or a mixture of both). Hunting behavior is, unlike aggression, emotionless. It requires a quick and well-estimated action with no time & need for threatening your prey. Normally, hunting behavior is shown in an appropriate context only (with prey animals) but sometimes prey-motivated dogs start hunting little dogs, kids, joggers and even scooters.
Another problem happens when a dog starts mixing aggression and hunting. Technically, the function of aggressive behavior is to secure one’s safety and keep important resources with as little conflict as possible. The function of hunting behavior is to get food (meaning, killing of the prey is necessary). I’m not sure I have to keep explaining why this can be greatly dangerous.
As you may have guessed, hunting dog breeds are more predisposed to show this, but all dogs have hunting drive to a certain extent.
Mixing drives
Did you ever see how dogs play nicely, and one second later they are hanging in each other’s fur violently? Well, it happens when dogs struggle to differentiate between the motives / drives. They jump from play to aggression, from aggression to hunting, from play to hunting, and vice versa.
This happens to younger dogs commonly, and technically speaking, they are supposed to learn to differentiate the contexts where each behavior is (not) appropriate with age. But it’s not what always happens. Risk factors are breeds who are predisposed to mix drives (like Jack Russel Terriers, for example) and dogs with low frustration tolerance in general.
Ressource Aggression
Dogs may show aggressive behavior when they think that something they own is at risk. They want to protect their resources. Their resources may be physical items (a toy, a leash, food), spaces (their neighbourhood — yes, technically, “territorial aggression” mentioned above is a part of resource aggression) or their social partner (dog or human). The first one seems pretty obvious, the second one was already covered above, let me talk about the third kind of resources here.
When we are speaking about resource guarding a dog or a human, you have to understand one thing. It’s not that your dog loves you so much that they would’t want others to hurt you (yes, sometimes there is this motivation, but it doesn’t really look like reactivity). It’s that your dog thinks that you belong to them, and no one else should ever approach you. It can be directed against other dogs as well as humans.
The same counts when your dog is resource guarding another dog — this is possessive aggression. Sexual aggression when dog secure a mate for themselves and push other dogs of the their gender away, is the same story.
Learned aggression
This is one of the most complicated kinds. What happens is that your dog has learned that showing aggressive behavior helps them, and then they start showing it without any real need. For example, your dog got attacked by a black labrador one day. They got scared and wanted to defend themselves. Next time they see this black labrador, they get all defensive, and the other dog backs off. Success. Next time your dog sees a black rottweiler and decides that it looks similarly to the black lab, so why not scaring it off as well. Success. Next time you meet a black pudel, or a black terrier, and your dog thinks: better safe than sorry. Attack. Success.This story can go on and on, and no one can predict when it stops. Sometimes it comes to the point that a dog tries to attack every other dog because this strategy has helped them so far.
This can work with all kinds of previously mentioned types. One time your dog saw a need to be loud and bold, and they may decide to try it again. Sometimes they need many repetitions to learn the strategy, sometimes one is enough.
Breed predisposition
There is no such thing as reactivity predisposition but your dog may be indirectly predisposed to it. Here are some examples:
livestock guarding dogs and other guarding dogs as well as primitive breeds are often territorial, sceptical towards strangers and aggressive towards the dogs of their own sex
working dogs were created to be very responsive, so they tend to have low frustration tolerance
terrier dogs and dachshunds (and some other hunting breeds) were bred to hunt independently and sometimes kill their prey, so they tend to mix drives
Conclusion
There are many reasons why your dog may be reactive. There are some reasons I haven’t spoken about in this article (like heat cycle-related aggression in females, for example) but I’ve covered the most common ones. Understanding why your dog is showing certain behavior is important but I have some bad news: it’s not always possible because motivations are often mixed. Sometimes we can see a clear pattern, and it’s fantastic. There are cases where we don’t really know what was it: lack of socialisation or a couple of not-so-good dog encounters or, let’s say, a general skepticism towards strangers. And then we decide that reactivity has multiple reasons, and we have to tackle each triggering situation individually.
Good news is: even if we have a multiple-factor reactivity, and there is no one big reason behind it, we can still treat this. I’m ready to help you there. Tell me more about your situation here.
