You're out on a walk with your furry best friend after a long day of work. It's one of your favorite times of the evening — we've all had visions of classic neighborhood strolls alongside our canine companions!
All of a sudden, though, your dog transforms. They saw something that triggered them — maybe another dog, or a bicycle, or a fast-moving car, or a stranger coming around a corner unexpectedly — and started barking, growling, lunging, and pulling at the end of the leash.
You're at a loss. This isn't how walks are supposed to go! What's going on with your four-legged family member? What are you supposed to do about these inappropriate behaviors?
We've got you covered. This phenomenon is called leash reactivity — and it's not at all uncommon in pet dogs, especially in our modern human world that's chock full of overwhelming distractions. As frightening and stressful as leash reactivity can be for us pet owners, it's probably even more uncomfortable for the pups engaging in it.
There is good news though: Leash-reactive behavior is often a very trainable behavior among dogs — as long as you’re willing to put in the time (and have access to the resources) required to get to the bottom of what’s causing your dog's emotional response, that is.
Here’s everything you need to know about leash reactivity, from what might trigger this type of reactivity to how to manage the behavior issue in the short term and, most importantly, some long-term training behavior modification strategies that can help save you and your pup lots of future stress.
Leash reactivity in dogs is a general term that encompasses a range of undesirable on-leash canine behaviors — from excessive barking and growling to physical jumping, pulling, and lunging. Basically, if your pup is on-leash and having a big, over-the-top reaction to something in the world around them (maybe other dogs, people, cars, or anything else, really) there's a good chance their behavior qualifies as leash reactivity.
So what's the reason some dogs develop outsized and inappropriate reactions to the environment when they’re on a leash? While it’s easy to mistake leash-reactive behavior for aggression, it’s important to remember that usually this isn’t the case.
More often than not, leash reactivity is caused by one of two major F-words: Fear and Frustration.
Typically, a dog who is being reactive on their leash has one of two goals in mind. They either want to get away from something they’ve seen in their surrounding environment (fear) or they want to get closer to something (frustration).
In fear-based leash reactivity, your dog’s fight or flight response has been triggered and — no matter which instinct they’re inclined to follow — they feel trapped by their leash.
Even a dog who instinctively wants to run from a perceived threat will often fallback on seemingly aggressive behavior, like barking and growling, if their leash makes fleeing the scene impossible. (Think of this like the classic "fight or flight" response we hear about in almost all animals. If we've removed the flight option by holding our dogs still on a leash, they're left with fight as a go-to fearful response.)
Dogs experiencing fear-based leash reactivity will often seem even more aggressive than their more excitable frustration-based counterparts. Anyone with a tiny dog who becomes a barking machine at the sight of any bigger dog on walks knows this all too well!
Frustration-based leash reactivity stems from a dog’s unmet desires. This could be anything from the desire to play with another dog on a walk to a desire to run up and say hi to every human they see to a deeply-ingrained need to chase all squirrels, birds, and other small creatures.
Just because a dog wants to do something, however, doesn’t mean they should — take the all-too-common doggy desire to dart into traffic and chase cars, for example. While using a leash is a fabulous way to manage these situations, it's inevitable that some undesirable replacement behaviors might bubble up when we restrict our dogs from following their natural urges.
All dogs have fears and frustrations, though, so why do only some of them develop reactive behaviors on-leash? Some common root causes of leash reactivity include:
If your dog struggles with leash reactivity, you can take some simple, actionable steps to manage the behavior, including:
Leash reactivity is definitely a behavior you’ll want to work to address, especially since improving your dog's outward behavior is usually a sign that you're soothing the underlying issues that are stressing your dog out.
Follow the following steps to train a dog out of reactive behavior on leash:
We've written a lot more about leash reactivity in our "dog reactivity" blog category that compiles multiple related posts. Browse through to find more information to help you and your dog on your training journey!
There is so much misinformation out there, we want to make sure we only provide the highest quality information to our community. We have all of our articles reviewed by qualified, positive-only trainers.
This is the trainer that reviewed this article:
Olivia Peterson, CCS
Owner - Sound Connection Dog Training
WSU Bachelors in Animal Science Business Management
Northwest School of Canine Studies (NWSCS) Certification
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