Reactive behaviour is quite different to other types of behaviour you might see in your dog. So, lets start by figuring out the difference between reactive and responsive behaviour.
Reactive behaviour happens without thought or analysis. When a dog encounters something that triggers them (another dog in this case), their emergency system is activated, and the fight or flight responses take over. This dog hasn’t considered if the other dog poses any kind of threat, or if it’s even looking at them; its mere existence will trigger reactive behaviour.
This is different to responsive behaviour. In responsive behaviour, a dog changes their behaviour only after analysing the situation. The dog will wait to see what the other dogs intentions are, and will respond to that appropriately, before escalating its reaction, if needed.
In psychology, these two types of thought process are often referred to as System 1 and System 2.
System 2, also known as the thinking or slow brain, likes to consider all the information before making choices. This system is in use most of the time, and is great for day to day stuff, planning shopping lists, and driving the car, for example. It is also good for writing emails, solving sudokus, and planning presentations at work.
System 1, otherwise known as the reactive or fast brain, keeps us safe in emergencies. If a car suddenly pulled out in front of you on your way home from work, your thinking brain would be useless. It is called the slow brain for good reason. Analysing the speed and trajectory of the incoming car, and comparing that data to your own speed and angle of approach, takes time. By the time you had done all that and come up with a plan, it could be too late, and the other car might have hit yours. The fast brain is much better suited to this type of situation, it needs far less information to act. In fact, the mere presence of the other car, in an unexpected place, is enough to make you hit the break and swerve to avoid. Afterwards, your thinking brain might reconsider the situation with more care and might have come up with a better solution. But your reactive brain doesn’t care about any of that, it’s only goal is to keep you safe, which, if you are here to tell the tale, it did rather well!
This is all great and useful, until the reactive brain gets a little trigger happy and activates when it doesn’t need to. For example, when your reactive dog see’s anther dog at the other side of the park, minding their own business, and yours goes into full on attack mode. It may even surprise you to know that a dog doesn’t have to be afraid of something, to become reactive because of it.
Let me introduce Tilly. Tilly is a lovely little fox terrier, we’ll be seeing her again later in this section when we talk about assessing behaviour. I have a brilliant video of her that perfectly demonstrates the switch between the thinking and reactive brain. But for now, let’s talk about Tilly’s assessment session. I met Tilly at her home, as I usually do. She was a pretty chilled little girl at home, very happy and content. On a walk, it was a different story though. Her owner told me that it didn’t matter how far away another dog was, she would spot it, and she would get very stressed and react with barking and lunging. In fact, it didn’t even need to be an actual dog – even something that could be a dog provoked the same reaction (I’ll talk more about why that is that later on).
So off we went to her local park in search of a dog, or dog-like thing, that we could assess her with. We went round and round and didn’t spot anyone, until suddenly we were surprised by a dog who ran out of the hedge straight to her. Her owner panicked, but Tilly just sniffed the other dog while they sniffed her back.
Lot’s of things contributed to that reaction, or lack of it, and we’ll go into detail in later stages, when it becomes more relevant. For now though, there was no build-up of frustration and the process of introduction, and the surprise element, were also big contributors. But it proved one thing, Tilly was not afraid of other dogs. In fact, she was quite sociable. Her greeting was calm and polite. She wasn’t reactive because she was afraid. She wasn’t reactive because she was naughty. This was an inappropriate biological response to a situation her brain had wrongly categorised as a threat.
If we could just keep the thinking brain on, your dog would analyse the situation carefully and make a more considered response- like Tilly did. In their thinking brain, they also have access to all the tricks we taught them, and they are still motivated by food, toys and praise. They are calm, considerate, and can still respond to cues.
It only takes a fraction of a second to trigger the reactive brain, and fight or flight mode, but once its activated, it won’t deactivate until the threat is gone. When they go into their reactive brain, the body floods with adrenaline and has only one goal – to stay safe. Adrenaline makes them stronger, faster, and more alert. And, as you’d expect, when the thinking brain gets switched off, so also does their ability to seek reward, food and toys and follow cues
We’ll learn more about threshold later in the course, but for now, lets just say that threshold is the line separating the thinking brain behaviour and reactive brain behaviour. When people say their dog is over threshold, it is because they are only using their fast or reactive brain.
We know reactive behaviour is different to responsive behaviour. We know it is activated by a chemical response (that can’t be stopped), and not a conscious thought. And, we know it is not associated with the thinking, or slow brain.
Well, just like your dog can’t choose to be reactive, they also can’t choose to stop it. Many people get frustrated when their reactive dog won’t stop barking if they yell at them, or won’t sit when they order it. They think the dog is being naughty, or disobeying them. They’ve taught their dog to sit, so why won’t they do it? The standard response is this frustrating “lack of compliance” is to escalate your own behaviour – to make yourself heard or noticed. But this often means shouting louder, or adding some kind of physical intervention.
But, as we have just discovered, reactive behaviour won’t stop until the situation is resolved, and the brain feels safe again. Reactive brains aren’t concerned with well known cues, or meeting your approval, they are only concerned with safety. This might be a good time to note that shouting louder, or physical interventions, won’t make your dog feel safer either, and will actually hinder the process, rather than speeding it up! For obvious reasons, only positive, confidence building techniques can do that, and that is what we’ll be using here!
Tilly has shown us what can happen when the reactive brain isn’t triggered. Not all reactive dogs are like Tilly, of course, some are afraid of other dogs, some lack the social skills needed to greet another dog, even if they were calm. We’ll fix all that later. But, no dog will recover from their reactive behaviour while the emergency response system is being routinely activated. So we need to find ways to prevent the reactive brain from activating and creating a new automatic response.
Which is why we started with a reset…