Reactive & Aggressive Dogs | There’s Always a Reason
The hardest part of living with a reactive dog isn’t their behaviour. It’s not knowing why.
Thats why everything we do starts with understanding the cause - because without it you’re not solving the problem. You’re just managing it.
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In both instances, it’s very unlikely that any real diagnosis has taken place beyond “yep, your dog is reactive”. Which means that you could be giving food to an over excited dog and making them even more excited, or you could be delivering a barrage of physical corrections to a nervous dog that just wants a handler they can feel safe with.
Knowing why your dog is reacting is the biggest part of the puzzle when it comes to resolving it. Which is why it’s our number one priority with every dog that we work with.
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When we work with your dog, diagnosis drives all of our decision making. If we have a nervous dog, we’ll focus on teaching you how to create relaxation through calm touch, and using relative positioning to remove responsibility and promote a feeling of safety. If we’re working with an over excited or frustrated dog, we’ll show you how to how to counter condition the stimuli that get your dog worked up, and redirect their energy into breed specific activities. If your dog is territorial, we’ll show you how to set boundaries around your personal and intimate space to put a stop to possessive behaviours.
And if we’re dealing with a dog that displays genuine aggression or has a bite history? We’ll show you how to get your dog under safe control quickly, and de-escalate the unhealthy behaviours like lunging and biting that are most dangerous (without reinforcing them), whilst also give you the understanding to address the cause of the behaviour at its root.
We’ve worked with every type of reactive and aggressive dog you can Imagine.
And a few you probably can’t.
If you recognise any of these, you’re exactly who we’re here for.
Reactivity and Aggression towards dogs.
Lunging at Cars, Bikes & Scooters
Aggression towards Family Members
Over excitement and frustration on a lead
Territorial Reactivity & Aggression
Fighting between dogs in the Home
Resource Guarding
Unpredictability towards Strangers
Jumping and grabbing at the Handler
Don’t see your dog on the list? Get in touch and talk us through your needs. We’ll listen.
The first thing we want every client to have is a dog they feel safe walking.
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Your dog takes their cues from you more than you probably realise. When you feel safe and in control, they feel it too. That’s why lead safety isn’t just about managing your dog — it’s the foundation everything else is built on.
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When you’re dealing with a reactive or aggressive dog, you can’t spend six months working up to feeling safe on a walk — you need that now. That’s why we make lead safety and confident handling a priority from the very first session. And because dogs aren’t perfect and neither are we, we’ll also help you find the right tools for you and your dog — so that when life doesn’t go to plan, you’re still okay.
We start all our Reactive and Aggressive cases away from the home. Here’s Why it matters:
“My dog is most aggressive in or around the home - and it’s bitten several people who walked through the front door. Can you also walk through our front door so we can show you how bad the behaviour is?”
“I find it very difficult to keep control of my dog around other dogs when out on a walk. There have been several incidences where my dog has attacked other dogs. Can you walk around my local area with me so you can see what a nightmare I’m having?
Apart from the glaringly obvious reason why these are not a great way to start a training session, there are actually several other key reasons why it doesn’t help to work with aggressive dogs in their home environment.
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Meaning that yes - they will show their most aggressive side, making it much more difficult to diagnose underlying cause. Aggression masks other behaviours like fear, anxiety and insecurity. It’s also very difficult to distinguish between a dog that is possessive of the owner and territorial over their home environment whilst in situ. Getting your dog away from the home makes all of this a lot clearer.
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… before moving back into more challenging real world scenarios. No one wants to find themselves in a firefight, and when it comes to working with dogs, that means being properly prepared and educated in how to handle your dog safely, before going on a walk or inviting someone through your dog. Our paddocks, and our ambassador dogs, are here to ensure just that.
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We don’t need to see your dog at their worst to know what a worst case scenario looks like. We are more than capable of diagnosing serious issues based on lower levels of behaviour expression, and it’s less stressful for both you and your dog if we can do so at a lower intensity. It’s not our goal to back your dog into a corner and wrestle them into submission. Anything we can do to reduce stress, we will - and the easiest way to do that is in a neutral space.
We deal with Reactivity and Aggression every day - we’re used to spotting red flags, deescalating dangerous situations quickly and helping you to develop the skills you need, fast. That’s why we always start at our secure paddocks - and graduate to real world sessions down the line - because we know it works.
Stop Managing. Start Solving.
The Complete Support Programme is our best value programme for getting your relationship with your dog back on track and their behaviour under control.
3 Intensive Sessions. Unlimited Phone and WhatsApp Support. Access to our online content library. and 33% off any extra sessions you need.
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Single Behaviour Intensive | Up to 2 Hours | £179.00
Visit our secure paddocks to get a clear diagnosis of your dogs core issues, and work through essential skills with us practically, so you can leave confident about exactly whats going wrong and how to fix it.
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Single Real World Intensive | Up to 2 Hours | £269.00
Programme Participants also have the opportunity to book training in pre-selected real world environments for their second or third session, to practice training in public, with real people, dogs, and other environmental challenges.
Live Nationally? Speak to us about arranging your sessions intensively over the course of a week.
THE JOURNAL | featured Reactivity and Aggression Articles
Lessons in Reactivity.
Introducing a Pitbull to a Llama.
Lesson 1 | Why food doesn’t solve fear based reactivity. The Bear Analogy.
Dogs are so much smarter than having a binary relationship with the environment based on “Good” and “Bad” associations. The most common cause of reactivity in dogs is nervousness, fear or anxiety.
If your dog sees something that they are nervous or anxious about, they consider it a genuine threat, danger or challenge. In the exact same way that you would, if you were going for a hike in the Wilderness and a bear jumped out onto the trail in front of you.
If I was stood next to you, and I was supposed to be your wilderness guide, would you feel better about the threat of a wild bear if I told you to look away from it and focus on my delicious bag of hiking treats?
No. you’d be terrified. Because now, not only do you have the bear to deal with, but the person who is supposed to be your guide is completely incapable of protecting you!
Dogs aren’t stupid. They know when something represents a danger, and food is not going to change that association. A dog that feels threatened will do its best to defend itself, unless it knows that you can do it for them.
A dog that feels safe is a dog that will stay calm. Your job is to provide that Protection. In practice, that means handling your dog in a way where they you’ve acknowledged the threat, and it is easy and natural for you to put yourself between them and the problem,
Lesson 2 | Capital Letters and Full Stops. A Correction will never teach your dog what to do. A clear Direction and Outcome will.
When you work in behaviour rehabilitation, the simple reality is that you spend a lot of time reducing the prevalence of unwanted behaviours. In the scientific world - that’s called Punishment. It’s called punishment, because that’s the word that B.F Skinner chose to use back in 1938. That’s it, that all.
Punishments, Corrections, Aversive’s. The words change, and the inescapable reality of undesirable behaviour is that you cannot change it or remove it with reinforcement alone. That is the fundamental science of operant conditioning and we cannot change it. Any more than you can slow down a car if you have your foot on the gas pedal. Because when we move beyond the words, and look at the function behind them, they exist exclusively to interrupt and to deter the successful outcome of a behaviour that we don’t want a dog to practice.
That does not mean that we have permission to be aggressive. That means that we have the knowledge and responsibility to train in a smart, considered and conscious way.
Conscious training means knowing how to handle a dog safely and interrupt aggression with maximum effect and minimal force. It means knowing how do disagree fairly, without losing your cool or getting frustrated. But most importantly, it means knowing that you cannot teach a dog what to do or how to behave with a Punishment - only interrupt the behaviour you don’t want.
When it comes to reactive and aggressive dogs, A correction is nothing more than the capital letter at the beginning of a sentence. Your message - what you teach, how your dog learns - is all about what happens next.
What is your full stop? What is the outcome that you create? That’s what matters most. Did you teach your dog how you wanted them to respond? Did you provide a better way forward? Did you show them how to succeed?
Learning how to deescalate a situation quickly means teaching your dog to resolve disagreement in a healthy way. We teach our clients to create calmness as an Outcome, not Fight, Flight or Avoidance. Because a calm state of mind, is one that you can teach.
We want you to maximise the amount of time you spend showing your dog what you do want, and nurturing the behaviour you love. We want to create opportunities that maximise your dogs chance to succeed. We want to give them other options besides aggression, and make it easier for them to communicate their needs.
Lesson 3 | Dogs will always be the best teachers for Dogs.
It’s a simple lesson - that a human will never be a substitute for another dog. That’s why our Ambassador dogs are always on hand to help when you visit us at Underhill Farm. they’re there to act as a calm influence, even if your dog is going off the rails. They’re there to help us with our assessment and diagnostics, so we can get a better idea of what’s driving your dogs behaviour. And they are a huge part of our resocialisation work when integrating reactive dogs back into society.
They are an example to you too - to show you what a healthy, happy, psychologically balanced dog can be, and how to practice healthy behaviour with your own dog. Our dogs are our family and our best friends, and we rely on them so much for the work that we do.
Hold onto your butts - in this case profile, we discuss the delightful assassins of the dog world - the pocket rockets, the Swiss army knife, the lethal teddy bears. The 10kg workout, the professional nightmares. The Working Terriers.