The Importance of Supervision: Keeping Your Reactive Dog Safe
If you have a reactive dog, one that displays over excited, aggressive or fearful behaviour towards certain stimuli, it’s crucial to provide them with a safe and controlled environment. This means, not leaving them unattended in the backyard.
If you leave your dog unattended in the backyard, there are many potential risks involved.
1. Reactive behaviour in dogs usually stems from fear, anxiety, or past traumatic experiences. It comes out as barking, lunging, or even aggression towards other animals, people, or objects. Recognizing and acknowledging your dog’s reactivity is the first step towards ensuring their safety.
2.Reactive dogs can be easily triggered by various stimuli, such as unfamiliar animals, loud noises, or even sudden movements. When left unsupervised in the backyard, they may encounter these triggers without any guidance or intervention. This can lead to heightened anxiety, aggressive outbursts, or even escape attempts. When working with reactivity, it’s extremely important to keep your dog at a low threshold, by being aware of your surroundings.
Just like people, dogs can experience trigger stacking, which is where your dog is exposed to multiple triggers one after the other, without having the chance to calm down in between. As the stressors ‘stack up’, your dog may get progressively more distressed, which can result in increased aggressive behaviours. A trigger is anything that causes a reaction in your dog, whether it’s positive or negative. These triggers are not limited to visual cues, but can also include sounds, feelings, and scents.
It’s important to understand that when the adrenaline and cortisol build up in our dogs brains, it can be extremely difficult for them to come back down quickly. In fact, studies have shown that 1 angry bark can leave our dogs feeling stressed for around 7 hours. So now imagine your dog is left in the backyard alone and sees multiple triggers, that’s a lot of stress!
3. When dogs are faced with triggers they will go into fight or flight mode. If your dog is in the backyard alone, and they experience a stressful encounter, they may resort to flight and this could lead to them escaping. They may dig under fences, jump over them, or find other ways to escape, potentially putting themselves in harm’s way.
4. Allowing your reactive dog to be unsupervised in the backyard can inadvertently reinforce their reactive behavior. Without proper guidance and intervention, they perceive their reactive responses as effective in dealing with perceived threats. This can make their reactivity worse over time, making it more challenging to manage their behavior in the long run.
5. Instead of leaving your reactive dog unsupervised in the backyard, consider engaging in structured walks that are at quite times of the day, providing mental stimulation through interactive toys, or playing with them in the yard. These activities can help redirect their focus and build confidence, ultimately reducing reactive behaviour.
I would strongly encourage teaching your dog the game of find it, as well as touch, as these are both very fun and engaging redirection techniques that get both the dog and handler involved.
Anther technique I would strongly recommend is using some sort of visual blocker along your fence. Many dogs who bark and or lunge at the fence, are experiencing “barrier frustration.” When your dog can see and smell things going on, such as your neighbor’s dog, children, or grilled hot dogs, but can’t access those things, they become frustrated and bark.