Reactive = aggressive. A very common misconception...

How many dogs do you see barking, lunging, or growling at other dogs or people? And, how many times do you think...'Wow, that's an aggressive dog'?

I'll hold my hands up and say that before I had Odin, if I saw a dog exhibiting the above behaviours, I would think exactly that. I was naive and had absolutely no idea how to read dog's body language, or have any understanding of why dog's do the things they do. It's a very common, mis-informed association that people make about dogs. In actual fact, having met multiple reactive dogs, and owning one myself, it could not be further from the truth. Now, of course there will be dogs out there that are genuinely aggressive and would quite literally tear you limb from limb given the chance, but they are few and far between. The every day dog you see in the park or town centre that is reacting to yours is most likely going to be displaying those behaviours out of fear, over-arousal or frustration.

In Odin's case it is a combination of over-arousal and frustration. It was around May 2024 when we went on a normal, everyday walk and Odin decided to bark and lunge at a Greyhound, a dog we had seen many times before. It came totally out of the blue and I was taken by surprise. I couldn't figure out why on earth he had just done it, he was friendly towards other dogs? He went to daycare and played all day, no issues? From then on out, it was every walk, every dog and no matter how hard we tried to stop him he just absolutely went for it. But still no issues at the daycare? I even contacted them and asked how he'd been as I was so worried this was the start of him displaying aggression towards other dogs, but they had said they had no worries at all. He played nicely, was able to take himself off to chill out and have some 'me time' if he needed space, wasn't over-bearing on the other dogs or pestering. So what was going on?

Putting it in Odin's perspective, one day he's off lead with loads of dogs, he's allowed to run around, play, interact and socialise as he pleases, there are little to no boundaries. Then we take him on a walk, on lead, he can't physically get to anyone and everything he wants, he wants to say hello and play as he's always been able to but can't. What does that create? Frustration. That frustration turns into vocalisation, so enter the barking, the lunging etc. Once our trainer had walked us through it made complete and perfect sense.

We made the decision there and then to take him out of daycare, he was around 6 months and this point and had we let it continue any longer, it would be difficult to undo. Now if we wanted to be 'those dog owner's and let him off lead wherever he likes, allow him to run up to every dog he saw then there would be absolutely no vocals or dramatics, but I'm not that person and not everyone appreciates a 40kg GSD charging at them or their tiny little doggos.

My advice to new dog owners...as cute and lovely as the concept of doggy daycare sounds, all it does is create problems you will spend more time and money fixing down the line. We use a dog walker every week now to care for Odin and they're brilliant, if only we could go back to Day 1 and know what we know now!