Dog Behavior: Reactivity

What Is “Reactivity” in Dogs? How and Why Do Dogs Become “Reactive?”

Dogs are the most social animal on earth.

They can also be the most aggressive.

Reactive, Over-Reactive, or Pro-Active?

One of the most common behavior problems in dogs is “reactivity,” a term I’ve never quite understood. It seems to me that the dog who doesn’t react to stimuli is the one with a problem. In fact, many authors put quotes around the term, as if to say, “This isn’t quite the right word, but you know what I mean...” A lot of people seem to think such dogs should be referred to as “over-reactive.” In fact, former police dog trainer Kevin Behan says such dogs are actually being “pro-active;” meaning they've re-experiencing a traumatic event from the past as if it were about to happen again for the first time, which is exactly how war veterans, rape victims, and others who've experienced deeply traumatic events feel.

I think Behan is right. Why would a reactive dog—let’s call him Otto—bark and lunge at people and dogs he’s never met, who, in most cases, aren’t even aware of his presence until the barking starts? If Otto only barked and lunged at people or dogs that hurt him, then “reactive” would be the right word.

It’s true that some dogs will react only to specific triggers: i.e., certain breeds of dog, men wearing hats. But dogs are usually capable of a bit more discrimination than that. It seems to me that this kind of explosive, semi-indiscriminate response could only happen if the prior event was so traumatic, so terrifying, that it left a deeply stressful emotional charge in the dog's body and mind, so that when he sees another dog or person who fits the general template of “enemy,” despite obvious differences, he feels as if the traumatic event is happening, or were about to happen again. If that's the case then maybe the term should be re-active, with a hyphen, to denote that the dog's fears are being re-activated!

As I said before, reactivity in dogs bears a strong resemblance to post-traumatic stress in war veterans, rape victims, survivors of natural disasters, etc. What happens in all these cases, reactive dogs included, is that during the initial trauma the danger “seemed to come out of nowhere.” The person or animal wasn’t expecting this terrible thing to happen, and is now, in the present, reacting to a kind of replay of the original event.

Fear, Fright and Sigmund Freud

In 1920 Sigmund Freud wrote about the symptoms of what were then referred to as the “war neuroses” (then “shell shock” then “battle fatigue,” now PTSD). We now know that people can develop post-traumatic stress just by witnessing a horrific traffic accident or seeing footage of a natural disaster. When discussing these issues, Freud said that “the chief weight in their causation seems to rest upon the factor of surprise, of fright.” (“Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” 1920, Freud Reader, 598.)

Freud also made it quite clear that fright, fear, and anxiety are not synonyms; they represent clear distinctions in how emotional beings—like dogs and humans—relate to danger. Anxiety, he said, “describes a particular state of expecting the danger or preparing for it, even though it may be an unknown one. ‘Fear’ requires a definite object of which to be afraid. ‘Fright,’ however, is the name we give to the state a person gets into when he has run into danger without being prepared for it; it emphasizes the factor of surprise.” (598.) Since PTSD is classified as an anxiety disorder, and anxiety is a state of “constantly expecting … danger or preparing for it,” this makes sense, not just for war veterans, but for reactive dogs: they’re constantly expecting danger or preparing for it.

I think it’s also important to know why post-traumatic stress syndrome is a neurosis. Most people (at least people my age) tend to associate neurotic behavior with (usually irritating) characters in old Woody Allen movies, always whining about their lives. But neuroses are, in reality, simply anxiety-based behaviors where the energy behind them is out of whack with a) the normal reasons for producing such behaviors or b) with the amount of energy that might normally be expended on them. Since reactive dogs expend far more energy than is necessary to protect themselves from people or dogs who mean them no harm, they’re behaving in a neurotic fashion. One reason I think it’s important to know this is because most if not all neuroses are the result of repressed emotional energy, and the key to curing reactivity is not to desensitize a dog to his triggers, but to give him a safe and (hopefully) deeply satisfying outlet for his repressed emotions.

Thorndike & Skinner, Tension & Flow

Kevin Behan has, for over 30 years, been developing and honing a new understanding of canine behavior and learning based on the laws of physics instead of, for example, “The Law of Effect,” a principle first proposed by American psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1905: “Any behavior followed by pleasant consequences will increase in frequency and be more likely to occur in the future, whereas any behavior followed by unpleasant consequences will decrease in frequency and be less likely to occur in the future.”

At first glance "The Law of Effect"—which laid the foundation for B. F. Skinner's concept of operant conditioning—makes a lot of sense, or seems to until you parse things out a little. For instance, a “reactive” dog will quite often and almost without fail, continue barking and lunging at certain dogs and people, and this behavior will often “increase in frequency,” which, according to Thorndike’s equation means that the dog is getting a pleasant outcome from the behavior. But since the dog is clearly agitated, deeply-stressed, and seems to be in anything but a happy, pleasurable mood, what could that pleasant outcome possibly be?

The answer is simple. By barking and lunging, the dog is releasing pent-up energy, as per Freud’s definition of pleasure, which—like Kevin Behan’s model of dog training—is also based on the laws of physics and flow dynamics.

For example, when a dog’s or person’s emotions are flowing smoothly there’s no agitation, very little pressure, and, in fact, it’s usually a pleasurable experience. When things aren’t flowing we feel tension, pressure, stress and emotional turbulence. And clearly, so-called reactive dogs exhibit intense emotional turbulence.

There's another important thing to consider, which is that Thorndike's work was the basis for what later became called "associative learning," the idea that animals learn by associating a behavior with either a punishment or a reward, and that this type of learning almost always requires a certain amount of trial-and-error. But those precepts are based on outdated 20th Century science. This is the 21st Century. We now know that animals don’t learn by trial-and-error or by making mental associations. They learn through an unconscious mental process called pattern recognition (which appears to be the same thing as associative learning but happens almost immediately), and through changes in feeling states as theorized first by Sigmund Freud and reiterated by the work of Ivan Pavlov.

Pattern recognition is a "down-and-dirty" cognitive process, meaning it takes very little time and uses up very little energy. But there's a drawback: only the general ouline or properties of a pattern are usually retained. That's why you'll sometimes see smart dogs do stupid things, like the border collie, famous on Youtube for trying to get a statue of Alan Turing to throw a stick for him to chase. (Ironically, Turing is the "father" of pattern recognition; the first scientists to see it as an integral aspect of natural systems and animal consciousness.)

Templates & Imprints, Intensity & Physical Memory

In the late 1908s, my first dog Charley, a field setter who had temporary fame as "Charlie the Bubble Eating Dog" on Late Night With David Letterman), was playing with another dog in Central Park. During an intense game of chase Charley got fooled by the other dog's play maneuver, a fake-left, go-left gambit Charley had never seen before. He was running so fast, and was so befuddled, that he ran head-first into the nearest tree. He gave out an angry yelp, then got up and shook himself furiously to get rid of the excess tension.

I ran over to see if he was okay, but before I could get there, he was back up and running after the other dog. Only this time, he wasn't fooled by any of the other dog's moves, most of which I'd never seen before, and neither had Charley. Not only that, but when that dog left the group, and Charley began playing with a new dog, where he became the chasee, he was somehow able to incorporate all the first dog's moves into his own repertoire, as if he had learned every single possible permutation instantly, and, as it turned out, permanently.

Another interesting thing happened when my Dalmatian Freddie went up to investigate/say hello to the first cat he'd ever seen. Freddie's ears were pricked and he was wagging his tail, showing an avid interest in this strange new potential friend. But just as I said to Fred, "Do you like the kitty?" the cat scratched poor Freddie on the nose. He was shocked, but not frightened. His ears didn't go back, they stayed in the pricked position. Plus, he was still wagging his tail. Later, at home, I was curious to know if he'd retained a memory of that event. So, out of nowhere, I said the word "Kitty!" in the same tone of voice I'd used earlier. The instant I did, Fred's ears pricked up and he began wagging his tail. There was no fear or nervousness in his demeanor. In fact he reacted in exactly the same way as when I'd ask if he wanted to go for a walk—ears up, tail wagging.

I believe these are both examples of a kind of "instant learning" through pattern recognition, and possibly even a form of imprinting. (Of course Freddie didn't "learn" anything, per se, he just exhibited an automatic reflex.) The reason Charley was able to learn all the other dog's play moves in one fell swoop was due in part to the intensity of his experience, plus his breeding and temperament, and the way he was able to integrate the event into his mind and body immediately afterwards. Freddie's experience was just a minor blip. It only affected his body (his ears and tail), not his mind.

I think what this shows is that an intense, shocking or surprising experience often leaves a deep imprint on a dog's mind in such a way that it also becomes integrated into his body as well. This means that, as per Pavlovian conditioning, there's virtually no difference between physical and emotional memory. This is deeply important because it's why reactive dogs behave the way they do. They're re-experiencing a traumatic event, one where they're unable to fight back, run away, or get it out of their system. It stays stuck until they're given an opportunity to "fight back" at the same level of intensity they experienced during the original event, which is why playing tug-of-war is so important in helping reactive dogs let go of their fears; it enables dogs to offload all that fear and aggression into the tug toy.

So it seems to me that instead of using desensitization techniques, or the BAT (Behavior Adjustment Training) or CAT (Constructional Aggression Treatment) protocols, which are designed to dull a dog's responses to fearful stimuli, I think what’s really needed is a way to give the dog an alternative, deeply emotional experience, one that allows him to get the "stuck" feelings out of his system, and thus feel a more “pleasurable outcome” than he’s getting by barking furiously at the other dog, person, or inanimate object, or by being put in a position where he has to put his feelings on hold. Because no matter how well a dog can do that, if he's ever put in a position where the same level of emotional intensity is re-triggered, all that counterconditioning and de-sensitization goes out the window.