Why is my dog snarling in the window?: A Breakdown of Barrier Reactivity

My Aussie Marco is a really friendly and well adjusted dog. He came to me with a great temperament at 8 weeks old and through mountains of socialization he has continued to be my most trustworthy dog around other dogs, small animals, babies and of course new people. Marco however has a secret... he use to be extremely barrier reactive. What does this mean? 


Barrier reactivity is when you put a dog behind a fence, kennel door, window, leash, etc. and they see a person or another dog or small animal. An over reaction follows that might include lunging, growling, showing of teeth, barking, snarling, etc. Marco literally went from wiggling, happy puppy to full on vampire face. Even my trainer friends thought he was aggressive until of course I opened the kennel door and poof it vanished and my happy boy was back. 


Marco had a very specific form of barrier reactivity that occurred only when he was in his kennel and saw another dog. It also had to be a dog he didn't know well (the other dogs in my house didn't elicit any sort of reaction from him). I deduced that for Marco it occurred because he was extremely frustrated that he couldn't go meet the other dogs and he would blow up like a toddler having a temper tantrum until he got his way and was allowed to play. This behaviour first appeared at 6 months (right around when adolescence kicks in) and I had solved the problem before he reached 8 months. It did take some work though. 


So now that you have a good idea of what barrier reactivity is you're probably wondering how you can solve it? Well it depends on WHY your dog is reacting. A good trainer can help you figure this one out. A dog that is overly excited is different than a dog that is fearful. Both dogs can demonstrate barrier reactivity. I would address the issues quite differently though. An over excited dog needs to learn impulse control (Marco had to wait to be quiet before I would let him out of the kennel to play so he learned quiet, calm behaviour got him what he wanted instead of growling). A scared dog (like Heidi) needed a confidence boosting program to help her learn to trust not only me but understand that people passing by aren't going to hurt her. 


The good news is that barrier reactivity is one of those issues that can be resolved within a fairly reasonable amount of time and improve the dog's (and owner's) quality of life fairly significantly. 


Where's Your Sit? offers 2 fun group classes that can help both hyper, excited dogs as well as fearful dogs. Check out our Hyper Dog Program or our Confidence Booster Program to help your pup today. We also offer private, in home training that can address this issue. 

Why Does My Dog Go Crazy On Leash?

Increasingly pet owners are complaining about dogs that seem to go crazy on leash when they see other dogs, people or wildlife but are fine off leash. So what's going on?


Dogs are inherently social creatures and like to investigate their world. When off leash they can determine how to approach (distance, speed, posture, if to approach at all, etc) but we add a leash to the situation and suddenly the dog has no choices at all. Add in the fact that very few humans that are aware of dog body language and social behaviour and there's disaster. Scared dogs learn that they are forced to interact with unknowns in their environment in an unpleasant way. Hyper/friendly dogs learn that they can't get access to exciting stimuli and become frustrated. 

And then leash reactivity happens. That's the behaviour where a dog is at the end of his/her leash barking/lunging/growling, etc or running around in circles with the same results. Most of the time the owners are really embarrassed and don't know what to do. 


This is definitely the time to call in a positive reinforcement trainer to help you come up with a plan. Fearful dogs will need different protocols than hyper/friendly dogs. A good dog trainer can spot the difference where most people can't. Sometimes a very scared dog looks hyper or aggressive. You won't get anywhere if you can't tell the difference. 

Many training academies will offer special classes for dogs with these issues but I highly recommend you start with private one on one training. A lot of the work can start right in the home. 


My own Miniature Schnauzer Heidi came to me as a fearful reactive dog. She would bark and have a fit at anything that moved (people, dogs, cats, birds, bikes, skateboards, leaves, etc). You wouldn't know it today. We worked slowly on desensitizing her to each environmental fear (and I mean slowly as it took well over a year) and at the same time participated in confidence building activities and fine tuned her obedience skills. Heidi now helps me work with other fearful reactive dogs as she can be a relaxing prescence. That's success! Help is out there and the longer you wait the worse it tends to get. 

How To Use Your "Leave It" Cue

So many dog owners are now choosing to attend a basic dog training class. They learn skills like sit, down, stay, heel, leave it and recall. Or at least they sort of learn these skills depending on how much they practice. What I have noticed is that even though dogs and their families are learning these cues they aren't sure how or when to use them. 

Let's discuss the important Leave It or Mine cue. This means that you've asked your dog to not touch and back off an object such as a treat, toy or person. Many dogs get really good at this as a party trick. I can easily line up treats on my dogs' legs as they look away waiting for a chance to earn one. However Leave It as many real world applications that could help you out. 

Here's some examples:

Situation #1
I'm walking my dog down the street and we have to pass another owner and dog. My dog starts to get excited, pull and even bark! I can ask my dog to leave it, focus on me and then heel on or leave it, focus on me and do a sit stay as they pass. So much better than yelling at my dog, yanking on the leash or allowing him to pull me over. 

Situation #2
I'm cooking some hamburgers for dinner and one falls off the plate! All four of my dogs do a mad scramble to grab these delectable entry. A good leave it means they all back off and I get my burger back.

Situation #3
My young puppy has grabbed a boot and is playing keep away. He thinks he's being so cute with it. I know that if I chase him he'll never give it up. So instead I ask him to leave it and then call him to me. The boot is left behind, forgotten until I put it away where he can't get it. 

Situation #4
I'm at the dog park and of course one of my dogs finds a dead duck sitting near the river. Well I definitely don't want to grab that out of his mouth nor do I want one of my other dogs to dart in and start a tug of war. I ask them to leave it and the finder dog promptly drops the duck and all dogs follow me away from it. I didn't even get my hands dirty and no one ate it. 

Situation #5
It's winter and one of the dogs is in the yard eating poop... yes it happens and the jury is still out why they do it. I don't care why right now; I want him to stop it. So I open the door yell out leave it and he drops the yucky stuff. 

And there's more you can do with leave it! It's one handy cue word. Leave it can be applied to anything you don't want your dogs to have (objects, people, dogs, garbage, rocks, etc). It can also stop dog fights in the home... for example if one of your dogs is guarding a toy or bone and it is about to trigger a battle. I can easily claim the object by saying leave it and removing it. It saves a lot of trouble! 

Remember that if you have a dog that guards things like bones, food or toys you will need to contact a professional trainer or behaviourist to help you. It's very important to understand dog body language when dealing a potentially threatened pet. We don't want to push our dogs to guard or bite us. There's many ways to use desensitization to change that situation around over time. 

Contact Where's Your Sit if you want more information on leave it or resource guarding issues. We would be more than happy to help!