28/06/2025
"I don't understand why he reacts sometimes, look at him, he is fine"
We hear this kind of thing a lot, whether it is about a dog who sometimes reacts to people, other dogs or some other trigger, owners often describe their dogs as being "fine" in the past with the trigger, or "fine" with the trigger right before an outburst. They might even mention their dog is "fine" during a training session when we are working with a trigger. In fact we hear this so often that one of my trainer friends and I used to say "fine is a four letter word."
What people usually mean when they say a dog is "fine" is that the dog is QUIET. That they aren't growling, barking, lunging or reacting wildly. But there is a BIG difference between quiet, and fine. By the time a dog is reacting loudly, they have likely been showing LOTS of subtle signs of discomfort, stress, avoidance, attempts to maintain distance etc. up until that point. The problem is, humans just aren't that good at reading dog.
In this video you'll see Oscar, a sweet, worried retriever mix who has been coming to me to help work on his reactions to other dogs. When he sees dogs passing his property or out in the woods he reacts BIG TIME - lots of noise, charging up to them if he is off-leash. This video is his second session working in a controlled set up with another dog as part of his behavior modification plan.
In his first session, we presented a live dog at a GREAT distance, probably 150ft or more. He took ONE look at the dog, licked his lips, turned his head down and started to frantically chew at the grass. After a few moments when he looked up and saw she was still there, he turned his entire body around, standing with his rear end facing the dog, staring in the opposite direction, with his mouth closed, before then resuming some grass eating.
He didn't bark. He didn't growl. He didn't lunge.
But was he "fine"?
Absolutely not. He was so completely distressed at the sight of a totally calm dog standing hundreds of feet away that he did everything he could to completely avoid them, and pretend they didn't exist. The lip licking, the grass chewing, the looking away, the turning around - all of these behaviors were signs of stress and displacement. He didn't know how to get out of the situation, and he could NOT handle it.
Many people would have looked at him and thought he was "fine" just a dog, standing in a field, looking off into the distance while another dog minded their own business. But to me, I saw a dog who was completely overwhelmed, terrified, and avoiding and it was easy to understand why in situations where a dog was closer, or coming towards him that he would feel the need to explode in an attempt to keep that dog from getting closer to him.
In our first session, we gave him more space, moving further away from the dog and giving him what he REALLY wanted - distance from "the scary thing" (because that is what most "aggression" really is, an attempt to get distance, to make the "scary thing" move away) and even then he could barely look at her. We kept our session short, and full of reinforcement.
In his second session, we did see some noticeable improvements - he still did plenty of avoiding, but he was able to look at the other dog several times, and started to learn a nice pattern of looking at the dog, looking away from the dog and getting a treat. But he STILL wasn't "fine"
In this video you'll see some clips of different examples of him NOT being fine. Quickly glancing at the dog without really "seeing" her, licking his lips, sniffing intently at the ground, looking at his owner, or me or ANYTHING other than the dog, stress wrinkles around his mouth as he panted, turning completely away from her to sniff at the bushes around him.
None of that behavior signals comfort. He did make good progress with this session, getting braver and looking at the other dog more, needing less breaks and avoiding less. We worked at greater distances to help him feel safer, and helped him start to understand that this particular dog was not a threat, his body language loosened and he showed less signs of stress. But he still wasn't "fine", he was just beginning to learn how to cope.
Oscar will keep coming back, and over time he WILL learn to feel fine about the presence of another dog, and he will show that to us with his body language, by being able to calmly look at her, by not seeking distance, by being loose and relaxed instead of tense and avoidant. But it will take time.
There are many, many dogs out there who are doing their very best to tell their owners and the people and dogs around them that they are NOT FINE. That they are overwhelmed, uncomfortable, or scared of something. And usually, the sad reality is we just aren't picking up the signals they are putting down. As a result, over time they learn to really SHOUT in an attempt to keep themselves safe, and then we label them as reactive, or aggressive.
The more we can learn to read our dogs subtle signals, the better we can understand their behavior and support them, preventing behavior problems from forming, and above all - keeping them safe!
Stay tuned for Oscar's progress, soon he will be a changed dog!
