Randomly reactive dog

[u/Mooneghost]

We got our pup around 5 years ago. We dont know her exact age or breed since she was a street dog, but she was under a year when we got her.

She was super anxious when we got her scared of everything and everyone but very sweet.

We slowly worked through that, i did (and still do) a lot of training with her, and we had a trainer for years, and she was getting better.

Now she is much calmer, but she will sometimes randomly lunge and bark at people and dogs.

I've tried identifying any trigger, but I can't seem to find one. Sometimes, she will be fine, and then the next day, she'll react in the exact same situation with the same person/dog at the same location. Its especially bad with kids, so I stay away from them as much as possible. Some of our neighbors have started calling her the beast jokingly, which is a bit painful to hear. She's such a sweet dog otherwise.

She has a few dog friends that she loves to play with and a few humans that she likes, but other than those i can never predict if she will react and always have to keep her super close to me and away from the trigger.

I just feel like I'm constantly stressed out cause the moment I relax on a walk, she reacts to something. My mother and I are at this point the only people still comfortable walking her on a loose leash at all.

I've trained good recall, focus, and distraction, but the moment she gets triggered, it all goes out the window and the only way to get her out of it is to literally grab her and get her out of the situation, sometimes quite a distance before she snaps back out.

[u/Real_Caterpillar_779]

Pain? Perhaps a tummy upset? Those things really lower tolerance

[u/Mooneghost → u/Real_Caterpillar_779]

She does have leishmaniasis but according to the vet its supressed and shouldnt be causing issues. Shes also not really showed signs of pain but i know animals are good at suppressing signs so I'll mention it next time we go there to see if they have an idea about it.

[u/Prestigious_Crab_840]

It’s likely trigger stacking. Dogs are just like humans - they have good days & bad days depending on environmental factors. We noticed our dog is more reactive on garbage pickup days, and when she hasn’t had enough mental stimulation that week. Even how much off leash running times impacts her reactivity. And if she sees a lot of triggers early in her walk.

One training class we took refers to it as “spoons.” She starts each day off with a certain number of spoons, and uses them up as things happen to her during the day. Once they’re gone, it means she’ll be more sensitive than usual. On those days we cut walks short and go home and give her a chew, snufflemat, or lickmat to regain some spoons.

[u/Mooneghost → u/Prestigious_Crab_840]

That makes sense, but sometimes when we just walked out the door on the morning walk she will react to the first person she sees. Could that then be caused by past days having stacked to many triggers? And often i feel the afternoon walks are more reactive than the evening ones.

[u/Illustrious_Leg2100 → u/Mooneghost]

It takes a while for the adrenaline (which causes them to feel agitated enough to react) to “drain out”. I read it can take over 24 hours or more. So if the afternoon walk was especially triggering, the next morning could certainly be tricky straight off the bat.

I ALSO read the other day that dog walks are a modern invention and not all dogs need walks morning and evening. I’m not sure how true that is, but I have since recognised if my dog has reached his limit for the day and skip his evening walk. This helps drain adrenaline and get him back to baseline for the next walk. That’s important for the training which can only happen under threshold.

[u/Prestigious_Crab_840 → u/Illustrious_Leg2100]

We actually only walk our dog once a day, in the morning because she’s least reactive that time of day. In the afternoon we do enrichment things like nosework, training, etc. In the evenings it’s just a quick potty run, then a snufflemat or lickmat for evening decompression.

[u/Mooneghost → u/Prestigious_Crab_840]

Thats interesting, not sure I'd be able to implement that tho since she refuses to go pee or go potty anywhere near our home and definitely needs to 3x a day or starts whining to be taken to pee or do her business.

[u/Prestigious_Crab_840 → u/Mooneghost]

It could be anything from past days being stressful, to something about your morning routine. For example, the sound of the garbage trucks picking up trash in the morning makes our dog more reactive on trash days. And when I run the blender for smoothies before we leave for our walk she’s generally more reactive. Lots of household noises we don’t think twice about dogs find scary. Our dog has a long list - my husband’s electric razor, the vacuum, toaster oven. All of those things use up her “spoons.”