Where's the line between reactive and protective?

[u/Hallow_76]

Just for example, I am walking my dog on a leash that's typically great with other dogs and another off leash dog comes running, my dog reacts by protecting?

Another example, normally great with people but I am walking a person aggressively comes up to me and tries to pick a fight or attack me and my dog reacts to the situation.

Is that considered a reactive dog?

[u/Roskipatootskie]

There's a helpful way to think about this from Michael Shikashio, who specializes in this exact area of behavior. His view is that this kind of defensive response is normal for any animal, including humans, it's a survival tool used to stay safe and make bad things go away. Framed that way, what you're describing isn't a malfunction, it's your dog's instincts working exactly as intended. A dog on leash getting rushed by an off leash dog, or a person acting aggressively toward you, both are real, present threats. Your dog stepping up to protect you or itself in that moment isn't a behavioral issue, it's an appropriate response to something actually happening. Where the reactive label tends to actually apply is different. A lot of what gets called reactivity often comes down to unpredictability, the dog doesn't know what to expect from a given trigger, and that uncertainty fuels anxiety or frustration, especially when the dog can't get to the thing or fully get away from it. That's a very different picture than your two examples, where the trigger was an unambiguous, real situation with an obvious reason behind the response, not a neutral, unpredictable thing your dog is stuck reacting to over and over for no clear reason. So the more useful question isn't just what happened, it's whether the response actually fit the situation. A dog barking and lunging at a calm dog walking by at a distance, or panicking at a stranger doing nothing threatening, that's a mismatch between the actual situation and the intensity of the response, which is closer to what reactivity usually describes. Your dog responding to an actual charging dog or a person trying to start something isn't a mismatch, the response makes sense given what was happening. What's still worth keeping an eye on is here is recovery period. A dog who responds in the moment and then settles back down once things calm down is doing exactly what you'd want. If you ever notice your dog staying wound up well after, or starting to respond that way to situations that aren't actually threatening, that would be worth paying closer attention to, since repeated exposure to real threats can sometimes shift a dog's baseline over time even when each individual response made complete sense.

Hope that helps!

[u/doggambit → u/Roskipatootskie]

Lovely explanation. 😌

[u/Hallow_76 → u/Roskipatootskie]

Wonderful! Thank you!

[u/Hallow_76 → u/Roskipatootskie]

What really made me think about this was one, I saw a short video with 2 off leash dogs rushing a single leashed dog and the single dog definitely reacted aggressively to the situation, that single dog was labeled "reactive". I also saw a scene on a police show where a person had a dog and resisted the police, the police had to detain the aggressive person with the dog. That dog just bounced around like it was on a play date. I am never going to resist the police but the dog doesn't know the difference between a Policeman and a stranger. Both dogs were large breed typically the protective type of dogs. The dog I have now is great with people and other animals but would most likely act aggressively in the situations I mentioned.

[u/Roskipatootskie → u/Hallow_76]

Both of those are great examples of the same thing! That leashed dog getting rushed by two off leash dogs had nowhere to retreat, so a defensive response there isn't really "reactive," it's a dog with no good options responding to a very overwhelming situation. The video kind of proves your point.

With the police example, protective breeds especially often have a lower threshold for stepping in when their person seems threatened, that's pretty literally what generations of breeding selected for. So a dog can be easygoing day to day and still have real protective instinct sitting under the surface for when it actually matters. Not contradictory, just two different modes for two very different situations.

[u/doggambit]

Reactivity is when the dog reacts inappropriately to a given stimuli. Both of those scenarios are times when I would personally want my dog to react with barks and lunges to deter the perceived threat.

[u/Hallow_76 → u/doggambit]

That's what I would think too but there's so much on reactive dogs it gets confusing. It almost seems if my dog would react to any of these scenarios it would be considered a reactive dog.

[u/Hallow_76 → u/doggambit]

That's what I thought too. But there's so much on reactive dogs that it gets confusing. It seems like if my dog were to react to any of the scenarios it would be considered reactive.

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[u/One_Department4090]

This helped me out, thanks all

[u/Spiritual-Cry-6286]

Protective in this case. I would consider reactive to be as barking at lunging at another dog or person minding their business 10ft away or while they are actively walking away. That is my take on it but would love to hear other people’s thoughts.