What Is Dog Reactivity Training?

Dog reactivity training is designed to help dogs feel safer, calmer, and more confident around their triggers. The focus is on understanding why your dog is reacting and supporting them in a way that improves their inner emotional state.

Reactivity training begins with meeting your dog’s 15 needs. Diet, health, hygiene, sleep, mental stimulation, physical stimulation, safety and security to name a few. When these needs are met as best as possible, dogs feel more balanced, more fulfilled, and less stressed, creating a stronger foundation for learning. If your dog’s less stressed, they’re more likely to remain calm and respond well to training.

Management plays a key role: preventing overwhelming or negative exposure to triggers, so that your dog isn’t repeatedly pushed into reactive moments and rehearsing unwanted behaviours, which would just make reactivity worse and store stress in their body.

The training itself is focussed on positively reintroducing your dog to triggers through counter-conditioning and desensitisation techniques, beginning at the realistic starting point for your dog and always progressing gradually at their pace. The aim is to build more positive/neutral associations at a distance from triggers first, and then gradually expand your dog’s comfort zone to closer proximity to triggers while they feel calm and confident throughout the process.

Every dog has different triggers, thresholds, and learning styles, so the process and techniques used must be personalised. Reactivity training is about meeting your dog’s needs, listening to their communication, and guiding them through a thoughtful, science-based process to build a more calm and positive emotional response to triggers, so that they don’t need to use reactive behaviour anymore.