Reactivity is often very difficult to explain, because it means different things to different people. But If I had to try and explain reactivity succinctly, it would be a ‘A response to a stimulus’, which is actually the Dictionary definition too. However, when we put that into context, being reactive is actually a normal part of life! If someone came up to you head-on and pushes their face into your face, you’d react either by backing away, pushing the person away or asking what the hell they’re doing, and that’s just a few options of what you might do! The thing with that incident is that personally, I would deem that to be a very reasonable response or ‘reaction’ to the event or stimulus. My thoughts are the same when it comes to dogs. If a dog gets charged at, or bowled over by another dog and they react with a bark, growl or lunge to tell the dog they’re not happy with that experience, I would deem that to be a very reasonable response to that event or stimulus.

So it begs the question, why do we use reactivity to label dogs who go way over the top around certain stimulus? Well, its easy for people to get their heads around the word reactive when it comes to dog’s doing amplified behaviours around the presence of a stimulus. However, this is what I would deem to be over-reactive.

Over-reactivity, for me, is an disproportionately strong or excessive response to a stimulus. For most people with dog reactive dogs, that shows itself like the dog losing it whenever they see one of their triggers, even if the trigger is nowhere near!

To make things easier, and for the purpose of this course, when we say reactive, we’re actually referring to over-reactive behaviour