Living With a Reactive Dog: What No One Tells You (and What Helped Me Survive It)

Living with a reactive dog changes your whole life — not just your walks.

It's like you become the lookout, constantly scanning the environment for movement before your dog even catches a whiff (and then we also wonder who they get that from).

You adjust your entire routine around quiet times, avoid routes that might have people or dogs, and tense up the moment you hear a bark in the distance or see the dreaded sight of a dog walking towards you. You constantly cross streets. Use cars to your advantage as a hiding spot. I even changed my job at the time to make our lives easier.

Any of this sounding familiar yet? Because I can go on...but to sum it up you live on the edge, constantly on the struggle bus.

It’s exhausting — emotionally, physically, mentally...and I personally think we all deserve a gold star.

Yes, training helps, having a solid obedience and engagement foundation will do wonders with you and your dogs transformation — but it wasn’t what truly changed things for me, it was only part of the puzzle.

The shift happened when I finally started to understand the bigger picture:

Reactivity isn’t a switch that dogs have the control of turning off and on (becaue that would be easy and unfortunately the worthwhile things aren't easy). It’s system overload. And, if you don’t learn to track and support the layers underneath, you’ll always feel stuck and repeat the same patterns over and over.

That’s when I stopped just "trying to fix the problem” and started learning to manage the whole dog first before focusing on strategies for reactivity, so he could cope with the mountain we were about to climb.

When we only look at reactivity as a “behaviour issue,” we miss the bigger message underneath it because reactivity is never just the barking, lunging, or acting like a psychopath — it’s a form of communication and that communication usually is screaming one thing...

“I’m not okay.”

Reactivity is your dog’s nervous system going into fight, flight, or freeze. It’s not a conscious choice — it’s a reflex, and the more dysregulated your dog is, the more often they’ll explode over things that seem “small” — because that system never truly gets a break.

So what could your dog’s reactivity actually mean?

Stress from earlier in the day (or week, or even longer!) is still in their system. They haven’t had a chance to reset and recover, so every new trigger tips them over the edge faster.

When dogs are never allowed to make choices, say “no,” or decompress, they start to lose emotional flexibility. This can increase frustration and also conflict in the relationship. Some dogs may act more impulsively due to the frustration or even just so they can feel some form of control.

This is more of a frustration-based reactivity — like wanting to say hi, but being restrained. This usually stems from a lack of impulse control and also often the sign of a dysregulated dog.

Sound, motion, new environments, even too much excitement can overwhelm sensitive and dysregulated dogs. Reactivity becomes their emergency valve that they resort to releasing.

To be completely honest with you, as hard as you may even try — some days just break you.

You head out with the best of intentions, a solid plan, and a positive attitude...and then you come home crushed. Maybe your dog exploded over something small. Maybe nothing even happened, but your dog was so disengaged and tense all walk that you still came back stressed and shaky because your nervous system never got a break (and chances are your dogs didn't either).

These are the days no one else sees. These are the days that make it so isolating when you don't have a support system or a community of people going through the same thing. These are the days that often push you to burnout.

What's even worse is the self doubt that starts to creep in...

One thing that I learned the hard way is that structure is more than just training cues. It’s about creating a life that supports regulation and teaches the foundations of better habits.

The more structure you place, the more freedom your dog will get in the future.The more regulated your dog is, the more choices they'll be able to make.

Some of the biggest game changers?

When your dog is constantly reacting, it’s easy to think you need a major intervention, but sometimes, the most powerful shifts start with the smallest of tweaks.

Here are a few changes that helped massively in my journey with Jasper — and they’re super doable, even on your busiest days.

Ever have one of those weeks where your dog just feels off — more barky, more restless, less responsive — and you just can’t figure out why?

That used to be me, until I started journaling and tracking our progress.

Not just the meltdowns, but the little stuff too: rest, arousal, routines, patterns, and suddenly, the chaos started to make more sense. I could finally see what was building pressure and how to shift things before it overflowed.

That’s exactly why I created the Digital Dog Training Journal — so you can get the same clarity, without drowning in notebooks.

[Start Tracking Your Progress Today]

One of the biggest breakthroughs I had with Jasper didn’t come from a new technique believe it or not, it came from changing the way I thought about (and saw) his behaviour.

For the longest time, I was laser-focused on “fixing” the reactivity — managing outbursts, stopping the lunging, getting him to behave. I thought it was a personal attack on me when he couldn't control himself (in the overwhelming situations I was putting him in), so we did more...and the more I chased behaviour, the more stuck we became.

Reactivity isn’t just a behaviour problem. It’s a regulation problem.

And solving it isn’t about suppression — it’s about reshuffling the whole system which means shifting the order you tackle things in, and the mindset you bring to the process.

This is where boundaries stop being about punishment — and start being about clarity. They teach your dog what to expect. They give structure to their world. And when paired with regulation work, those boundaries become habits… and those habits turn into freedom.

Shifting your perspective won’t magically fix your dog overnight, but it will unlock a different kind of momentum. One where you’re not constantly firefighting behaviour — you’re rebuilding capacity, connection, resilience, and calm from the inside out.

Living with a reactive dog takes a toll — not just on your routines, but on your mindset, your social life, your identity, and your energy. This is why the importance of self care for dog owners is such a big passion of mine and one I always preach (I do want to start writing more into this because I think self care and perspective are such a huge part of the journey).

These are a few things that helped me keep going, even when everything felt like too much:

I stopped forcing the idea of what we “should” be doing — like social walks or busy parks, pub gardens — and focused on what brought my dog joy. Quiet sniffari walks, frozen kongs, flirt pole, learning new things and structured play made a massive difference for both of us.

This kind of links in with self care but you shouldn't feel guitly for actually wanting to take time to live your life.

It’s easy to get lost in your dogs needs, their routines, and their issues. That you start struggling to hav you time...reading, going to the gym, talking to friends, going out to enjoy the weather...yes we're dog parents, but we're also people too.

With my dog and my own journey, journaling has done so much in terms of speeding up my growth. Writing down tiny wins — like “didn’t bark at the postman today” — gave me a thread of hope to hold onto. It reminded me we were growing, even if it was slow. Journaling 1 thing that I'd do better the next day with Jasper helped me keep myself on the right path.

This is something I always recommend to people I work with, purely for the fact that by journaling your progress and spotting the patterns you're making, you can constantly course correct and shift on to the right track.

Living with a reactive dog is messy. It’s emotional. It's isolating...it’s just a lot.

BUT there is a way out. Your dog isn’t beyond help. You can learn to handle your reactive dog with confidence and you don’t need to do this perfectly to actually make progress, you just have to make sure you're going in the right direction and stick with it.

You’re showing up. You’re learning. And that’s where change starts.