Did your dog really react out of nowhere... or did you just miss this?

Did your dog really react out of nowhere... or did you just miss these signs?

It's one of the most common things I hear from reactive dog owners:

"He just exploded."
"She reacted out of nowhere."
"There weren't any warning signs."
"they're so unpredictable!"

But, what if your dog had actually been communicating long before the barking, lunging or growling began?

In this episode, we're diving into one of the biggest misconceptions in dog training: the belief that reactive behaviour happens without warning. I'll explain why most dogs don't suddenly "lose it," how subtle body language often goes unnoticed, and why learning to recognise those early signs can completely change the way you approach your walks.

We'll also explore why so many owners become exhausted trying to stop the behaviour, when the real breakthrough comes from understanding what's driving it in the first place.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why reactive dogs rarely "come out of nowhere"
• The subtle body language most owners miss
• How trigger stacking can lead to seemingly unpredictable reactions
• Why behaviour is communication, not just something to stop
• A simple exercise to help you start reading your dog's signals before they reach breaking point

If you've ever walked away from a reaction wondering what just happened, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever found yourself saying, he just exploded, or she reacted out of nowhere? Maybe you thought that there weren't any warning signs. Now, if you have, this is something that I hear quite a lot. So you're definitely not on your own. In fact, I probably hear these words every single week when I'm working with clients. Someone will send me a video of their walk or they'll tell me about what happened that morning and they'll say, Claire, I honestly don't know what happened. They were absolutely fine one second and then the next, they just lost it. And I can completely understand why it might feel this way because when you're holding the lead, you're trying to keep everyone safe, worrying about who's watching you, hoping today might finally be a good walk, that the moment your dog barks or lunges is all-consuming. Like that's the bit that you remember. It's it's loud, it's embarrassing, it's stressful. But here's the thing for your dog, that reaction didn't start there. It actually started much earlier. Now, one of the biggest shifts I ever made as a trainer wasn't learning another technique. It wasn't discovering like a magic exercise or finding a better harness or a different lead. It was learning to stop asking, how do I stop this behaviour? And instead, what I started to do was I started to ask, okay, why did my dog feel they needed that behavior in the first place? And that one question completely changed how I looked at reactive dogs. Because when we are, when uh dogs are using behavior, it's it's communication, always. And sometimes that communication says, I'm scared. Sometimes it can be saying, like, I need more space, I'm overwhelmed. And, you know, we have other emotions that we have to think about as well, like frustration, uncertainty. But the long and short of it is your dog's behavior is always telling you something. I think the problem is that most of us only start listening when our dogs start shouting, when they're at that top end of the ladder of aggression. So I just want you to imagine having a conversation with someone for a second. Like they're quietly telling you that they're uncomfortable, but you don't hear them. And they repeat themselves. Still, nothing. And eventually they start raising their voice. Now, everyone turns around and says, Wow, you're a lot. That wasn't necessary, or that came out of nowhere. But did it? Or did nobody listen until they shouted? And when we look at reactive dogs, we can often find those similarities in in their behaviors as well. I think this is why so many owners of reactive dogs can become exhausted. Not because the dog is difficult, but because they've been fighting the wrong battle. You know, I I know what it's like. You're trying to stop the barking, the lunging, the growling, the pulling, just just to, you know, all of the undesirable behaviors that your dog might be presenting. It feels like every single walk can become a battle against that undesirable behaviour. But for me, I don't think behaviour is actually the problem. I think it's the symptom. And trying to remove the symptom without understanding what's causing it underneath is like putting tape over the warning light on your car dashboard. You know, the light disappears from your your eyeline, but the problem doesn't. So, like when it comes to client videos, especially, like I'll often analyze a lot analyse them, and I find it fascinating. You know, they'll they'll tell me, as I said earlier, Claire, there was there was honestly no warning. But then we slow that video down, and suddenly we start to see and uncover more behind it, like the the dogs stop sniffing or their mouth closed, maybe their breathing changed, their body stiffened, their weight started shifting, eyes locked on or their ears moved, or some anything like that. You know, sometimes all of that happens 10 to 15 seconds before the bark. Sometimes it can be longer, sometimes it can be shorter, but the moral of the story is the warning signs were there all along. Just nobody had ever shown the owner what it was that they were looking for. And, you know, why would you know? If you you don't know what you don't know. And most people have never been taught how dogs communicate. I really like my human analogies, and I always try to tell people to think of it like a volcano. Nobody says a volcano erupted out of nowhere. Scientists who study these volcanoes know that there are signs long before the eruption. The pressure might build, the ground might change, gases escape, temperature rises. I mean, I'm I'm no scientist in volcanoes, but I do know that by the time the lava appears, the process has been going on for quite a while. And the scientists will have picked up on that. And your your dog's barking and reactivity is a bit like that lava. It's it's just the visible part. It's it's not the beginning. Now, there's something else that catches people out when it comes to reactivity, and that's called trigger stacking. Your dog doesn't like wake up with a completely empty bucket every morning, just like we don't. You know, you go through the week and you you've done more and more work and your bucket's more and more full and you're more and more tired. And your dog's the same. They don't wake up with a completely empty bucket every morning. Maybe they've had things stacking up through the week that's been filling that bucket. Maybe they were barking out of the window when the postman arrived. Maybe another dog walked past the house. Maybe they didn't sleep particularly well, and then the walk starts, and we've got cyclists and we've got runners and we've got kids playing, and and then another dog appears, and that's the moment that they start to explode. Like it's very easy to blame the other dog, but was it really just the other dog, right? Or was it that simply the final drop into that bucket that had been filling all morning was the dog. So when you start looking at your dog's day as a whole, rather than judging every reaction in like isolation, so much more can begin to make sense to you. Now, a lot of the people that I work with don't want like robot dogs. They just want to be able to go for a normal walk. And I get it, I really do. And that I think that that's a more than achievable goal to aim for because owning a reactive dog can be exhausting, but sometimes in our desperation to kind of get through the walk without another reaction, we stop paying attention to what our dog is actually telling us. We become so focused on preventing the explosion that we just miss everything that was leading up to it. So here's something I'd love for you to try this week. Don't worry about changing your dog's behavior right now, okay? Instead, I want you to start becoming curious. I want you to watch and observe them. I want you to notice when they stop sniffing or when their breathing rate changes, notice when they become still, notice where and what it is that they're looking at, and notice what happens just before they become uncomfortable. Like you're not trying to fix anything here, you're just simply gathering information on your individual dog. Because the more that you can start to understand your dog's communication, the earlier you'll start to spot the moment where you can actually step in and start helping them. And that's where your real progress is. Not after the explosion, long before it. So if there's one thing I want you to take away from today's episode, it's this. Your dog probably isn't reacting out of nowhere. They are simply communicating in a language that most people have never been taught to recognize. And once you start learning that language, everything begins to feel less unpredictable. It starts to feel less chaotic and less hopeless and strangely a lot less exhausting. Because you, you know, you stop fighting the dog in this battle and and you start to understand them instead. So if today's episode resonated with you and you'd like to learn more about understanding your dog's behavior before it reaches that break-in point, come and join my free reactive dog reset insiders list. You'll get a set series of emails where I will share practical training, advice, behavior insights, and just honest conversation designed to help you feel more confident at both ends of the lead. You'll find the link for this in the show notes, and I'd love to have you there.