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Struggling with reactivity? It’s more common than you think.

If you’ve ever felt frustrated managing reactivity, you’re not alone.

Here’s why it happens—and how to achieve neutrality around triggers.

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Before addressing reactivity, it's important to understand what triggers it.

• Social Stressors: People and dogs

• Environmental Stressors: Locations, surfaces, loud noises, and objects

• Physical Stressors: Pain, frustration, and forced compliance

Nature and nurture determine how easily dogs react to stressors.

Lemme break it down. 👇

How Nature Affects Reactivity

🛡️🧬 Defense Genetics

Reactivity is common in puppies (like Aki) that have a low threshold for defense.

These dogs are highly sensitive to perceived threats and are easily triggered into a fight or flight response.

This manifests as hyper vigilance but can escalate to threat displays or avoidance.

Territoriality and resource guarding are common examples of defensive genetics.

🔗 What happens when they’re on a leash

Leash restraint removes their ability to create distance. When avoidance isn’t an option, they’ll counter with threat displays to drive it away.

Uncommitted Threat Displays: Staring, hackling, stiffening, staccato barking, and growling

Committed Threat Displays: Lunging and biting

If any of these drive the threat away or cause you to pull them away, they’ll become self-reinforcing habits.

In other words, they’ll learn that they can control the situation and overcome their insecurity through aggression.

Trainers building protection dogs intentionally do this using decoys who exert social and spatial pressure. This helps build their confidence around stressors.

But not every dog reacts out of defense drive (fight or flight).

There's a second genetic component...

🐿️🧬 Prey Genetics

Reactivity is also common in puppies with a low threshold for prey.

These dogs are highly sensitive to movement, making them quick to trigger into predatory behaviors.

This often manifests as stalking, chasing, and biting anything that resembles prey—including small animals, fast-moving objects, or even running children.

When they’re restrained 🔗, frustration builds, which can escalate into aggression. Some dogs redirect this frustration onto their handlers if they don’t have an outlet.

Although infrequent, it can happen. A local K-9 handler showed me a bite from his apprehension dog. Some handlers have been bit for withholding a reward!

🐕‍🦺🧬 Breed Genetics

At the extreme end, some working breeds inherit the A22 gene—also known as rage syndrome. Not to be confused with idiopathic aggression.

Beyond genetics, socialization plays a key role in shaping reactivity.

Here’s what I wish I knew about socializing a low threshold for defense puppy, like Aki.

How Nurture Affects Reactivity

📈 Prioritize Positive Experiences

Socialization is an ongoing process that encompasses all their experiences.

Many vets recommend waiting until puppies finish their vaccines before socializing, but this can delay crucial early learning.

Some trainers recommend that puppies training for protection shouldn’t be socialized or allowed to interact with people. This is unproductive and dangerous since sociability is independent of protection drives and skills.

Safe, controlled exposure in proximity to various bio sensory stimuli reduces the risk of long-term insecurity and builds confidence.

🎢 Be Patient During Fear Periods

Puppies may temporarily develop insecurities during natural developmental stages until adulthood.

📉 Avoid Bad Experiences

Bad experiences—like forced interactions or unavoidable exposure to stressors—can sensitize your dog and create superstitious associations. 

By proactively enforcing their boundaries, they learn to trust that you can handle situations, so they don’t feel the need to react.

Alright, now that you know what influences reactivity, here are three techniques trainers use to manage it.

3 Techniques To Modify Reactivity

1️⃣ Counter-Conditioning & Desensitization

Create neutrality by setting up controlled environments where your dog can have positive experiences near triggers without direct interaction.

Ideally, the stressor becomes a cue for something positive—but when that’s not possible… 👇

2️⃣ Teach Incompatible Behaviors

Replace reactive responses by proactively redirecting your dog into engagement, teaching them to focus on you instead of the trigger.

3️⃣ Using Positive Punishment (when necessary)

⚠️ Disclaimer: Positive punishment is not effective for modifying self-defensive reactivity. Punishing threat displays can make reactivity harder to predict. 

However, it can be effective in modifying self-reinforcing prey-driven reactivity when redirection or blocking is not an option.

Let’s put these techniques into action to raise your dog’s threshold and build resilience around stressors.

7 Step Reactivity Modification Guide

1️⃣ Provide Structured Enrichment

Mental and physical enrichment helps take the edge off, allowing them to focus better when introduced to stressors.

2️⃣ Carry Rewards

Skip a meal and use high-value rewards to keep them engaged.

3️⃣ Be Calm

Energy travels down the leash. If you're tense or anxious, your dog will be too.

4️⃣ Establish Threshold Baseline

Measure how far your dog can be from a specific stressor before they show avoidance, threat displays, or refuse rewards.

5️⃣ Set Up Controlled Environments

Introduce low-intensity stressors independently at a distance that they’re comfortable with, keeping them below threshold.

• If they're triggered by social stressors: Use neutral dogs and people who ignore your dog

• If they're triggered by environmental stressors: Introduce a clatter stick at a low volume

If you can’t control the environment, remove your dog from the situation to prevent a reaction. Use tight inside turns to block their line of sight.

6️⃣ Redirect With Rewards

Proactively redirect your dog using high-value rewards after they notice the stressor but before any escalation.

Say their name → use light leash pops if they don’t respond → back up and move the treat away so they chase it → feed them 1-5 treats individually to prevent them from checking out.

🔁 Repeat until they relax in the presence of the trigger and voluntarily focus on you instead. Reward every voluntary check-in.

Box feeding is also a great way to build confidence around environmental stressors. 

7️⃣ Gradually Increase Threshold

Increase the intensity of the stressor progressively by decreasing distance, introducing new environments, and applying it in different contexts.

The Goal? Build toward neutrality and confidence in any setting.

TL;DR: Reactivity is mainly a fight-or-flight response to perceived threats. You can raise your dog’s tolerance for stressors through structured positive experiences, engagement, and confidence-building.

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Sam’s Picks

• Michael Ellis on Counter Conditioning Anxiety (LINK)

• Michael Ellis on Learning To Redirect Your Puppy (LINK) (LINK)

• Michael Ellis on Management to Prevent Unwanted Behaviors (LINK)

• Lecture on Punishment from Michael Ellis School (LINK)

Tail End Trivia