By the time your dog is barking and lunging, you’ve already missed a whooooole lot of what’s going on. Reactivity doesn’t start when your dog explodes. It starts WAY before that (and the state of mind your dog is in when they encounter a trigger matters). Dogs are constantly giving you information. Their ears go up, their body gets stiff, they start fixating on another dog. These are all things you should be paying attention to. The problem is, most owners don’t recognize these signals until the dog is already reacting. Good handling is about learning to read your dog, recognizing when things are starting to escalate, and stepping in BEFORE the behavior happens. Not waiting until your dog is losing its mind at the end of the leash. — dog reactivity, reactive dog, dog training, dog aggression, dog behavior, Maryland