How to Help a Leash Reactive Dog: The Flight Training Method

Estimated reading time: 6 mins

Imagine something with me for a moment. You’ve just finished watching a news segment on the FBI’s most wanted. Deciding you should probably exercise instead of binging TV, you head out for a walk around the neighborhood. A neighbor stops you partway into your walk to chat. While talking with them, you glance over their shoulder. A man is walking toward you. He looks oddly familiar…you start tuning your friend out as you’re trying to place the stranger.

It hits you. He looks a whole lot like #3 on the FBI’s most wanted list. You feel panic mounting. You mention this to your friend. They glance at him and say, “Oh, that’s just Colin. He lives a few doors down.”

Your friend continues talking, but you can no longer hear them. You’re solely focused on the man walking towards you. Is it possible that he’s #3?

A once-enjoyable conversation now feels like you’re being held hostage in a potentially dangerous situation. Trapped. You hold your breath as Colin walks past and continue sneaking peeks as he walks away to make sure he doesn’t double-back.

What's Going On With Your Leash Reactive Dog

Now, what does all this have to do with dog behavior? I see this same scenario happen all the time with dogs. While on a walk, a dog starts getting nervous as a person or another dog approaches. Their human says, “It’s okay! That’s just Colin.” The dog doesn’t understand English, and even if they did, Colin still seems pretty suspicious. (Sorry to any Colins reading this. I’m sure you’re a lovely person.) Noticing the growing stress, the human, with all the best intentions, asks their dog to sit and watch Colin as he passes. Held hostage. Trapped.

Stop Forcing Your Dog to "Face Their Fears," Do This Instead

How do we avoid holding our dogs hostage? Go away from scary things. Your dog is nervous that Colin is approaching? Give Colin a wide berth. Cross the street. Turn around and go a different direction. Don’t force your dog to remain in a situation that they are uncomfortable in. And, more to the point, don’t force your dog to remain in a situation that they don’t have the skills to navigate successfully.

How Flight Training Works: A Step-by-Step Overview

At Pet Harmony, we teach our clients’ dogs a skill we call flight training. It’s a specific way to move away from scary things that empowers the dog to be able to make that decision for themself – without human intervention.

The steps look something like this:

Pair your flight cue with a change in direction in a controlled setting. Make the reward the best thing since sliced bread- throw a party! Once cue = party, move to the next step.
Make sure the cue works in multiple controlled settings before using it on walks.
Start pairing the flight cue with scary things on walks. Scary thing predicts flight cue (make sure it’s not the other way around, or you can create hypervigilance.)
After a while, you should start to see your dog choosing flight when they see scary things. Let them choose flight; follow them wherever it is they’re deciding to go to remove themselves.

To be successful at teaching flight this way, you’ll need some additional skills and knowledge (Note: I’m using terminology so you know what to search for if you’re trying this on your own. If that’s overwhelming, work with our team to help offload your mental labor):

Ability to read, interpret, and react to body language and behavior in real-time
Know your dog’s ladder of escalation and de-escalation
Identify your dog’s reinforcers, and be able to experiment to find the best party
Timing mechanics for trace or delayed counterconditioning

After more than a decade since we developed this technique, I can confidently say that it’s one of the most important skills we can teach our dogs. I can’t tell you how much more successful I am at working through leash reactivity now that I teach flight training first, rather than trying to do it without that skill. But even if you’re not teaching our specific technique, there’s a whole lot of good you can do by simply encouraging your dog to move away from scary things.

Won't Moving Away Just Make the Fear Worse? (Fair Question)

When I’m working with clients and their leash reactive dogs, the #1 question I get after talking about flight training is this one. It’s a valid question. If the goal is to teach leash reactive dogs that things aren’t scary, then aren’t we reinforcing their fear by letting them move away?

If you want the short, not nuanced, mostly accurate answer: no. Teaching your dog to move away from scary things doesn’t reinforce fear. To give you the nuanced, more accurate answer to how moving away helps them learn that things aren’t scary, we have to break up these questions into their components.

You Can’t Reinforce Fear

The explain-it-to-me-like-i’m-five answer: fear is an emotion. Reinforcement is for behaviors. Emotions aren’t behaviors. So, by definition, you can’t reinforce fear-the-emotion. You can reinforce behaviors often associated with fear, like moving away. It’s not the same thing. For the in-depth answer, check out podcast episode #125.

Having Agency Makes Things Less Scary

It sounds counterintuitive, but when someone has the ability to opt out of a situation, they’re more likely to opt in. Think about it like this. You’re at a doctor’s appointment. A nurse takes your vitals, tells you the doctor will be in shortly, and leaves you alone in the examination room. Normally, you’d pull out your phone and scroll until the doctor comes in. But what if you heard the nurse lock the door- locking you in- after they left? You’re less likely to sit calmly and wait for the doctor; you’re going to start pounding on the door, demanding to be let out. Agency makes a difference.

Approximations Are Key

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make when working with their leash reactive dog is making their steps too big. For example, if their dog is okay at 20’, they try to work at 15’. That makes sense to our human brains, but what if the dog has decided that 17.35’ is actually the correct next step? Teaching flight makes it easier for our dogs to tell us what the next best step is.

My Primary Goal Isn’t Actually to Make Them Learn That Things Aren’t Scary

Hear me out. My primary goal is to help dogs feel comfortable navigating any situation that they’re in. Learning that things aren’t scary is one element of that, but it’s not the whole thing, and it’s not the most important thing. It’s unreasonable to expect a dog to be comfortable 100% of the time in 100% of situations. Humans don’t get to live that life, either. Therefore, instead of solely relying on making things less scary, I want to teach a dog that things aren’t that scary but, even if is something is scary, they have tools for how to navigate that situation successfully and safely.

Here’s to harmony,

Allie

Now What?

When in doubt, have your dog go away from things they find scary. Keep increasing the distance between them and the scary thing until you notice your dog visibly relax.

Reinforce your dog for choosing to move away on their own. You have a visitor, and your dog chooses to go away? Awesome! That’s a skill we usually have to teach to dogs who bark, lunge, and bite at visitors. Your dog is already doing it! Celebrate!

Work with our team to connect all those dots so your dog has skills to successfully and safely navigate day-to-day situations.

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Results are not guaranteed because behavior, human, canine, or otherwise, are not guaranteeable.