Instead of forcing your reactive dog to “face their fears,” try flight training (teaching them to choose to move away from scary things on cue), which builds agency instead of dread. You’ll get the step-by-step process for pairing a flight cue with rewards and applying it to real triggers, plus an answer to the common worry that moving away might reinforce fear (spoilers: it doesn’t). The real goal isn’t eliminating fear, but building coping skills.
Tag: reactive dog
5 Ways Your Dog’s Leash Reactivity Starts Before You Leave
Your dog’s leash reactivity often has less to do with the sidewalk than with everything leading up to it. Here are five hidden triggers to check: undiagnosed pain or GI discomfort, disrupted routines and sleep loss, stacked stress hormones from the prior 72 hours, tense gear or pre-walk rituals, and your own anxious energy. You’ll also find long-term calming projects as a solid Plan B for days when your dog’s “stress cup” is already full and a walk isn’t the answer.
How to Simplify Walks With Your Reactive Dog
Walking a reactive dog is a lot. Treat pouch in one hand, leash in the other, constantly scanning for triggers. Here’s how to plan ahead: choosing predictable, low-contact locations, scheduling walk time around your own bandwidth, and prepping calming projects for after. You’ll also find the specific gear that makes walks manageable, what behaviors to reinforce along the way, and permission to celebrate small wins. Because life with a reactive dog is rarely simple, and that’s okay.
There is No I in Team, but There is a U in Community
You are walking your reactive dog and you are both doing your very best. You have your high value treats in a treat pouch, you have a leash sleeve alerting others that your dog needs space. You are hypervigilant and constantly scanning the area for potential triggers that will send your dog into an over threshold rage. Someone on their phone, paying no attention to you or your dog, walks towards you head on and your dog starts barking and lunging. You already feel bad and deflated. And to top it off, the stranger gives you a side eye and says “Get your dog under control!” which makes the entire situation sting even more. Sound familiar?
Maybe your dog has separation anxiety and cannot be left alone safely. You are working with a Board Certified Veterinary Behaviorist to manage behavioral medications and a Behavior Consultant to help with day to day training. You have not been out of the house for longer than 10 minutes in over a year without a pet sitter or sending your dog to day care. The entire endeavor is costly both financially and emotionally. You try talking to friends and family members about your struggles, hoping for a safe space to share. Instead you get unsolicited advice and feedback- “Just let them cry it out.” ”If I were you I would get rid of that dog,” and other ideations of similar sentiments. These conversations further solidify that you are alone on this journey and there is no one out there that understands your situation. Or is there?
Social Prescriptions for Loneliness
If we zoom out for a moment, from the guardians and trainers of animals with big feelings, to our broader society as a whole, there are some alarming trends. A recent study by the American Psychological Association shared that among more than 3,000 U.S. adults, 69% say they needed more emotional support in the past year than they received. This loneliness epidemic is concerning for our mental health as well as our physical health. The same APA study shared that “Survey data also revealed that those who experience high levels of loneliness were more likely to also be struggling with their physical and mental well-being than those with low loneliness levels.” It’s like loneliness is the tip of the iceberg, and without actively moving away from it, it can take you down just like the Titanic.
Studies continue to prove the positive link between social connection and longevity. Having relationships with friends and family can literally help you live longer! I think it is also important that we normalize the feeling of loneliness. We must be able to recognize and verbalize the feeling before we can work towards healing. As Jeremy Nobel said in this Harvard article “Loneliness is a biological signal indicating that we need human connection, just like thirst is a signal telling us that we need water. I’ve never met anyone embarrassed about being thirsty, so why are we embarrassed about being lonely?” He discusses doctors giving “social prescriptions” for loneliness, meaning that instead of medication, the patient is supposed to find ways to spend time with others.
My challenge to you is to create your own social prescription. Find ways to fill that need for human social connection and community. Sound like a daunting task? Don’t worry – social workers are the givers of resources so I cannot end this blog without doing so! Take a look at the resources below to help build your own village!
For Owners of Dogs with Behavioral Challenges
For Friends & Family of Owners of Dogs with Behavioral Challenges
For Dog Trainers of Dogs with Behavioral Challenges
For All Animal Caretakers & Professionals
You have the tools, now it’s time to try them out!
Your Friend,
Valerie
Copyright 2025 Pet Harmony, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy
Results are not guaranteed because behavior, human, canine, or otherwise, are not guaranteeable.
Is Your Safe Space Actually Safe?
When we first adopted Oso, we knew we were bringing home a dog who was reactive to both people and other dogs. Not long after, he became reactive to loud and/or large vehicles, too. (I talk more about how I caused that in this podcast episode.) We were prepared for that and got to work right away—especially because we lived in a townhome complex with no yard, which meant potty walks weren’t optional.
Inside, our setup seemed ideal. Zorro’s tank lived in front of the front window, which meant Oso couldn’t see out of it. Our back patio faced a tall brick wall. No yard meant no yard stress. No window access meant no watching the world go by and getting riled up. It felt like a win.
And yet… we weren’t making progress. Not at the rate I expected, anyway.
What gives?
One day, I came home on my lunch break and found Oso standing on our bed—on the second floor—barking his fool head off at a dog walking past on the sidewalk. I stood there, confused. Our bedroom balcony faced the brick wall behind our building. How was he seeing the sidewalk?
Turns out, from his height on the bed and the angle of our sliding glass door, he could see the sidewalk. Just enough to react to it.
That was my lightbulb moment. I had been assuming he was peacefully snoozing at home while I was at work, and was fresh and ready to practice our reactivity work in the evenings when I got home. In reality, he was spending his days yelling at passersby and trigger-stacking. No wonder we weren’t making progress!
We put up window film on the balcony doors so he couldn’t see out anymore. And wouldn’t you know it…once he had a space that was actually a break from stress, his progress picked up.
It Was Going Fine… Until It Wasn’t
I’ve heard variations of this story time and again from my clients—sometimes it’s about reactivity, like with Oso. Other times it’s about interspecies relationships, like a dog who suddenly becomes grumpy with a child they previously tolerated well… until we discover that the child is climbing into the dog’s bed while they’re trying to sleep.
Whatever the scenario, the pattern is the same: when we make decisions based on faulty data, we get faulty results.
What We Think Is Safe Doesn’t Always Feel Safe
At Pet Harmony, we say it all the time: only the learner decides what’s reinforcing. That same principle applies to safety. Only the learner decides what feels safe.
We can do our best to set up a cozy, quiet corner and call it a “safe space.” But if your pet doesn’t feel safe there, it isn’t. That’s not a failure—it’s just information. And we can work with that.
What feels safe to one individual may not feel safe to another. And what feels safe when you’re home may feel very different when you’re not.
So… Is Your Pet’s Safe Space Actually Safe?
Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
- Does anyone invade that space?
- Think: kids, other pets, delivery people, roaming Roombas. A “safe space” that’s constantly interrupted can’t serve its intended purpose.
- Do you really know what your pet is doing when you’re not home?
- I thought Oso was napping. He was very much not napping. A pet cam can give you helpful insight into what’s actually happening while you’re away.
- Is your pet choosing to use the space on their own?
- If they’re avoiding it or only using it when guided, it may not feel as safe as you think.
- Is it protected from triggers?
- Can they see or hear (or smell!) things that stress them out? Can those things access the space (like the neighbor’s dog sticking their nose through the fence)? Visual barriers, sound masking, and strategic location can make a big difference.
Safe spaces are a foundational part of helping pets feel secure, emotionally regulated, and ready to learn. But like everything else in behavior, they only work when they work for the individual. If something isn’t progressing the way you expected, it might be time to take a closer look; you might be surprised by what you find.
Here’s to harmony!
Allie
Now What?
- Observe your pet over the next few days. Where do they tend to hang out? Is there anywhere they seem to hang out when they’re stressed (good or bad stress)?
- Observe your pet in that particular hangout spot. Are they protected from triggers and invaders in that space? If yes, awesome! If not, how can that be changed?
- If you need help identifying or teaching your pet about safe spaces, our consultants can help!
Data Tracking: Finding a Method That Works For You
Behavior change is hard enough without adding in another piece of homework like data tracking. There are so many factors and contributors to behavior; we can look at antecedent arrangements, learning history, health, species-typical behaviors, the list can go on and on!
So how do we collect information in a way that is helpful and manageable to our behavior change journey?
For the Benefit of Mister Pete: Creating a Sensory Garden in a Small Backyard
For the Benefit of Mister Pete: Creating a Sensory Garden in a Small Back Yard
Estimated reading time: 8 min
Petey the Wondermutt climbs a small tower of tires and nudges some rocks around with his snout, inhaling deeply. “Be careful, bud,” I tell him with no expectation that he will respond to the sounds I just made. He’s five days post upper canine tooth extraction and nursing a sore face, but our rather boring back yard just has been outfitted with new (and exciting?) random objects that I stole from the yards of my wonderful and supportive friends.
Who decided it would be a great idea to work on a backyard project during the hottest days of August with zero budget so that I could write a blog about it? Oh yeah, that was me. But I’m (mostly) not here to talk about how I boiled my brain out of my skull working in my shadeless, brick-lined yard, or the rash I got from hauling bales of straw while I was wearing shorts. I’m here, once again, to talk about my scruffy bestie, Peter Leroy.
In my last blog, you learned about some of the ways I foster agency in Petey’s life even though he requires a lot of management. Since I had been thinking all summer about adding some elements to the yard that would provide more sensory stimulation for Petey (and some for the humans too!), a blog deadline was just what I needed to get to work! Antecedent arrangement? Never heard of her.
The Idea
As with most ideas these days, I saw something on social media about a dog sensory garden. I knew that when Petey had the opportunity to even just lay around outside for a while and sniff the breeze, he’d usually come in and have a snooze. I knew that he asked to stay outside when it was nice, and that he often took time to just sniff all around the boundaries of our yard, even if it was something he’s done a million times. After all, there might be a new and important scent to process hidden under a single piece of gravel. So I followed some social media tags, joined a Facebook group, and started jotting down ideas.
Management in the yard is just as, if not more, important than inside the house. We have a tall fence that obscures most visual stimuli around the yard. Seeing a trigger comes with a barking, growling, lunging brand of hyperfocus that is very difficult to interrupt. So a new layer of x-pen in front of the chain link gate entrance to the yard was step one in securing a little sanctuary for my big-brained big-feelie guy. (Yo dog, I heard you like a fence so we added a fence to your fence!)
My main focus, aside from spending as little money as possible, was to create more nooks and crannies to sniff and investigate (and hide snacks in for backyard foraging games), to add some novel textures, some structures to climb, and to plant some things that might smell or taste interesting. Petey says veggies are for suckers, but he not only physically resembles a scruffy little goat, he also grazes like one when he can find new, tender shoots of grass, so I sprung for a bag of oat grass seeds.
Finally, I wanted some sound masking for neighborhood sounds such as a wind chime and/or water fountain sounds. These will likely come later in the process when I have a bit of a budget.
As with all enrichment options, this will be an iterative process with lots of trial and eval. Anything I put together I wanted to be able to rearrange as we see what works and what doesn’t, and also to add some novelty. I have a lot of data/knowledge based on our years together, but bringing it all together for the sensory garden is a new, and I hope fun, application.
Clearing the Space: How We Turned a Forgotten Corner Into an Enrichment Zone
There is a strange space between the fence and our garage that has historically served as Petey’s dig pit and log shredding area. Sometimes a small mammal shows up for him to track, and I just let whatever pops up grow back there; usually just Virginia creeper vines and pokeweed, which had lots of dangly purple berries by the time I started to pull them out to make way for what I was about to set up in that space.
Back to me pretending I have farm gal constitution. Spoiler: I do not. I am essentially allergic to any plant that dares touch my skin. The human keeper of my heart and Petey’s Best Frenemy, Big Man, brought home some old tires and bales of straw, and then ended up working all weekend. So I climbed in and out of the bed of his truck by myself to haul these items into the yard. I yanked up the pokeweed, which thanked me by staining my skin purple. I cut down clumps of grape vine from the fence since it tends to grow faster and farther and choke out the Virginia creeper, which I like for the pretty shades of red it turns in the fall. I wedged myself behind the decorative grass that grows in front of the area I was clearing out (and got big welts on my arms and legs). Once cleared out, in went some straw bales for parkour and/or shredding, and down went a layer of straw for ground cover. Did I just build a castle for mice? Possibly. It’s all trial and eval, baybee! Petey seemed excited to snuff around in the layer of straw, and I earned myself a very long shower for my blotchy, itchy skin and screaming sinuses.
The temp had dropped a bit by the time I tackled weeding the rest of the back yard. But my ADHD hyperfocus wouldn’t let me stop or eat or drink enough water until the weeds were gone and the patio swept, so I added a migraine to the list of merit badges earned during this project.
How to Build a Dog Sensory Garden for (Almost) Free
If you live in a city where Facebook Marketplace is useful, I am very happy for you. After looking locally for weeks, I had only seen a few viable options for freebies on Marketplace, but somehow a lot of (not free) toilets, and many ways to probably bring home bed bugs (also not for free). So I put out a request to my own network, and they came through with the following:
- Logs – Great for climbing and shredding!
- Cinder blocks – Structure and space to plant things.
- Clay pipe – Hidey hole for critters and/or snacks when we play find it.
- Plant starts – Sage and mint smell good for everyone.
- Rocks – More hidey spots and/or structure.
Finally, the blood, sweat, and tears I had shed were leading me somewhere, and I had some materials to work with. A stack of tires with rocks inside might not look like much, but Petey has been climbing up and turning those rocks over! I was starting to change the space into something we could all enjoy.
How a Dog Sensory Garden Addresses Enrichment Needs
Lest this post lean too heavily on story time, let’s take a look at how this all came together as far as covering categories of enrichment.
To save space, I’ve combined some of the fourteen categories, and not listed others. If you have experience using the enrichment framework, you know there is a lot of overlap in the way the categories are experienced and utilized.
Next year I hope to plant more dog-friendly things that also flower, and to get some kind of structure, either just rope or long limbs, to encourage the Virginia creeper to grow into a tunnel/tent. We’ll keep seeing what is most interesting for Petey, and see if there are areas we need to improve for him or for the humans. After all, we’re never done tweaking our enrichment charts!
Don't Forget the Humans: Making the Space Work for Everyone
When you have a very small back yard that is mostly bricks and has zero natural shade and with no grass, preventing it from smelling like a dog toilet is a major factor for the humans of the household to enjoy the space as well. To that end, I invested in a product from Simple Green called Outdoor Odor Eliminator (not sponsored). I rather enjoy the smell of the normal Simple Green cleaner, so spraying the mulch area where Petey does his bathroom biz will be yet another chance for trial and eval in the great experiment.
Since the sound masking elements are not yet part of Pete’s Haus of Senses, we are currently relying on the trusty Bluetooth speaker playing 80’s new wave while we hang out. I would be remiss to not shout out my dad for putting together a sun screen and adding an umbrella to our picnic table, which makes it possible to sit in the back yard at all (thanks Dad!!), and for Petey to regulate his body temperature. As the first human to spend an afternoon working in the back yard under the canopy, 80’s jams playing, while Petey alternated resting spots and checking out the new elements, I can tell you we had a real nice time. Remember, enrichment strategies are meant to help everyone in a household meet their needs!
Getting by With a Little Help From Our Friends
It really takes a village sometimes to help out our big feeling pals, and that’s certainly been the case for Petey. From online love and support, to professional veterinary and training services, to friends letting us burgle their gardens, to friends and family funding vet and VB trips and Treat ‘n Trains (thanks, Mom!), to folks just letting me vent when life is hard; we couldn’t do what we do for Petey without our community. So let me take a moment to say to every single human who has ever loved my handsome, brilliant, goofy, complicated dude: Thanks for being awesome. I love you. May his joy in this space serve as a testament to what we can do when we observe and learn and take care of each other.
Here’s to harmony,
Tiffany
Now What?
Now that you’ve seen a very tiny yard transformation with very simple changes ponder the following:
- How do you incorporate sensory input into your pet’s lives?
- What are some of their favorite activities?
- Are there (indoor or outdoor) spaces in your home or yard that you can add more ways for them to use their senses and process information?
- Can you think of some ways to also make the spaces more enjoyable for the human members of your family?
Copyright 2025 Pet Harmony, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy
Results are not guaranteed because behavior, human, canine, or otherwise, are not guaranteeable.
