Do you have the reactive dog owner sixth sense? You know, that ability to identify what your dog will bark at before they bark when you walk down the street. Maybe it’s the dog tags jingling at an incredible volume two streets over? Or, a flag blowing in the wind? Or, possibly a teenager riding a scooter across the street? 

Or, are you the other kind of clairvoyant? You can see a dog that will bark at you a mile away. You can see their prolonged eye contact, their brief stillness. You know the bark and lunge is inevitable and you move away in anticipation.

Often in appointments with reactive dogs, I seem like a psychic. People are baffled at how I can guess what their dog will bark at before they start barking. You know how I know? From watching a lot of dogs. It isn’t rocket science if you’ve seen a large number of dogs all bark at fast or unusual movement or if you’ve watched hundreds of dogs cascade from a long stare to barking and lunging. 

I want to give you a little bit of my seeming clairvoyance. Knowing what will set a dog into a fear or frustration response can help you head off reactivity before it starts. Having more confidence in your knowledge of dog body language will help you make adjustments for your own dog when they need it to prevent a negative reaction, and it can also help you around other dogs. Often, it’s not enough to watch and know your own dog. Most people can describe their dog’s body language and things that spark a bark or two, but if you want to gain a lot of skill, you’ll want to add more dogs to your observation list. 

This is where Reactivity Meets Real World comes in. We launched this program last year as a way to help reactive dog teams change human and canine emotional responses to known triggers and build community for an isolating issue. One great benefit of the program comes in the observation of the other reactive dog and human teams. Embarrassment is largely stripped away because you’re in a room full of people with dogs with similar struggles, and you have many people there supporting you. Watching the nuances of body language as increasing controlled challenges are presented is a crash course for anyone lucky enough to be in the room.

The Reactivity Meets Real World program ran twice in 2024, and I am so honored to have watched 8 canine-human teams grow infinitely in their capabilities and responses around known triggers. I was even more proud watching them help each other and nod along as each team described challenges they were facing at home and in their neighborhood environments. 

The way the program is set up there are four total teams per program. Each week, two dogs are present and working in the in-person class. Each dog and owner team brings their dog to class and works in the space every other week. On the weeks a team does not work, the human of that team is in class acting as an observer for the other team. We’re calling them observers, but they’re operating as triggers, distractions, and even trainers as we drop clickers into their hands. Together with the instructor, with a clicker in hand, they are noting moments of success for the working team and indicating when a reward should be given to the dog. This is important. We are building observation skills, and importantly, building skills to see moments where we should tell the dog they are right. What a takeaway! Picking up on the moments when the human and dog team are right will make observers that much more likely to see that in themselves, and in their dogs.

In addition to important in-person observations, we also have online video assessments. Taking video of working your own dog is a valuable tool to help you take a step back and really see what is going on. Finagling a camera and setup is endlessly worth it when you see the little moments you missed in real life. If you’re reading this and you haven’t signed up or thought about our program, some of the best advice I can drop to you is to start recording snippets of your own sessions. Watch them back and catch the little moments of body language you missed. Catch good moments you missed, you’ll grow a lot from watching it back, I promise.

In 2025 we are so excited to expand the Reactivity Meets Real World program. The online component of the program opens us up to a wider audience than just local students, and with video assessments and sharing we can bring some of that observation goodness to the rest of the world. We’re offering the program in full to students that want online access, in-person observation, plus the challenges for their dogs in person. In addition, we’ll soon be opening up an audit option for those that want to gain observation skills and an online only option for those that aren’t necessarily nearby. 

If you’re interested in joinin our March offerings of this program signup here: Program Registration.

If you’re interest getting the latest updates on future program dates and additions, please fill out this form: Reactivity Meets Real Word Interest Form.

I am so excited for what further cohorts bring to the program, and I continue to owe everything to what I’ve gained by watching all the dogs I’ve worked with to this point!