What's in a label?

How terms like "reactive" and "fearful" can both help and hurt dogs.

Halle working on her confidence by balancing on a wobbly donut.

I was watching a YouTube video recently on building dogs’ confidence, and the trainer, Susan Garrett, cautioned against the use of labels like fearful, shy and aggressive when working with dogs that need confidence. 

Labels lead to confirmation bias, according to Garrett. Her analogy: when you get a new car, you suddenly see the same make and model everywhere. But it’s not because everyone bought the same car as you, it’s because you’ve been primed to notice it more since you now own one.

Her thought is that the same can happen when you label a dog. After calling a dog fearful, we pay attention to every time they cower or run away and disregard the times when they act comfortable. We might even reinforce behaviors we don’t like. With a dog labeled reactive, we start to anticipate them barking and lunging everytime a trigger is near and our stress causes us to grip the leash tightly. Trainers say this tension signals to the dog that something is wrong, making them more likely to react. 

Dog trainer Kamal Fernandez appears to agree that labeling dogs is problematic. He even has an online course called “Re-labelling Reactivity.” At the Out of Control Dog Summit webinar this year, he mentioned that “reactive” is so broadly applied that it doesn’t provide information on how to help the dog. Fernandez described a client dog that had been kicked out of multiple group classes. When he saw the mini Schnauzer, though, he described it as simply lacking confidence. After training with Fernandez, the dog went on to compete at the international dog show Crufts.

I think a lot about whether I unintentionally contributed to Halle’s reactivity. I didn’t think of Halle as reactive initially. We still pulled off the trail to let other dogs pass. Sometimes she would bark a little, but sometimes she would quietly sit and watch the other dog pass by. I would tell other dog owners that she was just a bit over-excited. But Halle’s behavior eventually worsened, and I eventually labeled it reactivity. I can’t remember what happened first. It’s sort of a chicken and egg problem. 

And having “reactive” put a word to a pattern of behavior that many other dogs struggle with. It helped me find resources and connect with people with similar dogs. For me, “reactive” was a good starting point. Whether people like the term or not, we can agree that the dog is on some level over-reacting to something in their environment and then take steps to help them feel more at ease. 

I think “reactive” might be problematic when it becomes core to how we think of the dog—and even ourselves. I saw a post online where the author, after their dog died, said they struggled with their identity once they were no longer a “reactive dog owner.” Other discussions online describe reactive and non-reactive dogs as a binary, as if reactive dogs are always reactive and non-reactive dogs never show reactive behaviors. 

It’s probably true that you can’t change a dog's core personality—a dog that shies away from every new person shouldn’t be expected to become a social butterfly. But there are many examples of solving (or at least vastly reducing the odds of) reactive behaviors in dogs. Believing reactivity to be a permanent, fixed quality, I think, can lead to confirmation bias and accidental reinforcement. Instead, why not have some faith in our dogs and help them grow more confident out in the world?

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Thanks for reading! For more on reactivity, see my recent article at Outside. I hope it’s a solid overview of what’s going on behind reactive behavior and how to help dogs and their people.