Dogs bark at other dogs for a few reasons – all of them linked to an emotional state.

This emotion could be frustration. Your dog might love interacting with other dogs but find being on a lead frustrating because they can’t rush up to say hello. Or your dog may be worried about other dogs and start barking to make them go away. Some dogs are conflicted – they want to meet a dog but are a bit worried as well, and bark to let out their feelings!

Get a vet check

If this is new behaviour for your dog, the first thing to do is get a full vet check. It’s important to make sure there’s no physical reason for the behaviour, like pain or discomfort.

If there are no medical issues, you need to address the emotional reason for the behaviour.

There is some training you can do with your dog to help. But it can take some time and management to get rid of this behaviour completely.

Avoid other dogs for a while

It’s a good idea to change your walking routes to avoid your dog’s triggers. You only need to do this in the short term, but it’s important to prevent them practising the behaviour you don’t like.

Then you can start working on the behaviour you want to see from your dog instead – which is noticing dogs but walking on by.

Start your training

There is quite a simple exercise you can start with – using treats and a marker word to tell your dog how they’re doing.

• Take your dog on a lead to an area of low distraction.
• Gently throw a treat on the ground in front of them and let them eat it.
• Wait for them to look up at you (this may take some time).
• When they do, say your marker word. This could be ‘good’ or ‘yes’ to make it clear to them they’re doing the right thing.
• Then gently throw another treat down and do it all again.
• Repeat this ten times, two or three times a day.

Then, you can start gradually adding some distractions. Begin with other people (without dogs) and manage the distance. This is so your dog can always be successful at noticing the distraction then looking back at you. You can gradually increase the difficulty by getting the people to be more distracting – maybe holding a toy or rustling a treat wrapper.

When your dog has got the hang of that, you can start to practise the same thing around dogs. Again, you will need to manage the distance carefully.

Don’t punish

It’s important to remember that dogs displaying this behaviour are struggling. Whether they’re afraid, excited, angry or frustrated, they need help learning how to deal with it in a more appropriate way.

Punishment has no place in this training and could make your dog’s behaviour worse or more dangerous.

Get some support

If you’d like support with your dog’s behaviour, just get in touch – we’re here to help. Or you can find a qualified trainer at ABTC's website. You might want to watch our webinar on helping reactive dogs.