Big, Bad Reputation: Adopted & Reactive

ADOPT THAT MONSTER

Welcome to another episode of the Adopt That Monster Podcast!

Today I felt called to talk about reactivity. While this will not be about how to solve or remedy your dog’s reactivity, we will explore how reactivity affects our lives as humans and how our behavior, mental and emotional states are impacted by our dog’s reactivity.

Unfortunately, after unconsciously practicing these emotional and thinking patterns, we act almost on auto-pilot in specific environments. Which in turn reinforces our dog’s reactive reactions, and it all kind of spirals from there.

My intention with this episode is that we practice awareness and make even the slightest change in our thinking patterns and emotional states so that we get to enjoy walkies with our adopted monsters more!

Rather than walking around feeling like sitting ducks waiting to be shot down, feeling ashamed, having all these apologies prepared when people look at us horrified because our dog is a quote, unquote “acting out.”

Or wasting our time, ruminating, and running over and over arguments we would be having with irresponsible dog owners who let their dogs run free and who often don’t have a good recall in place for their dog.

At the end of the day, the only person all this bad mojo going on inside of you is hurting is YOU, and the only relationship that is being negatively affected is the one you have with YOUR DOG!

For that, I thought it would be helpful to explore (from a kind and compassionate perspective) three widespread situations in which we, guardians of adopted & reactive dogs, often find ourselves. Together we will be re-framing these situations so that we pivot internally and end up walking with our dogs on the street feeling empowered and at ease.

Suppose you do not have a reactive dog, or you want to send this to a friend who does not have such a kind of monster on their hands. In that case, this episode is an eye-opener as to what guardians of reactive dogs go through and how they internalize their dogs’ reactivity.

It is my intention that you, the guardian of the reactive dog, feels seen and understood and that you, who do not have such a monster on your hands, gain a better understanding of what goes beyond the surface of a reactive-dog-human pairing when you meet them on the street, or at the park.

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Thank you for listening!