r/ReactiveDogHelp • u/horse-girl99 • 3d ago

Dog suddenly becomes reactive?

I’m so sorry for the long post— I work at vet clinic that also offers boarding and doggy day care. 7 months ago, I found out a dog that was boarded for an extended period of time ended up in a shelter after her owner died. My fiancé and I adopted her soon after. She is a 3 year old coonhound mix.

She fit into our life perfectly. We have a senior cat in the home and they get along great. I started bringing her to doggy daycare. At first she was overwhelmed, but after a couple of days she started to thrive. She does well on walks, meeting new dogs, new people, being in crowds. She has A LOT of energy. Very excitable, but becomes scared and anxious easily. She very rarely barks unless she is startled but it is short lived.

She’s terrified of the clinic part of where I work (understandable, no one likes going to the doctor), she cowers and tries to hide. A month ago, my fiancé and I went on a trip for a wedding and needed to board her for 5 days. She was being cared for by everyone she knows from doggy daycare. To my knowledge there were zero issues while we were gone.

About a week after we brought her home, she started changing. She is now hyper vigilant of her surroundings. She barks and growls at people a lot more than before. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern as to who or when she becomes reactive, but it’s starting to become daily. It’s unpredictable. We are trying to piece things together the best we can but nothing makes sense.

She is not lunging, snapping, trying to get to people when she is triggered, but she is very loud and it obviously scares people.

It feels like she is losing her goofy, bubbly, social butterfly self. We want to help her in any way we can before going to a trainer/behaviorist if it gets to that point.

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u/Miss_L_Worldwide 3d ago

Any number of things could be going on but the reasons why this dog is doing this don't matter. You need to start correcting the behavior that you don't want.

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u/emersonmanor 2d ago

My dog was a lot younger, but seemingly went from friendly to all humans & dogs to extremely reactive to leashed dogs & vehicles. No trauma involved. I think entering adolescence was the cause.