Hi everyone, and welcome back to The Feral Behaviourist, where we talk all things dogs, behaviour, emotions, and connection — always with kindness at the heart. I’m Tasha Attwood, your host, and today I want to explore something that’s been changing across the dog training and behaviour world — and something I’m really passionate about — the language we use to describe dogs who struggle emotionally.
Specifically, why I, and many others in the welfare-first community, are moving away from the word “reactive” and instead using “emotionally challenged.”
Now, I know what you might be thinking — “It’s just a word, right?”But actually, the words we use carry huge weight. They shape how we perceive behaviour, how we talk about our dogs, and even how we feel about them in those difficult moments.
“Reactive” has become a bit of a blanket label. We use it to describe dogs who bark, lunge, growl, snap, or show big emotional displays towards people, dogs, or certain triggers. But over time, it’s also become a label that defines the dog, rather than describing what they’re going through.
And that’s where I feel we can do better.
When we say a dog is reactive, it tends to frame the dog as the problem — as if they’re choosing to “overreact.”But when we say a dog is emotionally challenged, we’re acknowledging that what we’re really seeing is a dog who’s struggling to cope with an emotion — fear, frustration, anxiety, or even excitement — in that particular moment.
It reframes the behaviour from being a fault to being a form of communication.
Think about it this way: if a child was overwhelmed, frightened, or anxious, we wouldn’t call them “reactive.”We’d probably say they were finding something difficult or that they were emotionally dysregulated. We’d look for the why — not just the what.
Dogs deserve that same compassion.
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