Blog — reactivity

    Dogs don’t act out of spite or mischief—what looks like “bad behavior” is often a window into their nervous system at work. To truly understand why dogs react the way they do, we need to step back and see their brains not as moral arbiters, but as evolutionary survival machines, finely tuned to sense threat, reward, and opportunity. The Limbic Orchestra: Emotions in Motion At the core of your dog’s emotional life is the limbic system—a network of brain regions that regulates fear, motivation, pleasure, and memory. Amygdala: The emotional alarm bell. Detects danger and triggers rapid defensive responses....

  Fitness and mobility don’t just change what a body can do—they change what the nervous system believes is possible. A nervous system is constantly asking one core question beneath awareness: “If something goes wrong, do I have options?” When an animal has strength, coordination, balance, and ease of movement, the answer is more often yes. That “yes” matters deeply. It creates a baseline sense of agency—the felt understanding that one could move away, brace, climb, stabilize, push off, or hold ground if needed. Even if no threat is present, the nervous system tracks this capacity quietly in the background....

  Many dogs who struggle with reactivity, behavioral changes, or sudden “attitude shifts” are quietly carrying something we don’t always see: pain that’s being filtered through the nervous system. To understand why pain can hide during activity, show up during rest, and dramatically increase reactivity, we need to talk about three related—but often confused—concepts: Nociception, Stress-Induced Analgesia, and Pain. Nociception is not pain Nociception is the nervous system’s process of detecting potential tissue damage or threat—things like excessive pressure, inflammation, chemical irritation, or joint strain—and sending that information to the brain. Importantly: Nociception is the signal Pain is the experience...

What is Neuroception? Neuroception is a term coined by Dr. Stephen Porges as part of his Polyvagal Theory, referring to the subconscious, automatic process of scanning the environment for cues of safety or danger. It is a "built-in radar" that operates below the level of conscious thought, allowing a dog's nervous system to detect threats and initiate survival behaviors (fight, flight, or freeze) long before they consciously perceive a danger. As dog owners, understanding neuroception is crucial because it helps us realize that a dog's "bad" behavior is often actually a fear-based, involuntary survival response rather than disobedience or defiance....

  Everything for me in the world of canine somatics is boiling down to one thing: Emotional Capacity. Reactivity is a lack of capacity to deal with outside stressors. Instead of trying to fix, correct, punish, or suppress the symptoms of reactivity, we can go straight to the heart of the issue which is capacity. Increasing emotional capacity goes hand in hand with autonomic flexibility and higher thresholds. Difficulty in learning or retaining information is: A lack of capacity. We can think of your dog's emotional and cognitive bandwidth being cluttered and confused with too much noise/stress. It leaves little...