Reactive dog training: how to make walks boring again

You see it before they do. A dog, two blocks down, coming your way. You cross the road. You take a sudden, deep interest in a hedge. Too late. Your dog has spotted it, and now you're holding sixty pounds of opinions at the end of a leash while the other owner gives you a look.

You walk home a little faster than you left. Tomorrow, you tell yourself, you'll go at 5:45am, when the street is empty.

If that's your walk, you're not alone, and it's fixable. Reactive dog training doesn't need a new leash, a new route or a 5:45am alarm. It needs a clear idea of what you're rewarding, and a reward worth more than the dog across the street.

What we believe about reactive dogs.

A reactive dog isn't a bad dog. On leash, dogs can feel trapped, unable to get away from the thing that worries or excites them, so they make it go away the only way they can: loudly.

Trainers argue about a lot. Every approach out there, whatever else it uses, rewards the dog for getting it right. That's the part we care about, and the part Rigby was made for. We're not here to pick a side. We're here to make getting it right the best thing that happens on the walk.

The goal is boring.

Training a reactive dog isn't about stopping the bark. It's about building the opposite of the bark: a dog who sees another dog and does nothing much about it.

That's the moment to pay. Your dog looks at the trigger and stays calm. Reward it.

Better still is the look-back. Your dog sees the other dog, then turns and looks at you, as if to say, "Saw it. Your move." That's your dog choosing you over the street, and it's the most valuable thing they'll do all walk. Pay that one big.

Look. Lick. Walk on.

This is how we do it. Five steps, and you'll repeat them more times than you can count.

1. Find your distance. Far enough that your dog notices the other dog and stays calm. If they bark or lunge, you got too close, too fast. Add distance and try again.
2. Wait for the look. The moment your dog sees the trigger and stays calm, say "yes." One word, same word every time. It tells your dog: that, exactly that.
3. Lick. Cap already off, pouch straight to the nose. A couple of seconds of licking, then away.
4. Jackpot the look-back. If they look at the trigger, then back at you, that's a longer lick. Make it worth turning around for.
5. Walk on. Keep moving and end it while it's going well. Over the weeks, close the distance a little at a time.

Do it often enough and something shifts. Your dog starts looking at you as soon as they notice another dog. The trigger stops meaning trouble. It starts meaning lunch.

Start with their attention.

None of this works if your dog has forgotten you exist. Trainers call it engagement. You can call it your dog thinking you're the most interesting thing on the street.

Build it on quiet walks first, with nothing around. Any time your dog checks in with you on their own, a glance, a look up, a walk back to your side, say "yes" and give them a lick. Trainers call that capturing. We call it free money. A dog who's been paid for checking in a hundred times on a quiet street is far more likely to check in when it counts.

Why the reward matters more than you think.

Out there, your reward is competing with another dog across the street. A piece of kibble loses that contest every time. It has to be the best thing on the whole walk.

That's where the usual pocket stash runs into trouble. Hot dog slices, cheese cubes, a spoon of peanut butter. Your dog likes them, fine. But you're fishing in a pocket with one hand while the other holds a leash. You drop one, and your training walk becomes a scavenger hunt. And you might pay forty times a walk. Peanut butter runs around 94 calories a tablespoon. Forty spoonfuls is not a training plan. It's a second dinner.

A pouch works differently. One hand, cap off, no crumbs. You decide how long each reward lasts: a quick lick for a calm look, a long one for the look-back. And however many licks you give, it's one pouch.

That's not an accident. We built Rigby from day one to be high value, the thing your dog would cross the road for. In this case, ideally they won't.

What's in the pouch.

If you're rewarding dozens of times a walk, every day, what's in the reward matters. Here's the whole Grass-Fed Beef recipe, the lowest-calorie Essential pouch we make:

That's everything

Organic sweet potato, organic grass-fed beef, water, organic spinach. 63 calories a pouch.

It took us three years to get Rigby right. There was a quicker way: add preservatives, binders and fillers, and you can make a pouch faster and cheaper. We said no. Every Rigby Essential Pouch is four real ingredients or fewer, organic or wild-caught, made in the USA.

So squeeze as much as you see fit. Grass-Fed Beef is 63 calories, Free-Range Chicken 78 and Wild-Caught Salmon 109, and up to one pouch a day suits dogs of every size. Want the walk to do a bit more? Rigby Targeted Pouches come in the same pouch, made to support mobility, gut or coat.

A dog, two blocks down. Your dog sees it. Then looks at you.

Look. Lick. Walk on.