All about Bruno: How focusing on my dog helped me stop worrying about other people's takes on his 'reactive' behaviour

Having a barky, lungy dog means finding yourself the centre of attention when things get all too much for them, but learning to focus on Bruno in that moment is helping both of us cope better

A picture of me not focusing on Bruno at all…

I used to care a lot about what other people thought of Bruno – especially when he was having a big, barky reaction to something he didn’t like. And during his first few months in the UK, the list of things that would set him off was extensive.

For this reason, I was constantly apologising to people for how he reacted to them and feeling embarrassed – as he barked, lunged and pulled at the end of the lead.

If we were in the park, he’d often kick-off at the sight of young children frolicking, families having picnics, groups of people engaged in any form of team sport and – in short – anyone having a good time.  

But his reaction to seeing other dogs in the park was next-level. If another pooch was engaged in some kind of high-energy play like fetch, for example, he would start barking and trying to gallop towards it.

And when he realised he couldn’t reach it - because he was tethered to me by the lead – I’d bear the brunt of his frustration. He’d jump up, head butt, mouth at me - and claw at my arms and legs too.

While this spectacle was going on, I’d be in pure panic mode, as I tried to drag him away from whatever  had set him off, while also trying to sooth and distract him with treats. All I wanted to do was get him back under control and stop him drawing unwanted attention on us.

In these moments, I’d be inwardly cringing and worrying about people judging me for having an “out of control” dog in public. If that’s what her dog does to its owner, imagine what it might be capable of doing to someone else?

With those kinds of thoughts racing through my brain, I found myself engaging in kind of performative displays of discipline, which mainly involved me swearing at him, in an attempt to show the rest of the park that I got this.  

On one particularly bad occasion, when we were set upon by an off-lead dog during his morning walk, Bruno ripped a hole in my t-shirt and scratched my right arm to shreds, as he clawed at me to get him away from this dog and its unwanted advances. I didn’t swear at him that day – instead I left the park in tears, with Bruno in tow.  

It was this incident that prompted me to enlist the help of a behaviourist – a very kindly and understanding lady called, Jo Hinds, who helped reframe my thinking about Bruno and his behaviour.

I asked her how to stop Bruno jumping up at me, and she explained it was his way of trying to communicate to me that he was too close to something that was scary and triggering to him.

And if this was happening frequently (which it was) while we were out on walks, it was a reflection of the fact that I was putting him in situations that he couldn’t cope with yet.

Learning that made me feel really sad for Bruno. The barking, the lunging and redirection was his way of communicating to me that he was struggling – while (speaking plainly) I just thought he was being a dick.

At the same time, I thought repeatedly taking him to these places and putting him in these situations, where I was unwittingly setting him up to fail, would be the only way for him to get used to being around other dogs, people and weird objects.

I wasn’t totally wrong in thinking that way, but what I didn’t appreciate at the time was that Bruno would need to build up to seeing these things from much further away and at much lower frequencies – which would mean walking him in the park at quieter times of day and along less busy routes.

It would also mean paying much closer attention to his body language, so I could get a better read on how he was coping (or not) during his walks. And manage him (and his environment) accordingly.

This meant making sure I walked him in open spaces where, if he suddenly looked like he was on high alert in the presence of a trigger, I could move him away from whatever was troubling him. And if he remained calm, I’d use a marker word (like ‘good’) and give him a treat.

On the advice of the behaviourist, I also started walking him at the same times and along the same routes each day, because she said anxious dogs like Bruno draw a lot of comfort from predictability and routine.

And, so do anxious owners, I discovered. Going out at the same time each day meant we often spotted the same people and dog walkers, so I could tailor our route to avoid any unnecessary confrontations. 

Within a few months of implementing these changes, I started to realise our hit rate for completing whole walks without any major reactions from Bruno had started to increase and the distance that he could tolerate people and other dogs had started to decrease. And the redirections – mercifully – became a lot less frequent.

But probably the biggest change was that, by becoming hyper-focused on Bruno and how he was coping during the walks, I started to care less about what other people thought of us when he did react.

If he did bark or lunge at someone or something, I could rationalise why he was acting that way. Maybe the person had taken him by surprise or made a sudden movement he wasn’t expecting. Sometimes it was less about the actual trigger but the other things that were going on in the environment. This meant he was on high alert already and that person or dog wandering into view was just the final straw.

Whatever was happening was out of our control, and he was just expressing his dislike of it. It wasn’t his fault – he was scared and acting instinctively to make the scary thing go away. And, without making a conscious decision to, I realised I’d stopped apologising to strangers for his behaviour and feeling embarrassed.

With one exception – if he barks or lunges at children or people with children I apologise profusely because that still utterly mortifies me.

We also started to have fewer walks that ended with me stomping back to the car, giving him the silent treatment because I felt like he was “showing me up”.

Bruno was just expressing himself and now I was listening to him properly, I realised none of this was his fault. As the saying goes, he wasn’t trying to give me a hard time, he was a dog having a hard time. And having that understanding has made our life together a whole lot easier to navigate.