The most effective tool for reactivity and how YOU can use it with your dog

Welcome to our reactivity mini masterclass!

If you have a reactive dog, there’s a good chance you’ve already tried approximately 47 things to make walks feel a little less stressful.

And if you’re curious about e-collar training, I’m also guessing the idea of adding a remote-controlled training tool to the situation might make you a little nervous at first.

I get it.

Especially when you start Googling and immediately find people telling you that correcting a reactive dog will make them more anxious, more fearful, or even more reactive.

Meanwhile, I’ve spent years working with reactive dogs and have seen something very different.

The e-collar has become one of my favorite tools for reactivity—not because I can press a button and magically make a dog stop barking at other dogs (wouldn't that be convenient), but because of how much clearer it can make communication when a dog is really struggling.

And that's what I want to explain here.

Why does this tool help so much? What are we actually doing with it? And why haven't I seen it create all of the scary things you may have heard about?

But first, hi.

If we haven't met yet, I'm Bethany, the dog trainer behind Walking Dog Training. I actually started out as a dog walker, which is where I first started using an e-collar with my own dogs. Eventually I started using them with some of the dogs I walked too, sharing what I was learning online as I went.

People started asking me to help with their dogs, and somehow that turned into Walking Dog Training.

I've now been doing this for years, and reactive dogs have become kind of my thing.

So if your walks currently involve scanning for dogs in the distance, crossing the street when you see one coming, or occasionally turning around and going home because absolutely not today, you're in the right place.

Let's talk about what actually helps.

First, why an e collar?

One of the things that makes an e collar so useful with a reactive dog is that it gives you a way to communicate with your dog even when the environment gets harder.

The e collar I use has 100 levels. That matters because the amount of pressure your dog notices while standing in your kitchen probably isn't going to be the same amount that gets their attention when another dog suddenly appears across the street.

Think about what normally happens when a reactive moment starts.

Your dog sees another dog and starts staring. Their body gets stiff. Before you know it, they're barking and lunging while you're trying to pull them away with the leash.

If you've done this enough times, you already know how frustrating it is.

Sometimes pulling harder on the leash just doesn't mean very much to a dog who is already completely focused on something else.

That's where I love the e collar.

I use it as an interrupter. It gives me another way to tell my dog, Hey. Stop doing that. Come back over here.

And because I can adjust the level depending on the dog and what's happening around us, I don't have to get into a wrestling match with the leash to communicate with them.

But there's an important part of this that gets skipped all the time:

The e collar isn't the entire training plan.

Putting an e collar on a reactive dog and pressing a button every time they bark isn't what I'm talking about.

Your dog also needs to understand what you want them to do instead.

And that's where I usually start with heel.

Give your dog a job on the walk

When I say “heel,” I mean your dog walking next to you, usually around your knee, rather than pulling out in front and deciding what we're doing next.

I like to think of heel as your dog's job on the walk.

A lot of reactive dogs spend their walks out in front, scanning everything around them. They're watching the dog across the street before you've even noticed it. They're basically running neighborhood watch while you're attached to the other end of the leash.

I don't want that to be their job anymore.

Instead, I want them following me.

So before I'm worried about passing another dog on the sidewalk, I'm going to teach the dog what heel means somewhere much easier. Usually we start inside the house where there aren't nearly as many distractions.

This is also where the e collar starts making a lot more sense to the dog.

I'm not introducing it for the first time in the middle of a giant reactive explosion. I've already taught them what the sensation means and paired it with leash guidance. They've had time to learn how to respond before I start asking them to do it when something much harder is happening.

This part matters.

And it's one of the reasons I created my E Collar Starter Guide. If you're reading this thinking, Okay, but how do I actually introduce the e collar? How do I find my dog's working level? When do I press the button? — that's exactly what I walk you through inside the guide.

The goal isn't to buy an e collar and figure it out while another dog is walking toward you.

Learn the tool first. Then use it to help you with the harder stuff.

The e collar also gives me a meaningful way to say no

This is probably where my approach is different from some of the other reactivity advice you've seen online.

I don't believe the answer is always avoiding anything that makes your dog uncomfortable. And I don't believe correcting reactive behavior is automatically going to make a dog more reactive.

I actually think being able to clearly tell a dog no can be really helpful.

That doesn't mean I'm waiting for my dog to completely lose it and then hammering away at the remote.

Usually, I want to catch the smaller stuff first.

If you've lived with your reactive dog long enough, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. There's often a whole sequence that happens before the explosion.

Maybe your dog's ears go up when they notice another dog. They start drifting out of heel and staring a little too long.

That's information.

I can use the e collar to interrupt that fixation and remind the dog what they're supposed to be doing before we ever get to the barking and lunging.

This is also why heel matters so much to me.

Instead of spending the whole walk saying don't look at that, don't bark at that, please don't lose your mind at that, I have something very simple I can ask my dog to do:

Stay with me.

But what if my dog is already reacting?

This is where things get more advanced.

There are situations where I will correct the actual reactive behavior. If a dog is barking, lunging or growling, I'm comfortable telling them no.

But here's where understanding e collar levels becomes really important.

The level a dog notices while calmly walking down the street may not mean very much once they're in a full reactive moment.

I think about it like trying to talk to someone in a quiet kitchen versus trying to talk to them at a concert. You didn't suddenly forget how to speak. The environment got louder.

A reactive dog can be the same way.

And this is one of the places I see owners get nervous. They don't want to use too much pressure, so they stay at a level that isn't really communicating much of anything to the dog.

Sometimes that can actually make the situation messier. Instead of interrupting the behavior, you're adding a sensation the dog notices but isn't meaningful enough to change what they're doing.

This is why I don't like giving people a magical number and saying, Use level 27 for reactivity.

It doesn't work that way.

The right level depends on the dog and what is happening in that particular moment.

And learning how to make those decisions is part of learning how to use an e collar well.

If this is the part making you nervous, my E Collar Starter Guide goes much deeper into levels, how I introduce the tool, and how I know when I need to adjust. I'd much rather have you understand what you're doing before you try to figure it out while your dog is losing their mind at a golden retriever across the street.

This is a process

I want to make this really clear because it's easy to read the section above and think I'm telling you to slap an e collar on your reactive dog, crank the level up and start correcting them.

I'm not.

There's a process before we get there.

Your dog first needs to learn what the e collar means. Then I'm going to teach them what I want from them on the walk.

Once we have that foundation, I can start using the tool when the environment gets harder.

That's a very different thing from introducing an e collar for the first time during a reactive moment.

Your everyday expectations matter too

Something else I think gets overlooked with reactive dogs is everything that happens when there isn't another dog around.

Let's say you expect your dog to heel only when you're passing another dog, but the rest of the walk they're allowed to pull out in front and ignore you.

That's confusing.

If heel is going to be the job, make it the job when nothing exciting is happening too.

This is why I spend so much time working on boring stuff with reactive dogs.

Practice when it's easy.

Then when you turn a corner and there's suddenly another dog there, you're not asking your dog to do something completely different. You're asking them to do something they've already practiced over and over again.

That's a much easier conversation.

So where would I start?

If you're reading this because you're standing at the very beginning of e collar training with a reactive dog, I wouldn't make the reactivity your first project.

Start by learning the tool.

Introduce the e collar somewhere boring. Learn how your dog responds to it and teach them how to turn the sensation off. Start working on leash communication and heel.

Once that starts making sense to both of you, then start bringing those skills into harder environments.

You do not have to figure all of this out on your first walk.

And please don't wait until your dog is screaming at a doodle across the street to press the remote for the first time.

That's making this way harder on both of you than it needs to be.

Want me to show you how I do it?

If you got to the end of this article thinking, Okay, I understand why this could help my dog, but I still don't totally know what I'm supposed to DO — perfect.

That's exactly why I made the E Collar Starter Guide.

It walks you through how I introduce the e collar, how I find a dog's working level, and how I start using it in everyday training. I also show you the exercises I use so you're not trying to piece everything together from random Instagram videos and blog posts.

GET THE E COLLAR STARTER GUIDE HERE→

And if you're already comfortable using an e collar but the reactive stuff is where you're getting stuck, my reactive dog training resources go deeper into that part of the process.

You don't need to become a dog trainer.

You just need to understand what you're doing with your dog.

And hopefully this article made that feel a little less confusing.

— Bethany