reactive dog?

This article may help improve on the tugging and outs, if you haven't already read it or something similiar.

http://www.clickertraining.com/node/1355

Has anyone ever read...

Focus not fear
or
Scaredy Dog

They are books on reactive dogs that i am thinking about ordering off of amazon.com for Ruckus

Nope.

But I've read and highly suggest "Click to Calm."

i have both of the ali brown books but i haven't read them yet. i've paged through both and they look very promising. scaredy dog is more of a "how to" book and focus not fear is a diary of classes illustrating how everything works in actual practice.

I've found the word "reactive" is often used to candy-coat what is actually "aggressive" behavior in dogs.

It seems to be a blanket diagnosis some trainers and behaviorists pull out of their hat any time a dog is confused, insecure, or just plain spoiled.

A truly "reactive dog", meaning a dog who is chosing flight over fight, is one thing. A dog who claims space, disciplines humans, and moves into another being's space in order to "get them before they get me" is behaving in an aggressive manner.

IMO

An interesting opinion.

Sounds like you're not clear on the differences between "reactive" and "aggressive", and that's ok, the lines aren't exactly clear. There was a thread here a few weeks ago about the difference between aggressive and reactive, though, so hopefully none of us will have to rehash that discussion again.

That was a great thread.