Adopting a Reactive Dog: Our Story with Luna

Welcome to Adventures with Luna! Like everything in life, you have to start somewhere, right? So let us start at the beginning.

Our adventure as a family technically started on New Year's Eve 2023. We made the decision to visit our local Humane Society to meet Luna. We were informed that she tended to be more nervous around men, but we decided to go ahead with the meeting. It turned out to be a very good first meeting. The adoption counselor told us that she would like us to have a few more meetings with Luna, just to be sure that we would be committed to her and she was comfortable enough with us. One week and three more meetings later, we got her loaded in the car and headed home.

This is when the real adventure began. At the time, we were living in a townhouse with just a small personal patio for outdoor space. Not the perfect scenario for a reactive dog like Luna. She barked at everyone that walked by. Taking her to go potty in the common areas was always an anxious time for us because we didn't know who else was going to be outside and how she would react. We thought, what did we get ourselves into? We worried about how the neighbors would react if she barked at them. Even though, that's all she did. She barked. No lunging, no showing teeth. Just barks. There were many times we both felt super overwhelmed with her. One thing was certain though, the three of us were going to figure things out. Not a chance she was going back to the shelter. We read countless articles and training websites on living with, training, and reconditioning reactive dogs. We learned what worked for her and what didn't. We learned what her threshold was and how to make all of us comfortable outside.

One of the biggest game-changers for us was learning about threshold — that invisible line where Luna went from curious to overwhelmed. Once we understood it, everything shifted. Instead of pushing her to "just get used to it," we started working at a distance where she could see the trigger but stay calm. Treat, praise, retreat. Over and over.

We leaned heavily on desensitization and counter-conditioning — fancy terms for teaching her that strangers walking by meant good things happen (usually chicken). We also discovered that a sniff-heavy walk was worth ten times more to her than a brisk one. Letting her lead with her nose gave her an outlet for all that nervous energy.

Tools that actually helped us: a well-fitted harness (no neck pressure), long-line walks in quieter areas to build confidence, and a solid "look at me" cue for redirecting her attention. What didn't help: flooding her with situations she wasn't ready for, or trying to comfort her when she was already over threshold — it just confirmed there was something to worry about.

None of it happened overnight. But week by week, Luna started trusting that we had her back.

Over time, being outside and walking around the complex where we lived got easier. While things got better with Luna, our complex was going through some changes that were a bit frustrating for us. We had some long discussions every day for about a month. In September of 2024, we both decided that it was time for us to move. The two of us had been renting the same place for 15+ years. We were ready to move on as a family of three. It didn't take long for us to find the perfect place.

Come back and see us next week to find out what we found!