This blog post explores how emotional arousal, commonly referred to as "reactivity," in dogs can often be linked to underlying pain or discomfort. Emotional arousal is characterized by heightened responses to stimuli, such as excessive barking, lunging, or hypervigilance, which can interfere with a dog’s ability to calm down…

My entire life I have only owned rescued dogs with histories of unknown circumstances and problematic issues. All of my dogs essentially came to me “broken”. They all came with a plethora of problem behaviors and were “project” dogs. After working with rescue after rescue and seeing more of the same, I decided it was time for me to step outside of my comfort zone and purchase a dog from a responsible breeder instead.