I want to tell you about the dog who broke me open a little.
His name is Loki. He’s a pittie mix with a face that looks like pure trouble and a heart that’s so big it gets him into situations he hasn’t quite thought through yet. He does everything at full speed. Every walk, every jump, every Tuesday morning. No gears below fourth.
He’s also the most challenging dog I’ve ever loved.
The Early Days
When Loki came into my life, I thought I knew dogs. I’d had dogs. I loved dogs. Everyone loved my dogs because they were so sweet and loving and well behaved. I figured this would be fine.
It was not immediately fine.
Loki is reactive. For anyone who doesn’t know that term: it means he has Big Feelings about certain things — other dogs, unexpected sounds, the Amazon driver, whatever his brain decides deserves a Very Strong Opinion on a given day — and those feelings come out loud and fast and without a ton of warning (especially to the untrained eye). A reactive dog doesn’t mean a bad dog. It doesn’t necessarily mean a dangerous dog. It means a dog whose nervous system is firing faster than their ability to process it, and who needs a human willing to figure that out with them.
I did not fully understand that at first. I just knew that walks were stressful, that I felt embarrassed on a regular basis, and that I was Googling things at midnight that made me feel worse instead of better.
Finding the Right Help
I started training Loki from the time he was a puppy. I knew he was a pitbull (thanks to Embark) and I wanted a well-trained one — that felt like a responsibility I owed him and everyone around us. Group classes. One-on-one sessions with multiple different trainers. I explained what I was seeing. We tried things. I kept trying.
And it kept feeling like it was getting worse even though I was spending thousands of dollars and SO much time working with him.
One trainer — and I say this with my whole chest — told me I needed to crate all of my dogs for five days and not interact with them except to feed them. Then put prong collars on all of them (JiJi and Dalai were senior dogs – shitzhu mixes!) and keep them on leashes around the house until he learned how to behave.
I don’t fucking think so.
I will not be ignoring my dogs for five days. That is not happening. Not then, not ever. I have a relationship with my animals and I’m not blowing it up because someone decided that was the path to obedience. Hard pass.
(For what it’s worth: Loki does wear a prong on our walks now, and it’s there for his safety and mine. Not because someone told me I had to — because it’s the reality of our situation and it works for us. That may change someday. But I’m not forgoing the hikes that mean everything to both of us because some people don’t approve of the tools we use. We do what works. We keep going.)
He wasn’t a bad puppy. I want to be clear about that. He was displaying behaviors I didn’t understand, and the standard obedience training didn’t feel right in my soul even when I couldn’t articulate why. He enjoyed training — so did I — but deep down I knew something bigger was going on, even before it fully showed up. In puppy play groups he was the goofy bully who was always too much for the other dogs, not because he was aggressive but because all he wanted to do was play in his big, rowdy, bullish way. He’s always been a solid, strong little dude who has no idea he’s a lot.
Adolescence is when everything came into sharper focus. The reactivity intensified. The standard advice wasn’t working. I was desperate in a way I hadn’t expected to be — not because I was giving up on him, I never would, but because I felt like I was failing him and I didn’t know how to stop.
That’s when the universe smiled on me and I found Carolina Dog Coach.
I came to her originally for puppy play groups. But I kept coming back because she was so good at her job and she understood bully breeds better than anyone else I had met. She could explain him to me. She could take the thing I was watching happen and tell me what was going on underneath it. We did private lessons. We kept working. And slowly, I started to understand the pittie brain — the genetics, the drive, the sensitivity, the way these dogs are wired differently and need to be met differently.
Understanding changed everything. When I stopped being frustrated and started being curious, our relationship changed.
I researched. A lot — that’s what I do. I went deep on breed genetics, on reactivity, on what “threshold” means and why it matters. And somewhere along the way I found myself doing things I never thought I’d be doing: herding balls in the backyard. Flirt poles. A tire tied to a rope from a tree that he could jump and bite and hang from and absolutely demolish because he loved it so much.
I was trying to fulfill him genetically. And it was working.
The Long Slow Middle
Progress with a reactive dog is not linear. There’s no graduation day. There are good weeks and hard weeks and days where you think you’ve lost all the ground you gained and then the next morning your dog does something that makes you realize how far you’ve actually come.
We still have our moments. I’ll be honest about that. Loki is always going to be Loki, and I stopped wanting to change that somewhere along the way. But generally? He is the funniest, most loving dog in the world. He throws himself at life with a commitment I find genuinely inspiring. He doesn’t second-guess. He doesn’t hold back. He picks a direction and he goes.
He’s taught me more about going all in than any person ever has.
The Dock Diving Chapter
Here’s the thing about high-drive reactive dogs: all that energy, all that intensity — it needs somewhere to go. When it doesn’t have somewhere to go, it leaks out sideways as The Behavior Everyone Is Tired Of.
Dock diving is giving all that Loki fire energy somewhere to go.
The first session, he was great on the ramp and the training dock. The big dock gave him a moment’s pause — he stood there, looked at the water, did his own risk assessment — and then jumped right off. Of course he did.
The second session, he decided the big dock wasn’t happening that day. So we stayed on the training dock, and that was completely fine with me. Loki gets to set the pace here. I’m not here to push him into anything. I’m here to keep showing up as long as he’s having a good time, and he is very clearly having a good time.
Does he have a competitive spirit? Absolutely. Is he a total show-off? Without question. Do I think dock diving competitions are in his future? I genuinely hope so. But right now we’re just a dog and his mama, figuring it out together, one training dock jump at a time. And every time he launches himself into the pool, I think about where we started and I feel something I don’t have a better word for than proud.
What He Made Me
I said at the beginning that Loki broke me open a little. I mean that in the best possible way.
Before him, I was a good dog mom. I loved my dogs, I took care of my dogs. But Loki demanded something more. He demanded that I actually learn — that I stay curious, that I stop assuming I knew what was going on, that I advocate harder and research deeper and show up differently than I had before.
He made me a better dog mom. And I would argue, a better person.
He also — and this one is not roundabout at all — made me a collar maker.
When Loki was a puppy, I couldn’t find a collar that felt right for him. Standard flat collars looked like something was missing on a dog like him. So I did what I do: I researched. I found Biothane®. I went deep. I ordered a starter pack and some tools, and my very first project was a 2″ double layer collar — because of course I didn’t start small. The design worked. The vinyl didn’t. (That’s a whole other story, and I’ve written about it here.)
That first collar, the one that started everything, was made for him.
Four and a half years later, Loki wears our Siren’s Song rhinestone collar — 2″ teal Biothane®, hand-set crystals, built to keep up with a dog who does absolutely nothing halfway. When I’m at the workbench now, I think about dogs like him. Dogs who live fully and loudly and deserve something beautiful that can actually keep up.
He started all of this. I’m just trying to keep up.
📷 Photo by Raleigh Pet Photographer – Five Freedoms Photography
A Note to Every Reactive Dog Mom Out There
Don’t give up.
I know how hard it is. I know the embarrassment and the exhaustion and the desperate midnight Googling. I know what it feels like to try everything and still feel like you’re failing. I know the days where you love your dog so much it hurts and also want to sit down on the sidewalk and cry.
Keep going anyway.
Find someone who understands the breed. Not just any trainer — the right one. Ask questions. Do your research. Trust your gut when something doesn’t feel right, because your gut knows your dog.
It does get better. Maybe not in a straight line, maybe not on your timeline, but it gets better.
And while you’re in it — give yourself grace. This dog is teaching you something. About patience, about advocacy, about showing up even when it’s hard. Let it teach you. Embrace the weird games and the tire on a rope and the flirt pole sessions at 7am. You’re not failing. You’re figuring it out. That’s the whole job.
You and your dog are doing it together. That’s what truly matters. 🐾
Loki wears the Siren’s Song Rhinestone Dog Collar — 2″ teal Biothane® with hand-set teal rhinestones. Built waterproof, built for an active life, built to be as unforgettable as the dog wearing it. 📷 Photo by Raleigh Pet Photographer – Five Freedoms Photography