The Lunge Is a Distance Signal, Not a Threat
When a dog on a leash explodes toward a passing stranger or another dog, the instinct is to read it as aggression. The animal is loud, forward, and looks nothing like the dog you know at home. But in the majority of cases, what you are watching is a fear response, not a predatory or dominance-driven one. Canine behaviourists classify this pattern as leash reactivity, and the underlying motivation is almost always distance-seeking: the dog is trying to make the thing it finds threatening go away.
