I just watched T react to M's energy. Not in a big way but just enough to see that his 'felt sense' was disturbed. We all react to disturbances but, with dogs, we don't want that to happen. To everyone else T was highly 'reactive'. But we know he's sensitive to energy. This is why disturbances to his 'felt sense' appear as reactive - he feels far too much and can't cope with those big feelings. Dogs co-regulate and and when T was a young dog he was feeding into not only his own emotional instability but that of the lead holder too. He learned that the street was a place of much energetic disturbance and he was trapped by the lead. There was no escape and the feelings were building with every step. He used to explode! He would be gyrating through the air, barking, snarling - expressing everything he felt.
He also learned to create a contextual blueprint of all the things that were associated with the disturbance and he remembered every one, as a FEELING. Not as things to see or hear. As feelings! Can you imagine stepping out of your home and feeling so totally vulnerable! So when he went on the street he was reacting to the feeling captured in the memory.
Now we all know reactivity is fear based but this frames the dog differently and that's the important part.
Imagine that your street is full of whirlwind vortices and you have to navigate all these random moving vortices every time you step outside. It's emotionally draining and no-one can help you. So on top of all the 'felt sense' disturbance, being trapped and numerous disturbing vortices, there's exhaustion to deal with as well.
A nervous system cannot thrive in these conditions. In fact, this nervous system has been hijacked by itself, it can't find its way out and it has no capacity to learn.
So what to do?
Instead of 'controlling' the dog, control the energy. Usually and unfortunately most guardians add to the energy as do the other people involved in 'the incident'. This is why calm mind and actions are necessary in addition to an ability to 'banish the energy vortices'.
You both want to feel safe and relaxed.
What you both want, needs a plan. We have one.
It's built in a way that uses a reverse strategy. Let me explain.
The original reaction was embedded in a very successful way. We know that because it keeps on happening! That's success! But doing the same thing over and over yet expecting a different answer isn't successful. Nor is trying a myriad of different ideas on different days and in different circumstances.
In this reverse strategy we're going to use your dog's understanding of 'positive' to replace what people see as 'negative'. We do this so your dog changes the memory of the incident replacing the old memory with a new one. Obviously that takes a bit of learning and practise however it works because we know that there's already recognition of a successful pathway/process within your dog. It's easier to reverse out of this than try to teach a new layer on top. Why? Because learning doesn't happen when the nervous system is overloaded.

Our courses and library contain all the work we've put into this.

What's happening in the body and why you're 'fighting the invisible'.

The explosion you see is not the start. The body goes first. In seconds, stress chemicals flood in. Heart races. Body goes stiff. Food is refused. Eyes lock on. Your dog cannot think yet. Then a slower chemical hangs around after the street looks quiet. The scary thing has gone. The body is still in it. That is why the next small thing can set them off. If this keeps happening, coming down gets harder. The reaction gets practised. It needs less and less to start.

Everyone forgets about the chemicals!

You are in this too. Dogs and people share state. If you stay up, they stay up.
Two sets of surging chemicals.
This is why we don't add more training on top while the system is overloaded.
First the body needs to learn how to come down. Then the memory can change. The real work starts before the explosion.
Not by distracting your dog, but by changing the energy they are living in at the baseline. When that baseline changes, everything further down the line has to change too. The old reaction has less to build from because the dog is no longer stepping into the same feeling in the same way. That is the point.