DOG REACTIVITY AND BUILDING RESILIENCE IN OUR REACTIVE DOGS
What causes Reactivity in our dogs? Before we can jump to conclusions and wrongly diagnose this behaviour, we need to understand the dilemma the dog is dealing with.
Is the Behaviour Fear Based, Aggression Based, Barrier Frustration?
Let’s have a look at fear. In most cases assuming for the purpose of the exercise your dog is reactive to large black dogs ( this could also be any other stimuli for example fear of traffic), If we can imagine your dog has a bubble all around him which they consider to be their safe zone, the size of the bubble is decided by the dog itself, as every dog is different from the next in the sensitivity/distance of a trigger or stimuli they are faced with. When a black dog enters the bubble then your dog immediately moves into arousal, this would be demonstrated by their body language. If the black dog keeps approaching then your dog will begin to consider FLEE, FREEZE, FIGHT. Most dogs will not want to go straight to fight and first consideration is flee, problem is we have the dog on a lead so FLEE is not an option. So we move to FREEZE in place and hope the stimuli goes away. If the stimuli keeps approaching then the only option left is FIGHT
DECISIONS AND PLANNING AHEAD
In the wolf pack the Leader/Alpha will be aware of dangers ahead and always ready to make good decisions for the good of the pack and will mostly lead the pack to safety if he feels the threat is too great. As the dogs human guardian/leader we need to make similar decisions. Give our dogs the option of FLEE by leading them to safety and keeping the bubble intact. Once we have our dog back on baseline inside his bubble then it’s time to counter condition and take the dogs attention off the stimuli and onto you as Leader. The eventual aim is to reduce the size of the bubble and help the dog to make good decisions for themselves.
AGGRESSIVE REACTIVITY
By studying your dog’s body language, we can judge if the reactivity is aggression. The reason your dog is acting this way is because he is reinforced by his own behaviour. He barks and lunges the stimuli is taken away by its owner. He now firmly believes he has chased the stimuli away and this behaviour will be repeated in the future.
The answer is simple the dog reacts we remove him from the situation so giving him a negative result to his behaviour.
Barrier Frustration
Barrier Frustration is easily explained. Your dog simply wants to play and he is frustrated by the inability to get there because of the lead attaching him to you and barks and lunges in an attempt to get to the other dog to play.
Building Resilience in our Dog’s
If your dog’s resilience is low then they will be quick to resort to reactive behaviour.
UNDERSTANDING RESILIENCE
Imagine a rowing boat in an estuary controlled by the tide from the sea, imagine the water is resilience. On the bed of the estuary there are jagged rocks. At high tide there is enough water if a storm picks up to protect the boat from the rocks so no damage occurs to the boat, so resilience is high. However at low tide a storm picks up and the boat is severely damaged by the rocks and smashed to pieces so resilience is low.
UNDERSTANDING OUR DOG’S DILEMMA
So now let’s imagine the dogs resilience is the water so when the dogs resilience is high the ability for our dog to absorb everyday appearances of large black dog’s is increased.
When the dogs resilience is low and he hits rock bottom the ability to deal with the large black dog is diminished.
What Causes our Dogs Low Resilience
Low Resilience to the large black dog is caused by trigger stacking, every time our dog is exposed to a Stimuli it is a trigger. Imagine the dog’s threshold as a bucket, every time he encounters a scary stimuli a cup of water is poured into the bucket, until eventually the bucket over flows and spills, this is classed as going over threshold and the dog becomes stressed and reacts in an aggressive outburst of lunging and barking.
HOW DO WE HELP
Once we have understood our dogs mental ability to deal with trigger stacking and stress that accompanies the state of mind, we can begin to help by giving the opportunity to participate in natural behaviours such as Chewing, Licking and sniffing. all these natural behaviours release natural endorphins from the brain, once dopamine is released into the blood stream, the dog receives a feel good moment simula to runners high after exercise.
REDUCING STRESS IN OUR DOGS
If you can imagine when the dog reaches threshold and his bucket spills over and he can no longer deal with the situation and resorts to aggression. It actually takes 72 hours for the dog to empty his stress bucket away from the stimuli that is causing the trigger stacking until he is mentally able to deal with the situation. so providing ability to indulge in natural behaviour (with reference to the previous paragraph) is the most effective way to help our dog.
CONCLUSION
So essentially the answer is to build our dogs resilience by empowering them to make good decisions and learn that maybe things are not so scary after all. We achieve this by becoming the dogs one true leader and using Counter Conditioning and Desensitisation thus demonstrating to them – calm behaviour wins the day.
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