[Episode 22]

 

Is Stress Sabotaging Your Dog Training?   

 

If your dog is too stressed, you’re not going to see progress and stress. Hormones will prevent your dog from learning and he won’t be able to be calm today. We’re going to talk about how stress can sabotage your dog’s training progress.

 

Did you know that stress can prevent your dog from learning? If your dog is too stressed, you’re not going to see progress. Even hormones will prevent your dog from listening to you. Today you’re going to learn how stress can sabotage your progress.

 

I had a client years ago with a white German Shepherd. Her dog had bitten 3 or 4 people and they weren’t able to walk him. When they were able to get him outside, he would pull and try to run home. When he saw a dog or heard one inside a neighbors home, he would lunge and bark. They loved their dog and they wanted to help him. 

 

I was the 3rd trainer they hired. We did 12 private training lessons but didn’t see much success. Many struggling dog owners make a big mistake that inhibits learning and can prevent learning. This happened with this German Shepherd. Unfortunately the family didn’t see much success and change in their dog?  Why did that happen? The main reason why they didn’t see a change is because they didn’t reduce their dogs stress. This dog was afraid of people, he was terrified of people. And this nice family like to entertain and have people over all the time. Even though their dog had bitten the pool man before, they continued to let him out when he arrived every week. They hoped that he would “get over it” and become friends with the pool guy, but it didn’t work. They continued to have people over the their house and even remodeled their home with numerous constructions working walking through the house.

 

Of course, I advised them not to do these things, but sometimes people don’t listen. They expected their dog to get over his fears even when he was exposed to them every day. Unfortunately this is mistake many dog owner make. 

 

The first step to help your dog get over his fears is to remove the fear first.

You need to decrease the number of times that your dogs will see his trigger as much as possible. Now, with my reactive dog clients, I tell them that they need to avoid dogs or people at least 80% of the time. Now this is one of the easiest, and it’s also one of the most difficult tasks for people with a fearful or reactive dog. And it’s one of the biggest mistakes that dog owners make. It’s one of the mistakes that this nice woman made with her white German shepherd. 

 

Think of this like dieting. The first step to losing weight is to stop eating that donut for breakfast every morning. You first have to stop doing what caused the weight gain first. It’s the same for your dog. The first step is to decrease the fears and/or remove the fears. If your dog is afraid of people, then you need to commit to limiting the number of people you have to your home, while you train your dog. 

 

Fearful dogs have a threshold of tolerance. That means they can only handle so many stresses at one time. If your dog is lunging, barking, growling and biting, he way above his threshold of tolerance. Even little things that normally don’t set your dog off, can if he’s over his threshold. This is  also known as trigger stacking, too many triggers at a time or in a duration of time. 

 

If you want to see success and change with your dog, then you need to keep him below his threshold of tolerance, or subthreshold. 

 

With the right training plan and execution, you can raise your dog’s threshold of tolerance so that he can tolerate more triggers. 

 

It could be being exposed to the trigger for too long or too much of a duration of time. So for example, when I work with reactive dogs, most of the time I start with letting them look at the trigger while counter conditioning and desensitizing for maybe 10 seconds, 10 to 20 seconds. And then we give them a break. So maybe the duration of time exposed to the trigger is too much

 

The whilte German Shepherd was over his threshold of tolerance, more than 80% of the time. Every time someone was in the house he was worried and stressed.

 

The second thing you need to do is to prevent your dog from practicing the behavior that you don’t want.

If the behavior is barking, lunging, biting, snapping and growling, you want to prevent that first. You can’t teach your dog what to do when he is too stressed or worried and in the middle of lunging and barking. He’s not learning at that moment, he’s too worried. I hear so many people say, my dog won’t take a treat when he’s barking. Of course not, you’ve let him get over his threshold. It’s like when you’re angry at your spouse and you’re having a heated conversation and your spouse says, you need to calm down. You’re already angry and someone saying you need to calm down only makes you more upset because you’re at your threshold of tolerance. Does that make sense? It’s too late to be calm, it’s past the point of being calm.

 

The third reason why stress could be sabotaging your dog is because each time your dog has a reaction, barks, lunges, bites, snaps, or growls stress, hormones, flood his body.

There are two main hormones that flood through our body when we’re fearful. 

The first hormone is adrenaline. Adrenaline is fast acting. It goes in and it’s out of the system within 24 hours. If you’ve ever heard of those situations where there’s a car accident and the child is trapped underneath and the mom lifts up the car to save her child. That’s adrenaline in her system that helps her lift the car. 

 

 Adrenaline is fast acting. It comes in and out of the system within 24 hours. 

 

The second hormone that floods the body during fight or flight or a stressful situation is cortisol. Cortisol is the fight or flight hormone. It prepares the body internally to run for your life or to fight. When your dog is stressed, when he’s barking, lunging, biting, snapping, or growling, cortisol floods his body to prepare him to fight or flight.

Cortisol can stay in the system for three to four days. 

 

When you don’t give your dog a break from his stressor or fears, his cortisol level won’t decrease. Remember, cortisol is a hormone and you can’t fight hormones with dog training, any kind of dog training. I don’t care what it is. You’re not going to be able to fight hormones. 

 

So back to that white German shepherd, one of the challenges that she had was that her dog’s cortisol level was constantly high.

 

Anytime you are training your fearful, reactive or aggressive dog, you need to make sure that you are below his threshold of tolerance. Counterconditioning or desensitization isn’t going to be effective when your dog is in a constant state of fear. Part of desensitization is a gradual change the environment for your dog. 

 

Once your dog has some coping mechanisms, once you start to work on this, you can add triggers back in, but you want to change how your dog feels about those triggers. You need to decrease that first. Make a contract with your dog that you’re going to help him and stick to it. 

 

In most situations, you can  create a safe space for your dog or a place where he could go that is away from his triggers. Crate training or keeping your dog in another room is a great solution IF your dog is comfortable. 

 

Having a fearful dog can be difficult, but it’s not an impossible situation. I fostered a terrified chihuahua for 9 months. During that time it seemed like everything in the house broke, from the garbage disposal to the bathroom sinks (both of them). I had several repainmen over and the Chihuahua was able to stay below his level of tolerance when they were there because I kept him comfortable and calm in his crate. 

We’re here to help if you want it. You’ve got this!!  

Thank you for reading and listening to this episode of The Naughty Dog Podcast. Visit our Instagram page and leave me a comment or question.