21/06/2025
Would you know how to support your dog if they panicked?
HOW CAN YOU HELP YOUR DOG IF THEY BECOME ACUTELY STRESSED?
I’m remembering today a few years ago when I went for a walk with Sylvi’s best buddy Falcor wolfdog. We did a walk we had done loads and we were having a really nice time chilling out together walking on lead nice and calmly. Then suddenly Sylvi totally lost it 😳
Sylvi is totally comfortable around people and she’s also fine around horses; not really interested but would quite like to sniff their bums and she’s certainly not scared of them 🙄. We saw two horses with riders coming towards us pretty fast on the track. The people were talking really loudly as it must have been hard for them to hear each other.
I moved off the track and got a treat out for Sylvi to feed as they went past us, like I always would and I didn’t anticipate any issue at all. Then suddenly Sylvi tried to bolt, that pure panic, head down running in a straight line in absolute terror pure flight response. Sylvi is well over 40 kg so if she decides to move quickly you know about it. To her, horses are fine, fast moving horses are fine, people are fine but horses moving quickly with q loud people are not fine and were terrifying.
✋ So what should we do in these situations if our dog really panics and tries to run? It’s the same response really as barking and lunging, it’s just they are using ‘flight’ instead of ‘fight’. The same response we would have if a bear was chasing us, no thinking going on anymore, just trying to increase distance and stay alive.
➡️ The first thing we need to do is help them increase distance. We use a ‘this way’ to turn and move away from scary things (remember this is the same whether they are trying to run away or reacting by barking and lunging). I jogged with her away from the approaching shouty horses. I’m also testing how she is feeling in terms of thresholds as I move away, can she eat? Can she even hear me? If they are really stressed and over threshold (can’t eat, can’t hear you etc) they just need to get further away from the trigger.
🍗 When we got 5 metres away she was able to eat again but was still stressed, panting (a physical sign of feeling very stressed). At the point where she was still stressed she was likely to be unable to learn so the best thing to do is get her attention elsewhere and help her de-stress a bit, so I chucked some treats in the long grass for her to find. If I had licky treats (primula/liver pate), I could have let her lick the tube to try and reduce stress a bit too. Licking and sniffing are pretty good at helping reduce stress if you’ve moved far enough away from the ‘scary’ thing.
🖐️ For some dogs, physical touch helps them to calm down quicker (but others may not like that). Some dogs calm down quicker if you get them doing some balance or proprioceptive work- climbing on a tree stump etc but you may find they can’t do this until stress levels have dropped quite a bit.
When I could see she had calmed down and was back under threshold (able to eat treats, able to ‘hear me’, not snatching treats, not panting etc). I could then make sure she learned something from this situation.
🐎 We can learn from every situation but dogs can’t learn when they are over threshold and their body has switched purely to survival mode. As she was under threshold we could then counter condition to the shouty horses, each glance at the horses as they moved away made food appear as if by magic. She could then watch them calmly as they moved away and she felt safe enough to be able to follow them a bit from a distance (every glance at them paired with food).
She then had a big shake off and job done, she’d moved on from it and it’s likely if that we ever saw the same thing again she would react better. What’s really important is that she’d had been able to get far enough away that she felt safe and was able to calm down enough to be able to learn. This all happened over less than a minute and we need to be able to act fast to help our dogs through potentially stressful situations.
It really helps if you have a plan in place in your head of what you are going to do if your dog gets stressed- how will you move away, what will you then do and how will you help then recover and can they learn anything from the situation (if they are able to calm down enough). Also have a plan of what you will do if they get really stressed and find it hard to calm down. If your dogs are very scared by something do you have a plan of activities that help them when you get home? Would you do extra scent work or have an extra Kong or lick mat ready? Would they benefit from a nap?
Try and have a plan of what you can do to help them if they get overwhelmed well in advance of if happening. When it happens for real, it’s much easier if you have a plan in place to fall back on rather than trying to decide what to do when you feel stressed too!
Laura McAuliffe 2025, Dog Communication
