21/11/2025
✨What about second breakfast?✨
It’s completely normal for our dog’s resilience and ability to cope in situations to differ day to day. Just like humans, dogs are influenced by their environment and other factors daily.
Hunger, thirst and needing toileting impacts cognitive ability reducing focus and concentration resulting in increased frustrated, anxiety, tension and arousal.
Adult dogs require a minimum of 12-16 hours of quality sleep in a 24 hour period in order to process information efficiently, maintain focus, reduce cortisol levels in the body and retain information.
Increased wind speed, rain, daylight savings & a drop/ rise in temperature can all reduce their physical and emotional comfort meaning their resilience to stressful encounters is reduced.
All dogs thrive with a predictable routine. Changes within their home, such as building work, Christmas or a new baby, can unsettle this routine leading to being less tolerant to uncomfortable encounters outside of the home.
Potentially the most underestimated but critical aspect is pain. Pain has a substantial influence on behaviour. Studies have found that 80% of dogs presenting with undesirable behaviours have some underlying muscular skeletal or gastrointestinal pain & discomfort.
Prioritising fulfilment of their basic needs as well as their physical and emotional comfort is one way of setting them up to be more successful outside of the home.
