10/03/2023
🪣The Arousal Bucket🪣
How often has your dog had an episode of over excitement, barking, lunging, or just switched off listening?
How often has this been seemingly out of the blue?
We use the bucket analogy to represent our dogs arousal levels. Every dog has a bucket and all events (good or bad) can pay into that bucket. Once that bucket reaches its limit and overflows, that’s when we see these over-arousal episodes. So when you hear the phrase “oh they have never done that before”, that’s because it isn’t that particular event that has triggered a specific reaction, it was just the last drop that tipped the bucket.
Each bucket is different depending on the dog.
🪣The size of the buckets vary. Some dogs may have a very small bucket which doesn’t take long to overflow.
🪣The hole in the bottom that empties the bucket varies in size. Larger hole means faster recovery and a longer period before that bucket overflows.
🪣What pays into the bucket may vary. For some dogs a visit to the vets may be equivalent to 5 cups of water, for others it may just be 1.
This is something to consider in day to day life. It can take some dogs up to 72 hours for their arousal levels to come back to normal after a period of overflow. So management is key! Do you have to take your dog on that family picnic if you know it’s going to really pay into that bucket? Maybe add a day of rest between walks if you think it’s topping up that bucket.
Learning about your own dogs bucket is very important.
📚Story time 📚
A few weeks ago I took Luna to her usual Flyball training, and oh my did she have the sassy pants on. She said ”Work? Today? I think not”.
She proceeded to do the most half hearted turns, followed by a parade around the room to hand out kisses to everyone. If she could have laughed in my face I think she would have.
After, when I thought about it, that week we had really upped her fitness training at home, and I had been taking her on longer walks. The day before training, I took her out with her sister who she hadn’t seen for a long time. While these were all things she enjoyed, they clearly topped up that bucket, and her over flow is shown though sass. She just gets hilariously cheeky.
So going forward, I make sure that we have lots of calming activities and down time on the run up to Flyball.
🌟Now it’s time to consider your own dogs! 🌟
What does their bucket look like?
How big is it? How big is the hole? What pays into it? And what does their overflow look like?
