Ben's Buddies

11/23/2024

Snow day walks for these pups! ❄️

11/01/2024

Dog of the day: Snoopy!! 🤍

10/31/2024

Happy Howloween from Ben’s Buddies everyone! 🎃

10/18/2024

So glad to see my buddies again!

09/07/2024

🩷

08/30/2024

❤️...!

08/02/2024

Sweet snoopy!

07/23/2024

❤️...!

07/17/2024

TRAFFIC LIGHTS AND REACTIVITY

Before trying to work on improving reactivity, consider what colour your dog’s emotional state is in.

The belief or expectation that by continually exposing reactive dogs to triggers will make them get over it, is setting dogs up to fail.

Generally, a dog that is reacting to something does not feel safe – they are in survival mode – a mode where learning and appropriate responses simply cannot take place.

Neurotransmitters like adrenaline and cortisol flood the brain causing automatic responses intended for survival. This red zone is certainly not the time or the place to try to change behaviour.

We need to start working with a brain that is calm, relaxed, focused and feels safe – the green zone, where learning can take place.

A calm nervous system is essential to learn a new way to respond.

To recognise which colour an emotional state is, we need to become more adept at recognising and interpreting our dog’s body language.

Being aware of body language enables us to intervene before our dogs’ emotions – the “traffic light” changes colour.

Always start in the green zone, this is where we can really help our dogs to learn strategies to cope with triggers.

Keep working in the green - reinforcing, proofing and building confidence.

Once behaviours are established in the green, we can try moving into the amber zone by allowing our dogs to notice and be aware of distractions, but at a sufficient distance where they still feel safe and are able to focus. This is where we can make distractions or triggers feel far less threatening.

Stay out of the red as much as you can. Avoiding this is not always possible – life happens / the unexpected happens and we have no control over this.

In this case get as much distance as possible between your dog and the trigger.

We can’t teach our dogs to feel safe, but we can help them feel safe by managing the environment, taking small achievable steps, being aware of body language and intervening when their emotional traffic light is about to change colour.

07/09/2024

Happy girl on her walk!

06/30/2024

Sweet Blade and Charlie!

06/30/2024

Cute little kitty, Cinder

06/27/2024

Summertime grass rolls are our favorite!! 🪴☀️

06/27/2024

06/26/2024

He’s feline good! Such a pleasure to watch our sweet friends new fur baby! 🧡

06/22/2024

😁😁

06/22/2024

So precious❤