Random Dog Thoughts (2024)

01/07/2023

To all of our wonderful readers, especially those here in the USA. The dreaded time is upon us, and some are already dealing with the fireworks.

I want to talk a bit about the importance of understanding trigger stacking and coping thresholds, as well as focus on recovery.

In the most simplified explanation, “trigger stacking” is when an organism (in this case lets say your dog - and you!) is exposed to small stressors that raise cortisol and other stress chemicals. What happens is that there isn’t time between the stressors/triggers/exposure for the dog to come back down to a baseline.

Lets face it, many of our dogs struggle to stay at a baseline regardless so this is something we REALLY need to understand!

It’s July 1, and a weekend. Those fireworks will be coming hard and fast. It’s almost impossible for most of us to avoid them.

Be aware that part of setting your dog up for staying closer to their baseline isn’t specifically/solely about the response to the actual firework (but please pair those!), but also about the triggers and exposure to other stressors throughout the days as well. We want to try and avoid as much of a cumulative effect as we can. Realistically, we cannot help/make them enjoy fireworks. What we absolutely can do is advocate for them so they can then have a faster recovery after all the stress and exposure.

So, right now…start “shutting your dogs world down”. Limit exposure to stress. Limit exposure to changes in environment. Limit exposure to unpredictability. Practice what I call “safe and same” (known routine). Give lots of chews, give lots of quiet time. If your dog does well with a quiet walk outside, do that. Do what your dog seems to like, what seems to center them and help them return to baseline. That party you considered taking them to? No. That parade you were going to let them go watch? Please no 🙏

Beginning every morning each small stressor begins to accumulate, from the doorbell ringing, to the kids playing, to company coming over, to a dog running up on them during a neighborhood walk, to a trash truck, to thunder…and ending with this terrifying flashing and booming sky all around.

It’s no wonder our dogs quickly hit their coping threshold immediately, and stay hypervigilant and sensitize so fast, without any time (hours) to find their baseline again.

Just a friendly reminder, thinking of you all, and remember to focus on the trigger stacking through this holiday weekend.

Keep your dogs SAFE above all else ❤️❤️

(Meds if you need them. Inner room/no windows preferably. Blankets or comforters around to help minimize the feeling of the booms, masking devices (noise machine/radio/air filters)to help with the sounds. Lots of high value chews and highest value food. If you have windows. Cover them…ironically many dogs react to the unpredictability of the flashes. Then pivot to recovery, for my most fearful dog that also includes massage after to help her calm).

Don’t contribute to trigger stacking through the days!

*pic of my dog that is neutral to fireworks, my others are hunkered down inside closets ❤️

10/06/2023

I wanted to talk just a bit today about management.

I know practicing management may sound counter productive to overcoming challenges, but it’s really not. There are many areas where we can implement management to help us minimize responses, and many other areas where practicing management also HELPS with our progress.

In simplistic terms, I would like to explain why science gives a big 👍 to management.

Repetition. Repetition of behavior builds and strengthens neural connections in the brain. Physiological changes occur when behavior is repeated, making it more likely to reoccur in similar situations (also a danger of generalizing to other environments/situations). If behaviors are practiced to proficiency as working for the dog to create distance, they become an automatic response that will be more difficult to CER+.

If neural connections are NOT used, these connections gradually weaken, and can be known as an example of “use it or lose it”. This doesn’t mean management or avoidance will suddenly stop negative responses from occurring when exposed again, but it helps weaken the connections in the brain for the responses. This helps us move forward with greater chance of success in achieving cer+.

This is why it’s so important, in addition to working ds/cc, to practice management of avoiding triggers. It allows the dogs brain to be in a better place for learning, and it keeps behaviors from being practiced to proficiency.

We cannot have our world be one where we put our dogs in environments they cannot cope with, and expect them to learn to cope when we ask them to. We have to focus on a multifaceted approach of management, avoidance, AND cc’ing for greater success.

Think of your challenges and ask yourself where you can think outside the box to implement better management of environment, antecedents, and stimulus for your dogs emotional well-being.

We have to understand this part of healing, I can’t stress it enough!

11/03/2023

Varying levels of trauma.

There are many definitions for “fear” but overwhelmingly, most will mention that fear is a natural and powerful response that alerts the organism to threat or danger. In addition to externals changes, internal physiological changes occur to poise the organism for survival.

If we think about it, fear is healthy and normal! Without it, most organisms would not survive threats. This is passed on to offspring to ensure “survival of the fittest”. Our challenges occur when a normal fear response leads into abnormal responses that do not match the response a stimuli should express.

When this happens, there are varying levels of emotional responses from normal/rational all the way to abnormal/maladaptive and into anxiety and phobia. Anxiety (and phobia) falls under responses to anticipated/perceived stimuli that may not even exist and can be a perception of the individual.

Most “normal” fear responses are learned and we can work through them with modification, graduated exposure, counter conditioning.

But I wanted to talk phobia here.

Phobia is a different ballgame (than fear). Phobia is typically defined as profound reactions that do not diminish. Phobia involves sudden, all or nothing, profound reactions of complete panic. Most often that will also be accompanied by profound physiological responses that are so strong we will also see that outwardly expressed.

Once a phobia is established in an organism, they are then categorized as an immediate and intense level of panic and anxiety. There is no threshold. It’s all or none. Once a phobic event has been imprinted, any similar event or trigger associated with it, either real or perceived or (triggered in memory), is enough to generate that immediate panic/anxiety reaction. Some of us have probably witnessed this unfortunately, or we know a specific stimuli that may trigger this in our dogs.

With phobia, even without re exposure of the original stimuli, the panic can remain at level or exceed that for years, often for a lifetime.

Situations (or stimuli) that trigger a phobic reaction are usually avoided at all costs because there is no threshold. Because of zero threshold, the best we can hope for is to focus on coping through as best we can, but most times sadly that Is with the extreme anxiety and terror.
In some cases, depending on dog and trigger, it might border on inhumane to continually subject the dog to that level of trauma because there is no low level exposure to even begin working with.

It will be almost impossible to focus on modification of a phobia without the use of medication and even then, practicing avoidance is by far the most humane path forward.

I have a personal dog that is a trauma survivor, a dog meat trade survivor and long term stray survivor. She was diagnosed with global fear, generalized anxiety disorder, confinement trauma, exaggerated flight response, noise aversion. Her biggest phobia was specific noises that determined immediate and severe non cognitive flight responses. She would hurt herself in order to flee. She would jump off a high rise if exposed.

Modification can be this complex scenario of avoidance, but also emergency coping just in case, and also focusing on the recovery times after you inadvertently run into those triggering events.

For us, coping meant hunker down in your safe bed and ride it out. I kept safe beds everywhere including our car. If she got scared, hunker down. For a phobia, I will choose to redirect and reinforce a freeze over flight as a wanted response because freeze keeps her safe. To reiterate though once again, avoidance was my first choice always. Recovery for my dog meant distractions, massage, redirecting to clear her mind and lower stress chemicals faster.

In your journey, please remember your focus needs to be on avoidance, coping, and your RECOVERY methods are extremely important.

Please remember exposure or flooding can easily sensitize a dog even more. You can work through a lot of challenges by avoiding them for awhile and then sslowly exposing after you’ve taught coping behaviors and you can be there for them as a secure base. I call this micro exposures.

Avoidance is part of helping heal. It’s advocacy, time for the brain to find a place of health, a time for recovery, and is imperative that we all remember avoidance, coping, recovery in each situation.

Does your dog struggle with any phobias?

02/03/2023

The sooner we can admit this reality the better. Overwhelmingly, we assume that “balanced training” is somehow more humane than compulsion training. I’m not sure where this disconnect comes from.

The fact of the matter is that the unpredictability of reinforcement combined with corrections isn’t more humane. In fact, it brings with it trauma bonding which can be construed as abusive all on its own.

Balanced training doesn’t exist! Balanced trainers ARE compulsion trainers regardless of what they tell you!

Don’t fall for it. Ask questions, ask hard questions to them like what do they escalate with if your dog doesn’t respond initially? How often are treats used? What happens to your dog if they don’t understand the behavior asked of them in different environments? What happens if they have emotional responses or what happens if the dog isn’t capable of responding due to environmental pressure/triggers/stimuli in proximity. What then? Ask!

28/05/2022

Start at one

Like hopscotch, when we first start learning, if we try to hurry and jump to the end, we face greater chances of falling down, skinning our knees, and possibly having to stop or start all over!

Behavior modification with fearful dogs is much the same. One of the biggest mistakes I find people make is exposing their dog to more stimuli than it can cope with.

The amount a dog is comfortable with is determined by each dogs genetics, ‘noise’ in their current environment, and their past experiences.

The newly adopted dog may have never been inside a home!

The new puppy may need to develop a secure attachment to one caregiver initially!

The dog with isolation/deprivation trauma will not be able to cope with a lot of stimuli in our human world and may need as much removed as absolutely possible.

Start at ONE. Stay at ONE. We cannot jump to 5, or 6, or 10 until we’ve helped them feel safe, confident and comfortable with 1 and then 2 and then 3. While you are working on 2, you will have opened up the world just a bit with ONE.

This may mean one person as a primary caregiver so that person can offer support while working the same steps with person 2. That may mean ONE room inside your home while we slowly expand to a second and then a third room. That may mean ONE neighborhood block until your dog can walk that block with confidence. It may mean one outdoor environment like a yard or hiking trail before we ever consider exploring 2 or 3. For a dog with a lot of trauma, it will mean ALL OF THE ABOVE.

As we stay focused on one, and then on two, and then on three, we are ultimately slowly exposing our dogs in a very precise way that helps them gain more positive experiences and grow in confidence as we go.

Remember, remove as much stimuli as possible and listen to your dog. Learning to feel safe never means being fearful or terrified.

One baby step at a time. Focus on safety at the ONE before you hop to two…

*if your dog cannot cope at one, with the smallest world possible, please consider an appointment with a vet behaviorist and a discussion about adding medication.

21/05/2022

Antecedents

Hi all, long post warning! I’m going to *attempt* to explain how/why we should consider looking at our dogs behavior from a different perspective. Understanding antecedents can help us see things from our dogs view.

Examples of things I hear.
*my dog keeps lunging and barking at the neighbors dog when we walk and it’s embarrassing, how do I get her to stop?
*my dog keeps charging at my sister when she visits, how do I get him to stop*
*my dog keeps barking at the mailman out the window and I’m thinking of getting a bark collar to make him stop*

What’s the human focus in each example? The dogs behavior?

Over many decades multiple different learning theories have been published. In the past, much of the sciences stayed individual instead of working together. Luckily nowadays, we know that all of the different learning theories overlap and all organisms have vast and complex ways of learning. From behaviorism to cognitive theory to social theory and many more. For the purpose of this post I’m going to stick with behaviorism and the ABCs of behavior.

I realize my focus is fearful dogs with a focus on the emotion, but it’s also really important to grasp the ABCs. This is important because depending on consequences (either positive or negative), emotional responses can strengthen or weaken. For the purpose of THIS post since we are emotional focused page, observable behavior (what we can see) is an outward reflection of internal emotions! They do go hand in hand. *for professionals following, I’m going to keep this as simple as possible.

I want to try and explain the ABCs with a special focus on the A. Antecedents. ABCs stand for:

Antecedent (stimuli that presents before the..)
Behavior (the organisms response to A)
Consequence (the positive or negative outcome from the behavioral response. Will it increase repeated behavior or decrease it?). Almost everywhere we look, once we understand the ABCs, we can see ABCs occurring.

So often I see or hear people who completely focus on their dogs behavior and how to stop it/change it/eliminate it without ever considering what the behavior is in response to or what it’s telling us about our dogs emotions. Almost always, there is a viable antecedent that we need to acknowledge. Focusing solely on stopping the behavior by any means possible can be really detrimental to the dog because that approach doesn’t account for the antecedent!! In many instances, humans immediately focus on *how our dog is REACTING/ACTING/BEHAVING BADLY and how we can stop is fast, instead of what our dog is RESPONDING to*. An easy way to stop it fast or change it is to work with/on the antecedent.

Antecedents can also be distant antecedents, which would include things like anxiety (anticipation of danger), health and medical reasons, and trigger stacking to name a few. Often times distant antecedents can be addressed by professional medical help and understanding small trigger exposures. We can really help our dogs feel better in their world by eliminating any distant antecedents that may be affecting them daily. In addition to distant antecedents, we have the IMMEDIATE antecedents. Immediate antecedents occur right before the behavior. Sometimes they can be difficult to sort out but I promise they are almost always there if we play detective enough and pay attention. Some are blatantly obvious (dog sees car. Dog barks at car. Car goes away. dog receives a positive consequence by keeping himself safe, a self reinforcing behavior!). We can address the barking by keeping safe distance from the car, ds/cc to cars over time via open bar/closed bar at the sight of a car, or simply turning the other way and implementing an alternative behavior for distraction. Most examples listed are not going to change the way your dog feels, but they are also going to stop the ABC chain from occurring which In turn will keep the behavior from being constantly practiced (and strengthening). Often times people will solely focus on “make my dog shut up” without realizing the dog is sharing information about how they are feeling, as a response to an antecedent. In almost all instances, we need to look for, understand and focus on the specific stimuli. If we focus on the antecedent more, we will also change the behavior response. Focusing on how to get our dogs to “stop the behavior” without ever addressing the antecedents is not the way to help our dogs begin to gain confidence or feel safer in our world. Using punitive methods or fear or force as a response to your dogs behavior doesn’t help address the antecedents either and in fact can be suppression and flooding. If my dog is barking at my kid, or trembling at the sight of my sister, or charging the mailman - the kid, the husband and the mailman are all antecedents and triggers. The way for me to help my dog practice different responses is to acknowledge that I need to focus and work on antecedent arrangements, management, avoidance, distance when I cannot actively counter condition. Behavior always follows antecedent exposure or is caused by a distant antecedent.

Please think of ways you can identify antecedents and how we can address them so our dogs have different, more positive experiences which in turn is expressed as more “positive” behavior. Behavior is ALWAYS information for us about how our dogs are feeling at that moment in time, and is almost always a response to specific stimuli (an antecedent). If we cannot work with the antecedent, we need to try and keep distance, avoid, and distract until we can work on it, so fear doesn’t strengthen and behavior isn’t reinforcing. Focus on the specific stimuli and how to work with that. Antecedents are TRIGGERS. Antecedents can also be PREDICTORS of good things to come. They could predict food, a toy, a fun game, a quick run the other way. We can help our dogs more by understanding how antecedents work and focusing on making them predictors instead of triggers. One of the most effective ways to initially begin working with antecedents is to recognize them and implement management and avoidance so the dog begins to learn they are safe.

07/04/2022

• Above all else, a strong bond is fundamental for quality of life and the five freedoms of welfare. A safe and secure attachment matters.

• Make sure your dogs life is lived with you, not for you.

12/12/2021

Let’s talk. I have a few questions. This is random dog thoughts, after all.

• if I introduce more excitement to an excited dog, can I increase arousal? ❓❓I think so.

• if I add more calming exercises/environment to a halfway calm dog, can I make I increase calmness? Well…yes. 🤔🤔

• if I put a dog in a fearful situation when it’s already a little afraid, can I make it more fearful? Yes I can, absolutely! 😱😱

➡️I can strengthen emotional responses by adding the same emotion to them.⬅️

➡️ I cannot weaken a fearful emotional response by abandonment! I can weaken a fearful response by being there with my dog and supporting them however they may need ⬅️

So let’s talk about that.

We often here that we shouldn’t coddle a fearful dog because it will make them more fearful. When we break down this common misconception, from a neuro perspective, and from a survival perspective, it makes no sense.

If a dog is forced to confront fear all alone, we are not providing adequate assistance to change neural pathways into more positive ones, and we are allowing the defensive strategies to remain in memory and strengthen. We are adding more fear to a fearful situation, not taking any away.

We end up doing the exact thing that we say we don’t want to do…”facing the fear” and “gaining confidence” isn’t the biggest reinforcer…survival is. They didn’t face a fear, rather…they barely escaped! This does not make them feel any safer, and can very well contribute more sensitization and even long term health issues.

Coddle your dog. Provide adequate assistance if they are struggling. Give them choice. Advocate for them.

04/12/2021

Behavior modification, helping a fearful dog feel safe.

Often times, dogs are left struggling longer than necessary or living a life barely coping because all aspects of behavior modification arent put into place. We may use one of the paws, or two, or even three…but just like a car, if one tire goes flat, it will take longer to reach your final destination (if you reach it at all).

So let’s discuss the 4 paws of Modification a bit more in depth.

1. Avoidance of triggers. If we have a dog in environments where they are constantly faced with single or multiple varying levels of stressors, their body is constantly pulling internal reserves poised for fight or flight, they are constantly on guard, and are never fully capable of relaxing and reaching a place of homeostasis. In order to counter this, we must try to eliminate exposure to as many of the triggers as we possibly can. The more we can advocate for our dog, the faster they can relax and learn the entire world isn’t a huge scary place. This will help them feel safer when near you, or their home, or a room in their home (all dependent on their level of fearfulness). They can begin to see the world with a little different view…one of safety, not of danger. The brain stores things as safe or danger, and we want to start moving more and more triggers to “safe”.

2. Management. This second paw goes along avoidance, because without one it’s difficult to have the other. There are very simple and effective things we can implement to help manage our dogs environment. Dog dependent ideas:
Safe spaces in the home. A safe room if needed. Drapes closed if needed. Lights on or off. Television on, air filters on, noise machines, moving a dog to a back room on trash pickup days for distance, putting window coverings on windows, gating off access to a front door, taking your dog out on a leash, choosing times to walk parks when quiet, cutting out walks, avoiding neighborhood walks and so much more. If you need advice on management, please ask someone who may see a different solution to avoid triggers.

3. Vet and medication. There is a large amount of newer research that points to the hypothesis that many behavior challenges can have a contributing factor of underlying/undiagnosed medical conditions. It’s crucial when beginning a modification plan that we have a thorough vet exam so we can to rule out things like hearing, vision, arthritis, infections, teeth and so much more. Often times, we may need to discuss with a vet a more thorough exam than a yearly checkup. Discuss your concerns with a professional and advocate for your dog.

In addition, prescription medication (long lasting meds as well as situational), can increase recovery times, allow your dog to cope better, feel safer, and cope with more trigger exposure so they learn this world is actually safe!! Please consider the possibility that medication may be a vital part of your dog’s recovery process and speak with a professional.

4. DS/CC/training. When working avoidance and management, we will also eventually implement DS/CC to try and help our dogs form better emotional responses to the things that scare them. This may be a slow process of continuing to avoid many triggers while we slowly reintroduce with a specific plan. There is a precise method for counter conditioning that needs to be followed. A key part is keeping your dog at a distance where they feel safe and pairing the trigger with highest value yummy food. If your dog will not take the highest value food at the furthest distance, you need to implement avoidance again. We do not ask for behaviors during this process, only pairing food with trigger. However, we do set ourselves up for more success if we have a few emergency toolbox behaviors at our disposal. Teaching behaviors such as nose targeting objects, hand targeting, emergency uturns, emergency “let’s go!” cues, and more. Well rehearsed behaviors can be highly effective if we find ourselves in a situation where we need to practice distractions if a trigger gets too close, or if we need to create distance from a trigger that we have no control of.

Please consider hiring a positive reinforcement trainer or scheduling an assessment with a veterinarian behaviorist for more help tailoring an individual modification plan for you and your dog.

Random Dog Thoughts

01/07/2023

10/06/2023

11/03/2023

02/03/2023

28/05/2022

21/05/2022

07/04/2022

12/12/2021

04/12/2021

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