Is your dog stressed?

The stress hormone 'Cortisol', plays a hugely important role in the body (human and canine). Just the right amount helps us thrive. However, too much or too little can cause problems. When a dog is placed under stress, something called the 'feedback loop' is created - what this does is once the hormones reach a certain level the feedback loop looks to stop the release of those hormones; which helps the body to regulate itself. It has been shown that when an excess of cortisol enters the body due to a stressful event, it can take up to 72 hours for levels to return to a 'normal'.

All dogs will go through periods of high stress, this is a normal and unavoidable part of life, and as long as they are allowed sufficient time to recover this doesn't become an issue. However; if a dog is exposed to prolonged periods of stress, the feedback loop breaks down and isn't able to do it's job properly. This means cortisol continues to be released and can be up to four times higher than normal and will fail to return to normal levels if repeatedly exposed to stress.

*Just to note: Some events will be more stressful than others depending on what that individual dog finds stressful. As well as each dog having a separate ability/threshold for coping with stress. Some have a high tolerance for stress, therefor having a higher threshold for coping; whereas some have a low tolerance for stress, therefore having a lower threshold for coping. This is also true for how quick some dogs can recover from a stressful event compared to others - it's all very individual based on numerous factors; however the graph below shows the potential outcome.*

How each dog deals with their stress will be individual to them. Let's go over a recent stressful period my dogs went through to shed some light on how stress can affect our dogs behaviour, and how to ensure it doesn't escalate.

Stressful events - Jacob and Jaffa were groomed (by me) on the Sunday.

• For Jacob this takes 3 separate sessions and about 2 hours altogether. He is pretty great at voluntary grooming and will accept a huge amount, but the face and feet understandably are harder to cope with. Even with all our training, this still is a stressful event.

• Jaffa, to put it bluntly, absolutely hates it and we try to make it as painless as possible while she endures this.

• After all of the grooming, they then also had an extremely restless sleep on Sunday night for a few different reasons, getting only a few hours sleep.

• All of this = excessive stress (cortisol) in the body

How do they cope with stress?

Jaffa in the house will retreat, and sleep. On a walk she is more likely to want to gravitate towards me and not do much normal doggy stuff, but will also be less likely to cope with any triggers. Ie she may snap at a dog without processing the situation first, where usually that certain dog might have been a good one for her to greet. For people that don't know Jaffa, her way of dealing with stress by staying close to me and not going off and doing anything, might look like a "well behaved dog" (which is actually her dealing with things by shutting down slightly), but they would then see "unpredictable with dogs, sometimes fine sometimes not" (which is actually her stress levels being too high she's not doing well with processing situations and coping with greeting dogs that day), for me that's actually pretty predictable.

Jacob in the house will be very 'clingy' for want of a better word, and more vigilant and responsive to noises. On walks he is unable to respond to known cues under distraction, sensitive to sights and sounds, a bit flighty, will run about like mad and have very little self control. He is also much less tolerable of being restrained when faced with exciting or scary stimuli. Ie today he barked and lunged at some horses (they were pretty close and on a small path to be fair, but normally would process the situation and check in with me for some reassurance), and he completely ignored me when trying to get him on lead with a dog coming towards us. For people who don't know Jacob they would see a dog misbehaving, 'reactive', and not trained. Whereas actually all the above are very rare to see, and are just his personal reaction to excess stress in the body.

How do I deal with this?

First and most importantly, I am not looking to punish my dogs for any of this behaviour. Why not? All that's going to do is create even more stress, making these issues last longer or become worse until I have a real issue on my hand. I need to remember that although also stressful and disheartening for me, what my dogs are going through is worse, and it won't last forever if I handle the situation right.

Here are a few things I do for 3-4 days when my dogs are dealing with excess stress:

• Decompression (lots of sleep, low arousal activities, and lots of sniffing on quite walks)

• Avoid stressful events like meeting dogs, no visitors to cause over excitement, make sure there are no cats to chase in the back garden, no grooming/husbandry work.

• Plenty of (but not excessive) enrichment activities: food toys, sprinkles, scent work, training, and reinforcing fun and known cues on walks such as tricks (they LOVE tricks).

Once I start to see stress levels reduce by observing their behaviour, I can re-introduce normality. More exciting and arousing activities, go back to working on distraction training and Jaffas ongoing work with greeting dogs. (By the Thursday things had returned to 'normal')

When people are unable to notice periods of high stress for what they are, they tend to assume their dogs are 'bad' or 'disobedient' dogs. The way they then handle those situations by trying to get rid of behaviours they don't like using punishment, or not giving their dog adequate time and activities to reduce stress; is all likely to actually increase stress and worsen not only their dogs behaviour but also their relationship too.

The arousal/stress curve

As I said at the beginning, a certain amount of stress can help us to thrive. When working with a dog, whether simple training or more complex behaviour modification; we're always looking to have our dogs at optimal performance where the best learning happens. This is where a certain amount of stress is healthy (anticipation, drive, excitement). When the dog tips over into negative stress this is where learning declines and we see our dogs go over threshold (a topic for another day). See chart below for an explanation:

Long term stress can be very tiring and eventually lead to continuous problems

When dogs don't have a sufficient amount of time to recover from a stressful event and the feedback loop breaks down, this can lead to various psychological and physiological (health) problems. If the event or stimuli that your dog finds stressful is for example grooming or a trip to vets; typically there is plenty of time to recover from this as it won't happen again for a while. However if the event or stimuli is fear of dogs or people, and your dog encounters this on an every day walk; this can lead to some problems in helping the dog recover.

Some of the problems that can occur from high stress levels are:

• High blood pressure, and potential onset of heart or kidney diseases

• Tummy issues like diarrhoea, or stomach ulcers

• Increased/inappropriate urination

• Changes in mood

• Increased alertness, vigilance, or readiness for 'fight or flight'

• Reduced ability to learn or retain information

What can you do to help your dog?

Firstly and very important, you can learn to read their body language and subtle signs that can help your dog avoid high levels of stress. To start learning about body language check out the app from Dog Decoder https://www.dogdecoder.com. With short periods of stress like my situation with Jaffa and Jacob, you can follow some of the ideas I do with mine during these brief periods. For longer periods of stress where you are unable to avoid stressful situations at all times; I would advice speaking with a science based, force free dog professional to come up with a plan to help your individual dog. It may not always be easy, but things can get better. (see poster below)