The importance of recognising the stress threshold of your dog

To build a strong and mutually trusting foundation upon which you can help your anxious dog to progress, it is essential to be able to recognise the first signs of a stress response in your animal. At this point the stress hormone cortisol will be flooding their body affecting their ability to see the situation from a neutral perspective. They will rapidly descend into the ‘flight or fight’ responses that we see as reactive behaviours (lunging, barking, fear aggression, or cowering, hiding, freezing to the spot). The point just before which you see the first signs of stress is your animals stress threshold.

SO what are the signs of stress? They could be hypervigilance (looking all around them – hyperalert), freezing, rigid body language and staring at a trigger (other dog, car, person), growling, barking, even yawning widely can be a sign that they are trying to self regulate themselves.

When we know the distance our dog needs to be away from a trigger before they begin to show signs of stress (their stress threshold), then we can aim to ensure that we ensure that we keep this far away from potential triggers when we notice them. This will allow your dog to remain calm and ensure their system does not become flooded with cortisol. This is important because cortisol remains in the system for up to 24 hrs or more after a stressful event, and if an animal experiences several triggers on a walk, or on walks over several days known as trigger stacking then their stress threshold will rapidly reduce and they will struggle to remain calm even in situations that may previously seemed not to have bothered them. When we are consistently aware and work within the limits of our companions stress threshold then they get the opportunity to re-evaluate situations that they previously found very stressful, and you will find you can work at gradually reducing the distance between your dog and the trigger.