Don’t Discount Decompression

I recently took part in a zoom talk in the Dog Dilemmas Facebook group (if you’re on FB and interested in kind and ethical training and living with dogs come and join us, it’s a lovely positive group and a safe space to ask questions and talk dog!) on the topic of supporting your reactive dog. As part of the conversation the question was asked about mistakes that can often be made, and decompression was one of the first things that came to mind.

One of the factors I often talk about in reactive behaviour cases is trigger stacking: the accumulation of a number of smaller stresses or triggers that can lead to what might seem a relatively minor thing causing the dog to boil over and react.

Below is an excerpt from my book Understanding Reactive Dogs: Why Dogs React and How to Help**:

“As we know, a stimulus that can cause a dog to become stressed is called in behavioural language a trigger – they trigger behaviours such as avoidance, displacement or distance creating behaviours. A dog may have one or more triggers, all of which may have a different level of effect on the dog. Perceiving one of these triggers, whether it is something seen, heard, or perhaps smelled sets the stress response detailed above into action. As mentioned previously, it takes time for the stress hormones to leave, particularly cortisol. A heightened level of stress hormones means that the dog then becomes less tolerant to the proximity of any more possible triggers. With each further encounter before the dog has a chance to recover, the hormones build higher until eventually the dog goes beyond the point at which he can cope, goes over threshold and goes into an overt display of reactive behaviours…

Trigger stacking does not just occur on walks as stress can happen in almost any place a dog finds themselves. A common example would be a trip to the veterinary surgery, especially if the dog has previously had a bad experience there or is in some measure of pain. This combined with the smells and sounds of the veterinary practice and the proximity of a person they probably do not know well, can all stack up to send the dog over threshold.

Given the fact some studies show that potential up to 72-hour period for cortisol levels to drop to pre-reaction levels, it is clear that trigger stacking is definitely something that we must take into account when working with or planning to work with a reactive, fearful or anxious dog.”

Other analogies for explaining the cumulative effects of smaller stressors also exist.

This explanation is taken from my on-demand webinar Supporting a ‘Reactive’ Dog:

"There are other analogies that we can use to explain how this phenomenon works, and different ones will work best for different people to really understand what is going on with and inside the dog.

One involves envisaging candles underneath a bowl of water. Each candle will heat the water up a little, and the more candles there are the hotter the water will become. Eventually, with enough candles, the water will heat up to the point it goes over the boiling point and can, if the heat is not removed, boil over the sides of the bowl.

Another analogy that is often seen is that of the stress bucket. Every event and factor that causes stress to the dog is like water flowing into the bucket. If the dog’s stress levels are not able to drop then the bucket will become full and the liquid will overflow as it becomes too much for the bucket to contain.

A third way to explain this concept, and one that I have also used in my books, is the ‘spoon theory’, often used to describe how people deal with chronic pain and illness. The theory also works well to explain how dogs can become overloaded with triggers. On any given day, your dog has a certain number of spoons in his mental repository that correspond with the resilience he has to deal with triggers that he might encounter, and those spoons are all he gets to cope with his day. Every trigger takes a certain number of spoons away from the dog, depending on how much fear it provokes in the dog. At some point, if he encounters more triggers, your dog will run out of spoons so has no capacity to deal with any more triggers and will go over threshold and react.

These illustrations show the importance of a period of decompression, to let those stress levels reduce and the hormone levels in the dog’s body drop down into the ‘normal’ range for that dog and homeostasis returns. This can help the dog to be more relaxed and happy in his day to day life, and also gives an excellent platform from which to start helping the dog be more able to cope with the things he sees as triggers."

It is this fact of taking time for stress levels to drop and the hormone levels to return to normal that highlights the importance of the decompression stage before starting work to help our dogs feel safer in the world outside their safe places. Time spent avoiding triggers is invaluable, whether that is staying entirely at home and using puzzles, training, and play to give your dog the mental and physical stimulation they need, or getting in the car to go somewhere else for a walk away from triggers; perhaps a quiet area with plenty of room to stay far enough away from everyone or everything else or to a secure field where you can both relax.

That last point is also a good one when it comes to decompression and something we discussed during the conversation – it is not just the dog who needs to decompress. Living with one of these special sensitive dogs can be incredibly difficult with lots of emotional turbulence and stress that comes with it. Time to relax and enjoy being with our dogs will be incredibly helpful when it comes time to step outside of that door again.

And finding quiet places to relax together can be incredibly rewarding!

** Ebooks available at a variety of stores via the link. Paperback and hardcovers from Amazon or to order from other bookstores. Audiobooks via Amazon, Audible and Apple Books.