[nagdu] stress, how much is too much?

[Katrin Andberg]

Dogs show stress often in ways that most humans would not naturally
recognize as stress signals.  I work with severely stressed dogs in my job
and a huge part of what I do is educating dog owners on what their dog is
doing and what it means.

 

Signs of canine stress fall into a couple of different categories.  You have
(in order of escalation)

 

1.  Displacement behaviors: sniffing the ground and/or scratching as if they
have an itch.  I see the sniffing the ground commonly corrected, when really
what the dog is trying to self sooth, they are stressed and so they sniff.
Classic I see is a dog is corrected, and immediately drops his head to sniff
something.  The handler mistakes this behavior for disobedience, so corrects
the dog again.  When this happens I want to cry for the dog, he is being
corrected for trying to diffuse and de-stress.  Think of how difficult an
experience at that moment for the dog, he's being corrected, punished for
being stressed.

 

2.  Calming signals: Yawning, licking lips, turning the head away, looking
away/avoiding eye contact, walking or moving away from the stressor/trigger.
There is an excellent booklet called On Talking Terms with Dogs: Calming
Signals that discusses this subset of self-soothing behavior patterns in
dogs

 

3.  Stress Reactions: panting, pupil dilation, full body shake off (as if
the dog were wet but he isn't at that present moment), sweaty paws,
trebling/shaking, whale eye (looking at something with a sideways stare,
called whale eye because you see mainly the whites of the dog's eye),
putting the hackles up (hair on the back of the dog's spine/neck)

 

4.  Focus: staring at trigger/stressor, stiffened body posture, freezing,
holding breath, closing mouth/clenching jaw

 

5.  Preparing to defend: showing teeth, growling, barking (vocalizations) 

 

6.  Lunging

 

7.  Biting

 

Something I frequently encounter and counsel clients on is how incredibly
dangerous it is for a person to misinterpret and punish any of the beginning
or lower level stress signals.  Any dog in enough stress, if their threshold
is pushed far enough will either fight or flee (in some cases 'flee'
exhibits as an entire mental shut down, in others as complete avoidance).
For a dog who has been corrected for showing stress, you effectively take
away their warning system.  Dog says- I'm scared, I'm stressed, I tried to
tell you this before and you punished me, this time I'm not going to warn
you (and often this means dog goes directly to biting).  

 

Punishment doesn't actually long term change behavior.  Punishment
suppresses behavior.  It doesn't actually change the beings underlying
motives for doing said behavior.  This is often why those who rely on
various forms of punishment to control another beings behavior (dog,
person/child, etc) find themselves having to as time goes on resort to
higher and higher escalations of punishment form.  To truly change a
behavior that is occurring that you find inappropriate for whatever reason,
you must address and change the beings underlying motivation for doing the
behavior.

 

Katrin