Building Resilience, Lowering Stress
If there is one thing I have learned in life with my dogs, it is that resilience is not linear.
What is resilience? It is the body's ability to adapt to or overcome stressors.
Resilience is not linear; it goes up and down and it is our job as Guardians to continually facilitate what our dogs need in order for them to thrive throughout the entirety of their lives.
That's right. We cannot think that because our dog is hearty and resilient now, that they will always be. Things change, experiences happen, beings get sick, and it is the role of the Guardian to assess and recognize their needs regularly, and adapt our approach whenever it is necessary.
Things to assess when considering resilience conditioning for your dog:
-Does my dog feel safe and secure in everyday life? If not, what can I do to provide more emotional and physical comfort and security? Since dogs are den animals, providing safe spaces to get away from everyday stressors is key to helping our dogs feel at ease.
-Am I regularly facilitating active and passive decompression? That means am I providing my dog opportunities to bring their stress hormones down. Activities such as biting and tug, running in the woods, playing with a social partner, sniffing for food off the ground, snuffle mat, or food dispensing toy, adequate time resting on a bed and/or in a crate. The key here is to ask ourselves: are the activities I am proving leaving the dog feeling rested and at ease when they are done?
-Is my dog physically able to complete the stress cycle and bring their stress hormones back down to baseline levels after a stressful event, or are they experience stacking stressors? A dog who does not have the ability to regulate their stress levels will experience allostatic overload (stacking stressors) and be more likely to trigger/ have behavioral problems. We need to provide opportunities for stress hormone levels to come down between stressors. This can be accomplished by facilitating safe spaces and through decompression activities.
-How is my dog's mental and physical well being? Since dogs will hide illness we need to pay close attention to subtle changes in behavior and asses whether they may be related to health concerns. We must also recognize how chronic afflictions can negatively impact our dog's behavior. Consider nails that hit the ground causing chronic pain to the feet and into the body, or itchiness due to allergies. What we feed our dogs matters too, so are we feeding a species specific diet that aids in their health journey, or is what and how much we are feeding them adding to their stress levels?
-Are we providing a lifestyle that is predictable enough that our dogs understand our expectations, yet not so predictable that they get bored, frustrated, and enraged? We need to be sure we are proving predictability for the sake of clarity while also proving novile stimuli to ensure our dogs live enriched lives.
-Am I providing social support or does my dog feel alone in the world? If our dogs do not see us as leaders at home on a daily basis, they will not see us as leaders in social situations. We can provide social support by being strong leaders to our dogs every day, choosing quality over quantity when it comes to socialization, and by not putting our dogs into uncomfortable situations they are not ready for. Dog parks are a perfect example of how to teach our dogs not to trust as in social situations.
-Are we proving agency? Does my dog have the ability to express themselves and make their own choices in a way that does not compromise safety, physical/mental/behavioral health, or enable the dog to practice unwanted behaviors. We must allow our dogs to have only as much agency as the dog is capable of handling at any given moment. Freedom is a major motivator, but it must be earned and we teach this by taking away freedom at first, crate training, boundary training, leash training and recall training. Every dog is different and every dog can handle a different degree of agency, but if we give too much too soon, we may set our dogs up for failure. Take your time, offer freedom and agency slowly, and adjust as needed if the dog struggles to remain poised in any given situation.
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