

If possible, let your dog take a break somewhere quiet, where they can enjoy a chew or food-stuffed hard toy or take a nap. Some pups can compose themselves quickly after such a situation, while others can carry stress effects for days or even longer. It takes time for their cortisol levels to drop. If your dog experiences an incident of trigger stacking, try to give them time to decompress. Since dogs don’t dwell on the past, proactively treat this experience as a learning opportunity for the future. Avoid lingering and instead try to get your pet out of the stressful situation as quickly as possible. If no other option exists, shorten your leash to keep your dog safely close to you pull out the treats and lure or guide your dog through the space. Ask people to give your pet space or if you can exit out the back. In those moments, take the lead by advocating for your dog. We might not have a choice other than to push forward through the moment quickly and keep our dog as calm as possible. Unfortunately, even if you have great plans to keep your dog below threshold, sometimes life gets in the way.

When training, aim to keep your “under threshold.” Over time, you can work through this via counter conditioning and slowly pairing the sight, smell, or presence of a stressor with a non-stressor from a comfortable distance. In fact, forcing your dog into stressful situations might worsen canine fears and phobias or reactivity. Morgan Growth Equity Partners, with participation from PayPal.
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When your dog is at their comfort level, they are said to be “below threshold.”įlooding your dog won’t actually change behavior with desensitization or shift their overall response. Compliance-as-a-service platform Laika has raised 35 million in a series B round of funding from lead investor J.P. On a calm day, your dog might ignore a person coming to the door. Such anxious behavior might manifest as lunging, snapping, growling, or even biting.ĭifferent things will stress different dogs, and a pup’s feelings about an unpleasant or concerning situation might differ from day to day. This increase in cortisol might result in your dog responding in a manner that is out of character to a seemingly minor situation. As part of a stressed dog’s fight-or-flight response, cortisol-the body’s natural stress hormone-is released. That even goes for pets who don’t generally experience ongoing anxiety or reactivity.

What is Trigger Stacking in Dogs?īecause dogs thrive on routine, they might feel rattled when their schedules are disrupted.
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Here’s how to tell when your dog is battling trigger stacking and how to help them deal with it. As a result, a pup may feel overwhelmed and exhibit a large reaction to an otherwise minor stressor. Trigger stacking refers to a phenomenon in which a dog experiences multiple stressful or scary situations within a short timespan. Similar to people, sensitive, anxious, or reactive dogs can have periods when everything seems to go wrong.
