Recognizing stress in all its forms.

I recently posed a question to the "hive mind" on Facebook requesting ideas for supporting a dog who "stresses down." First, I received a lot of great comments - thanks to all who chimed in! Second, I received many private messages from people who had never heard the term.

As a result, I had many great conversations about dogs and stress. While I will continue to leave dog training to others, I do believe that we all need to understand how stress affects our dogs, especially when their stress, in turn, affects us.

I learned the terms "stressing up" and "stressing down" by having them applied to my dogs - sort of a "you'll know it when you see it" thing. My Novice A dog stressed up in that when he was stressed, he would run off and even leave the ring. In other words, his outward response looked like naughty, energetic behavior - he was a "wild man." At the time, I didn't understand that this was his stress response, and I thought it was all my fault for not training correctly or enough.

Fast-forward years later, I took that now highly-trained, highly-accomplished dog to a group class that was organized chaos. I thought nothing of it - the environment was known to me - but he was overwhelmed. In that moment I FINALLY understood him - it was just too much stimulus for him to be successful.

Conversely, we have "stressing down" where the dog may shut down or perform tentatively. Some handlers call everything shutting down, but I disagree as I feel that the act of shutting down is just one of several ways a dog might stress down. For instance, my ultra-successful Indie always stressed down at the weave poles in agility, but she kept working, and once they were over, she sped up. She didn't shut down, but I always joked that you could knit a scarf during the time it took her to finish 12 poles.

From a mental management perspective, we must know how stressors impact our dogs so their stress doesn't freak us out! And remember, not all stress is bad. A chaotic environment, for example, might be busy for us, exciting for one dog, and overwhelming for another. It's our responsibility to get good at reading our dogs to create the best environment and rituals for us all to succeed.

Knowing how our dogs show stress is the first step to being able to support them. Chalking it all up to "ring stress" can be a dangerous oversimplification (I've been there myself!). If we think we contribute to our dog's stress, we can work on that. If we believe our dogs lack confidence, we can work on that. But we can only work on what we can see.