What’s Stress Got to Do with It? - The 3 Kinds of Stress Your Dog Can Experience
Home Depot was a bit stressful for Ellie.
Stress is a bit of a buzzword in the human world these days. But do dogs also experience stress? If you have a dog with reactivity issues - you may have already guessed that the answer is yes. Stress is a physiological response - the release of different stress hormones that in turn cause a variety of changes in the body - happening in the body of an animal experiencing a stressful situation. Mammals have a very similar nervous system and process stress in similar ways, and humans and dogs are no exception. While trainers often warn about the dangers of anthropomorphizing your pets, this is actually one area where research suggests that dogs and people are pretty similar.
We can therefore conclude that both dogs and humans experience stress. We humans are often warned of the dangers of stress for mental and physical health, and doctors might tell us to reduce stress for a better quality of life. Does that then mean all kinds of stress are bad? In order to answer this question, we need to dig a little deeper and truly understand what the word “stress” means.
The Stress Response
When a human or a dog experiences stress, several processes happen in different areas of the brain, releasing hormones that set a fight or flight response into motion. It causes a few important changes in the dog’s body:
The heart beats faster
The breathing rate increases
The dog has easier access to energy
The dog can focus more on small details and remember them better
The dog feels pain less acutely
The dog switches from thinking to acting more habitually
If the dog’s system is working well, once a certain level of stress hormones has been reached or the stressful situation has passed, the dog’s system then reverses the changes and returns back to its normal state.
The stress response exists because dogs, just like us, have evolved to weather a variety of environmental challenges successfully. Stress is necessary for survival. But is it always unpleasant to experience stress?
Eustress - The Good Kind of Stress
The short answer is - no, not all kinds of stress are unpleasant. My dog Ozymandias once successfully hunted and caught a vole. This was clearly a stressful experience for him - he was breathing heavily after, panting with an open mouth, his pupils were dilated, his heart was beating more rapidly, and his movements were quick. He was under the influence of stress hormones, but he was not experiencing distress. In fact, I would say he was having an amazing time.
Dr. Kristina Spaulding, author of The Stress Factor in Dogs, differentiates between three different kinds of stress. The first kind, good stress or “eustress”, enables an animal or person to successfully interact with their environment - usually with a good outcome. For Ozy, hunting the vole was probably one of the highlights of his recent life. But it doesn’t always have to be this dramatic. Both of my dogs greatly enjoy sniffing out small treats that I hide around the house. Depending on how tricky I make it, it can be quite challenging for them, but it clearly is something they want since they keep coming back for more. They also both enjoy learning new tricks for access to food or toy play. Eustress is a positive experience that can help an animal feel a sense of fulfillment and happiness.
When we offer our dog enrichment activities, such as sniffing, digging, licking, running, playing, chewing, or searching, we allow them to feel eustress - if we do it right. If the activity we offer our dog is too easy or too hard for their skill level, they may either become bored or frustrated. Similarly, if we offer them the same activities over and over, they will likely grow tired of them. When choosing enrichment activities for your dog, it is a good idea to rotate through activities and introduce new challenges regularly. However, you also need to ensure that you break down complicated tasks so that your dog is not experiencing too high a degree of difficulty and becomes frustrated with the task - because then we may leave the area of eustress and venture into distress territory.
Tolerable Stress - Sometimes Things Suck a Bit
The second kind of stress is tolerable stress. This kind of stress is distressing to an extent, but a dog can navigate it and learn from it, often with the help of other dogs or a human. I see this frequently when taking young dogs on their first hikes. Going on nature hikes sounds idyllic, but it offers a variety of new challenges: a longer car ride, unfamiliar other dogs around them, different sights, sounds, and smells. A young Golden Retriever on my Friday adventure team recently discovered crossing streams for the first time and found this rather challenging! However, seeing the other dogs step into the water, she was able to learn that putting her paws into water was actually not so bad. In short, she gained the skill of stepping through water, and the amount of tolerable stress she experienced was actually worth it in the long run. We could describe the challenge of crossing he water as an acute stressor after which the dog’s nervous system returned to a normal state.
While it sounds so simple - just expose your dog to the scary thing and then their nervous system will adjust, unfortunately, it is not always guaranteed that dogs “work through” distressing experiences and learn to navigate them. Just as dogs are able to adjust to challenges, they may also find them so stressful that they come to prefer avoiding them in the future. Therefore, you need to be careful what kinds of stressors you expose your dog to and at what intensity. It is also important to offer your dog control over the experience. When we do exposure therapy, we are able to consent to it, but our dogs cannot truly give you consent. If your dog is then also leashed, and you use pressure on the leash to move them closer to the scary thing, you are removing your dog’s agency even further. This can be much more stressful than allowing your dog to approach on their own.
A much better method is to allow your dog to approach the scary thing at liberty or on a long line and reward them by tossing food away from the scary object when they interact with it in any way. For example, if your dog finds fire hydrants tricky, you can walk them to a hydrant, mark them when they look at it, and then toss a treat away from the hydrant. Over time, they may become more comfortable with the hydrant and even choose to take a step towards it or sniff it. If you use this method, it is very important to not ask too much of your dog, though. If you get the impressing that your dog is scared, stop the session and give them at least 24 hours to bounce back from the experience.
Toxic Stress - The Kind You Want to Avoid at All Costs
The third kind of stress is toxic stress, which is actually the kind of stress we usually refer to when we discuss the negative impacts of stress. Toxic stress can have severe consequences for both mental and physical health.
Toxic stress sometimes comes from acute stressors. Acute stressors may last anywhere from a moment to a few weeks, and usually the system then returns to its normal state. However, if an acute stressor is so intense that it leaves a lasting impact on a dog or person, it veers into the territory of toxic stress. In humans, this can lead to PTSD. PTSD cannot be diagnosed in dogs because we aren’t able to verify that certain aspects of the PTSD diagnosis are met since dogs can’t communicate their symptoms to us. But it is somewhat likely that they experience a similar condition after intense acute stressors. An example would be if your dog is attacked by another dog.
Chronic stress describes stress that continues for more than a few weeks by acute stressors continuing to pile on top of each other. Canine (and human) nervous systems are actually not equipped to deal with chronic stress. Remember when we talked about a healthy nervous system that shuts off the stress response when appropriate? When animals experience too much stress, or stress for too long, the systems in the body handling the stress response no longer work properly, which leads different body systems to take on the extra load and over time stop working properly and starting to shut down. Constant, chronic stress can, very simply, lead to disease and a shorter lifespan. For this reason, we need to take toxic stress very seriously in both dogs and ourselves.
Beginning Your Dog’s De-Stressing Journey
Many dogs experiencing reactivity on a daily basis are dealing with toxic stress. For this reason, most behavior professionals, such as myself, recommend reducing stressors as the first step in the training journey for dogs experiencing reactivity. In order to set you and your dog up for the best success, you can begin the journey of de-stressing even before you begin a training protocol to directly address your dog’s triggers.
Make sure that your dog is not experiencing physical pain or discomfort. This is, of course, a tall order since your dog can’t speak with you. Discuss this topic with your vet and be prepared to circle back to health as a factor if training interventions aren’t working well.
Feed your dog nutritious food that they digest well and that contributes to their overall health and wellbeing.
Reduce exposure to your dog’s triggers to the best of your ability. My dog Ozy is scared of people, especially on walks, and since I live in a city, I suspended walks for about 1.5 years. For you, it may be enough to drive your dog to a different neighborhood or a quiet park.
If you cannot limit exposure to your dog’s stressors, or at least not enough to stop the cycle of experiencing toxic stress, discuss with your vet or veterinary behaviorist if medication is appropriate for your dog.
Dial in your dog’s daily activities to increase predictability and routine. Most stressed beings do better when they can at least predict what’s going to happen next.
Offer your dog eustress experiences in the form of exercise and enrichment. Offer your dog activities that allow them to exercise their natural desires to dig, lick, sniff, run, scavenge, hunt, etc.
Give your dog as much choice and agency as is safe. For example, allow them to choose what kind of chew item you give them, offer them the choice to be pet or not, or let them pick the route for your walk.
Behavior professionals can also help you with these steps and give you feedback on what you’re already doing, so don’t hesitate to reach out. Please also watch out for future blogs on the topic discussed here to give you more ideas.
A eustress experience.
In Conclusion
As you can see by the sheer length of this post - stress is a complex topic, and more research is coming out every year. This is very hopeful because it means that we will very likely have more strategies for helping our dogs - and ourselves. I have said much about dogs, but of course the human end of the equation also matters. Just as we need to take care to keep our dog’s nervous system healthy, we also need to keep ours healthy. On a very pragmatic level this is because dogs sense our stress and respond to it, but also because you deserve to live a healthy, regulated, and eustress-filled life. Both you and your dog matter!
