Meeting your dogs needs the smart way - training is overrated

"Meet your dogs needs!"
"Don't forget enrichment!"
"Those are species appropriate behaviors!"
"Are you focusing on decompression?"
"That type of dog needs tons of activation!"

Have you ever stumbled upon the same clichés over and over without a proper explanation to what it actually means? No worries, I'm here to help sort things out.

When it comes to the dog world, it can be quite intimidating to start dabble your feet in those concepts. People are quick to judge, scold and shower you in unsolicited advice and opinions. I have been (and still sometimes am) that person, it's easy when you feel like you have a greater perspective than many other people in a certain subject to insert yourself as superior and allowed to make those judgments. I usually get back to my senses after posting judgy or "know-it-all" comments, and delete them. No one likes to hear that. What I instead try and focus on is writing about the things that bother me that I see/hear/read. A couple of things that have bothered me quite a bit for some time now is the missuse of the buzzwords enrichment and activation. I have also been quite bothered by seeing so many dogs being punished or deprived of engaging in behaviors that are healthy and functional for them, in order to regain a sense control over them. So I decided to write about this.

First of all, we want to make sure that we set the baseline correct. The relationship we have with our dogs are supposed to be symbiotic, not a power struggle. We are supposed to be in tune with our dogs. Humans didn't domesticate wild predators by leash popping or shocking them with e-collars. Humans have the ability to understand animals and animals have the ability to understand us - through our shared language: body language. It doesn't take a dog pro to feel what a dog is trying to communicate when they're lunging, snarling and growling at you, right? It doens't take a dog pro to feel what a dog is trying to communicate when a dog is prancing towards you with a toy in their mouth, softly wagging their tail, right? It doesn't take a dog pro to feel what a dog is trying to communicate when furrowing their brows, making their eyes real wide while licking their lips when you eat a tasty meal, right? Context, body language and behavior are powerful ways to communicate our needs and desires. Even humans talk too much in my opinion, most of our needs and desires can be expressed by the choices we make and clear, assertive statements for clarification. The problem here is that, most people aren't even in tune with themselves so how would they possibly be able to stay in tune with others? Before we can achieve emotional intimacy with others we need to practice emotional intimacy with ourselves. Before we can achieve honesty with others we need to practice being honest with ourselves. Before we can clearly communicate our needs to others we need to be able to understand our needs ourselves. This is a lot easier said than done, and I will not be able to teach you how to do any of those things. However, the great things about relationships is that they tend to act as a reflection, a mirror sort of. Showing us where we are lacking in the relationship with ourselves. The relationship with our dogs can be some of the most catalytic, expansive and healing experiences ever - if we decide to take on the challenge! And if you're here, still reading this, chances are you have already taken on that challenge.

When we become more interested in understanding how to meet our dogs needs and less interested in changing their behavior we are already on the right path. All behavior serves a function and all behavior has an underlying reason. If we're seeing maladaptive, dangerous, unhealthy or pathological behavior our initial thought should be "why is it happening" rather than "how do I change it". When we're trying to assess behavior we want to keep certain things in mind as well, we have core markers to help us navigate how behavior correlates with each other and how sensitive our dogs are to certain stimulus and we also have core emotions or core emotional systems to help us navigate the underlying neurobiological forces that drives behavior. I like to look at these core markers: Sociability, playfulness, arousal, predatory drive, anxiety, fear, resource guarding and aggression. These markers can help me better understand personality types, behavior patterns, correlations in behavior and environment, attachment, conflict and control issues, underlying reasons for certain behaviors, potential medical conditions, make risk assessments and figure out the best way to meet the needs of individual dogs. I also like to look at the core emotions (by Dr Jaak Panksepp): seeking, play, fear, care, lust, rage and panic. This help me better understand what parts of the dogs brain are working overdrive or could be out of balance, what their nervous system states might look like and how to best approach these imbalances to reach regulation and social engagement. Behaviors are not the disease, they are the symtom.

I also like to keep the predatory motor sequence in mind and assess how it is currently being applied in a dogs life, if applied at all. The predatory motor pattern is a gold mine to help our dogs nervous systems to regulate, if we know how to use it strategically.

What we tend to see in a healthy, well functional and adaptive dog is: Sociability, playfulness, functional arousal and functional predatory drive. This indicates the dog is in homeostasis and that the brain is engaged in primarily the seeking and play center of the brain which is a really good place to be in! When we see a lot of the other behavioral markers we start to se indications of the fear, rage and panic center of the brain being highly activated which is not just an unpleasant place to be in, it is unhealthy and creates actual damage to the brain and body of the dog. We would die if these centers of the brain didn't exist, so we can't expect our dogs to never ever be in them, but to be chronically engaged in these emotional states is unhealthy and will create maladaptive and unhealthy behaviors as a response to that.

So, what has any of this to do with enrichment, activation, biological needs and decompression? Don't worry, we're getting there!

Enrichment at it's core is about creating a sense of control. Enrichment was primarily created as a concept for zoo animals - wild captive animals that experience immense stress from living under such controlled premises. We're finding ways to let the animal engage in species appropriate behaviors but we are not prompting them to do so. We are not teaching or training them to do anything. We are setting up opportunities to do these things if they want to. Not wanting to and opting out is also enrichment! Control, choice and consent are some of the most basic things to implement for an organisms well-being. And that is what enrichment is about. It could be as simple as letting your dog pick which way to go on your walk. Or pick what toy they want to play with. Let them choose between two different chew treats, and if they choose both or neither - that's still enrichment! If we toss treats in the grass to encourage scavenging and our dogs show no interest, opting out of the activity - that is an enriching experience still. Enrichment is also about fullfilling species appropriate needs, this could be scavenging and foraging behavior, this could be exploring interesting scents, chasing, tugging, tearing, chewing, barking, digging etc. Things that our dogs just tend to find outlets for either we planned it or not. So when we make it a habit to encourage and provide opportunities for these behaviors as well as letting our dogs decide if they want to engage in it or not that is when we have pin pointed enrichment.

Activation can have enriching aspects to it! However, activation is different from enrichment. When we talk about activation we talk about setting things up that have a purpose beyond species appropriate needs such as training, dog sports, physical exercise, brain games etc. It usually requires us humans to be involved in either the exercise itself, to prep it and prompt it or to teach our dogs to do it. It is not something our dogs would engage in without manipulation of the environment or their behavior. All dogs need activation but we usually put way too much emphasis on activation, especially activation exercises with way too high and unmonitored arousal levels (such as playing fetch, lots of running and highly aroused play/free roaming with other dogs, working our dogs when they are over-aroused because we misinterpret it as excitement etc) thinking this is what will help us tire our dogs out, help them get outlets for their energy and to excersise them properly. We CAN have that effect of activation - if we manage to create focused and very intentional exercises that help our dogs work their bodies in controlled movements while simultaneously for example controlling their breathing or arousal levels. Canine conditioning is one type of activation training that has that effect.

Biological needs can also be referred to as our physiological needs. It is important to understand what our dogs biological needs are in order to make sure we are giving them a proper foundation to stand on. If that foundation is not sustainable our dogs are not going to be able to maintain homeostasis and their neurobiological balance will be thrown off - resulting in behavioral problems. Biological needs include things such as food, water, shelter, autonomy and safety. In order to fully understand the importance of biological needs I want you to imagine living in the forest as a wild animal. What would make you thrive? Waking up and knowing you've got food easily accesible and drinkable water nearby, shelter if it would start to rain or get cold, autonomy to move around as you please and make choices for your wellbeing, having a well functional physical body that does not hurt when you move around, being in good health to ensure you can survive, find food and relocate if needed, be able to reproduce, having your social group nearby and being in close connection to your social group. You get what I'm trying to get at. These are the biological needs of living organisms, of course depending on species they might differ slightly, especially depending on if we're solitary or social animals but except from that it does not differ very much. These are pretty much essential for our survival no matter the species. When these needs are fulfilled and we feel safe and secure, our bodies thrive to their fullest. Now, we are not wild animals living in the forest, in fact we live in very unnatural environments and so does our dogs. So even though a lot of our biological needs might technically be met, the overpowering stressors from our everyday environment can still impact us to the point where we start to malfunction. Stress from work, rent, relationships etc can make us feel unsafe. And that is the core difference in an organism that is thriving and one that is not thriving. Are they feeling safe in their particular physical, emotional and social environment? If we feel unsafe our nercuous systems will be activated and we will become dysregulated moving into fight/flight and sometimes even into shut down/freeze states. The state we want to primarily be in for maintained homeostasis is called social engagement and this is the regulated state we are in when we are feeling safe. We feel safe to relax, to connect, to breathe, to eat, to enjoy ourselves, to take action when needed, to problem solve and so on. It is when we exist in this state our seeking and play centres of the brain are online. The seeking centre of the brain are responsible for things such as motivation, serotonin production, circadian rythm and desire. The play centre of the brain is responsible for things such as pleasure, dopamine production, joy and leisure. If these centres of the brain or emotional systems aren't working properly we tend to see issues in these areas such as sleep disorders, mood disorders, depression etc. So it is important to meet our own biological needs as well as our dogs biological needs, we also need to recognize that the chronic stress that comes from living in modern society causes actual damage to our brains. We need to work strategically to maintain balance in these emotional systems and in our nervous system, because our environment is not supporting biological homeostasis.

Decompression means that we are actively helping all that pent up stress from living in modern society, release. We are actively and strategically creating stress-reducing activities to make sure we are almost cleansing our bodies and brains of stressors. I like to look at it as a bucket, let's call it an emotional bucket. The bucket is the container for our capacity of stress and emotional dysregulation. That bucket fills with water everytime we encounter a stressor that makes us feel unsafe, this could be a thought, a feeling, a trigger, an event, a loud noise, pretty much anything. For our dogs this could be another dog, a loud noise, a stranger, a bird they're unable to catch (it triggers the rage system when dogs experience leash frustration or barrier frustration for example), not being able to communicate you're in pain, riding the bus etc. When our bucket fills to the brim and spills over we have meltdowns, survival mode activated, maladaptive behaviors, reactivity etc. All individuals have a different sized bucket, some were simply just born with a tiny bucket and some were born with a really big one. What we do with decompression is we drill little tiny holes into the bucket. This way we help the water spill out before it reaches the brim, this way we can avoid survival mode, meltdowns, maladaptive behaviors, reactivity etc. Decompression can be somatic exercises targeted towards lowering heartrate and respiratory rate, stretching certain parts of the body, aligning posture and relieving pain but it can also be about resting, relaxing, moving into meditative headspaces. It can be about zoning out, reducing stimulus, processing information and feelings or channeling chaotic energy into functional outlets (like being creative for example). For our dogs we can easily prompt these somatic experiences by prompting scatter feeding off the ground (lowering HR and RR, eating in natural position with head down will trigger fluent eating and effectively activate rest and digest system, it will help dogs process and retain information) or providing them with something to chew (engages jaw muscles, triggers rest and digest system, meditative state with repetetive movements). We can also prompt them through stretching exercises, massage techniques, breathing exercises, relaxation exercises or by simply reducing and/or monitoring stimulus on a daily basis. Cover windows to reduce stimulus from visual triggers, play music indoors to reduce stimulus from audible triggers, create distance when seeing other dogs on leash to reduce stimulus from reactive feelings and so on. Decompression is, in my opinion, the most important aspect if we are living in urban environments.

Now, the predatory motor pattern is an exciting thing, because we can access all of these topics with it. We can provide enrichment, activation, satisfy biological needs and provide decompression by simply setting up experiences for our dogs to move through the predatory motor pattern. The predatory motor pattern looks like this:
ORIENT->EYE->STALK->CHASE->GRAB-BITE->KILL-BITE->DISSECT->CONSUME

When our dogs move through the predatory sequence their arousal levels will look like a curve with a spike mid chase and then as they start to dissect the prey the curve will go down. The entire sequence is enriching and providing satiaton for biological needs, the stalk, chase and kill parts will be avticating and the dissect and consume parts will be decompressing. Of course we can't let our dogs move through this however they like, most dogs will not move through the entire sequency even if they had the chance since they've been bred to stop at certain parts of the sequence (golden retrievers are not supposed to go beyond a grab bite for example, a pointer is not supposed to go beyond a stalk/chase and a yorkshire terrier is not supposed to go beyond a kill-bite for example) but we can set up exercises and activities in a strategic way to mimic the experience of a predatory sequence. We can for example start with prompting ORIENT->EYE->STALK by teasing with a flirt pole on the ground. We can then drive our dogs into CHASE->GRAB-BITE->KILL-BITE by letting them chase after the flirt pole, grab onto the prey and shake it, maybe even let them start the DISSECT part by tearing pieces of the toy apart. Then, ending that activity with a frozen kong or a bully stick will move our dogs into CONSUME. We have then helped our dogs to properly fulfill the entire sequence. Rather than just activating our dogs and then leaving them at the top of that curve, aroused and not able to return down from that high, we are helping them to regulate their nervous system by moving through the arousal and back down into rest and digest. This will help your dog maintain regulation and social engagement. Taking into consideration that our dogs circadian rythm does not look like ours will also help. Their highest spikes of activation is at dusk and dawn - when wolves tend to hunt. They then tend to have a slump midday. Dogs need a lot more sleep than humans, even adult dogs need to sleep around 12 hours a day, so making sure they are feeling safe to sleep during the day will be crucial for their well-being. Dogs are social eaters and sleepers, so if we're away most of the day that can actually impact our dogs sleeping needs - increasing stress and anxiety. Making sure to meet your dogs needs strategically during the most effecive times of the day and making sure they feel safe enough to rest during the day and at night will help your dog regulate and maintain homeostasis. Depending on your individual dogs needs, the size of their emotional buckets, their core markers and underlying factors for potential stress and maladaptive behaviors, you will need to balance these activities to really hit the sweet spot for your particular dog. Now this is not all we can do, we can really get creative with these exercises. We can encourage running or physical exercise and then end it with a scatterfeeding and lickmat. Fulfills a similar curve. It all depends on what activities your particular dog enjoys doing. Try out different things, make it less predictable and make it a routine!

Now that you have a better understanding of the core needs of your dog and how to properly assess and meet them, you're more than ready to start improving your dogs mental and physical health as well as your relationship with your dog! Good luck!

Fulfilling your dogs needs isn't actually that difficult or time consuming. Work smarter, not harder!