TRIGGER STACKING

 When talking about stress and reactivity it is important to take into account trigger stacking and coping thresholds.

What is Trigger Stacking?

 Trigger stacking is essentially the culmination or arousal and stress from various triggers which ultimately pushes a dog over its coping threshold so whilst they may not have reacted to a certain trigger in a calm state, due to trigger stacking they do on that occasion.

 For example:

For example, a positive or negative arousing event (trigger) may take place that pushes your dog into an emotional and physical state of readiness via increased adrenaline and cortisol. The trigger might be a sudden sound, the anticipation of driving to the park and then being held in the car, waiting for a toy to be thrown, new people entering the property and the anticipation to be petted and given attention etc etc….

This is fine but if arousal continues to rise then inappropriate behaviours may emerge such as barking, humping, mouthing/grabbing, spinning, jumping up, lunging, barking, overly boisterous play and ultimately it may culminate in unexpected aggression from a particular situation such as you drop a bin lid which may frighten your dog to jump and move away or bark but on this occasion due to trigger stacking, your dog enters a Fight, Flight, Freeze State and thus one of those scenarios takes place such as your dog launching an all-out attack on you. This diagram may help explain:

Signs of arousal include:

Fast heart/respiration rate, dilated pupils, tense body posture, hyper-vigilance (on high alert), panting, barking/whining, spinning, mouthing/grabbing, jumping up, humping, increased pulling/lunging on lead, snatching at food, high tail/ear position, hackles raised, increasingly rough play.

In this hind brain state it is also very hard for a dog to learn and means they are more likely to take the low road response than well thought out high road response.

For more on High Road and Low Road response Click Here.

Preventing Trigger Stacking

The physical and mental effects of stress such as Cortisol circulating the body into the brain can last for at least 24 hours, some reports say up to 72hrs. Therefore your dog can be ‘stacking triggers’ over quite a period of time. This might explain why you can’t see where the sudden fleeing or ‘attack’ comes from. Therefore it is critical you identify triggers and avoid them and / or work on desensitising them.

For example, play in dog pens and ball chucking especially in a group of dogs can be very arousing. Therefore, our group walks encourage keeping on the move, allowing sniffing and they do not involve competitive ball chucking play or enclosed pen space play. This is also one of the reasons I have resisted the concept of a daycare centre.

 For more on the effects of stress and helping reduce it click here:

“Trained proactive handlers can pay attention to the environment around them so they can diffuse situations before they arise.” Brenda Aloff, (APDT)