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Thresholds are a concept, not something concrete, so it can be difficult to have a consensus as to what they actually are. To make this even more confusing, there are many types of thresholds that a dog can cross. In this episode, Sarah and I do our best to break this topic down.

We discuss:

• Sarah’s framework for helping her clients understand the threshold of perception and the threshold for behavior
• How changes in the environment cause changes to thresholds
• How vocalizations are not always a helpful metric for a dog “going over” threshold
• The correlation between increased stress and lowered thresholds, and what to do with reactive dogs when they in various stages of stress
• How the intensity of a trigger influences a dog’s threshold
• And so much more!

About Sarah:

Dr. Sarah Shapiro-Ward CPDT-KA, KPA-CTP has lived and worked as a professional dog trainer in two of Canada’s most densely populated downtown communities: Toronto and Vancouver. Sarah is best known for her viral trick training videos with her Cockapoo Percy, including tricks such as playing Jenga, Connect Four and Painting on Canvas. She also has a standard poodle, Eleanor, and a horse, Niamh.

Before becoming a dog trainer, Sarah completed her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 2015. Though she has long since left the laboratory behind she still enjoys keeping up with the literature and applying her skills of critical analysis to dog training scenarios.

Sarah is a frequent guest on the live call-in radio show CBC BC Today, answering Vancouver’s dog behaviour questions. She has also been featured on Jimmy Fallon, The Daily Mail UK, NHK Japan, Good Morning America, The New York Post & others.

Besides training tricks, Sarah teaches group classes and private lessons for city dog owners across Vancouver. She can be found on Instagram and TikTok @prancingpoodles.

Read her blog post on thresholds here.

Transcript

Jessica: [00:00:00] I am Jessica Wheatcraft, and this is Rethinking Reactivity, A podcast designed to educate, empower, and equip the modern handler of reactive dogs. Whether you have a reactive dog or you help people with their reactive dogs, you’re in the right place.

Jessica: Before we get into today’s episode, I wanted to share a quick update. My leash reactivity mentorship for professionals is starting this September and registration opens July 15th. If you’re looking to elevate your work with reactive dogs, you won’t find a more comprehensive course and mentorship program available.

Jessica: I only offer the cohort version of this mentorship twice a year, so be sure to check the show notes on how to be first in line to register. Let’s talk thresholds. There isn’t one single definition of thresholds in the dog training world that [00:01:00] all of the dog professionals use, and that’s because thresholds are a concept rather than being something concrete.

Jessica: So it’s difficult to have a single definition of what thresholds actually are. Some people interpret thresholds for reactive dogs as being the point in which the dog is not reacting, and then the point in which they are. But what if I told you that there are many different types of thresholds that a dog can cross, and even if your dog is not barking and lunging, they might be experiencing stress levels high enough to impact their ability to learn effectively.

Jessica: Whether you’re a trainer trying to help your client or you have a reactive dog yourself, your goal is often to change that dog’s behavior. You’re wanting to reduce the reactive behavior and help them learn how to be around things that trigger them while teaching them calmer responses, but you can’t get those responses without having a solid understanding of [00:02:00] thresholds and how they are influencing that dog’s behavior.

Jessica: I wanted to bring in Sarah Shapiro Ward for the conversation today because I really love her take on thresholds and how she explains it to her clients like myself, she has a long history of working with reactive dogs in the city where you can’t always keep a dog under threshold when out and about.

Jessica: When the vast amount of your clients live these lives, you have to come up with ways to help them, even when conditions aren’t ideal. If you’ve ever been confused by thresholds, I think you’ll walk away from this conversation having a better understanding of what they are and how you can work with a dog even when they’re over a threshold.

Jessica: Before Sarah and I got into our discussion, we actually started chatting about training horses, which is something we both have some experience in. It was an interesting conversation that I thought listeners would enjoy, so I decided to keep that [00:03:00] part in. Let’s dive in.

Sarah: With a dog. It’s like their whole world is in question in that moment, and they remember things and I, I think horses remember things as well. But it’s almost like you have to convince a dog many times that they’re okay. Yeah. Many times in many different situations.

Sarah: Whereas it seems to me, that you only really have to convince a horse a couple of times in a couple of different situations, and then they’re like, okay, I got it. I’ve been thinking about this a little bit and I don’t know if it’s because horses are better at generalization. ’cause it could be that horses are just a little bit better at generalizing behaviors or, and I think this is more likely, and this is a pet theory, this is not I haven’t even spoken to anyone about this, but I think that it might be because we have a cleaner setup in the barn.

Sarah: You know, your horse is in an environment. We’re not taking them to a million different places. They’re in their own spot. You’re using your own equipment . Your setup looks the same. Like you don’t live with your horse. So you come out, you set up your training experience the [00:04:00] same way, and then when it does come time to generalize, you’ve got all of those pieces in one trained way and then you go to a different location and you’re like, okay, can we do that thing?

Sarah: It’s it’s neat and clean and you can build that training pathway. Whereas dogs we’re constantly jumping out at them with something new. It’s oh, now your triggers at the pet store. Oh, now your triggers at the vet. Or, oh, now your triggers just outside your house. I think it just makes them a bit more jumpy.

Sarah: And I don’t know if you think that resonates or not. ’cause that’s how I’m starting to think about things. But it might be nonsense. I don’t know. I haven’t really discussed it.

Jessica: I don’t think it’s nonsense at all. And in fact, it’s really making a lot of sense to me, especially because I have thought about.

Jessica: How we don’t live with the horse, right? Like they’re not in our homes so there’s certainly a, just a different relationship. They’re just exposed to less. And I think that you bring up a really valid point because imagine with your horse, if they did [00:05:00] have to live with you somehow, and then in order to, you know, potty breaks or exercise, you’d have to take them out only on lead and walk them through a bunch of busy things that they aren’t always familiar with.

Jessica: I think we would see horses behave maybe very similarly to dogs if they were in that situation. Yeah. To, if we flipped that where if somehow a dog would be happy, living in a barn and having a pasture and all that sort of stuff. And some friends around, and then some really consistent interactions with humans.

Jessica: You know, they come out, they feed you, they clean up the barn and so forth. Your person comes out. Yeah. And they work with you and it’s all the same. And, yeah. Actually now that we’re talking about it, I think this makes way more sense about just

Sarah: wonder of having it cleaner.

Sarah: Like having that almost jump scare of your trigger in different locations early in the process. Breaks it for later because once you’ve built that in your horse, you can start taking them in all different places and they’re ready for it and they’re able to cope. And I think that’s the [00:06:00] difference.

Sarah: Yeah. And I think with dogs, it just, that jump scare of your trigger could be anywhere at any point. It’s just too early in the process. But at the same time, we can’t just like. Hide them away in our house never go out into the world because then they lack enrichment and that makes things worse.

Sarah: You’re always, and we’ll talk about this, but when we have a reactive dog, we’re always towing that line between doing enough enrichment for their welfare, like making sure their exercise needs are met, making sure they get out and about to smell things and do things. And then also protecting them from their triggers.

Sarah: And I think that’s really hard to do with dogs. And I think that a lot of the time when their triggers appear, they’re not ready to deal with it. Whereas with horses, it’s a lot easier to protect them from their triggers until you feel like they’re ready for it, if that makes

Jessica: sense. Yeah, it does. And especially because we present the triggers, right?

Jessica: Like we often, yeah. Show up with whatever it is, right? Yeah. The saddle block, the water if we were gonna make like a puddle [00:07:00] for the horse to go through, or the tarps and all the crazy things that people bring out for the horses to end Yeah. With, it’s like we add itch to the environment.

Jessica: And then

Sarah: they’re safe the whole rest of the time because they trust that their environment is consistent, which it is.

Jessica: Just

Sarah: think it’s gotta be hard to be a dog, especially a reactive dog. Especially reactive dog living in the city. It’s just gotta be such an odd just way of living your life.

Sarah: ’cause it’s not like we can explain to them what’s going on and why. It’s just like we do all these things inexplicably and some of them are scary and you never know when it’s gonna happen. It’s just gotta be tough to be a dog, I think.

Jessica: I agree. I a thousand percent agree.

Sarah: Oh my goodness. What a life.

Sarah: Oh my gosh.

Jessica: All right, Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Sarah: Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

Jessica: I am so excited that you are here to talk about thresholds and [00:08:00] I found your blog post on thresholds from aggressive dog.com and when I read through it, the first thing I thought in my mind was, oh my gosh, I need to talk to this person. ’cause it was such a fantastic article and it laid out thresholds in so many different ways that I thought were not only so spot on, but really just illustrated why thresholds or the concept of thresholds can be so challenging for people to understand.

Jessica: And so that’s a big part of why I’m so excited to have this conversation with you today so we could really dive into that.

Sarah: I’m so, so glad you enjoyed that. That blog started life as I’d had a conversation with someone, and I can’t quite remember when this happened. I think it was a colleague ween Hounds flyback when I worked there.

Sarah: And we’d had this conversation and I was trying to explain thresholds, and I looked like that meme, you know, the, it’s always sunny meme where the [00:09:00] guy is like, there’s strings everywhere. And there’s, and he is pointing at this wall of chaos where he is got all of these theories. And I just, I felt like that, I felt like I was trying to articulate this really big conspiracy theory of like, why.

Sarah: Why no one understands what a threshold is. And they were like you should write a blog. And so I did. And it was just this big A DHD fueled hyper fixation long blog. And I eventually distilled it down for aggressive dog.com. But it’s funny, it’s something that I’m really passionate about and at the time I really didn’t think much would come of that one little conversation.

Sarah: But it’s just exciting to me that it resonates with other people. That’s so cool that someone else has read that and being like, oh yeah, that makes so much sense. And, you know, it’s good to see that in a different light. ’cause I think that, I really do think that we need to collectively as a dog training community look at our terminology for thresholds and come to some kind of agreement as to what it means. ’cause it’s kind of nebulous right now. It

Jessica: [00:10:00] is. It is. And I’m glad that you are bringing this up because I know that there are listeners who are not dog trainers and they have a reactive dog. And they have been told, or they have read somewhere online or they watched a video about needing to keep their dog under threshold.

Jessica: That is the space that is best for them to learn. And yet when they go out in the world, their dog is often going over threshold and then they feel like they are failing their dogs, or they feel like they don’t know what they are doing wrong. And there is so much nuance to thresholds. Especially being that there isn’t just one, it is not just a threshold, a thing that everybody is thinking of as being all the same metric or visual or whatever. We wanna think of what this would be. It is not, there are many different types of thresholds. So let’s start there about [00:11:00] different types of thresholds and what they are.

Sarah: Yeah. So there’s the one that everyone thinks is what threshold is, and I think that’s probably the one that we first need to lay out on the table.

Sarah: But I think the traditional definition of threshold is that point at which your dog, has a reaction, whatever that reaction looks like, has that full blown, whether it’s barking or lunging or snarling or aggression. And it’s kind of a point of no return. So when dogs go over that threshold, they become so worked up and so stressed that they’re not really able to come back down to a baseline state of just, you know, feeling calm.

Sarah: Like it takes them a long time physiologically for them to settle after they’ve had an experience like that, their heart rate’s up their frantic behaviors for a while afterwards. And so. That threshold where it’s truly a point of no return, where the dog just goes completely crazy. That’s what everyone thinks of as a threshold.

Sarah: And it’s true that if your dog [00:12:00] goes over that threshold, they generally won’t take food. They won’t look at you or listen to you or follow basic cues, like none of that is happening. The dog is usually in fight or flight mode, so it’s either trying to chase away its trigger or scare away its trigger, or it’s trying to run away itself.

Sarah: From whatever that trigger is. And I think that’s what most people mean by threshold. But I’ve always personally found this definition quite useless in practicality. Because if you think about it, if you know where a threshold is, it’s because you’ve crossed it. You know, if I draw a line in the sand and tell you don’t cross that line in the sand, you could walk all the way along the beach and not know where that line in the sand is ’cause you’ve never crossed it before.

Sarah: But of course the moment you do then it’s useless. Then whatever has gone wrong and it’s a point of no return. So it’s always been useless to me. ’cause it’s well, yeah, we don’t want our dog to go over threshold, but for the most part, when I’m training, we’re not gonna go anywhere near that threshold.

Sarah: Like that threshold is so far down the line. And you know, like once in a [00:13:00] while something battle happen and your dog will go over that threshold. And then what we’re doing is management. You know, we’ve got a dog who’s in crisis and is really struggling to self-regulate and function, and all we can do is take that dog into a different environment so that we can get back to baseline.

Sarah: So it’s not once we’re at that threshold, everything’s over and it’s done and we’re failing there it is useful to know well, what happens if your dog does go over that threshold? Well, we’re gonna end the training session and we’re gonna finish. But otherwise, for actual, what training are we doing?

Sarah: How are we presenting the trigger? Like all those other little questions that threshold’s actually not important because if we’re approaching that threshold, we’ve gone too far. And for most dogs, I find even like the really reactive dogs, I find that we don’t get to that threshold very often. We’ll have some threshold for behavior, but a lot of reactive dogs will react and they’ll be able to come back down to baseline quite quickly.

Sarah: And a lot of dogs will be able to react and still be able to do under threshold things like follow cues and eat food, like traditionally under threshold things. [00:14:00] So that’s kind of how I’ve been taught as a dog trainer, what threshold is. And also those are my main concerns with using that as the definition.

Sarah: And I don’t know how you feel Jessica about how I’ve laid that out, is that. What resonates with you as well?

Jessica: Yeah, I think that’s the most common threshold that people think of. They’re either reacting or they’re not reacting. And that’s way too black and white. And that also doesn’t break it down enough for us to really tap into when we’re seeing maybe more subtle changes in the dog’s behavior that tell us that they are perhaps starting to become a little uncomfortable with something, but they’re still able to respond to cues.

Jessica: They can still eat, they can do different things. And those moments, they’re also still able to learn. And that is, a big part of when we’re working with reactive dogs. When I think of thresholds coming into the picture here, it’s not only because we want to make sure that we’re not putting them in situations that they [00:15:00] are going to have a big reaction in, but we’re also looking to keep them under threshold because for most of my reactive, our clients, our goal is to teach them behaviors when they’re out and about.

Jessica: That’s the why we’re out there, and if the dog is not in a state where they can learn, then it does make it more challenging. Right it makes it more difficult for us to get closer to our goals. So that’s the other reason why this is so important. It’s not just to avoid the reactions.

Jessica: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. There’s definitely a window where your dog is able to learn the best and if you’re over threshold in that like the end threshold where your dog is fight or flight mode, your dog definitely is not gonna be in the right frame of mind for actually learning a new behavior because they really are just trying to escape the situation in that definition of what threshold is.

Sarah: I think you touched on something before though, when you said it’s not clear because I think when we as dog trainers say your [00:16:00] dog is over threshold when they’re in fight or flight response and even that you think that’s fairly clear, but then as an owner, what does fight or flight response look like?

Sarah: If we say it’s lunging and barking, then we may have a sense of the dog is over threshold when they are lunging, barking. In a certain way, in a certain intensity, and the owner may feel like, well, my dog is pulling and huffing and therefore they’re over a threshold. So we could have a different definition of what that threshold looks like, even when we’re trying to be really clear about what does the behavior look like?

Sarah: Because behavior doesn’t always look the same moment to moment or dog to dog. So we could say, you know, over threshold dogs are lunging and barking. I have one dog, my poodle, when she goes over threshold, she actually gets very quiet. I have to worry if she freezes. That’s when she’s really stressed out.

Sarah: And you know, most people wouldn’t even notice that ’cause she’s not being loud and she’s not being rude, but I know that she’s having a really hard time internally because she is just frozen stuck still and [00:17:00] stationary. I think that having a definition for even the fight or flight based.

Sarah: Threshold is very difficult and I think that you can try as hard as you want, but even if you’re very clear, it can be very difficult for people to understand what that looks like in their dog. ’cause it’s different.

Jessica: It is different with each individual dog. And that is where it gets tricky when somebody’s reading just your average article because their dog might not fit the bill even if we’re listing behaviors that indicate a dog is likely to go over threshold when they look like this.

Jessica: And if we were to fill in that blank of staring, their body weight shifting forward towards the other dog we could also put some vocalizations in there as well. So those are some things that one dog might do. And we might start to think, okay, this dog is beginning to tip into going over threshold, [00:18:00] whereas there’s other dogs who might just vocalize, they might just be barking.

Jessica: And I have had. A fair amount, not a ton, but I’ve had a fair amount of clients whose dogs are vocalizing by barking. And I don’t think they’re under th excuse me, over threshold at all. In fact, they’re over a threshold because yes, they had escalated their behavior to vocalizing compared to when they weren’t.

Jessica: So certainly there is a threshold that they have crossed, but they’re still able to learn just fine. And when I look at their body language, I also don’t even think that they look very stressed to me at all. Yeah. They look like they’re just talking. And so I think then if somebody is trying to have vocalizations or not vocalizations be this metric for the dogs over or under even that isn’t very helpful.

Sarah: It’s really tough. I always joke with my dogs, so I have a poodle and a poodle mix, and they’re both very vocal and I always joke that the bark is just under the surface. It [00:19:00] really is. Like you could have any noise that happens and both of them will put their heads up and they’ll, maybe a bark or two will come out and then they’ll go straight back to sleep again.

Sarah: No big deal. It’s just the bark is just under the surface. And if I do redirect, it’s very easy if I just, you know, ask for a touch or another behavior, they’ll be like, oh, okay, cool. So they’re not in a really stressed state where they’re worried for their safety because they can like task switch to do something else.

Sarah: It’s just that they’re more likely to vocal and there are other dogs. An example that I always like to give is once in a while someone will complete my enrollment form for private lessons with a reactive dog or a fearful dog, and they’ll put trembling or shaking as a symptom of fear and.

Sarah: Whenever I see that, I’m like, oh the fear has gotta be really bad for trembling and shaking. That’s not something that we see in normal dogs. Once in a while though, I will read the breed and I’ll be like, oh, it’s an Italian greyhound. And like for those guys, the trembling also is just under the surface.

Sarah: Like it’s [00:20:00] something that happens really easily in that particular breed. And sometimes chihuahuas as well, so they may not be as over threshold as like a Labrador who’s trembling. And it’s not always the case. Like it depends on the dog. But there are dogs where they will exhibit those like really key body language moments that we highlight on purpose. ’cause they usually are certain milestones along the track of feeling less comfortable. But then there are certain dogs that just throw that track into you know, they scramble all up and actually they’re trembling first and then they’re like shifting their weight forward.

Sarah: And then they start lip looking and then they might bark. But you can’t always neatly categorize how each dog is gonna appear when they’re approaching and when they’re over a threshold. It’s so difficult to do.

Jessica: Yes. Yes. And you know what, I appreciated that you brought up the example of your dogs at home.

Jessica: And being dead asleep and then hear something and they vocalize a little bit and then they just go right back to [00:21:00] sleep. I think that’s a great example of dogs who display similar behaviors, but in just a slightly different context. That would. Be really helpful, I think for listeners who aren’t sure about their own dog of, okay, well how am I supposed to know if my own dog is over threshold?

Jessica: I think looking at some of the behaviors that their dog does when they’re on leash and they think it means that their dog is over threshold to see if those behaviors present themselves anywhere else in other events in the dog’s life, because I think that does help us better understand that some dogs just use more behaviors than others.

Jessica: And especially if we’re using vocalization as an example, that some dogs bark when they’re excited too. And then they also bark when they are feeling frustrated or maybe if they’re feeling worried. So they might be the type that just vocalizes a lot. Yeah. And so it doesn’t necessarily mean that because they’re barking on leash, that they’re so far gone in terms of being so over [00:22:00] threshold.

Jessica: So I think that would be one thing for our listeners to maybe think about is observe their dog in lots of different events during the day and see if you can find any correlations between, oh, I’m seeing that they’re doing the same behavior here. Maybe even at a lesser degree that would be normal. But that it’s still occurring.

Jessica: And that way they could get a little bit more information about seeing the dog’s behavior is presenting in this situation. And Okay, now I’m seeing it again somewhere else. Yeah. Because I do find that dogs tend to just have these patterns of behavior that Yeah, are pretty easy to spot if you start looking for them.

Sarah: Yeah, I call it the baseline, like the baseline behavior and knowing how far your dog is deviating from their normal baseline behavior is. Really important. ’cause yeah, if your dog’s trembling all the time because they’re an Italian greyhound and that’s kind of what they do. I mean, not all Italian greyhounds, I have a couple of clients who have Italian greyhounds, so I’m picking on them.

Sarah: But like a number of them will tremble when they’re excited or they’ll tremble when [00:23:00] they go outside and that’s normal for them. If you have a dog that’s never trembled in their life and they’re now trembling, then that’s a deviation from the baseline that’s more concerning than if your dog trebles all the time.

Sarah: And it’s the same for the barking. Both of my dogs are quite vocal and they do bark a lot, but the key thing for me is that they are really easy to redirect. So they listen to cues, they are happy to eat foods and they’re happy to go do something else. It’s like barking is an activity for them.

Sarah: It’s recreational and then they’re happy to go do some other recreational activity. That’s how I often try and think about it, just because it is very different when you have a dog who’s scared, and usually it is ’cause they’re scared or if they’re really frustrated, like if there’s barrier frustration because they’re having an emotional response in a way that my dogs aren’t necessarily having an emotional response.

Sarah: And one way I kind of check for that is looking at whether my dog can eat scattered treats on the ground, low value scattered treats. If your dog is having a really [00:24:00] emotional fight or flight, they’re terrified reaction. They will not eat. ‘Cause when you’re anxious and humans are the same, you know, if you’re driving along on the highway and someone does something really scary in front of you and you’re having that panic moment, if someone hands you a cookie, you’re not gonna be able to eat it.

Sarah: You’re too anxious. You don’t need to eat in that moment. And so looking for food refusal is a really good indication of whether or not your dog is, really worried or not. Whereas if they’re not worried, they’ll probably take the cookie,

Jessica: I like that you are using that as a metric.

Jessica: I’m gonna play a little bit of devil’s advocate. Because I know there’s a lot of dogs who are not necessarily comfortable eating outside. And granted maybe they’re not vocalizing or lunging or barking at anything, but they certainly feel uncomfortable enough, you know, to being outside.

Jessica: Or. What I also tend to see a lot is that the dog just isn’t familiar with eating outside. It’s something that they just don’t have a lot of practice with. Yeah. So to them they’re like, well, this is kind of new, I normally just eat out of my food [00:25:00] bowl, or you give me a cookie, you know, in the kitchen after dinner, and that’s.

Jessica: That’s normally how they’re accustomed to taking food. And when you’re describing with your dogs that the treat scatter is something that you can use as a metric to determine whether your dog is under over threshold, that is something that you had taught ahead of time. So there is an element to familiarity there.

Sarah: I’m so glad you’re playing devil’s advocate because this is so important. And I think something that people frequently don’t realize, and this is a Kathy Sado saying I think, but eating is a behavior. And I remember going to one of Kathy’s talks and she was talking about how eating itself is a behavior that your dog does and how, you know, any behavior we can reinforce, we can practice, we can.

Sarah: Play around with. And that really changed things for me because it truly is, eating itself can be trained. And sometimes, you know, your dog even has a history of not wanting to eat because that behavior’s been punished in the past. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve [00:26:00] had clients where this scary thing has happened and then the or sorry, the cookie has been presented and then the scary thing has happened.

Sarah: ’cause it’s very common in the beginning of your dog training journey when you don’t have a lot of information to just try and get through your day by guiding your dog past something scary with a treat. And of course, that works until it doesn’t. And then your dog starts thinking, well, the treat is a bit of a trap because if I eat the treat or if I follow the treat, something scary is gonna jump out at me.

Sarah: So then you get these different scenarios where, yeah, some dogs. They just don’t have history of eating outside. So it’s like, why would I, some dogs are too busy sniffing the grass, like there are competing motivations going on. My poodle she’s a very fussy eater, which I’m told is like a kind of classic poodle thing.

Sarah: But her appetite’s kind of low anyway, so if she’s not eating outside, I’m not immediately worried. It’s probably just ’cause she’s full, you know, she had her breakfast and she doesn’t wanna eat anymore. Which is a wild concept when your other dog is like the most food drive dog in the world.

Sarah: So there [00:27:00] are lots of reasons why dogs may not eat, and that’s a big problem with trying to assess threshold because no matter what our metrics are, they’re always going to be a proxy for how the dog is feeling, which is something that we can never know. You know, we might try and measure a threshold by how does our dog look in terms of body language, but as I said, it’s not always gonna be the same between dogs.

Sarah: We might try and measure our dog’s threshold by what behaviors they will do. Can they listen to cues? Can they eat food? Can they walk on a leash, can they follow you? That kind of stuff. But those are all behaviors that are going to be modified by how much practice they’ve had. So it’s really difficult.

Sarah: Ultimately the crux of it is what we’re looking at is the dog’s emotional state, which is private to them, and we’re never gonna be able to like. Pull back the curtain and really see how they feel. And it’s a tough one. It’s not it’s not straightforward. And I think this is why we don’t have a really clear set of instructions for what to do because ultimately there is no manual for how to [00:28:00] tell how your dog’s feeling.

Jessica: Ah, that’s beautifully said. I want to talk about the two thresholds that you’re describing in your blog posts, which are the threshold of perception and the threshold of behavior. And I’m wondering if we could start with threshold of perception and if you just share more about what that is and what it looks like.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. So this is something that I use frequently with my clients ’cause I think it’s really important. This is like the most important threshold that people need to understand. I had this like realization when I read one of Amy Cook’s blog posts, I think that was on Zi.

Sarah: And she was basically saying that there is only one threshold that matters. And it’s the threshold where your dog starts to feel uncomfortable. Like any movement away from a camp baseline state is when your dog has crossed a threshold. ’cause ultimately all a threshold is moving from one state of behavior to another state of behavior.

Sarah: So starting a new [00:29:00] behavior or stopping a, an old behavior or something like that. So ultimately the moment you notice your dog is. Crossing a threshold into stress behavior patterns. The moment you notice that the first behavior threshold that they cross, that’s the most important one because ultimately you can now work to bring your dog back to their baseline.

Sarah: So that’s kind of where I read that blog and I was like, ha, that makes a lot of sense. Like, why wait until your dog is anywhere near the big scary threshold where they can’t function anymore? Why not choose a threshold that’s much closer to the kind of baseline state and work to get them back there?

Sarah: The reason I’ve kind of modified it a little bit is because I think that there’s more threshold than just the one firstly. We often miss the very first sign that our dog is stressed. ‘Cause it can be really subtle. And I think that really defining it as the threshold of perception makes it really clear for people to watch for.

Sarah: So in my definition of the threshold of perception, it’s the moment your dog notices their trigger. And I think that it’s [00:30:00] usually very clear in reactive dogs. It’s either a sound or a sight and you see your dog. Perk up when they notice the sound of the site.

Sarah: So it could be the sound of the skateboard rolling down the street and your dog’s ears perk up and they like kind of raise their front body and they stand really upright and they’re like, oh my God. And that’s the threshold of perception for that sound of that skateboard. Or it could be a dog across the way, and maybe you’ve been following it for a while.

Sarah: It’s 50 feet ahead of you, your dog’s short so they can’t see it. And then you are suddenly crafting a hill and you’re looking down on them and your dog goes, whoa. There’s a dog there. Did you know there’s a dog there? And so you’ll see the same kind of tip offs that your dogs notice. That dog, they’ll generally look, some dogs look and then they look away oh no, I didn’t see it.

Sarah: But most dogs will look and they’ll scan and you’ll see some stiffness in their body a lot of the time, and it does look different for each dog. But I have found by categorizing it as the threshold of perception, because owners have seen their dog perceive triggers multiple times, even though those behaviors might be different between dogs, most.

Sarah: Pet guardians [00:31:00] will go, oh yeah, I know what it looks like when my dog sees a trigger. And they’ll be able to describe, oh, he puts his ears back, or he puts his tail up, or, you know, she stands really upright, or she huffs a little bit. And so now we have a measurable moment at the earliest stage of the process where we can recognize we are now on that pathway to a reaction down the line if things continue.

Sarah: The other reason that I really like to have a threshold of perception is because it’s very easy for people to jump the gun on their training. Because we as humans generally perceive the trigger before our dogs. Not always, but like we’re taller, we got a bigger visual range, and we also have the benefit of understanding how our world works and knowing, well, the dog parks around the corner, so there’s probably gonna be dogs over there, or this is where the skate park is. There’s probably gonna be skateboards coming and going. Our dogs are often surprised, whereas we can use pattern recognition to know what triggers coming.

Sarah: And so we often know the trigger’s coming [00:32:00] first, and then we try and train our dog before they realize that there’s something about to happen. And then we get into that situation where we present food and then our dog thinks I’m eating the food as delicious. Oh my gosh, something really scary has jumped out at me.

Sarah: And that could be a real problem. So by having this threshold of perception and making sure people wait for it. Watch it and then train. We are making sure our events are happening in the right order. The scary thing appears, and then we do our training and we do our food intervention or our cues that we’ve pre-trained or our treat scatters or whatever it is that we’re working on.

Sarah: And we’re making sure that those things are happening in the right order. So we’re not accidentally going, I the human, have seen the threat. I present food, my dog eats the food, and they have no idea what’s going on. Or what’s the worst is, you know, we present the food and then our dog is jump scared by the person or the dog or the skateboard or whatever it is.

Sarah: And then they think the food is the trigger. You know, if I eat food on a walk, then therefore scary things are gonna [00:33:00] happen. So having that threshold or perception, I would say that is the most important threshold to recognize as a, especially as a reactive dog guardian. But as a dog owner or any animal owner, knowing what that looks like is really critical.

Jessica: Yes. I’m really glad that you are bringing up all these pieces of not only the threshold of perception because you are right. That is something that every person who has a reactive dog knows when their dog notices something. That is very obvious. And I also like how you’re tying this in with the training and the food, that sequence of things, because that is a really big reason why dogs don’t want to eat outside is for what you described, that the food is being presented at the wrong time and or sometimes the owner is anxious, , like naturally, right? Okay, I’m anxious ’cause I don’t know if my dog is going to have a reaction.

Jessica: So sometimes they become a little bit more forceful with the food, so to [00:34:00] speak. All of this is what I this is gonna sound really silly, but years ago I started saying that you’re being a treat creeper. Like you’re Yeah.

Sarah: I love

Jessica: that. You’re creeping out your God. Okay.

Jessica: You’re being a treat creeper. And so it just became like a funny joke between me and my clients because it was the only way that I could illustrate that. You’re creeping your dog out, like you’re not Yeah. Them feel good about the situation and it devalues the food on top of Yeah. So when people say, my dog isn’t food motivated, that’s a whole that’s a whole nother podcast.

Jessica: We’re not even gonna go down there. But all of these things are intertwined in addition to the threshold. So I’m so glad that you’re bringing that up as part of this conversation.

Sarah: I love it. The treat creeper I’m gonna steal that one. ’cause it’s true.

Sarah: Like we get anxious and we just, we think success is my dog saw trigger and ate a treat. And so we’re so striving for that success. We don’t even realize we’re pushing treats towards the dog’s nose or turning their head away. And we’re like, no, eat it. [00:35:00] And if you think about a human being stressed in a scenario, if you were like, no, eat, you got a spoon of apple sauce or something and you’re like, here, eat the apples.

Sarah: Like you could really creep that person out very quickly by doing that. And I’ve seen it happen and I’ve seen it happen. It’s just ’cause we’re worried. We’re worried about our dog, we want them to eat, we wanna make sure they’re okay. And yeah, it can turn into that really easily. So yeah, so having that threshold of perception and at least knowing that things are in the right order is really useful and I think it’s a good time to talk about and, you know, we can.

Sarah: Call tangent if it is, but I think it’s a good time to talk about how treats are not the only thing that is really important for reinforcing our dog. If our dog is truly in need of space from their triggers. Sometimes what you can do is you can wait for the threshold of perception and then you can move away.

Sarah: And so your dog starts recognizing, I saw the scary thing, and then we laugh together so that we could get a breather and away from it. And that’s a more constructional approach. And I really [00:36:00] appreciate that approach in reactive dogs. And I find that it’s gotten a little bit of a bad wrap in just it’s underrepresented in what we see online.

Sarah: And it’s also ’cause it kind of works on negative reinforcement. I say it kind of, it does, you know. A negative reinforcement for those who don’t know what that is it’s giving the dog relief from something in order to make them do the behavior more frequently. So the idea is if your dog does the behavior of perceiving a trigger, then you are going to move away from the trigger and your dog is going to feel, f we got away from the trigger.

Sarah: There are other ways of setting it up. There’s probably a better way of explaining that, but we’re in the positive reinforcement community. We’re so used to. Having, like having this framework of, we do a behavior and we reinforce it with food, we do a behavior and we reinforce it with food.

Sarah: Sometimes we forget that when we are training reactive dogs, there is an aversive in the environment and it is the trigger. The trigger inherently is aversive. [00:37:00] And if your dog is feeling threatened by something, providing them with that relief is the kindest thing to do. It’s the best thing to help your dog feel better in that situation.

Sarah: And so giving them food is not always the right option. Sometimes if you just teach your dog, if you are scared, we’ll calmly leave. We can. Really reinforce, calmly looking at triggers, which then gets quite far along the pathway of reactivity training. And then you can reintroduce food because they’re feeling a lot more comfortable.

Sarah: They’re feeling safe and secure. So having a constructional approach to reactive dog training, that’s probably a podcast in itself. But it is knowing what to do on that threshold or perception. There are some clients where I’ll say, you know, your dog has perceived the trigger.

Sarah: Feed them a treat. And there are some clients where I’ll say, your dog has perceived the trigger. Feed them away from the trigger and then feed them a treat. And so. Knowing that like when my dog has crossed this threshold of perception, what am I supposed to be doing in [00:38:00] that situation that will differ on different dogs, but for whoever I’m helping at that time, there’ll be a clear and this is the next thing that we do.

Sarah: And so it’s it’s really useful for building in that kind of guide for owners to know, well, what’s the flow chart look like? Like when this happens, what do I do next?

Jessica: I love that. I’m really glad that you brought up using distance as well. Or just moving away, giving the dog more distance, because I do a lot of that, but I build it in really early on, and I’ll just explain really quickly how I do this.

Jessica: So whenever I do a setup bringing in a helper dog and we’re doing you know, very contrived setup, or even if it’s a dog that we’re just happen to come across on the walk, I almost always. Mark behavior, move and feed. So the dog gets in this habit of move, feed, move, feed, move, feed.

Jessica: And I describe it to my clients as using a double reinforcer, which that technically is, right? If we’re using positive and then the negative reinforcement at the same time, I call it [00:39:00] a double reinforcer. I don’t really always explain to my clients the negative reinforcement aspect of it, but also particularly if the dog is really comfortable with the proximity between them and the other dog, then we could say that it’s not technically negative reinforcement at that proximity, but I like to build that in so it becomes something that the dog can not necessarily always come to expect, but it’s something that frequently happens when they are out and about that we often add in that movement because I just found that not only did the movement help the dog, because I’m sure you and I would both agree that movement’s very helpful for reactive dogs and

Jessica: so it allowed us to move because I think that’s inherently reinforcing in that moment. It taught them that many times we move away from the trigger. Maybe we don’t go that far because maybe we can’t, you know, maybe we just have to keep walking down the street a little bit. But we try to add in some movement here and there.

Jessica: And. I think that could be really helpful to build in early on. Also for those times that you’re describing when the dog is [00:40:00] just too overwhelmed or maybe they can’t eat and maybe the only reward that you can use is distance. That it, that becomes something that’s more rehearsed or familiar to the dog.

Sarah: I’m really glad that you mentioned building it in early. ’cause I do the exact same. Especially if the dog is not someone that I know very well, if it’s our first lesson or second lesson, I’m always gonna build in movement on the off chance that they would struggle. I’d rather have the easier version first and then we take out movement later.

Sarah: And it’s really reassuring to hear someone doing that. ’cause it’s not always the case. And it’s just, it’s so important and you know, as you said, movement. Actually does help dogs feel better. But I always tell people like, well, what is the final behavior that we’re looking for? And goal, final behavior that most people are looking for with a reactive dog is movement past the target right, past the trigger.

Sarah: And so if you are already teaching your dog, when you see a trigger, you move away or you move 90 degrees away rather than like you turn away it’s easier to convince your dog. [00:41:00] Okay, well now we’re gonna go at like a more acute angle, we’re gonna go a little bit away and we’re gonna just swing around wide.

Sarah: Like it’s easier to develop that behavior. And I think some of the traps that people fall into and especially people who are trying to do all of this by theirselves and they don’t have the benefit of someone coaching them. The trap that people fall into is either the human is standing still fiddling for their treats, or they’re actively asking the dog to do a sit.

Sarah: And that’s so much harder for the dog because they don’t feel safe, because they don’t feel like they can just leave. And it’s also not the ultimate end goal behavior. And I did have a client once who their dog was I, and I don’t think they were particularly afraid, but like when the dog was a puppy, they would have the dog sit when there were cars go by.

Sarah: They lived in the countryside, so there wasn’t that many cars. And it was just an important thing of don’t run into traffic. But then they moved to the city and of course their dog was sitting all the time. ’cause there’s cars everywhere. And it’s well this is what happens when you train a behavior that you didn’t really mean to, or you didn’t really [00:42:00] think through all the way.

Sarah: And so by building in movement as part of your process really early on, you’re setting up that same dog to. Use movement as part of the final behavior, which ultimately, like all of us want, we just wanna walk along. And so it’s actually a very smart training practice, whether or not it’s negative reinforcement for that particular dog, it’s just good to build in for the end product.

Sarah: Because you want your dog to continue moving and you know, if you do practice, see a trigger, stay stationary, feet, a treat, dogs will often stop. Even if they won’t sit, they’ll stop and they’ll be like, Hey, where’s my treat? And so by practicing the movement, you prevent that behavior problem from occurring down the line.

Sarah: So I just, I dunno. I just, I think it’s really important for people to know, and I think it’s not talked about that much. How we can incorporate movement on purpose for all of these different reasons into our reactivity training.

Jessica: Exactly. Exactly. I love that. We both do it very similarly, and even when you’re describing [00:43:00] modifications of the movement, like going at it from maybe a different angle, I also do very similar things like that.

Jessica: It’s because I want to give the dog what I call the same picture. Hey, we’re gonna do this walking thing. You’re gonna see that dog over there, but it’s not a direct walk by at first. Because they’re not ready for that proximity yet. Yeah. And yes, and that is something that I still think is really helpful in terms of skill building, which I relay that to my clients, you know, Hey, just because you can’t get old the way past at this point, it doesn’t mean that we aren’t necessarily building towards that because you’re still having all of these pockets in your walk that you could ask for and reinforce your dog.

Jessica: In various situations where you are skill building to, with the goal in mind of eventually that big picture of getting past the other dog.

Sarah: Yeah, it makes so much sense. And it’s very intentional and it’s very clever when you break it down. And I think that everyone should be teaching reactive dogs this way.

Sarah: And not even just reactive dogs. In my pet dog [00:44:00] group classes when we’re trying to train, pass a friendly dog which is, you know, something that I want all of my pet dogs to learn ’cause it’s something that they’re gonna do. We always start by like walking towards each other and then you turning away.

Sarah: So these are not reactive dogs, they’re just overexcited little baby puppies. And we just, we go up and we turn away and we go up and we turn away. And ultimately the structure is the same. Like you’re starting from a walk, you see a trigger, and then you continue into a walk, and then you get a treat. And then the only modification that you’re making is adding that distraction closer and closer, which is just good shaping and good dog training.

Jessica: Yes, I love it. Love it.

Sarah: Me too.

Jessica: So, so let’s talk about the threshold of behavior and how that differs from threshold of perception.

Sarah: So this one is more nebulous, I suppose. Like I really appreciate the threshold of perception, and as I said, I think it’s the most important one that everyone needs to know about.

Sarah: The threshold for behavior was a way that I was trying [00:45:00] to get better at giving people kind of a roadmap guide of when if this happens, we’re gonna switch tactics and we’re gonna train like this instead. Because ultimately the threshold of perception for many dogs is not close to that ultimate threshold where your dog is, they go over it and they’re irredeemably lost in terms of their learning capacity.

Sarah: Usually for dogs they’ll cross the threshold of perception, as in they’ll they’ll see their trigger and then there’ll be this area where. They’re progressively more uncomfortable, and then as the trigger gets closer or louder or more intense in some way, then they’ll go over their end threshold.

Sarah: So there was a point in there where it was like, look, well, we can’t just hang out after the threshold of perception and wait for the other threshold to happen. And also sometimes it’s beneficial for your dog to live in that perception for a while. So, you know, if we’re always looking at dogs and leaving or looking at dogs and eating food, you will get to a point where your dog will look at dogs or any trigger, you know, skateboards or [00:46:00] whatever, and make an assumption about what’s gonna happen, which may not be what you want to do in that moment.

Sarah: You may see the dog is 50 feet away from you. You might think, well, that’s fine. That’s a safe distance, let’s just stay where we are. Or let’s. Follow them for a little bit and then we’ll turn off down this other street, or we’ll do whatever we have to do. Especially if you’re trying to build some distance towards triggers or you’re trying to get closer to your, I wanna pass the dog in the street goal immediately.

Sarah: Acting on the threshold of perception won’t get you there in the long run. It’s very useful in the beginning, but in the long run, you want your dog to be able to perceive a trigger and then stay in that perception zone. Know it’s there for a while. So then I was like, okay, how do I help my clients know what to do when your dog is in that zone. So a lot of the time what I’ll do is I’ll have a dog observing dogs from a distance or other triggers, whatever it is. There’s a place that I go that I live quite close to. It’s a park where there’s a hill and then you look down into a [00:47:00] baseball diamond from the hill.

Sarah: And dogs will play in the baseball diamond. So you’re a good trip away and your dog has good visual range on those dogs. And so we’ll take reactive dogs there. They’ll be able to look at these dogs from a really safe distance and then they can just kind of hang out there, have some treats, snuffles in the grass.

Sarah: We’ll walk back and forth if we want to, but we’ll let them perceive and then process. And I think giving them that processing time is important. But as I say, you don’t wanna just leave your dog in that zone until they hit their ultimate threshold. There has to be some like. Trigger for you, the human to be like, okay, this is enough and we need to now do something else.

Sarah: And so for me, that will be picking a behavior that’s a body language behavior that my dog does or my client’s dog does, that shows that they’re getting closer to their threshold, like the stress is building and it’s no longer sensible or tolerable to observe those dogs playing. And so for a lot of dogs it will be things [00:48:00] like the upright posture and the huffing. For some dogs, it’ll be like the lack of interest in the treats on the ground for snuffling, or like the lack of interest in playtime. Like sometimes we’ll bring a tug and we’ll be doing our own thing while the dogs are doing their own thing down there. So sometimes it’s well, my dog stopped playing, or my dog stopped eating the treats.

Sarah: Sometimes it’s, well, my dog started doing that weird huffy breathing thing that they do, or, well, my dog is now starting to scan those dogs and they’re staring and they can’t look away. So whatever that behavior is, I’ll clearly define it. It’s different for every single dog. No two dogs are the same, and that behavior is now the canary in the coal mine that tells you that dog is now moving along their their stress response pathway and they’re getting closer to their ultimate threshold. So at that point, our training game may change. So if we’ve gone from a perceived the trigger snuffle in the ground for treats or play or just observe and process for a while, and now all of a sudden our dogs aren’t doing so well they’re [00:49:00] staring, they’re fixated. Now we switch our training practice, and it could be, well now we’re gonna do the click move away feed or the lure away feed. It could be, well now we’re gonna place some engaged disengaged where we’re gonna click and treat a little bit, and then we’ll scatter more treats and see how you do.

Sarah: Or it could just be like, if you know that behavior is very close to that ultimate threshold where your dog is gonna go over it then you might just go, okay, well then we’re just gonna end the training session. But ultimately, that behavior that you pick is something that your dog can bounce back from so you’re not waiting too late so that your dog is gonna have a really hard time, but you are aware of my dog is escalating and it’s time to change our tactics.

Sarah: I hope that makes sense. I do sometimes still feel like I am. I don’t know, explaining this whole conspiracy theory there’s all these disconnected thoughts in my head about how this all works. And it’s sometimes hard to put them into a linear process, but that’s how I’ve worked on this with my clients.

Sarah: And as I said, it is [00:50:00] always a different behavior because it depends on that individual dog, but there’s usually one really clear thing that they’ll do. And it’s like when you see your dog do this behavior or stop doing that behavior, then we’re gonna change your training plan from this to this. And that’s ultimately what the behavior or the threshold for behavior is for me.

Jessica: Okay, I’m following it and I can tell you how I perceived that. Okay. And then you can tell me if I’m on the right track here. Sounds good. From what I heard, is that instead of keeping the dog at the threshold of perception, meaning all they do is just notice the dog and then we move on quickly.

Jessica: Or you even remove the dog from the situation so that the trigger is no longer. Relevant. We’ll use the word relevant. But if we wanted to continue helping this dog feel more comfortable with the trigger still being present, then now we’re moving into this threshold of behavior where we are [00:51:00] having the dog be exposed to the trigger.

Jessica: The trigger is far enough away to where the dog notices it and is aware of it, but isn’t necessarily fixated. So we’re not getting that degree of intensity, but the dog certainly knows that it’s there. And then while you’re in that pocket, we are doing things. And it could be a variety of things.

Jessica: Like you mentioned play, you’re maybe just letting the dog observe. Maybe you’re working on some other skills that you might have been practicing just as an opportunity to practice. But that. All the while you’re paying really close attention to the canary in the cold mine, which is a behavior which every reactive dog has.

Jessica: One that indicates that this is becoming too much for them. And at that point, you’re either making it really easy for the dogs, such as, Hey, we’re just gonna click for you, noticing that other dog over there, and then we’re gonna move on. Or it could be switching to management. Hey, we’re just gonna lure you [00:52:00] away because we can see that you’re almost, another way to think of this is they’re unable to make any more good choices on their own. So now they need yes to intervene. And because now we’re intervening, we’re just supporting them because we know that without that they are going to have a reaction.

Sarah: Yeah, that’s exactly it.

Sarah: And I’ve used the term dog directed training and human directed training before with clients. And dog directed being, you’re looking for those good decisions that your dog is making on their own. So if your dog, looks at the trigger and then goes back to snuffling. That’s a good decision.

Sarah: Leslie Wit has some really great pattern games for this, she has one called latte, which is look at that. And then enrichment. So the idea is your dog has like some enrichment to do and they’re looking at the trigger and then they’re doing their enrichment and they’re looking at the trigger and they’re doing their enrichment.

Sarah: And that’s all dog directed. Like you just stand there with the leash in your hand and you’re not really doing anything. The other kind of example for that is when you have an opt-in. So the [00:53:00] other pattern game that I use a lot with Leslie McDevitt is the 1, 2, 3 game where your dog is oh, there’s a trigger over there.

Sarah: And then they look up at the human and then you 1, 2, 3, walk away and feed a treat. And so you’re really looking for that moment where your dog does tear themselves away from what they’re looking at and they’re looking up at you. So. That category of training is something like where your dog is really driving the training process.

Sarah: That’s something that we can only really do around the thresholds of perception at least in the beginning because it’s the only place where your dog has a chance of making good decisions upon seeing a trigger with all the rest of like distance in place and all of that stuff. Where it becomes human directed is, as you said, where you have to intervene.

Sarah: So if you’re now doing like more direct counter conditioning, so your dog sees the trigger and you click and you treat or if you’re doing really direct like constructional approach where your dog. See the trigger and you re retreat and move away. You’re kind of overriding your dog’s ability to make choices and saying, you’re doing [00:54:00] great.

Sarah: Here’s what we’re doing next. So you are guiding the process and there’s space for both of those things because ultimately, if we only ever do human directed, and I think this is again, really important for people to know, but it’s very nuanced. If we only ever do human directed interventions, we can actually create reactivity in our dogs.

Sarah: And I don’t know if you’ve seen this before but I have had people come into private lessons because they had a reactive dog in the past, and then now they’re worried that their new dog, is gonna become reactive. And I’ll go out with them and I’ll see what they’re doing.

Sarah: And they’re doing the counter conditioning game of your dog sees the trigger, you eat a tree. And then of course what happens over time is your dog expects food every time they see a dog. And then you get this little the moment you don’t. Play that game. They’re like, Hey, what are you doing? And so they start barking in order to get treats from you.

Sarah: And it’s so obvious when you see it because a reactive dog will typically like look at the trigger and bark and lunge these dogs who have been almost created to have [00:55:00] reactivity. They’ll look at the trigger and then they’ll look at the human and bark, right? So it’s like demand barking. And so sometimes you can actually create a.

Sarah: Problem where you’re teaching your dog. In order to get the treat, you have to perceive the trigger. And if I don’t notice that, then you better tell me by barking or doing other weird behaviors. And so then I go, oh, my dog’s acting weird. I better do the training. And so we end up in this situation where we’re almost.

Sarah: Accidentally artificially creating reactivity. If we do everything where we, the human is micromanaging. So having a dog who’s able to be in the presence of their trigger and actually make their own choices is really important for really successful, really resilient rehabilitated reactive dogs. But we can only do that in certain spaces.

Sarah: There are, you know, between the threshold of perception and that behavior, which tips us off as the dog is having trouble. That’s where we can do those really fancy, go forth and make good decisions and learn some coping skills on your own and process [00:56:00] this in your own time. It’s beautiful work, but it only works if our dog is in the right frame of mind and in the right context to do it.

Sarah: And so we have to have rails on it so that we can see, oh, my dog is no longer in the right stage of learning, and they’re not in the right state of mind. So at this point, I have to do some human directed training and I have to guide them through the next steps because they’re gonna start making poor decisions if I don’t.

Sarah: So hopefully that makes sense. Reactive dog training is fascinating to me ’cause it’s so nuanced. There’s a lot to it and there’s a lot of moving parts and it’s not easy, you know, when you first start, when you have your first reactive dog, it’s overwhelming and there’s so much to learn and it’s really confusing.

Sarah: And so, I think it’s really important to talk about it. I think the tendency of. Trainers and like information online is to try and simplify things so that people feel less overwhelmed. And then here I am being like, yeah, it’s really hard, it’s really overwhelming, but here’s these 50 things that you have to know.

Sarah: And it’s difficult for me ’cause I really wish it [00:57:00] was simpler. And unfortunately it’s not. So I don’t know. I don’t know how you feel about that, Jessica.

Jessica: Oh, you and I are so alike. I feel the same way. I think reactivity is very complex. I think there is never a cookie cutter approach for any dog.

Jessica: I think that there’s many layers to it. It’s very nuanced, and that’s why I tend to have a hard time even explaining, you know, some of the things that I like to do with dogs. That was also a reason why I wanted to start this podcast, is because now I can have all of this time to talk about things and not be confined to a 32nd social media clip.

Jessica: Because I can’t get it out. I feel stifled by it, but I also feel like I’m not giving people the information that they actually need to know what is actually gonna help people. It’s not the super quick social media clips. You might learn a couple things from that, but people with reactive dogs need to know more about.

Jessica: Some of the things that we’re talking about right now. Because I think this is actually helping them piece it together in their minds, [00:58:00] because as we’re talking, they might be thinking, oh my gosh, well yeah, that’s what’s happening with my dog. I just didn’t have the words for it, or I didn’t know how to describe that.

Jessica: So I’m really glad that we’re talking about this.

Sarah: Yeah, me too. The social media thing just as a, as an aside, like it’s really difficult and it’s really difficult as a client not knowing which pieces are relevant at time. ’cause like you say, those 32nd minute. Clips, you can have six different clips that have six different exercises that could all benefit your dog, but they don’t play well with each other.

Sarah: So you know that there’s a lot of people who are like, well, I saw this one thing on social media and I’ve been doing it. Well, that’s great, but in this context, and actually all of these other things are important too. So I think by sometimes only having one piece of the puzzle is just not sufficient to get to this, the successful part.

Sarah: And I see a lot of people come in and they’ve done their research and they’ve done a lot of [00:59:00] looking online and watching videos and looking at people’s posts. And they have a lot of really good information, but it’s still not sufficient. And I think that’s really hard. And I just, I don’t have a solution for it.

Sarah: It’s just, it’s social media has it’s good in so many ways and it’s also creating problems in other ways. So, yeah, I don’t know that, that resonated with me. I that could be a whole podcast on its own.

Jessica: Exactly. Well, when you were discussing the threshold of behavior, that leads us right into this other part that I wanted to talk about, which was the zone of itchiness.

Jessica: Which is something else that you referenced in your blog post, and I’m wondering if you could share more about that.

Sarah: Yeah, I’d love to. So the zone of itchiness, like everything in my like dog training approach, I’ve kind of taken bits from other trainers. I. Because there’s so many really good trainers out there.

Sarah: And this one comes from Milana di Martini price I think her name is. She wrote a book called Treating Separation Anxiety in Dogs, and [01:00:00] now there’s a second version out. So treating separation anxiety in Dogs 2.0. I also have a few friends who have done her course, so they’re certified separation anxiety trainers.

Sarah: And I love talking about dog training, so even if it’s not my specialty, and I do tend to refer all of my separation anxiety cases to csat. So I don’t even do separation anxiety stuff, but here I am having conversations about like, how do you do your training and what’s your course like and what do you think about these things?

Sarah: And that’s really where this came up. I was talking to some CSAT and they were telling me about how weird it is when you’re doing separation anxiety training, that sometimes your dog can be displaying these behaviors where you think they’re gonna go over thresholds and then they don’t. There’s a threshold for perception or the threshold of behavior.

Sarah: You can see your dogs going up the stress progression pathway. And then they just go, I am okay. I’m gonna go back to sleep. And I think that’s really fascinating for me because that’s not, it’s [01:01:00] not how you typically think about reactivity training at all. Once you’re on that stress response pathway, it usually starts with, its like threshold of perception, and then the threshold for behavior happens, and then that body language escalates, and then you get like a really crazy reaction.

Sarah: And it seems to be like that for reactive dogs every time, but then it’s not always. So sometimes if you’re watching, and it’s usually closer towards the threshold of perception. But there, there will come a point where your dog will notice a trigger and they’ll be really uncomfortable about it.

Sarah: You might see the behavior that we’ve flagged as this is your dog getting uncomfortable, and then they’ll go. You know what, it’s okay. I’m gonna go back to Snuffling. And I think part of the reason why we don’t see that very often is because we don’t necessarily allow our dog to live in that zone of, so that zone of itchiness is between the behavior that you’ve earmarked as being like the start of the stress progression pathway, and then the over threshold response of the point of no return.

Sarah: So it’s the [01:02:00] zone of itchiness and it’s typically where we would intervene. And I think with reactive dog training, we don’t let them stay in that zone for very long because we know that they’re quite likely to go over threshold. So we just, we intervene. But it’s interesting to know it’s there and that some dogs will be able to self-regulate on their own.

Sarah: So being able to map what that looks like is kind of interesting and important. So the behavior that I flag is usually, pretty close to the start of the stress behavior or the stress response pathway. So if the perception is I have noticed the trigger then they might go back to doing very calm behaviors after that, like snuffling, and then they look again, and then they snuffle, and then they look and then, or they follow cues or whatever it is.

Sarah: So we’re not really seeing stress. And then the behavior might be like that hard staring or that fixation, that upright body language, whatever it happens to be. And then there’s progression. So you’ll see dogs escalate their body language. So maybe they start weight shifting forward or pulling on the leash, trying to move [01:03:00] closer towards the trigger or trying to move further away.

Sarah: And then that typically escalates further. You get some vocalizations and then there’s a huge response. And I think that really understanding what that looks like is. Nice to have. Because sometimes what the trigger is doing is really important in that threshold of, or sorry, that zone of itchiness.

Sarah: Because sometimes what happens is your dog, your trigger dog comes closer to you. Your dog goes, oh my gosh, there’s a trigger. And so they do that threshold for behavior and now you’re in the zone of itchiness. And if you see that dog, then turn around and go away. So I’m thinking back to my park with the baseball diamond that I’m looking over.

Sarah: Sometimes people will throw balls towards me and my dog. And so the dog will come running at us and my dog will cross the threshold for behavior. They’re gonna be looking really intently at that dog, but I know they’re gonna pick up the ball and turn around. And so I might just wait and I might be like, okay, I know we’re in that zone of itchiness.

Sarah: It’s really uncomfortable, [01:04:00] but. Because that trigger is gonna go away again, I feel pretty confident that you’ll be able to go back down to baseline. But on the other hand, usually with reactive dogs, that trigger’s coming towards you. They’re on leash, they’re like walking down the street. And so in that case, when you see the threshold for behavior is crossed and you’re in that zone of itchiness, if you know that trigger’s gonna get more intense by coming towards you, you know that you’re on a ticking time clock, basically, of we’re on the pathway and the problem is gonna happen.

Sarah: And so at that point, knowing that you’re in the zone of itchiness you can make some decisions about what you’re gonna do to try and deescalate the or off ramp your dog from the stress response pathway. So you know, you’re on that pathway. How do I take the exit ramp so that my dog doesn’t complete that pathway into going truly over threshold?

Sarah: And usually that’s taking a treat, luring your dog away. It may even just be getting distance any way you need to. You know, if your dog’s not taking food. Picking them up and moving them is something I’ve done before. Putting a little bit of pressure on the leash and saying, Hey no, we’re going this way [01:05:00] may be beneficial in the long run as well.

Sarah: And so just knowing what that that stress escalation pathway looks like, that zone of itchiness and knowing when to intervene in different ways. So knowing is the trigger getting more intense or is it the same or is it getting less intense? Will help you decide like what your intervention is gonna be.

Sarah: But generally speaking, in that zone of itchiness, you’re going to want to have some intervention because for most reactive dogs, if left unchecked, it will result in a reaction. Hopefully that makes sense too. Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve explained that one.

Jessica: No, it does. And. I appreciate that because there are times where a dog might seem like they’re gonna tip over, but then something changes in the environment.

Jessica: You, like you mentioned the dog that the ball got thrown closer to you, but you knew that they were gonna pick up the ball and go the other way. The dog doesn’t know that, but you know that. And so by just allowing the dog to have a moment to process that, rather than us trying to intervene immediately, I [01:06:00] think that sort of stuff.

Jessica: It is important for reactive dogs, and not that this is anything that you and I would prioritize or purposely try to do a lot of, but I know that you and I have both worked with reactive dogs in the city. I worked with reactive dogs in San Diego, which is hugely populated with a ton of dogs. Is impossible to go anywhere without seeing them.

Jessica: And I know that you worked in a very similar environment and so that’s why you and I think about thresholds in this way because we don’t have a choice and our clients don’t have a choice. We’ve had to really think about, okay, when do we intervene? When do we allow the dog to try to deal with this on their own?

Jessica: What are the signs that we need to intervene and all these different things. But then also that the dogs. Eventually learn how to cope with being in the presence of these triggers and learn. How to just continue moving on or engage with us. And I think that’s part of what [01:07:00] builds resilience with these dogs.

Jessica: When done in a careful way and done in, you know, the way that you and I do it, it does help build that resilience rather than it being only keeping the dog at the point or the threshold of perception, like only staying there. It’s going to be extremely difficult to get past that and get to any sort of more real world application of this dog’s training.

Sarah: I mean, I really feel for people who live in cities because reactive dog training gets so much harder. And again, something that is not talked about enough. If you live in a more suburb environment, if you have access to a car, if you are rural, then you can meet your dog’s deeds for enrichment, for environment, for exercise, all of that stuff.

Sarah: Sniffing. You can go take your dog to a big field and let them sniff. Or you can go do dog sports. You can rent a facility. Like it’s easier if you live downtown in, I mean, I’ve lived in [01:08:00] Vancouver. I’ve, or I currently live in Vancouver. I’ve lived in Toronto. I have trained clients in London, back in the uk.

Sarah: ‘Cause I’m British so I know some people down there. I also have a horse in the countryside and it’s very different in the countryside ’cause there’s areas that you can access that are trigger free. And so for those dogs really you have them on. Routine where all their needs are met.

Sarah: And then you go trigger hunting, like you go looking for dogs or you do setups in order to do your training. But when you live in the city, you have to take your dog outside your house. They gotta pee and they’ve gotta poop. And you know, you do also wanna get some exercise in, and you wanna be able to like, take your dog to the big open field that you can access, but you gotta go through four blocks before you get there.

Sarah: There’s a gauntlet that you have to run. And for those people, and many of them don’t have cars. I didn’t have a car when I lived in Toronto. And so there is less control in how the triggers are presented. And there’s a lot more [01:09:00] chance that your dog is gonna go into that zone of itchiness.

Sarah: So if you are in a more controlled setting where you don’t have that many triggers, your dog is enriched, they’re feeling good, we’re doing setups, then it’s easier to kind of, play around with the threshold of perception. And then when your dog is ready, move closer. And when your dog is ready, stay in the presence of the trigger for longer.

Sarah: But that’s not an option for our city dogs. We are doing the best that we can, but ultimately a dog is gonna round the corner suddenly, and now you’re in the zone of itchiness. And you need to know what that looks like. You know, there’s a lot of articles and social media content out there being like, your dog should not, like if you’re training too close to the dog, you’re doing it wrong or you know you’re failing but ultimately when you live in a city, there are gonna be many times when the dog just.

Sarah: Is there or the skateboard or whatever it is. And there’s nothing that you can do about it. It doesn’t mean that you’re failing. It just means that when you live in the city, you have to know what all parts of the stress progression pathway look like if you live in a controlled area or not controlled area.

Sarah: But if [01:10:00] you live like suburbs rural, you only really need to know about the threshold of perception and like maybe the threshold for behavior of what we’re gonna do next. But when you live in the city, you need to know what it looks like when your dog gets close to that threshold too. What happens if you go after the threshold for behavior, and then you’re moving along the stress response pathway and you need to have one or two or three toolkits or tools in your toolkit to be able to deescalate that situation.

Sarah: And it’s just not something that’s really. I mean, it is out there, it’s just not out there a lot. Like people have written about this, but it’s not baked into a lot of the protocols that I see online. You know, you see engaged disengage, and you see patching games and you don’t see people talking about, well, if your dog is suddenly startled by another dog and they’re close to reacting what do we do in that moment?

Sarah: And it’s really important because a lot of the time we just panic, we tighten on the leash, and that leash tightening becomes a cue bark. And I’ve seen that so many times. If you tighten up on the leash, your dog [01:11:00] starts barking. And it’s because we don’t know what we’re supposed to do. And our dog is in that zone of itchiness.

Jessica: Yes, it is. It’s so important for people to be aware of all of these different, you know, zones and all of the different types of thresholds that their dog is crossing because they are going to cross all of those things. If they’re out with their dog and if they live in that type of environment it just

Sarah: feels so bad as a city person, it’s just so much harder.

Sarah: You’ve got to know a lot more and you can’t really drip feed your clients and you probably had the same thing because a lot of the time when we have a new client for private training, we wanna give them enough information that they’re going to start making progress, but not so much information that they feel overwhelmed and kind of hopeless.

Sarah: And in the city that’s so much harder because in the countryside you can be like, well, we’re gonna do these setups twice a week and we are gonna come to this field and we’re gonna do this training. And it can feel more manageable and more achievable. [01:12:00] Whereas in the city, it’s like you’re you have to know what you’re gonna do at all stages because otherwise there’s a gap.

Sarah: So you have to really choose. I. What information you give people straight away and you have to ramp them up really quickly. There’s not leisure time to get to grips with a threshold of perception. You have to also talk about the threshold of behavior and the zone of itchiness. And I still don’t have the answer.

Sarah: I find that really complicated and it’s really difficult to navigate and it’s overwhelming and, you know, it’s unfortunately, it is just a really difficult situation. But yeah, there’s no easy answer.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You know, the last thing that I wanna touch on before we wrap up is the intensity of the trigger.

Jessica: Because that is a really big. Piece to why a dog’s threshold might change. And that’s one thing that we kind of alluded to, but I think I wanna bring a little bit more clarity about that for our listeners, because when the [01:13:00] intensity of the trigger changes, and it might change because they get closer, but in my experience it’s not necessarily because they came closer. Many other things could have changed. Well, I’ll rattle off a few things and then I’d love to get your take on some things. So for the intensity of the trigger is just this degree in which it becomes more intense to the dog and it could be due to a variety of things, right?

Jessica: I just had mentioned. It could be because the proximity is getting smaller. It could be because maybe initially the dog that was down the street was sniffing the ground and now it picked its head up and now it’s looking at your dog. That is something that even though proximity has not changed their threshold might it could be even, I would also say, which we did touch on this, is just how long they’ve been exposed to that trigger.

Jessica: That sometimes just the length of time for some dogs, it’s helpful for them. They’re like, oh, wow, yeah, we’ve been doing this for five minutes. I’m calmer, and then there’s other dogs. Oh wow. We’ve been doing this for five minutes now I’m more [01:14:00] agitated. So again, it’s hugely dependent on the dog, but I didn’t think that we could walk away from this conversation about thresholds without touching on that a little bit more because it can influence the dog’s threshold.

Sarah: Yeah. I think it’s really important. And it’s one of those things where quite frequently I’ll have a private lesson client and they’ll say, well, sometimes my dog reacts and sometimes they don’t. And it looks the same to me. You know, like I could pass 10 dogs in the street and my dog might react to three or four of them, and I never know which ones it’s gonna be.

Sarah: And so whenever you’re looking at something like that you’re kind of asking, well, what’s the pattern? ’cause there’s always a pattern. And so sometimes dogs are. Triggered by bigger dogs, but not smaller dogs, you know? So it’s a common one. If the dog feels like that’s a little dog, it’s not that important, then they might not react to a dog passing them close by.

Sarah: But then the next day when they see a really large dog further away, they’re reacting. So there might be that element Very commonly, it’s how much interest the [01:15:00] other dog is paying to your dog. And this is something that many guardians miss because we just go, well, there’s a dog over there. We’re not really looking at what they’re doing.

Sarah: But for our dogs, if a dog is like really intensely interested in them, then they’re more likely to feel creeped out by that dog. Whereas if a dog is head down and moving along and they’re, or sniffing the grass. It’s a lot easier. And I actually find this a lot with human directed aggression.

Sarah: So, less about reactivity, but if you have a dog who is aggressing towards people it’s usually what the person is doing. You know, like a dog could be perfectly happy with people walking along down the street, but the moment there’s a jogger, it’s well, that guy’s doing something different, so I’m suspicious.

Sarah: Or, you know, if someone reaches out to pet your dog, then suddenly that guy’s doing something weird and that’s suspicious. So it’s kind of the same, but with other dogs, we’re batter as humans picking up on what the other human is doing previous to a reaction than what than looking at other dogs.

Sarah: Like we’re not great at picking up on that body language. So that’s a really big [01:16:00] one. And ultimately it’s difficult sometimes to really see the pattern because it’s kind of private to dog how they are perceiving the world.

Sarah: Sometimes you get like really difficult cases where the pattern isn’t really clear and then it turns out that it’s something really simple, like your dog is just really short and they’re quite low to the ground, and so they just can’t see very far ahead of them. And so you’re only getting these reactions when the situation allows your dog to actually perceive the other dog in the first place, which is not all the time.

Sarah: So it’s really interesting to me because I think as humans we’re quite good at this and we we look for the patterns and we try and find them and we get really hung up on well my dog really hates Huskies ’cause he is always reacting to Huskies, but never to you know, the little fluffy be Sean down the road.

Sarah: You know? So we sometimes we overthink about this and what the pattern is when it could be a much more simple explanation. And ultimately in order to understand how intense a trigger is to your dog, [01:17:00] rather than looking at the trigger, I find it’s better to look at your dog and how they’re actually perceiving that trigger.

Sarah: This is where it can have a simple explanation. Sometimes your dog is not perceived the trigger. They’re not aware that it’s there, and that’s why they’re not reacting. So it could be the scariest dog in the world, but it’s behind a guy pushing a trolley.

Sarah: And so your dog hasn’t seen it, and that’s why they’re not reacting. And so by looking at your dog and being like, well, what is my dog doing? Are they busy sniffing something on the ground or are they watching the other dog? Or like having that understanding of what their body language is doing is the only real way that we can see how intense they find that trigger.

Sarah: And sometimes there is a pattern that emerges and sometimes there’s not. So there are times when the pattern really doesn’t emerge for a very long time. If ever, sometimes it’s like. My dog has bad days. Sometimes it’s something else as well like if your dog has something else that’s stressful for them, like car rides, they might be more reactive than if they’re just leaving the house.

Sarah: So, I don’t know, like [01:18:00] that was a lot of disjointed thoughts in a row, but ultimately intensity generally speaking, things that are moving faster or have more kind of energy and exuberance to them are more intense than slower things. Bigger things are more intense than smaller things. Closer things are more intense than things that are further away, and especially things that are moving towards you or more intense than things that are moving away from you.

Sarah: So having that general guideline can usually reveal the pattern. For you. ‘Cause most dogs will follow those kind of rules. But ultimately the only way that you know how intense a trigger is to your dog is by looking at your dog and seeing how far along their stress response pathway they’re getting within, you know, within reason before you have to intervene.

Jessica: Yeah. That’s summed it up perfectly actually.

Sarah: There’s a, there’s some stuff to it. I feel like I’m always very verbose with my explanations, but hopefully it’s thorough. If nothing else,

Jessica: it’s, and that’s why I like it so much. No, truly, [01:19:00] I really enjoy this conversation. I feel like I have to have you come back again because I would love to, there’s so many things we touched on today that I would really love to get your perspective on.

Jessica: And yeah, definitely have to have you come back. ’cause this was really fun. I feel like I could talk to you for hours. We have to hopefully meet at a conference sometime. I love that. Something, I feel like we could spend a lot of time together and have so much fun talking about reactive dogs.

Sarah: Yeah, me too.

Sarah: This is really fun. It’s really nice to be able to articulate all my thoughts on the subject with someone. It’s not often that I get to like really nerd out about a specific topic, so this is really fun for me.

Jessica: Oh, good. I’m glad to hear that. All right, well thank you so much for coming on Sarah, and we’ll talk soon.

Jessica: Great. Thanks

Sarah: for having me.

Jessica: Take

Sarah: care.

Jessica: Hey listeners, I want to hear from you. If you have a suggestion for a topic or a guest, send me an email at podcast@jessicawitchcraft.com. [01:20:00] Or if you have a question about reactive dogs that you’d like me to answer on the show, you can leave me a voice message. Be sure to check the show notes on how to do that.

Jessica: If you found this podcast helpful and you want to support the show. There’s a few ways that you can do so. First, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you’re feeling extra awesome, you can also leave me a five star review. Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you next time.