Over-arousal, How to Avoid It? Dog Trainer Kingsford

Over-arousal, How to Avoid It? Advice from a Dog Trainer in Kingsford

Over-arousal behaviours are very common in dogs and especially within certain breeds such as working dogs and staffies but why? We have to look at the escalation process to understand what happens.

First dogs get excited about things and if the excitement isn’t controlled or it’s reinforced, the dog can then become over-excited. This means that the dog is clearly starting to lose self-regulating skills when excited. This can escalate further to over-arousal. The difference between the two is that when a dog is over-excited they have poor impulse control skills, when over-aroused they show none or very very little impulse control. The problem with over-arousal is that it can escalate further to frustration-based or learnt aggression. This is when once happy-go-lucky dogs turn evil, a very common story I hear from clients who love dog parks.

When doing high arousal activities such as free play at dog parks we are talking about activities that produce adrenaline in the dog’s body. This can be highly addictive to dogs such as it is to us people and can cause severe obsessive behaviours and aggression issues when left to escalate. Avoiding over-arousal is the key to managing it!

Over-arousal activities should be done only occasionally, not on a daily basis and I always recommend doing it in a way that allows the dog to maintain good communication with you at all times such as fetch through training (it’s used as a reward isntead of just plain old fetch), doing dog sports like agility or fly ball which is very much controlled activity and for a short time at a time! Too long high arousal activity will only raise those arrousal levels!

And keeping an eye on your dog’s mental state is the key! When your dog no longer pays attention to you at the park, you have over-done it. Cut it shorter the next time and focus on engagement with you more. Fun with the other dogs at the park is fine, as long as your dog can still self-regulate and listen to you too. And there should be a healthy balance of being calm and observing other dogs. If your dog struggles to do this, you have a raising over-arousal issue at hand!