I told you last week about the problems I’ve had with my Zoom meeting account. Several of you were affected during the Perfect Pet class and our Devotee online meet ups. Despite at least one phone call every day for the past week, several emails and completion of three online contact forms I’ve heard nothing. Nada.
I’ve found it very stressful, which means I’ve not slept well, I’ve felt very tired and lacking in energy, it’s been difficult to concentrate on things and I’ve been snappy at Himself and Daughter no 2. Typical stress symptoms.
Stress is common.
Pre-lockdown, around 15% of the population showed signs indicating toxic levels of stress. After only two weeks of lockdown, the proportion of the population suffering toxic stress increased to a quarter and it’s likely to have increased further since then.
It’s inevitable that these times are affecting our dogs as well as us.
One of Gus’s new favourite tricks now is to disrupt my video conference calls and online training sessions. When dogs are bored they tend to look elsewhere for entertainment. Last week Gus barked and then chewed my wooden doorstop during the Perfect Pet class. He’s never shown any interest in it before and hasn’t chewed anything in the house since he was a puppy. I wasn’t amused.
I’m far more aware of everyday noises and I notice every vehicle that passes now. So is Gus. He’s become much more sensitive and reactive than usual to noises and movements outside. For the past two days he’s rushed back inside instead of pottering around while I feed the birds and he’s barked at rain hitting our roof and at several tractors passing by. This is especially noticeable at night – every noise is amplified. Gus has started going out and barking after dark – at what, I’m not always sure.
What behaviour changes have you seen in your dog?
Perhaps your dog believes it is extremely important to bark at every person, dog, cat, and leaf that passes by the window. Or perhaps they’re reacting more out and about to the dark, or to noises, or to other dogs or people.
Reactivity in dogs is a common problem, affecting between 10-25% of dogs.
Having a reactive dog is difficult for owners, from the physical challenge of holding onto a lunging and barking beast and the embarrassment of trying to control their dog while other people look disapprovingly down their noses. So owners start taking their Reactive Rover out earlier and earlier in the morning or later and later at night to try to avoid the problem.
In many cases, the reactivity is also related to being on lead. The majority of reactive dogs are not aggressive at all – they are just reacting in frustration that they can’t go say hi, or play, or sniff out some information in every dog or person they see.
When you add in the odd way people are behaving at present, keeping their distance and moving away to avoid getting too close, we’ll almost certainly see an increase in reactivity problems as we ease out of lockdown. And that’s without the difficulty of teaching our dogs about people wearing different face-masks and face guards that change their appearance completely.
Despite these issues, it is actually a good time to work on helping your reactive dog. Used correctly, the same things that can increase reactivity can also help it. Fewer people and dogs around means it’s easier to control and manage exposure and gives you opportunities to practice teaching your dog to be calm around their triggers.
How will you teach or retrain your Reactive Rover to be calm around other dogs and people?
By the way, on Monday night (well, Tuesday morning at 2am – I told you I couldn’t sleep…) I took the nuclear option, deleted my Zoom account and set up a new one. I immediately felt 100% better.
Keep training and keep safe,
Carol