Startle, Fight or Flight and Aggression – using scales

Preprogrammed treble and base are those toggle switches that greatly affect your music. Well, your dog is very similar in that he may have high treble and low base or any combination thereof. This means that your pup may be pre-programmed by genetics and nature to be the nervous. First of all, remember that your dog has the best chance of being helped because you are his fur parent. Think about something that was difficult for you to do as a child. Perhaps it was skiing, skating or riding a horse. Even though you didn’t have a natural talent for skiing, you were still able to have a great time and manage not to get hurt. Perhaps you would never be an Olympic downhill mogul Gold medalist, but you were able to enjoy the sport safely. Well, if you are a great teacher you can now teach someone else how to ski. So do not despair if your dog has behavioral issues, even if they are quite significant. You have our help.

Let’s say that your dog can be classified as “normal”. Now, normal is not actually normal, but rather average. Normal for one person or dog can be quite different from normal for another person or dog. So think about your dog as a combination of slides or toggle switches on a music mixer. Let’s say that there are 5 hypothetical sliders to consider. The first slider is “startle”. Startle is what we love to do when we are practical jokers and are trying to get someone to react suddenly. This has little to do with the reaction but rather the response or reflexes you were born with. Some people startle easily, and are more reactive to outside stimuli. Think about your dog and how startled he becomes when he is sleeping, lying down, walking, playing or engaging in other activity. Does he jump out of his skin or does he open one eye halfway and barely acknowledge the stimulus? This will enable you to determine his startle reflex. A higher number, such as 10, would mean that he jumps out of his skin whenever there is an outside stimulus. A 0 would basically be a stuffed animal. A 5 would be a little jump or movement such as a quick head turn or slower movement in the direction of the stimulus in order to look at it or acknowledge it.

The next might be true fight or flight. Does your dog immediately turn to run or does he turn to fight? Technically these are two separate stages, but for our purposes let’s put them on the same slider and call them reactivity. It is not the specific reaction he has but rather the intensity of the reaction he has. So set the slider here as 10 if your dog runs away, or bites when he’s afraid or is being aggressive. Fearfulness is when a dog shuts down and is unable to move forward because of panic or anxiety. This is at the bottom of this slider. This is certainly not a good thing. This is when a dog is so terrified or panicked that its body can no longer move. This is the deer in the headlights response. The fear has become so intense that the central nervous system is no longer able to function properly. We all know someone who when terrified shuts down, covers their head in their hands and is simply unable to function. There are many dogs with this response, many of whom are feral dogs who have not been touched by humans and they are simply unable to function properly. Dogs with this response are safer to handle, as a general rule, because their natural response is to shut down when challenged rather than to lunge at someone. An appropriate and desired response of a dog in a fearful or uncertain situation should be one of caution, not fear. A dog lunging toward what he is fearful of would be something to be concerned with.