Medication has undoubtedly been incredibly helpful in reducing George's overall anxiety, enabling him to get better rest, and giving us the space to work on behaviour modification.
But there are a few things outside of medication that have been (and continue to be) incredibly helpful.
These have been the top five game-changers for us:
- Management
Reducing George's exposure to triggers has stopped him being in a constant state of high stress, and has enabled him to rest and recover better. He has some room leftover in his stress bucket.
See Management.
- Rest days / recovery time
I didn't realise how much rest dogs need. Anxious dogs need even more. George struggled to settle and wasn't getting anywhere near enough quality rest.
Introducing more rest and recovery time has made a huge difference to George's tolerance, resilience and emotional regulation.
- Distance
Similar to management, distance is your friend with anxious and reactive dogs.
The first step is understanding the distance your dog can tolerate from a trigger. If they react (and staring fixatedly or freezing is a reaction), you're too close.
It can be challenging as the distance may be different depending on the trigger (e.g. dog vs person) or where you are (e.g. open field vs trail). It can also be differ from day to day.
Your dog may have experienced some trigger-stacking and may have less tolerance - or, just like humans, they may be having an off day.
This one's pretty easy to figure out for George, as his distance is massive! 😆
Although he's made some improvements with distance to people recently, and he does better if it's not just the two of us.
You can only successfully attempt behavioural modification at a distance your dog can tolerate.
We walk at quiet times in quiet areas, and we avoid places with limited visibility or where unexpected triggers may appear. If we see a trigger, we create more distance if needed.
Respecting George's distance needs has really helped to reduce his stress.
- Patterns
Another one I didn't really understand at first!
Anxious dogs love routine and predictability. Creating a predictable and familiar routine is incredibly helpful.
When our trainer introduced us to pattern games, I was a little sceptical.
But when George was afraid to leave the house, pattern games got us closer to - and eventually out of - the door, while keeping George's stress levels in check.
George adores playing pattern games.
We are still in the early stages of playing them 'in the wild', and only in the absence of triggers at the moment, but I think they will continue to be an extremely valuable tool.
- Rewarding calm
Probably one of the most important 'training' tasks - and one that's often overlooked. It can seem strange to reward your dog for doing nothing.
I carry kibble in my pocket and frequently reward George for being calm.
I don't need to reward him as much nowadays, but it was very frequent in the early days when George struggled to settle and rarely displayed calm behaviours.
Calm builds calm. He is naturally much calmer nowadays (at home at least), but he needed that positive reinforcement that calm = good things.
It's still very much a work in progress outside the house.
There are, of course, lots of other incredibly important things that contribute - exercise, brain games, cue training, enrichment and confidence-building, to name but a few.
But in terms of what have had the biggest and fastest impact for us, these are our strong top 5.