Understanding Thresholds: The Key To Training A Reactive Dog

Imagine for a moment that you are casually walking down the street with your spouse, and all of a sudden, you catch a glimpse of your favorite celebrity (i.e. Beyoncé or Brad Pitt), and you literally CANNOT believe your eyes.

Almost immediately, you start sweating uncontrollably in your state of discombobulated excitement (“is it hot in here, or is it me?!”).

Meanwhile, your spouse, who is completely oblivious to your mini freakout, casually asks you where you would like to go for lunch.

At that exact moment, you definitely heard your spouse mention something about lunch (“I think!?!”), but because your brain is wildly misfiring from excitement, doing simple things like speaking, moving, thinking and/or closing your WIDE OPEN mouth shut, is extremely difficult, never mind doing somewhat more difficult things, like processing your spouse’s question AND expressing your lunch spot preference, in real time.

But eventually, doesn’t your sense of the world and your surroundings come back into sharper focus once you get a little distance away from your celebrity crush?

WTF just happened there?

Going Over Threshold

If this scenario was a familiar one to you, you just experienced going over your threshold.

What is a threshold, you might ask?

I tend to think of a threshold as an invisible line; a line that you cross when you move from one emotional state into another.

When you’re below the threshold, you can BOTH perceive the stimuli AND think, process and respond.

When you go over it, your ability to think, process and respond is incredibly impaired due to the stimuli.

In other words, going over your threshold generally takes you from a controllable emotional state to an uncontrollable one.

The reason that I bring up this story is that dogs, like us, go over threshold all the time, whether it’s due to excitement, like in the example above, or any number of countless other emotions, most notably, fear.

And again, just like us, when a dog goes over threshold, it can be difficult to communicate with them and get their attention because they are so laser-focused on the stimuli, and incredibly difficult, still, to be able to get them to perform even the most basic and well-practiced behaviors (such as “Sit”), in those moments.

This matters because when a dog goes over threshold, it’s common for them to exhibit behaviors that we don’t like, or are embarrassing to us, such as pulling/jumping/lunging towards someone/something or vocalizing/barking (which are probably behaviors we’d do as well in front of our celebrity crush if we had a bit less self-control), which is usually when clients reach out to me to help them reduce or eliminate these behaviors in their dog.

Identifying Triggers

When I start working on a case like this, I try, like a detective, to identify the stimulus or stimuli that triggered that response.

Sometimes, the client may already know what the exact triggers are. Other times, the client may have a generalized idea of what they are (or no idea at all), but their dog’s reactions to them can, at times, seem random, unpredictable and counterintuitive to them.

When a client has a generalized idea (or no idea) of their dog’s triggers, I ask them to watch out for these common body language signals that indicate that something in their environment has the potential to send them over threshold:

• yawns

• lip licks

• tongue flicks

• panting

• furrowed brows

• slight movement of the corners of the mouth, 

• a slight evidence of piloerection (raised hair)

• pulled back ears

• intense gaze

• tense body language

Limiting/Eliminating Exposure To The Trigger

Once you’ve identified your dog’s trigger(s), it’s best to first limit or eliminate exposure to the stimuli, as much as possible, so that they stay under threshold and are not given the opportunity to practice these undesirable/embarrassing behaviors.

This is because you want to give your dog every opportunity to succeed, much like how you wouldn’t fill your fridge with easily-accessible junk food if you, or someone in your household, is on a fitness plan.

In general, the best ways to limit or eliminate exposure to the stimuli is to:

• Increasing the DISTANCE between your dog and the stimuli (i.e. getting your dog further away from a dog that he doesn’t like);

• Decreasing the INTENSITY of the stimuli (i.e. taking your dog to a quieter space during a thunderstorm);

• Decreasing the DURATION of exposure to the stimuli (i.e. going around a corner when exposed to passing motorcycles)

These tactics might seem straightforward, but I’ve seen countless dog parents just stand FROZEN IN PLACE while their dog is completely losing it, because they either:

• Don’t know what else they should be doing;

• Think that enough exposure to the trigger will get them used to the trigger; or

• Believe that there’s nothing that can be done to manage this behavior

Think about it this way: imagine that you’re walking down the street with your nephew who’s in elementary school. And all of a sudden, your nephew catches a glimpse of the schoolyard bully, and immediately stiffens up in fear, rendering him unable to move or talk.

Shouldn’t your first instinct be to remove him from that situation before figuring out a plan of action to help him overcome his fear?

And while some might say that this might be the perfect moment to talk him through the situation, or to remind him that he knows karate, and should use it RIGHT NOW to face his fear head on, the fact is that NONE of those words will be heard or processed by your nephew until he is removed from that situation.

Creating Training Set-Ups

Once you’ve mastered the ability to limit or eliminate exposure to known triggers based on your reading of your dog’s body language, it’s time to create carefully-crafted training setups that will allow exposure to the trigger, but will keep them below threshold.

This can take the form of exposing the dog to the stimuli, but at a distance, level of intensity, and/or duration that keeps your dog under threshold, all the while rewarding your dog with treats for staying under threshold.

For example, if you know that your dog just loses his mind when he sees the Bernese Mountain Dog in the neighborhood, ask your neighbor if she wouldn’t mind helping you create a training setup where she stands at the end of the street with her dog, while you stand at the other end of the street with your dog.

Once you’re at a distance where your dog is NOTICING the Bernese, but not REACTING to him, then whenever your dog looks at the Bernese, mark the behavior with a “YES!” (or using a clicker), and then reward your dog with a treat.

Eventually, your dog will learn that the scary Bernese, for some reason, isn’t as scary as initially thought, if just looking at him results in delicious treats raining down from the sky.

Check out this video where you can see this training set-up in action.

Think about it like this way: imagine you’re deathly scared of spiders, to the point where even looking at them causes an emotional reaction in you.

Now, what would happen if every time you looked at a spider, someone immediately tapped you on the shoulder, congratulated you, and gave you a million dollars. 

Wouldn’t you, over time, emotionally experience spiders in a more positive way?

That’s EXACTLY what we’re trying to do when training a a dog that goes over threshold when exposed to certain triggers.

The Consequences of Labeling

It’s important to remember that a dog that goes over threshold is not ignoring you, being stubborn or doing it on purpose.

They are simply experiencing an alien world (to them), which can, at times, be scary or not make sense to them, and as a result, can cause an intense uncontrollable emotional reaction that results in behavior that you don’t like.

I mean, imagine if your spouse, in the example above, took your inability to focus on, and answer, their question about your lunch preference, as an incredibly rude thing that you did on purpose, and to make matters worse, uses this interaction with you to justify labeling you as a bad listener or a stubborn person, from that point forward.

Would that be fair?

Because, while it’s possible that your behavior in that moment did indicate those things, isn’t the ACTUAL reason why you couldn’t answer the question in that moment was because you were in the presence of the…QUEEN BEE, hard stop?!?!

Happy training!