On the latest episode of The Family Pupz Podcast, we asked the owner and head trainer of Sit Pretty Behavior & Training, Vanessa Charbonneau, explains what "Trigger Stacking" is, and how it relates to reactive behaviors in dogs.
Check out her answers above!
To learn more about how to train a dog that is reactive in the car, check out Vanessa's webinar, Chaos In The Car, here: https://www.sit-pretty.ca/training-options/chaos-in-the-car-webinar
To listen to the rest of the conversation with Vanessa, check out the podcast episode below:
[TRANSCRIPT FOR THE VIDEO BELOW]
Vanessa Charbonneau: When I talk about trigger stacking, I always throw that word around and realize that not everybody knows what it means.
But a trigger is anything that our dog reacts to, our stressed out by, or is eliciting emotions. And if we're constantly being triggered, we're being triggered multiple times a day, or multiple times in every car ride, those triggers start to stack on top of each other. And then we have a dog who's climbing higher and higher and higher towards their thresholds and getting more and more and more stressed. And if we're getting triggered every day, or multiple times a day, our dogs never have a chance to regulate those stress hormones and come back down to normal. And this results in a dog who's kind of wound tight all of the time and very trigger sensitive.
So we're seeing more reactions more easily with dogs who are constantly being exposed to them.