Are High Cortisol Levels Negatively Impacting Your Dog?

Have you been trying to build your dog’s confidence around certain triggers? Perhaps they are scared of other dogs, people, bikes, or certain noises. Their flight / fight response is activated (to learn more about these responses click here), and they run and hide or lunge forward barking when seeing or hearing these triggers. You are doing your best to build positive associations with their experiences around the scary trigger, but you feel like your efforts are pointless. You don’t seem to be seeing much change.

While behavioural modification of fear responses in dogs can certainly take time, months or even years, there is one thing that could be hindering your progress! Long term chronic high levels of cortisol.

What is cortisol?

Cortisol is a stress hormone involved in our dog’s flight / fight/ freeze response. When activated, cortisol helps raise blood sugar levels to give energy to the body to deal with the threat. It also increases blood pressure and heart rate and so much more.

So why might we not be seeing the behavioural change we hoped for?

While Cortisol is an extremely important hormone particularly if we are truly in danger. If our dogs (or ourselves) are experiencing repeated high frequency frightening stimuli (e.g., multiple times per day), therefore triggering on going high cortisol, this can lead to long term negative health and mind affects. This includes weakening of the immune function (Svobodová et al. (2014)) and lowering their threshold for coping with stressful experiences. This can then lead to increase in behaviours such as aggression, anxiety, hypervigilance. Their ability to learn and remember can also be impaired when cortisol is consistently high.

So, if your dog has for example been home on their own for the day, repeatedly encountering their trigger stimulus which then activates cortisol secretion into the body initiating a flight / fight response (e.g. a dog worried about people barking at everyone they see through the window walking past the house). Then you come home and try to do some positive training around the stimuli your already at a major setback! Your dog’s cortisol is high therefore impeding their ability to learn throughout the training session and experience positive associations with their triggers. Even if you manage to get a few good experiences occurring during the session the negative experiences of the trigger throughout the day still outweighs the few positives you got in the training session.

“When the number of positive experiences our dogs have had with a trigger greatly exceeds the number of fearful experiences, then we have a good foundation to build more lasting confidence and courage.” – Kim Hallworth

Reduce Exposure to Triggers

Cortisol can take a significant amount of time to return to baseline levels, sometimes up to 72 hours, particularly if your dog has experienced these triggers repeatedly in a short period of time (also known as trigger stacking). It is therefore extremely important to reduce your dog’s exposure to scary stimuli throughout their day, except when you are specifically building their confidence through a specialised training program. This program should aim at keeping the dog feeling safe whilst seeing or hearing their triggers so not to activate an intense fight / flight response.

Tips for reducing exposure

So, what can you do to ensure your dog feels as safe as possible in their environment? Limiting their exposure to fear triggers, especially when you are not in a position to help them, is an important foundation whilst building their confidence. Here are a few suggestions:

Visual: If your dog gets worried when seeing their trigger then consider reducing their ability to see them by:

•  Adding window film to your windows - allows the sun in but stops your dog seeing out the window. You can put it just up to the height your dog could see out if you don’t want it all the way up.

• Keeping blinds down.

• Adding a removable visual barrier (e.g. solid partisan that could be removed when you are able to assist your dog with their fears).

• Another room - moving them to another room whilst for example people are over at the house so they don’t feel intimidated.

Auditory: If your dog gets worried when hearing their trigger then consider reducing their ability to hear them by:

• White noise machine - this works well for my girl Neesha who can be fearful of some noises happening outside the house e.g., car door closing.

• Fan turned on - not for the cooling wind movement but to increase rhythmic sound and therefore helping reduce other environmental sounds.

• Tv / radio - depending on your dog’s sensitivities to their trigger this may or may not work, A tv or radio on a channel that has unpredictable sounds may accidently play sounds your dog is worried about, or if they also get visually worried a tv may show something that worries them.

Safe Places: Creating a safe place that your dog can voluntarily go to that reduces their exposure to a scary trigger can be incredibly useful to help your dog stay calm. Initially you may need to teach them this is a safe place, but you may also be able to use something that is a naturally instinctive safe place for your dog. Whilst it may not work for all dogs’ places that can work well are dark enclosed spaces like:

• Under the bed - place a dog bed or blankets under your bed that they can crawl into, this works well for my dog Neesha, she loves her safe place and will go there herself if she hears something scary particularly at nighttime. My bed is reasonably high so plenty of space underneath but may not work with lower beds.

• Under the table - lots of dogs naturally go under a table to get comfortable, my dogs love sleeping under my desk when I am working. Creating an inviting space under a table / desk can work well.

• In a crate - especially if it is an enclosed crate like a material one or a wire one with a blanket over the top. Can work well if your dog is crate trained and enjoys being in the crate. My dogs will voluntarily sleep in a crate. Be careful to ensure that the door can’t accidently close behind them.

• In a cupboard - the bottom of a cupboard can be nice and dark inviting space for a dog. Placing a bed under your hanging clothes may work well depending on the size of your dog and assuming they are not going to chew and destroy your clothes. Be careful to ensure that the door can’t accidently close behind them.

Enrichment: Giving your dog something else to do and think about can assist to stop your dog from reacting to a trigger and going into flight / fight mode. It is basically distracting your dog from noticing or fixating on their trigger. These may include:

• Kong filled with food - having some ready to go for unexpected situations can be beneficial. Ensure you choose the right size and strength for your dog.

• Licky Mat – can smear a range of foods on the mat for them to lick off, ensure your dog will just lick the mat and not chew and ingest the mat.

• Raw Bone - be careful to choose a bone that is less likely to result in broken teeth e.g., don’t choose weight baring animal bones. Ensure it is raw and not cooked, as cooked bones can splinter and cause digestive issues. Seek veterinary advice if you have questions about safe bones for your dog.

• Snuffle Mats – sniffing out food has been shown to reduce dogs stress levels, reducing heart rate and cortisol secretion. Ensure your dog will just sniff through the mat and find the food, not chewing and ingesting the mat.

It is important to note that each dog is different and some of these strategies might work better than others, particularly if they have a combination of triggers.

Will reducing trigger exposure build my dogs confidence?

Remember that reducing exposure to stressful stimuli on its own is not actively building their confidence to the trigger (this is what specific training programs like counter conditioning do). However, reducing exposure to fear triggers can help decrease the level of stress hormones (i.e. cortisol) they have in their body on a daily basis therefore helping training sessions become more impactful in building confidence and reducing their fear responses.

Want help with implementing a training plan to build confidence and courage give me a call to discuss your dog’s needs on: 0493 661 678