Have you ever been in that place where you have been walking your dog, they see so many other dogs (or insert your dogs trigger here), and then randomly out of nowhere.... you get a HUGE almighty reaction?
Well, I'm here to tell you that your dog is trigger stacking.
If you're not sure what that means, well let me break it down for you!
Have you ever woken up and the alarm didn’t go off, you are late for work, you were delayed by someone rear ending you and you had to exchange details, you get to work and there is no coffee, your boss gives you the most difficult job in the office to do, you get stuck in traffic on the way home. Finally you get home and your partner asks you why you didn’t home sooner…. Boom. You explode.
Now let’s translate that into dog:
They wake up and the postman is at the door. The postman knocks 1 million times and makes your dog bark, then you take them for a walk, they see 2 dogs that they usually might have found scary. Later that day you go to the vets. They have to endure a potentially invasive and painful minor procedure. When they walk out a dog is waiting for them. They explode.
Maybe it’s more relatable to read back to back like this?
What we see is that the triggers in isolation would be fine for us or our dogs to cope with, but when stacked up on top of each other, they cause overwhelm - to use a human centred phrase.
To combat trigger stacking?
Well, we need to work on our distance, duration and distraction levels. We need to make sure we are keeping outings an appropriate length; working at appropriate distances; and finally not overloading our dogs with too many of the things that causes them to feel this way.