It started as a good morning. A nice walk, a little noisy. Kids were out for recess, they were using machinery in the field, of which sounded like it was constantly backing up for 20 minutes, a few dogs out, a few walkers, fairly normal Monday morning. The skies were a little overcast, and the weatherman was calling for rain and storms later in the day, so there is always a “different” feeling in the air on those days, but everything was how it should be, minus the incessant backing up.
I had a dog walking with me, of course, because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t know what to do with my arms. The dog in question, well, she isn’t always the most confident dog, and has been known to be terrified of fireworks, and nervous in the pet stores, but beyond that, she’s usually heads up, tails up outside. We were headed down our morning route as per usual, and were just starting to move off into the grass to give space to the upcoming dog on the path, as he looked like he was eyeballing the wee dog as a morning snack.
There were no fireworks being set off before 10:30am on a Monday, and no rouge pet stores in the area, however, something startled that little dog. Startled her to a point that panic set in and the flight response kicked in – hard. The same response that she has had to fireworks. This hasn’t happened for quite some time, and she had even shown some good progress with fireworks. I have no idea what triggered this – but for possibly a gentleman coughing, who had been running and now sounded like he had perhaps run too fast or too hard, and may have been having a mini heart attack. It still didn’t sound like fireworks, however, it was a tad disconcerting.
Well, she spooked, big time, and the leash slipped out of my hand (I can’t even begin to tell you how this happened, it just did) and she bolted. And, she happened to bolt straight towards said dog that was eye balling her as breakfast. In all “normal” circumstances, if the leash happens to drop, she will bounce herself off of me, laser focused and rather rudely asking, “when can we start work?”. Not this time, not with fear involved. I immediately ran after her, which isn’t the best thing to do, but in this scenario, not the worst either. I will never be one of those people who just stands there and calls their dogs name without doing something to stop said dog physically as it bounds off without a care in the world. But this wasn’t bounding off. This was panic. And panic that drove her straight towards the other dog to get away from whatever it was that made her panic. I apologized as I ran by the person with the dog who seemed hungry for breakfast (I’m sure she wasn’t happy with me, and I also don’t blame her for that) and yelled a bunch of things at my fleeing dog, none of which had an impact, because panic makes ears close.
When I finally caught her (she wasn’t going to go too far, but far enough that I was getting nervous, as my sprinting abilities has seriously degraded since I changed to solely playing net in ball hockey) she was shaking like a leaf, a severely shaking leaf, a leaf shaking in a hurricane. So I knew, no matter what I did in that moment, it would have zero impact on her brain. I scooped her up, since she was trying to drag me away from the offending area, and carried her for a little. We sat down on a bench nearby, I offered her a bit of liver for even looking at me for a split second, while she tried her best to figure out how to escape from the situation. We waited at the bench for a while, until she calmed her little brain long enough to offer a down. Once she did, we headed for home, and though the anxiety wasn’t as intense, she was adamant that we move much faster to get back, to which I did not comply, and kept the walk as casual as possible. Along the way, I did encourage some sniffing around to reduce the tension.
So why did I tell you this story that completely makes my dog sound unable to perform basic tasks under distraction? I tell you this because number one, it can happen to all of us, even so-called professionals (I didn’t feel too professional in the moment, I felt more so-called). Number two, there are always going to be situations that you run into that you haven’t prepared for, or that happen out of no where, that make your dogs ears close, either flight, fight or freeze will kick in, and disaster strikes. Social media makes it look like dogs are always perfect after training, and that your dog should be too, and no matter what the circumstances, you dog will act perfect after training and if they don’t, it’s your fault. You see these 30 second before and afters on the Instagram and TikToks, and I think that they lead the public into believing that dogs are like robots, which you program, and with the correct programming, they become these perfect little beings where no mistakes are made, no matter what. This is dangerous and untrue whether you train your dog yourself, have help from a trainer through private lessons or group training, or send your dog to a board and train.
You see, said dog has pretty darn good obedience, is ecollar trained for recall, and is very engaged with me for the most part (she is a terrier after all). But when something startles a dog who isn’t the most confident creature, these types of things that happened to me above, can happen to you, no matter how well trained that you think your dog is. Everything that they know can go soaring out the window when flight or fight kicks in. Which is why you hear of so many lost dogs after a firework session. In a similar way, this can happen to us humans as well, we are not immune. We panic, we bolt, we have irrational fears, we get fired up, pissed off, and uncontrollable given the right scenario. So it’s disingenuous to think that this can not happen to dogs who have been through training as well.
I guess my main point here is that you need to understand that dogs are animals, not robots, and there are times when their instincts kick in and this can over-ride even the best training in the world, no matter what anyone tells you, especially if you have a dog who is more prone to fear/flighty behaviour or aggression. And you can not always prepare yourself and your dog for these situations that come up, because often they are one offs, or like the one I experienced, completely out of nowhere, like seriously out of nowhere – this wasn’t like “oh, the dog bit me and there was no warning signs”, but there truly was a thousand low key warning signs. No, this was zero to sixty, real quick.
There are many dogs that this sort of thing will never happen to. I have two of them as well, and I can pretty much guarantee that they would never bolt – one, well, bolting isn’t in his repertoire or stamina level, and the other, well, he is to obsessed with me to really go anywhere, and noises don’t faze either … unless it sounds like someones car that they know, but that’s a different story. However, there are also many dogs that this could happen to, especially the dogs who show more anxious tendencies, and this is also why, quite a few rescues out there require you to double leash your dog for a period of time and use slip leads or martingales (though it doesn’t help if you drop both the leashes). So please be mindful of your dogs tendencies, and be aware that in particular situations your dogs training might not help them get through it completely. Now, I’m not saying that training doesn’t help these dogs, it sure does, because I can tell you that without any training at all, that little dog would have been long gone, but it won’t always work the way it should or the way you want it to when those “out of nowhere” times arise. Don’t take your training for granted, and be prepared to deal with the unknown when you are outside in public places. That sounded ominous … but you get my point.
Happy Wednesday!
Smart Dogs Canine Training Milton 